DOJ Special Counsel David Rody: Rejoining Biden, Russia, and the Trump Era in the Post-Washington Era
Indicting an active candidate for the White House would surely spark a political firestorm. According to people with knowledge of the matter, DOJ officials have debated whether a special counsel could insulate the department from the accusations that Joe Biden’s administration is targeted at his chief political rival.
The months leading up to the election have provided little respite from the political and legal activity. More than 800 rioters who were on the grounds of the Capitol and still look to charge hundreds are likely to be tried or given guilty pleas by the DC US Attorney’s Office.
“They can crank up charges on almost anybody if they wanted to,” said one defense attorney working on January 6-related matters, who added defense lawyers have “have no idea” who ultimately will be charged.
Trump and his associates also face legal exposure in Georgia, where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State and expects to wrap her probe by the end of the year.
Special counsels, of course, are hardly immune from political attacks. TheRussia investigation and the investigation of the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe came under fire from their opponents.
The Justice Department looked to an old guard of former prosecutors, including David Rody, who had specialized in gang and conspiracy cases, as well as the Kansas City-based federal prosecutor David Raskin who was also a national security expert.
Rody, whose involvement has not been previously reported, left a lucrative partnership at the prestigious corporate defense firm Sidley Austin in recent weeks to become a senior counsel at DOJ in the criminal division in Washington, according to his LinkedIn profile and sources familiar with the move.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/03/politics/doj-trump-investigation-expansion-special-counsel/index.html
Advising the US Attorney’s Office in Investigating Right-wing extremists with the January 6 elections. Update on the case of Biden
The team at the DC US Attorney’s Office handling the January 6 investigations is growing, even as other cases against right-wing extremists go to trial.
A prosecutor with years of experience in criminal appellate work and a high-ranking fraud and public corruption prosecutor are among the new prosecutors who joined the January 6 investigations team.
The decision of whether to charge Trump or his associates will ultimately fall to Attorney General Merrick Garland, whom President Joe Biden picked for the job because his tenure as a judge provided some distance from partisan politics, after Senate Republicans blocked his Supreme Court nomination in 2016.
Several former prosecutors believe there are facts to the case. But Garland will have to navigate the politically perilous and historic decision of how to approach the potential indictment of a former President.
In March, Garland avoided answering a CNN question about the prospect of a special counsel for Trump-related investigations, but said that the Justice Department does “not shy away from cases that are controversial or sensitive or political.”
Garland said that they must avoidpartisan elements of their decision making about cases. “That is what I’m intent on ensuring that the Department decisions are made on the merits, and that they’re made on the facts and the law, and they’re not based on any kind of partisan considerations.”
Garland’s tough decisions go beyond Trump. The long-running investigation of Hunter Biden, son of the president, is nearing conclusion, people briefed on the matter say. Also waiting in the wings: a final decision on the investigation of Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, after prosecutors recommended against charges.
One former Justice Department official with some insight into the thinking around the investigations said that they wouldn’t charge before they were ready to charge. “But there will be added pressure to get through the review” of cases earlier than the typical five-year window DOJ has to bring charges.
Willis has observed her own version of a quiet period around the midterm election and is seeking to bring witnesses before the grand jury in the coming weeks. CNN could get indictments as soon as December, sources previously said.
Key Trump allies, including South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows are among witnesses that have tried to fight off subpoenas in the state probe into efforts to interfere with the Georgia 2020 election.
The January 6 investigation by the House Select Committee added to the investigative leads from inside the Trump White House, and how those disputes resolve in Georgia could improve DOJ’s ability to gather information.
Yet in both investigations, under-seal court activity never subsided, with the Justice Department trying to force at least five witnesses around Trump to secretly provide more information in their grand jury investigations in Washington, DC, CNN has previously reported.
Trump’s legal team successfully put in place a complicated court-directed process for sorting through thousands of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago, to determine whether they’re privileged and off limits to investigators. The intelligence community and the Department of Justice have had access for weeks to about 100 records that Trump kept in Florida.
The outcome of the intelligence review of those documents may determine if criminal charges will be filed, according to one source familiar with the Justice Department’s approach.
On Tuesday a federal judge ordered Trump adviser Kash Patel to testify before a grand jury investigating the handling of federal records at Mar-a-Lago, according to two people familiar with the investigation.
A decision by the judge of the district court in DC to grant immunity from prosecution on any information that he gives to the investigation moves the Justice Department closer to charging the case.
The recommendations under consideration of obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the federal government match allegations the select committee made against Trump and his elections attorney John Eastman in a previous court proceeding seeking Eastman’s emails. A judge had agreed with the House, finding it could access Eastman’s emails about his 2020 election work for Trump because the pair was likely planning to defraud the US and engaging in a conspiracy to obstruct Congress, according to that court proceeding.
The impact of House referrals might not be known because the Department of Justice special counsel investigation is already analyzing Trump. But in addition to criminal referrals, committee Chairman Bennie Thompson told reporters that the panel could issue five to six other categories of referrals, such as ethics referrals to the House Ethics Committee, bar discipline referrals and campaign finance referrals.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump, criticized the committee in a statement as a “Kangaroo court” that held “show trials by Never Trump partisans who are a stain on this country’s history.”
The committee has been careful in crafting recommendations and has uncovered facts, according to Rep. ZOE L OF gren.
We spent a lot of time looking at the facts, but also looked at what the code section was and what the bottom line recommendation was, so we were able to make a decision on what to do.
The Investigating Committee on Judgment-Incriminating Observations on the Role of Trump’s Crime-Breaking Activities
The criminal statutes related to the violence, for obstructing a congressional proceeding, and in some cases for seditious conspiracy, have mostly been focused on by the Justice Department.
The final public meeting of the committee will take place on Monday, while the full report will be released on Wednesday. The panel will approve the final report Monday and will make announcements about criminal referrals to the Justice Department, but the public will not see it until two days later, according to the Mississippi Democrat.
According to multiple sources, the panel weighed the criminal referrals of a number of Trump’s closest associates, including his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former White House strategist George Papas.
In a way, our system of justice is not like the one where people go to jail and don’t go to prison, argued Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the committee.
More broadly, the committee has now sketched the most urgent framing of a perennial question about Trump’s riotous careers in business and politics: Will he ever face accountability for his rule-breaking conduct? The question is acute given that this time the norm crushed almost brought down US democracy.
The issue of accountability is a key part of the comment regarding foot soldiers, since many of those who were part of the mob that trashed the Capitol have already been sentenced. And since winning the White House in 2016, Trump repeatedly avoided paying political and legal prices as the ultimate example of a “ringleader” who skips past judgment. Former special counsel Robert Mueller, for example, unearthed a trove of information apparently showing Trump obstructed the Russia investigation but decided not to make a finding that the then-president committed crimes. Most of the Republicans in the Senate found reasons to not convict Trump when he was impeached twice.
The committee might have had a political consequence. The video of Trump’s mob smashing into the Capitol and the courageous testimony of witnesses, often Republican, who testified against him will certainly be at the center of the 2024 presidential campaign if Trump is the GOP nominee.
The committee’s televised hearings and the summary released Monday paint a devastating picture of Trump’s assault on the constitutional order and the previously unbroken peaceful transfers of power from one president to the next – the essence of American democracy.
The committee cites Section 1512 (c) (2) of Title 18 of the US code, which makes it a crime to “corruptly” obstruct, influence or impede any official proceeding or attempt to do so. Based on what the panel said, it seems that Trump tried to get people to vote against Congress so as to prevent a mob attack.
The Mueller investigation of the insurrection against a former president: The muddying of the 2016 presidential campaign and the role of the DOJ
The DOJ has its own investigation into the events surrounding the insurrection and will have to weigh whether the case stands up as well in a court of law as it seemed to in the Capitol Hill committee room on Monday afternoon.
The former deputy FBI director thinks the Justice Department needs to go further on every one of the people who were touched and interviewed.
The nature of the committee, which featured little cross examination of witnesses and used curated video excerpts to make its most strident case, means that it is impossible to get a full picture of all of the evidence. McCabe noted that some witnesses might have made statements that were favorable to Trump or that were exculpatory in some way that would surely be used by his lawyers in court.
The CNN legal analyst said that the lawyers for the president would go through every word of it. They will be looking for any inconsistencies and will be looking for any basis to attack the potential witnesses in court. That is what defense lawyers do.”
One particular complication for the Justice Department is that the nature of the insurrection and the involvement of a former president makes this an unprecedented case. A good defense team could seek to puncture a prosecution by reframing Trump’s true intent and muddying the question of what he honestly believed about whether or not there was fraud in the 2020 election. They could say that his speech was in line with his rights to free speech. If they decided to prosecute, special counsel Jack Smith and Garland would have to satisfy themselves that they had a good chance of obtaining a conviction, considering the likely thrust of Trump’s defense.
Rod Rosenstein, who served as deputy attorney general in the Trump Justice Department, told CNN’s Erin Burnett that the most serious referral – accusing Trump of giving aid and comfort to an insurrection – would likely come up against a First Amendment defense.
The Department would have to prove that the president was talking about inciting lawless action. In other words, they’d actually have to prove he intended for a mob to engage in violent activity. That would be a hurdle to prosecuting him under that charge,” Rosenstein said.
It is unlikely that prosecutors at the DOJ will be influenced by the opinion of the select committee, albeit one that is backed up by a mountain of evidence, that the former president should be indicted. The testimony and other documents amassed by the panel could be useful to the DOJ in their investigation, as one reason prosecutors have been eager to get hold of its testimony for months.
One thing is certain. The DOJ has less than one month to meet the clock. Smith isn’t able to have the time that it takes to mount a prosecution due to the campaign season underway. It is possible that his investigative pace is ramping up, following the reappearance of two ex White House counsels before the grand jury.
One way that the committee’s graphic depiction of Trump’s aberrant behavior could help Smith is by preparing the public – at least the portion that does not simply defend Trump whatever he does – for the grave possibility that a former president could go on trial. coups are very much like fragile world democracies and dictatorships.
When the House GOP majority takes power, Liz Cheney will not give up the committee she devoted her life to in order to stop the ex-president from ever being president.
“No man who would behave that way at that moment in time can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again. He is unfit for any office,” the Wyoming Republican said on Monday.
Fifty years of prosecutors are paralyzed by the precedent set by Ford. That precedent and Justice Department policy have left the United States with what seems an untenable situation — presidents are immune from prosecution in office and politically untouchable after leaving office.
There’s clear evidence that the monkey of Jaworski’s day is alive and well: A new book from the legal pundit and former prosecutor Elie Honig reports that federal prosecutors in New York considered bringing charges against Mr. Trump after he left office regarding his role in the Stormy Daniels cover-up. The indictment leaves no doubt that Mr. Trump was not merely a bystander or an unaffected beneficiary of the campaign finance crime. He was the one who led the scheme and likely will be fined for it.
The prosecutors decided that the former president was best charged with more serious crimes than campaign finance violations. (Perhaps now Mr. Bragg will pick up where they left off.)
The evidence gathered by the special counsel Robert Muller impeded investigators from being able to determine if any criminal conduct took place, according to the report. The prosecutor didn’t try to pursue the material now that he was out of office. Everyone seems afraid to be the first to make the first move and break the Nixon precedent. Yet other democracies have been willing to bring current and former leaders to justice, including France, Israel and South Korea. The British police fined Prime Minister Sunak for not wearing a seatbelt and his predecessor Boris Johnson was fined for hosting parties that did not comply with Covid lockdown rules. It’s better if you explain the fundamental principle that the laws apply to everyone rather than bring a small charge against a powerful figure.
We’re able to prosecute state governors. Governors in Alabama and Illinois have been brought up on federal criminal charges twice in the last decade. A number of members of Congress have been charged with criminal activity in the last decade. Democracy chugs along just fine.
The bar and evidence necessary to prosecute a former president should be high since the case of the commander in chief is unique. The papers in the Stormy Daniels case clearly implicated Mr. Trump. If he’d been anyone else, he almost certainly would have faced felony charges. How is it better for our democracy for him to escape a charge that prosecutors would levy against anyone else?