The Trump Special Master Review of the Miami home of Donald Trump: reshaping the plan by the former US District Judge Aileen Cannon
Former President Donald Trump got another boost in his bid to challenge the FBI search of his Florida home, with US District Judge Aileen Cannon reshaping the plan put forward by the special master she appointed to review the materials seized at Mar-a-Lago last month.
Cannon’s decision to block DOJ’s access to documents marked classified and seized from Mar-a-Lago has slowed down the DOJ’s ability to work on the case and given Trump a runway to sharpen his defenses.
Cannon pushed back the review time by at least a half-month, as well as saying that Trump will have the chance to bring more litigation after the special master process is over.
The court ordered that a third lawyer review the materials seized in the search. The documents marked as classified were allowed to be used in the criminal probe because they were excluded from the review.
The Department of Justice said that classified documents were removed from a storage room at the Mar-a-Lago resort in order to obstruct the FBI investigation into Trump’s handling of classified materials.
Cannon rejected the part of the plan that would have forced the former President’s attorneys to back up their out-of-court claims that the FBI planted evidence.
“Should any additional matters surface during the Special Master’s review process that require reconsideration of the Inventory or the need to object to its contents, the parties shall make those matters known to the Special Master for appropriate resolution and recommendation to this Court,” Cannon said.
The legal team for Trump doesn’t have to give certain details about his executive privilege claims in the special master review.
The ruling ended a major obstacle to the investigation by theJustice Department into the handling of government records during the presidency of Donald Trump.
The discussion highlighted the potentially messy and slow process of working through privacy claims in the unprecedented criminal investigation around Trump. The former President is arguing that at least some of the documents are his and shouldn’t be allowed to be used by Justice Department investigators.
Cannon explained that the parties had faced issues in obtaining a vendor to digitize the seized materials for the review, and that’s why there was a tiny enlargement of the timeline.
“In conversations between Plaintiff’s counsel and the Government regarding a data vendor, the Government mentioned that the 11,000 documents contain closer to 200,000 pages. That estimated volume, with a need to operate under the accelerated timeframes supported by the Government, is the reason why so many of the Government’s selected vendors have declined the potential engagement,” Trump’s team wrote on Wednesday.
The discovery of additional records by the two people Trump’s lawyers hired came in November, well after Trump’s team and the FBI under a court-approved warrant unearthed hundreds of other classified pages in his possession following his presidency. At that time, Trump’s lawyers were locked in a dispute with the Justice Department over whether they had adequately searched his properties and turned over all classified records still in his possession. The DOJ’s investigation continues, despite the fact that they were not satisfied.
The Archives has sent the latest letter in the years-long pursuit of all records associated with the federal government that was created during the Trump administration.
Whether the FBI rounded up all of the sensitive federal records in Trump’s possession during its August 8 search of his Florida residence and resort is a question that’s loomed over the situation in recent weeks.
According to the DOJ filing, Navarro used a private mail account for his presidential business, which included use of hydroxychloroquine to treat cancer, and creation and deployment of National-Guard based rapid response teams.
According to the lawsuit, the National Archives was told about his private account from the House committee.
The Justice Department has already returned to Trump a selection of documents that were either legal in nature or were non-government records with sensitive personal information, like medical records.
The lawyer, Alex Cannon, had become a point of contact for officials with the National Archives, who had tried for months to get Mr. Trump to return presidential records that he failed to turn over upon leaving office. Mr. Cannon declined to convey Mr. Trump’s message to the archives because he was not sure if it was true, the people said.
The court may move at a quicker pace even if it hears the case. Justice Clarence Thomas gave the Justice Department until 5 p.m. on October 11 to respond to the appeal.
The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected an emergency request from former President Donald Trump to intervene in the dispute over classified documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate in August.
He would like the classified documents at issue to be included in the special master’s review after the 11th circuit court of appeals exempted them.
The Supreme Court is not listening to Donald Trump: a warning against prosecutions in the wake of his illegitimate undersurrection
There is no guarantee that this case will be taken up by the court due to its vital importance and the fact that they are being dragged into politics.
And Trump could simply lose – even if he persuades the justices to take the case – since to get emergency relief he must prove that he’s suffered irreparable harm in the matter, a threshold many legal experts believe is a stretch.
The House committee probing the US Capitol insurrection needed the 700 documents from the National Archives that the court refused to block. The Supreme Court denied challenges to the election many times. The court has also ruled that the then-President was not immune from a New York subpoena in a criminal investigation seeking his tax records.
Trump has long appeared to believe that judges he appointed owe him loyalty. He nominated three of the Supreme Court’s nine justices – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
He usually reacts badly to his defeats before the top bench. In December 2020, for instance, he tweeted that the court had let him down and displayed neither wisdom nor courage in dismissing a challenge to the election.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/05/politics/trump-supreme-court-mar-a-lago-documents/index.html
Investigating the Watergate Case in the U.S. Supreme Court: Donald Trump’s Emergency Request for a Classification Subpoena Revisited
His supporters see him as being treated unfairly, so it keeps him in the news. As in this case, Trump often substitutes a political or public relations strategy for a strong legal one. It would be expected that Trump would raise money off of his emergency request.
His latest move is also consistent with his habit of using every possible avenue in the legal system to slow a case or fog it up. A CNN legal analyst, Steve Vladeck, suggested that the application to the court came across as an attempt by their team to appease a litigious client.
The jurisdictional argument is narrow, technical and non-frivolous, and good lawyers do this to appease bad clients. It’s a way of filing something in the Supreme Court without going all the way to crazytown and/or acting unethically,” Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, wrote on Twitter.
But Trump’s team pushed back, saying in Tuesday’s filing that this position “cannot be reconciled” with the DOJ saying it may want to show those same documents to a grand jury or to witnesses during interviews.
The application claimed that the case was used to investigate the Forty-Fifth President of the United States and took liberties with the facts.
“I didn’t see much of an emergency,” Dean, who was at the center of the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Tuesday.
“The arguments are highly technical and not the sort of thing the Supreme Court, I would think, would want to get into given their current standing in public opinion.”
The Justice officials – including Jay Bratt, a top lawyer in the Department of Justice’s national security division – have communicated to Trump’s attorneys that he has an ongoing obligation to return the documents marked as classified.
The judge’s order made it difficult for the FBI to take investigative steps that would lead to the identification of other records still missing.
The witness said that he had been instructed by the former President to move boxes from a basement storage room to the residence at Mar-a-Lago, according to the source.
His most immediate clash with the institutions of accountability went to another level Friday when the House January 6 committee issued a subpoena for documents and testimony. It is not unusual for Trump to try to delay or frustrate investigations into his conduct. But the subpoena also raised the possibility that he might opt to testify in order to claim the political spotlight – even though giving evidence under oath could cause him more legal exposure.
The professional search team looked through all possible locations to find the right documents. We went through some locations that we thought wouldn’t work. We did it anyway because the DOJ asked us.
A lawyer for the former president accused the January 6 committee’s criminal referrals to the Justice Dept. of being worthless.
As the subject of a congressional subpoena, it must be painfully clear to Trump that he is a former president. Just another citizen. A subpoena can be issued to that kind of person.
“They are trying to make the case that Trump is Oz,” said CNN’s John King, interpreting the committee’s subpoena of Trump. He presents himself as a powerful person but is actually a little guy trying to pull a machine.
Something should be done. The full House, which is controlled by Democrats until at least January, could vote to hold him in contempt of Congress, something it’s done with several other uncooperative witnesses.
It is a prosecution. If found guilty, as Bannon was, Trump could theoretically face a minimum of 30 days in jail. Bannon will be sentenced for failing to comply with the House subpoena later this month.
Trump is not a candidate for the presidency: A response from the conservative lawyer George Conway on CNN (An appearance on CNN in 1983)
“None of that is going to happen,” the Trump critic and conservative lawyer George Conway predicted during an appearance on CNN Thursday. The purpose of this is to lay a marker. This is about triggering a response (from Trump).”
Conway did point out the Supreme Court has already made clear where it stands on Trump’s status as a former president when it ignored his attempt to block the National Archives from sharing information with the committee.
Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming said the January 6 committee feels it has enough information to make referrals to the Department of Justice for prosecutions stemming from the committee’s work. More than 30 people have used the Fifth Amendment to protect themselves from self incriminating statements about their dealings with the former President.
In 1983, the former president testified to a Senate subcommittee. The last time a president took questions from legislators in a committee setting was 39 years ago.
President Thomas Jefferson declined to appear at former Vice President Aaron Burr’s trial for treason even though he was subpoenaed by then-Chief Justice John Marshall. Jefferson did ultimately provide some documents. Burr was eventually acquitted.
The Ex-President’s 2020 Insurrection and a Subpoena from the House of Deputies will be Suspended
The Supreme Court did rule New York investigators could get access to the financial documents. Trump’s company will go on criminal trial this month on charges of violating tax laws.
A judge ordered him toComply with subpoenas as part of the civil inquiry into his business practices. The Fifth Amendment protects you against incriminating yourself in court.
The New York Attorney General requested a state court to stop the Trump Organization from moving assets and continue to perpetrate what she has alleged is a decades-long fraud.
The January 6 committee needs to finish its work by January 3, 2023 if the next Congress is to have any chance of happening.
The House January 6 committee voted to subpoena him after laying bare his depraved efforts to overthrow the 2020 election and his dereliction of duty as his mob invaded the US Capitol.
The testimony featured never-before-seen footage of congressional leaders huddled in a secure location during the insurrection, grappling with the implications of the pro-Trump mob’s attack on the Capitol. It also featured almost pitiful accounts of the ex-President’s desperate attempts to avoid publicly admitting he was a loser in 2020 and made a case that his full comprehension of his defeat made his subsequent actions even more heinous.
The Mueller investigation of a case of obstruction of justice against the ex-president: the January 6 committee report, its report and the case of the Mar-a-Lago
The ex-president has not yet been charged in either probe and there is so far no indication that he will be. But the sense that Trump is approaching a moment of maximum legal peril is being driven both by signs of an increasingly aggressive investigation by special counsel Jack Smith and the realities of a calendar that offers limited time for any potential prosecutions before the 2024 campaign is in full swing. Trump’s already questionable hopes of winning a national election, meanwhile, could absorb new blows with the unveiling of the January 6 committee’s final report next week and its possible criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.
Since everything about Trumps political career has been unprecedented, he is posing new questions with the potential to further challenge and damage the country’s political institutions.
The court turned down his request to intervene because he did not explain why. There was no dissent from the judges who Trump elevated to the bench and who he frequently believes owe him a debt of loyalty.
There have been questions about how transparent the White House and Biden’s legal team have been about the government’s investigation into the president’s handling of classified documents.
The panel is debating if it is wise to indict Trump and his associates for their actions on January 6. The January 6 case and the classified documents storm is in the hands of Attorney General Garland, who is currently investigating attempts by Trump and his associates to kill off the 2020 election in Georgia.
The two people who were hired by the FBI to search Trump’s properties for incriminating evidence were each given three hours of questioning last week. The extent of information they offered the grand jury remains unclear, though they didn’t decline to answer any questions, one of the sources familiar with the investigation said.
David Schoen, Trump’s defense lawyer during his second impeachment, told CNN that the Mar-a-Lago details didn’t amount to a case of obstruction of justice.
If President Trump knew he didn’t have the right to have these documents in his possession, they hid them, disobeyed the subpoena and kept them.
Timothy Parlatore, who is one of Trump’s attorneys, said there should be no prosecutions related to the President because he didn’t commit a crime.
A quickening special counsel probe, now focusing on the alleged attempt to steal Georgia’s election, the climax of the House January 6 committee and a new trial of pro-Trump Oath Keepers extremists underscore the breadth of attempts to secure accountability over one of the darkest days in modern American history. These new signs of a net possibly closing around Trump and his allies come a month after voters sent a signal of disapproval with his obsession over the 2020 election by repudiating many midterm candidates in swing states who bought his claims of voter fraud.
The Unselected Committee of the Republican National Committee on Judgment Investigations: Why Didn’t the Subpoena Trump Choose to Testify?
As always, Trump came out fighting on Thursday, one of those days when the seriousness of a crisis he is facing can often be gauged by the vehemence of the rhetoric he uses to respond.
In the select committee, there was unanimous approval to subpoena the former President for documents and testimony.
“Pres Trump will not be intimidate(d) by their meritless rhetoric or un-American actions. Trump-endorsed candidates will sweep the Midterms, and America First leadership & solutions will be restored,” Budowich wrote on Twitter.
The former President weighed in on his Truth Social network and posted a post that failed to address the accusations against him, which was clearly designed to cause a political reaction from his supporters.
“Why didn’t the Unselect Committee ask me to testify months ago? They waited until the very end of the last meeting, why? The Committee is a total waste of time. Trump wrote.
The subpoena could give the bipartisan committee some cover from those who say that the subpoena is a politically motivated attempt to impugn Trump. If it wished to enforce a subpoena, the committee would have to seek a contempt of Congress referral to the Justice Department from the full House. It took such a step with Steve Bannon, who was found guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress and faces a sentencing hearing.
If Trump refuses to testify, an effort to follow a similar path would take months and involve lengthy legal battles. The Justice Department has an advance state of its own January 6 investigation, so it is unclear if they would consider this a good investment. With the Republicans expected to take over the majority in the House following the elections, there is a good chance the committee will be swept into history.
There is little chance of Donald Trump complying with a congressional subpoena, so the dramatic vote to target the ex- President is likely to be another theatrical flourish in a set of hearings that often resembled a television courtroom drama.
The investigation was not only about what happened on January 6 but also about the future, said Rep. Liz Cheney, the Republican vice chair.
“With every effort to excuse or justify the conduct of the former President, we chip away at the foundation of our Republic,” said the Wyoming lawmaker, who won’t be returning to Congress after losing her primary this summer to a Trump-backed challenger.
Where the beef is in the executive branch probing a sensitive document seized from the president’s home: a joint letter to the 11th and lower courts
Calling the records “extraordinarily sensitive,” the Justice Department had asked the court to stay out of the dispute while legal challenges play out.
The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals found that Cannon exercised her discretion and inflicted an unwarranted intrusion on the Executive Branch’s authority to control the use and distribution of sensitive government records.
A panel of judges on the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, however, acting upon a request from the Justice Department, agreed to freeze portions of those orders while the legal dispute plays out.
The Eleventh Circuit lacked the power to stay the District Court’s order that the Special Master should review the seized materials from the president’s home.
The appeals court order will slow the work of Raymond Dearie, the seniorUS judge who was appointed as the special master, Trump’s team said.
The filing said that limits on the comprehensive and transparent review of materials seized in the President’s home undermine public confidence in the system.
Elizabeth Prelogar said Cannon, the special master chosen by Trump, was “fundamentally flawed” in appointing him and that the Justice Department was appealing the decision in lower courts.
I want to know where the beef is. The judge who was the third party reviewer of seized documents said he needed some beef on the conference call.
Dearie told the parties that he also hopes to hear from both sides on how he should treat documents that Trump wants to call personal, and thus potentially protect them from investigators, and also claim are covered by executive privilege, which could make them government documents.
The judge would have to decide if the letter should be kept confidential or not in order for the two sides to determine if it was sent.
“I don’t want to be dealing with nonsense objections, nonsense assertions, especially when I have one month to deal with who knows how many assertions,” said Dearie of the Eastern District of New York.
There is a certain incongruity when I’m wrong and before. Dearie believed that the lawyer for the case might address that in a submission.
The case for restoring the Mar-a-Lago Trump property to the judiciary in the midst of an investigation into collapsing
The parties have not said how many pages of the Mar-a-Lago Trump are in dispute, which will require the special master to make a call.
The possibility of allowing federal officials to return to Trump’s property – likely with Trump’s own lawyers present – is just one option on the table as the Trump team grapples with how best to protect the former President from legal jeopardy. Sources informed of the situation say that neither firm decisions, nor a decision on how to treat the Justice Department, have been made.
The approach comes even as Trump continues to indulge legal theories that the records he took with him at the end of his presidency are his personal property, an argument his team is making in court and that he first heard from conservative judicial activist Tom Fitton.
The people close to the former President think that this is unimportant and that the best thing to do is move on.
A court proceeding that is under seal, where at least some of the battle to get them back has been played out, is a reference to people familiar with the situation. One idea is for the Justice Department to ask a judge to order the Trump team to work with them on another search.
Sources close to Trump said that the former President has become more amenable to the cooperative approach being advocated by some of his more experienced lawyers, including former Florida Solicitor General Chris Kise, who joined his legal team following the FBI search in August. Kise had faced some challenges from Trump and his advisers.
A person familiar with Trump’s comments said he complained to the donors at the roundtable last week that federal investigators needed to see everything when they searched his residence.
Trump lawyer Christina Bobb had to hire her own lawyer after signing an attestation in June which declared that Trump’s team had conducted a “diligent search” to comply with the Justice Department’s subpoena and returned all documents with classified markings. Bobb, who was Trump’s custodian of records at the time, recently told federal investigators in a voluntary interview that the attestation had been drafted by another Trump lawyer, Evan Corcoran, for her to sign. A source who has knowledge of the event said that Bobb was rushed to Mar-a-Lago to sign the attestation but she insisted on first saying that her knowledge was based upon the information that has been provided to her.
Insights from Ex-President Donald J. Corcoran on the 2020 Presidential Election: How the Former President is Getting His Way
According to sources familiar with his situation, Corcoran insisted to his colleagues that he doesn’t face any legal risk and hasn’t hired a lawyer.
A third Trump lawyer, Boris Epshteyn, had his cellphone seized by the FBI last month and has testified in front of a Georgia grand jury investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Former President Donald Trump and his movement are posing new challenges to accountability, free elections and the rule of law, ushering in a fresh period of political turmoil.
A new White House run by Trump is at a time when he is on a collision course with the Biden administration, the courts and facts.
It was already unusual that Trump is in the political scene. One-term presidents usually do not stay in office long. Even though he lost reelection, he is still a key player in the GOP because he maintains a firm hold on it. And while there is growing talk about whether his thicket of legal and political controversies could convince some GOP primary voters it’s time to move on, Trump still seems to have plenty of juice.
The ex- President’s claims of political persecution could cause more upheaval than his four years in office because of the open legal and political loops surrounding him.
There is a chance the coming political period revolves around the former President’s past and future, and there’s fierce differences of policy between Democrats and Republicans over policy on the economy, abortion, foreign policy and crime.
The case against the pro-Trump candidate Joe Biden and the organization of the Trump Organization in Arizona: a high-profile case in Washington
A source familiar with the matter says that the Trump lawyers have been working together with other lawyers in the former president’s team to figure out how to proceed with the subpoena demands.
In Arizona, one of the ex- President’s favorite candidates, the GOP gubernatorial hopeful is raising doubts about the election system. Lake said that he was afraid it probably wouldn’t be fair.
The New York Post reported last week that one of the most powerful pro-Trump Republicans said that impeachment was on the table for Biden. Nancy Mace said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that she didn’t want to see impeachment proceedings after Trump was twice impeached. She said that she was against the process being weaponized. She said that Biden had committed impeachable offenses and it would have to be investigated.
An already pro-Trump Republican presence in Washington is likely to expand after the midterms. With so many Trump endorsed candidates running on a platform of election fraud, are they going to accept results if they lose their races in two weeks?
On Monday, the Trump Organization is going to go on trial for their crimes. The ex-President hasn’t been personally charged but the trial could impact his business empire and prompt fresh claims from him that he is being persecuted for political reasons that could inject yet another contentious element into election season. In a separate civil case, the Attorney General of New York is accusing Trump and his family of running tax and insurance fraud schemes to enrich themselves for years.
Democrats are attempting to get Trump back into the political spotlight. President Joe Biden equated MAGA followers with “semi-fascism” and some campaigns have tried to scare critical suburban voters by warning pro-Trump candidates are a danger to democracy.
The investigation of the 2016 presidential campaign by the ex-President Mike Pence reportedly told NBC that he wouldn’t run for the presidency again
But raging inflation and spikes in gasoline prices appear to be a far more potent concern before voters head to the polls, which could spell bad news for the party in power in Washington.
The ex- President told his supporters at a rally that he would probably have to do it again if he ran for president again.
Cheney told NBC that it will be done with a level of rigor and discipline that it deserves.
“This isn’t going to be, you know, his first debate against Joe Biden and the circus and the food fight that that became. This is a far too serious set of issues.”
There are some gaps in the interview transcripts that could jeopardize federal investigators, witnesses with shaky memories and testimony about Trump’s tech-avoidance.
The prospect of video testimony over an intense period of days or hours is likely to be unappealing to the former President because it would be harder for him to dictate the terms of the exchanges and control how his testimony might be used.
Trump has already tried to use claims that justice is being weaponized against him as rocket fuel for his 2024 presidential bid. If a president was to try to overthrow an election, the precedent that would be set would not be in the national interest.
The simple, politically charged act of investigating an ex-president was always bound to create a political furor. The fact that Trump is running for the White House again multiplies the stakes and means profound decisions are ahead for Attorney General Merrick Garland if evidence suggests Trump should be charged.
Trump’s attorneys were worried that a special counsel would drag out the investigation they had been fighting in court. Trump has compared the prospect of a former special counsel investigating him to that of the Russia investigation.
The months leading up to the election have provided little respite from the political and legal activity around the investigations. The DC US Attorney’s Office is still carrying out investigations into January 6th, but has dealt with burnout in its ranks as prosecutors attempt to get guilty pleas from hundreds of people who were on the grounds of the Capitol.
One defense lawyer working on January 6 matters said they can charge almost anybody if they want to, although they had no idea who would be charged.
Special Counsel Timing for the Judiciary Sessions of Attorney General Merrick Garland, a former Justice Department official, and the future of the investigation of Hunter Biden
Special counsels are prone to political attacks. Both former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe came under withering criticism from their opponents.
Top Justice officials have looked to an old guard of former Southern District of New York prosecutors, bringing into the investigations Kansas City-based federal prosecutor and national security expert David Raskin, as well as David Rody, a prosecutor-turned-defense lawyer who previously specialized in gang and conspiracy cases and has worked extensively with government cooperators.
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.
The January 6 investigations at the DC US Attorney’s Office are growing, even as the office prosecutes right-wing extremists for sedition.
There are at least two prosecutors on the January 6 investigations team, one of whom has moved out of a supervisor position and is now involved in some of the grand jury activity.
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.
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.”
“What we will avoid and what we must avoid is any partisan element of our decision making about cases,” Garland said. I want the Department decisions to be based on the facts and the law and not rely on partisan considerations, that is what I want to ensure.
Garland made tough decisions beyond Trump. The long-running investigation of Hunter Biden, the son of the president, is nearing an end, according to people briefed on the matter. There is a decision on the investigation of Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz.
“They’re not going to charge before they’re ready to charge,” one former Justice Department official with some insight into the thinking around the investigations said. It will be added pressure to get through the review of cases earlier than a five-year window DOJ has to bring charges.
She wants to bring witnesses before a grand jury in the next few weeks, as she has observed a quiet period around the election. CNN could get indictments as early as December, according to sources.
Lindsey Graham and former White House chief of staff MarkMeadows are two of the witnesses who have been subpoenaed as part of the Georgia probe into attempts to interfere with the 2020 election.
How those disputes resolve in Georgia – including whether courts force testimony – could improve DOJ’s ability to gather information, just as the House Select Committee’s January 6 investigation added to DOJ’s investigative leads from inside the Trump White House.
The DOJ tried to keep quiet the investigation in the lead-up to the election but Trump was able to bring attention to it in the weeks leading up to the election.
According to a source familiar with the Justice Department’s approach, the result of the intelligence review may determine if criminal charges will be filed.
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.
The Justice Department is closer to charging the case after a District Court judge granted immunity to Patel from prosecution for any information he provides.
“We have informed the former President’s counsel that he must begin producing records no later than next week and he remains under subpoena for deposition testimony starting on November 14th,” the committee said in the statement.
Liz Cheney, vice chairwoman of the committee, has said the committee was in discussions with Trump’s attorneys about testifying. But it remains unclear whether those discussions will lead to him sitting for a deposition.
The request for documents and communications to be given to members of the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and other groups from September 1, 2020 to the present was broad. The panel’s document request spans 19 different categories.
Two people who found two classified documents in a Florida storage facility for Donald Trump have testified before a federal grand jury in Washington that’s looking at the former president’s handling of national security records at his Mar-a-Lago residence, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
The team of two searched Trump Tower in New York, the Bedminster golf club, an office location in Florida, and the storage unit where the two documents were found and where the General Services Administration had shipped Trump’s belongings after he left the White House.
The FBI search of Biden’s home earlier this month was done with the consent of the president’s attorneys, according to people briefed on the matter. There were six items consisting of documents with classification markings.
A special counsel is a lawyer appointed to lead an independent investigation and, if necessary, to prosecute anyone suspected of crimes. It’s necessary that he or she comes from outside the government. A special counsel is typically appointed when the usual investigative bodies under the Justice Department, such as the FBI, have a conflict of interest in carrying out a probe.
The Attorney General appointed a special counsel to investigate the retention of national defense information at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Jack Smith was the chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, where he investigated war crimes.
Trump’s lies are having a bad life: How the insurrection and justice have affected the public opinion of the Florida Supreme Court and higher courts
Speaking at the America First gala at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night, the former president called the special counsel appointment an “appalling announcement” and a “horrendous abuse of power.”
The former president on Friday indicated that he had believed federal investigations into him were slowing down or over until the announcement from Garland. He repeatedly called the investigations political and said it was not a fair situation and would not be a fair investigation, telling the crowd at Mar-a-Lago, “You’d really say enough is enough.”
The appeals court believed that the law was clear. We can’t write a rule that would allow anyone who has a search warrant to stop the government from investigating them. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.”
The 11th Circuit said that either approach would be a “radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations” and that “both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”
Prosecutors are examining whether there was obstruction of justice, criminal handling of government records and violations of the Espionage Act, which prohibits unauthorized storage of national defense information.
While slow burning efforts are heating up again in order to work through the trauma of the post- election period, there is a warning that the future threat to truth and democracy remains acute. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for instance – a key force in the incoming GOP House majority that is likely to try to shut down or obstruct investigations into Trump – is embroiled in yet another controversy over the insurrection.
The Georgia Republican thinks the mob would have been armed if she had her way. She then rebuffed White House condemnations of her comments by insisting she was joking. This came days after the ex-president stepped up his voter fraud falsehoods by demanding the termination of the Constitution in a sign of how his potential second term might unfold if he wins the 2024 election and returns to the White House.
It is remarkable how tight a hold Trump’s unprecedented attempt to overturn a presidential election still has on Washington politics – even if many Americans are more concerned with feeding their families and paying rent amid raging inflation. Trump’s lies are having a negative impact. Even after Republicans won the House last month, a new CNN/SSRS poll published Monday found that only 34% of Republican-aligned adults are even somewhat confident that elections reflect the will of the people – down from 43% in October.
Smith and his new team have inherited the January 6 probe at a crucial juncture, as the public has a better understanding of the lengths the former president and his allies went to try to keep Trump in the Oval Office but also as congressional investigators hit the limits of their powers.
“It’s been over 700 days since the Washington Post published the full hour audio … of that highly incriminating phone call – 700 days for the DOJ to finally get around to subpoena him. When does it happen? Under Jack Smith.
If the legal team believed that Smith was less likely to be influenced by the politicized aftermath of the January 6 attack and that he would lean against indictments, they may have been guilty of wishful thinking.
Preet Bharara, a former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that Smith’s appointment and his assembling of a high-powered team of experienced prosecutors represented bad news for Trump.
I believe they would not have left their jobs if they knew that the Justice Department was on a path to charge. He thinks it will happen in a month.
Of the two investigations, legal experts say the one regarding classified documents may move ahead the fastest after several failed attempts by Trump in court to delay it. A judge on Monday formally dismissed Trump’s case challenging the Mar-a-Lago evidence collection and in which she had appointed a special master. That gives the Justice Department full access to tens of thousands of records and other items found among documents marked as classified in Trump’s beach club and private office.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has vowed that no one is above the law and that investigations will go where the evidence leads. The legal process means that any trials would take a lot of time. It would be a good idea to bring charges against a former president or current presidential candidate before the end of the White House race.
The CNN legal analyst said that it would be difficult to finish the case before the election.
If they can, they’ll probably bring a case on the documents side on January 6, but they’ll probably take more time.
While Smith is following legal procedures, the political context makes it even more incumbent on the DOJ to demonstrate to Americans that it had no choice, for instance, to mount an unprecedented search at an ex-president’s home.
That’s yet another reason why the turn of the year and the early months of 2023 are beginning to look like a moment of reckoning for both Trump and those who are investigating him.
“The referral itself is pretty much worthless,” Trump lawyer Tim Parlatore said on “CNN Newsroom.” “The Department of Justice doesn’t have to follow it. There’s been an existing investigation that we have been dealing with for quite some time. This is what it does – it politicizes the process.
The bipartisan Select Committee of the US Capitol attack sent unprecedented criminal referrals to the Justice Department this week. Committee members said they believed Trump was guilty of at least four federal crimes, including conspiracy and obstructing a joint session of Congress.
Emails, text messages and testimony from the House January 6 committee show how Trump tried to get battleground state officials to overturn the election results, pushed for a replacement for the acting attorney general with someone who would embrace election fraud claims and laid the groundwork early on to call the election.
While it is political noise, it does not have any effect on the defense of the Trump Organization, as of now, according to Parlatore.
Parlatore told CNN on Saturday that he was sure there weren’t any more records with classification markings still at Mar-a-Lago, saying, “Everything that was found has been turned over.”
Trump and the DOJ: Progress in the Mar-a-Lago Subpoena Case. The D0 Impact of Biden’s Case Against Pence
The DOJ had sought to hold Trump and his office in contempt for not fully complying with a subpoena following the search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in August.
Taken together, the investigative moves underscore that there is continued grand jury activity in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, at a time when the Justice Department has newer inquiries into unsecured national security records underway involving President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence.
A person with knowledge of the case says he is adding two people who specialize in public corruption cases, including the former chief of the DOJ’s public integrity section.
The expansion under Smith shores up the office’s ability to examine broad conspiracy cases and determine the avenues of the investigation, another source said. A team of more than 20 prosecutors from the DOJ, as well as senior advisers brought in in recent months, were already investigating Trump and his allies.
Despite Attorney General Merrick Garland’s assurances that Smith’s appointment won’t slow down the dual Trump-related probes, setting his office up does take time. Smith is still working to find a permanent location for an office, but has begun to change email addresses for some staffers who used to use their Justice Department accounts.
Harbach was seen by CNN getting his bearings in the federal courthouse in DC on Thursday, speaking to another special counsel prosecutor about extremist group cases and briefly sitting in on an ongoing Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy trial.
Investigating a Jan. 6 Capitol Police Riot: Democratic Senator Donald Trump and the Case for a Proposed Law-Changing Legislator
Over 750 people have been arrested for their involvement in the January 6, 2021 riot, with over 500 of them being convicted. One person died of an overdose, two members of the crowd suffered heart attacks and one rioter was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer. Five officers died after the riot, one by suicide, and 140 officers were injured that day, according to the DOJ.
DOJ prosecutors who work under Smith will have the tools to dismantle the brick walls of the congressional investigation, which included witnesses who claimed privileges or fled after they were told to cooperate. They include ongoing legal proceedings about piercing the shield of confidentially that normally surrounds a president.
“POTUS expectations are to have something intimate at the ellipse, and call on everyone to march to the capitol,” rally organizer Katrina Pierson wrote in an email days before the Capitol attack.
“My father doesn’t use text messaging or email,” Donald Trump Jr. told congressional investigators during his interview. Trump Jr. said that he wasn’t sure if he’d even know what messaging apps were.
Trump’s style of making ambiguous asks rather than direct demands was also on display as he pressed state officials to upend the election results. Michigan’s former Senate Majority Leader said that he remembers that he never asked for a specific question. “It was always just general topics.”
The ex-president and many others were definitely the center of the conspiracy, but he was certainly assisted by others, according to a California Democrat who served on the committee.
According to the evidence collected by the committee, many of the state-based operatives and fraudulent electors themselves were largely in the dark about what the endgame of the gambit was. Several of them testified that they thought alternate electors were being assembled as a contingency plan if Trump were to win the legal challenge and change the result in their state.
After the last major election challenge at the Supreme Court ended in December of 2020, top Trump campaign officials distanced themselves from the effort.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/politics/january-6-justice-department-jack-smith-trump-investigation/index.html
Correspondence between the Justice Department and Mark P. Meadows during an investigation into the fake slates of the presidential candidate, Donald Trump Jr. (Tedham) Hutchinson
The Department of Defense would have a much easier case to prove, if the scheme was continued after Congress certified it, according to a professor at a New York University School of Law.
If a court reverses the electoral loss of Donald Trump, the advisers saw the alternate electors as vital, as long as they were approved by the state legislature or Congress.
The committee referred Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, but it also said that several Trump allies could be involved in a conspiracy. One of them was former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
The committee has evidence showing that he played a part in every attempt to overturn the election. Some of the most revelatory evidence came from Meadows himself – in the thousands of text messages he turned over to the committee before ceasing his cooperation with the investigation.
The texts show that on the day after Election,Meadows was planning for a rally with GOP lawmakers and activists. On the day after the election, Donald Trump Jr. was texting his father’s opponent ideas for keeping him in power that he thought were the most sophisticated and plausible.
The testimony that former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson gave to the committee states that Donald Trump and his former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, were involved in early conversations about using fake slates of electors.
Transcripts released by the committee also reveal that Hutchinson testified before the committee how Meadows regularly burned documents in his fireplace around a dozen times – about once or twice a week – between December 2020 and mid-January 2021.
The congressman did not show up for testimony before the House after producing the texts to congressional investigators. A lawsuit he filed challenging the subpoena was unsuccessful, but the Justice Department opted not to bring criminal charges for his lack of cooperation.
The committee noted in their report’s summary that criminal prosecutors may have access to materials that lawmakers didn’t have, pointing to Meadows specifically.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/politics/january-6-justice-department-jack-smith-trump-investigation/index.html
What’s wrong with Hunter Biden when he left office: Why do we care about what is wrong? What is wrong with Biden?
The violence at the US Capitol was not the result of anyone wanting to overturn the will of the people, but to ensure that the will of the people was accurately counted, Parlatore said.
Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. The New York Times best-seller, “Myth America: Historians take on the Biggest Lies and Legends About Our Past,” was edited by him. Follow him on Twitter @julianzelizer. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
When Biden left presidency, he should have given back the documents that were found at his home in Delaware and at a Washington office he once used. The home of Pence contained some classified material.
This isn’t an inside Washington story according to the latest revelations. It is not one that will go away soon. While Pence’s disclosure certainly takes the heat off Biden, this scandal is bad news for Biden’s brand name.
And new polling makes this clear. A survey shows that more than eight out of 10 Americans approve of the appointment of a special counsel to investigate how Biden handled classified documents. However, according to the same CNN poll, it seems Americans understand the differences between the two cases involving Biden and Trump. While a majority of Americans disapprove of the way Biden has handled the issue and consider it a serious or “somewhat serious” problem, it’s telling that only 37% of Americans believe he has done something illegal. Less than half of Americans think that Trump has done something illegal.
Biden, who established himself as the responsible foil to Trump in 2020, has now squandered the political high ground on this issue. And with Pence thrown into the mix, Trump’s team believes the latest developments could help support their argument that this should be treated as an administrative issue, rather than a criminal one.
It will be helpful if Biden has a better reputation than Clinton. But that certainly won’t insulate him from an onslaught of attacks in the next two years.
We’re now seeing the first major blow to that image, with more attacks sure to come now that the Republicans who have gained control of the House are vowing to investigate everything from Hunter Biden to the president’s border policies.
The turmoil will reignite discussions about whether Biden should run for reelection or who may challenge him in the primaries, two conversations that had largely dissipated after the party’s stunning performance in the elections.
The public and the media can be distract from the issues Biden is focused on, such as the slowing of inflation or military support for Ukraine.
And, of course, there are plenty of ways this could continue going south for Biden, especially if there are fresh revelations surrounding his handling of classified documents.
All of this is doable. While there are constraints on what Biden can say in the midst of an ongoing investigation, he should be as direct with the public as possible and make every effort to turn over whatever material he has. He needs to push forward conversations about his domestic agenda and keep the public attention focused on the chaos caused by House Republicans.
But he and his supporters shouldn’t discount the significant political impact this story can have. It has already opened the door to questions about his prospects in 2024 and given a laggard Trump campaign something to crow about.
The Search for Justice During the First Two-State Campaign: Donald J. Trump and the Search for a Room in Mar-a-Lago
The two individuals who were hired to search four of Trump’s properties last fall were each interviewed for about three hours in separate appearances last week.
The FBI conducted a search of Mar-a-Lago in October last year, but they were later given permission to search Trump Tower, Bedminster golf club, and an office location in Florida. The extent of information they offered the grand jury remains unclear, though they didn’t decline to answer any questions, one of the sources said.
The investigators are trying to find out if there’s an electronic paper trail with the classified documents by getting access to computers.
Special counsel Jack Smith and prosecutors who now work for him have used the federal grand jury nearly weekly to question witnesses in the Mar-a-Lago investigation.
The former president, who was impeached twice, embarked on his first two-state campaign swing on Saturday in hopes of reviving his political career.
“We’re going to stop the appalling weaponization of our justice system. There’s never been a justice system like this. It’s all investigation, investigation,” the ex-president said on the trail over the weekend.
This is a message that may appeal to some of Trump’s base voters who have previously been swayed by his claims about a “deep state” conspiracy against him. It’s also a technique, in which a strongman leader argues that he is taking the heat so his followers don’t have to, that is a familiar page in the authority playbooks of demagogues throughout history.
High-Sensitivity News on Trump’s Collection of Mar-a-Lago Documents in the Furor: How an Air Force Sergeant is Suspected to Plege guilty?
Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Department of Defense, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday that the latest development was a sign of an advanced special counsel investigation and could indicate that Smith was leaning toward indictments.
“It sounds like he is trying to lock in their testimony, to understand how they would testify at trial, whether it is incriminating evidence against Trump or exculpatory evidence that the prosecutors would then have that and have it solidified.”
On a more granular level, the report about the grand jury underscores that for all the political noise, the investigation into Trump’s haul of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago is taking place inside its own legal bubble.
The latest sign of a major approach to the controversy over classified material by the House Republicans and their allies is that they are giving Trump a free pass.
According to CNN’s Pamela Brown,House Oversight Chairman James Comer was asked why he had no interest in the more than 325 documents found at Trump’s home, but focused on the approximately 20 classified documents uncovered in Biden’s premises.
The investigations into Trump and Biden are going on their own. In a legal sense, there is no overlap between them. If findings are made public, they will be in the same political hot spot as well.
The country was reminded of the treatment that can occur to lower-ranking members of the federal workforce when secret material is taken home in the furor on Monday.
A retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, who is accused of keeping classified information at his home, will plead guilty in February, according to court documents.
The FBI Investigated a Presidential Visit to the Penn Biden Center: A First Look at a Top Secret Collection in the U.S.
The FBI conducted voluntary interviews with some people on the Biden team who handled documents, though there have not been any known subpoenas or search warrants.
The FBI first examined the classified documents, and the other materials from the Penn Biden Center, at the National Archives during the week of November 21, one of the sources told CNN. That was the only FBI visit to examine the documents, according to the source.
The purpose of the visit was likely to ensure that nothing was left in the office and assess how the documents were stored, according to a former Justice Department official.
The source said the FBI was told about the discovery of the classified materials by the Archives on November 4.
The FBI looked at the binders that were handed over by the president to the Archives. Those binders contained no classified materials, the source said.
At least 60 of the Trump documents were labeled “top secret,” including some files with SCI markings. There were also some documents with “SAP” designation, which stands for “special access programs” and is used for documents that are closely held with special protocols for who can access the material.
In the interview on Wednesday, Short slammed what he saw as a “double standard” in how the FBI and Justice Department have approached retrieving documents from Pence’s and Biden’s homes, saying it took federal agents weeks before they went to the president’s Delaware home but that they had traveled to Pence’s Indiana residence the same day documents were discovered.
“I don’t think he hears concern about (the documents) when he travels across the country,” Short said. “I think he hears encouragement from people as he travels.”
“I think the trajectory of most candidates who get in early to Republican primaries doesn’t really fare too well, so I think there is a benefit to him waiting until the end of this process,” he said.
Trump’s lawyer Timothy Parlatore revealed that he had slept at night using a blue light on his landline telephone
A lawyer for Donald Trump said Sunday they have finished their searches for classified material in his former president’s properties and handed it over to the Justice Department.
Parlatore told CNN in an exclusive interview that his client was cooperative in the ongoing criminal probe, and that they had searched all relevant places.
He also confirmed that Trump’s team handed over to DOJ an empty manilla folder marked “Classified Evening Summary” after receiving a subpoena for that item, which was found in the former president’s bedroom.
According to Parlatore, Trump had effectively been using the empty folder as a lamp shade to block a light on his landline telephone that was keeping him up at night.
“He has one of those landline telephones next to his bed, and it has a blue light on it, and it keeps him up at night. So he took the manilla folder and put it over so it would keep the light down so he could sleep at night,” Parlatore said. “It’s just this folder. It says ‘Classified Evening Summary’ on it. It isn’t a classification marking. It’s not anything that is monitored in any way. There’s nothing illegal about it.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/12/politics/trump-lawyer-timothy-parlatore-classified-material/index.html
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Procedure for Handling Known Secretarial Documents: The Case of the Special Counsel (Mike Pence)
“When you have DOJ go into these things, they are automatically going in with all the criminal processes and trying to threaten people to go to jail over something that is a procedural failure and an institutional procedural failure that has nothing to do with Mike Pence, Donald Trump or, quite frankly, Joe Biden,” he said.
The office of the Director of National Intelligence should review the White House’s procedure for handling classified documents, instead of appointing special counsels, according to Parlatore.