The Case of Donald Trump at the Mar-a-Lago White House: The Discovery of Classified Documents by the FBI, the Grand Jury and the National Archives
On the face of it, this development is troubling since it could suggest a pattern of deception that plays into a possible obstruction of justice charge. The FBI told a judge that they had evidence of obstruction when they searched Trump’s home in August.
Cannonnixed a number of parts of the plan put forward by Raymond Dearie, who was put forward by Trump for the third-party review to make uncomfortable assertions in court, including that the FBI planted evidence at Mar-a-Lago.
The Justice Department investigation, looking at whether crimes were committed in how the White House documents were handled, will be affected by the delay and other opportunities Trump will have to block.
The criminal probe was brought back to life because of the intervention of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
Donald Trump may have mis handled classified material at Mar-a-Lago. The Justice Department continues to look into the case of how documents from the White House came to Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office. A federal grand jury in Washington is interviewing potential witnesses to look into how Donald Trump handled documents. The National Archives, charged with collecting and sorting presidential material, has previously said that at least 15 boxes of White House records were recovered from Mar-a-Lago, including some classified records.
Special Master Review of Donald J.Cannon’s Defamation and the Failure of the Legal Team to Back up his Claims that the FBI planted Evidence
Cannon denied the part of the master plan that would have forced the former President’s legal team to back up his 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.
Cannon said that Trump doesn’t need to give certain details about his executive privilege claims in the special master review.
The federal judge removed the special master’s proposed requirement that Trump, when asserting a document is covered by executive privilege, specify whether he believed that barred disclosure within the executive branch versus disclosure outside of it.
The Justice Department has argued that Trump’s executive privilege claims are especially weak because the materials were seized by the executive branch for an executive branch purpose, i.e. a DOJ criminal investigation.
In explaining the “modest enlargement” of the timeline, Cannon pointed to the issues the parties had faced in securing a vendor to digitize the seized materials for the review.
“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. The reason why so many of the Government’s selected vendors have declined the potential engagement is that there is an estimated volume that needs to be operated under the accelerated timelines supported by the Government.
The committee’s dramatic, though probably futile, effort to get Trump to testify was a mic drop moment to cap its last hearing before the midterm elections and came with a warning that Trump owes the nation an explanation for a day of infamy in January 2021.
The panel is planning to argue that Mr. Trump inspired far-right extremists and election deniers who are still a serious threat to American democracy, in part by his lies about voter fraud.
The Capitol Calls Back Against The Republicans: Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and the Insurrection That Killed President Jeffrey Rosen
This could become a subject in school. Given the possibility of a Trump legal challenge to the subpoena, the issue could drag on for months and become moot since a possible new Republican House majority would likely sweep the January 6 committee away as one of its first acts.
Liz Cheney, the panel’s top Republican, said that they were obligated to seek answers from the man who started it all. “And every American is entitled to the answers, so we can act now to protect our republic.”
Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who is the Chairman of the select committee, argued that Trump is at the center of the story of January 6th. We want to hear from him.
If Republicans win control of the House, January 6 will no longer be the location for the committee, which will have less than three months to issue a final report.
During the hearing, the panel labeled the footage as showing lawmakers at an “undisclosed location.” It has been widely known since January 6, that senior congressional leaders from both parties took refuge at Fort McNair during the chaos of the Capitol takeover.
The footage shows House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other top officials working the phones and coordinating with Trump Cabinet members and other officials to secure the resources needed to quell the insurrection and secure the Capitol.
There were two phone calls between Pelosi and the then-Vice President, Mike Pence, who helped coordinate the emergency response on January 6.
Schumer was seen dressing down Attorney General JeffreyRosen. During their heated phone call, Schumer implored Rosen to intervene directly with Trump, and tell Trump to call off the mob. Pelosi stated during the call that the rioters were breaking the law because of the President.
CNN reported in August that one of the senators’ wives, includingMitch McConnell, met with the committee. But after condemning the attack in her resignation letter in early 2021, Chao has largely stayed out of the national spotlight, with her recent comments to the committee providing fresh insight into her thinking on the deadly attack.
“And at a particular point, the events were such that it was impossible for me to continue, given my personal values and my philosophy. I came as an immigrant to this country. I believe in the country I live in. I believe in the peaceful transfer of power. I think in democracy. And so I was – it was a decision that I made on my own,” she said.
Hutchinson provided detailed accounts of how Trump acted on January 6 in her testimony during the summer hearings.
I remember telling Mark that he cannot possibly think that we’re going to pull this off. That call was crazy. He looked at me and shook his head. He is like, “No, Cass, you know he knows it’s over.” He knows that he didn’t win. Hutchinson told the committee that they are going to keep trying.
“It’s dizzying for the public to see this kind of chaos surrounding a candidate for president,” Hutchinson told CNN’s Brianna Keilar. It is reflective of all of the challenges that go with a Trump candidacy and that is what it is to me.
The President said something to the effect of, “I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark.” This is embarrassing. Figure it out. We need to figure it out. I don’t want people to know that we lost,’” Hutchinson said.
Secret Service and the House Judicious Committee on Electoral Jury: The Secret Service’s High-profile Witnesses Thursday Hearing on Jan. 6
In roughly three months since the last January 6 committee hearing, the panel has obtained more than 1 million records from the Secret Service, and the panel revealed some of what they learned during Thursday’s hearing.
On January 6, one Secret Service agent texted at 12:36 p.m., according to the committee, “With so many weapons found so far; you wonder how many are unknown. Could be sporty after dark.”
“I got the base FIRED UP,” Miller texted Meadows on December 30, 2020, appearing to take credit for amplifying the violent rhetoric about January 6 that was circulating on the pro-Trump website The Donald dot win.
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said in Thursday’s hearing that that the Secret Service received alerts of online threats made against Vice President Mike Pence ahead of the Capitol insurrection, including that Pence would be “‘a dead man walking if he doesn’t do the right thing.’”
The committee played previously unseen video from its deposition of Pence’s counsel, Greg Jacob. Jacob says that he and Short had prepared for Trump to win the election regardless of the results.
After their conversation on November 3, 2020, Jacob drafted a memo to Short, which the committee said it obtained from the National Archives and presented for the first time on Thursday.
It is important that the public does not perceive the Vice President as having decided questions about disputed electoral votes prior to the full development of all relevant facts.
The committee uncovered new emails that conservative activist Tom Fitton sent to two Trump advisers. One email contains a draft statement for Trump to declare victory on Election Night.
Committee members interviewed Ginni Thomas last month but ultimately her testimony was not featured as part of the panel’s last hearing before the midterm election.
But her absence was notable considering the panel did use testimony from several other high-profile witnesses who had been interviewed since the committee’s most recent hearing earlier this summer.
The FBI and the Public Interest in the Increasing Aggressive Investigation of the Trump Ex-President: Marc Short, a former Chief of Staff for Mike Pence, and a National Security aide Kash Patel
The ex-president has not yet been charged in either probe and there is so far no indication that he will be. The sense that Trump is about to be indicted, and the fact that Jack Smith has a limited time frame in which to bring any prosecution, are both driven by signs of an Increasingly Aggressive Investigation by Special Counsel Jack Smith. Next week will be a critical time for Trump as the final report of the January 6 committee is set to be released and possible criminal referrals are made to the DOJ.
Since everything about Trump’s political career has been unprecedented, it’s hardly surprising that his political reemergence is posing new questions with the potential to further challenge and damage the country’s political institutions.
“We’ve gotta be concerned about the precedent that we would create that would allow any target of offense of a federal criminal investigation to go into district court and to have a district court entertain this kind of petition, exercise equitable jurisdiction (that allows a court to intervene) and interfere with the executive branch’s ongoing investigation,” Pryor told Trump lawyer James Trusty.
The court turned down his emergency request to intervene, which could have delayed the case, without explaining why. Conservative justices who appeared to owe President Donald Trump a debt of loyalty were not noted.
The ex-president faces a real threat of criminal exposure because of the classified documents that are at issue, and the political drama surrounding them all is not enough.
The former President asked why the panel waited so long to call him. But his obstruction of the investigation and attempts to prevent former aides from testifying means he is on thin ice in criticizing its conduct. And it is not unusual for investigators to build a case before approaching the most prominent potential target of a probe.
Marc Short, a former chief of staff for then-Vice President Mike Pence, was spotted leaving a courthouse in Washington, DC. Short had been compelled to testify to the grand jury for the second time, according to a person familiar with the matter, CNN’s Pamela Brown reported. Another Trump adviser, former national security aide Kash Patel, was also seen walking into an area where the grand jury meets. Patel would not tell reporters what he was doing.
CNN’s Brown had reported late on Wednesday that a Trump employee had told the FBI about being directed by the ex-President to move boxes out of a basement storage room at his Florida club after Trump’s legal team received a subpoena for any classified documents. The FBI has a staffer who is shown in footage moving the boxes.
Still, David Schoen, who was Trump’s defense lawyer in his second impeachment, told CNN’s “New Day” that though the details of what happened at Mar-a-Lago raised troubling questions, they did not necessarily amount to a case of obstructing justice.
But he added: “If President Trump or someone acting on behalf knew … that they didn’t have the right to have these documents in their possession, the documents belonged to the government or the American people, et cetera, and knowingly disobeyed the subpoena, knowingly hid the documents or kept the documents from being found, then that could theoretically constitute obstruction.”
On Thursday morning, New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a state court to block the Trump Organization from moving assets and continuing to perpetrate what she has alleged in a civil lawsuit is a decades-long fraud.
“There is every reason to believe that the Defendants will continue to engage in similar fraudulent conduct right up to trial unless checked by order of this Court,” James wrote in an application for a preliminary injunction linked to her $250 million suit against Trump, his three eldest children and his firm.
The agency is looking at whether Trump broke the law when he kept highly classified information at his resort. Any prosecution of the ex President and those around him will cause a political conflagration, especially if he is by then a declared candidate for president.
Multiple federal and state investigations are ongoing regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, his handling of sensitive government documents and his family business.
What Did the Unselect Committee Tell Us About the January 6 Correlated Subpoena Measure of the Ex-President?
One of those days, when the seriousness of the crisis can often be gauged by the vehemence of Trump’s responses, he came out fighting on Thursday.
The unanimous vote for the subpoena of the former President was mocked by the first Trump spokesman.
“Pres Trump will not be intimidate(d) by their meritless rhetoric or un-American actions. Budowich said the Midterms will sweep Trump-endorsed candidates and that America First leadership will be restored.
Then the former President weighed in on his Truth Social network with another post that failed to answer the accusations against him, but that was clearly designed to stir a political reaction from his supporters.
“Why didn’t the Unselect Committee ask me to testify months ago? Why did they not finish before the end of the meeting? Because the Committee is a total ‘BUST,’” Trump wrote.
Given the ex-President’s history of obstructing efforts to examine his tumultuous presidency, it would be a surprise if he does not fight the subpoena, although there might be part of him that would relish a primetime spot in a live hearing.
If Trump skips his testimony it will take months to follow a similar path. It’s unclear whether the Justice Department would consider this a good investment, especially given the advanced state of its own January 6 probe. The Republicans are likely to take over the House majority following the elections and there is a good chance the committee will be swept into history.
Given the slim chance of Trump complying with a congressional subpoena then, many observers will see the dramatic vote to target the ex-President as yet another theatrical flourish in a set of slickly produced hearings that often resembled a television courtroom drama.
The investigation into what happened on January 6 was not just about what happened, according to Liz Cheney, the committee’s Republican vice chair.
After losing her primary to a Trump-backed challenger in Wyoming, the lawmaker said she won’t go back to Congress and that the country is at risk because of the conduct of the former President.
The panel’s evidentiary hearing concluded on Thursday and it was not clear if it had made a difference to the jury. After four months of sensational hearings and lots of evidence, people who already blamed Mr. Trump were able to return to their normal lives. those who started out in his camp largely remained there.
The relatively little movement in public opinion since the hearings opened in June, at least as measured by an array of polls, underscored the calcification of American politics in recent years. Many voters seem to have been locked into their opinions. Mr. Trump’s supporters for the most part have remained loyal to him, brushing off the congressional investigation as the partisan exercise he claims it to be.
The former president’s attempt to overturn a fair election to retain power in defiance of the voters is still seen as the most likely candidate to win the party’s nomination. While the committee extensively documented the plot for history’s sake, it could not enforce accountability for it.
Donald Trump and his movement are posing new challenges to accountability, free elections, and the rule of law, bringing with them a new period of political turmoil.
Trump dropped his clearest hint of a new White House run when he mentioned on Saturday that he would be running for president again.
Trump’s current prominence on the political scene was already highly unusual. There is a tendency for one-term presidents to fade quickly into history. It is a testament to the hold he has over much of the GOP that he still is a key player more than two years later. 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.
If a potential presidential campaign is built on the claims of political persecution, it would cause more upheaval than his four years in office.
And while fierce differences are emerging between Democrats and Republicans over policy on the economy, abortion, foreign policy and crime in the 2022 midterms – while concerns about democracy often rank lower for voters – there is every chance the coming political period revolves mostly around the ex-President’s past and future.
Trump’s men and women are also stepping up their activity. Steve Bannon wants to expose the Biden regime in an appeal against the prison sentence handed down last week for disobeying a congressional subpoena. Lindsey Graham is calling for the Supreme Court to reject the attempt to force him to testify in an investigation into Donald Trump and his campaign.
The Trump Organization and its Ex-President Embedding: The Tax Fraud and Grandy Larceny Cases in Arizona and New York
In Arizona, one of the ex-President’s favorite candidates is raising doubts about the election system. “I’m afraid that it probably is not going to be completely fair,” Lake told AZTV7 on Sunday.
There’s a rising prospect next month’s election will install a Republican majority in the House that will effectively mean a return of Trumpism to political power given the hold the ex-President maintains over the House GOP. There is talk of a possible drive to impeach Biden and they will use their powers to cause a fight with Biden if there is a clash with Trump.
The Republican Party is expected to grow in Washington after the elections. Scores of Trump-endorsed candidates are running on a platform of his 2020 election fraud falsehoods, raising questions over whether they will accept results should they lose their races in just over two weeks.
On another politically sensitive front, the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud and grandy larceny trial begins in Manhattan on Monday. 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. New York’s Attorney General, a Democrat, is pressing a civil case against the Trump Organization and its executives, accusing them of running tax and insurance fraud schemes to enrich themselves.
Democrats are trying to get Trump back in the spotlight. Some campaigns tried to scare suburban voters with warnings about pro-Trump candidates being a threat to democracy after President Joe Biden likened MAGA followers to fascists.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/24/politics/donald-trump-circus-analysis/index.html
A Special Counsel for the Investigation of a White House Candidate: Donald J. Cheney, a former president and the presidential firestorm
With voters about to head to the polls, raging inflation and spikes in gas prices seem to be more of a concern, which could spell bad news for the party in power.
The ex-President told supporters at a rally in Texas on Saturday regarding the possibility of a new White House bid, “I will probably have to do it again.”
It may take several days to complete, and it will be done with the right level of rigor and seriousness, according to Cheney.
“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 really serious set of issues.
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 justice as a weapon in his bid to win the presidency. And while the law, and not politics, is Garland’s stated business, any potential prosecution of Trump must balance the national interest and the precedent that would be set if a commander in chief were to get away with attempting to overthrow an election.
Indicting an active candidate for the White House would surely spark a political firestorm. And while no decision has been made about whether a special counsel might be needed in the future, DOJ officials have debated whether doing so could insulate the Justice Department from accusations that Joe Biden’s administration is targeting his chief political rival, people familiar with the matter tell CNN.
The Justice Department is exploring the possibility of creating a special counsel to handle two federal investigations relating to the former president if Donald Trump were to run for president once more, sources tell CNN.
The Department of Justice is prepared for any potential criminal charges against a former president after next month’s mid-term elections, because it is putting in more experienced prosecutors to investigate.
A defense attorney working on January 6-related matters said that prosecutors have the power to charge almost any person, and that they have no idea who will be charged.
Supervised Special Counsel to the US Attorney General: The January 6 Investigations of Donald Trump and the Biden-Biden Correspondence
Special counsels, of course, are hardly immune from 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 left his firm Sidley Austin and became a senior counsel at the DOJ in the criminal division in Washington several weeks ago, according to sources familiar with the move.
The team at the DC US Attorney’s Office handling the day-to-day work of the January 6 investigations is also growing – even while the office’s sedition cases against right-wing extremists go to trial.
A handful of other prosecutors have joined the January 6 investigations team, including a high-ranking fraud and public corruption prosecutor who has moved out of a supervisor position and onto the team, and a prosecutor with years of experience in criminal appellate work 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.”
Garland said they must avoid any partisan elements when making their decision about cases. I want to ensure that the Department decisions are made on merits, and that they aren’t based on any kind of partisan considerations.
Garland’s decisions are not limited to Trump. The long-running investigation of Hunter Biden, son of the president, is nearing conclusion, people briefed on the matter say. There is a final 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. The review of cases earlier than a typical five-year window by the DOJ will cause added pressure to get through it.
She is trying to get witnesses to appear before the grand jury in the coming weeks, as she observed her own quiet period around the election. CNN indictments could come as early as December according to sources.
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.
Whether courts force testimony in Georgia could improve the ability of the DOJ to gather information, just as the January 6 investigation by the House Select Committee added to the probes into the Trump administration.
In the weeks before the election, Trump has made it clear that he doesn’t want the DOJ to keep quiet about the investigation.
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 DC District Court judge granted immunity to the man in the case, another sign that the case is moving closer to prosecution.
Trump and his company have not been accused of anything and they have remained steadfast in their innocence. Trump has also won dismissals of two lawsuits this week in cases brought by his niece and his former attorney.
It is not uncommon for Trump to have a tough time on the same day in his cases because of his heavy legal exposure.
But Tuesday’s developments marked the first time that the legal chaos and jeopardy that surround him has come fully into focus since he declared his third bid for the Republican presidential nomination last week. It’s the first test of whether the swirling courtroom peril facing him on multiple fronts will detract from his capacity to mount a credible campaign and whether it will put off GOP primary voters who may consider an alternative candidate.
But outgoing Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is also considering a 2024 Republican presidential primary campaign, said on CNN on Tuesday that the fresh evidence of turmoil surrounding Trump could be a turn-off for GOP voters.
Trump did not follow precedent by releasing his tax returns during the presidential campaign, which was one of the first signs of his determination to break the norm. So the Supreme Court’s decision not to block the Internal Revenue Service from releasing his tax documents to the House Ways and Means Committee represented a significant personal defeat, as well as a political one.
The public will not be able to see the returns that the president has been trying to hide. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who sits on the committee, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Tuesday that the documents were subject to privacy protections. But he also said the panel did have the option of releasing the documents publicly and that “the time pressure here creates an added reason to consider doing that.”
On the substance of the case, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat, said that the Supreme Court had upheld a vital norm. “Since the Magna Carta, the principle of oversight has been upheld, and today is no different. The committee will now conduct oversight that they have sought for the last three and a half years.
But the top Republican on the committee, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, warned that by stepping aside, the court established a precedent that would mean that no citizen could be safe from a majority political party.
One interesting wrinkle will be whether Trump’s loss in the tax returns fight will influence how future Republican presidential candidates will deal with their financial records. They could not just reestablish a current tradition of transparency for presidents by releasing them. They could cause a bigger problem for Trump.
A three-judge panel at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals expressed skepticism of Trump’s arguments for why he was entitled to a third party, known as a special master, to sift through around 22,000 pages of materials taken from his Florida resort. It is a question of whether Trump is entitled to the type of judicial intervention that could slow down many cases, if it were widely adopted.
There is only one thing that differentiates this from the others, and that is the fact that this involves a former president.
The judge rebuked Trusty for calling the search a raid, as the former president has done many times. Do you agree that raid is the right term for the execution of a warrant? Grant asked. Trusty apologized for using the term.
Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Department of Defense, told CNN’s Burnett the court could decide to overrule Judge Aileen Cannon, who appointed the special master, in what would be a severe blow to the ex-president.
Any such move could significantly speed up the documents case after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee it last week.
It can offer clarity to the public, who must now assess another unprecedented political scenario involving Trump. The former president’s multiple legal challenges have slowed both cases, but Tuesday offered signs that each could be moving closer to resolution.
Sources said the panel was weighing criminal referrals for MarkMeadows, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Rudy Giuliani.
While the criminal referrals would largely be symbolic in nature – as the DOJ has already undertaken a sprawling investigation into the US Capitol attack and efforts to overturn the 2020 election – committee members have stressed that the move serves as a way to document their views for the record.
Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said Thursday that committee members are expected to reach a decision on criminal referrals when members meet virtually on Sunday.
Subcommission on Referenda to the Full Committee on Investigating the Trump-Pence Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Presidential Election: Insights from the Eastman Group
“I think the more we looked at the body of evidence that we had collected, we just felt that while we’re not in the business of investigating people for criminal activities, we just couldn’t overlook some of them.”
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who leads the January 6 subcommittee tasked with presenting recommendations on criminal referrals to the full committee, said Thursday, “I think anyone who engages in criminal actions needs to be held accountable for them. We are going to spell it out.
The gravest offense is the attempt to subvert a presidential election and circumvent the order of the constitution. “Subsidiary to all of that are a whole host of statutory offenses, which support the gravity and magnitude of that violent assault on America.”
Raskin, along with Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren, both of California, and the panel’s vice chair GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, comprise the subcommittee.
The House committee voted to refer the matter to the Justice Department for Meadows’ refusal to testify and the fact that he didn’t turn over other documents. The Department of Justice decided not to indict him due to his position in the Trump West Wing and his claims of executive privilege.
Raskin also suggested Thursday that previous referrals to DOJ for contempt of Congress would not impact how the panel handles these criminal referrals.
There is a process for making contempt of Congress referrals happen, he said. We will explain in detail our decisions in regards to referrals for certain people and others.
In a hearing over the summer, the panel presented revelations that provided new insight into Eastman’s role as a central figure in the effort led by Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The pressure campaign that Trump directed at Vice President Mike Peat to help overturn the election results was spearheaded by something called the “Eastman Group”.
In the hearing, the committee walked through how Eastman put forward a legal theory that Pence could unilaterally block certification of the election – a theory that was roundly rejected by Trump’s White House attorneys and Pence’s team, but was nevertheless embraced by the former President.
Clark invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times during his deposition with the committee. Federal investigators have raided Clark’s home as part of their own criminal investigation.
The June hearing which focused on Clark’s involvement in Trump’s attempts to weaponize the DOJ in the last months of his time in office was a part of the plan to overturn the 2020 election.
The committee zeroed in on the work that Rep. Scott Perry did to get Clark to the White House.
The committee in court filing have shown that CNN reported on the role thatPerry played and that they also show text messages that he exchanged with Meadows.
A former aide to the leader of the caucus said in a deposition that he wanted Jeff Clark to take over the Department of Justice.
Giuliani, Trump’s onetime personal attorney and a lead architect of his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results, met with the panel in May for more than nine hours.
The warning that the future threat to truth and democracy remains acute is brought up by each sign that once slow burning efforts to work through the trauma of the post election period are heating up. One of the key forces in the incoming GOP majority that is expected to try to shut down or obstruct investigations into Trump has been involved in trouble over the insurrection.
The mob that smashed into the capitol would have been armed, according to the Georgia Republican. She then rebuffed White House condemnations of her comments by insisting she was joking. This happened a week after the former president went on a voter fraud spree and demanded that the Constitution be terminated in a sign of what his second term would look like if he makes it into the White House.
CNN reported Sunday that Smith is speeding ahead on twin probes into Trump’s role in an effort to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 and his apparently haphazard storage of classified documents at his Florida residence and resort. It emerged Monday that Smith’s team subpoenaed Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was on the other end of the then-president’s phone call designed to convince him to “find” sufficient votes to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the Peach State in 2020. Smith has also issued a flurry of grand jury subpoenas since Thanksgiving, including to ex-Trump adviser Stephen Miller and two former White legal counsels.
“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 Smith’s appointment meant that he was less likely to be influenced by the politicized aftermath of the January 6 attack and that a fresh mind would lean against indictments, it was questionable if Trump’s team was 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.
If the Justice Department was to be charged, they would’ve left their former positions in both government and private practice. He said it would happen in a month.
Legal experts say the one regarding classified documents may move ahead quicker 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 Garland says no one is above the law and that investigations will go where evidence leads. It takes a long time to prepare for and conduct a trials in the legal process. The prospect of a prosecution of a former president and current presidential candidate is so politically explosive that it would be optimal for any proceedings to take place well before the climax of the 2024 White House race.
On CNN on Monday, the legal analyst said that it is now a challenge to finish the cases before the election.
“So, I think they will bring a case on the documents side, if they can, as soon as they can,” Rodgers said, adding that any case on January 6 would 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.
It is difficult to tell how incriminating testimony about Trump’s behavior would be under the higher standard required by a court of law because the committee’s highly choreographed televised hearings did not include any cross examination of witnesses. Still, the report – and transcripts of its depositions expected to be sent to the DOJ – could be useful in fleshing out any criminal case by the special counsel, and in preparing the public for the possibility of any move by Smith to charge Trump.
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.