The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I split off the discussion about the Trump Espionage and Obstruction Investigation to a separate thread

[N.E. Brigand]

And just today, Forbes reported that the General Services Administration relied on the financial statements provided by Trump's accountant -- the statements now known to be incorrect -- when determining whether or not he owed additional rent to the federal government for his D.C. hotel, which is in a former U.S. Post Office building leased from the government. Trump is now trying to sell that lease to another firm and could make hundreds of millions from that sale.

A number of legal observers said several months ago that the New York D.A.'s case would be a difficult one to prove, because to show that all this financial skullduggery is actually criminal, you probably need the cooperation of witnesses like Trump's CFO, Allen Weisselberg (who has been charged with a lesser financial crime and apparently decided not to flip on Trump). In that context, today's news about the D.A.'s office apparently giving up on the case makes sense. But given the events of last week, that Mazars has abandoned him and that a New York judge ruled that Trump and his children must sit for depositions in the New York Attorney General's parallel civil suit, it certainly seemed like the tide was turning. It doesn't help that the two prosecutors leading the case for the D.A.'s office seem to have resigned in protest because the D.A. decided against pursuing the case.

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Edited to add: It may be that Bragg made the right call given the evidence, but this really just again emphasizes a bigger problem: that our financial and legal systems appear to be set up to allow powerful people to get away with crimes. And in this case, the powerful criminal became the president of the United States and then came darn close to ending the nation's democratic system of government. (Plus he keeps getting away with it even in the most blatant cases, even when other people go to jail for doing what he ordered them to do. Michael Cohen didn't pay off Stormy Daniels for no reason!)

The New York Times reports that New York prosecutors are nearing a plea deal with Allen Weisselberg, and that it will not include any cooperation against Trump.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Ex-Trump Org. official Allen Weisselberg expected to plead guilty in tax case

The big question is, is he cutting a deal to cooperate in exchange for a lighter sentence?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Bragg just seems worse and worse.

Ex-Trump Organization CFO negotiating 'unexpectedly favorable' plea deal with Manhattan DA

Weisselberg, who is 75, could walk away with a minor prison sentence of just five months, the Times reports, calling it “an unexpectedly favorable outcome for him.”

The plea deal would not include any cooperation on broader issues related to Donald Trump. Legal experts have said Weisselberg knows nearly everything that the Trump Organization has done.

“His plea deal, if finalized, would bring prosecutors no closer to indicting the former president but would nonetheless brand one of his most trusted lieutenants a felon.”

[N.E. Brigand]

On the other hand, I saw a report on TV this evening that Weisselberg will be pleading guilty to all 15 counts against him and will be required, if called, to testify as a prosecution witness in the criminal trial of the Trump Organization this fall.

[N.E. Brigand]

A District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the ruling of Judge Amy Berman Jackson (in response to a Freedom of Information Act request) that the Department of Justice must release an internal memo that then-Attorney General William Barr (claims to have) relied upon to determine in March 2019 that President Trump should not be charged with obstruction of justice. A much-redacted version of this memo was previously released. The Circuit Court concurs with Judge Jackson's determination that, essentially, the memo Barr received was political rather than legal in nature. Because of the well-known Office of Legal Counsel determinations that a sitting President cannot be charged with a crime while in office -- which is what Special Counsel Robert Mueller relied up on when determining that he wasn't allowed to say that President Trump had committed obstruction of justice -- A.G. Barr cannot have needed the memo to make a prosecutorial decision (and the Appeals Court says that Barr never contemplated charging Trump). Rather, he was only making a decision about what to tell Congress. The Appeals Court says that DOJ might have succeeded in withholding the memo on other grounds had they been up front about its nature from the start, but they weren't, and the plaintiffs thus never had the opportunity to address any such arguments. DOJ has argued that it should be allowed to make that case now, but the Court says:

"We are unpersuaded by the Department’s assertion that the district court needed to sua sponte grant it a do-over."

[N.E. Brigand]

If the former Attorney General never actually made a legal determination about whether Donald Trump should be prosecuted for obstruction of justice, then I think it's incumbent upon the current Attorney General to actually do so.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That ship has long since .

[N.E. Brigand]

That ship has long since .

Many of the statutes of limitations have not yet expired, so while Merrick Garland might very well decide to not to prosecute Donald Trump for obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation, he should be asked under oath by Congress about why no such decision was ever made, one way or the other, after many millions of dollars were spent on a special counsel investigation that presented hundreds of pages of evidence that Trump did indeed obstruct justice. The Appeals Court, echoing Judge Jackson, says that Barr had already decided not to charge Trump when he received Robert Mueller's report. Mueller himself testified in July 2019 that the Department of Justice could indeed decide to prosecute President Trump after Trump was out of office. Garland shouldn't be allowed to just move on without an explanation. He needs to own the decision.

[N.E. Brigand]

It may be stretching to note this here (so if it's moved elsewhere, I understand), but:

About a week after the Access Hollywood tape (in which Donald Trump boasts about grabbing women's genitalia) became public in October 2016, there was a now little-remembered story about how a former employee on the Celebrity Apprentice reality TV program claimed that one of the show's contestants, the actor Gary Busey, groped her "between my legs" while Trump, the program's star, "stood by and laughed." There are numerous other examples of people claiming on social media, both before and after that report, that Busey groped them.

Well today, the Associated Press reports that "Gary Busey has been charged with two counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual contact and other offenses alleged at the Monster Mania Convention in Cherry Hill, N.J., where the actor had been a featured guest."

Busey has said in recent years that he considers Trump to be a close friend. And one more reason to mention this news here is that one of the jokes told by President Barack Obama at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner, in a set that was perceived to have humiliated Trump and was later seen by some as a key moment in Trump's decision to run for president in 2016, was about Gary Busey.

Trump was then the leading figure in the insane Birther movement which alleged that Obama was not born in the U.S. and thus was not legitimately the president. To put that nonsense to rest, at Obama's request, the state of Hawai'i had just released his long-form birth certificate. Trump attended the dinner, and Obama offered some humorous remarks, as had become a tradition for presidents at the time. He told a few jokes about Trump, climaxing with this one: "All kidding aside, obviously we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. No, seriously. For example, just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice, at the steakhouse, the men's cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around, but you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership, and so ultimately you didn't blame Lil John or Meatloaf. You fired Gary Busey. These are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. Well handled, sir. Well, handled."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It is a stretch to put it here, but I don't think it is worth splitting it into a new thread or moving it to another thread. I think it is a good here as anywhere else (and worth posting).

[RoseMorninStar]

I remember watching that correspondents dinner and thinking Trump would not take that well.

[Sunsilver]

Trump's ego prevents him from understanding humour, I think.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That ship has long since .

Actually, I will amend that. In the unlikely event that some of the documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago provide additional evidence of obstruction of the Mueller investigation (or the investigation into collusion with Russia before Mueller was engaged as special counsel), it is possible that Trump could be charged for that in addition to other charges. But I think there is a miniscule chance of that happening.

[N.E. Brigand]

Many people today have responded to a New York Times editorial by National Review editor Rich Lowry in which, in the course of arguing that Donald Trump shouldn't be prosecuted for stealing government documents, he also claims the Trump-Russia investigation was a "hoax." I think David Frum's rebuttal is the best. That said, others made one point that Frum didn't in response to Lowry's (rhetorical?) qustion, "Can you tell me what would happen if the F.B.I. were investigating a Democrat?" As they note, Lowry seems to have forgotten that there were two different investigations into Hillary Clinton in 2016, both of which were made public.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

I'm not sure I quite get Leopold's meaning. As an aside, he adds in a subsequent tweet, "Of course, I can think of several people who did undertake such DIRECTIONS," but that doesn't seem to be the point he's making in the first tweet.

Is it akin to the joke here?



If so, I fully endorse it. But I'd like to be sure.

This analysis of the memo from New York Times reporter Charlie Savage is damning.

As he says, one of the memo's primary arguments is that because Robert Mueller was unable to prove that Donald Trump criminally conspired with Russia, it would not be possible to charge Donald Trump with obstructing the investigation into a possible Trump-Russia conspiracy.

But that's nonsense. Suppose the police are investigating a missing person, and I incorrectly believe my best friend murdered that person. If I find and burn the victim's body in order to protect my friend, I'm committing obstruction even if my friend was completely innocent of the crime.

And furthermore, I believe the more accurate analogy is this: Suppose the police are investigating a missing person case, and I murdered the person and know where the body is located, and I then burn the body in order to protect myself. Suppose the police find video of me burning the body, but because the body is now burned, there's no evidence proving that I murdered the victim. I'm still guilty of obstructing the investigation!

(Andrew Weissmann, who was one of Robert Mueller's top deputies on the investigation, noted on Nicolle Wallace's MSNBC show today that memo's legal analysis here is flat out wrong and that the Mueller report addresses this very subject.)

The analysis in that memo -- Savage says that it "reads like a defense lawyer's brief" -- is so shoddy that the people involved in its creation (Steven Engel, Edward O'Callagahan, Rod Rosenstein, and William Barr) should never be allowed to practice law again. And that's the best case interpretation of that memo. What I think it really shows is that those Dept. of Justice officials illegally conspired to cover up Donald Trump's crimes.

And remember, Trump's crimes were treasonous in nature.

Edited to add: And I think that Marcy Wheeler is right to point out that even many people who are rightly outraged at what this memo shows aren't outraged enough. The truth is worse than it seems. Barr gets even his critics to repeat incorrect talking points about what Mueller found, and he continued to work to shape the narrative for more than a year after Mueller's report was released, shutting down the other investigations that had spun off from Mueller's work. (It's a bit like how I, who only saw the Lord of the Rings movies once and strongly disliked them, mistakenly remembered Tolkien's book as including a chant of "Grond! Grond! Grond!" during a discussion of that chapter.)

Edited further to add: As previously noted, the existence of this memo is one factor that would make it very hard for the Dept. of Justice to prosecute Donald Trump now for obstructing the Trump-Russia investigation, even though the statute of limitations doesn't expire for another year. Trump would be able to point to this document in court and say that any such prosecution runs afoul of DOJ's prior determination.

But Attorney General Merrick Garland should be required to testify to this publicly. He needs to say, "William Barr successfully covered up Donald Trump's crimes." And if he won't say, then a Congressman should make him answer this question: "Did William Barr successfully cover up Donald Trump's crimes?" He can't honestly say "No," so he'd either have to say "Yes" or dodge the question in a way that makes it clear to everyone that the answer is yes. We can't move on until the Dept. of Justice owns up to its failures.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Sorry but that is not going to happen.

[N.E. Brigand]

Sorry but that is not going to happen.

Which part? Garland frequently testifies to Congress. All we need is for someone to ask him a question like the one I suggest above: "Did Attorney General William Barr cover up crimes committed by President Donald Trump?" If he dodges, then it will be plain that the real answer is "Yes."

I'm not asking for much! Just one member of Congress to ask one simple question.

EDIT: The more I think about this: if Garland doesn't officially repudiate this memo, doesn't that put DOJ in a world of hurt? The memo undermines the legal grounds by which someone can be charged with obstruction of justice. We now have an official Department of Justice memo that argues you can't be guilty of obstructing if (1) the underlying crime hasn't been proved, (2) the obstruction is unsuccessful, and (3) your motive for covering up possible evidence of an underlying crime is that you think the evidence will hurt you politically. You can darn well expect this to be cited by lots of defendants who will argue that for those reasons, they are the victims of selective prosecution. Sure DOJ will have some counterarguments, but I have a hard time thinking a judge will agree to a claim that the arguments in the memo apply to presidents and ex-presidents. (Remember, the DOJ position is that the decision not to charge Trump had nothing to do with the fact that he was a sitting president who was by prior DOJ determination not able to be charged while in office.) What a nightmare.

[N.E. Brigand]

This concerns Trump, but it's not exactly a "case": Fox Business is reporting that Donald Trump's social media platform, Truth Social, hasn't paid its web hosting provider in months and owes that company $1.6 million.