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Trump Doc Inquiry Poses Unparalleled Take a look at for Justice Dept.

Trump Document Inquiry Poses Unparalleled Test for Justice Dept.

WASHINGTON — As Justice Department officials haggled for months this year with former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers and aides over the return of government documents at his Florida home, federal prosecutors became convinced that they were not being told the whole truth.

That conclusion helped set in motion a decision that would amount to an unparalleled test of the Justice Department’s credibility in a deeply polarized political environment: to seek a search warrant to enter Mar-a-Lago and retrieve what prosecutors suspected would be highly classified materials, beyond the hundreds of pages that Mr. Trump had already returned.

By the government’s account, that gamble paid off, with FBI agents carting off boxloads of sensitive material during the search three weeks ago, including some documents with top secret markings.

But the matter hardly ended there: What had started as an effort to retrieve national security documents has now been transformed into one of the most challenging, complicated and potentially explosive criminal investigations in recent memory, with tremendous implications for the Justice Department, Mr. Trump and public faith in government.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland now faces the prospect of having to decide whether to file criminal charges against a former president and likely 2024 Republican candidate, a step without any historical parallel.

Remarkably, he may have to make this choice twice, depending on what evidence his investigators find in their separate, broad inquiry into Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election and his involvement with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The department’s Jan. 6 investigation began as a manhunt for the rioters who attacked the Capitol. But last fall it expanded to include actions that occurred before the assault, such as the plan to submit slates of electors to Congress that falsely stated Mr. Trump had won in several key swing states.

This summer, prosecutors in the US attorney’s office in Washington began to ask witnesses directly about any involvement by Mr. Trump and members of his inner circle, including the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, had in efforts to reverse his election loss.

For all his efforts to distance the department from politics, Mr. Garland cannot escape the political repercussions of his decisions. How he handles Mr. Trump will surely define his tenure.

It is still unclear how either case will play out. Prosecutors working on the investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified information are nowhere near making a recommendation to Mr. Garland, according to people with knowledge of the inquiry. Court filings describe the work as continuing, with the possibility of more witness interviews and other investigative steps to come.

The Trump Investigations

Cards 1 of 6

The Trump Investigations

Numerous inquiries. Since former President Donald J. Trump left office, he has been facing several civil and criminal investigations into his business dealings and political activities. Here is a look at some notable cases:

The Trump Investigations

Jan 6 investigations. In a series of public hearings, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack laid out a comprehensive narrative of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. This evidence could allow federal prosecutors, who are conducting a parallel criminal investigation, to indict Mr. Trump.

The Trump Investigations

Georgia election interference case. Fani T. Willis, the Atlanta-area district attorney, has been leading a wide-ranging criminal investigation into the efforts of Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. This case could pose the most immediate legal peril for the former president and his associates.

The Trump Investigations

New York State civil inquiry. Letitia James, the New York Attorney General, has been conducting a civil investigation into Mr. Trump and his family business. The case is focused on whether Mr. Trump’s statements about the value of his assets were part of a pattern of fraud or were simply Trumpian showmanship.

So far, Mr. Garland has signaled that he is comfortable with owning all of the decisions related to Mr. Trump. He has resisted calls to appoint a special counsel to deal with investigations into the former president. In his first speech to the department’s 115,000 employees last year, he expressed faith that together they could handle any case. “All of us are united by our commitment to the rule of law and to seeking equal justice under law,” he said.

Over the course of this year, as prosecutors sought to understand how sensitive government documents ended up at Mr. Trump’s Florida resort, they began to examine whether three laws had been broken: the Espionage Act, which outlaws the unauthorized retention or disclosure of national security information; a law prohibiting the mishandling of sensitive government records; and a law against obstructing a federal investigation.

By summertime, the investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified information had started to yield compelling indications of possible intent to thwart the law, according to two people familiar with the work. While there was not necessarily ironclad evidence, witness interviews and other materials began to point to the possibility of deliberate attempts to mislead investigators. In addition to witness interviews, the Justice Department obtained security camera footage of various parts of Mar-a-Lago from the Trump Organization.

What we consider before using anonymous sources.
How do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even satisfied with these questions, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.

The heavily redacted affidavit explaining the government’s desire for a search warrant said that the Justice Department had “probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at” Mar-a-Lago, and that “the government has well-founded concerns that steps may be taken to frustrate or otherwise interfere with this investigation if facts in the affidavit were prematurely disclosed.”

But a decision about whether to charge Mr. Trump over attempts to obstruct the investigation, or his handling of sensitive national security information, would involve a variety of considerations.

At the heart of the case would be evidence uncovered by the FBI, which is still trying to understand how and why government records made their way to Mar-a-Lago and why some stayed there despite repeated requests for their return by the National Archives and a later subpoena from the Justice Department.

But the highly classified nature of some of the documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago and the possible evidence of obstruction are only some elements that will go into any final decision about pursuing a prosecution.

Career national security prosecutors will conduct a robust analysis of whether that evidence persuasively shows that laws were broken. That process will include a look at how the facts have been applied in similar cases brought under those same laws, information that prosecutors examined when they investigated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the former CIA director David H. Petraeus.

Key developments in the inquiries into the former president and his allies.

In the case involving Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server, for instance, officials in the national security division asked prosecutors to dive deep into the history of the Espionage Act. At issue was whether her handling of classified information indicated she had engaged in gross negligence. One compelling case of gross negligence that they did find, involving a former FBI agent, included far more serious factors. After examining past examples, they found that her case did not meet that standard. In the end, the consensus was not to charge Mrs. Clinton.

But Mr. Trump’s case presents the additional question of obstruction of justice, and the possibility that evidence could show that he or his legal team defied the Justice Department to hold onto documents that belonged to the government.

That in some ways echoes a previous obstruction inquiry conducted by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who examined whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election. His final report showed that Mr. Trump tried to curtail, or even end, the special counsel inquiry as he learned more about it. But Mr. Mueller declined to say whether Mr. Trump had broken the law, allowing the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, to clear Mr. Trump of that crime.

There is no way to know whether the Justice Department has facts regarding obstruction that meet its standard of prosecution, which is evidence that would “probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction.”

But the Justice Department’s own legal filings have thrust the question of obstruction into public view. Should Mr. Garland find that there is not enough evidence to indict Mr. Trump, the Justice Department under two successive administrations will have chosen not to recommend prosecuting Mr. Trump for that crime.

If Mr. Garland chooses to move forward with charges, it will be a historic moment for the presidency, a former leader of the United States accused of committing a crime and possibly forced to defend himself before a jury of his fellow citizens. It is a process that could potentially unfold even as he runs again for the White House against an incumbent whose administration is prosecuting him.

That, too, runs huge risks for the department’s credibility, particularly if the national security threat presented by Mr. Trump’s possession of the documents, inevitably disclosed at least in part during the course of any trial, do not seem substantial enough to warrant such a grave move.

Mr. Garland and his investigators are fully aware of the implications of their decisions, according to people familiar with their work. The knowledge that they will be scrutinized for impropriety and overreach, they say, has underscored the need to hew to the facts.

But a decision to prosecute — or to decline to prosecute — has political implications that Mr. Garland cannot escape. And no matter of judiciousness can change the fact that he is operating within an America as politically divided as it has been in decades.

Mr. Trump’s supporters have viewed any investigative steps around the former president as illegitimate attacks by a partisan Justice Department that is out to get him. And his detractors believe that any decision not to prosecute, no matter the evidence, would show that Mr. Trump is indeed above the law.

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State Dept. Presents Potential Refugee Standing to Extra Afghans Who Labored With U.S.

State Dept. Offers Potential Refugee Status to More Afghans Who Worked With U.S.

The State Department is offering potential refugee status to new categories of Afghans who helped the United States during the war in Afghanistan, including those who have worked for the news media and non-governmental organizations.

The ministry announced in an announcement on Monday that the measure was intended to protect Afghans “who may be at risk because of their affiliation with the US,” but who were not eligible for a special immigrant visa program that has started with it , Thousands of Afghans and their family members.

The White House is under heavy pressure to protect Afghans who have worked with the US military for the past 20 years and who may face Taliban reprisals if the United States withdraws its troops from Afghanistan. As the Taliban gains territorial gains across the country, Biden government officials and prominent members of Congress are increasingly concerned about the threat posed by ties to the United States.

The first plane load of more than 200 Afghan interpreters, drivers and other US military aides arrived in the Washington area last week to relocate them as part of a government initiative under two special visa programs prepared by Congress.

Congress created the Special Immigrant Visa Program to provide refuge to Afghans and Iraqis who have helped the US military. But the State Department’s actions on Monday reflected concerns that the program is still putting many Afghans with US ties at risk.

Last month, a coalition of news media organizations – including The New York Times, along with The Washington Post, ABC News, CNN, Fox News, and several others – sent letters to President Biden and the leaders of Congress urging them to take further action To undertake protection of Afghans who had worked as reporters, translators and support staff for the US media in Afghanistan.

The letters indicated that the special immigrant visa program “did not reach the Afghans who served US news organizations. But they and their families face the same threat of retaliation from the Taliban that the American press see as a legitimate target. “

The Taliban “long waged a campaign of threats and killing of journalists,” the letter read, and estimated that around 1,000 Afghans were at risk because of their journalistic affiliations.

The refugee program will also provide shelter for Afghans who worked on US government-funded programs and projects in the country, as well as non-governmental organizations long targeted by the Taliban.

The State Department said Afghans who fail to meet the minimum tenure of the special immigrant visa program would also be granted potential refugee status.

Those eligible for the program would undergo a “comprehensive security clearance” before being allowed to relocate to the United States as refugees, the department said.

While it offers relocation opportunities to new categories of Afghans, the United States continues to work to protect thousands more who have helped the military and are eligible for the special immigrant visa program.

Approximately 2,500 Afghans are being relocated to Fort Lee, Virginia, as part of an effort known by the White House as Operation Allies Refuge to remove them while they are completing their visa and permanent relocation applications in the United States.

Federal officials say around 4,000 more Afghans in the middle of the application process will soon be flown to other countries along with their immediate families before those who have been granted visas are taken to the United States.

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State Dept. Modifications Coverage for Passport Gender Identification

State Dept. Changes Policy for Passport Gender Identification

Americans are allowed to use their self-identified gender on their U.S. passports without presenting medical documents, under a new State Department rule announced by officials on Wednesday, the last day of Pride Month.

The shift was the first step in creating gender tagging on U.S. passports and citizenship certificates for individuals who identify as non-binary, intersex, or who otherwise do not conform to gender roles. This process is complex and will take time, said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity prior to Foreign Minister Antony J. Blinken’s announcement.

In the meantime, officials said, Americans who apply for a passport and proof of citizenship abroad will no longer be required to provide a medical certificate if their stated gender does not match their other identification documents.

The move fulfills an election promise made by President Biden, who has raised concerns that transgender and non-binary people without documented evidence of their self-identified gender are at risk of denial of employment, housing and other benefits, including the right to vote.

Blinken was expected to announce that the new policy will follow other countries that have taken similar steps – including Canada, Australia, Argentina, Nepal and New Zealand – to align in part with foreign allies and partners.

Currently, the State Department requires a medical certificate stating that a passport applicant has either moved or is in the process of changing their gender on official consular documents. It was not immediately clear on Wednesday when this requirement would no longer apply.

Last month the State Department reversed another policy that had disproportionately affected LGBTQ families and granted foreign-born babies US citizenship to married couples with at least one American parent, regardless of which parent was biological with the child was related.

This policy, a victory for same-sex couples, effectively guaranteed that American and binational couples who use assisted reproductive technology to give birth abroad – such as surrogate motherhood or sperm donation – can pass citizenship on to their children.

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Justice Dept. to Sue Georgia Over Voting Legislation

Justice Dept. to Sue Georgia Over Voting Law

The Justice Department is suing Georgia over a comprehensive electoral law passed by the state’s Republican-led legislature, a Congressional official said Friday, a key move by the Biden administration to counter state-level electoral restrictions in place since the 2020 election.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland was expected to announce the lawsuit late Friday morning.

The lawsuit is among the highest-profile enforcement actions launched under the Voting Act since the Supreme Court gutted a key provision in 2013 that allowed the Justice Department to prevent states from passing laws that facilitate discrimination against voters.

The lawsuit shows that the Justice Department, under the von Biden administration, intends to use the remaining tools at its disposal to aggressively oppose government actions it regards as potentially disenfranchised minority voters.

Mr Garland said earlier this month that the ministry would use all available tools to tackle voter discrimination.

The lawsuit comes days after Republicans in Congress blocked the most ambitious federal voting law in a generation, which dealt a blow to Democrats’ efforts to get the vote. President Biden and the Democratic leaders pledged to continue working to enforce state voting laws.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit is expected to accuse Georgia law of effectively discriminating against non-white voters and is intended to show that Georgia lawmakers intended to do so.

Georgian law introduced a number of new restrictions on electoral access and dramatically changed the balance of power in the electoral administration. The bill followed an election in which Georgia, a once reliably red state, turned blue in the presidential race for the first time in nearly 40 years, followed by two quick consecutive Senate seats, moving from Republicans to Democrats.

Georgia was the epicenter of former President Donald J. Trump’s months of efforts to overturn the election results. Picking up on numerous false conspiracy theories about the Georgia elections, he went on to claim that despite three separate recounts and audits – including one entirely manual – it reconfirmed the results, was fraudulent.

Critics were quick to cry that the law was rooted in the former president’s falsehoods and intended to reverse the democratic wave in Georgia, targeting the state’s absentee voting scheme, which was approved by Republicans in 2005, but the preferred method was voting for Democrats in the 2020 election amid the pandemic.

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Justice Dept. Ends Prison Inquiry Into John Bolton’s E book

Justice Dept. Ends Criminal Inquiry Into John Bolton’s Book

The Justice Department has stopped its criminal investigation into whether a derogatory memoir by President Donald J. Trump’s National Security Advisor John R. Bolton has illegally disclosed classified information and is closing a deal to resolve its lawsuit aimed at recovering profits from the To recover the book, to two people who have been briefed on the matter.

The deal would end an attempt that began under the Trump administration to silence Mr Bolton and sue him over the book’s profits. Closing both the investigation and the lawsuit is a clear reprimand from Attorney General Merrick B. Garland over the Trump Justice Department’s tactics on the matter.

The details of the agreement were unclear. A Justice Department deal is likely to prevent Trump administration officials from being forced to take oath to answer questions about their tenure. A federal judge had given Mr. Bolton’s attorney Charles J. Cooper permission to begin dismissing these officers, but a settlement would end that lawsuit.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

Legal action against Mr Bolton began last year after Mr Trump publicly and privately pressured White House staff and Justice Department officials to use their powers to prevent Mr Bolton from reading his book about his time at the White House by Mr. Trump. “The Room It Happened In.” In June 2020, the Justice Department sued Mr. Bolton for an attempt to stop the publication of the memoirs and recover the profits made from them; a judge ruled that the department could continue to pursue profits but could not stop their publication.

Last September, it was revealed that the Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation to investigate whether Mr Bolton had unlawfully disclosed secret information in the book – an investigation that began after the Trump administration did not stop publication. As part of the investigation, the department issued a grand jury subpoena to the book’s editor, Simon & Schuster, for communications records of the memoir.

Drawing on detailed accounts of Mr. Bolton’s tenure as national security advisor, the book portrayed Mr. Trump as a corrupt leader who puts his personal and financial interests over the country’s national security.

Released in June, it became an instant best-seller and fed an increasingly damaging narrative about Mr Trump during his re-election campaign. The Justice Department continued its lawsuit to seize Mr. Bolton’s profits and the criminal investigation, including the unusual move of Simon & Schuster’s subpoena.

The Biden Justice Department inherited the matter and had spent the past few weeks negotiating the terms of the settlement with Mr Bolton’s legal team, according to one person who was briefed on the matter.

During the transition to president, Biden advisors investigated a number of difficult questions related to Mr. Trump and the way the Justice Department under Attorney General William P. Barr worked that they would likely face after taking office.

From an examination of the publicly available materials on Mr Bolton’s case, the Biden transition advisors concluded that the department had acted in a highly political manner. The ministry, the advisors argued, could allow the book-win lawsuit, but it has the potential to expose unsavory behavior by Trump’s White House and Justice Department. The transition advisors found it inappropriate to simply embarrass an unsubstantiated case in order to embarrass the Trump administration, and officials recommended that the department drop it.

The White House’s efforts to meddle in Mr Bolton’s book came to light in September when a career administration official accused Trump advisers of improperly intervening to prevent Mr Bolton’s account of his time as national security advisor by Mr. Trump becomes public.

The officer, a classified book screening specialist named Ellen Knight, said the aides made false claims that Mr. Bolton had leaked classified information and suggested that if she refused, they would take revenge on her. to participate.

She also said an adviser to Mr. Trump “instructed her to withhold any response temporarily” to a request from Mr. Bolton to review a chapter on the president’s dealings with Ukraine to prevent it from being opposed during the first impeachment trial Mr Trump will be released The focus was on allegations that he had abused his powers in foreign policy with the Kiev government.

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Trump Pressed Rosen to Wield Justice Dept. to Again 2020 Election Claims

Trump Pressed Rosen to Wield Justice Dept. to Back 2020 Election Claims

Mr. Rosen made clear to his top deputy in one message that he would have nothing to do with the Italy conspiracy theory, arrange a meeting between the F.B.I. and one of the proponents of the conspiracy, Brad Johnson, or speak about it with Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer.

“I learned that Johnson is working with Rudy Giuliani, who regarded my comments as an ‘insult,’” Mr. Rosen wrote in the email. “Asked if I would reconsider, I flatly refused, said I would not be giving any special treatment to Giuliani or any of his ‘witnesses’, and reaffirmed yet again that I will not talk to Giuliani about any of this.”

Mr. Rosen declined to comment. A spokesman for Mr. Trump could not immediately be reached for comment.

The documents “show that President Trump tried to corrupt our nation’s chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost,” said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat who is the chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee.

Ms. Maloney, whose committee is looking into the events leading up the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump crowd protesting the election results, including Mr. Trump’s pressure on the Justice Department, said she has asked former Trump administration officials to sit for interviews, including Mr. Meadows, Mr. Clark and others. The House Oversight Committee requested the documents in May as part of the inquiry, and the Justice Department complied.

The draft brief that Mr. Trump wanted the Justice Department to file before the Supreme Court mirrored a lawsuit that Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas had filed to the court, alleging that a handful of battleground states had used the pandemic to make unconstitutional changes to their election laws that affected the election outcome. The states argued in response that Texas lacked standing to file the suit, and the Supreme Court rejected the case.

The version of the lawsuit that Mr. Trump wanted the Justice Department to file made similar claims, saying that officials in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania had used the pandemic to unconstitutionally revise or violate their own election laws and weaken election security.

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Garland Particulars Justice Dept. Plan to Shield Voting Rights

Garland Details Justice Dept. Plan to Protect Voting Rights

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland on Friday tabled a detailed plan to protect voting rights, announcing that the Department of Justice would redouble its enforcement staff on the matter, review and act on new laws aimed at restricting voter access and take action take action if it detects a violation of federal law.

Mr. Garland announced his plan as Republican-led state lawmakers push for new restrictive electoral laws and amid dwindling opportunities for comprehensive state voter protection laws introduced by the Democrats.

“To meet the challenge of the current moment, we must devote the Justice Department’s resources to a critical part of its original mission: enforcing federal laws protecting the right to vote for all eligible voters,” Garland said in an address to the department.

The Justice Department will also review current laws and practices to see if they discriminate against non-white voters, he said. It was not clear how many people were working to enforce voting rights and what the total would be after the department added staff.

At least 22 new laws making voting harder have been passed in more than a dozen states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive public policy institute that is part of the New York University School of Law.

Mr Garland also said the department oversees the use of unorthodox by-election checks that could undermine confidence in the country’s ability to hold free and fair elections, adding that some jurisdictions have used disinformation to justify such checks.

“Much of the reasoning given in support of these by-election reviews and electoral restrictions was based on allegations of material fraud in the 2020 elections that have been refuted by law enforcement and intelligence agencies, both this and the previous government, as well as any court – federal and state – which it took into account, ”Garland said.

The ministry’s civil rights division has sent a letter expressing concerns that any of these reviews may have violated the civil rights law, Garland said, in part because it could violate a provision of the law that prohibits voter intimidation . He didn’t state which state, but in Arizona, a week-long exam is widely viewed as a partisan exercise to cultivate complaints about Donald J. Trump’s electoral defeat.

The Department of Justice will publish guidelines explaining the civil and criminal law provisions that apply to by-election reviews, guidelines on early voting and voting by post, and will work with other agencies to combat disinformation.

Democrats have sued over some new electoral laws, but this lawsuit could take years to resolve and may have little power to prevent those laws from affecting the upcoming elections.

Two major federal election laws – the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act – are also the subject of heated debates in Congress.

Earlier this week, West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin III said he would speak out against the For the People Act, which dashed hopes among progressives that the sweeping anti-voter suppression bill would become law.

Mr. Garland has said protecting the right to vote is one of his top priorities as the attorney general, and his top lieutenants include high profile proxy attorneys like Vanita Gupta, the No. 3 ministry, and Kristen Clarke, the civil rights director.

Ms. Clarke’s long career as a vocal protection attorney – including with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the New York Attorney General, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law – will make her a key player in the Justice Department’s work to improve access to To receive voting.

That work is made more difficult, however, by a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that struck down portions of the electoral law that forced states with a legacy of racial discrimination to obtain the approval of the Department of Justice before they could change their electoral laws.

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Justice Dept. Goals to Preserve Secret A part of Barr-Period Memo on Trump

Justice Dept. Aims to Keep Secret Part of Barr-Era Memo on Trump

The Biden administration has decided to fight to keep most of a Justice Department memo from the Trump era related to the controversial 2019 statement by former Attorney General William P. Barr in which President Donald J. Trump is exempted from illegal obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation.

Late on Monday, the Justice Department appealed part of a district court ruling ordering the entire memo to be published. At the same time, it was written that Mr. Barr sent a letter to Congress claiming that the evidence in the then-secret report by Special Envoy Robert S. Mueller III was insufficient to charge Mr. Trump with a crime.

The Justice Department published the first page and a half of the nine-page memo. While Mr Miller had refused to pass judgment on what the evidence brought together because the department’s policy was not to indict a seated president, the memo said Mr Barr was entitled to make a decision to the public Shape understanding of the report.

The Mueller report itself, which Mr. Barr was allowed to publish weeks after his letter to Congress, had created the impression that the fruits of Mr. Mueller’s investigation had cleared Mr. Trump of the obstruction. It contained several actions by Mr Trump that many legal specialists said were clearly sufficient to ask a grand jury to charge him with obstruction of justice.

These actions included attempting to harass his White House attorney Donald F. McGahn II to forge a record to cover up a previous attempt by Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Miller and a possible pardon for Mr. To impose Trump’s former election chairman. Paul Manafort to encourage him not to work with investigators.

The Justice Department’s new filing also apologized and defended the Barr-era court files, which Judge Amy Berman Jackson had described as “insincere.” They could have been written more clearly, but they were still correct.

“The government acknowledges that its pleadings could have been clearer and deeply regrets the confusion it has caused,” the Justice Department said. “But the government attorney and registrants had no intention of misleading the court, and the government respectfully submits” that missteps still did not warrant the publication of the entire memo.

Mr Barr’s claim – made weeks before the Mueller publication was released – that the evidence gathered showed that Mr Trump did not commit a criminal offense of disability has been widely criticized as deeply misleading.

Among other things, a government monitoring group, CREW, filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act in the US District Court in Washington to request disclosure of an internal memo on the matter.

Earlier this month, Judge Jackson issued a damning ruling on the case alleging that the Barr-era Justice Department was “insincere” to that court about the nature of the memo on court records, arguing that it could be lawfully kept secret under an exception preliminary considerations. She wrote that she made the discovery after insisting that she read it herself.

While the Barr-era Justice Department advised her that the memo concerned considerations about whether Mr. Trump should be charged with disability, the memo itself indicated that Mr. Barr had already decided not to, and the memo dealt with instead Strategy and arguments that could be applied to discard the idea. She ordered the entire document released.

The Biden-era Justice Department had until Monday to respond. In its filing, she acknowledged that her previous filings “could have been clearer and deeply regrets the confusion it has caused”. However, it also insisted that its “statements and pleadings were correct and submitted in good faith”.

The decision that Mr Barr actually made was, according to the department, about whether to decide whether the evidence would be enough to indict Mr Trump one day – and not whether he should be indicted at that moment, as the longstanding legal policy of the The sitting department should consider sitting presidents temporarily protected from prosecution during their tenure.

And it said the legal analysis in the second part of the memo – the part about which secrecy is appealing – was in fact decided beforehand, although the memo was finalized after Mr Barr made his decision because it commemorates legal advice which the department’s attorneys had previously given to the attorney general.

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Justice Dept. Seizes Washington Publish’s Telephone Data

Justice Dept. Seizes Washington Post’s Phone Records

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department under President Donald J. Trump has secretly obtained the phone records for three Washington Post reporters from the early months of the Trump administration, the newspaper said on Friday.

Prosecutors searched for records of reporters’ work, home and cell phone numbers from April to July 2017 to find out who had spoken to them.

“We are deeply concerned about this use of governance to gain access to journalists’ communications,” said Cameron Barr, the Post’s acting editor-in-chief, in a statement. “The Justice Department should immediately clarify its reasons for interfering with the activities of reporters doing their job, an activity protected by the first amendment.”

The department’s decision to seek a court order for the records made in 2020 would have required the approval of Attorney General William P. Barr, a department official said.

The Justice Department, under the Trump administration, had also indicted a former Senate assistant over his contacts with three reporters in a case in which prosecutors secretly confiscated years’ worth of phone and email records from a New York Times reporter. This case signaled a continuation of the aggressive pursuit of leaks under the Obama administration.

Marc Raimondi, a Justice Department spokesman, said on Friday in a statement regarding the seized postal records: “Although the department is rare, it follows the procedures set out in its media policy guidelines when looking for legal procedures to and not to telephone charges Email records of content received from media members as part of a criminal investigation into unauthorized disclosure of classified information. “

He added, “The targets of these investigations are not those who receive the news media, but rather those with access to the national defense information they made available to the media and therefore did not protect them as required by law.”

According to its guidelines, the Justice Department should exhaust other investigative steps before seeking permission to receive telephone recordings or e-mails from journalists from telecommunications companies. In addition, the division must “strike the right balance between a number of important interests”, it says in its guidelines, such as “Maintaining the essential role of the free press in promoting government accountability and an open society”.

Leak cases, as known in the Justice Department, are notoriously difficult to track and require FBI agents to devote significant time to cases that rarely lead to charges.

It wasn’t clear what caused the Justice Department to seize the Post’s records, but in July 2017 the newspaper published an article about Sergey I. Kislyak, the then Russian Ambassador to the United States, and Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General at the time the publication of the article.

The Post reported that the two men discussed the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election when Mr. Sessions was a Republican Senator from Alabama and a prominent supporter of Mr. Trump. The article referred to U.S. surveillance sections, which are highly ranked and among the government’s best kept secrets.

In addition to the phone records of the Post reporters – Ellen Nakashima, Greg Miller and Adam Entous who now work at The New Yorker – prosecutors have also received a court order to obtain metadata for the reporters’ email accounts, the company said Newspaper with.

The New York Times also reported in June 2017 that surveillance wiretaps suggested Mr Kislyak was discussing a private meeting with Mr Sessions at a Trump campaign event at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. The Times has received no indication that their reporters’ records have been confiscated.

The media leaks enraged Mr Trump, who repeatedly railed against them, particularly those revealing details of the government’s efforts to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and whether any of his campaign aides had conspired with Russia.

In August 2017, as Attorney General, Mr. Sessions condemned the “dramatic increase in the number of unauthorized disclosures of classified national security information in recent months”.

Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department also aggressively prosecuted officials who provided sensitive information to reporters. In 2013, prosecutors obtained the phone recordings from reporters and editors from The Associated Press. In this case, law enforcement officers obtained the records for more than 20 phone lines from their offices and journalists, including their home and cell phone numbers.

In addition, the Justice Department confiscated the phone records of James Rosen, then a Fox News reporter, after one of his articles contained details of a secret United States report on North Korea. In an affidavit, Mr. Rosen was described as “at least as a helper, advocate and / or co-conspirator”.

The Justice Department’s decision to search the phone records was widely condemned in the news media.

In 2013, then Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. issued new guidelines that severely restricted the circumstances in which journalists’ records could be accessed, but did not prevent prosecutors from keeping phone records and emails for national security reasons to search.

In an email from July 2017, Sarah Isgur Flores, then a top Justice Department spokeswoman, tried to cast doubt that a meeting between Mr Kislyak and Mr Sessions had even taken place. She described the section as “exposed” and challenged its credibility when defending Mr. Sessions on the news media.

Ms. Isgur described the coverage as “serious leaks for our national security”. The email was received from reporter Jason Leopold of BuzzFeed News under the Freedom of Information Act.

Last year the Trump administration released confidential transcripts from Mr. Kislyak speaking with Mr. Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn. The documents also revealed extremely delicate capabilities of the FBI, showing that the office was able to monitor the phone line at the Russian Embassy in Washington even before a call from Mr. Kislyak connected to Mr. Flynn’s voicemail.

In his extensive investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, the special adviser, “found no evidence that Kislyak spoke or had the opportunity to speak to Trump or Sessions after the speech,” his office’s 2019 report said.

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Politics

Justice Dept. Requested to Study Whether or not Swiss Financial institution Stored Serving to Tax Dodgers

Justice Dept. Asked to Examine Whether Swiss Bank Kept Helping Tax Dodgers

WASHINGTON – The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday asked Attorney General Merrick B. Garland for information on whether Credit Suisse continues to help rich Americans defraud the IRS, even after signing a settlement agreement with the Justice Department promising to to finish the practice.

It’s about a retired professor named Dan Horsky, who Credit Suisse helped avoid tax payments on assets of $ 200 million. In the summer of 2014, a whistleblower drew the attention of the federal prosecutor’s office to Mr. Horsky’s account and clearly violated the provisions of the settlement agreement that Credit Suisse had agreed a few weeks earlier.

However, the Justice Department under the Obama and Trump administrations never punished Credit Suisse for violating the agreement, despite the whistleblower’s information leading to Mr Horsky pleading guilty of tax evasion in 2016.

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, asked Mr. Garland for more information about the Horsky account and anything else that could reveal whether Credit Suisse executives have made false statements to Congress, the Department of Justice, and the courts when it said it vowed to work with the US government’s efforts to force the richest Americans to pay their taxes.

The review of Credit Suisse’s private wealth management practices comes at a sensitive time for the bank. Significant losses were reported last week on loans to a collapsed investment firm and the Swiss financial regulator said it was investigating the bank’s risk management practices. Regulators are also investigating a spying scandal and sales of billions of dollars worth of investments reminiscent of the bad subprime mortgage bonds that led to the 2008 global financial crisis.

“Public reports and documents from the federal court raise important questions as to whether Credit Suisse has complied with its declaration of consent in full,” wrote Wyden in a letter to Garland.

“The plea agreement expressly depends on Credit Suisse fulfilling all essential obligations,” added Wyden. it “stipulates that the agreement not to initiate further prosecution will be void if Credit Suisse fails to fully comply with its obligations.”

Should prosecutors decide that Credit Suisse is in breach of its agreement with the Justice Department, the bank could face legal liability and higher fines.

Mr. Wyden requested the Justice Department to report the Horsky case by May 11th.

A spokesman said the Justice Department received the letter but had no immediate comment. A Credit Suisse spokeswoman said the company “has been and will continue to have fully cooperated with the US authorities since the 2014 settlement.”

Wyden also asked the department to help determine whether Credit Suisse executives had made false statements to the Senate in February 2014 when they testified whether the bank had stopped helping wealthy Americans evade taxes.

Brady Dougan, then managing director of Credit Suisse, told the senators that the bank had strived to “meet 100 percent of the US taxpayer’s requirements,” wrote Wyden. At the same hearing, the bank’s general counsel, Romeo Cerutti, testified that Credit Suisse is “really looking into whether someone is a US person” in an attempt to eradicate Americans who were hiding their assets from the IRS

For nearly 15 years, Republicans and Democrats have been participating in a well-known campaign to weed out tax evaders with Swiss bank accounts, with a focus on UBS and Credit Suisse, both of which are headquartered in Zurich.

When Credit Suisse executives testified in 2014, they were in the midst of negotiations with the Justice Department about an agreement on the bank’s treatment of US tax dodgers.

The two sides signed the deal in May 2014, in which Credit Suisse pleaded guilty to assisting some American clients with tax evasion and fined a total of $ 2.6 billion. But even higher fines were avoided because federal prosecutors swore they had abandoned the practice of “closing down all accounts of recalcitrant account holders” and helping the US with other criminal investigations.

The confession of guilt and the heavy fine were rare in 2014, and it was the first time in more than 20 years that a lender of his size had admitted wrongdoing in an American court.

But a whistleblower surfaced in July of that year telling Justice Department tax officials and federal attorneys who worked on the case about an account owned by Mr. Horsky, a retired economics professor who lived in Rochester. NY and amassed much of his fortune by investing in start-ups in the 1990s.

In September 2014, when Credit Suisse appeared in court to plead guilty, the judge asked both the bank and prosecutors if they had any information that would affect the settlement agreement. Both sides said no.

But the whistleblower spike let prosecutors find out that with the help of Credit Suisse bankers using offshore shell companies, Mr. Horsky had hidden a fortune of $ 200 million, court documents show. The deal lasted months after the bank signed its pleading agreement.

As part of the scheme to hide Mr. Horsky’s assets, it was placed by bankers in the name of a relative of Mr. Horsky who lived abroad. When an account of this size changes hands, it is subject to advanced due diligence, including notifying bank managers of the change.

Mr Wyden also sent a letter to Credit Suisse Tuesday asking for information on when the Justice Department told Credit Suisse about the Horsky account. He asked if the bank had informed the government of the account before reporting the whistleblower, and if not, whether it was due to poor internal controls or a deliberate decision not to report the existence of these accounts to US government agencies. ”

It is unclear why the Justice Department failed to inform the court of the whistleblower claim and change the terms of its settlement. The department would have had the authority to review the Credit Suisse case for possible violations and to pursue the bank.

Jack Ewing contributed to the coverage.