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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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Supreme Court docket Justice Clarence Thomas says federal marijuana legal guidelines could also be outdated

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says federal marijuana laws may be outdated

Clarence Thomas, Assistant Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, listens during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, the United States, on Monday, October 26, 2020.

Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said Monday that federal laws against the sale and cultivation of marijuana are inconsistent, making a national ban unnecessary.

“A ban on the interstate use or cultivation of marijuana may no longer be necessary or appropriate to support the federal government’s piecemeal approach,” wrote Thomas, one of the court’s most conservative judges, in a statement.

The court’s decision not to hear a new case related to tax deductions alleged by a medical marijuana dispensary in Colorado prompted Thomas to issue a statement relating more broadly to federal marijuana laws.

Thomas stated that a 2005 judgment in the Gonzales v. Raich, which stated that the federal government could enforce the ban on marijuana possession, may be out of date.

“Federal policy over the past 16 years has severely undermined its rationale,” added Thomas. “The federal government’s current approach is a half-in, half-out regime that both tolerates and prohibits the local use of marijuana.”

Thomas referred to several guidelines that contradict the 2005 ruling. These include Justice Department memoranda from 2009 and 2013 stating that the government would not interfere with state marijuana legalization programs or prosecute individuals for marijuana activities if it was in accordance with state law.

He added that since 2015, Congress has repeatedly banned the Justice Department from using federal funds to meddle in the implementation of state medical marijuana laws.

“Given all these developments, one can understand why a normal person might think that the federal government has withdrawn from its once absolute ban on marijuana,” he wrote.

With 36 states allowing medical marijuana use and 18 recreational use, Thomas claimed marijuana companies do not experience “equal treatment” under the law.

The problem is a provision in tax law that prohibits companies that deal in marijuana and other controlled substances from deducting their business expenses. The IRS is cracking down on marijuana companies like the Colorado medical marijuana dispenser by conducting investigations into their tax deductions.

“Under this rule, a company that is still in the red after paying its workers and leaving the lights on could still owe a sizable federal income tax,” wrote Thomas.

The judiciary also found a consequence of the federal marijuana ban, stating that most marijuana companies operate entirely in cash due to restrictions preventing state financial institutions from providing banking services to these companies. This makes these companies more vulnerable to break-ins and robberies, according to Thomas.

All of these questions regarding federal marijuana laws threaten, Thomas argues, the principles of federalism.

“If the government is now satisfied with allowing states to ‘act as laboratories, then it may no longer have authority to enter the[t]The central police powers of the states. . . Define criminal law and protect the health, safety and wellbeing of its citizens, “said Thomas.

Legal experts like Joseph Bondy, a cannabis law expert on the board of directors of the National Organization for the Reform of Marihuana Laws, agreed with the judiciary’s testimony, predicting that arguments about the injustice of federal marijuana laws would continue. Law & Crime reported on Monday.

While Bondy noted that Thomas’ testimony may not have actual legal implications, he told Law & Crime that it was still “sending out a message that may temper the views of some people in Congress,” including “one of our Republican senators.” “

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Biden Justice Division suing Georgia over new voting restrictions

Biden Justice Department suing Georgia over new voting restrictions

The Justice Department is suing Georgia, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Friday that a recently passed electoral law violates the protection of the voting rights law for minority voters.

“Wherever we see federal law violations, we will act,” Garland said at a press conference.

Garland said Georgia’s electoral reform law was “enacted with the aim of denying or restricting black Georgians the right to vote on the basis of race or color.”

He called the Justice Department’s new lawsuit “the first of many steps we are taking to ensure that all eligible voters can cast a vote,” that all legitimate votes are counted and that every voter has access to accurate information.

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Garland quit the federal lawsuit about three months after Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp signed the GOP-controlled state legislature passed the electoral revision bill.

The law has reportedly enacted a range of restrictive and potentially confusing measures that critics claim will affect voter turnout, especially in democratic and minority urban and suburban counties.

The changes sparked a national outcry among Democrats and constituencies. Large corporations and organizations such as Coca-Cola and the NCAA also protested the Peach State’s actions.

Kemp later disrupted the DOJ’s lawsuit on Friday, accusing Democrats, including President Joe Biden and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, of “armed” the agency.

“This lawsuit is born out of the lies and misinformation that the Biden government urged against Georgia’s electoral integrity law from the outset,” Kemp said in a statement.

“Joe Biden, Stacey Abrams and their allies tried to force an unconstitutional takeover of power by Congress – and failed to overwhelm our democracy.”

The governor insisted that the electoral law he signed should ensure that “it is easy to vote in Georgia and difficult to cheat”.

Kemp’s state isn’t the only one putting voting restrictions in place. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a similar bill in May, while other state parliaments across the country are considering legislation.

In Texas, the Democrats recently thwarted the passage of a restrictive voting law. Republican Governor Greg Abbott has vowed to revive it.

Garland promised Friday that the Biden government’s Justice Department would “look into new laws aimed at restricting voter access”.

Garland said it was cause for celebration that Georgia had a record turnout in the 2020 election. But SB 202, signed in March, contains numerous provisions that “make it difficult for people to vote,” he said.

The historically republican state fell apart for Biden over former President Donald Trump, an angry victory that Trump still rejects.

Trump’s conspiracy theories that widespread fraud were costing him re-election helped fuel restrictive voting laws across the country.

As part of the DOJ’s efforts to protect and expand access to voting, Garland also urged Congress to restore a federal provision that the Supreme Court placed in the landmark Shelby County v. Holder from 2013 defused.

That measure, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, required that certain jurisdictions’ proposed changes to their electoral rules could not be enforced until they demonstrated to federal authorities that those changes did not deny or restrict voting rights based on race, color, or minority status.

“If Georgia had still been covered by Section 5, SB 202 would likely never have taken effect,” Garland said. “We urge Congress to restore this invaluable tool.”

Garland also said his division’s civil rights division will publish new guidance to ensure post-election audits – several of which are controversial examples running in key states – comply with federal law.

The department is also working on guidelines for early voting and mail-in voting, as well as guidelines clarifying protections for districts when redesigning their maps, Garland said.

The attorney general also noted a “dramatic increase in threats and violent threats” against election officials at all levels, “from senior administrators to volunteer electoral workers”.

Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco will issue an order directing federal prosecutors to prioritize investigations into these threats, Garland said.

The Democratic leaders and the Biden government have pushed for the passage of a comprehensive bill to revise the electoral rules. They argue that legislation known as the “For The People Act” provides a variety of safeguards to protect voters from repression and other attacks on the right to vote.

Republicans have criticized the “radical” law as a naked seizure of power that would overturn all elections in favor of the Democrats.

The Republicans in the Senate blocked the submission of the bill in their chamber on Tuesday.

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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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U.Okay. Justice System Has Failed Rape Victims, Authorities Says

U.K. Justice System Has Failed Rape Victims, Government Says

LONDON — Thousands of rape and sexual assault victims have been failed by the criminal justice system, according to a British government review released Friday that cited a dramatic fall in convictions in England and Wales in recent years, prompting an apology from government ministers.

In an interview with the BBC, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland said that the findings of the review revealed “systemic failings” to deal with complaints made by victims “at all stages of the criminal justice process.”

He added: “The first thing I think I need to say is sorry, it’s not good enough. We’ve got to do a lot better.”

The review, which only covered cases with adult victims but acknowledged that children and young people were also subject to sexual assaults, was commissioned in March 2019 by the Conservative government. The review was intended to address the decline in rape prosecutions, which the Ministry of Justice said fell 59 percent, and convictions, which have dropped by 47 percent, since 2015-2016.

In that period, reported rapes of adults jumped to 43,187 from 24,093, according to Office for National Statistics numbers cited in the report.

But the government estimates that fewer than 20 percent of rape cases are actually reported to the police, and that the number of victims is about 128,000 a year. Of reported cases, which the statistics office said involved women in 84 percent of cases, just 1.6 percent resulted in a person being charged, according to the Home Office.

The report came as Britain grapples with a national reckoning over male violence against women that erupted in March after a police officer was arrested in the killing of a young woman, Sarah Everard. The officer, Wayne Couzens, 48, pleaded guilty to the rape and kidnapping of Ms. Everard this month.

In the report released Friday, Mr. Buckland, Home Secretary Priti Patel and Attorney General Michael Ellis said they were “deeply ashamed” of the decline in the number of prosecutions for rape cases, and the fact that one in two victims withdrew from rape investigations.

The review also found that the reasons for the decline in cases reaching court are “complex and wide-ranging,” including an “increase in personal digital data being requested, delays in investigative processes, strained relationships between different parts of the criminal justice system, a lack of specialist resources and inconsistent support to victims.”

Emily Hunt, an independent adviser to the review who was herself a victim of rape, said in the report that the low prosecution rate could not be attributed to possible false claims, which government data suggests accounts for up to 3 percent of rape allegations.

Katie Russell, the national spokeswoman for Rape Crisis, a charity that is part of a coalition of women’s groups called End Violence Against Women, welcomed the government’s admission of its own “catastrophic failures.”

However, she said, the drop in prosecutions could not be accounted for by cuts in funding and resources alone, which Mr. Buckland alluded to in his interview with the BBC.

“It’s clear there are wider cultural issues and issues of the actual functioning of the criminal justice system, in relation to rape and sexual offenses,” said Ms. Russell.

The review acknowledged that victims of rape have been treated “poorly.” In some instances, as they were struggling to deal with the psychological toll of reporting their rapes, they were informed that their cases would not be taken any further, sometimes without explanation.

Bonny Turner, a sexual assault activist who has gone public about her experience with an investigation of her 2016 rape allegations, which was dropped by prosecutors because of insufficient evidence, said the report’s findings came as little comfort.

The report did not make any reference to how the government “is going to redress the situation with those of us who have already been failed,” she said. “It’s as if they feel as though they think they can just get away with an apology but no action to back that up.”

The government said in the review that it would push for a “cultural change” in the police and among prosecutors to return the number of rape cases reaching court to “pre-2016 levels.”

The government added that sexual assault investigations would focus on the behavior patterns of accused attackers, and try to avoid undermining the credibility of victims — a failure that was highlighted in the report.

Citing rape victims who felt traumatized by having their phones taken away and examined during investigations, the review said victims would no longer be left without their devices for more than 24 hours.

Vulnerable victims will also be allowed to record video evidence in advance instead of being forced to endure the trauma of giving public testimony during trials.

Vera Baird, the victims’ commissioner for England and Wales — an independent adviser to the government — welcomed the ministers’ apologies over what she described as an “abysmal record.”

She said the government had taken too long to confront “what victims have been saying for years,” adding that the review underscored numerous missed opportunities. “Despite its clear limitations, we have to seize this moment if we are to escape this crisis in our justice system. I truly hope this review will drive us forwards. Indeed, it can’t get much worse.”

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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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Justice Division to step up enforcement of voting rights protections

Justice Department to step up enforcement of voting rights protections

Attorney General Merrick Garland said Friday that the Justice Department will swiftly increase its resources dedicated to enforcing voting rights protections, citing a 2013 decision by the Supreme Court as well as bills being pushed by conservatives across the country that aim to tighten election procedures.

In a speech delivered at the department’s headquarters, Garland said that in the next 30 days he will double the civil rights division’s staff dedicated to protecting the right to vote.

The department, he said, had already begun scrutinizing new laws that he said “seek to curb voter access,” as well as policies and measures that are already on the books.

In particular, Garland said the department was reviewing recent studies that showed that, in some jurisdictions, nonwhite people wait in line much longer than white people to vote.

“To meet the challenge of the current moment, we must rededicate the resources of the Department of Justice to a critical part of its original mission: Enforcing federal law to protect the franchise for all voters,” Garland said.

Garland, a former federal judge, said the department’s new steps were inspired by “a dramatic rise in legislative efforts that will make it harder for citizens to cast a vote that counts.”

“So far this year, at least 14 states have passed new laws that make it harder to vote, and some jurisdictions, based on disinformation, have utilized abnormal post-election audit methodologies that may put the integrity of the voting process at risk and undermine public confidence in our democracy,” Garland said.

The attorney general alluded to a 2020 election recount underway in Arizona’s Maricopa County supported by former President Donald Trump. The Justice Department wrote in a letter last month that the review by the state’s Republican Senate may violate federal law.

“Many of the justifications proffered in support of these post-election audits and restrictions on voting have relied on assertions of material vote fraud in the 2020 election that have been refuted by law enforcement and intelligence agencies of both this administration and the previous one, as well as by every court, federal and state, that has considered them,” Garland said.

He added, “Moreover, many of the changes are not even calibrated to address the kinds of voter fraud that are alleged as their justification.”

Garland has been at pains to emphasize the independence of his Justice Department from President Joe Biden, a Democrat, even as he distances the federal agency from its controversial record under Trump, who at times pushed its lawyers to defend his personal interests. Trump has falsely alleged that his loss in the 2020 election was fraudulent.

In addition to the wave of conservative voting bills in states such as Texas, Georgia and Arizona, Garland also cited a Supreme Court decision from 2013 known as Shelby County v. Holder.

The decision effectively struck down the pre-clearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act, which forced certain jurisdictions with records of discrimination to have election law changes approved by the Justice Department.

Garland recounted that in 1961, then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy called into his office the assistant attorney general for civil rights, Burke Marshall, and Marshall’s first assistant, John Doar.

Before the pre-clearance requirement was signed into law in 1965, Garland said, “the only way to guarantee the right of Black Americans to vote was to bring individual actions in each county and parish that discriminated against them.”

“Kennedy told his assistants that was what he wanted to do,” Garland said. “‘Well, General,’ Burke Marshall replied, ‘if you want that, you’ve got to have a lot more lawyers.'”

“Well, today, we are again without a pre-clearance provision,” Garland said. “So again, the civil rights division is going to need more lawyers.”

In addition to beefing up the staff of the civil rights division, Garland said the Justice Department will publish guidance on post-election audits and on early voting and voting by mail. He said the department will also publish new guidance ahead of the decennial redistricting cycle.

“We will publish new guidance to make clear the voting protections that apply to all jurisdictions as they redraw their new legislative maps,” Garland said.

Garland added that the department, which includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation, will also pursue criminal charges against those who violate federal laws in spreading election disinformation in efforts to suppress the vote.

“We have not been blind to the dramatic increase in menacing and violent threats against all manner of state and local election workers,” Garland said. “Such threats undermine our electoral process and violate a myriad of federal laws.”

The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon in a case over the Voting Rights Act that could have implications for legal challenges against the new voting restrictions. The court has a 6-3 majority of justices appointed by Republicans.

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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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Politics

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.