https://thehill.com/regulation/cour...urce=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf DOJ tells Supreme Court that subpoenas for Trump's finances are unconstitutional The Department of Justice is arguing in filings to the Supreme Court that the multiple subpoenas for President Trump's financial records are unconstitutional. The solicitor general's office is siding with the president in his appeal of lower court rulings upholding subpoenas issued by House committees and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. The Justice Department argued that the Constitution prohibits local law enforcement from investigating the president and that Congress must overcome high hurdles when seeking information from him. "These cases involve the first attempts by congressional committees to demand the personal records of a sitting President of the United States," the Justice Department said in one of the filings, submitted Tuesday. "That use of their limited and implied investigatory powers poses a serious risk of harassing the President and distracting him from his constitutional duties." The administration made a similar argument against the Manhattan DA's subpoena in a filing submitted Monday. "State grand-jury subpoenas for a sitting President’s personal records pose serious risks to the independent functioning of the Office of the President," the department wrote. "State prosecutors could use such subpoenas to harass the President in retaliation for the President’s official policies. Such subpoenas could also subject the President to significant burdens, threatening to divert the President’s time and energy from his singularly important public duties." In April of last year, the House Oversight and Reform Committee issued a subpoena for the president's personal financial records to his accounting firm, Mazars USA, and the House Intelligence and House Financial Services committees issued wide-ranging subpoenas for personal and business records to Deutsche Bank and Capital One. The committees cited investigations into Russian interference in U.S. elections and money laundering. That same month, Cyrus Vance, the Manhattan district attorney, issued a subpoena to Mazars for the tax returns and other financial records. The D.C. and 2nd Circuit courts of appeals ruled last year that Trump's accounting firm and bank would have to comply with the subpoenas. Trump's personal legal team appealed the rulings, arguing that the president has broad immunity to subpoenas and even law enforcement investigation. In the cases over the House subpoenas, the Justice Department argued that the committees failed to identify legitimate legislative needs to justify the demands for the highly personal information. "Together, those documents encompass a constellation of transactions that would permit the committees to reconstruct in detail the President’s financial history with those institutions—including fund transfers, deposits, withdrawals, investments, loans, mortgages, and lines of credits," the Justice Department wrote. "To be sure, congressional committees ordinarily have considerable latitude about which private transactions and events to examine," the department's filing added. "But committees investigating far-reaching public problems, such as money laundering, do not properly exercise that discretion by making the President the primary target of their inquiries." Both cases will be argued before the Supreme Court on March 31.
U.S. Constitution provides that "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." -- Its a good argument. Does an elected official lose their 4th amendment right to privacy?
Maybe this can be your next scam and sham. We know that you and your ilk are running low. And the voters really care a lot about this. No. Really. Just like the Ukraine.
if it weren't for double standards, cons would have no standards at all: https://www.nationalreview.com/news...enate-republicans-for-hunter-biden-documents/ Treasury Department Turns Over Hunter Biden Financial Docs to Senate Republicans The Treasury Department has granted a request from Senate Republicans for financial documents related to Hunter Biden’s relationship with a Ukrainian gas company, according to Senator Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, who criticized the move. Senator Chuck Grassley, chair of the Finance Committee, and Senator Ron Johnson, chair of Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, obtained the sensitive financial records as part of their continuing investigation into former vice president Joe Biden’s son’s possible conflicts of interest involving his lucrative position on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings. “Applying a blatant double standard, Trump administration agencies like the Treasury Department are rapidly complying with Senate Republican requests — no subpoenas necessary — and producing ‘evidence’ of questionable origin,” said a spokeswoman for Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee. “The administration told House Democrats to go pound sand when their oversight authority was mandatory while voluntarily cooperating with the Senate Republicans’ sideshow at lightning speed.” The Republican committee chairmen, along with Senator Lindsey Graham, chair of the Judiciary Committee, are moving forward with their probe even after President Trump was acquitted by the Senate Wednesday, ending his impeachment trial. They have requested records on Hunter Biden as well from the State Department, the Justice Department, the FBI, the National Archives and the Secret Service. “It’s unfortunate that Democrats whom we’ve kept in the loop on our investigations would recklessly seek to interfere with legitimate government oversight,” a spokesman for Grassley said. Hunter Biden’s position on the board of the Ukrainian company became a focal point of the impeachment inquiry. House Democrats launched a formal impeachment probe after Trump appeared to suggest in a July phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky that he wanted Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden over allegations that the elder Biden leveraged his position as vice president to benefit his son. As vice president, Biden was in charge of addressing corruption in Ukraine at the time. In the meantime, the White House temporarily froze $391 million in U.S. military aid to Ukraine intended to help the country ward off Russian aggression, prompting suspicion of a quid pro quo scheme in which Trump is accused of making the aid contingent on the Ukrainian president’s promise that Biden’s conduct would be investigated.
https://thehill.com/homenews/admini...urce=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf DOJ reveals 24 redacted emails related to Trump's involvement in Ukraine aid freeze The Department of Justice reportedly said in a court filing just hours after the Senate voted against subpoenaing additional witnesses and documents in President Trump's impeachment trial that it has two dozen emails related to his involvement in the halt of U.S. military aid to Ukraine. An Office of Management and Budget (OMB) lawyer said in the filing that the emails are protected by “presidential privilege,” The Washington Post reported. “Specifically, the documents in this category are emails that reflect communications by either the President, the Vice President, or the President’s immediate advisors regarding Presidential decision-making about the scope, duration, and purpose of the hold on military assistance to Ukraine,” the OMB lawyer said in arguing that the emails should remain redacted. The Center for Public Integrity received a heavily redacted version of the emails in December through a Freedom of Information Act request, according to the Post, which added that the judge in the case wanted an outline of what information is in the emails and why they were redacted. CNN noted that the filing is the administration's first acknowledgement that there are emails related to Trump's thinking about the aid freeze, which is central to Democrats' impeachment effort. Senate Democrats have argued that the White House has refused to hand over documentation that would shed further light on the decisionmaking behind the aid freeze and whether it was linked to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly announcing an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. Democrats' hopes of obtaining the documents were dashed on Friday, however, when senators voted not to seek witnesses and the documentation in a 51 to 49 vote. The Senate minority needed four GOP senators to break ranks and vote in favor of the measure, but in the end, only two Republicans did: Sens. Mitt Romney (Utah) and Susan Collins (Maine).
There ya go. Another impeachment. Can you spell "res judicata" boys and girls? Idiots. Find a candidate.
Inb4 cultists champion no separation of powers. https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/11/politics/roger-stone-sentencing-justice-department/index.html Federal prosecutors quit Stone case after DOJ overrules prosecutors on sentencing request Washington (CNN)Three federal prosecutors have withdrawn from the case against longtime Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone after a decision by top Justice Department officials to disavow and undercut their own federal prosecutors by reducing the government's recommended sentence against him. The stunning and politically charged decision to reduce prosecutors' recommended sentence of up to nine years came hours after Trump publicly criticized it, immediately raising questions about the Justice Department's independence from political pressure. Although prosecutors called for prison time for Stone in a revised filing Tuesday afternoon, they said "far less" would be appropriate. Ultimately, the presiding judge in the case will have the final say on Stone's sentence. Prosecutors from the US Attorney's office in Washington, who are employees of the Justice Department, had initially said Monday that Stone should be sentenced to seven to nine years in prison after he was convicted on seven charges last year that derived from former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, including lying to Congress and witness tampering. That recommendation led Trump overnight Tuesday to bemoan what he called a "horrible and very unfair situation." "The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!" Trump said. He later told reporters in the Oval Office that he didn't ask the Justice Department to change the sentencing recommendation. Tuesday afternoon, federal prosecutors asked for Stone to still be sentenced to prison, though for "far less" than the office had asked for a day earlier, according to a new filing. The prosecutors decline to say how much time in prison Stone should serve. "While it remains the position of the United States that a sentence of incarceration is warranted here, the government respectfully submits that the range of 87 to 108 months presented as the applicable advisory Guidelines range would not be appropriate or serve the interests of justice in this case," the prosecutors write. A senior Justice Department official said that that original sentencing recommendation, transmitted to a judge and signed off on by the office's top prosecutor, had not been communicated to leadership at the Justice Department. "The Department was shocked to see the sentencing recommendation," the official told CNN. "The Department believes the recommendation is extreme and excessive and is grossly disproportionate to Stone's offenses." The decision to make the change was directed by the leadership of the Justice Department, the official said. The department made the decision before the President's tweet and without consultation with the White House, according to Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman. The White House referred a request for comment to the Justice Department, and the US attorney's office in Washington declined to comment. Grant Smith, an attorney for Stone, said they look forward to reviewing the government's latest filing shortly. "We have read with interest the new reporting on Roger Stone's case. Our sentencing memo outlined our position on the recommendation made yesterday by the government. We look forward to reviewing the government's supplemental filing," Smith said in a statement. Stone's attorneys had argued a sentence of 15 to 21 months would be appropriate. Prosecutors quit Soon after the revised recommendation was made, three prosecutors who worked on the case, Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, Jonathan Kravis and Adam Jed, a motion to withdraw from the case. Zelinsky and Kravis both resigned from the DC US attorney's office. Zelinsky, who is based at the Baltimore US attorney's office, was the Mueller prosecutor most closely associated with Stone's case while it was being investigated, and also played a significant role in questioning witnesses at Stone's trial. He stayed with the Stone case following the closure of Mueller's office and "resigned effective immediately after this filing" from his role in the DC US attorney's office, he wrote to the judge on Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the Baltimore US attorney's office said Tuesday afternoon that Zelinksy had not resigned from his position there. The US attorney's office in Washington declined to comment on the resignations. John Crabb, another prosecutor in the DC US attorney's Office, has announced he'll work on the Stone case. New filing takes more sympathetic view of Stone's crimes The new filing -- which isn't signed by any of the four line prosecutors who approved the original sentencing memo -- takes a more sympathetic view of Stone's crimes. It suggests that Stone may not have truly threatened to injure his associate Randy Credico, even though a jury had found him guilty of intimidating him. The filing says Stone's "advanced age, health, personal circumstances and lack of criminal history" weigh in favor of a lesser sentence. The prosecutors point to other cases, including that of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who received more lenient sentences for witness intimidation, false statements and obstruction of justice. The DC US Attorney's Office now argues that Judge Amy Berman Jackson should effectively discount Stone's social media posts following his arrest, including one threatening her, when deciding his sentence. In their previous argument that Stone should get seven to nine years in prison, prosecutors had noted that Stone posted an image on Instagram of Jackson with crosshairs behind her head, contradicted himself under oath in a court hearing about the Instagram post, and violated the judge's orders not to speak publicly about the case should merit him more prison time. But the new court filing on Thursday says those actions shouldn't add to Stone's sentence. "It is unclear to what extent the defendant's obstructive conduct actually prejudiced the government at trial," a new prosecutor on the case wrote to the judge. Shock over department's move It's not immediately clear whether the Justice Department's revised recommendation will affect the decision of Jackson, who will have broad authority to sentence Stone as she sees fit on February 20. But the move to overrule federal prosecutors after they've already made a public commitment is rare, and quickly reverberated throughout the ranks of career Justice Department employees, with prosecutors from another high-profile US attorney's office expressing shock to CNN. Tensions have simmered at the department in recent months over Attorney General William Barr's penchant to be closely involved in matters big and small in the department, Justice officials say. The attorney general has a reputation as a micro-manager and that has manifested itself in odd ways. Barr in recent weeks appointed Timothy Shea, a close aide, to be acting US attorney in Washington in a clumsy transition with the former US Attorney Jesse Liu, who was moving to a post at the Treasury Department. Liu had been waiting to move to the new job, but Barr's move to appoint Shea while Liu was still awaiting her hearing created an awkward transition. Shea had qualms about the sentencing recommendation on Stone made by line prosecutors, but went along with it, perhaps as a way to win over his troops in the office, one official said Barr's decision to disavow and sharply criticize a decision made by Shea severely undermines him in his new job, officials say. Federal prosecutors and a person convicted of crimes both have the opportunity to submit a memorandum to the court ahead of their sentencing hearing, asking for certain amounts of prison time or less severe punishments. At the sentencing hearing, they'll speak again to the judge about their wishes before the judge makes a final decision. In Stone's case, prosecutors reasoned on Monday that he deserved seven to nine years in prison es
This whole thing with giving Roger Stone a heavy sentence actually puts Barr's arse in a sling that he needs to get out of. There have been a pile doj and fbi officials who have either been let off with not much punishment and durham will generate dozens more who might get a perjury charge at most but mostly some kind of public shaming a report. So Barr has to deal with the longstanding but still growing tsunami of anger about how the doj is good at putting trump people behind barrs for a long time, but not so much when it comes to hillary or comey or loretta or mccabe types. Not a problem going away anytime soon. Yet if durham goes out with some heavy duty stuff no one in the doj, barr included, have the balls to do any heavy duty sentencing on them.