https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/11/nyregion/trump-tax-returns-lawsuit.html Trump Taxes: Justice Dept. Asks Judges to Block Subpoena But the department did not agree with President Trump’s lawyers that a sitting president is immune from criminal investigation. The Justice Department asked a federal appeals court on Friday to stop the release of President Trump’s tax returns to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, arguing that local prosecutors should have to meet a very high legal bar before investigating a sitting president. The filing meant Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department was lending support to his attempt to block a subpoena demanding eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns. The district attorney’s office issued the subpoena to Mr. Trump’s accounting firm in late August as part of an investigation into hush-money payments made before the 2016 presidential election. But in its filing, the Justice Department, which is led by Attorney General William P. Barr, stopped short of endorsing Mr. Trump’s most sweeping argument: that sitting presidents are totally immune from all criminal investigations. Mr. Trump’s lawyers had made the argument in a lawsuit attempting to shield his tax returns from the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. Judge Victor Marrero of United States District Court in Manhattan dismissed the lawsuit and rejected that position, which he called “repugnant to the nation’s governmental structure and constitutional values.” The Justice Department had not previously weighed in with its view of the merits of Mr. Trump’s lawsuit, which made an argument that has not been tested in the courts. But after Mr. Trump appealed Judge Marrero’s ruling, the department wrote to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, saying it wanted to provide its views in a case that raised “a number of significant constitutional issues that potentially implicate the interests of the United States.” Even though the United States is not a party to the lawsuit, it has the right to give its views.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/21/politics/fbi-fisa-russia-investigation/index.html Exclusive: FBI official under investigation after allegedly altering document in 2016 Russia probe Washington (CNN)An FBI official is under criminal investigation after allegedly altering a document related to 2016 surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser, several people briefed on the matter told CNN. The possibility of a substantive change to an investigative document is likely to fuel accusations from President Donald Trump and his allies that the FBI committed wrongdoing in its investigation of connections between Russian election meddling and the Trump campaign. The finding is expected to be part of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's review of the FBI's effort to obtain warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide. Horowitz will release the report next month. Horowitz turned over evidence on the allegedly altered document to John Durham, the federal prosecutor appointed early this year by Attorney General William Barr to conduct a broad investigation of intelligence gathered for the Russia probe by the CIA and other agencies, including the FBI. The altered document is also at least one focus of Durham's criminal probe. It's unknown how significant a role the altered document played in the FBI's investigation of Page and whether the FISA warrant would have been approved without the document. The alterations were significant enough to have shifted the document's meaning and came up during a part of Horowitz's FISA review where details were classified, according to the sources. Some witnesses who have been interviewed in Horowitz's investigation have said they expect the inspector general to find mistakes in the FBI's handling of the FISA process, but that those mistakes do not undermine the premise for the FBI's investigation. American intelligence agencies and the Justice Department have not swayed from their finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election by hacking the Democrats and spreading pro-Trump propaganda online. And even former top Trump campaign officials have corroborated special counsel Robert Mueller's finding that the Trump campaign planned some of its strategy around the Russian hacks, and had multiple contacts with Kremlin-linked individuals in 2016. Horowitz's investigators conducted more than 100 witness interviews in their review. During one of interviews this year, they confronted the witness about the document. The witness admitted to the change, the sources said. The identity or rank of the FBI employee under investigation isn't yet known, and it's not clear whether the employee still works in the federal government. No charges that could reflect the situation have been filed publicly in court. The Justice Department and inspector general's office declined to comment. Horowitz report Horowitz is expected to release his report on December 9 and testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee two days later. The internal, independent investigator so far, over several reports, has criticized top members of the FBI for their actions leading up to and during the Russia investigation. Those IG reports have looked at situations including former FBI Director James Comey's handling of his personal memos about meetings with the President and former official Peter Strzok's anti-Trump text messages. A finding of alleged wrongdoing from Horowitz could further fuel Republican criticism and conspiracies about previous investigators' targeting of Trump associates. It could also provide them a political boost at a moment where Democrats' impeachment investigation into Trump's political quid pro quo with Ukraine has battered the President. The report is said to cover the FBI's approach to foreign surveillance during the Russia investigation, including of warrants used to wiretap Page, who had advised the Trump campaign in 2016. Witnesses are currently reviewing Horowitz's findings. Horowitz has shared information from his review with Durham, CNN previously reported. The Justice Department has been tight-lipped on outlining exactly what Durham has been looking at. But the attorney general himself said soon after appointing him that he was concerned officials acted inappropriately as they oversaw the counterintelligence probe of the 2016 Trump campaign. Barr's embrace of these theories aligns with Trump's chief grievance that he was the victim of a "deep state" spy operation that has clouded his presidency. The New York Times, CNN and other outlets have reported that Durham's investigation had become a criminal investigation.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/17/politics/mitch-mcconnell-response-schumer-impeachment/index.html McConnell rejects Schumer's call for witnesses at impeachment trial (CNN)Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday rejected calls from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to allow witnesses at an expected Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. "We don't create impeachments," McConnell said on the Senate floor. "We judge them." "The House chose this road. It is their duty to investigate. It is their duty to meet the very high bar for undoing a national election," the Kentucky Republican said. "If they fail, they fail. It is not the Senate's job to leap into the breach and search desperately for ways to get to 'guilty.' That would hardly be impartial justice." In a letter to McConnell on Sunday, Schumer said he wanted to have four Trump officials testify, including former national security adviser John Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, two people close to Trump's actions on Ukraine who refused to testify in the House investigation. McConnell also said that Senate Democrats wanting fact witnesses is a sign House Democrats did "sloppy work" in their impeachment inquiry. "If House Democrats' case is this deficient, this thin, the answer is not for the judge and jury to cure it here in the Senate. The answer is that the House should not impeach on this basis in the first place," McConnell said. McConnell's rejection of Schumer's request does not mean the question of witnesses is settled. McConnell said the Senate should revisit the issue at some point in the middle of the trial, similarly to how it was handled in the Clinton impeachment trial. "In President Clinton's trial, we handled procedural issues in two separate Senate resolutions that passed at different times. The first resolution passed unanimously before the trial. It sketched out basic things like scheduling, opening arguments and the timing of a motion to dismiss," he said. "Other, more detailed questions about the middle and the end of the trial, including whether any witnesses would be called, were reserved for a second resolution that was passed in the middle of the trial itself."
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/06/8035...WfWADbM9-vKJjCPNuQkqhWK0TfTrfvR6bgL1KjEXsX5A0 Attorney General Barr Issues New Rules For Politically Sensitive Investigations Attorney General William Barr has issued new restrictions on opening investigations into politically sensitive individuals or entities, including a requirement that he approve any inquiry into a presidential candidate or campaign. Barr outlined the new policies in a three-page memo obtained by NPR as the Democratic primaries are underway and the country gears up for November's presidential vote. The memo was first reported by The New York Times. Barr's new restrictions follow a sharply critical report from the Justice Department's inspector general on aspects of the FBI's Russia investigation, which began in the summer of 2016 during the presidential campaign and continues to ripple through American politics four years later. The IG report was particularly critical of the bureau's surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The FBI and other intelligence agencies uncovered and documented an unprecedented campaign of active measures targeted against the United States, one that flummoxed the administration of President Barack Obama. The bureau — and later special counsel Robert Mueller — also documented extensive contacts between Russians and people in Trump's orbit, but Mueller did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin in its election interference. The Justice Department, Barr's memo says, "has a strong interest in the prosecution of election-related crimes, including those involving corruption of the election process." But, it says, "we must investigate and prosecute those matters with sensitivity and care to ensure that the department's actions do not unnecessarily advantage or disadvantage any candidate or political party." The memo adds to existing Justice Department guidelines that caution officials against taking steps that influence an election. It spells out concrete restrictions for opening politically sensitive probes. Barr's memo says investigations, including preliminary ones, into a presidential or vice presidential candidate, their campaigns or staff cannot be opened without the written approval of the attorney general. It also says that an investigation into a congressional candidate or campaign cannot be opened without first notifying the assistant attorney general and the respective U.S. attorney in the district involved. Roger Stone, Political Operative And Trump Aide, Guilty In False-Statements Trial Barr's memo imposes the same requirements for investigations into illegal contributions, donations or expenditures by foreign nationals to a presidential or congressional campaign. If an investigation is initiated in line with these guidelines, the memo says, the investigating agency should provide regular updates to the office of the Justice Department's No. 2 official, the deputy attorney general. It urges officials to err on the side of consulting with the appropriate officials or seeking their approval if there's any doubt. "While the department must respond swiftly and decisively when faced with credible threats to our democratic processes, we also must be sensitive to safeguarding the Department's reputation for fairness, neutrality, and nonpartisanship," the memo says.
1st stage to toss out the Russian investigation: undermine the roots of said investigation as immaterial
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/us/politics/michael-flynn-case.html ‘Never Seen Anything Like This’: Experts Question Dropping of Flynn Prosecution Abandoning the case is the latest step in a pattern of dismantling the work of the Russia investigators. A former prosecutor likened it to eating the department from the inside out. WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s decision to drop the criminal case against Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, even though he had twice pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, was extraordinary and had no obvious precedent, a range of criminal law specialists said on Thursday. “I’ve been practicing for more time than I care to admit and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Julie O’Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Georgetown University. The move is the latest in a series that the department, under Attorney General William P. Barr, has taken to undermine and dismantle the work of the investigators and prosecutors who scrutinized Russia’s 2016 election interference operation and its links to people associated with the Trump campaign. The case against Mr. Flynn for lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations with the Russian ambassador was brought by the office of the former special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. It had become a political cause for Mr. Trump and his supporters, and the president had signaled that he was considering a pardon once Mr. Flynn was sentenced. But Mr. Barr instead abruptly short-circuited the case. On Thursday, Timothy Shea, the interim U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, told the judge overseeing the case, Emmet G. Sullivan, that prosecutors were withdrawing the case. They were doing so, he said, because the department could not prove to a jury that Mr. Flynn’s admitted lies to the F.B.I. about his conversations with the ambassador were “material” ones. The move essentially erases Mr. Flynn’s guilty pleas. Because he was never sentenced and the government is unwilling to pursue the matter further, the prosecution is virtually certain to end, although the judge must still decide whether to grant the department’s request to dismiss it “with prejudice,” meaning it could not be refiled in the future. A range of former prosecutors struggled to point to any previous instance in which the Justice Department had abandoned its own case after obtaining a guilty plea. They portrayed the justification Mr. Shea pointed to — that it would be difficult to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the lies were material — as dubious. “A pardon would have been a lot more honest,” said Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Duke University. The law regarding what counts as “material” is extremely forgiving to the government, Mr. Buell added. The idea is that law enforcement is permitted to pursue possible theories of criminality and to interview people without having firmly established that there was a crime first. James G. McGovern, a defense lawyer at Hogan Lovells and a former federal prosecutor, said juries rarely bought a defendant’s argument that a lie did not involve a material fact. “If you are arguing ‘materiality,’ you usually lose, because there is a tacit admission that what you said was untrue, so you lose the jury,” he said. No career prosecutors signed the motion. Mr. Shea is a former close aide to Mr. Barr. In January, Mr. Barr installed him as the top prosecutor in the district that encompasses the nation’s capital after maneuvering out the Senate-confirmed former top prosecutor in that office, Jessie K. Liu. Soon after, in an extraordinary move, four prosecutors in the office abruptly quit the case against Mr. Trump’s longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. They did so after senior Justice Department officials intervened to recommend a more lenient prison term than standard sentencing guidelines called for in the crimes Mr. Stone was convicted of committing — including witness intimidation and perjury — to conceal Trump campaign interactions with WikiLeaks. It soon emerged that Mr. Barr had also appointed an outside prosecutor, Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney in St. Louis, to review the Flynn case files. The department then began turning over F.B.I. documents showing internal deliberations about questioning Mr. Flynn, like what warnings to give — even though such files are usually not provided to the defense. Mr. Flynn’s defense team has mined such files for ammunition to portray the F.B.I. as running amok in its decision to question Mr. Flynn in the first place. The questioning focused on his conversations during the transition after the 2016 election with the Russian ambassador about the Obama administration’s imposition of sanctions on Russia for its interference in the American election. The F.B.I. had already concluded that there was no evidence that Mr. Flynn, a former Trump campaign adviser, had personally conspired with Russia about the election, and it had decided to close out the counterintelligence investigation into him. Then questions arose about whether and why Mr. Flynn had lied to administration colleagues like Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with the ambassador. Because the counterintelligence investigation was still open, the bureau used it as a basis to question Mr. Flynn about the conversations and decided not to warn him at its onset that it would be a crime to lie. Notes from Bill Priestap, then the head of the F.B.I.’s counterintelligence division, show that he wrote at one point about the planned interview: “What’s our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” Mr. Barr has also appointed another outside prosecutor, John H. Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to reinvestigate the Russia investigators even though the department’s independent inspector general was already scrutinizing them. And his department has intervened in a range of other ways, from seeking more comfortable prison accommodations last year for Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, to abruptly dropping charges in March against two Russian shell companies that were about to go to trial for financing schemes to interfere in the 2016 election using social media. Mr. Barr has let it be known that he does not think the F.B.I. ever had an adequate legal basis to open its Russia investigation in the first place, contrary to the judgment of the Justice Department’s inspector general. In an interview on CBS News on Thursday, Mr. Barr defended the dropping of the charges against Mr. Flynn on the grounds that the F.B.I. “did not have a basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at that stage.” Anne Milgram, a former federal prosecutor and former New Jersey attorney general who teaches criminal law at New York University, defended the F.B.I.’s decision to question Mr. Flynn in January 2017. She said that much was still a mystery about the Russian election interference operation at the time and that Mr. Flynn’s lying to the vice president about his postelection interactions with a high-ranking Russian raised new questions. But, she argued, the more important frame for assessing the dropping of the case was to recognize how it fit into the larger pattern of the Barr-era department “undercutting the law enforcement officials and prosecutors who investigated the 2016 election and its aftermath,” which she likened to “eating the Justice Department from the inside out.”