Donald Trump allies cite Hillary Clinton email probe to attack classified records case. There are big differences
As former President Donald Trump prepares for a momentous court appearance Tuesday on charges related to the hoarding of top-secret documents, Republican allies are amplifying, without evidence, claims that he is the target of a political prosecution. To press their case, Trump’s backers are citing the Justice Department’s decision in 2016 not to bring charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent in that year’s presidential race, over her handling of classified information. His supporters also are invoking a separate classified documents investigation concerning President Joe Biden to allege a two-tier system of justice that is punishing Trump, the undisputed early front-runner for the GOP’s 2024 White House nomination, for conduct that Democrats have engaged in. “Is there a different standard for a Democratic secretary of state versus a former Republican president?” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Trump primary rival. “I think there needs to be one standard of justice in this country.” But those arguments overlook abundant factual and legal differences — chiefly relating to intent, state of mind, and deliberate acts of obstruction — that limit the value of any such comparisons. A look at the Clinton, Biden, and Trump investigations and what separates them: WHAT DID CLINTON DO? Clinton relied on a private email system for the sake of convenience during her time as the Obama administration’s top diplomat. That decision came back to haunt her when, in 2015, the intelligence agencies’ internal watchdog alerted the FBI to the presence of potentially hundreds of emails containing classified information. FBI investigators would ultimately conclude that Clinton sent and received emails containing classified information on that unclassified system, including information classified at the top-secret level. Of the roughly 30,000 emails turned over by Clinton’s representatives, the FBI has said, 110 emails in 52 email chains were found to have classified information, including some at the top-secret level. After a roughly yearlong inquiry, the FBI closed out the investigation in July 2016, finding that Clinton did not intend to break the law. The bureau reopened the inquiry months later, 11 days before the presidential election, after discovering a new batch of emails. After reviewing those communications, the FBI again opted against recommending charges. WHAT IS TRUMP ACCUSED OF DOING? The indictment filed by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith alleges that when Trump left the White House after his term ended in January 2021, he took hundreds of classified documents with him to his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago — and then repeatedly impeded efforts by the government he once oversaw to get the records back. The material that Trump retained, prosecutors say, related to American nuclear programs, weapons and defense capabilities of the United States and foreign countries and potential vulnerabilities to an attack — information that, if exposed, could jeopardize the safety of the military and human sources. Beyond just the hoarding of documents — in locations including a bathroom, ballroom, shower and his bedroom — the Justice Department says Trump showed highly sensitive material to visitors without security clearances and obstructed the FBI by, among other things, directing a personal aide who was charged alongside him to move boxes around Mar-a-Lago to conceal them from investigators. Though Trump and his allies have claimed he could do with the documents as he pleased under the Presidential Records Act, the indictment makes short shrift of that argument and does not once reference that statute. All told, the indictment includes 37 felony counts against Trump, most under an Espionage Act statute pertaining to the willful retention of national defense information. WHAT SEPARATES THE CLINTON AND TRUMP CASES? A lot, but two important differences are in willfulness and obstruction. In an otherwise harshly critical assessment in which he condemned Clinton’s email practices as “extremely careless,” then-FBI Director James Comey announced that investigators had found no clear evidence that Clinton or her aides had intended to break laws governing classified information. As a result, he said, “no reasonable prosecutor” would move forward with a case. The relevant Espionage Act cases brought by the Justice Department over the past century, Comey said, all involved factors including efforts to obstruct justice, willful mishandling of classified documents, and indications of disloyalty to the U.S. None of those factors existed in the Clinton investigation, he said. That’s in contrast to the allegations against Trump, who prosecutors say was involved in the packing of boxes to go to Mar-a-Lago and then actively took steps to conceal classified documents from investigators. The indictment accuses him, for instance, of suggesting that a lawyer hide documents demanded by a Justice Department subpoena or falsely represent that all requested records had been turned over, even though more than 100 remained in the house. The indictment repeatedly cites Trump’s own words against him to make the case that he understood what he was doing and what the law did and did not permit him to do. It describes a July 2021 meeting at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, in which he showed off a Pentagon “plan of attack” to people without security clearances to view the material and proclaimed that “as president, I could have declassified it.” “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret,” the indictment quotes him as saying. That conversation, captured by an audio recording, is likely to be a powerful piece of evidence to the extent that it undercuts Trump’s oft-repeated claims that he had declassified the documents he brought with him to Mar-a-Lago. WHERE DOES BIDEN FIT IN? The White House disclosed in January that, two months earlier, a lawyer for Biden had located what it said was a “small number” of classified documents from his time as vice president during a search of the Washington office space of Biden’s former institute. The documents were turned over to the Justice Department. Lawyers for Biden subsequently located an additional batch of classified documents at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, and the FBI found even more during a voluntary search of the property. The revelations were a humbling setback for Biden’s efforts to draw a clear contrast between his handling of sensitive information and Trump’s. Even so, as
House Republicans to target border crisis, IRS funding, more with new majority
Now that U.S. House Republicans have a leader in Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., they are turning their eyes toward an agenda with investigations and a few key legislative goals. McCarthy gave a window into those plans during his acceptance speech over the weekend, taking aim at the border crisis, IRS funding, and education. The new Republicans’ rules package included a promise to vote on those issues as well as abortion and others as part of the deal that got McCarthy the needed Speaker votes over the weekend. “This is what we’ve been fighting for,” U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., one of McCarthy’s most vocal opponents, wrote on Twitter, referring to the rules package. While the Republican holdouts will see some rules changes because of their resistance, they are still a small minority in the House and will likely be unable to steer the legislative ship. One of the items that does seem most promising for broader support is the push to undo President Joe Biden’s aggressive expansion of the IRS, a move that sparked controversy as Biden promised to partially pay for his rash of recent spending by auditing more Americans. “According to CBO, Democrats’ supercharged IRS will cause audit rates to ‘rise for all taxpayers, ’ and a conservative analysis shows that returning audit rates to 2010 levels would mean 1.2 million more audits with over 700,000 of those falling on taxpayers making $75,000 or less,” the Republican press office for House Ways and Means said in a statement. Other tax items that could see legislative action are a bill to make the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent, a vote to repeal the inflation tax on capital gains as well as the 1099-K IRS paperwork provision. With a divided Senate and a Democratic president, though, Republicans will have trouble pushing through any conservative legislation. What they can do and have made clear they will focus on are using their investigatory powers to unearth more information on a string of controversies in recent years. After taking the majority in November, House Republicans on the Judiciary and Oversight Committees were quick to announce their plans to investigate Hunter Biden, the president’s son. Lawmakers at a news conference argued that Hunter Biden in particular used his father’s influence to negotiate business deals overseas that may have used federal resources and even compromised the Biden family. “Evidence obtained by Committee Republicans reveals Joe Biden lied to the American people about his involvement in his family’s business schemes,” said House Oversight Committee Ranking Member James Comer, R-Ky. “The Biden family business model is built on Joe Biden’s political career and connections with Joe Biden as the ‘chairman of the board.’ Biden family members sold access for profit around the world to the detriment of American interests. If deals compromise President Biden with foreign adversaries and they are impacting his decision making, this is a threat to national security.” House Republicans have also put Big Tech in their sight, as a string of news reports have shown that the White House, federal law enforcement, and tech companies have apparently worked together for years to censor Americans on a range of issues, most notably COVID-19. House Oversight Republicans recently sent a letter to Facebook and Twitter on that very issue, demanding more information. “Committee Republicans continue to investigate whether U.S. government officials have participated in suppression and censorship of lawful speech in violation of the U.S. Constitution,” the letter said. “Reports continue to surface that social media companies acted on the behest of government agencies and officials when removing, restricting, or disclaiming content. The American people and their elected representatives must know the extent to which their government has engaged in prohibited censorship to expose and prevent this unlawful conduct.” Despite these ambitions, this legislative term is effectively shorter than most. Soon, it will be a presidential election year. Both parties will become focused on campaigning and fundraising, which means legislating will largely take a back seat. Committee investigations, though, could be used to push for media attention. “Aside from the House’s policy agenda, conservatives will have new opportunities to carry out the much-needed oversight investigations into the administration’s incompetence at the southern border, the origins of COVID-19, Hunter Biden’s laptop and shady business dealings, and the Big Tech censorship of these stories,” said Heritage Action Executive Director Jessica Anderson. “These investigations need to both expose the truth and follow through with accountability measures.” Republished with the permission of The Center Square.
FBI seized top secret documents in Mar-a-Lago search
The FBI recovered “top secret” and even more sensitive documents from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, according to court papers released Friday after a federal judge unsealed the warrant that authorized the sudden, unprecedented search this week. A property receipt unsealed by the court shows FBI agents took 11 sets of classified records from the estate during a search on Monday. The seized records include some marked not only top secret but also “sensitive compartmented information,” a special category meant to protect the nation’s most important secrets that, if revealed publicly, could cause “exceptionally grave” damage to U.S. interests. The court records did not provide specific details about information the documents might contain. The warrant says federal agents were investigating potential violations of three different federal laws, including one that governs gathering, transmitting, or losing defense information under the Espionage Act. The other statutes address the concealment, mutilation, or removal of records and the destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations. The property receipt also shows federal agents collected other potential presidential records, including the order pardoning Trump ally Roger Stone, a “leatherbound box of documents,” and information about the “President of France.” A binder of photos, a handwritten note, “miscellaneous secret documents,” and “miscellaneous confidential documents” were also seized in the search. Trump’s attorney, Christina Bobb, who was present at Mar-a-Lago when the agents conducted the search, signed two property receipts — one that was two pages long and another that is a single page. In a statement earlier Friday, Trump claimed that the documents seized by agents were “all declassified” and argued that he would have turned them over if the Justice Department had asked. While incumbent presidents generally have the power to declassify information, that authority lapses as soon as they leave office, and it was not clear if the documents in question have ever been declassified. And even an incumbent’s powers to declassify may be limited regarding secrets dealing with nuclear weapons programs, covert operations, and operatives, and some data shared with allies. Trump kept possession of the documents despite multiple requests from agencies, including the National Archives, to turn over presidential records in accordance with federal law. The Mar-a-Lago search warrant served Monday was part of an ongoing Justice Department investigation into the discovery of classified White House records recovered from Trump’s home earlier this year. The Archives had asked the department to investigate after saying 15 boxes of records it retrieved from the estate included classified records. It remains unclear whether the Justice Department moved forward with the warrant simply as a means to retrieve the records or as part of a wider criminal investigation or attempt to prosecute the former president. Multiple federal laws govern the handling of classified information, with both criminal and civil penalties, as well as presidential records. U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, the same judge who signed off on the search warrant, unsealed the warrant and property receipt Friday at the request of the Justice Department after Attorney General Merrick Garland declared there was “substantial public interest in this matter,” and Trump said he backed the warrant’s “immediate” release. The Justice Department told the judge Friday afternoon that Trump’s lawyers did not object to the proposal to make it public. In messages posted on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote, “Not only will I not oppose the release of documents … I am going a step further by ENCOURAGING the immediate release of those documents.” The Justice Department’s request was striking because such warrants traditionally remain sealed during a pending investigation. But the department appeared to recognize that its silence since the search had created a vacuum for bitter verbal attacks by Trump and his allies and felt that the public was entitled to the FBI’s side about what prompted Monday’s action at the former president’s home. “The public’s clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred under these circumstances weighs heavily in favor of unsealing,” said a motion filed in federal court in Florida on Thursday. The information was released as Trump prepares for another run for the White House. During his 2016 campaign, he pointed frequently to an FBI investigation into his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, over whether she mishandled classified information. To obtain a search warrant, federal authorities must prove to a judge that probable cause exists to believe that a crime was committed. Garland said he personally approved the warrant, a decision he said the department did not take lightly given that standard practice, where possible is to select less intrusive tactics than a search of one’s home. In this case, according to a person familiar with the matter, there was substantial engagement with Trump and his representatives prior to the search warrant, including a subpoena for records and a visit to Mar-a-Lago a couple of months ago by FBI and Justice Department officials to assess how the documents were stored. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke on condition of anonymity. FBI and Justice Department policy caution against discussing ongoing investigations, both to protect the integrity of the inquiries and to avoid unfairly maligning someone who is being scrutinized but winds up ultimately not being charged. That’s especially true in the case of search warrants, where supporting court papers are routinely kept secret as the investigation proceeds. In this case, though, Garland cited the fact that Trump himself had provided the first public confirmation of the FBI search, “as is his right.” The Justice Department, in its new filing, also said that disclosing information about it now would not harm the court’s functions. The Justice Department under Garland has been leery of public statements about politically charged investigations, or of confirming to what extent it might be investigating Trump as part of a broader probe into the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The department has tried to avoid being seen as injecting itself into presidential politics, as
Florida judge who approved FBI warrant for raid on Mar-a-Lago was assigned to Donald Trump lawsuit against Clintons
Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, the Florida judge who approved the warrant for the FBI raid of former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, was formerly assigned to oversee a lawsuit in which Trump sued Hillary Clinton. He also previously represented former convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s employees in a sex trafficking case. In the case of Trump v. Clinton, Trump sued Hillary Clinton on March 24, 2022. He also sued the Democratic National Committee, Perkins Coie, LLC, Michael Sussmann, Marc Elias, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Charles Halliday Dolan Jr., Jakes Sullivan, John Podesta, Fusion GPS, Nellie Ohr, Bruce Ohr, Christopher Steele, Igor Danchenko, James Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, and many others. The lawsuit alleges that Clinton “and her cohorts … maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent [Trump] was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty.” The scheme included “falsifying evidence, deceiving law enforcement, and exploiting access to highly sensitive data sources,” and was “conceived, coordinated and carried out by top-level officials at the Clinton Campaign and the DNC.” Reinhart was assigned to the case on April 6, 2022, after the previous magistrate judge, Ryon McCabe, was recused. On April 15, Reinhart conducted a scheduling conference in the case, according to court documents obtained by The Center Square. He oversaw scheduling of a June 2 status conference on May 4 and 31 and oversaw the actual conference. Reinhart also signed another order on June 14, setting another status conference for July 6, but by June 22 Reinhart canceled the conference and recused himself. Less than two months later, on Monday, August 9, he signed a warrant for the FBI to raid Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate over an alleged dispute over White House documents. The search warrant remains under seal, and Trump’s attorney has told news outlets that they don’t know what the probable cause was to justify issuing the warrant, also maintaining Trump’s innocence and that he didn’t commit a crime. Many officials have called for the warrant to be unsealed, including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, has called for a congressional investigation into the raid, also saying the FBI’s tactics were like those of a third-world dictatorship. Rubio said, “the Justice Department under Joe Biden decided to raid … the home of the former president who might … be running against him … This is what happens in places like Nicaragua where last year every single person who ran against Daniel Ortega for president, every single person that put their name on the ballot, was arrested and is still in jail. That’s what you see in places like Nicaragua. We’ve never seen that before in America. You can try and diminish it, but that’s exactly what happened.” Gov. Ron DeSantis said the raid was a “weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents.” The White House has declined to comment on the raid, saying it was not made aware of it before it took place. The document dispute stems from a disagreement over which documents in Trump’s possession are presidential records or not. Under the Presidential Records Act, some records in question should have been transferred to the National Archives in January 2021 when Trump left office, the institution said in a statement at the time. Instead, Reinhart authorized the FBI to execute the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, which Trump said was “prosecutorial misconduct.” According to a report by the New York Post, Reinhart previously represented several of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s employees in a sex trafficking investigation. His ties to Epstein’s employees was first reported on by the Miami Herald, with whom he confirmed that clients were Epstein’s pilots, his scheduler, Sarah Kellen, and a woman Nadia Marcinkova. Reinhart also donated to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, according to the Post. Prior to becoming a magistrate judge in 2018, he spent ten years in private practice, according to Bloomberg News. He previously worked as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida. According to Law.com, the Palm Beach Federal Court removed Reinhart’s contact information from the court’s website Tuesday. Republished with the permission of The Center Square.
FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Florida estate: Why now?
The FBI’s unprecedented search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence ricocheted around government, politics, and a polarized country Tuesday, along with questions as to why the Justice Department — notably cautious under Attorney General Merrick Garland — decided to take such a drastic step. Answers weren’t quickly forthcoming. Agents on Monday searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, which is also a private club, as part of a federal investigation into whether the former president took classified records from the White House to his Florida residence, people familiar with the matter said. It marked a dramatic escalation of law enforcement scrutiny of Trump, who faces an array of inquiries tied to his conduct in the waning days of his administration. From echoes of Watergate to the more immediate House probe of the January 6 Capitol insurrection, Washington, a city used to sleepy Augusts, reeled from one speculative or accusatory headline to the next. Was the Justice Department politicized? What prompted it to seek authorization to search the estate for classified documents now, months after it was revealed that Trump had taken boxes of materials with him when he left the White House after losing the 2020 election? Garland has not tipped his hand despite an outcry from some Democrats impatient over whether the department was even pursuing evidence that has surfaced in the January 6 probe and other investigations— and from Republicans who were swift to echo Trump’s claims that he was the victim of political prosecution. All Garland has said publicly is that “no one is above the law.” A federal judge had to sign off on the warrant after establishing that FBI agents had shown probable cause before they could descend on Trump’s shuttered-for-the-season home — he was in New York, a thousand or so miles away, at the time of the search. Monday’s search intensified the months-long probe into how classified documents ended up in boxes of White House records located at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year. A separate grand jury is investigating efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and it all adds to potential legal peril for Trump as he lays the groundwork for a potential repeat run for the White House. Trump and his allies quickly sought to cast the search as a weaponization of the criminal justice system and a Democratic-driven effort to keep him from winning another term in 2024 — though the Biden White House said it had no prior knowledge and current FBI Director Christopher Wray was appointed by Trump five years ago. Trump, disclosing the search in a lengthy statement late Monday, asserted that agents had opened a safe at his home, and he described their work as an “unannounced raid” that he likened to “prosecutorial misconduct.” Justice Department spokesperson Dena Iverson declined to comment on the search, including whether Garland had personally authorized it. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the West Wing first learned of the search from public media reports, and the White House had not been briefed in the run-up or aftermath. Jean-Pierre refused to say whether Biden wanted the attorney general to explain publicly the rationale for the search amid the concerns about politicization of the probe. “The Justice Department conducts investigations independently, and we leave any law enforcement matters to them,” she said. “We are not involved.” About two dozen Trump supporters stood in protest at midmorning Tuesday in the Florida summer heat and sporadic light rain on a bridge near the former president’s residence. One held a sign reading “Democrats are Fascists,” while others carried flags saying “2020 Was Rigged,” “Trump 2024,” and Biden’s name with an obscenity. Some cars honked in support as they passed. Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence, a potential 2024 rival, tweeted Tuesday, “Yesterday’s action undermines public confidence in our system of justice, and Attorney General Garland must give a full accounting to the American people as to why this action was taken, and he must do so immediately.” Trump was planning to meet Tuesday at his Bedminster, New Jersey, a club with members of the Republican Study Committee, a group headed by Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana that says it is committed to putting forth his priorities in Congress. The FBI reached out to the Secret Service shortly before serving a warrant, a third person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. Secret Service agents contacted the Justice Department and were able to validate the warrant before facilitating access to the estate, the person said. The Justice Department has been investigating the potential mishandling of classified information since the National Archives and Records Administration said it had received from Mar-a-Lago 15 boxes of White House records, including documents containing classified information, earlier this year. The National Archives said Trump should have turned over that material upon leaving office, and it asked the Justice Department to investigate. There are multiple federal laws governing the handling of classified records and sensitive government documents, including statutes that make it a crime to remove such material and retain it at an unauthorized location. Though a search warrant does not necessarily mean criminal charges are near or even expected, federal officials looking to obtain one must first demonstrate to a judge that they have probable cause that a crime occurred. Two people familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said the search Monday was related to the records probe. Agents were also looking to see if Trump had additional presidential records or any classified documents at the estate. Trump has previously maintained that presidential records were turned over “in an ordinary and routine process.” His son Eric Trump said on Fox News on Monday night that he had spent the day with his father and that the search happened because “the National Archives wanted to corroborate whether or not Donald Trump had any documents in his possession.” Trump himself, in a social media post on Monday night, called the search a “weaponization of the Justice System,
Joe Biden to name judge Merrick Garland as attorney general
President-elect Joe Biden has selected Merrick Garland, a federal appeals court judge who in 2016 was snubbed by Republicans for a seat on the Supreme Court, as his attorney general, two people familiar with the selection process said Wednesday. In picking Garland, Biden is turning to an experienced judge who held senior positions at the Justice Department decades ago, including as a supervisor of the prosecution of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The pick will force Senate Republicans to contend with the nomination of someone they spurned in 2016 — refusing even to hold hearings when a Supreme Court vacancy arose — but Biden may be banking on Garland’s credentials and reputation for moderation to ensure confirmation. Biden is expected to announce Garland’s appointment on Thursday, along with other senior leaders of the department, including former homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco as deputy attorney general and former Justice Department civil rights chief Vanita Gupta as associate attorney general. He will also name an assistant attorney general for civil rights, Kristen Clarke, the president of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, an advocacy group. Garland was selected over other finalists including Alabama Sen. Doug Jones and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. The people familiar with the process spoke on condition of anonymity. One said Biden regards Garland as an attorney general who can restore integrity to the Justice Department and as someone who, having served in the Justice Department under presidents of both political parties, will be respected by nonpartisan career staff. If confirmed, Garland would confront immediate challenges, including an ongoing criminal tax investigation into Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, as well as calls from many Democrats to pursue inquiries into Donald Trump after he leaves office. A special counsel investigation into the origins of the Russia probe also remains open, forcing a new attorney general to decide how to handle it and what to make public. Garland would also inherit a Justice Department that has endured a tumultuous four years and would likely need to focus on not only civil rights issues and an overhaul of national policing policies after months of mass protests over the deaths of Black Americans at the hand of law enforcement. It was unclear how Garland’s selection would be received by Black and Latino advocates who had advocated for a Black attorney general or for someone with a background in civil rights causes and criminal justice reform. But the selection of Gupta and Clarke, two women with significant experience in civil rights, appeared designed to blunt those concerns and offered as a signal that progressive causes will be prioritized in the new administration. Garland would also return to a Justice Department radically different than the one he left. The Sept. 11 attacks were years away, the department’s national security division had not yet been created and a proliferation of aggressive cyber and counterintelligence threats from foreign adversaries have made counties like China, Russia, and North Korea top priorities for federal law enforcement. Monaco brings to the department significant national security experience, including in cybersecurity — an especially urgent issue as the U.S. government confronts a devastating hack of federal agencies that officials have linked to Russia. But some of the issues from Garland’s first stint at the department persist. Tensions between police and minorities, an issue that flared following the 1992 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, remain an urgent concern particularly following a summer of racial unrest that roiled American cities after the May killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. And the FBI has confronted a surge in violence from anti-government and racially motivated extremists. That is a familiar threat to Garland, who as a senior Justice Department official in 1995 helped manage the federal government’s response to the bombing of a government building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people. The bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was later executed. Garland has called the work the “most important thing I have done” and was known for keeping a framed photo of Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in his courthouse office in Washington. At the time of the bombing, Garland was 42 and principal associate deputy attorney general, a top lieutenant to Attorney General Janet Reno. He was chosen to go to Oklahoma City, the highest-ranking Justice Department official there, and led the prosecution for a month until a permanent lead prosecutor was named. Garland was selected over other contenders for the job including former Alabama senator Doug Jones, who lost his Senate seat last month, and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. It is rare but not unprecedented for attorneys general to have previously served as judges. It happened in 2007 when President George W. Bush picked Michael Mukasey, a former federal judge in Manhattan, for the job. Eric Holder, President Barack Obama’s first attorney general, had also previously been a Superior Court judge. Garland was put forward by former President Barack Obama for a seat on the Supreme Court in 2016 following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, but Republicans refused to hold hearings in the final year of Obama’s term. The vacancy was later filled by Justice Neil Gorsuch during the Trump administration. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to let the nomination move forward in the Senate in the final months of Obama’s tenure. He was criticized by Democrats this fall when he took the opposite approach toward confirming President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick, Amy Coney Barrett. He said the difference this time around was that the White House and Senate were controlled by the same political parties. One year later, after the firing of FBI Director James Comey, McConnell actually floated Garland’s name as a replacement for that position, though Garland was said to be not interested. Garland has been on the federal appeals court in Washington since 1997. Before that, he had worked in private practice, as well as a federal prosecutor, a senior official in the Justice Department’s criminal division, and as
Lindsey Graham to probe Russia investigation; won’t call Barack Obama
The Judiciary Committee will first delve into the Justice Department’s decision to dismiss its prosecution of Flynn.
GOP lacks votes to block trial witnesses, Mitch McConnell concedes
Several Republicans apparently are ready to join Democrats in considering in-person testimony from former National Security Adviser John Bolton and perhaps others.
Donald Trump team concludes defense, argues against calling John Bolton
Donald Trump’s defense team argued against a guilty verdict for a total of almost 12 hours.
38 people cited for violations in Hillary Clinton email probe
The State Department has completed its internal investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of private email and found violations by 38 people, some of whom may face disciplinary action. The investigation, launched more than three years ago, determined that those 38 people were “culpable” in 91 cases of sending classified information that ended up in Clinton’s personal email, according to a letter sent to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley this week. The 38 are current and former State Department officials but were not identified. The investigation covered 33,000 emails that Clinton turned over for review after her use of the private email account became public. The department said it found a total of 588 violations involving information then or now deemed to be classified, but could not assign fault in 497 cases. For current and former officials, culpability means the violations will be noted in their files and will be considered when they apply for or go to renew security clearances. For current officials, there could also be some kind of disciplinary action. But it wasn’t immediately clear what that would be. The department began the review in 2016 after declaring 22 emails from Clinton’s private server to be “top secret.” Clinton was then running for president against Donald Trump, and the now-president made the server a major focus of his campaign. Then-FBI Director James Comey held a news conference that year in which he criticized Clinton as “extremely careless” in her use of the private email server as secretary of state but said the FBI would not recommend charges. The Justice Department’s inspector general said FBI specialists did not find evidence that the server had been hacked, with one forensics agent saying he felt “fairly confident that there wasn’t an intrusion.” Grassley started investigating Clinton’s email server in 2017, when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Iowa Republican has been critical of Clinton’s handling of classified information and urged administrative sanctions. By Matthew Lee and Mary Clare Jalonick Associated Press Republished with the permission of the Associated Press
James Comey violated FBI policies in handling of memos
Former FBI Director James Comey violated FBI policies in his handling of memos documenting private conversations with President Donald Trump, the Justice Department’s inspector general said Thursday. The watchdog office said Comey broke bureau rules by giving one memo containing unclassified information to a friend with instructions to share the contents with a reporter. Comey also failed to return his memos to the FBI after he was dismissed in May 2017, retaining copies of some of them in a safe at home, and shared them with his personal lawyers without permission from the FBI, the report said. “By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees — and the many thousands more former FBI employees — who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information,” the report said. The report is the second in as many years to criticize Comey’s actions as FBI director, following a separate inspector general rebuke for decisions made during the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. It is one of multiple inspector general investigations undertaken in the last three years into the decisions and actions of Comey and other senior FBI leaders. Trump, who has long regarded Comey as one of his principal antagonists in a law enforcement community he sees as biased against him, cheered the conclusions on Twitter. He wrote: “Perhaps never in the history of our Country has someone been more thoroughly disgraced and excoriated than James Comey in the just released Inspector General’s Report. He should be ashamed of himself!” The White House in a separate statement called Comey a “proven liar and leaker.”But the report denied Trump and his supporters, who have repeatedly accused Comey of leaking classified information, total vindication. It found that none of the information shared by him or his attorneys with anyone in the media was classified. The Justice Department has declined to prosecute Comey. Comey seized on that point in defending himself on Twitter, saying, “I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a ‘sorry we lied about you’ would be nice.” He also added: “And to all those who’ve spent two years talking about me ‘going to jail’ or being a ‘liar and a leaker’ — ask yourselves why you still trust people who gave you bad info for so long, including the president.” At issue in the report are seven memos Comey wrote between January 2017 and April 2017 about conversations with Trump that he found unnerving or unusual. These include a Trump Tower briefing at which Comey advised the president-elect that there was salacious and unverified information about his ties to Moscow circulating in Washington; a dinner at which Comey says Trump asked him for loyalty and an Oval Office meeting weeks later at which Comey says the president asked him to drop an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. One week after he was fired, Comey provided a copy of the memo about Flynn to Dan Richman, his personal lawyer and a close friend, and instructed him to share the contents with a specific reporter from The New York Times. Comey has said he wanted to make details of that conversation public to prompt the appointment of a special counsel to lead the FBI’s investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel one day after the story broke. The inspector general’s office found Comey’s rationale lacking. “In a country built on the rule of law, it is of utmost importance that all FBI employees adhere to Department and FBI policies, particularly when confronted by what appear to be extraordinary circumstances or compelling personal convictions. Comey had several other lawful options available to him to advocate for the appointment of a Special Counsel, which he told us was his goal in making the disclosure,” the report says. “What was not permitted was the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome,” it adds. After Comey’s firing, the FBI determined that four of the memos contained information classified at either the “secret” or “confidential” level. The memo about the Flynn interaction that Comey sent to Richman did not contain any classified information, the report said. Comey said he considered his memos to be personal rather than government documents, and that it never would’ve occurred to him to give them back to the FBI after he was fired. The inspector general’s office disagreed, citing policy that FBI employees must give up all documents containing FBI information once they leave the bureau. FBI agents retrieved four of Comey’s memos from his house weeks after he was fired.The office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz also is investigating the FBI’s Russia investigation and expected to wrap up soon. Last year, the watchdog office concluded that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe had misrepresented under oath his involvement in a news media disclosure, and referred him for possible prosecution. That matter remains open with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington. By Eric Tucker Associated Press Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Ex-FBI official: ‘Crime may have been committed’ by Donald Trump
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said in an interview that aired Sunday that a “crime may have been committed” when President Donald Trump fired the head of the FBI and tried to publicly undermine an investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia. McCabe also said in the interview with “60 Minutes” that the FBI had good reason to open a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump was in league with Russia, and therefore a possible national security threat, following the May 2017 firing of then-FBI Director James Comey. “And the idea is, if the president committed obstruction of justice, fired the director of the of the FBI to negatively impact or to shut down our investigation of Russia’s malign activity and possibly in support of his campaign, as a counterintelligence investigator you have to ask yourself, “Why would a president of the United States do that?” McCabe said. He added: “So all those same sorts of facts cause us to wonder is there an inappropriate relationship, a connection between this president and our most fearsome enemy, the government of Russia?” Asked whether Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was onboard with the obstruction and counterintelligence investigations, McCabe replied, “Absolutely.” A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment Sunday night. McCabe also revealed that when Trump told Rosenstein to put in writing his concerns with Comey — a document the White House initially held up as justification for his firing — the president explicitly asked the Justice Department official to reference Russia in the memo. Rosenstein did not want to, McCabe said, and the memo that was made public upon Comey’s dismissal did not mention Russia and focused instead on Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email server investigation. “He explained to the president that he did not need Russia in his memo,” McCabe said. “And the president responded, “I understand that, I am asking you to put Russia in the memo anyway.” Trump said in a TV interview days after Comey’s firing that he was thinking of “this Russia thing” when he fired Comey. Those actions, including a separate request by Trump that the FBI end an investigation into his first national adviser, Michael Flynn, made the FBI concerned that the president was illegally trying to obstruct the Russia probe. “Put together, these circumstances were articulable facts that indicated that a crime may have been committed,” McCabe said. “The president may have been engaged in obstruction of justice in the firing of Jim Comey.” McCabe was fired from the Justice Department last year after being accused of misleading investigators during an internal probe into a news media disclosure. The allegation was referred to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington for possible prosecution, but no charges have been brought. McCabe has denied having intentionally lied and said Sunday that he believes his firing was politically motivated. “I believe I was fired because I opened a case against the president of the United States,” he said. In the interview Sunday, McCabe also said Rosenstein in the days after Comey’s firing had proposed wearing a wire to secretly record the president. McCabe said he took the remark seriously, though the Justice Department last September — responding last September to a New York Times report that first revealed the conversation — issued a statement from an unnamed official who was in the room and interpreted the remark as sarcastic. McCabe said the remark was made during a conversation about why Trump had fired Comey. “And in the context of that conversation, the deputy attorney general offered to wear a wire into the White House. He said, “‘I never get searched when I go into the White House. I could easily wear a recording device. They wouldn’t know it was there,’” McCabe said. In excerpts released last week by CBS News, McCabe also described a conversation in which Rosenstein had broached the idea of invoking the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. The Justice Department said in a statement that Rosenstein, based on his dealings with Trump, does not see cause to seek the removal of the president. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who is seeking her party’s nomination for president, told reporters after a campaign event Sunday in Las Vegas that if the people around Trump believe he cannot fulfill the obligations of his office, then they have a duty to invoke the 25th Amendment. A favorite target of Trump’s ire, Warren said she has no special knowledge on whether there are grounds to remove Trump from office but said that “there are a whole lot of people who do see him every day who evidently were talking about invoking the 25th Amendment.” Republished with permission from the Associated Press.
