[ad_1]
Former President Donald Trump has been charged with 34 criminal counts in an indictment unsealed Tuesday.
Read the indictment here.
[ad_2]
Tag: Indictments
-
READ: Trump indictment and statement of facts related to hush money payment | CNN Politics
-
Inside the long and winding road to Trump’s historic indictment | CNN Politics
[ad_1]
CNN
—
The New York grand jury hearing the case against Donald Trump was set to break for several weeks. The former president’s lawyers believed on Wednesday afternoon they had at least a small reprieve from a possible indictment. Trump praised the perceived delay.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had other plans.
Thursday afternoon, Bragg asked the grand jury to return an historic indictment against Trump, the first time that a current or former US president has been indicted. The surprise move was the final twist in an investigation that’s taken a long and winding road to the history-making charges that were returned this week.
An indictment had been anticipated early last week – including by Trump himself, who promoted a theory he would be “arrested” – as law enforcement agencies prepared for the logistics of arraigning a former president. But after the testimony of Robert Costello – a lawyer who appeared on Trump’s behalf seeking to undercut the credibility of Trump’s former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen – Bragg appeared to hit the pause button.
Costello’s testimony caused the district attorney’s office to reassess whether Costello should be the last witness the grand jury heard before prosecutors asked them to vote on an indictment, multiple sources told CNN.
So they waited. The next day the grand jury was scheduled to meet, jurors were told not to come in. Bragg and his top prosecutors huddled the rest of the week and over the weekend to determine a strategy that would effectively counter Costello’s testimony in the grand jury.
They called two additional witnesses. David Pecker, the former head of the company that publishes the National Enquirer, appeared on Monday. The other witness, who has still not been identified, testified on Thursday for 35 minutes in front of the grand jury – just before prosecutors asked them to vote on the indictment of more than 30 counts, the sources said.
Trump and his attorneys, thinking Bragg might be reconsidering a potential indictment, were all caught off-guard, sources said. Some of Trump’s advisers had even left Palm Beach on Wednesday following news reports that the grand jury was taking a break, the sources added.
After the indictment, Trump ate dinner with his wife, Melania, Thursday evening and smiled while he greeted guests at his Mar-a-Lago club, according to a source familiar with the event.
The Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into Trump has been ongoing for years, dating back to Bragg’s predecessor, Cy Vance. Its focus shifted by mid-2020 to the accuracy of the Trump Org.’s financial statements. At the time, prosecutors debated legal theories around the hush money payments and thought they were a long shot. At several points, the wide-ranging investigation seemed to have been winding down – to the point that prosecutors resigned in protest last year. One even wrote a book critical of Bragg for not pursuing charges against Trump released just last month.
The specific charges against Trump still remain under seal and are expected to be unveiled Tuesday when Trump is set to be arraigned.
There are questions swirling even among Trump critics over whether the Manhattan district attorney’s case is the strongest against the former president amid additional investigations in Washington, DC, and Georgia over both his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents at his Florida resort.
Trump could still face charges in those probes, too, which are separate from the New York indictment.
But it’s the Manhattan indictment, dating back to a payment made before the 2016 presidential election, that now sees Trump facing down criminal charges for the first time as he runs again for the White House in 2024.
It was just weeks before the 2016 election when Cohen, Trump’s then-lawyer, paid adult film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep silent about an alleged affair with Trump. (Trump has denied the affair.) Cohen was later reimbursed $420,000 by the Trump Organization to cover the original payment and tax liabilities and to reward him with a bonus.
That payment and reimbursement are keys at issue in the investigation.
Cohen also helped arrange a $150,000 payment from the publisher of the National Enquirer to Karen McDougal to kill her story claiming a 10-month affair with Trump. Trump also denies an affair with McDougal. During the grand jury proceedings, the district attorney’s office has asked questions about the “catch and kill” deal with McDougal.
When Cohen was charged by federal prosecutors in New York in 2018 and pleaded guilty, he said he was acting at the direction of Trump when he made the payment.
At the time, federal prosecutors had determined they could not seek to indict Trump in the scheme because of US Justice Department regulations against charging a sitting president. In 2021, after Trump left the White House, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York decided not to pursue a case against Trump, according to a recent book from CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig.
But then-Manhattan District Attorney Vance’s team had already picked up the investigation into the hush money payments and begun looking at potential state law violations. By summer 2019, they sent subpoenas to the Trump Org., other witnesses, and met with Cohen, who was serving a three-year prison sentence.
Vance’s investigation broadened to the Trump Org.’s finances. New York prosecutors went to the Supreme Court twice to enforce a subpoena for Trump’s tax records from his long-time accounting firm Mazars USA. The Trump Org. and its long-time chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg were indicted on tax fraud and other charges in June 2021 for allegedly running an off-the-books compensation scheme for more than a decade.
Weisselberg pleaded guilty to the charges last year and is currently serving a five-month sentence at Rikers Island. Prosecutors had hoped to flip Weisselberg to cooperate against Trump, but he would not tie Trump to any wrongdoing.
Disagreements about the pace of the investigation had caused at least three career prosecutors to move off the investigation. They were concerned that the investigation was moving too quickly, without clear evidence to support possible charges, CNN and others reported last year.
Vance authorized the attorneys on the team to present evidence to the grand jury near the end of 2021, but he did not seek an indictment. Those close to Vance say he wanted to leave the decision to Bragg, the newly elected district attorney.
Bragg, a Democrat, took office in January 2022. Less than two months into his tenure, two top prosecutors who had worked on the Trump case under Vance abruptly resigned amid a disagreement in the office over the strength of the case against Trump.
On February 22, 2022, Bragg informed the prosecution team that he was not prepared to authorize charges against Trump, CNN reported. The prosecutors, Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz, resigned the next day.
In his resignation letter, Pomerantz said he believed Trump was guilty of numerous felonies and said that Bragg’s decision to not move forward with an indictment at the time was “wrong” and a “grave failure of justice.”
“I and others believe that your decision not to authorize prosecution now will doom any future prospects that Mr. Trump will be prosecuted for the criminal conduct we have been investigating,” Pomerantz wrote in the letter, which was reviewed by CNN.
At that point, the investigation was focused on Trump’s financial statements and whether he knowingly misled lenders, insurers, and others by providing them false or misleading information about the value of his properties.
Prosecutors were building a wide-ranging falsified business records case to include years of financial statements and the hush money payments, people with direct knowledge of the investigation told CNN. But at the time, those prosecutors believed there was a good chance a felony charge related to the hush money payment would be dismissed by a judge because it was a novel legal theory.
Dunne and Pomerantz pushed to seek an indictment of Trump tied to the sweeping falsified business records case, but others, including some career prosecutors, were skeptical that they could win a conviction at trial, in part because of the difficulty in proving Trump’s criminal intent.
Despite the resignations of the prosecutors on the Trump case, Bragg’s office reiterated at the time that the investigation was ongoing.
“Investigations are not linear so we are following the leads in front of us. That’s what we’re doing,” Bragg told CNN in April 2022. “The investigation is very much ongoing.”
At the same time that Bragg’s criminal investigation into Trump lingered last year, another prosecution against the Trump Org. moved forward. In December, two Trump Org. entities were convicted at trial on 17 counts and were ordered to pay $1.6 million, the maximum penalty, the following month.
Trump was not personally charged in that case. But it appeared to embolden Bragg’s team to sharpen their focus back to Trump and the hush money payment.
Cohen was brought back in to meet with Manhattan prosecutors. Cohen had previously met with prosecutors in the district attorney’s office 13 times over the course of the investigation. But the January meeting was the first in more than a year – and a clear sign of the direction prosecutors were taking.
As investigators inched closer to a charging decision, Bragg was faced with more public pressure to indict Trump: Pomerantz, the prosecutor who had resigned a year prior, released a book about the investigation that argued Trump should be charged and criticized Bragg for failing to do so.
“Every single member of the prosecution team thought that his guilt was established,” Pomerantz said in a February interview on “CNN This Morning.”
Asked about Bragg’s hesitance, Pomerantz said: “I can’t speak in detail about what went through his mind. I can surmise from what happened at the time and statements that he’s made since that he had misgivings about the strength of the case.”
Bragg responded in a statement saying that more work was needed on the case. “Mr. Pomerantz’s plane wasn’t ready for takeoff,” Bragg said.
Prosecutors continued bringing in witnesses, including Pecker, the former head of American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer. In February, Trump Org. controller Jeffrey McConney testified before the grand jury. Members of Trump’s 2016 campaign, including Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks, also appeared. In March, Daniels met with prosecutors, her attorney said.
And Cohen, after his numerous meetings with prosecutors, finally testified before the grand jury in March.
The second week of March, prosecutors gave the clearest sign to date that the investigation was nearing its conclusion – they invited Trump to appear before the grand jury.
Potential defendants in New York are required by law to be notified and invited to appear before a grand jury weighing charges.
Behind the scenes, Trump attorney Susan Necheles told CNN she met with New York prosecutors to argue why Trump shouldn’t be indicted and that prosecutors didn’t articulate the specific charges they are considering.
Trump, meanwhile, took to his social media to predict his impending indictment. In a post attacking Bragg on March 18, Trump said the “leading Republican candidate and former president of the United States will be arrested on Tuesday of next week.”
“Protest, take our nation back,” Trump added, echoing the calls he made while he tried to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump’s prediction would turn out to be premature.
Trump’s call for protests after a potential indictment led to meetings between senior staff members from the district attorney’s office, the New York Police Department and the New York State Court Officers – who provide security at the criminal court building in lower Manhattan.
Trump’s lawyers also made a last-ditch effort to fend off an indictment. At the behest of Trump’s team, Costello, who advised Cohen in 2018, provided emails and testified to the grand jury on Monday, March 20, alleging that Cohen had said in 2018 that he had decided on his own to make the payment to Daniels.
Costello’s testimony appeared to delay a possible indictment – for a brief time at least.
During the void, Trump continued to launch verbal insults against Bragg, calling him a “degenerate psychopath.” And four Republican chairmen of the most powerful House committees wrote to Bragg asking him to testify, which Bragg’s office said was unprecedented interference in a local investigation. An envelope containing a suspicious white powder and a death threat to Bragg was to delivered to the building where the grand jury meets – the powder was deemed nonhazardous.
The grand jury would not meet again until Monday, March 27, when Pecker was ushered back to the grand jury in a government vehicle with tinted windows in a failed effort to evade detection by the media camped outside of the building where the grand jury meets.
Pecker, a longtime friend of Trump’s who had a history of orchestrating so-called “catch and kill” deals while at the National Enquirer, was involved with the Daniels’ deal from the beginning.
Two days after Pecker’s testimony, there were multiple reports that the grand jury was going into a pre-planned break in April. The grand jury was set to meet Thursday but it was not expected to hear the Trump case.
Instead, the grand jury heard from one last witness in the Trump case on Thursday, whose identity is still unknown. And then the grand jury shook up the American political system by voting to indict a former president and 2024 candidate for the White House.
[ad_2]
-
Who is Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA leading the historic criminal case against Trump? | CNN Politics
[ad_1]
CNN
—
Alvin Bragg, a former New York state and federal prosecutor, drew national attention when he made history as the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office’s first Black district attorney. Now, he is back in the spotlight after a grand jury voted to indict Donald Trump following a yearslong investigation into the former president’s alleged role in a hush money scheme.
The indictment was unsealed Tuesday as Trump was arraigned in a Manhattan criminal court, unveiling the 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records made against the former president.
In Bragg’s first comments following the arraignment, he called the charges the “bread and butter” of his office’s work.
“At its core, this case today is one with allegations like so many of our white collar cases,” he said.
Bragg inherited the probe from his predecessor, Cy Vance, who began the investigation when Trump was still in the White House.
Trump, who pleaded not guilty to the charges, cast Bragg’s case as political and called for his resignation in a speech Tuesday evening.
“I never thought anything like this could happen in America, never thought it could happen,” Trump said. “The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.”
In March, Trump announced on social media, ahead of any details from Bragg’s office, that he anticipated he would be arrested within days in connection with the investigation. The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined at the time to comment on the former president’s remarks.
The high-profile case relates to a $130,000 payment made by Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen to adult film star Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election in exchange for her silence about an alleged affair with Trump a decade prior. Trump has continuously denied having an affair with Daniels.
The indictment is historic, marking the first time a former US president and major presidential candidate has ever been criminally charged.
In the lead-up to Bragg’s decision, sources told CNN that city, state and federal law enforcement agencies in New York City had been discussing how to prepare for a possible Trump indictment, with the former president having called on his supporters to protest if he were to be arrested.
Discussions between the New York Police Department and the FBI also have focused on the possibility of increased threats against Bragg and his staff from Trump’s supporters in wake of an indictment, sources told CNN. Bragg said in an email to staff earlier in March that his office will “not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York.”
Bragg has aggressively pursued Trump and other progressive priorities so far in his tenure, including not prosecuting some low-level crimes and finding alternatives to incarceration.
Before Bragg’s swearing-in last year, he had already worked on cases related to Trump and other notable names in his role as a New York state chief deputy attorney general.
He said he had helped sue the Trump administration more than 100 times, as well as led a team that sued the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which resulted in the former president paying $2 million to a number of charities and the foundation’s dissolution.
Bragg also led the suit against disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein and his company, which alleged a hostile work environment.
The Harvard-educated attorney previously served as an assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York, worked as a civil rights lawyer and as a professor and co-director of the New York Law School Racial Justice Project, where he represented family members of Eric Garner, who died in 2014 after being placed in an unauthorized chokehold by a then-police officer, in a lawsuit against the City of New York seeking information.
Bragg emerged the winner in a crowded Democratic primary in the summer of 2021 to lead the coveted Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, for which Vance had announced earlier that year he would not seek reelection. While campaigning, he often spoke about his experience growing up in Harlem, saying he was once a 15-year-old stopped “numerous times at gunpoint by police.”
“In addition to being the first Black district attorney, I think I’ll probably be the first district attorney who’s had police point a gun at him,” he said during a victory speech, following his historic election to the office. “I think I’ll be the first district attorney who’s had a homicide victim on his doorstop. I think I’ll be the first district attorney in Manhattan who’s had a semi-automatic weapon pointed at him. I think I’ll be the first district attorney in Manhattan who’s had a loved one reenter from incarceration and stay with him. And I’m going to govern from that perspective.”
Bragg ran as a reformer, releasing a memo just days after taking office detailing new charging, bail, plea and sentencing policies – a plan that drew criticism from police union leaders. He said his office would not prosecute marijuana misdemeanors, fare evading and prostitution, among other crimes.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
[ad_2]
-
Takeaways from the indictment of Donald Trump in the classified documents case | CNN Politics
[ad_1]
CNN
—
Special counsel Jack Smith returned an historic indictment against former President Donald Trump that was unsealed Friday, the first time that a former president has been charged with crimes in federal court.
Trump faces a total of 37 counts, including 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information. His aide, Walt Nauta, faces six counts, including several obstruction and concealment-related charges stemming from the alleged conduct.
“We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone applying those laws, collecting facts, that’s what determines the outcome of an investigation,” Smith said in a short appearance in Washington, DC, on Friday. “Nothing more and nothing less.”
The 49-page indictment included new details about how Trump allegedly took classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office in 2021 and resisted the government’s attempts to retrieve the classified materials. In his statement, Smith encouraged the public to read it “in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged.”
Here are the key takeaways from the indictment:
Trump and Nauta face nearly a half-dozen charges relating to obstruction and concealment of documents in the Justice Department’s probe, which will help prosecutors make the argument that Trump’s alleged conduct went well beyond the classified document snafus involving President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence.
The indictment lays out how Nauta allegedly moved the boxes out of the storage room where a Trump attorney was set to search for classified materials in a response to a May 2022 subpoena, and how the aide only moved some of those boxes back before the attorney’s search. Prosecutors, pointing to phone calls and other evidence, allege that Nauta moved these boxes at Trump’s direction.
To bolster the narrative that Trump knew he was concealing materials that were being sought in a grand jury subpoena, the indictment points to a conversation Trump had with his attorneys about how to respond to the subpoena, in which Trump allegedly suggested that his team could not turn over the classified documents the subpoena demanded.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” Trump is alleged to have said.
After his attorney collected 38 records that would be turned over to the DOJ, the attorney discussed with Trump storing them in his hotel room. Trump, during the back and forth, made a “plucking motion,” the indictment said, which the attorney memorialized as meaning: “why don’t you take them with you to your hotel room and if there’s anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out.”
Trump is accused of showing classified documents on two occasions to others.
The episodes described in the indictment suggest Trump knew the information was classified and highly sensitive and may help prosecutors explain to a jury why Trump’s alleged willful retention of national defense information is such a serious crime.
One of those occasions that Trump allegedly showed others classified records he took from the White House was a 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, when Trump “showed and described a ‘plan of attack’ that Trump said was prepared by the Defense Department,” a meeting CNN first reported was captured on an audio recording.
“Trump also said ‘as president I could have declassified it,’ and ‘Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret,’” according to the indictment.
According to prosecutors, in August or September 2021 Trump also showed a document at Bedminster to a representative of his political action committee: a classified map related to a military operation and “told the representative that he should not be showing it to the representative and that the representative should not get too close.’”
The indictment says Trump retained documents related to national defense that were classified at the highest levels and some so sensitive they required special handling.
That includes one Top Secret document, dated June 2020, “concerning nuclear capabilities of a foreign county” found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, according to the indictment.
This document was not only classified as “Top Secret” but included additional restrictions of “ORCON” and “NOFORN.”
Documents designated as ORCON cannot be disseminated outside of the department issuing it without approval. Those labeled NOFORN cannot be shared with foreign nationals.
For the prosecution, the Justice Department has singled out 31 documents in particular for each of the 31 willful retention counts. Several of the records concern the military capabilities of various countries, with one of the records – marked as NOFORN – also including handwritten annotation in a black marker.
The materials include White House intelligence briefings “related to various foreign countries.” One record relates to the “timeline and details of attack in a foreign country,” while another December 2019 document concerns “foreign country support of terrorist acts against the United States interests.”
Nationally security law experts previously told CNN that when prosecutors are investigating a classified materials case, they look for so-called “Goldilocks documents” that are sensitive enough to drive home the seriousness of the crime but not so sensitive that they cannot be used in a trial.
In addition to the timeline in the charging papers – sometimes broken down by the minute explaining how boxes with classified information moved around Trump’s Florida resort after Trump allegedly brought them there from the White House – the indictment includes six pictures that allowed prosecutors to vividly make their case that classified documents had been moved all over Mar-a-Lago.
The photos show boxes in a ballroom, a basement storage room – even in a bathroom and shower inside the Mar-a-Lago club’s Lake Room, according to the indictment.
In one photo, there are boxes of spilled documents on the floor. The indictment states that Nauta found the contents of several boxes spilled on the floor of the storage room in December 2021, including a “Five Eyes” classified document, which means intelligence only shared among five countries: the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Nauta allegedly texted two photos of the spill to another Trump employee, prosecutors allege. The indictment includes that photo – illustrating how the classified documents Trump kept were interspersed with newspapers and photographs.
With the 31 documents the indictment describes as underlying the 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information, the indictment also lists when those documents were recovered by the government. Twenty-one were retrieved on August 8, 2022 – the date of the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago – and 10 were retrieved on June 3, 2022, when Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran turned over classified documents in response to the Justice Department’s May 2022 subpoena.
The indictment does not, however, list in the charges that any of the classified documents were turned over in January 2022, when Trump handed over 15 boxes to the National Archives. The Archives found nearly 200 classified documents in those boxes, according to the indictment, including 30 marked “top secret.”
It’s notable that the indictment does not include any documents retrieved in January 2022, given that Trump and his allies in Congress have attacked the Justice Department for not charging Biden or others who had unauthorized classified documents in their possession.
The difference of course, is that Biden – as well as former Pence – immediately contacted the National Archives and offered to return the documents, while prosecutors allege that Trump obstructed efforts to retrieve the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
A separate special counsel investigation into Biden’s handling of documents remains ongoing, while the Justice Department told Pence’s attorney no charges would be brought over the discovery of classified documents in his Indiana home.
Trump has been summoned to appear in court in southern Florida at 3 p.m. ET Tuesday, where he will appear before a magistrate judge to hear the charges against him and is expected to enter a not guilty plea.
On Friday, Smith pledged that his office would “seek a speedy trial on this matter consistent with the public interest and the rights of the accused.”
Just how quickly the case goes to trial is still an open question, as the discovery process for this case could be lengthy. It will be further complicated by the fact that this prosecution involves classified materials.
The Justice Department believes it will take prosecutors 21 business days – about a month – in court to present their case to a jury at trial, according to a document prosecutors filed with the court alongside the indictment. The estimate does not include how long the defense might take to present its case, which includes the possibility that Trump could chose to testify in his own defense.
The case has been assigned to federal District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump-appointed judge who raised eyebrows last year when she oversaw court proceedings related to the Trump’s efforts to appoint a so-called special master to review the documents seized in the FBI’s August search of Mar-a-Lago. Her move to order the third-party review of the search was overturned by a conservative federal appeals court.
Trump already has a trial scheduled for March 2024 in his New York criminal case, and additional investigations into the former president – including from the Fulton County district attorney and the special counsel’s separate January 6 probe – are still looming.
[ad_2]
-
Trump legal team will look to challenge ‘every potential issue’ once indictment is unsealed | CNN Politics
[ad_1]
Washington
CNN
—
Donald Trump’s legal team will look to challenge “every potential issue” in his indictment once the charges are unsealed, an attorney for the former president said Sunday.
“We’re not doing anything at the arraignment because that would be showmanship and nothing more because we haven’t even seen the indictment yet. We will take the indictment, we will dissect it, the team will look at every – every – potential issue that we will be able to challenge and we will challenge it,” Joe Tacopina told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
Tacopina and other Trump lawyers have done several TV interviews in anticipation of the former President’s first appearance in court Tuesday, when he will learn the charges that the Manhattan grand jury has approved against him.
At times, the lawyers have vowed to ask for the charges to be dismissed. But the full slate of charges still aren’t known. And crucially, a judge will ultimately determine if the law is sound enough for the case to move forward to trial.
Former Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said in an interview with NBC News on Sunday, “We can speculate on what evidence we think they may or may not have, but even with the indictment published, we really will not know what the district attorney’s evidence is and what they would present at trial.”
Vance’s team investigated the case but did not charge it, leaving it under the purview of his successor, Alvin Bragg.
Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in the indictment. The investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office began when Trump was still in the White House and relates to a $130,000 payment made by his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to adult film star Stormy Daniels in late October 2016, days before the presidential election, to silence her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump a decade earlier.
Trump has denied the affair.
The Trump team’s court strategy could center around challenging the case because it may rely on business record entries that prosecutors tie to hush money payments to Daniels seven years ago, beyond the statute of limitations for a criminal case.
Tacopina suggested in TV interviews Sunday that the statute of limitations may be passed, and said the Trump businesses didn’t make false entries.
“They’re not false entries. But assuming they were, they’re misdemeanors way beyond the statute of limitations, so they had to cobble them together to try and get a felony,” he said.
Tacopina on Sunday also said a request to move the case to a different New York City borough isn’t on the table yet for Trump’s legal team.
“There’s been no discussion of that whatsoever,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in another interview. “It’s way too premature to start worrying about venue changes until we really see the indictment and grapple with the legal issues.”
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct Cy Vance’s comments to NBC.
[ad_2]
-
Trump should not be trusted with national secrets if charges prove true, his ex-Defense secretary says | CNN Politics
[ad_1]
CNN
—
Donald Trump’s onetime Defense secretary said Sunday that the former president should not be trusted with the nation’s secrets again should the allegations made in his federal indictment over his handling of classified documents prove true.
“Based on his actions – again, if proven true – under the indictment by the special counsel, no,” Mark Esper told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
“It’s just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation security risk. You cannot have these documents floating around. They need to be secured,” he said.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 37 federal charges, including 31 counts of “willful retention of national defense information.” The former president denies any wrongdoing.
Esper’s critical remarks about his onetime boss follow damning language by another high-profile Trump administration official – former Attorney General Bill Barr – who said last week that Trump was “toast” if even half of the details in his indictment were true.
“The revelations are very troubling, disturbing,” Esper said Sunday when asked by Tapper if Trump’s actions put America’s national security at risk. “Yes, I do. If the allegations are true that it contained information about our nation’s security, about our vulnerabilities, about other items, it could be quite harmful to the nation. And, look, no one is above the law. And so I think this process needs to play out and people held to account, the president held to account.”
Trump fired Esper as his Defense secretary in November 2020, shortly after Joe Biden was projected as the winner of the presidential election.
Meanwhile, in a separate interview on “State of the Union,” House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner said he was “not going to defend the behavior” listed in the indictment against Trump but the government would need to prove its case as the legal process moves forward.
The Ohio Republican also said he had “grave concern” about the way documents were stored not just as it pertained to Trump but to Biden as well. A separate special counsel is leading an investigation into Obama-era classified documents found at Biden’s home and former private office.
‘Grave concern’: GOP House Intel Chair on classified Trump docs – full interview
“The chair and ranking (member) of both the House Intel and Senate Intel (committees) have seen some of the documents, both from the Biden cache and the Trump documents itself. And I can tell you that, from having looked at both of those documents, I have grave concern about both of those type of documents being out in an unsecured place,” Turner said. “Both of them included details of national security issues that should not have been outside of a controlled environment.”
Turner also previewed a closed-door meeting Tuesday his committee will be holding with John Durham, the special counsel who concluded in a report released last month that the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.
“We’re pulling him in to our committee to say, ‘OK, now that we have seen that there were abuses, that this was wrong, and that there are problems with (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) itself, what are the recommendations that you think we should pursue?’” Turner said.
Durham is expected to testify publicly before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
His 300-plus page report states that the FBI used “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” to launch its Trump-Russia investigation but used a different standard when weighing concerns about alleged election interference regarding Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Durham, however, did not recommend any new charges against individuals or “wholesale changes” about how the FBI handles politically charged investigations, despite strongly criticizing the agency’s behavior.
This report has been updated with additional details.
[ad_2]
-
Donald Trump Fast Facts | CNN Politics
[ad_1]
CNN
—
Here’s a look at the life of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States.
Birth date: June 14, 1946
Birth place: New York, New York
Birth name: Donald John Trump
Father: Fred Trump, real estate developer
Mother: Mary (Macleod) Trump
Marriages: Melania (Knauss) Trump (January 22, 2005-present); Marla (Maples) Trump (December 1993-June 1999, divorced); Ivana (Zelnicek) Trump (1977-1990, divorced)
Children: with Melania Trump: Barron, March 20, 2006; with Marla Maples: Tiffany, October 13, 1993; with Ivana Trump: Eric, 1984; Ivanka, October 30, 1981; Donald Jr., December 31, 1977
Education: Attended Fordham University; University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Finance, B.S. in Economics, 1968
As Trump evolved from real estate developer to reality television star, he turned his name into a brand. Licensed Trump products have included board games, steaks, cologne, vodka, furniture and menswear.
He has portrayed himself in cameo appearances in movies and on television, including “Zoolander,” “Sex and the City” and “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”
Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” was first used by Ronald Reagan while he was running against President Jimmy Carter.
For details on investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, visit 2016 Presidential Election Investigation Fast Facts.
1970s – After college, works with his father on apartment complexes in Queens and Brooklyn.
1973 – Trump and his father are named in a Justice Department lawsuit alleging Trump property managers violated the Fair Housing Act by turning away potential African American tenants. The Trumps deny the company discriminates and file a $100 million countersuit, which is later dismissed. The case is settled in 1975, and the Trumps agree to provide weekly lists of vacancies to Black community organizations.
1976 – Trump and his father partner with the Hyatt Corporation, purchasing the Commodore Hotel, an aging midtown Manhattan property. The building is revamped and opens four years later as the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The project kickstarts Trump’s career as a Manhattan developer.
1983-1990 – He builds/purchases multiple properties in New York City, including Trump Tower and the Plaza Hotel, and also opens casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, including the Trump Taj Mahal and the Trump Plaza. Trump buys the New Jersey Generals football team, part of the United States Football League, which folds after three seasons.
1985 – Purchases Mar-a-Lago, an oceanfront estate in Palm Beach, Florida. It is renovated and opens as a private club in 1995.
1987 – Trump’s first book, “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” is published, and becomes a bestseller. The Donald J. Trump Foundation is established in order to donate a portion of profits from book sales to charities.
1990 – Nearly $1 billion in personal debt, Trump reaches an agreement with bankers allowing him to avoid declaring personal bankruptcy.
1991 – The Trump Taj Mahal files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
1992 – The Trump Plaza and the Trump Castle casinos file for bankruptcy.
1996 – Buys out and becomes executive producer of the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants.
October 7, 1999 – Tells CNN’s Larry King that he is going to form a presidential exploratory committee and wants to challenge Pat Buchanan for the Reform Party nomination.
February 14, 2000 – Says that he is abandoning his bid for the presidency, blaming discord within the Reform Party.
January 2004 – “The Apprentice,” a reality show featuring aspiring entrepreneurs competing for Trump’s approval, premieres on NBC.
November 21, 2004 – Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
2005 – Establishes Trump University, which offers seminars in real estate investment.
February 13, 2009 – Announces his resignation from his position as chairman of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Days later, the company files for bankruptcy protection.
March 17, 2011 – During an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Trump questions whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States.
June 16, 2015 – Announces that he is running for president during a speech at Trump Tower. He pledges to implement policies that will boost the economy and says he will get tough on immigration. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re sending people who have lots of problems,” Trump says. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”
June 28, 2015 – Says he’s giving up the TV show “The Apprentice” to run for president.
June 29, 2015 – NBCUniversal says it is cutting its business ties to Trump and won’t air the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants because of “derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants.”
July 8, 2015 – In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Trump says he “can’t guarantee” all of his employees have legal status in the United States. This is in response to questions about a Washington Post report about undocumented immigrants working at the Old Post Office construction site in Washington, DC, which Trump is converting into a hotel.
July 22, 2015 – Trump’s financial disclosure report is made public by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
August 6, 2015 – During the first 2016 Republican debate, Trump is questioned about a third party candidacy, his attitude towards women and his history of donating money to Democratic politicians. He tells moderator Megyn Kelly of Fox News he feels he is being mistreated. The following day, Trump tells CNN’s Don Lemon that Kelly was singling him out for attack, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
September 11, 2015 – Trump announces he has purchased NBC’s half of the Miss Universe Organization, which organizes the annual Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants.
December 7, 2015 – Trump’s campaign puts out a press release calling for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
May 26, 2016 – Secures enough delegates to clinch the Republican Party nomination.
July 16, 2016 – Introduces Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate.
July 19, 2016 – Becomes the Republican Party nominee for president.
September 13, 2016 – During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says his office is investigating Trump’s charitable foundation “to make sure it’s complying with the laws governing charities in New York.”
October 1, 2016 – The New York Times reports Trump declared a $916 million loss in 1995 which could have allowed him to legally skip paying federal income taxes for years. The report is based on a financial document mailed to the newspaper by an anonymous source.
October 7, 2016 – Unaired footage from 2005 surfaces of Trump talking about trying to have sex with a married woman and being able to grope women. In footage obtained by The Washington Post, Trump is heard off-camera discussing women in vulgar terms during the taping of a segment for “Access Hollywood.” In a taped response, Trump declares, “I said it, I was wrong and I apologize.”
October 9, 2016 – During the second presidential debate, CNN’s Cooper asks Trump about his descriptions of groping and kissing women without their consent in the “Access Hollywood” footage. Trump denies that he has ever engaged in such behavior and declares the comments were “locker room talk.” After the debate, 11 women step forward to claim that they were sexually harassed or sexually assaulted by the real estate developer. Trump says the stories aren’t true.
November 8, 2016 – Elected president of the United States. Trump will be the first president who has never held elected office, a top government post or a military rank.
November 18, 2016 – Trump agrees to pay $25 million to settle three lawsuits against Trump University. About 6,000 former students are covered by the settlement.
December 24, 2016 – Trump says he will dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation “to avoid even the appearance of any conflict with my role as President.” A spokeswoman for the New York Attorney General’s Office says that the foundation cannot legally close until investigators conclude their probe of the charity.
January 10, 2017 – CNN reports that intelligence officials briefed Trump on a dossier that contains allegations about his campaign’s ties to Russia and unverified claims about his personal life. The author of the dossier is a former British spy who was hired by a research firm that had been funded by both political parties to conduct opposition research on Trump.
January 20, 2017 – Takes the oath of office from Chief Justice John Roberts during an inauguration ceremony at the Capitol.
January 23, 2017 – Trump signs an executive action withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal negotiated by the Obama administration and awaiting congressional approval.
January 27, 2017 – Trump signs an executive order halting all refugee arrivals for 120 days and banning travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days. Additionally, refugees from Syria are barred indefinitely from entering the United States. The order is challenged in court.
February 13, 2017 – Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigns amid accusations he lied about his communications with Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. Flynn later pleads guilty to lying to the FBI.
May 3, 2017 – FBI Director James Comey confirms that there is an ongoing investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia during a hearing on Capitol Hill. Less than a week later, Trump fires Comey, citing a DOJ memo critical of the way he handled the investigation into Clinton’s emails.
May 2017 – Shortly after Trump fires Comey, the FBI opens an investigation into whether Trump “had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests,” citing former law enforcement officials and others the paper said were familiar with the probe.
May 17, 2017 – Former FBI Director Robert Mueller is appointed as special counsel to lead the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including potential collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein makes the appointment because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from investigations into Trump’s campaign.
May 19, 2017 – Departs on his first foreign trip as president. The nine-day, five-country trip includes stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, a NATO summit in Brussels and a G7 summit in Sicily.
June 1, 2017 – Trump proclaims that the United States is withdrawing from the Paris climate accord but adds that he is open to renegotiating aspects of the environmental agreement, which was signed by 175 countries in 2016.
July 7, 2017 – Meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in person for the first time, on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany.
August 8, 2017 – In response to nuclear threats from North Korea, Trump warns that Pyongyang will “face fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Soon after Trump’s comments, North Korea issues a statement saying it is “examining the operational plan” to strike areas around the US territory of Guam.
August 15, 2017 – After a violent clash between neo-Nazi activists and counterprotesters leaves one dead in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump holds an impromptu press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower and declares that there were “fine people” on both sides.
August 25, 2017 – Trump’s first pardon is granted to former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt for disregarding a court order in a racial-profiling case. Trump did not consult with lawyers at the Justice Department before announcing his decision.
September 5, 2017 – The Trump administration announces that it is ending the DACA program, introduced by Obama to protect nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. Trump calls on Congress to introduce legislation that will prevent DACA recipients from being deported. Multiple lawsuits are filed opposing the policy in federal courts and judges delay the end of the program, asking the government to submit filings justifying the cancellation of DACA.
September 19, 2017 – In a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Trump refers to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man” and warns that the United States will “totally destroy North Korea” if forced to defend itself or its allies.
September 24, 2017 – The Trump administration unveils a third version of the travel ban, placing restrictions on travel by certain foreigners from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. (Chad is later removed after meeting security requirements.) One day before the revised ban is set to take effect, it is blocked nationwide by a federal judge in Hawaii. A judge in Maryland issues a similar ruling.
December 4, 2017 – The Supreme Court rules that the revised travel ban can take effect pending appeals.
December 6, 2017 – Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announces plans to relocate the US Embassy there.
January 11, 2018 – During a White House meeting on immigration reform, Trump reportedly refers to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries.”
January 12, 2018 – The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump allegedly had an affair with a porn star named Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels. The newspaper states that Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, arranged a $130,000 payment for a nondisclosure agreement weeks before Election Day in 2016. Trump denies the affair occurred. In March, Clifford sues Trump seeking to be released from the NDA. In response, Trump and his legal team agree outside of court not to sue or otherwise enforce the NDA. The suit is dismissed. A California Superior Court judge orders Trump to pay $44,100 to Clifford, to reimburse her attorneys’ fees in the legal battle surrounding her nondisclosure agreement.
March 13, 2018 – Trump announces in a tweet that he has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and will nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo as Tillerson’s replacement.
March 20, 2018 – A New York Supreme Court judge rules that a defamation lawsuit against Trump can move forward, ruling against a July 2017 motion to dismiss filed by Trump’s lawyers. The lawsuit, filed by Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” contestant, is related to sexual assault allegations. In November 2021, attorneys for Zervos announce she is dropping the lawsuit.
April 9, 2018 – The FBI raids Cohen’s office, home and a hotel room where he’d been staying while his house was renovated. The raid is related to a federal investigation of possible fraud and campaign finance violations.
April 13, 2018 – Trump authorizes joint military strikes in Syria with the UK and France after reports the government used chemical weapons on civilians in Douma.
May 7, 2018 – The Trump administration announces a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossings. Sessions says that individuals who violate immigration law will be criminally prosecuted and warns that parents could be separated from children.
May 8, 2018 – Trump announces that the United States is withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal.
June 8-9, 2018 – Before leaving for the G7 summit in Quebec City, Trump tells reporters that Russia should be reinstated in the group. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 led to Russia’s suspension. After leaving the summit, Trump tweets that he will not endorse the traditional G7 communique issued at the end of the meeting. The President singles out Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for making “false statements” at a news conference.
June 12, 2018 – Trump meets Kim in person for the first time during a summit in Singapore. They sign a four-point statement that broadly outlines the countries’ commitment to a peace process. The statement contains a pledge by North Korea to “work towards” complete denuclearization but the agreement does not detail how the international community will verify that Kim is ending his nuclear program.
June 26, 2018 – The Supreme Court upholds the Trump administration’s travel ban in a 5-4 ruling along party lines.
July 16, 2018 – During a joint news conference with Putin in Helsinki, Trump declines to endorse the US government’s assessment that Russia interfered in the election, saying he doesn’t “see any reason why” Russia would be responsible. The next day, Trump clarifies his remark, “The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.” He says he accepts the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the election but adds, “It could be other people also.”
August 21, 2018 – Cohen pleads guilty to eight federal charges, including two campaign finance violations. In court, he says that he orchestrated payments to silence women “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” On the same day, Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort is convicted on eight counts of federal financial crimes. On December 12, Cohen is sentenced to three years in prison.
October 2, 2018 – The New York Times details numerous tax avoidance schemes allegedly carried out by Trump and his siblings. In a tweet, Trump dismisses the article as a “very old, boring and often told hit piece.”
November 20, 2018 – Releases a statement backing Saudi Arabia in the wake of the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Virginia resident, killed in October at a Saudi consulate in Turkey. Khashoggi was a frequent critic of the Saudi regime. The Saudis initially denied any knowledge of his death, but then later said a group of rogue operators were responsible for his killing. US officials have speculated that such a mission, including the 15 men sent from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to murder him, could not have been carried out without the authorization of Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In the statement, Trump writes, “Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event, maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”
December 18, 2018 – The Donald J. Trump Foundation agrees to dissolve according to a document filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. The agreement allows the New York attorney general’s office to review the recipients of the charity’s assets.
December 22, 2018 – The longest partial government shutdown in US history begins after Trump demands lawmakers allocate $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall before agreeing to sign a federal funding package.
January 16, 2019 – After nearly two years of Trump administration officials denying that anyone involved in his campaign colluded with the Russians to help his candidacy, Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani, says “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or people in the campaign. I said the President of the United States.”
January 25, 2019 – The government shutdown ends when Trump signs a short-term spending measure, providing three weeks of stopgap funding while lawmakers work on a border security compromise. The bill does not include any wall funding.
February 15, 2019 – Trump declares a national emergency to allocate funds to build a wall on the border with Mexico. During the announcement, the President says he expects the declaration to be challenged in court. The same day, Trump signs a border security measure negotiated by Congress, with $1.375 billion set aside for barriers, averting another government shutdown.
February 18, 2019 – Attorneys general from 16 states file a lawsuit in federal court challenging Trump’s emergency declaration.
March 22, 2019 – Mueller ends his investigation and delivers his report to Attorney General William Barr. A senior Justice Department official tells CNN that there will be no further indictments.
March 24, 2019 – Barr releases a letter summarizing the principal conclusions from Mueller’s investigation. According to Barr’s four-page letter, the evidence was not sufficient to establish that members Trump’s campaign tacitly engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government to interfere with the election.
April 18, 2019 – A redacted version of the Mueller report is released. The first part of the 448-page document details the evidence gathered by Mueller’s team on potential conspiracy crimes and explains their decisions not to charge individuals associated with the campaign. The second part of the report outlines ten episodes involving possible obstruction of justice by the President. According to the report, Mueller’s decision not to charge Trump was rooted in Justice Department guidelines prohibiting the indictment of a sitting president. Mueller writes that he would have cleared Trump if the evidence warranted exoneration.
May 1, 2019 – The New York Times publishes a report that details how Giuliani, in his role as Trump’s personal attorney, is investigating allegations related to former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential Trump opponent in the 2020 presidential race. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma Holdings. In 2016, the elder Biden pressured Ukraine to oust a prosecutor who had investigated Burisma for corruption. Giuliani suggests that Biden’s move was motivated by a desire to protect his son from criminal charges. Giuliani’s claims are undermined after Bloomberg reports that the Burisma investigation was “dormant” when Biden pressed the prosecutor to resign.
June 12, 2019 – Trump says he may be willing to accept information about political rivals from a foreign government during an interview on ABC News, declaring that he’s willing to listen and wouldn’t necessarily call the FBI.
June 16, 2019 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveils a sign at the proposed site of a Golan Heights settlement to be named Trump Heights.
June 18, 2019 – Trump holds a rally in Orlando to publicize the formal launch of his reelection campaign.
June 28, 2019 – During a breakfast meeting at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman reportedly discuss tensions with Iran, trade and human rights.
June 30, 2019 – Trump becomes the first sitting US president to enter North Korea. He takes 20 steps beyond the border and shakes hands with Kim.
July 14, 2019 – Via Twitter, Trump tells Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Illhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley to “go back” to their home countries. Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Pressley are natural-born US citizens; Omar was born in Somalia, immigrated to the United States and became a citizen.
July 16, 2019 – The House votes, 240-187, to condemn the racist language Trump used in his tweets about Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Omar and Pressley.
July 24, 2019 – Mueller testifies before the House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.
July 25, 2019 – Trump speaks on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump asks Zelensky for a “favor,” encouraging him to speak with Giuliani about investigating Biden. In the days before the call, Trump blocked nearly $400 million in military and security aid to Ukraine.
August 12, 2019 – A whistleblower files a complaint pertaining to Trump’s conduct on the Zelensky call.
September 11, 2019 – The Trump administration lifts its hold on military aid for Ukraine.
September 24, 2019 – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces the beginning of an impeachment inquiry related to the whistleblower complaint.
September 25, 2019 – The White House releases notes from the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky. The readout contains multiple references to Giuliani and Barr. In response, the Justice Department issues a statement that says Barr didn’t know about Trump’s conversation until weeks after the call. Further, the attorney general didn’t talk to the President about having Ukraine investigate the Bidens, according to the Justice Department. On the same day as the notes are released, Trump and Zelensky meet in person for the first time on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. During a joint press conference after the meeting, both men deny that Trump pressured Zelensky to investigate Biden in exchange for aid.
September 26, 2019 – The House releases a declassified version of the whistleblower complaint. According to the complaint, officials at the White House tried to “lock down” records of Trump’s phone conversation with Zelensky. The complaint also alleges that Barr played a role in the campaign to convince Zelensky that Biden should be investigated. Trump describes the complaint as “fake news” and “a witch hunt” on Twitter.
September 27, 2019 – Pompeo is subpoenaed by House committees over his failure to provide documents related to Ukraine. Kurt Volker, US special envoy to Ukraine, resigns. He was named in the whistleblower complaint as one of the State Department officials who helped Giuliani connect with sources in Ukraine.
October 3, 2019 – Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump says both Ukraine and China should investigate alleged corruption involving Biden and his son. CNN reports that the President had brought up Biden and his family during a June phone call with Xi Jinping. In that call, Trump discussed the political prospects of Biden as well as Elizabeth Warren. He also told Xi that he would remain quiet on the matter of Hong Kong protests. Notes documenting the conversation were placed on a highly secured server where the transcript from the Ukraine call was also stored.
October 6, 2019 – After Trump speaks on the phone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the White House announces that US troops will move out of northern Syria to make way for a planned Turkish military operation. The move marks a major shift in American foreign policy and effectively gives Turkey the green light to attack US-backed Kurdish forces, a partner in the fight against ISIS.
October 9, 2019 – Turkey launches a military offensive in northern Syria.
October 31, 2019 – Trump says via Twitter that he is changing his legal residency from New York to Florida, explaining that he feels he is treated badly by political leaders from the city and state.
November 7, 2019 – A judge orders Trump to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit against his charity filed by the New York state attorney general. According to the suit, Trump breached his fiduciary duty by allowing his presidential campaign to direct the distribution of donations. In a statement, Trump accuses the attorney general of mischaracterizing the settlement for political purposes.
November 13, 2019 – Public impeachment hearings begin and Trump meets Erdogan at the White House.
November 20, 2019 – During a public hearing, US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland says he worked with Giuliani on matters related to Ukraine at the “express direction of the President of the United States” and he says “everyone was in the loop.” Sondland recounts several conversations between himself and Trump about Ukraine opening two investigations: one into Burisma and another into conspiracies about Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 US election.
December 10, 2019 – House Democrats unveil two articles of impeachment, one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress.
December 11, 2019 – Trump signs an executive order to include discrimination against Jewish people as a violation of law in certain cases, with an eye toward fighting antisemitism on college campuses.
December 13, 2019 – The House Judiciary Committee approves the two articles of impeachment in a party line vote.
December 18, 2019 – The House of Representatives votes to impeach Trump, charging a president with high crimes and misdemeanors for just the third time in American history.
January 3, 2020 – Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, Trump announces that a US airstrike in Iraq has killed Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force.
January 8, 2020 – Iran fires a number of missiles at two Iraqi bases housing US troops in retaliation for the American strike that killed Soleimani. No US or Iraqi lives are reported lost, but the Pentagon later releases a statement confirming that 109 US service members had been diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injuries in the wake of the attack.
January 24, 2020 – Makes history as the first President to attend the annual March for Life rally in Washington, DC, since it began nearly a half-century ago. Trump reiterates his support for tighter abortion restrictions.
January 29, 2020 – Trump signs the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement into law, which replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement.
January 31, 2020 – The Trump administration announces an expansion of the travel ban to include six new countries. Immigration restrictions will be imposed on: Nigeria, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan, Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar (known as Burma), with exceptions for immigrants who have helped the United States.
February 5, 2020 – The Senate votes to acquit Trump on two articles of impeachment. Sen. Mitt Romney is the sole Republican to vote to convict on the charge of abuse of power, joining with all Senate Democrats in a 52-48 not guilty vote. On the obstruction of Congress charge, the vote falls along straight party lines, 53-47 for acquittal.
May 29, 2020 – Trump announces that the United States will terminate its relationship with the World Health Organization.
July 10, 2020 – Trump commutes the prison sentence of his longtime friend Roger Stone, who was convicted of crimes that included lying to Congress in part, prosecutors said, to protect the President. The announcement came just days before Stone was set to report to a federal prison in Georgia.
October 2, 2020 – Trump announces that he has tested positive for coronavirus. Later in the day, Trump is transferred to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and returns to the White House on October 5.
November 7, 2020 – Days after the presidential election on November 3, CNN projects Trump loses his bid for reelection to Biden.
November 25, 2020 – Trump announces in a tweet that he has granted Michael Flynn a “full pardon,” wiping away the guilty plea of the intelligence official for lying to the FBI.
December 23, 2020 – Announces 26 new pardons, including for Stone, Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, Charles.
January 6, 2021 – Following Trump’s rally and speech at the White House Ellipse, pro-Trump rioters storm the US Capitol as members of Congress meet to certify the Electoral College results of the 2020 presidential election. A total of five people die, including a Capitol Police officer the next day.
January 7-8, 2021 – Instagram and Facebook place a ban on Trump’s account from posting through the remainder of his presidency and perhaps “indefinitely.” Twitter permanently bans Trump from the platform, explaining that “after close review of recent Tweets…and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
January 13, 2021 – The House votes to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” He is the only president to be impeached twice.
January 20, 2021 – Trump issues a total of 143 pardons and commutations that include his onetime political strategist, Steve Bannon, a former top fundraiser and two well-known rappers but not himself or his family. He then receives a military-style send-off from Joint Base Andrews on Inauguration morning, before heading home to Florida.
February 13, 2021 – The US Senate acquits Trump in his second impeachment trial, voting that Trump is not guilty of inciting the deadly January 6 riots at the US Capitol. The vote is 43 not guilty to 57 guilty, short of the 67 guilty votes needed to convict.
May 5, 2021 – Facebook’s Oversight Board upholds Trump’s suspension from using its platform. The decision also applies to Facebook-owned Instagram.
June 4, 2021 – Facebook announces Trump will be suspended from its platform until at least January 7th, 2023 – two years from when he was initially suspended.
July 1, 2021 – New York prosecutors charge the Trump Organization and Trump Payroll Corporation with 10 felony counts and Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg with 15 felony counts in connection with an alleged tax scheme stretching back to 2005. Trump himself is not charged. On December 6, 2022, both companies are found guilty on all charges.
February 14, 2022 – Accounting firm Mazars announces it will no longer act as Trump’s accountant, citing a conflict of interest. In a letter to the Trump Organization chief legal officer, the firm informs the Trump Organization to no longer rely on financial statements ending June 2011 through June 2020.
May 3, 2022 – The Trump Organization and the Presidential Inaugural Committee agree to pay a total of $750,000 to settle with the Washington, DC, attorney general’s office over allegations they misspent money raised for former President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
June 9-July 21, 2022 – The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol holds eight hearings, where it hears from witnesses including top ex-Trump officials, election workers, those who took part in the attack and many others. Through live testimony, video depositions, and never-before-seen material, the committee attempts to paint the picture of the former president’s plan to stay in power and the role he played on January 6.
August 8, 2022 – The FBI executes a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of an investigation into the handling of presidential documents, including classified documents, that may have been brought there.
August 12, 2022 – A federal judge unseals the search warrant and property receipt from the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. The unsealed documents indicate the FBI recovered 11 sets of classified documents from its search, including some materials marked as “top secret/SCI” – one of the highest levels of classification, and identify three federal crimes that the Justice Department is looking at as part of its investigation: violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records.
September 21, 2022 – The New York state attorney general files a lawsuit against Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, alleging they were involved in an expansive fraud lasting over a decade that the former President used to enrich himself. According to the lawsuit, the Trump Organization deceived lenders, insurers and tax authorities by inflating the value of his properties using misleading appraisals.
October 3, 2022 – Trump files a lawsuit against CNN for defamation, seeking $475 million in punitive damages.
November 15, 2022 – Announces that he will seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
November 19, 2022 – Trump’s Twitter account, which was banned following the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, is reinstated after users respond to an online poll posted by Twitter CEO and new owner Elon Musk.
December 19, 2022 – The Jan. 6 insurrection committee votes to refer Trump to the Department of Justice on at least four criminal charges. Four days later the panel releases its final report recommending Trump be barred from holding office again.
February 9, 2023 – Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts are restored following a two-year ban in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, a Meta spokesperson confirms to CNN. On March 17, 2023, YouTube restores Trump’s channel.
March 30, 2023 – A grand jury in New York votes to indict Trump, the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.
April 4, 2023 – Surrenders and is placed under arrest before pleading not guilty to 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records in Manhattan criminal court. Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election through a hush money scheme with payments made to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump. He has denied the affairs. Hours after his arraignment, Trump rails against the Manhattan district attorney and the indictment during a speech at his Florida resort at Mar-a-Lago.
May 9, 2023 – A Manhattan federal jury finds Trump sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996 and awards her $5 million for battery and defamation.
May 15, 2023 – A report by special counsel John Durham is released. In it he concludes that the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. The report does not recommend any new charges against individuals or “wholesale changes” about how the FBI handles politically charged investigations, despite strongly criticizing the agency’s behavior.
[ad_2]
-
Timeline: The special counsel inquiry into Trump’s handling of classified documents | CNN Politics
[ad_1]
Washington
CNN
—
The federal criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump’s potential mishandling of classified documents escalated in stunning fashion this week with Trump’s indictment.
The indictment hasn’t been unsealed yet, so details of the charges aren’t publicly available. But the investigation – led by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith – revolves around sensitive government papers that Trump held onto after his White House term ended in January 2021. The special counsel has also examined whether Trump or his aides obstructed the investigation.
Federal authorities have recovered more than 325 classified documents from Trump. He has voluntarily given back some materials, his lawyers turned over additional files after a subpoena, and the FBI found dozens of classified records during a court-approved search of his Mar-a-Lago home last summer.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing and claims the investigation is a politically motivated sham, intended to derail his ongoing campaign to win the Republican 2024 nomination and return to the White House.
Here’s a timeline of the important developments in the blockbuster investigation.
An official from the National Archives and Records Administration contacts Trump’s team after realizing that several important documents weren’t handed over before Trump left the White House. In hopes of locating the missing items, NARA lawyer Gary Stern reaches out to someone who served in the White House counsel’s office under Trump, who was the point of contact for recordkeeping matters. The missing documents include some of Trump’s correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as well as the map of Hurricane Dorian that Trump infamously altered with a sharpie pen.
In a taped conversation, Trump acknowledges that he still has a classified Pentagon document about a possible attack against Iran, according to CNN reporting. The recording, which was made at Trump’s golf club in New Jersey, indicates that Trump understood that he retained classified material after leaving the White House. The special counsel later obtained this audiotape, a key piece of evidence in his inquiry.
NARA grows frustrated with the slow pace of document turnover after several months of conversations with the Trump team. Stern reaches out to another Trump attorney to intervene. The archivist asks about several boxes of records that were apparently taken to Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s relocation to Florida. NARA still doesn’t receive the White House documents they are searching for.
After months of discussions with Trump’s team, NARA retrieves 15 boxes of Trump White House records from Mar-a-Lago. The boxes contained some materials that were part of “special access programs,” known as SAP, which is a classification that includes protocols to significantly limit who would have access to the information. NARA says in a statement that some of the records it received at the end of Trump’s administration were “torn up by former President Trump,” and that White House officials had to tape them back together. Not all the torn-up documents were reconstructed, NARA says.
NARA asks the Justice Department to investigate Trump’s handling of White House records and whether he violated the Presidential Records Act and other laws related to classified information. The Presidential Records Act requires all records created by a sitting president to be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their administration.
NARA informs the Justice Department that some of the documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago included classified material. NARA also tells the department that, despite being warned it was illegal, Trump occasionally tore up government documents while he was president.
On April 7, NARA publicly acknowledges for the first time that the Justice Department is involved, and news outlets report that prosecutors have launched a criminal probe into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents. Around this time, FBI agents quietly interview Trump aides at Mar-a-Lago about the handling of presidential records as part of their widening investigation.
The FBI asks NARA for access to the 15 boxes it retrieved from Mar-a-Lago in January. The request was formally transmitted to NARA by President Joe Biden’s White House Counsel’s office, because the incumbent president controls presidential documents in NARA custody.
The Justice Department sends a letter to Trump’s lawyers as part of its effort to access the 15 boxes, notifying them that more than 100 classified documents, totaling more than 700 pages, were found in the boxes. The letter says the FBI and US intelligence agencies need “immediate access” to these materials because of “important national security interests.” Also on this day, Trump lawyers ask NARA to delay its plans to give the FBI access to these materials. Trump’s lawyers say they want time to examine the materials to see if anything is privileged, and that they are making a “protective assertion of executive privilege” over all the documents.
Trump’s lawyers write again to NARA, and ask again that NARA postpone its plans to give the FBI access to the materials retrieved from Mar-a-Lago.
Debra Steidel Wall, the acting archivist of the United States, who runs NARA, informs Trump’s lawyers that she is rejecting their claims of “protective” executive privilege over all the materials taken from Mar-a-Lago and will therefore turn over the materials to the FBI and US intelligence agencies, in a four-page letter.
The Justice Department subpoenas Trump, demanding all documents with classification markings that are still at Mar-a-Lago. At some point after receiving the subpoena, Trump asks his lawyer Evan Corcoran if there was any way to fight the subpoena, but Corcoran tells him he has to comply, according to notes Cochran took and later gave to investigators. Also after getting the subpoena, Trump aides are captured on surveillance footage moving document boxes into and out of a basement storage room – which has become a major element of the obstruction investigation.
News outlets report that investigators subpoenaed NARA for access to the classified documents they retrieved from Mar-a-Lago. The subpoena is the first public indication of the Justice Department using a grand jury in its investigation.
As part of the effort to comply with the subpoena, Corcoran searches a Mar-a-Lago storage room and finds 38 classified documents. According to a lawsuit that the former president later filed, Trump invites FBI officials to come to Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the subpoenaed materials.
Federal investigators, including a top Justice Department counterintelligence official, visit Mar-a-Lago to deal with the subpoena for remaining classified documents. The investigators meet with Trump’s attorneys, including Corcoran, and look around the basement storage room where the documents were stored. Trump briefly stops by the meeting to say hello to the officials, but he does not answer any questions. Corcoran hands over the 38 classified documents that he found. Trump lawyer Christina Bobb signs a sworn affidavit inaccurately asserting that there aren’t any more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s attorneys receive a letter from federal investigators, asking them to further secure the room where documents are being stored. In response, Trump aides add a padlock to the room in the basement of Mar-a-Lago.
Federal investigators serve a subpoena to the Trump Organization, demanding surveillance video from Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s company complies with the subpoena and turns over the footage. CNN has reported that this was part of an effort to gather information about who had access to areas at the club where government documents were stored.
The FBI executes a court-approved search warrant at Mar-a-Lago – a major escalation of the investigation. The search focused on the area of the club where Trump’s offices and personal quarters are located. Federal agents found more than 100 additional classified documents at the property. The search was the first time in American history that a former president’s home was searched as part of a criminal investigation.
Trump sends a message through one his lawyers to Attorney General Merrick Garland, saying he has “been hearing from people all over the country about the raid” who are “angry,” and that “whatever I can do to take the heat down, to bring the pressure down, just let us know,” according to a lawsuit he later filed. Hours later, after three days of silence, Garland makes a brief public statement about the investigation. He reveals that he personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant, and that the Justice Department will continue to apply the law “without fear or favor.” Garland also pushes back against what he called “unfounded attacks on the professionalism of the FBI and Justice Department.”
Federal Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart approves the unsealing of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant and its property receipt, at the Justice Department’s request and after Trump’s lawyers agree to the release. The warrant reveals the Justice Department is looking into possible violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records, as part of its investigation.
Trump files a federal lawsuit seeking the appointment of a third-party attorney known as a “special master” to independently review the materials that the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago. In the lawsuit, Trump’s lawyers argue that the Justice Department can’t be trusted to do its own review for potentially privileged materials that should be siloed off from the criminal probe.
In a major ruling in Trump’s favor, Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, grants Trump’s request for a special master to review the seized materials from Mar-a-Lago. She says the special master will have the power to look for documents covered under attorney-client privilege and executive privilege.
The Justice Department appeals Cannon’s decision in the special master case.
Cannon appoints senior Judge Raymond Dearie to serve as the special master and sets a November 30 deadline for the Brooklyn-based federal judge to finish his review of the seized materials.
A maintenance worker drains the swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago, which ends up flooding a room where there are computer severs that contain surveillance video logs, according to CNN reporting. It’s unclear if the flood was accidental or on purpose, and it’s possible that the IT equipment wasn’t damaged, but federal prosecutors found the incident to be suspicious.
Former Trump administration official Kash Patel testifies before the federal grand jury in the classified documents investigation. A Trump loyalist, Patel had publicly claimed that Trump declassified all the materials that ended up at Mar-a-Lago, even though there is no evidence to back up those assertions.
Garland announces that he is appointing special counsel Jack Smith to take over the investigation.
A federal appeals court shuts down the special master review of the documents that the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago. The appeals panel rebuked Cannon’s earlier decisions, writing that she essentially tried to “interfere” with the criminal probe and had created a “special exception” in the law to help Trump.
Trump attorney Timothy Parlatore testifies before the special counsel’s grand jury, where he described how Trump’s lawyers scoured his properties for classified materials. He later left Trump’s legal team.
Trump’s legal team searches four of his properties in Florida, New York and New Jersey for additional classified material. They find two more classified files in a Florida storage unit, and give them to the FBI. Around this time, Trump’s team also finds additional papers with classification markings at Mar-a-Lago, and they give those materials to the Justice Department. They also turn over a laptop belonging to a Trump aide who had copied those documents onto the computer, not realizing they were classified.
A string of key witnesses testify before the special counsel’s grand jury in Washington, DC. This includes Trump administration officials Robert O’Brien and Ric Grenell, who handled national security and intelligence matters; Margo Martin, a communications aide who continued working for Trump after he left the White House; and Matthew Calamari Sr. and his son, Matthew Calamari Jr., longtime Trump employees who oversee security for the Trump Organization.
In response to a new subpoena from the special counsel, Trump’s lawyers turn over some material related to a classified Pentagon document that he discussed at a recorded meeting in 2021. However, Trump’s team wasn’t able to find the specific document – about a potential US attack on Iran – that prosecutors were looking for.
Corcoran, the lead Trump attorney, testifies before the grand jury in Washington, DC. This occurred after a federal judge ordered him to answer prosecutors’ questions, ruling that attorney-client privilege did not shield his discussion with Trump because Trump might been trying to commit a crime through his attorneys. Corcoran later recused himself from handling the Mar-a-Lago matter.
The first public indications emerge that the special counsel is using a second grand jury in Miami to gather evidence. Multiple witnesses testify in front of the Miami-based panel, CNN reported.
Trump lawyers meet with senior Justice Department officials – including special counsel Smith – to discuss the Mar-a-Lago investigation. The sitdown lasted about 90 minutes, and Trump’s team raised concerns about the probe, which they have called an “unlawful” and “outrageous” abuse of the legal system.
News outlets report that the Justice Department recently sent a “target letter” to Trump, formally notifying him that he’s a target of the investigation into potential mishandling of classified documents.
News outlets report that Trump has been indicted in connection with the classified documents investigation. Trump also says in a social media post that the Justice Department informed his attorneys that he was indicted – and called the case a “hoax.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
[ad_2]
-
Trump once said a president under felony indictment would grind the government to a halt and create a constitutional crisis | CNN Politics
[ad_1]
CNN
—
Former President Donald Trump said in 2016 that a president under indictment would “cripple the operations of our government” and create an “unprecedented constitutional crisis” – years before he himself was indicted on federal charges while running for a second term as president.
Trump made the comments nearly seven years ago about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“We could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial,” Trump said during a November 5, 2016, campaign rally in Reno, Nevada, reviewed by CNN’s KFile. “It would grind government to a halt.”
Just days earlier, on October 28, then-FBI director James Comey publicly announced they had reopened the investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information related to her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.
Now, Trump finds himself under the exact situation he repeatedly described after he was charged in early June with 37 federal counts related to retention of classified documents and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
A tentative trial date had been set for mid-August by the case’s judge, but it is likely to be pushed back. The special counsel’s office asked for a December trial. The flexibility of when the trial will begin leaves uncertainty if the case will conclude before the 2024 election.
But Trump, the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, will not be disqualified from the presidency even if convicted, and he told Politico in June that he won’t leave the presidential race if he is convicted of the charges.
At another rally on November 3, 2016, in Concord, North Carolina, Trump made similar comments.
“If she were to win, it would create an unprecedented Constitutional crisis that would cripple the operations of our government,” he said. “She is likely to be under investigation for many years, and also it will probably end up – in my opinion – in a criminal trial. I mean, you take a look. Who knows? But it certainly looks that way.”
“She has no right to be running, you know that,” Trump said. “No right.”
Trump added at a November 5, 2016, rally in Denver that as “the prime suspect in a far-reaching criminal investigation,” Clinton’s controversies would make it “virtually impossible for her to govern.”
The comments aren’t the only ones from Trump’s past campaigns that could have aged poorly with his legal troubles. In another comment, made when running for reelection, Trump acknowledged only the sitting president could reveal classified information.
CNN previously reported in an exclusively obtained audio recording that Trump said as president he could have declassified a document about plans to attack Iran that he was showing aides after leaving office, but recognized he could not do so now that he is no longer president.
“And you know the newspapers and the press and the fake news they went and said he just gave away classified information,” Trump said at a rally in Pennsylvania in September 2020 when discussing his conversations with author Bob Woodward on nuclear weapons. “First of all, I’m allowed to do it, I’m the President so I’m allowed to. I’m the one – I’m the only one that’s allowed.”
In September, CNN’s KFile reported that Trump previously called for lengthy jail sentences for those who mishandled classified information.
[ad_2]
-
Trump shakes up legal team in wake of classified documents indictment | CNN Politics
[ad_1]
CNN
—
Former President Donald Trump’s legal team is undergoing a significant shakeup in the wake of his indictment in the special counsel’s classified documents probe.
In a sudden move, Trump announced Friday morning that he was removing two of his top attorneys, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, from the case and said Todd Blanche, a defense lawyer he hired in April after being indicted in Manhattan, would take the lead. Soon after, Trusty and Rowley issued a joint statement in which they said they were resigning from the legal team entirely.
Trump is considering adding Miami-based attorney Benedict Kuehne to his legal team, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. He has not been formally added to the team yet but could join soon given Trump’s expected court appearance on Tuesday. CNN has reached out to Kuehne for comment.
Lindsay Halligan, who is barred in the state where Trump was indicted, also remains on the team.
In their statement, Trusty and Rowley said they were confident Trump will be “vindicated in his battle against the Biden Administration’s partisan weaponization of the American justice system” and said now was a “logical” time for them to step aside with the case having been filed in Miami.
They added that they do not plan to make media appearances or to reveal conversations they’ve had with Trump. Trusty appeared on CNN just hours after Trump announced that he had been indicted to defend his client but also left open the door to potential changes in the legal team.
Asked which members of the team would accompany Trump to court Tuesday, Trusty said, “We’ll see. It’ll make some excitement to see who shows up to the table on Tuesday, I guess.”
Shortly before Friday’s statement was issued by Trusty and Rowley, Trump disclosed on Truth Social that neither would be representing him. He thanked them for their work, saying they “were up against a very dishonest, corrupt, evil, and ‘sick’ group of people,” but did not explain why they were departing.
Trump’s legal team has seen significant turnover as the investigation into the mishandling of classified documents has unfolded. Last month, Timothy Parlatore, an attorney who played a key role in the investigation and once testified before the grand jury, left Trump’s legal team due to infighting, he told CNN’s Paula Reid.
[ad_2]
-
What to know about the Trump indictment on the eve of his court appearance | CNN Politics
[ad_1]
CNN
—
Donald Trump, the first former president in history to face criminal charges, is heading to New York Monday for an expected arraignment on Tuesday after being indicted last week by a Manhattan grand jury.
The expected voluntary surrender of a former president and 2024 White House candidate will be a unique affair in more ways than one – both for the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the New York courthouse where he’ll be arraigned and for a nation watching to see how it’ll shake up the GOP presidential primary.
The former president has remained “surprisingly calm,” spending the weekend in Florida playing golf and mulling how to use it to boost his campaign, CNN reported Sunday night, after an indictment that caught him and his advisers “off guard.”
Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud, CNN has reported, but the indictment remains under seal.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office has been investigating Trump in connection with his alleged role in a hush money payment scheme and cover-up involving adult film star Stormy Daniels that dates to the 2016 presidential election. Trump and his allies have already attacked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg – and an advertised Tuesday night speech back at Mar-a-Lago will likely given Trump more opportunity to claim he’s being political persecuted.
Here is what we know about the expected arraignment.
Trump left Florida shortly after noon ET on Monday, and is scheduled to land at New York’s LaGuardia airport around 3 p.m. ET, according to a source familiar with his plans. The former president will stay at Trump Tower Monday night and is expected to depart New York immediately after Tuesday’s arraignment to head back to Florida, the source said.
But even before Trump’s appearance, his presence will be felt in the Manhattan courthouse Tuesday, as all trials and most other court activity is being halted before he is slated to arrive.
The Secret Service, the New York Police Department and the court officers are coordinating security for Trump’s expected appearance. The Secret Service is scheduled to accompany Trump in the early afternoon to the district attorney’s office, which is in the same building as the courthouse.
Trump will be booked by the investigators, which includes taking his fingerprints. Ordinarily, a mug shot would be taken. But sources familiar with the preparations were uncertain as to whether there would be a mugshot – because Trump’s appearance is widely known and authorities were concerned about the improper leaking of the photo, which would be a violation of state law.
Typically, after defendants are arrested, they are booked and held in cells near the courtroom before they are arraigned. But that won’t happen with Trump. Once the former president is finished being processed, he’ll be taken through a back set of hallways and elevators to the floor where the courtroom is located. He’ll then come out to a public hallway to walk into the courtroom.
Trump is not expected to be handcuffed, as he will be surrounded by armed federal agents for his protection.
“Obviously, this is different. This has never happened before. I have never had Secret Service involved in an arraignment before at 100 Centre Street,” Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “All the Tuesday stuff is still very much up in the air, other than the fact that we will very loudly and proudly say not guilty.”
By the afternoon, Trump is expected to be brought to the courtroom, where the indictment will be unsealed and he will formally face the charges. After he is arraigned, Trump will almost certainly be released on his own recognizance. It is possible, though perhaps unlikely, that conditions could be set on his travel.
Ordinarily, a defendant who is released would walk out the front doors, but Secret Service will want to limit the time and space where Trump is in public. So instead, once the court hearing is over, Trump is expected to walk again through the public hallway and into the back corridors to the district attorney’s office, back to where his motorcade will be waiting.
Then he’ll head to the airport so he can get back to Mar-a-Lago, where he’s scheduled an event that evening to speak publicly.
Several media outlets, including CNN, have asked a New York judge to unseal the indictment and for permission to broadcast Trump’s expected appearance in the courtroom on Tuesday.
The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal are among the outlets making the request.
The news organizations are asking for a “limited number of photographers, videographers, and radio journalists to be present at the arraignment,” and said in the letter that they are making “this limited request for audio-visual coverage in order to ensure that the operations of the Court will not be disrupted in any way.”
If the judge does not grant the media outlets’ unsealing request, it is expected that the indictment will be made public when Trump appears in court.
Judge Juan Merchan is no stranger to Trump’s orbit.
Merchan, an acting New York Supreme Court justice, has sentenced Trump’s close confidant Allen Weisselberg to prison, presided over the Trump Organization tax fraud trial and overseen former adviser Steve Bannon’s criminal fraud case.
Merchan does not stand for disruptions or delays, attorneys who have appeared before him told CNN, and he’s known to maintain control of his courtroom even when his cases draw considerable attention.
Trump attorney Timothy Parlatore said during an interview Friday on CNN that Merchan was “not easy” on him when he tried a case before him but that he will likely be fair.
“I’ve tried a case in front of him before. He could be tough. I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be something that’s going to change his ability to evaluate the facts and the law in this case,” Parlatore said.
Tacopina told CNN’s Dana Bash Sunday that the former president will plead not guilty. His team “will look at every potential issue that we will be able to challenge, and we will challenge,” Tacopina said.
The Trump team’s court strategy could center around challenging the case because it may rely on business record entries that prosecutors tie to hush money payments to Daniels seven years ago, beyond the statute of limitations for a criminal case. Tacopina suggested in TV interviews Sunday the statute of limitations may have passed, and said the Trump businesses didn’t make false entries.
Trump’s legal team isn’t currently considering asking to move the case to a different New York City borough, Tacopina said. “There’s been no discussion of that whatsoever,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in another interview Sunday. “It’s way too premature to start worrying about venue changes until we really see the indictment and grapple with the legal issues.”
Trump’s political advisers over the weekend were actively discussing how to best campaign off the indictment they have portrayed as a political hoax and witch hunt, according to sources close to Trump.
His team has spent the last several days presenting the former president with polls showing him with a growing lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, currently considered Trump’s biggest 2024 rival, in a head-to-head match up. And his team says it has raised more than $5 million dollars since he was indicted Thursday.
Despite the initial shock of the indictment, Trump has remained surprisingly calm and focused in the days ahead of his court appearance, CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported.
The former president has seemingly saved his rage for his social media site, escalating his attacks on Bragg and leveling threats.
Many of Trump’s allies, critics and likely opponents in the 2024 Republican presidential primary race have similarly attacked Bragg before and after the indictment.
But former Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who announced his presidential campaign on Sunday, doubled down on his call for Trump to drop out of the race now that he is facing criminal charges.
“The office is more important than any individual person. So for the sake of the office of the presidency, I do think that’s too much of a sideshow and distraction,” Hutchinson said in an interview on ABC News. “He needs to be able to concentrate on his due process.”
[ad_2]
-
Rep. George Santos’ lawyer asks to keep bond cosigners’ names sealed | CNN Politics
[ad_1]
CNN
—
Indicted Rep. George Santos’ attorney has filed a letter asking the judge overseeing the New York Republican’s case to keep the names of the people who put up his $500,000 bond sealed.
Attorney Joseph Murray objected to a motion by news organizations, including CNN, for the judge to make public the names of the cosigners following Santos’ indictment on campaign finance and fraud charges in New York in early May. If their names are released, the attorney said, they “are likely to suffer great distress, may lose their jobs, and God forbid, may suffer physical injury.”
In the letter, Murray wrote that “there is little doubt that the suretors will suffer some unnecessary form of retaliation if their identities and employment are revealed” and claimed that Santos “would rather surrender to pre trial detainment than subject these suretors to what will inevitably come” if their names are made public.
Murray also blamed CNN – which first reported that Santos had been charged by the Department of Justice – for the media being present at the congressman’s arraignment, saying it caused a “frenzy” which he claimed led to one of the suretors backing out.
“Unfortunately, on May 9, 2023, shortly after the defense was notified of the indictment and arrest warrant, this information was apparently leaked to the Cable News Network (‘CNN’), resulting in an immediate media frenzy. Also, at this time, defense counsel had been in the process of engaging our suretors and presenting their documentation and contact information to the government, in preparation for the arraignment on May 10, 2023,” the filing states. “As the media frenzy progressively got worse our suretors tors [sic] grew very fearful and concerned. As of the morning of May 10, 2023, we only had two confirmed suretors, while our third suretor had a change of heart and backed out.”
Last month, Santos pleaded not guilty to 13 federal charges: seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives.
Santos was released on a $500,000 bond, but was ordered to surrender his passport and will need permission to travel outside of Washington, DC, New York City and Long Island.
After his arraignment, Santos told reporters that he has been “compliant throughout this entire process” but blasted the indictment as a “witch hunt” and said he will “fight my battle.”
The freshman congressman, whose astonishing pattern of lies and fabrications stunned even hardened politicos and led top Democrats and some New York Republicans to call for his resignation earlier this year, has said he will not resign from his seat and that he plans to seek reelection next year.
[ad_2]
-
Could Donald Trump serve as president if convicted? | CNN Politics
[ad_1]
CNN
—
Donald Trump has been indicted on federal charges related to 2020 election subversion, a stunning third time this year that the former president has faced criminal charges.
But could the former president, who remains the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, assume the Oval Office again if convicted of the alleged crimes? In short, yes.
University of California, Los Angeles law professor Richard L. Hasen – one of the country’s leading experts on election law – said Trump still has a path to serving as president should he win reelection in 2024.
“The Constitution has very few requirements to serve as President, such as being at least 35 years of age. It does not bar anyone indicted, or convicted, or even serving jail time, from running as president and winning the presidency,” he said in an email to CNN.
Could a president serve from prison? That’s less clear.
“How someone would serve as president from prison is a happily untested question,” Hasen said.
The newest criminal counts against Trump include: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.
Those are in addition to a total of 40 counts in a separate federal indictment related to the special counsel’s investigation into the mishandling of classified documents, as well as 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records in Manhattan related to an alleged hush money payment scheme and cover-up involving an adult film star.
If Trump were to be convicted before the 2024 election and win the contest, he could try to grant himself a pardon, according to Hasen.
“Whether he can do so is untested. The Supreme Court may have to weigh in,” Hasen said, adding that Trump could potentially appeal a conviction to the conservative Supreme Court.
Special counsel Jack Smith told reporters that he will seek a “speedy trial,” but if Trump was to be elected before a trial concluded, he may be able dismiss it entirely.
Robert Ray, an attorney who defended Trump in his first impeachment trial, said on CNN following Trump’s June indictment in the classified documents case that the former president “would control the Justice Department” if reelected, adding that if the documents case was pending at that time, “he just dismisses the case.”
Asked about the latest indictment, Trump defense attorney John Lauro told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins he thinks a potential trial could last “nine months or a year.”
Lauro said he will need to see the evidence but that his client deserves as much time as any other American. “Every single person in the United States is entitled to due process, including the former president,” he said.
If Trump is convicted of a felony at the federal level or in New York, he would be barred from voting in his adoptive home state of Florida, at least until he had served out a potential sentence.
[ad_2]
-
Another historic week in the investigation and prosecution of Donald Trump | CNN Politics
[ad_1]
Washington
CNN
—
Former President Donald Trump was arrested and arraigned on federal charges this week in a never-before-seen moment in American political and legal history that captured the attention of a nation that has for years been captivated by his norm-busting episodes.
The former president’s booking at a federal courthouse in Miami on charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified government documents is just the latest twist in his post-presidency legal drama – which has now become a key issue in the GOP primary contest as Trump mounts a third White House bid.
Here’s the latest on Trump’s legal troubles:
On Tuesday, Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents.
“We most certainly enter a plea of not guilty,” Trump attorney Todd Blanche told the judge.
Trump’s aide and co-defendant, Walt Nauta, was also arrested, fingerprinted and processed. He had an initial appearance Tuesday but will not be arraigned until June 27.
The DOJ recommended that both Trump and Nauta be released with no financial or special conditions. Prosecutor David Harbach said that “the government does not view either defendant as a flight risk.”
The federal criminal charges Trump faces were brought following an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith, who attended Tuesday’s arraignment.
In the indictment unsealed last week, the Justice Department charged Trump with 37 felony counts, alleging he illegally retained national defense information and that he concealed documents in violation of witness-tampering laws in the Justice Department’s probe into the materials.
The charges are drastically more serious than those he faces in a separate New York case and present the possibility of several years in prison if Trump is ultimately convicted.
For his part, Nauta, who serves as Trump’s personal valet, faces six counts, including several obstruction- and concealment-related charges stemming from the alleged conduct.
In her first order after the indictment,US District Judge Aileen Cannon – a Trump appointee – told DOJ and Trump attorneys’ parties to get the ball rolling to obtain security clearances for the lawyers who will need them.
Both of Trump’s attorneys – Blanche and Chris Kise – have already been in touch with the Justice Department about obtaining the necessary security clearances to try the case, a source familiar with the outreach told CNN Thursday evening.
Cannon’s order reflects how the case concerns highly sensitive, classified materials – adding another layer of complexity to the high-stakes, first-of-its-kind federal prosecution of a former president.
How long the proceedings stretch out, and whether the trial takes place before or after the 2024 election, will depend in part on how efficiently Cannon manages her docket. Thursday’s move by Cannon suggests an interest, at least for now, in moving the proceedings along without delay.
In an expected, procedural step Friday, Smith’s team asked the judge to bar Trump and his defense team from publicly disclosing some of the materials shared in the criminal case as part of the discovery process. Lawyers for Trump and Nauta do not oppose the requested protective order, according to the new filing, and Cannon has referred the matter to a magistrate judge.
Trump had already been indicted earlier this spring in a separate case, this one brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in New York state court.
Trump has been charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records over hush money payments made during the 2016 campaign to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump, which he denies. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The case has remained relatively quiet since Trump pleaded not guilty to all of those charges in April, with the judge setting a trial date in New York County for March 2024.
Still, the former president’s legal team has been attempting to move the case to federal court, and on Thursday his attorneys asked a federal judge to deny Bragg’s motion to remand the case back to the state Supreme Court, again arguing that the charges are related to his duties as president and therefore should not be heard in state court.
A hearing on the issue is scheduled for June 27.
Trump still has other active investigations looming over him, including a probe by Smith, the special counsel, into the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
And in Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has recently indicated that she’s likely to make charging decisions public in August as part of her probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.
In a letter obtained by CNN last month, Willis announced remote workdays for her staff in August and asked judges to refrain from in-person hearings for parts of that month.
Trump has insisted that any criminal charges will not stop his 2024 campaign, and so far he’s keeping to that commitment.
On Wednesday, his campaign said it had raised more than $7 million since the former president was indicted in the federal case.
“The donations are coming in at a really rapid pace,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in an email.
Meanwhile, his GOP primary opponents have been weighing in on the new charges in a number of different ways, with some casting the prosecution as political while also stressing that the charges are concerning.
Trump can still run for president after being indicted or if he is eventually convicted.
Still, the existing indictments, as well as a potential conviction ahead of the 2024 election, could make it more difficult for Trump to win back the White House.
[ad_2]
-
Trump lawyer says there’s ‘no need’ to appear before grand jury in special counsel’s 2020 election probe | CNN Politics
[ad_1]
CNN
—
John Lauro, the recent addition to former President Donald Trump’s legal team, told Fox News on Friday there is no reason for the former president to appear before a federal grand jury investigating the 2020 election aftermath, adding that Trump “did absolutely nothing wrong.”
Earlier this week, Trump said he received a letter from special counsel Jack Smith informing him that he’s a target of the investigation and inviting him to appear before the grand jury. CNN previously reported that Trump’s team believed they had until Thursday to respond.
The grand jury did not convene on Friday after meeting on Thursday.
“There’s no need to appear in front of any grand jury right now,” Lauro said. “President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong. He’s done nothing criminal.”
“The bottom line is that the special prosecutor, which is really the Biden Justice Department, is after President Trump and that’s the focus,” Lauro told Fox News.
Lauro also echoed claims made by Trump and his GOP allies that the Justice Department is being politicized to target a political opponent and said that Trump merely asked for an audit in the wake of the 2020 election.
“The only thing that President Trump asked is a pause in the counting so those seven contested states could either re-audit or recertify,” Lauro said of Trump’s actions following his election loss. “I’ve never heard of anyone get indicted for asking for an audit.”
The target letter cites three statutes that Trump could be charged with: pertaining to deprivation of rights; conspiracy to commit an offense against or defraud the United States; and tampering with a witness, according to multiple news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, that cited a person familiar with the matter.
The Justice Department has been investigating possible violations of the law around conspiracy and obstruction of the congressional proceeding on January 6, 2021, which is part of the witness tampering law, CNN previously reported following a Justice Department search of a Trump administration adviser’s home.
Trump has already been indicted twice this year. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged the former president on 34 counts of falsifying business records in March, and Smith charged Trump on 37 counts in the classified documents investigation last month. Trump pleaded not guilty in both cases.
Justice Department regulations allow for prosecutors to notify subjects of an investigation that they have become a target. Often a notification that a person is a target is a strong sign an indictment could follow, but it is possible the recipient is not ultimately charged.
Trump addressed the target letter on Tuesday at a Fox News town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, saying that Smith’s probe amounts to “election interference” and calling it a “disgrace.” His campaign is already fundraising off of the target letter.
Lauro told Fox News that if he appears in court on Trump’s behalf, he’ll be representing “the sovereign citizens of this country who deserve to hear the truth.” The attorney also said he would request that cameras be allowed in the courtroom in Washington, DC, following any indictment of the president there.
[ad_2]