· In late 2019, James scored a legal victory against Trump when a judge ordered him to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit by the attorney general's office alleging that he had misused his Trump ...
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is due to testify before a congressional committee next week, three sources familiar with the matter said on Monday, offering Democrats a …
· The latest revelations about Trump's final days in office demonstrate that his behavior was, at a minimum, outrageous. He pressured his …
· Published Feb. 17, 2022 Updated March 3, 2022. The New York attorney general can question Donald J. Trump and two of his adult children under oath as part of a civil inquiry into his business ...
This law prohibits anyone who "incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto." In the first place, this law has almost never been invoked. The leading precedent on the statute comes from a case from 1863!
This law bans "attempts to deprive or defraud residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by . [the] tabulation of ballots known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent." Under this theory, by instructing his attorney general to say there was fraud in Georgia, Trump committed this crime.
This law makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct, influence or impede any official proceeding or attempt to do so. Once more, the issue would be intent -- here reflected in the word "corruptly." In his January 6 speech, Trump encouraged the crowd to march to Capitol Hill but he did not explicitly encourage violence.
The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity. The president himself is explicitly exempt from the strictures of the Hatch Act, but could be charged with the provision that makes it "unlawful for any person to intimidate, threaten, command, or coerce" a federal employee to "engage in ...
This broad provision, much loved by prosecutors, makes it a crime to "conspire to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States." The first part of this law runs into the same problem as the specific statutes noted above -- that it's difficult to prove an underlying crime.
The special counsel who finished the investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, secured three dozen indictments and convictions of some top Trump advisers, and he produced a report that outlined Russia’s wide-ranging operations to help get Mr. Trump elected and the president’s efforts to impede the inquiry.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department secretly took steps in 2017 to narrow the investigation into Russian election interference and any links to the Trump campaign, according to former law enforcement officials, keeping investigators from completing an examination of President Trump’s decades-long personal and business ties to Russia.
The Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, said in a memo released last week that he had reason to believe “that the F.B.I. Counterintelligence Division has not investigated counterintelligence risks arising from President Trump’s foreign financial ties.”.
The Mueller report, with redactions and without appendices, does not exonerate President Trump. Instead, it raises more questions about more forms of culpability. The one I find most concerning is the cyberwar launched by Russia against the United States around the 2016 campaign and election. These sections of the report documented the scope of the hostile activities aimed at the heart of our democracy. What was missing was a recounting of the president’s refusal to acknowledge the attack and to take reasonable steps to prevent a recurrence in 2020.
Ever since Attorney General William Barr released his purported “ summary” of the Mueller report’s conclusions, most media accounts have assumed that Mr. Mueller ultimately decided there was no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians. We have been told that the Mueller report had thus “exonerated” President Trump of conspiracy charges, though not on charges that he obstructed justice. Some media reports went further, stating that Mr. Mueller had found “no evidence” of a conspiracy. The Democrats, some said, had now been proved wrong even for supporting the special counsel’s independent investigation into the matter.
The redacted version of the Mueller report released today paints an unflattering picture of President Trump, particularly on the question of obstruction of justice. Although special counsel Robert Mueller did not reach any conclusion on whether the president should be prosecuted for obstruction, he did conclude that “Our investigation found multiple acts by the president that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russia-interference and obstruction investigations.”
The Mueller report paints a disturbing picture of President Trump trying to undermine investigations with a more reassuring portrayal of lawyers and aides seeking to preserve the rule of law. According to Mueller, ex-White House counsel Don McGahn and others “declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.” The president’s directive to FBI Director Jim Comey to go easy on National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI met the legal test for obstruction of justice. But Comey refused Trump’s request, just as McGahn shrugged off Trump’s order to fire Mueller.