The Trump documents bode ill for a 2024 campaign that is clouded by legal tangles
The House Appropriate Subpoena and the Campaign against Defending Donald Trump in the Context of the Congressional Impeachment
Republicans are going to use the authority of the House majority to subpoena witnesses in the wake of the impeachment of Hunter Biden and the January 6 hearings.
The committee can request that the Justice Department charge Trump or his former aides for their roles in orchestrating the attack on the Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
“They are trying to make the case that Trump is Oz,” said CNN’s John King, interpreting the committee’s subpoena of Trump. He presents himself as powerful, but when you look at him, he is actually a little guy trying to pull a machine.
Contempt. There is a chance that the full House will vote to hold him in contempt, something he has done with other witnesses.
There is a prosecution. A minimum of 30 days in jail is what Trump would be facing if he was found guilty. Bannon will be sentenced for failing to comply with the House subpoena later this month.
A Reply to a Critique of the Donald Trump Explicit Campaign and Why he didn’t show up for the trial of the Vice President
George Conway, a critic of Donald Trump, was on CNN Thursday and predicted that things wouldn’t happen. “This is about laying a marker. This is a response to be triggered by Trump.
Conway did point out the Supreme Court has already made clear where it stands on Trump’s status as a former president when it ignored his attempt to block the National Archives from sharing information with the committee.
Both of these incidents occurred just a few days after the documents saga surrounding President Donald Trump, who is under a special counsel investigation. The FBI seized more than 100 classified documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
The vice chair of the House committee, Cheney criticized people who invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than testify, including people who had communications with Trump on January 6, 2021.
In 1983, Ford testified as a former president to a Senate subcommittee. That hearing, 39 years ago, was the last time a president took questions from lawmakers in the committee setting, according to the Senate Historical Office and Senate Library.
Even though he was subpoenaed by the chief justice, President Thomas Jefferson didn’t show up for the trial of the Vice President. Some documents were provided by Jefferson. The person was eventually acquitted.
The Case of James A.J. Trump: A New Attorney General and a New Collision Course with the Biden Administration, the Courts and Facts
The Supreme Court did rule New York investigators could get access to the financial documents. Trump’s company will go on criminal trial this month on charges of violating tax laws.
He had to comply with subpoenas from the New York Attorney General as part of a civil inquiry. He invoked the Fifth Amendment when he was questioned.
James sued Trump, his three oldest children and the Trump Organization. James asked a state court to block Trump from moving his assets to shield them from the lawsuit.
The January 6 committee needs to finish work by January 3, 2023, if it wants to keep going after the next Congress.
The unique and extraordinary legal tangle surrounding Trump means that a third straight US election will be tainted by controversies that will drag the FBI and the Justice Department further into a political morass. President Joe Biden is facing a special counsel investigation over his handling of documents from his time as vice president and former Vice President Mike Pence is also under DOJ review for similar issues. This follows the Hillary Clinton email flap in 2016 and investigations into the Trump campaign’s links with Russia during that White House bid, as well as Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in 2020.
Trump dropped his clearest hint yet Saturday of a new White House run at a moment when he’s on a new collision course with the Biden administration, the courts and facts.
The fact that Trump is seeking the presidency again, under an extraordinary legal cloud, could have significant consequences for the wider 2024 campaign. Some of the potential Republican opponents might hope that his legal troubles will be enough to convince them to take him down. Republicans lose national elections in the past because of the perception that Trump is caught in a criminal investigation.
Investigating the Tax Fraud and Insurance Fraud Investigations of the Ex-President’s Campaign for Presidency in Arizona and the Trump Organization
“In the days ahead, the committee will evaluate next steps in the litigation and regarding the former President’s noncompliance,” Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson and GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, who serve as chair and vice chair of the committee respectively, said in a statement.
If the claims of political persecution by the ex- President lead to a future presidential campaign, there will be more upheaval than his four years in office.
There is definitely a chance that the coming political period will be mostly about the past of the ex-president as Republicans and Democrats often argue over policy on the economy, abortion, foreign policy and crime.
Still, Trump is a master of leveraging attempts to call him to account, legally and politically. He has built a central foundation of his new presidential bid around the idea that he is being politically persecution by the Justice Department and rogue Democratic prosecutors.
In Arizona, one of the ex- President’s favored candidates is raising doubts about the election system. “I’m afraid that it probably is not going to be completely fair,” Lake told AZTV7 on Sunday.
Hunter Biden is the tip of the iceberg in a planned barrage of investigations. Republicans have already called for the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, over the president’s immigration policy.
An already pro-Trump Republican presence in Washington is likely to expand after the midterms. Scores of Trump-endorsed candidates are running on a platform of his 2020 election fraud falsehoods, raising questions over whether they will accept results should they lose their races in just over two weeks.
The tax fraud trial of the Trump Organization will start in Manhattan on Monday. If the ex- President is charged, it could affect his business empire and cause him to make another accusation that he is being unfairly treated because of his political beliefs. In a separate civil case, New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, has filed a $250 million civil suit against Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, alleging that they ran tax and insurance fraud schemes to enrich themselves for years.
Democrats have been trying to get Trump back into the public eye. President Joe Biden had a bad word to say about the people who follow the platform of the political movement known as the “MAGA” and the campaign tried to frighten key suburban voters by warning them that the candidates were a danger to democracy.
Comedic Report on a Presidential Debate on President-Elect Donald Trump’s 2020 Causality Violations as Revised by the Press
But raging inflation and spikes in gasoline prices appear to be a far more potent concern before voters head to the polls, which could spell bad news for the party in power in Washington.
The ex-President told supporters at a rally in Texas on Saturday regarding the possibility of a new White House bid, “I will probably have to do it again.”
Cheney told “Meet the Press” that it will be done with a level of rigor and discipline that it deserves.
This isn’t going to be his first debate against Joe Biden, the circus and the food fight that happened, that’s for sure. This is a far too serious set of issues.”
After it was announced that the committee would send the subpoena, Trump gave a glimpse of how he might use an appearance before the panel to cause a political spectacle. He made several false and discredited claims in a 14-page letter, and he lashed out at the panel itself, calling them a bunch of partisan hacks who were only interested in destroying the lives of hard-working Americans.
The committee used a lot of testimony and depositions in it’s highly produced presentations. The most sympathetic witnesses have shown up in person. The powerful narrative that was created by the events on January 6 has helped create a strong impression of Trump’s neglect of duty and deprived those who watched of seeing witnesses under cross examination. This has made it difficult to assess whether the committee’s case would stand up to more rigorous evidentiary requirements in a court of law.
The prospect of video testimony over an intense period of days or hours is likely to be unappealing to the former President because it would be harder for him to dictate the terms of the exchanges and control how his testimony might be used.
A panel is discussing whether to make criminal referrals of Trump and the people around him for their actions on January 6. The Attorney General of the state of Georgia and the prosecutors in Georgia are investigating attempts by Trump and his associates to overthrow the 2020 election, and this is one of the most significant areas of criminal liability for the ex- President.
If there is evidence a crime was committed, Garland would face a dilemma over whether the national interest lay in implementing the law to its full extent or whether the consequences of prosecuting a former commander in chief in a fractious political atmosphere could tear the country apart.
It would cause uproar if the ex-president was charged and sentenced for a second White House term. But sparing him from accountability if there’s evidence of a crime would send a damaging signal to future presidents with strongman instincts.
After voting concludes Tuesday, look for the dominoes to start falling on a scramble of investigations from the Department of Justice and Republicans in the House of Representatives.
The Department of Justice will have to act quickly if they want to indict Trump before he launches his presidential campaign. He could announce his candidacy a week after Election Day on November 14, sources told CNN, although that date could change.
If the GOP wins on Election Day, Trump will take control of the primary field and make himself the leader of the party.
Hunter Biden, the House Republican Investigation of the House of Representatives, and the Senate Committee on the Investigation of his Probate With The FBI
Hunter Biden, the president’s troubled son, would likely get a lot of attention if there is a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
The House on January 6 will be closed, and Republicans will go public with their investigation into the son of the president.
GOP lawmakers do not have a detailed inflation plan, the issue driving many voters to the polls. But after years on the case of investigating Hunter Biden, who has struggled with substance abuse and made a career dealing with foreign nationals, they have prepared a 1,000-page road map they plan to present to the FBI and Department of Justice. Hunter Biden is already the subject of a two-pronged federal investigation in Delaware but has not been charged with any crime.
It’s false to equate GOP efforts to investigate Hunter Biden’s business activities with the January 6 committee’s efforts to document the insurrection and Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer was, for example, asked by CNN’s Pamela Brown this weekend why he had no interest in the more than 325 documents found at Trump’s home but was fixated upon the approximately 20 classified documents uncovered in Biden’s premises by lawyers and an unknown number also found during an FBI search of the president’s home this month.
The report states that Republicans have promised a lot of things about the Biden administration, and that they will investigate it.
Investigations, hearings and subpoenas will dominate in a GOP majority, according to CNN’s report, which notes that Republicans won’t have power to pass much of anything into law.
Zanona, Raju and Grayer write: “Most bills will be primarily messaging endeavors, unlikely to overcome the president’s veto or the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, though they would have to pass legislation to fund the government and raise the national borrowing limit to raise a debt default – an endeavor that is already alarming Democrats.”
Investigating the 2021 Capitol Hill Insurrection, a Special Counsel’s Letter, and a State-Client’s Brief Communication to the Select Committee
The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill insurrection said former President Donald Trump has “failed to comply” with its subpoena for documents and testimony.
There is no ability to force witnesses to comply with the subpoena quickly through the courts, which is why the committee has held witnesses in contempt of Congress before.
“Given the timing and nature of your letter – without any acknowledgment that Mr. Trump will ultimately comply with the subpoena – your approach on his behalf appears to be a delay tactic,” Thompson wrote.
The truth is that Donald Trump, like other of his closest friends, is hiding from the Select Committee’s investigation and refusing to comply with its subpoena. “Donald Trump orchestrated a scheme to overturn a presidential election and block the transfer of power. He is obligated to provide answers to the American people.”
Trump’s attorney, David Warrington, said in a statement with the release of the lawsuit in part that “long-held precedent and practice maintain that separation of powers prohibits Congress from compelling a President to testify before it.”
Special counsel Jack Smith has issued a subpoena to local officials in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, for information related to the 2020 election, a spokesperson for the county told CNN.
Those efforts included putting forward slates of pro-Trump electors and filing baseless lawsuits. CNN reported this summer that the DOJ issued numerous subpoenas and was seeking information in all seven states where Trump’s campaign convened the false electors as part of the effort to subvert the Electoral College.
In November 2020, Trump’s campaign team fought in court to throw out over 10,000 absentee ballots in Philadelphia and Allegheny counties that were missing dates or names. Those attempts were rejected by Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, which argued in its opinion that “while constituting technical violations of the Election Code, [the mistakes] do not warrant the wholesale disenfranchisement of thousands of Pennsylvanian voters.”
The recent subpoenas come as a group of election security advocates have called for Smith and other federal agencies to investigate a series of voting system breaches in multiple states carried out by allies of Trump after the 2020 election.
The group claims a multi- state conspiracy to copy voting software in Georgia, Michigan and Nevada.
Smith and his team of 20 prosecutors are moving fast in the pair of criminal probes. In the last few weeks, he has brought a number of Trump associates to Washington to testify before a grand jury.
Biden or Pence: Why the investigation of the Mar-a-Lago scandal is bad news for Biden and the White House, and what he thinks about his reputation
A professor at the University, Zelizer is a CNN political analyst. He is an author and editor of at least 25 books, including the New York Times best-seller, “Myth America: Historians take on the Biggest lies and Legends About Our Past”. Follow him on social media. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. You can also read more opinions on CNN.
From the outside, it appears as if Biden and Pence were far more cooperative with the DOJ and the FBI after some classified documents were found at their properties than Trump has been. It took a search warrant for FBI agents to get into Mar-a-Lago, and the ex-president claimed that presidential documents that belonged to the federal government when he left office belonged to him. But voters might find it hard to understand nuanced legal differences between the two cases – a factor the House Republican counter-attack based on Biden’s documents made more likely.
This isn’t an inside Washington story, as evidenced by the latest revelations. Nor is it one that it will go away anytime soon. This scandal is bad news for Biden and will take the heat off of him.
New polling shows that this is clear. More than eight out of 10 Americans approve of the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the handling of classified documents found at Biden’s home and office. However, according to the same CNN poll, it seems Americans understand the differences between the two cases involving Biden and Trump. While a majority of Americans disapprove of the way Biden has handled the issue and consider it a serious or “somewhat serious” problem, it’s telling that only 37% of Americans believe he has done something illegal. Yet, when it comes to Trump’s case, 52% of Americans believe he has done something illegal.
Biden, who established himself as the responsible foil to Trump in 2020, has now squandered the political high ground on this issue. And with Pence thrown into the mix, Trump’s team believes the latest developments could help support their argument that this should be treated as an administrative issue, rather than a criminal one.
Biden also has more to lose when it comes to the issue of reputation. One of Biden’s greatest assets has been his image as a regular Joe – a straight shooter who can be trusted. Biden, like Jimmy Carter, tried to cast himself as an upstanding candidate after the tumult of the Trump years, and he ran for president in 2020.
Now that the Republicans have control of the House, they will target everything from the president’s border policies to Hunter Biden, so we are seeing the first blow to that image.
Regardless of what House Republicans will find, if anything, they are capable of redirecting our attention to negative attacks on Biden and further damaging his reputation. The GOP used to bash Hillary Clintons reputation right through the 2016 election if Democrats think stories like this can have legs.
The turmoil will also renew talks within the Democratic Party about whether Biden should run for reelection or who might challenge him in the primaries — two conversations that had largely abated after the party’s stunning performance in the midterms.
All of these controversies can easily distract both the public and the media from the issues Biden would rather focus on, such as the slowing of inflation or military support for Ukraine.
There are other ways this could continue for Biden, especially if there are more revelations about his handling of classified documents.
The story can affect politics and he should not discount it. It opened the door to questions about his prospects and gave the Trump campaign something to crow about.
End The Weaponization of the Justice System: The Case of the Two-State Campaign Against the Ex-President Donald J.P. Smith
The twice-impeached former president, who tried to steal an election and is accused of fomenting an insurrection, launched his first two-state campaign swing on Saturday as he seeks a stunning political comeback.
Then on Monday, Trump’s potential exposure – in two of his multiple strands of legal peril – appeared to grow, foreshadowing a campaign likely to be repeatedly punctuated by distractions from criminal investigations.
We are going to end the weaponization of our justice system. This is the most innovative justice system we have ever had. The ex-president said on the trail over the weekend that it was all an investigation.
This is a message that may be attractive to some of Trump’s base voters who themselves feel alienated from the federal government and previously bought into his claims about a “deep state” conspiracy against him. It’s also a technique, in which a strongman leader argues that he is taking the heat so his followers don’t have to, that is a familiar page in the authority playbooks of demagogues throughout history.
The two people who were hired to comb Trump’s properties for evidence after an FBI search warrant was executed at his Mar-a-Lago resort were both interviewed for three hours last week. The sources said they didn’t decline to answer questions, but it’s not clear the extent of information they gave the grand jury.
The latest development in the Smith investigation could be a sign that he is leaning toward indictments, according to Ryan Goodman, a Former Special Counsel at the Department of Defense.
It seems like he’s trying to make sure that they know how to testify in a trial, whether it’s incriminating evidence against Trump, or exculpatory evidence that would help the prosecutors in their case.
The grand jury report states that there is an investigation going on inside its own bubble, and it underscores that for all the political noise.
Those discoveries allowed Trump to claim that he was being unfairly singled out, even if the cases have significant differences. Any Trump attempt to argue that he, like Biden and Pence, inadvertently took documents to his home will be undermined by the fact that he claimed the material belonged to him, and not the government, and what appears to be repeated refusals to give it back.
House Republicans hammering Biden over documents is giving Trump a free pass, despite the fact that Biden has said he didn’t see any classified material.
The special counsel probes of Biden and Trump are happening on their own. In a legal sense, there is no overlap between them. But they will both be subject to the same political inferno if findings are made public.
Do you have to take home a secret? Sensitivity of the Air Force Lieutenant Colonel to the Judiciary Circumscribing Donald Trump to the 2020 Election
While the political implications from the classified documents furor grew, a reminder of the treatment that lower-ranking members of the federal workforce can get when secret material is taken home was given to the country.
The retired Air Force lieutenant colonel will plead guilty next year for retaining classified information at his Florida home, according to court documents.
For Trump, more than 325 classified records have been recovered. The documents were turned over to the Justice Department under subpoena and found by the FBI.
At least 60 of the Trump documents were labeled “top secret,” including some files with SCI markings. There were also some documents with “SAP” designation, which stands for “special access programs” and is used for documents that are closely held with special protocols for who can access the material.
The Trump investigation has progressed the farthest. Federal prosecutors got a subpoena, demanded the return of all classified documents and tried to hold Trump in contempt when he didn’t fully comply. Investigators also got a judge to approve a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago and CNN has reported that there is an active grand jury based in Washington, DC, that recently heard testimony from witnesses.
There haven’t been any known subpoenas or search warrants in the Biden inquiry, though the FBI has conducted voluntary interviews with some of the people on Biden’s team who handled documents.
The former Vice President should not fear being forced to testify before a grand jury in Washington when he is starting his campaign for the Presidency, as was the case with Richard Nixon. That has to be an uncomfortable prospect for Mr. Pence, not to mention a potentially damaging one for a man who — at least as of today — is considered by many of us across the political spectrum to be a profile in courage for his refusal to join in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election in the face of Donald Trump’s demands. The constitutionally hallowed ground at which he stood on Jan. 6 is not the one where Mr. Pence brands the Department of Justice’s perfectly legitimate subpoena as unconstitutional.
Pence’s role in presiding over the electoral certification process made him a central figure in the Jan. 6 proceedings. In the days and hours before the mob attacked the Capitol, Trump subjected his vice president to intense pressure to overturn the 2020 election results. During crucial meetings with Trump and his allies, Vice President Mike Pence was present.
MIKE PENCE Subpoena Executive Privilege: A Nixonian’s First Attorney’s Perspective on the Watergate Break-In Case
In the constitution, executive privilege is not explicitly stated. It stems from the power and separation of powers of the executive branch.
“It is the idea that some documents and information would damage the public interest or harm the country if they were disclosed,” said a former Justice Department official, who is now a professor.
According to legal experts, the protection of the president’s advisers will allow them to give candid advice without fear of public disclosure, which will make president’s deliberations more productive.
The idea dates to the Nixon administration, when a special prosecutor leading the investigation of the Watergate break-in subpoenaed President Richard Nixon for tapes and transcripts of conversations related to the burglary.
Although the court ruled against Nixon, it eventually found that there was confidentiality interest in the communications between the president and his advisers. The court stated that executive privilege doesn’t apply when communications are relevant to a criminal investigation.
For example, in Nixon’s case, the Supreme Court found a compelling interest in the criminal case against the Watergate burglars, since there was a “demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial.”
Practically speaking, most disputes over executive privilege have been resolved through compromise between those asking for the documents or testimony, and those providing, legal experts said.
The former president has also tried to use executive privilege to block testimony to a federal grand jury, but those efforts have been less successful, the New York Times has reported.
Victoria Nourse, a former DOJ official who served as chief counsel to the vice president of the United States under then-Vice President Joe Biden, said a subpoena is harder to ignore. The process to get a judge to enforce congressional subpoenas can take a long time.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/11/1156205144/mike-pence-subpoena-executive-privilege
The Jerring Dissonance Between the Jack Smith and the Jack Pence Subpoena as a “Biden D.O.J. Subpenatra”
Pence cannot assert executive privilege as the former vice president. That power lies with the executive — in other words, Trump. The two men have not had the best relationships when it comes to the events of January 6.
A battle in court may follow if Trump succeeds in asserting executive privilege. Executive Privilege is not applicable to a crime. So the question is how far they want to take this and if they want a judge to adjudicate it,” she said.
A politician should be careful what he wishes for — no more so than when he’s a possible presidential candidate who would have the Supreme Court decide a constitutional case that could undermine his viability in an upcoming campaign.
Injecting campaign-style politics into the criminal investigatory process with his rhetorical characterization of Mr. Smith’s subpoena as a “Biden D.O.J. subpoena,” Mr. Pence is trying to score points with voters who want to see President Biden unseated in 2024. Well enough. That is what politicians do. Jack Smith used his subpoena to undermine the political careers of some people, including President Biden. Thus the jarring dissonance between the subpoena and Mr. Pence’s characterization of it. It is Mr. Pence who has chosen to politicize the subpoena, not the D.O.J.
