The 2016 Mar-a-Lago Case Revisited: Attorney General Sam Patel’s Interrogation of a Secret Counsel Under Oath
The Justice Department obtained a court order to have a Trump adviser answer questions under oath. Patel initially declined to answer questions before the grand jury in October, citing his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. Then prosecutors fought for more answers by immunizing his testimony from prosecution, CNN previously reported.
There is an immunity from prosecution that is granted by the DC District Court to the person who gives information to the investigation.
The court’s decision is under seal, coming after a confidential proceeding where the Justice Department subpoenaed Patel to the grand jury in October. At that time, he declined to answer questions by asserting his Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination.
According to court records and sources, though it is not certain if he is a target of the Justice Department probe, a few advisers around Trump could have legal risk related to the Mar-a-Lago situation.
He was in charge of national security and defense during the Trump administration, and he became one of his designees to talk to the National Archives and the Justice Department. He claimed in conservative media interviews he witnessed Trump declassifying records before leaving the presidency, and argued that Trump should be able to release classified information.
At the same time the Justice Department is investigating the Mar-a-Lago documents case and other related matters, there is still grand jury activity in the case.
As Donald Trump inches closer to launching another presidential run after the midterm election, Justice Department officials have discussed whether a Trump candidacy would create the need for a special counsel to oversee two sprawling federal investigations related to the former president, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.
In the weeks leading up to the election, the Justice Department observed the quiet period, which usually involves not making any major changes that will have political consequences. Behind the scenes, investigators have remained busy, using aggressive grand jury subpoenas and secret court battles to compel testimony from witnesses in both the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of national security documents at his Palm Beach home.
“They can crank up charges on almost anybody if they wanted to,” said one defense attorney working on January 6-related matters, who added defense lawyers have “have no idea” who ultimately will be charged.
In Georgia, the Fulton County District Attorney is investigating Trump and his associates in regards to their attempt to overturn the 2020 election in the state.
Special counsels are targets of political attacks. The investigations of former special counsel Robert Muller and current special counsel John Durham were both criticized by their opponents.
Top Justice officials have looked to an old guard of former Southern District of New York prosecutors, bringing into the investigations Kansas City-based federal prosecutor and national security expert David Raskin, as well as David Rody, a prosecutor-turned-defense lawyer who previously specialized in gang and conspiracy cases and has worked extensively with government cooperators.
Rody, whose involvement has not been previously reported, left a lucrative partnership at the prestigious corporate defense firm Sidley Austin in recent weeks to become a senior counsel at DOJ in the criminal division in Washington, according to his LinkedIn profile and sources familiar with the move.
Sedition cases in the US Attorney’s Office and the final decision on a possible charge of Trump or an ex-President: a journey beyond Trump
The team handling the January 6 investigations at the US Attorney’s Office in DC is growing more and more as the sedition cases go to trial.
A handful of other prosecutors have joined the January 6 investigations team, including a high-ranking fraud and public corruption prosecutor who has moved out of a supervisor position and onto the team, and a prosecutor with years of experience in criminal appellate work now involved in some of the grand jury activity.
The Attorney General will make the decision of whether to charge Trump or his associates, because his tenure as a judge provided a break from partisan politics after the Senate blocked his Supreme Court nomination.
Several former prosecutors believe the facts exist for a potentially chargeable case. But Garland will have to navigate the politically perilous and historic decision of how to approach the potential indictment of a former President.
Garland dodged a question about the existence of a special counsel for Trump-related investigations but said that the Justice Department did not shy away from cases that were controversial or political.
Garland said that they will avoid any partisan elements of their decision making about cases. I wanted to make sure the department decisions were based on the law and facts, not on partisan considerations, that is what I meant by that.
Garland’s tough decisions go beyond Trump. The long-running investigation of Hunter Biden, son of the president, is nearing conclusion, people briefed on the matter say. Also waiting in the wings: a final decision on the investigation of Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, after prosecutors recommended against charges.
One former Justice Department official said that they wouldn’t charge before they were ready to charge. There will be added pressure to get through the review before the five year window is up.
In the coming weeks, she wants to bring witnesses before the grand jury, as she observed her own quiet period around the election. Sources previously told CNN indictments could come as soon as December.
The witnesses tried to fight off the subpoenas in the state investigation into efforts to influence the 2020 Georgia election.
The House Select Committee discovered that the DOJ had leads on White House employees who may have been involved in illegal activity, just as the disputes resolve in Georgia will improve DOJ’s ability to gather information.
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 also facing a special counsel investigation over his handling of documents from his time as vice president, and former Vice President Mike Pence, who’s eying a 2024 bid, is 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.
Two people who found two classified documents in a Florida storage facility for Donald Trump have testified before a federal grand jury in Washington that’s looking at the former president’s handling of national security records at his Mar-a-Lago residence, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
The outcome of the intelligence review of those documents may determine if criminal charges will be filed, according to one source familiar with the Justice Department’s approach.
The two individuals, who were hired to search four of Trump’s properties last fall months after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago resort over the summer, were each interviewed for about three hours in separate appearances last week. The extent of information they offered the grand jury remains unclear, though they didn’t decline to answer any questions, one of the sources familiar with the investigation said.
They were hired to search Trump’s Bedminster golf club, Trump Tower in New York, an office location in Florida and a storage unit in Florida last October, months after the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. They didn’t decline to answer questions from the grand jury, though it’s not clear what the extent of information is.
An electronic paper trail regarding the classified documents can be found if investigators push for access to computers.
This remains the case, despite the political gift Trump received when he discovered the classified documents at the Biden home and an office in Washington that Biden used to work in. The home of Pence contained some classified material.
The 2016 Mar-a-Lago Insights into a Two-State Campaign in the Presence of a State Insurrection
Jack Smith and his team have used a federal grand jury almost weekly to question witnesses in the Mar-a-Lago investigation.
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.
On Monday, the potential exposure in two of his strands of legal peril appeared to grow, signaling a campaign likely to be repeatedly disrupted by distraction from criminal investigations.
Still, Trump is a master of leveraging attempts to call him to account, legally and politically. He’s already built a central foundation of his new presidential quest around the idea that he’s being political persecuted by Justice Department investigations and what he claims are rogue Democratic prosecutors.
“We’re going to stop the appalling weaponization of our justice system. There’s never been a justice system like this. The ex-president said 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 is a tactic in which a strongman leader claims that he is taking the heat in order to keep his followers away from him.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/31/politics/trump-documents-grand-jury-2024-campaign/index.html
What the documents at Trump’s home reveal about an ex-president that isn’t a candidate or a criminal liar
Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Department of Defence, told CNN that Smith was leaning towards indictments and that the latest development was a sign of an advanced special counsel investigation.
It sounds like he’s locked in their testimony, trying to understand how they’d testify at a trial, whether that is incriminating evidence against Trump or exculpatory evidence that the prosecutors would then have that and have it solidified.
The act of investigating an ex-president was bound to be political. The fact that Trump is running for the White House again multiplies the stakes and means profound decisions are ahead for Attorney General Merrick Garland if evidence suggests Trump should be charged.
The case was sealed to protect Trump and his attorney from public scrutiny, in an effort to get more info about the Mar-a-Lago document boxes, where the Justice Department believes the conversations may have been a crime.
Even if the cases have significant differences, those discoveries allowed Trump to argue that he was being unfairly targeted. 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.
Fresh indications of the momentum in the Trump documents special counsel probe followed the latest sign of a lopsided approach to the controversy over classified material by House Republicans, who are hammering Biden over documents but giving Trump a free pass.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer was asked by CNN host Pamela Brown why he had no interest in the more than 325 documents found at Trump’s home despite the fact that Biden’s lawyers had discovered about 20 classified documents.
The two special counsel investigations probing Trump and Biden’s retention of secret documents are unfolding independently. In a legal sense, there is no overlap between them. If the findings are made public, they will both suffer the same political backlash.
If the ex-president is not charged with obstruction over a larger haul of documents and conduct that may add up to obstruction, he would cause a huge uproar among his supporters. Even though the sitting president enjoys protections from prosecution because of historic Justice Department guidance, it’s hard to see how the political ground for prosecuting just one of them could hold firm – especially if Biden and Trump are rival presidential candidates in 2024.
The Secret Hunt of Robert Birchum: Attorney-Client Protection in Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Campaign and the Effect on Special Counsel Jack Smith
On Monday the country got a reminder of the treatment that can await lower-ranking members of the federal workforce when secret material is taken home.
Robert Birchum was an Air Force officer for more than 30 years and held top secret clearance. Over a hundred files contained information labeled as top secret, secret or confidential, according to his plea agreement. The plea agreement said that while the residence was not a location authorized to store classified information, the defendant knew as much.
The Justice Department is trying to have Evan and Donald Trump’s lawyer give additional testimony, two people familiar with the motion told CNN.
To overcome the shield of attorney-client privilege, prosecutors alleged in writing to the judge that the former president used his attorney in furtherance of a crime or fraud, according to one source.
A person familiar with the situation said that Corcoran testified to the grand jury about what happened in the lead up to the search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.
It was unclear on Tuesday whether the Justice Department has developed new evidence to argue there was criminal planning, or whether prosecutors are resting on the same arguments made when prosecutors sought a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago last year. At that time, they had cause to believe federal records were moved or concealed within the beach club, and they have been investigating both mishandling of national security records and obstruction of justice.
It was a witch hunt against President Trump that was being hatched to try and prevent the people from returning him to the White House.
According to sources and court records reviewed by CNN, Special Counsel Jack Smith is locked in at least eight secret court battles that aim to uncover some of the most important information about Donald Trump after the 2020 election.
The outcome of these disputes could have far-reaching implications, as they are centered around a presidential candidate in less than a decade and could lead courts to re-shape the law around presidency, separation of powers and attorney-client confidentiality.
There are a lot of grand jury challenges from potential witnesses which is a reflection of the fact that Trump is very aggressive with investigations.
Criminal law experts say that investigations that implicate government officials are usually sealed because they often involve grand jury witnesses.
About half a dozen cases are still ongoing in court, either before Chief Judge Beryl Howell or in the appeals court above her, the DC Circuit. The typical arcs of cases that arise during grand jury investigations, where prosecutors often use the court to enforce subpoenas, are what most appear to follow.
More challenges from subpoenaed witnesses – including former Vice President Mike Pence – are expected to be filed in the coming days, likely under seal as well. Pence may raise novel questions about the protections around the vice presidency.
“I think we are in extraordinary times. Neil Eggleston was a White House lawyer who argued for executive privilege during both the Whitewater investigation and the Clinton administration.
In Whitewater, after the court in DC ruled that privilege claims wouldn’t hold up when a federal grand jury needed information, other witnesses shied away from trying to refuse to testify, Eggleston recalled. In the investigations, witnesses are testing if he still has confidentiality protections.
There are redacted versions of sealed court cases related to the grand jury where Trump or others in his administration have attempted to limit the investigation with claims of executive privilege, according to court filings.
The Justice Department faced legal problems because of their ability to get data from the congressman’s phone, which was seized during the January 6 investigation. The DOJ has not been able to view the records yet because an appeals court panel blocked them according to court records. The case is set for oral arguments on February 23 at the appeals court in Washington. The Reporters Committee for Free of the Press requested that the documents in the case be un-illuminated.
Howell has released redacted versions of two attorney confidentiality decisions she made last year giving prosecutors access to emails between Perry and three lawyers – John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Ken Klukowski – before January 6, 2021.
Clark tried to keep a draft of his autobiographical book from investigators, in hopes of keeping a story about his dealings with the DOJ before January 6. Clark tried to mark a draft outline about his life as an attorney.
High Court Resolution of Special Counsel’s Office Grand Jury Cases – but Can We Discern them? A Comment on the Justice Department
The suite of special counsel’s office grand jury cases raises questions how transparent the courts will be regarding these cases, and how soon documents filed in court could become available.
But the Justice Department is against making disclosures related to the grand jury investigations – and won’t even admit the proceedings are taking place.
They argued on Monday that with the public’s interest around the cases, there was more need for more secrecy.
It may be necessary for a court to more often decline to release judicial opinion ancillary to grand jury investigations that are the focus of intense press attention, in order to advance the policy goals underlying grand jury secrecy.