Federal Criminal Case Against Trump (Documents Case)

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    Biden Says He Made the Clemency Decisions Recorded With Autopen

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    Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is escalating his battle against Republican claims that he might not have been in control of high-profile clemency decisions issued under his name at the end of his term and, more generally, that his cognitive state impaired his functioning in office.In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Biden said that he had orally granted all the pardons and commutations issued at the end of his term, calling President Trump and other Republicans “liars” for claiming his aides had used an autopen to do so without his authorization.“I made every decision,” Mr. Biden said in a phone interview on Thursday, asserting that he had his staff use an autopen replicating his signature on the clemency warrants because “we’re talking about a whole lot of people.”The interview was Mr. Biden’s first about the parallel investigations begun by the Trump White House, the Justice Department and Congress into a series of clemency decisions made by Mr. Biden in his final weeks in office and his mental acuity during his term.Republicans in Congress have demanded sworn interviews with former Biden aides, prompting them to hire their own lawyers. Some lawyers are said to have warned their clients not to talk publicly and about the dangers of testifying because the Justice Department under Mr. Trump might be eager to bring perjury charges over any inconsistency, no matter how minor.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Administration Fires More DOJ Employees Who Worked for Special Counsel

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      The latest round of firings targets not just prosecutors but also support staff members who played a smaller role.The Trump administration fired another batch of nearly 10 Justice Department employees who once worked for the special counsel’s office that twice indicted President Trump, some in relatively minor roles, according to two people familiar with the matter.The dismissals on Friday were the latest sign that the administration was reaching deep into the inner workings of the Justice Department to find and expel not just people who had a direct part in investigating and prosecuting Mr. Trump during his four years out of office but also those who had played secondary roles in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith.The latest firings, which include at least two federal prosecutors, appeared to once again ignore traditional civil service protections and were said to be based on a broad assertion of presidential authority, according to two people who spoke about the moves on condition of anonymity to avoid discussing a politically sensitive subject.At least seven others who were fired had served as support staff to Mr. Smith’s office, the two people said. They helped manage the office, handling tasks like overseeing financial records, performing paralegal services or conducting information security.Since the early days of Mr. Trump’s second term, the president’s aides have repeatedly sought to fire, punish or demote the people who worked on the cases against him as well on cases stemming from the attack on the Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.The purging from government ranks of anyone associated with these cases has been sporadic, with fresh batches of firings coming at different intervals and often without much explanation, other than the citing of Article II of the Constitution, which defines the powers of a president.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bondi Indicates Signal Chat Episode Will Not Be Criminally Investigated

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      Attorney General Pam Bondi signaled on Thursday that there was unlikely to be a criminal investigation into the sharing of military operation details in an unsecured text group, declaring that the specifics of when fighter jets would depart and when bombs would fall were “not classified.”Ms. Bondi, speaking at a news conference in Virginia, was asked about the public debate surrounding Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after he sent details of a coming attack on rebels in Yemen to senior administration officials in a Signal group chat that accidentally included a magazine editor.“It was sensitive information, not classified, and inadvertently released,” Ms. Bondi said, while praising the military operation that ensued.“What we should be talking about is, it was a very successful mission,” she said, before quickly accusing Democrats from previous administrations of mishandling classified information.“If you want to talk about classified information, talk about what was in Hillary Clinton’s home,” she said. “Talk about the classified documents in Joe Biden’s garage, that Hunter Biden had access to.”The Justice Department opened investigations into Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Biden in those instances, but neither ultimately faced criminal charges. She did not mention the prosecution of Mr. Trump over his handling of classified documents after his first term in office — a case which was ultimately abandoned when he won a second term.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fact-Checking Trump’s Justice Dept. Speech on Crime, Immigration and His Cases

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      President Trump repeated a number of well-trodden falsehoods on Friday in a grievance-fueled speech at the Justice Department, veering from prepared remarks to single out lawyers and prosecutors and assail the criminal investigations into him.His remarks, billed as a policy address, were wide-ranging, touching on immigration, crime and the price of eggs.Here’s a fact-check.Mr. Trump’s misleading claims touched on:His legal troublesThe 2020 electionBiden and classified documentsThe Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the CapitolParents, anti-abortion activists and CatholicsImmigration and crimeEgg pricesHis legal troublesWhat Was Said“They weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people.”“They spied on my campaign, launched one hoax and disinformation operation after another, broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff and supporters, raided my home Mar-a-Lago and did everything within their power to prevent me from becoming the president of the United States.”This lacks evidence. Mr. Trump’s claims refer to a wide array of investigations and criminal cases that occurred before, during and after his first term as president.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      F.B.I. Returns Materials Taken From Mar-a-Lago to Trump

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      Among the items taken from the president’s Florida residence were files that investigators said contained classified material and formed the central evidence in one of the criminal cases against him.The F.B.I. on Friday gave President Trump the boxes of materials the bureau had seized during a search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in 2022, the White House announced.Files that investigators said contained classified material were among the thousands of items taken in the search, and they had formed the central evidence in a criminal case charging Mr. Trump with illegally taking them when he left office after his first term and blocking the government’s efforts to retrieve them.But a judge unexpectedly threw out the charges last year, and prosecutors dropped their appeal to reinstate them after Mr. Trump was re-elected in November. Jack Smith, the special counsel in the case, said at the time that the charges had been dismissed because of a department policy that barred filing charges against a sitting president.Mr. Trump repeatedly argued that he had a legal right to the documents despite their classification. After the case was dropped, the president and his allies said they would seek the return of the files that had been seized.Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said that happened Friday afternoon.“The F.B.I. is giving the president his property back that was taken during the unlawful and illegal raids,” Mr. Cheung said. “We are taking possession of the boxes today and loading them onto Air Force One.”Mr. Cheung told reporters that the boxes of materials taken from Mar-a-Lago were loaded onto Air Force One before the president’s departure for Mar-a-Lago on Friday evening. Alina Habba, the counselor to the president, told reporters that the boxes included personal items from Mr. Trump and his family.In his own statement, the president said he wanted to make the materials “part of the Trump Presidential Library.”“The Department of Justice has just returned the boxes that deranged Jack Smith made such a big deal about,” he said, adding, “I did absolutely nothing wrong.” More

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      Trump Says He Would Have Had a ‘Very Nasty Life’ if He’d Lost the Election

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      President Trump said Wednesday he would have had a “very nasty life” if he lost the presidential election, a surprisingly public acknowledgment that his legal challenges could have consumed his life and brought jail time.“If I lost, it would have been very bad,” Mr. Trump said at an investment summit in Miami Beach. “It was dangerous, actually very dangerous.”When Mr. Trump won in November, the Justice Department abandoned the two federal cases against him, and a judge in Manhattan issued an unconditional discharge in his hush money case.Mr. Trump gave voice to something that his advisers had long said he had in the back of his mind as he campaigned. But he did not publicly acknowledge throughout 2024 that he was campaigning for his freedom as much as for the White House itself.The president made the comments in response to a question about how he would spend a year if granted a sabbatical. Mr. Trump did not directly answer the question, saying he was honored to be president. But he said it took “a certain amount of courage” to run again because of the personal risks.Mr. Trump also said he disagreed with historians’ assessment that Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated, were the two most mistreated presidents.“Nobody was treated like me,” he said. “Nobody, and I will tell you, you learn a lot about yourself, but there’s nothing I’d rather do.”During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump faced dozens of criminal charges across four different cases. Jack Smith, who served as a special counsel, charged him in two different cases, one related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and another related to his handling of classified government documents after he left the White House in 2021. The documents case had been dismissed by a Trump-appointed judge, but Mr. Smith’s team was appealing it.He also faced charges in Georgia over attempts to overturn his election loss in 2020, and he was found guilty on all counts in the hush-money case in New York, where he could have faced up to four years in prison.Maggie Haberman More

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      End of Trump Cases Leaves Limits on Presidential Criminality Unclear

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      Donald J. Trump is set to regain office without clarity on the scope of presidential immunity and with a lingering cloud over whether outside special counsels can investigate high-level wrongdoing.The end of the two federal criminal cases against President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday left momentous, unsettled questions about constraints on criminal wrongdoing by presidents, from the scope of presidential immunity to whether the Justice Department may continue to appoint outside special counsels to investigate high-level wrongdoing.Both cases against Mr. Trump — for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his later hoarding of classified government documents and obstruction of efforts to retrieve them — were short-circuited by the fact that he won the 2024 election before they could be definitively resolved.Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought both cases against Mr. Trump, asked courts on Monday to shut them down. The prosecutor cited the Justice Department’s longstanding view that the Constitution implicitly grants temporary immunity to sitting presidents, lest any prosecution distract them from their official duties.The result is not just that Mr. Trump appears set to escape any criminal accountability for his actions. (Mr. Smith left the door open to, in theory, refiling the charges after Mr. Trump leaves office, but the statute of limitations is likely to have run by then.) It also means that two open constitutional questions the cases have raised appear likely to go without definitive answers as Mr. Trump takes office.One is the extent of the protection from prosecution offered to former presidents by the Supreme Court’s ruling this summer establishing that they have a type of broad but not fully defined immunity for official acts taken while in office.The other is whether, when a president is suspected of committing crimes, the Justice Department can avoid conflicts of interest by bringing in an outside prosecutor to lead a semi-independent investigation into the matter.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Trump’s Win Helps Him Fight Off His Legal Charges

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      By triumphing at the ballot box, Donald Trump can dispense with federal charges against him while postponing or derailing other pending cases that have dogged him.For all that former President Donald J. Trump’s election to a second term was a remarkable political comeback, it was also the culmination of an audacious and stunningly successful legal strategy that could allow him to evade accountability for the array of charges against him.The string of accusations lodged during the two years of Mr. Trump’s candidacy, seemingly enough to end the career of almost any politician, became in his hands a fund-raising bonanza and a rallying cry, a deep pool of fuel for his rage and a call to demand retribution. The intensity of his campaign fed off the recognition that his personal freedom could be on the line.He was indicted not just once but twice for plotting to overturn the last election. He was accused of mishandling national security secrets and obstruction. He was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, and for inflating his net worth. And he was found guilty of criminal charges stemming from a hush money payment to a porn star.Throughout it all, however, starting with his first indictment in the hush money case, legal proceedings that were meant to hold him to account only seemed to strengthen his support. His political standing strengthened, he was relentless in fighting off some charges, delaying a trial on others and banking on the election itself to settle what he could not win in the courtroom.The Justice Department has taken the position under administrations of both parties that prosecutors cannot pursue criminal charges against a sitting president to avoid interfering with his performance of his constitutional duties. That is a legal principle that the Trump administration Justice Department and his defense lawyers will surely press state courts and local prosecutors to adhere to as well.The result is that the decision by voters this week to return Mr. Trump to the White House could lead all or many of the proceedings against him to be postponed or derailed altogether.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Golf Course Suspect Is Charged With Attempted Assassination

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      The new federal indictment in Florida comes on top of two gun charges against Ryan W. Routh, an itinerant contractor with an extensive criminal record.The man accused of lurking with a gun near former President Donald J. Trump at one of his Florida golf courses was charged on Tuesday with the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.The indictment was returned by a federal grand jury in Miami and filed in Federal District Court in southern Florida. The case was randomly assigned to Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the Trump-appointed judge who recently dismissed the case related to Mr. Trump’s retention of classified documents after he left office.The new charges against the suspect, Ryan W. Routh, 58, were expected. They come on top of two gun charges against Mr. Routh, an itinerant contractor with an extensive criminal record who exhorted Iran to assassinate Mr. Trump.In addition to the assassination charges, Mr. Routh was charged with possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, along with assaulting or intimidating a Secret Service agent — possibly referring to reports of his pointing the rifle in the direction of the agents before fleeing the perimeter of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.Earlier on Tuesday, a federal magistrate judge ordered Mr. Routh held until trial, citing his “lengthy criminal history with over a hundred arrests,” a history of weapons violations and his recent travel to Ukraine and Taiwan, which made him a flight risk.Just hours before that, federal prosecutors in North Carolina unsealed charges against Mr. Routh’s son, Oran A. Routh, accusing him of buying and possessing child pornography. An F.B.I. search of his apartment for evidence in his father’s case uncovered “hundreds” of sexual images on his phone involving children as young as 6, according to a court filing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More