Justice Department

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Gaetz, Gabbard and Hegseth: Trump’s Appointments Are a Show of Force

      by

      President-elect Donald J. Trump’s cabinet picks show that he prizes loyalty over experience and is fueled by retribution.A Fox News ally for defense secretary. A former Democrat-turned-Trump-World-celebrity to oversee 18 spy agencies. A right-wing provocateur for the nation’s top law enforcement job.President-elect Donald J. Trump’s appointments for top government jobs continued to roll in fast and furiously on Wednesday, and his promise to build a presidential administration fueled by retribution quickly came into view.Those plans were perhaps best summarized by Representative Matt Gaetz, who wrote of his enthusiasm for the wholesale elimination of federal law enforcement agencies just hours before Mr. Trump announced he’d chosen the Florida Republican to lead the Justice Department:“We ought to have a full-court press against this WEAPONIZED government that has been turned against our people,” Mr. Gaetz wrote on social media on Wednesday. “And if that means abolishing every one of the three letter agencies, from the FBI to the ATF, I’m ready to get going!”Mr. Trump could not have said it better himself. And that is the entire point.The president-elect’s other bombshell picks include Pete Hegseth, a military veteran known for defending Mr. Trump on Fox News, to be his defense secretary; and Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, to be director of national intelligence.President-elect Donald J. Trump chose Tulsi Gabbard as his director of national intelligence. They appeared together at a rally in North Carolina last month.Kenny Holston/The New York Times“These are so appalling they’re a form of performance art,” Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice, said in an interview, reflecting on Mr. Trump’s choices and their fitness for their jobs.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

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Matt Gaetz, a Bomb-Thrower for the Justice Department

      by

      President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be attorney general has set a new bar for in-your-face nominations.In selecting Representative Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general, President-elect Donald J. Trump has chosen an undisguised attack dog to preside over the Department of Justice.Mr. Gaetz, 42, a Florida Republican and an unswerving loyalist to Mr. Trump, has a history that under conventional circumstances would make his confirmation prospects appear insurmountable.He was investigated by the Justice Department on suspicion of child sex trafficking. This year, after the government case was shuttered, the House Committee on Ethics opened its own inquiry into the matter, which effectively ended on Wednesday night after Mr. Gaetz resigned from his seat. Mr. Gaetz has also been accused of showing photos of nude women to colleagues on the House floor and of seeking a pardon from the previous Trump White House. He has denied each of these allegations.Mr. Gaetz is also an avowed enemy of virtually every top Republican not named Trump. He led the charge last year to oust one Republican leader, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and this year openly celebrated the resignations of two others — Senator Mitch McConnell, who announced he would be retiring as minority leader, and Ronna McDaniel, who stepped down as chairwoman of the Republican Party National Committee.“We’ve now 86’d: McCarthy, McDaniel, McConnell,” Mr. Gaetz exulted on the social media platform X in March.“I am not some ‘Lord of the Flies’ nihilist,” Mr. Gaetz insisted to The New York Times in January 2023, just after he had relinquished his five-day blockade of Mr. McCarthy’s eventually successful quest to be speaker. But nine months later, Mr. Gaetz helped pushed Mr. McCarthy out of the job for good.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

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Weighs Key Personnel Choices, Schooled by His First-Term Experience

      by

      President-elect Donald J. Trump is not known for adherence to a disciplined and rigorous personnel selection process, but behind the scenes his advisers and allies have been preparing lists of candidates for the most important jobs in his administration.Three days after he decisively won a second term, Mr. Trump held his first formal transition meetings on Friday to turn his attention to the choices he faces.He is most keenly interested, aides and advisers say, in a handful of roles: attorney general, C.I.A. director, White House counsel and secretaries of Defense, State and Homeland Security. At one point during the 2024 campaign, he demanded the resignation of the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, whom he had appointed in 2017.He has put little focus so far on who will lead other cabinet departments, though he has told aides he wants to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “do whatever he wants” with the health agencies, and perhaps be secretary of Health and Human Services if he can be confirmed by the Senate.Mr. Trump is relying in part on the work done by Howard Lutnick, the billionaire chief executive of the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald, who has spent months overseeing a team that has drawn up lists and done vetting for any red flags.But Mr. Trump, who is a mix of competing impulses, is also doing what he always does: calling around to friends and associates, asking them who they think he should pick.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

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Trump’s 2nd-Term Agenda Could Transform Government and Foreign Affairs

      by

      The president-elect could reshape government and may dramatically transform foreign and domestic policy in a second term.As he declared victory, President-elect Donald J. Trump said that his mission now was nothing less than to “save our country.” His version of doing that involves an expansive agenda that would reshape government, foreign policy, national security, economics and domestic affairs as dramatically as any president in modern times.Over the course of the campaign, Mr. Trump outlined a set of policies for his second term that would be far more sweeping than what he enacted in his first. Without establishment Republicans and military veterans surrounding him to resist his more drastic ideas, Mr. Trump may find it easier to move ahead, particularly if his party completes its sweep by winning the House.Many of his policy prescriptions remain vague or change in detail depending on his mood or the day. But if he follows through on his campaign trail talk, he would restructure the government to make it more partisan, further cut taxes while imposing punishing tariffs on foreign goods, expand energy production, pull the United States back from overseas alliances, reverse longstanding health rules, prosecute his adversaries and round up theoretically millions of people living in the country illegally.“We’re going to do the best job,” Mr. Trump said in his victory speech. “We’re going to turn it around. It’s got to be turned around. It’s got to be turned around fast, and we’re going to turn it around. We’re going to do it in every way with so many ways, but we’re going to do it in every way. This will forever be remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country.”Having promised to devote his next four years in office to “retribution,” Mr. Trump plans to quickly shield himself from legal scrutiny, end criminal investigations against himself, pardon supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and turn the power of federal law enforcement against his adversaries.He has said he will fire Jack Smith, the special counsel who has brought indictments against him for mishandling classified documents and trying to overturn the 2020 election, and he has threatened to investigate President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and others who have angered him, including Republicans like Liz Cheney, the former congresswoman from Wyoming.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

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

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

      by

      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

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      House Covid Panel Refers Andrew Cuomo for Potential Prosecution

      by

      The Republican-led House subcommittee asked the Justice Department to investigate Mr. Cuomo for possible prosecution for “false statements” in his testimony.A House subcommittee has referred former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York to the Justice Department for potential prosecution, accusing him of lying to Congress about his involvement in a state Covid report on nursing home deaths.Mr. Cuomo was accused of engaging in a “conscious, calculated effort” to avoid accountability for his handling of nursing homes where thousands of people died of Covid, according to the referral from the Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.The referral, which was sent Wednesday night to the Justice Department, was signed by the subcommittee chairman, Representative Brad Wenstrup, Republican of Ohio. No other committee member, including the ranking Democrat, Representative Raul Ruiz of California, signed the referral letter, in a potential sign of political partisanship.The referral centers on closed-door testimony Mr. Cuomo gave to the committee, when he asserted that he had not reviewed a State Health Department report that deflected blame for the deaths of people in New York nursing homes in early 2020.The New York Times reported last month that Mr. Cuomo had reviewed the report and had personally written portions of early drafts, according to a review of emails and congressional documents.Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, said that the former governor testified that he did not remember having any role in the report, and rejected assertions that Mr. Cuomo had lied.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

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Secret Files in Election Case Show How Judges Limited Trump’s Privilege

      by

      The partly unsealed rulings, orders and transcripts open a window on a momentous battle over grand jury testimony that played out in secret, creating important precedents about executive privilege.Court documents unsealed on Monday shed new light on a legal battle over which of former President Donald J. Trump’s White House aides had to testify before a grand jury in Washington that charged him with plotting to overturn the 2020 election, showing how judges carved out limits on executive privilege.The trove — including motions, judicial orders and transcripts of hearings in Federal District Court in Washington — did not reveal significant new details about Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power. But it did open a window on important questions of presidential power and revealed how judges grew frustrated with Mr. Trump’s longstanding strategy of seeking to delay accountability for his attempts to overturn his defeat to Joseph R. Biden Jr.The documents also created important — if not binding — precedents about the scope of executive privilege that could influence criminal investigations in which a current or former president instructs subordinates not to testify before a grand jury based on his constitutional authority to keep certain internal executive branch communications secret.Starting in the summer of 2022, and continuing with the appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel later that year, the Justice Department undertook a wide-ranging and extraordinary effort to compel grand jury testimony from several close aides to Mr. Trump. Prosecutors believed the aides had critical information about the former president’s attempts to overturn the results of the election.The effort, which ended in the spring of the following year, was largely intended to obtain firsthand accounts from key figures who had used claims of executive privilege and other legal protections to avoid testifying to investigators on the House committee that examined the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the events leading up to it.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

    • 200 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Lil Durk Is Accused of Conspiring to Kill a Rival. What We Know About the Case.

      by

      The rapper Lil Durk was arrested at the airport in Miami this week after he had been booked on flights to three international destinations, federal prosecutors said.The Grammy-winning rapper Lil Durk was arrested on a federal charge near Miami International Airport on Thursday over accusations that he conspired to kill a rap rival, resulting in the fatal shooting of another person.Lil Durk put out a bounty on the life of another rapper, identified only as T.B. by prosecutors, as retaliation for the 2020 killing of the rapper King Von, a member of the hip-hop collective Only the Family, which Lil Durk founded, according to the federal criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.An F.B.I. affidavit also says that Lil Durk had been booked on at least three international flights that were leaving on Thursday — to Italy, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates — in an attempt to flee the United States.Lil Durk, 32, whose legal name is Durk Banks, appeared in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Friday. He remained in federal custody and was expected to be arraigned in Los Angeles in the coming weeks, according to prosecutors. He was charged with conspiracy to use interstate facilities to commit murder for hire resulting in death.The news of his arrest comes weeks before the scheduled release of his new album, “Deep Thoughts,” on Nov. 22. Earlier this year, he won a Grammy Award for Best Melodic Rap Performance for his song “All My Life,” featuring J. Cole.Representatives for Lil Durk had not responded to a request for comment.Here’s what we know about the case so far:Lil Durk is alleged to have co-conspirators.Lil Durk’s arrest comes on the heels of a recently unveiled federal indictment in Los Angeles charging five other men affiliated with Only the Family, or O.T.F., with the murder-for-hire plot, alleging that they conspired to “track, stalk, and attempt to kill” a rapper identified as T.B. 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