Justice Department

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Prosecutors Ask Judge to Deny Trump’s Request to Freeze Election Case

      by

      The special counsel Jack Smith told the judge she should keep the trial’s start date in March and continue making decisions as the former president appeals one of her rulings.Federal prosecutors on Sunday asked the judge handling former President Donald J. Trump’s trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election to reject his request to freeze the case in its entirety as Mr. Trump appeals her recent ruling that he is not immune from prosecution.The prosecutors told the judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, that even as the former president’s appeal of the immunity decision moved forward, she should continue working on several of the unresolved legal issues in the case and not postpone the trial’s current start date of March 4.“During the pendency of the appeal, any number of matters could arise in this case that are not involved in the appeal,” wrote Molly Gaston, a top deputy to Jack Smith, the special counsel who is overseeing Mr. Trump’s federal prosecutions. “The court should not enter an order preventing it from handling them.”“For its part,” Ms. Gaston went on, “in light of the public’s strong interest in a prompt trial, the government will seek to ensure that trial proceeds as scheduled.”The three-page filing by Ms. Gaston came just days after Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked Judge Chutkan to pause all of the dates and deadlines associated with the proceeding until the appeal of her decision denying their immunity claims is resolved.The expansive stay Mr. Trump’s lawyers have asked for would in essence stop the case in its tracks. The appeal is the centerpiece of a long-planned strategy by the former president’s legal team to postpone the trial in Federal District Court in Washington until after the 2024 election.This month, Judge Chutkan turned down Mr. Trump’s sweeping claims that he enjoyed “absolute immunity” from the election interference indictment because it was based on actions he took while he was in office.In her ruling, she condemned his attempts to “usurp the reins of government” and said there was nothing in the law, the Constitution or American history upholding the idea that a former president should not be bound by the federal penal code.Mr. Trump’s lawyers have already moved to challenge that decision in front of a federal appeals court in Washington and plan to keep appealing it all the way to the Supreme Court, if needed. But winning the argument is only one of their goals. They are also hoping to eat up time and postpone the case from going to trial for as long as they can.If the trial were to be put off until after the election and Mr. Trump were to win, he could have his attorney general simply dismiss the charges. Holding a trial after the presidential race was over would also mean that voters would never get to hear any of the evidence that prosecutors have collected about Mr. Trump’s expansive efforts to reverse the results of the last election before weighing in on whether to elect him again in 2024.Mr. Smith’s team has suggested in court papers that it knew Mr. Trump would seek to use the immunity appeal to delay the case. Last month, the prosecutors specifically asked Judge Chutkan to make her decision on the question quickly so that the appellate process could get underway.But in her filing on Sunday evening, Ms. Gaston suggested there was no reason Judge Chutkan could not make rulings on other outstanding issues in the case as the appeal went forward. Among those issues is an unresolved motion by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to have the election charges dismissed because they represent what they have described as a partisan attack against him by President Biden.While the defense and the prosecution have been sparring for months over the timing of the election interference trial, they have more recently been fighting over something else: a number of “speculative and conspiratorial” theories, as the government has called them, that Mr. Trump has indicated he may raise during the trial.On Saturday night, in a separate set of court papers, prosecutors pushed back against those theories, which could serve as the basis for one of Mr. Trump’s lines of defense at trial: suggesting, that in reassuring the public that the 2020 election was conducted fairly, the so-called deep state was in fact misleading the nation, an assertion that lacks any credible basis.In the papers filed on Saturday, Thomas P. Windom, another one of Mr. Smith’s top deputies, dismissed the notion — first brought up last month by Mr. Trump’s lawyers — that the SolarWinds computer hack engineered by Russia might have affected the results of the election.Mr. Windom also rejected as “bewildering” Mr. Trump’s claim that a statement issued by the country’s top cybersecurity official saying that the 2020 election had been safe was “part of a partisan effort to provide false assurances to the public.”Mr. Windom had little patience for yet another conspiratorial claim raised by Mr. Trump: that a cabal of politically motivated intelligence and national security officials had worked together after the election to convince him that no voting machines had been compromised and that the vote count had in fact been accurate.Calling the idea “theatrical,” Mr. Windom said prosecutors never found a shred of evidence during their long investigation that “a domestic or foreign actor flipped a single vote in a voting machine.”He also revealed how deeply the inquiry delved into the country’s national security community, noting that investigators interviewed the former director of national intelligence, the former national security adviser and his deputy, the former secretary of defense and the former leadership of the Justice Department. Asked if they were aware of any evidence of meddling in the election results, “the answer from every single official was no,” Mr. Windom’s filing said. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Appeals Court Upholds Trump Gag Order in Election Case, but Narrows Terms

      by

      The decision largely left in place an order limiting what the former president can say about his upcoming federal trial but allowed him more leeway to criticize Jack Smith, the special counsel.A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the gag order imposed two months ago on former President Donald J. Trump in the criminal case accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, but narrowed its terms to allow him to keep attacking one of his main targets: Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing his federal prosecutions.The fight over the gag order has pitted the First Amendment rights of a presidential candidate against fears that his vitriolic language could spur his supporters to violence against participants in the case. While the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed that a gag order was justified, its adjustments gave Mr. Trump broader latitude to lash out at some of the people he has been targeting for months.In its ruling, a three-judge panel sought to strike a cautious balance between what it called “two foundational constitutional values”: the integrity of the judicial system and Mr. Trump’s right to speak his mind.To that end, the panel kept in place the gag order’s original measures restricting Mr. Trump from attacking any members of Mr. Smith’s staff or the court staff involved in the case. It also preserved provisions that allowed Mr. Trump to portray the prosecution as a political vendetta and to directly criticize the Biden administration and the Justice Department.And in one respect, the court expanded the restrictions, adding a measure barring Mr. Trump from commenting on the relatives of lawyers or court staff members involved in the case if the remarks were intended to interfere with how the trial participants were doing their jobs.“We do not allow such an order lightly,” Judge Patricia A. Millett wrote for the panel. “Mr. Trump is a former president and current candidate for the presidency, and there is a strong public interest in what he has to say. But Mr. Trump is also an indicted criminal defendant, and he must stand trial in a courtroom under the same procedures that govern all other criminal defendants. That is what the rule of law means.”But the court cut back on the gag order in two important ways. In addition to freeing Mr. Trump to go after Mr. Smith, the public face of the prosecution, it relaxed a flat restriction against targeting witnesses — allowing Mr. Trump to criticize them if his remarks were not connected to their roles in the case.After the trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, first imposed the gag order on Mr. Trump in Federal District Court in Washington in October, Mr. Trump appealed seeking to get it overturned entirely as unconstitutional. As it hinted it might do at oral arguments last month, the appellate panel instead kept a version in place, but modified some of its terms.The modifications to the order mean that Mr. Trump can now return to using some of his favorite social media epithets and refer to Mr. Smith, as he has numerous times, as a “thug” or as “deranged.” The alterations also mean that Mr. Trump can lash out in a limited way against those of his political adversaries who also may be witnesses in the election interference trial, including former Vice President Mike Pence and former Attorney General William P. Barr.Asked for comment, the Trump campaign issued a statement saying the appeals court had struck down “a huge part of Judge Chutkan’s extraordinarily overbroad gag order.” Mr. Trump’s lawyers have promised to challenge the gag order all the way to the Supreme Court.The appeals court’s ruling rejected many of Mr. Trump’s legal team’s arguments for lifting the gag order entirely, including that his remarks are all constitutionally protected as political speech, that he could not be held responsible for his listeners’ responses to his speech, and that the court could not proactively gag him before any harm was shown to have occurred.“Many of former President Trump’s public statements attacking witnesses, trial participants, and court staff pose a danger to the integrity of these criminal proceedings,” Judge Millett wrote. “That danger is magnified by the predictable torrent of threats of retribution and violence that the district court found follows when Mr. Trump speaks out forcefully against individuals in connection with this case and the 2020 election aftermath on which the indictment focuses.”But the original order, she said, “sweeps in more protected speech than is necessary,” so the First Amendment required a narrower tailoring of the restriction.Judge Millett and her two colleagues on the panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia — Judges Cornelia Pillard and Brad Garcia — were appointed by Democratic presidents. Judge Chutkan was also put on the bench by a Democrat.While gag orders are not uncommon in criminal prosecutions, the order imposed in the election interference case has resulted in a momentous clash. Mr. Smith’s prosecutors have sought to protect themselves and their witnesses from Mr. Trump’s “near-daily” social media barrages, while the former president has argued that the government has tried to censor his “core political speech” as he mounts another bid for the White House.Mr. Trump has often blurred the lines between his criminal cases and his presidential campaign, using court appearances to deliver political talking points and employing public remarks to assail his prosecutions as a form of persecution.Complicating matters, several of his political adversaries, including Mr. Pence, are likely to be witnesses against him when the election subversion case goes to trial as early as March.The decision by the appeals court means that the two gag orders placed on Mr. Trump — one in the federal election case and the other in his civil fraud case in Manhattan — have now been reinstated after judges had temporarily paused them.Late last month, a state appeals court in New York put back in place a gag order barring Mr. Trump from attacking the court staff in his civil trial. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Seeks to Use Trial to Challenge Findings That 2020 Election Was Fair

      by

      The former president’s lawyers in his federal trial on charges of trying to overturn the election are asking to collect a wide range of evidence — including on unrelated issues like Hunter Biden.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump said in court papers that they planned to question the findings of several government agencies that the 2020 election was conducted fairly as part of their efforts to defend Mr. Trump against federal charges that he sought to overturn the results of the race.The lawyers also suggested in the papers that they intended to raise a host of distractions as part of their defense, indicating that they want to drag unrelated matters like Hunter Biden’s criminal prosecution and the investigation into former Vice President Mike Pence’s handling of classified documents into the election interference case.The twin filings by Mr. Trump’s lawyers late on Monday were formal requests to the prosecution to provide them with reams of additional material that they believe can help them fight the conspiracy indictment accusing Mr. Trump of seeking to subvert the lawful transfer of presidential power three years ago and stay in office despite his loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr.Criminal defendants routinely make such requests in what are known as motions to compel discovery, but many of those made in Mr. Trump’s two filings were long-shot efforts that are likely to be rejected. Ultimately, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the election interference case, will have the power to decide which, if any, of the records Mr. Trump will get.But even if his lawyers get far less than what they asked for, the scope of their requests can be read as a kind of outline of how they plan to fight the case, which is set to go to trial in March in Federal District Court in Washington.At the heart of their strategy, the court papers say, is a plan to call into question findings made by the intelligence community, the F.B.I. and other federal agencies that the election was not marred by widespread fraud.The lawyers intend to argue that government reports upholding the integrity of the election were in fact a “partisan effort to provide false assurances to the public.” By questioning the consensus that the election was secure, the lawyers are hoping to show that Mr. Trump was acting in good faith when he spread lies that the vote count had been rigged — a move that could weaken the prosecution’s attempts to prove his criminal intent.To make that argument, Mr. Trump’s legal team has asked Judge Chutkan to force the special counsel, Jack Smith, who is prosecuting the federal cases against the former president, to give it any internal government records that cut against the dominant view that the election had been conducted fairly.Those requests were only some of the 59 separate demands for records made in more than 70 pages of court papers submitted by Mr. Trump’s legal team. Looking for anything that could help them prove the race was not secure, the lawyers made additional requests for information about how federal officials assessed cyberattacks around the time of the election and about attempts by foreign governments to interfere in it.Suggesting yet another defense strategy, the lawyers also asked for any records that could help them undermine Mr. Smith’s contention that Mr. Trump was responsible for the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. They specifically asked Judge Chutkan to allow them access to any information about security measures implemented at the Capitol before the attack and about the presence of federal agents or informants who were on the ground during the riot.Almost from the moment the election interference indictment was handed up in August, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have tried to paint the case as a direct attempt by Mr. Biden to sabotage the man who is likely to be his chief rival in the 2024 election. They have advanced that argument not only without any evidence, but also in spite of the fact that the charges were filed by Mr. Smith, an independent prosecutor.The lawyers have specifically accused Mr. Biden of seeking to have Mr. Trump indicted in retaliation for the investigation of Hunter Biden, who was indicted in September on federal gun charges in a separate prosecution. And the discovery filings on Monday suggested that Mr. Trump’s lawyers would like nothing better than to muddy the waters of the election interference case by introducing evidence at trial about Hunter Biden.To that end, the lawyers requested any information concerning “coordination” between the Justice Department and the Biden administration or Mr. Biden’s family.In another far-fetched request, the lawyers asked for any records concerning dealings that the Justice Department had with Mr. Pence, who was investigated earlier this year after he returned to federal officials several classified documents he had kept when he left office.In their filing, Mr. Trump’s lawyers suggested without citing any evidence that Mr. Pence, who is likely to be a key government witness at the election interference trial, had “an incentive to curry favor with authorities” because of the potential charges he faced in his classified documents inquiry.Judge Chutkan will not issue a ruling on Mr. Trump’s requests until after prosecutors working for Mr. Smith respond to them next month. And her eventual decree about discovery is only one of several important decisions she will have to make in coming days.She is poised to issue an order about Mr. Trump’s claims that he enjoyed “absolute immunity” from the election charges because the indictment arose from official actions he took while in the White House. She is also expected to decide whether to allow cameras into her courtroom and televise the trial. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      A Troubling Trump Pardon and a Link to the Kushners

      by

      A commutation for a drug smuggler named Jonathan Braun had broader implications than previously known. It puts new focus on how Donald Trump would use his clemency powers in a second term.Even amid the uproar over President Donald J. Trump’s freewheeling use of his pardon powers at the end of his term, one commutation stood out.Jonathan Braun of New York had served just two and a half years of a decade-long sentence for running a massive marijuana ring, when Mr. Trump, at 12:51 a.m. on his last day in office, announced he would be freed.Mr. Braun was, to say the least, an unusual candidate for clemency.A Staten Islander with a history of violent threats, Mr. Braun had told a rabbi who owed him money: “I am going to make you bleed.” Mr. Braun’s family had told confidants they were willing to spend millions of dollars to get him out of prison.At the time, Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department and federal regulators, as well as New York state authorities, were still after him for his role in an entirely separate matter: his work as a predatory lender, making what judges later found were fraudulent and usurious loans to cash-strapped small businesses.Nearly three years later, the consequences of Mr. Braun’s commutation are becoming clearer, raising new questions about how Mr. Trump intervened in criminal justice decisions and what he could do in a second term, when he would have the power to make good on his suggestions that he would free supporters convicted of storming the Capitol and possibly even to pardon himself if convicted of the federal charges he faces.Just months after Mr. Trump freed him, Mr. Braun returned to working as a predatory lender, according to New York State’s attorney general. Two months ago, a New York state judge barred him from working in the industry. Weeks later, a federal judge, acting on a complaint from the Federal Trade Commission, imposed a nationwide ban on him.A New York Times investigation, drawing on documents and interviews with current and former officials, and others familiar with Mr. Braun’s case, found there were even greater ramifications stemming from the commutation than previously known and revealed new details about Mr. Braun’s history and how the commutation came about.The commutation dealt a substantial blow to an ambitious criminal investigation being led by the Justice Department’s U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan aimed at punishing members of the predatory lending industry who hurt small businesses. Mr. Braun and prosecutors were in negotiations over a cooperation deal in which he would be let out of prison in exchange for flipping on industry insiders and potentially even wearing a wire. But the commutation instantly destroyed the government’s leverage on Mr. Braun.The investigation into the industry, and Mr. Braun’s conduct, remains open but hampered by the lack of an insider.At multiple levels, up to the president, the justice system appeared to fail more than once to take full account of Mr. Braun’s activities. After pleading guilty to drug charges in 2011, Mr. Braun agreed to cooperate in a continuing investigation, allowing him to stay out of prison but under supervision for nine years — a period he used to establish himself as a predatory lender, making violent threats to those who owed him money, court filings show.Since returning to predatory lending after being freed, Mr. Braun is still engaging in deceptive business tactics, regulators and customers say.In working to secure his release, Mr. Braun’s family used a connection to Charles Kushner, the father of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser, to try to get the matter before Mr. Trump. Jared Kushner’s White House office drafted the language used in the news release to announce commutations for Mr. Braun and others.In a telephone interview, Mr. Braun said he did not know how his commutation came about.“I believe God made it happen for me because I’m a good person and I was treated unfairly,” he said, adding that his supporters tried “multiple paths” to get him out of prison but he had no idea which one succeeded.He said the 10-year sentence he received for marijuana trafficking was excessive and made him a victim of the criminal justice system. He denied any wrongdoing as a lender, and insisted that he had never talked to prosecutors about cooperating in the criminal predatory lending investigation.He said he had never met Jared Kushner. And he said a picture from April 2022, showing him and his wife on a golf course with the former president, had nothing to do with the commutation but was a chance three-minute encounter during a visit to a Trump property in Florida for a Passover event.“I didn’t meet him because of what happened, I just happened to be there the same time,” Mr. Braun said.Mr. Braun’s commutation highlights what former administration officials say were major problems at the Trump White House as it considered clemency applications: the lack of rigorous vetting of applications and the sidelining of the Justice Department, which has traditionally screened candidates.Mr. Kushner took a major role in the less structured vetting process that resulted in Mr. Braun’s commutation. The Justice Department investigators from Manhattan involved in the cooperation negotiations with Mr. Braun were never consulted.As other convicts seeking clemency did, Mr. Braun’s family retained Alan Dershowitz, the prominent lawyer and Trump ally who worked with Jewish organizations pushing for pardons, at least one of which had received financial support from the Kushner family.Mr. Dershowitz, who represented Mr. Trump in his first impeachment, had a direct line into Mr. Kushner’s office, and succeeded in helping win clemency from Mr. Trump for a number of other people. Mr. Dershowitz said he did not remember what steps he took to help Mr. Braun but said they were minimal.Jared Kushner declined to comment, and Charles Kushner hung up when called by a reporter, as did Jacob Braun, Mr. Braun’s father. The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan did not respond to messages seeking comment.A spokesman for Mr. Trump said all pardon applications “went through a vigorous vetting and review process,” but he did not address specific questions about Mr. Braun’s commutation.William P. Barr, a Trump attorney general who had left by the time of the Braun commutation, said when he took over the Justice Department he discovered that “there were pardons being given without any vetting by the department.”Mr. Barr added that he told Trump aides they should at least send over names of those being considered so the department could thoroughly examine their records. While the White House Counsel’s Office tried to do so, the effort fell apart under the crush of pardon requests that poured in during the final weeks before Mr. Trump left office, according to people with direct knowledge of the process.Mr. Trump boarding Air Force One for the last time on Jan. 20, 2021. He pardoned Mr. Braun in the final hours of his presidency.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesMarc Short, the chief of staff to Mr. Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, said when the vice president’s office was approached by Mr. Trump’s aides about clemency applications, it opted not to participate.“The pardon process at the end of the administration was so unseemly it would make the Clintons blush,” Mr. Short said, referring to the final-days pardons issued by President Bill Clinton — including one to the fugitive financier Marc Rich, whose ex-wife donated $450,000 to Mr. Clinton’s presidential library.Threats and a 10-Year SentenceMr. Braun’s path to receiving a last-minute commutation began in 2009, when the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, working with the Drug Enforcement Administration, raided what prosecutors said was a stash house for a marijuana smuggling ring run by Mr. Braun.When Mr. Braun found out about the raid, he rented a car and drove 25 hours straight from Florida to an Indian reservation in upstate New York where, dressed in all black, he was smuggled into Canada, according to court filings. He then fled to Israel.The Justice Department placed him on a special Interpol list that asked Israel to apprehend him. By 2010, he was back in New York, the Justice Department had charged him and he was behind bars.In the days after his arrest, prosecutors asked a federal judge to keep him in jail until he went on trial. The prosecutors said Mr. Braun could not be deterred and was violent or willing to use the specter of violence against those who owed him money or might turn on him. Mr. Braun, the prosecutors said, had access to millions of dollars in untraceable cash, and was willing to do anything to stay out of prison.The judge ordered that Mr. Braun be held pending trial. After nearly a year and a half in custody, Mr. Braun agreed to plead guilty. As part of the plea deal, he began cooperating secretly with the government’s investigations into other drug smugglers, particularly higher profile ones abroad, according to a former law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the internal workings of an investigation.In exchange, the prosecutors agreed to release Mr. Braun from jail, putting him on house arrest and delaying his sentencing on the drug charges while they pursued new cases with his help. It is unclear what information Mr. Braun provided the authorities or whether it led to convictions.Often, a cooperator can remain free for a few months by providing investigators with useful information. Sometimes, a court will hold off sentencing for a year or two as the cooperation continues. Throughout the process, federal authorities are supposed to monitor cooperators to ensure they do not break the law.For reasons that remain unexplained, Mr. Braun was permitted by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn to live relatively freely for nearly the next decade, and he was able to turn his focus to an enterprise rife with cash and threats: providing loans to struggling small businesses that often had nowhere else to turn.Former prosecutors and defense lawyers said they had never heard of a defendant being allowed to delay sentencing for such a long period or using his freedom to engage in the conduct he did. A spokesman for the Brooklyn federal prosecutor’s office declined to comment on Mr. Braun’s case.The business Mr. Braun entered is known by many names: the merchant cash advance industry, predatory lending or, in the view of some law enforcement officials, loan sharking.Small businesses — like restaurants and contractors — have long faced a problem: They need cash on a daily basis to buy ingredients and supplies, and pay employees so they can operate while awaiting customer payments.Banks often won’t lend to them, especially small firms with troubled credit histories, providing an opening for the merchant cash advance business to offer them financing on strict, sometimes usurious, terms that include high-interest rates and exorbitant fees. (Technically, they provide cash in exchange for a percentage of future revenues, an arrangement that typically gives them access to the borrower’s books and sometimes the borrower’s bank accounts.)An examination of court records by The Times found that between when the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn first let him out of prison in 2011 and when he reported to prison in 2020, Mr. Braun was accused of violently threatening eight people who owed him money. Another man accused Mr. Braun in a lawsuit of shoving him from the deck of a house in Staten Island in 2018.Mr. Braun eventually reported to the federal prison in Otisville, N.Y., in 2020.Mike Segar/ReutersAmong those threatened was a real estate developer, who said Mr. Braun told him: “I will take your daughters from you,” according to court documents.Another borrower said in an affidavit Mr. Braun told him, “Be thankful you’re not in New York, because your family would find you floating in the Hudson.”Over that time, companies connected to Mr. Braun made 1,900 fraudulent and illegal loans, some with interest rates greater than 1,000 percent, according to the New York State attorney general.Even as Mr. Braun was starting to become a threatening presence, the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn actually gave him more freedom. In May 2017, prosecutors and probation officers approved Mr. Braun being removed from house arrest.Five months later, Mr. Braun threatened the rabbi of a synagogue that had borrowed money from him, according to New York’s attorney general. Mr. Braun told the rabbi he would beat and “publicly embarrass him,” adding: “I am going to make you bleed” and “I will make you suffer for every penny.”Nearly a decade after he was first charged in the drug case, prosecutors scheduled his sentencing. Anonymous letters accusing him of violent threats were then filed on the docket of the judge overseeing his case.Despite his cooperation with the ongoing drug investigations, the judge sentenced him to 10 years in prison. Mr. Braun tried to appeal, but weeks before the pandemic hit in early 2020, he reported to the federal penitentiary in Otisville, N.Y.In prison, Mr. Braun’s legal troubles actually worsened. In June 2020, New York’s attorney general and the Federal Trade Commission, which was run by a Trump appointee at the time, sued him for his role as a predatory lender. The New York attorney general credited reporting by Bloomberg News — which in 2018 first documented Mr. Braun’s business practices and revealed last year that he had returned to predatory lending — as the impetus for the suit.At the same time, a dogged New York Police Department detective named Joseph Nicolosi, who was assigned to work as an investigator for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, was trying to build a wide-ranging criminal case focused on predatory lenders.The inquiry faced a big challenge. Unlike many financial fraud cases, where the government relies on documents to prove charges, federal prosecutors concluded they needed something more in this case: a turncoat to flip on higher-ups, explain the intricacies of lending agreements, say they knew what they were doing was wrong and serve as a narrator on the witness stand.Finding that witness was proving difficult, but investigators believed they had a strong candidate sitting behind bars.So in the fall of 2020, Mr. Nicolosi drove to Otisville to meet with Mr. Braun. Mr. Nicolosi had previously tried to flip Mr. Braun when he was free, but now Mr. Nicolosi — armed with a possible get-out-of-jail card in exchange for cooperation — had leverage over him as he sat marinating in the misery of federal prison.At the meeting, which Mr. Braun’s lawyer attended, both sides discussed what a deal could look like.Mr. Braun made clear he would do anything the government asked of him — including wearing a wire to record calls with his former business partners — if the government would agree not to prosecute him for his role in the lending business, according to a person familiar with the matter.Ties to the KushnersNegotiations between Mr. Braun and prosecutors stretched into the final days of Mr. Trump’s presidency. But what the prosecutors did not know was that Mr. Braun, his family and allies were pursuing an entirely different effort to help him regain his freedom through the White House’s clemency process. And among the channels they were exploiting was a tie to the Kushner family.Mr. Braun had ties to the family of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and a former White House senior adviser.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Braun, The Times found, was in the inaugural class of the Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston, N.J., which was heavily funded by Jared Kushner’s family. Mr. Braun enrolled in its first freshman class, alongside Jared Kushner’s youngest sister, Nicole.In an interview, a merchant cash advance dealer recounted how a cousin of Mr. Braun — whom Mr. Braun put in charge of his business when he went to prison and who took on a major role in trying to get him out — had told him in the wake of the commutation that Mr. Braun’s father, Jacob Braun, had sought help from Jared Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, about getting their pleas for a commutation before Mr. Trump.The cousin, Isaac Wolf, was said to have recounted that Charles Kushner and Jacob Braun had known each other for many years. Mr. Wolf credited the Kushner family with coming through for Mr. Braun, the merchant cash advance dealer said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to be publicly associated with Mr. Braun.Others who dealt with Mr. Braun also later relayed to investigators that they had been told that the Braun family helped secure the commutation by relying on their connections to the Kushner family.The Brauns also retained Mr. Dershowitz, a Trump ally who developed such a strong relationship with Jared Kushner that he nominated Mr. Kushner for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on Middle East peace 10 days after Mr. Trump left office.Mr. Dershowitz said Jacob Braun would call him regularly.“Every single Friday by 3 o’clock in the afternoon: ‘Hi this is Jacob Braun, I’m so upset my son is still in prison, what can you do? It’s unfair, he’s a good boy,’” Mr. Dershowitz recounted.Mr. Dershowitz said he handled so many clemency requests that he could not recall what he did for Mr. Braun, whom he might have talked to at the White House about his case or how much he was paid. But he said his involvement was minimal, perhaps just a phone call.In the chaotic final weeks of the Trump presidency, the volume of clemency requests overwhelmed the White House Counsel’s Office. Requests were being fielded by numerous White House officials — and many came in through Mr. Kushner’s office.It is unclear what type of due diligence, if any, the White House did on Mr. Braun. The New York attorney general and the F.T.C. had put out news releases about their civil actions against him in June 2020, and the suits they filed were a matter of public record. An inquiry to the Justice Department could have revealed the plea deal discussions.Jacob Braun, Mr. Braun’s father, made contact with and retained Alan Dershowitz, seen in a 2015 photo, the prominent lawyer and Trump ally who was active in seeking clemency for convicts.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesJust hours before Mr. Trump left office on Jan. 20, 2021, the White House sent out the news release, written by Mr. Kushner’s office, announcing Mr. Braun’s commutation, along with similar summaries for the 143 convicts who received pardons and commutations in the final batch, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Kushner thought it was important to honor each person granted clemency with a personalized write-up, the person said.The release misspelled Mr. Braun’s first name. And it overstated the time he had served in prison.“Upon his release, Mr. Braun will seek employment to support his wife and children,” the release said.The federal investigators in Manhattan learned of the commutation early that morning, immediately calling Mr. Braun’s lawyer to express their fury over how the president had undercut his own department’s investigation by removing all the leverage prosecutors had over Mr. Braun.In the weeks that followed, investigators made another attempt to reach a cooperation deal with Mr. Braun, meeting with him in person. But no longer needing help getting out of prison, Mr. Braun essentially called their bluff, signaling that if they thought they had a case against him they should indict him. Since then, the prosecutors have brought no charges against Mr. Braun or anyone else with ties to him in the industry.Back in BusinessJust a few months after his release, Mr. Braun returned to working in the merchant cash advance business.Amid the ongoing suits against him by state and federal regulators, he remained in a relatively behind-the-scenes role. While he would make major decisions, he would use an email account that did not include his name, his name was left off business documents and his interactions with customers were limited, according to court documents and a former merchant cash advance dealer.But in the experience of at least one borrower who dealt with him, his business practices remained unchanged.Dr. Robert Clinton is a North Carolina physician who during the pandemic turned his urgent care facility into a Covid testing center. He turned to merchant cash advance dealers because it took months for insurance companies and the federal government to reimburse him.Mr. Braun’s companies made arrangements with Dr. Robert Clinton for loans and eventually pushed him to the brink of financial ruin.Kate Medley for The New York TimesRelying on similar tactics to what he was accused of employing before he went to prison, the companies affiliated with Mr. Braun withheld some of the financing they had agreed to provide Dr. Clinton but charged him interest on the full amount, imposed heavy fees with little or no warning and unilaterally withdrew money from Dr. Clinton’s bank accounts, according to court documents.At one point, another merchant cash advance dealer who had lent money to Dr. Clinton called him in a panic to warn about Mr. Braun.“You gotta get away from him and pay him off — we are all afraid of him — anytime Jon Braun is involved he could seize your assets, block your bank accounts,” the other merchant cash advance dealer told Dr. Clinton, in the doctor’s recounting of the conversation.As Dr. Clinton’s finances deteriorated, he got a call from a man who claimed his name was Mike Wilson and that he was working for one of the Braun-affiliated lenders. The man told Dr. Clinton that he would send a private jet down to pick him up so he could bring expensive watches he had to New York to use as collateral for the money he owed, Dr. Clinton said.In an apparent slip-up during conversations with Dr. Clinton at the time, the man said: Refer to me as Jon.Dr. Clinton rejected the idea and, with help from a lawyer, Shane Heskin, sued the Braun-affiliated companies, saying they had fleeced him for over a million dollars.A major portion of the suit was dismissed because North Carolina usury laws provided no protection for Dr. Clinton. Now, Dr. Clinton — who still owes other merchant cash advance dealers several million dollars — spends his days doing some telemedicine and the rest of his time trying to get money back from insurance companies and the federal government.In a filing this summer, the New York attorney general said Mr. Braun, through his companies, “continues to commit usury.”Mr. Braun continues to portray himself as a victim of an unfair criminal justice system.“What is so bad about me?” he said in the interview with The Times. “I never hurt anybody, never did anything wrong to anybody.”Mr. Braun and his companies put liens on Dr. Clinton’s business, leading to cascading financial problems that Dr. Clinton said cost him $1.6 million.Kate Medley for The New York TimesMatthew Cullen More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      3 Takeaways From the Investigation Into Trump’s Pardon of Jonathan Braun

      by

      Mr. Braun was still under investigation by the Justice Department at the time of his pardon. Here are some key points about the case.Two days after Donald J. Trump left the White House, The New York Times published a story about how one of his last acts as president had been to commute the 10-year sentence of Jonathan Braun, a marijuana smuggler who had ongoing legal problems and a reputation for making violent threats.In his final weeks in office, Mr. Trump had used his pardon power on behalf of a parade of loyalists, as well as scores of others who were not big political names. But few of them stood out like Mr. Braun, who was still under investigation by the Justice Department in an entirely different matter: for gouging small businesses through high-interest loans.At the time of the commutation, the New York State attorney general and the Federal Trade Commission were also after Mr. Braun for making predatory loans. Among other things, they accused him of threatening borrowers who owed him money. And his family had told others they were willing to spend millions of dollars to get him out of the prison sentence he had just started to serve on the drug charges.With Mr. Trump running again for president and suggesting that he again intends to make full use of his pardon powers if elected, The Times decided to take a closer look at how the pardon came about and what it said about the Trump White House’s standards for clemency.Here are the main takeaways from our investigation, which is based on documents and interviews with current and former officials and others familiar with Mr. Braun’s case:The Commutation Undercut a Federal Criminal InvestigationMr. Trump’s decision to commute Mr. Braun’s sentence undermined what had been an ambitious Justice Department investigation being led by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan into predatory lenders in the merchant cash advance industry by pulling the rug out from under investigators who had been in negotiations with Mr. Braun about cooperating with them.Prosecutors felt they needed an industry insider to flip on others in the business, explain the intricacies of lending agreements and serve as a narrator on the witness stand. In Mr. Braun, who had made clear he was desperate to get out of prison, they thought they had an ideal candidate. They were still going back and forth with his lawyer about a deal that would have freed him from prison when Mr. Trump commuted his sentence.Prosecutors instantly lost their leverage over Mr. Braun. The investigation into the industry, and Mr. Braun’s conduct, remains open but is hampered by the lack of help from an insider.The Case Exposed Shortcomings in the Justice SystemAt multiple levels, right up to the president, the justice system appeared to fail more than once to take full account of all of Mr. Braun’s activities despite longstanding concerns among prosecutors that he was a threat and could not be deterred.A decade and a half ago, he fled the country while the Justice Department was closing in on him in the drug case, but prosecutors later let him out of jail while awaiting sentencing because he agreed to cooperate with their ongoing investigations into drug traffickers. But he used that freedom to establish himself as a predatory lender, leading to a string of accusations that he employed threats and intimidation — a record that the Trump White House seems not to have considered or given any weight in granting him the commutation.In all, he was free for nearly a decade while awaiting sentencing on the drug charges. Former federal prosecutors and defense attorneys said they knew of no other case in which a defendant was allowed to be free for so long and engaged in the conduct of which Mr. Braun is accused.Once Mr. Trump let him out of prison in early 2021, Mr. Braun returned to working in the merchant cash advance business, with regulators and some customers again accusing him of using intimidating tactics.The Kushners Had a Role in the Pardon ProcessMr. Braun’s family used ties to the family of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, to open doors at the White House. Mr. Braun had attended Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston, N.J., which was funded by Jared Kushner’s family. Mr. Braun enrolled in its first freshman class, alongside Jared Kushner’s youngest sister, Nicole.In seeking the commutation, Mr. Braun’s family reached out to Charles Kushner, Jared Kushner’s father. Jared Kushner’s White House office drafted the language used in the news release to announce commutations for Mr. Braun and others.Mr. Braun’s cousin, in conversations with others, has credited the Kushners with helping Mr. Braun secure the commutation.The Braun family also hired Alan Dershowitz, the pro-Trump lawyer who had ties to Jared Kushner, to promote Mr. Braun’s request. Others who dealt with Mr. Braun later relayed to investigators that they had been told that the Braun family helped secure the commutation by relying on their connections to the Kushner family. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Los planes de Trump y sus aliados para ejercer el poder en 2025

      by

      Utilizar el Departamento de Justicia para vengarse de sus adversarios y aumentar la represión a los inmigrantes serían algunas de las prioridades de Trump si regresa a la Casa Blanca.En el primer mitin de su campaña presidencial de 2024, el expresidente Donald Trump declaró: “Yo soy su castigo”. Más tarde, prometió utilizar el Departamento de Justicia para perseguir a sus adversarios políticos, empezando por el presidente Joe Biden y su familia.Detrás de estas amenazas públicas hay una serie de planes de Trump y sus aliados que pondrían en jaque elementos fundamentales de la gobernanza, la democracia, la política exterior y el Estado de derecho de Estados Unidos si regresa a la Casa Blanca.Algunos de estos temas se remontan al último periodo del mandato de Trump. Para entonces, sus asesores clave habían aprendido a ejercer el poder con mayor eficacia y Trump había despedido a funcionarios que se resistían a algunos de sus impulsos y los había sustituido por partidarios leales. Entonces, perdió las elecciones de 2020 y tuvo que abandonar el poder.Desde que dejó el cargo, los asesores y aliados de Trump en una red de grupos bien financiados han perfeccionado políticas, creado listas de posibles funcionarios y comenzado a dar forma a un nuevo andamiaje jurídico, con lo que han sentado las bases para una segunda presidencia de Trump que esperan que comience el 20 de enero de 2025.En una declaración poco clara, dos de los funcionarios más importantes de la campaña de Trump buscaron distanciar a su equipo de campaña de algunos de los planes que desarrollan los aliados externos del expresidente, grupos liderados por antiguos altos mandos de su gobierno que siguen en contacto directo con él. La declaración calificó los informes de noticias sobre el personal y las intenciones políticas de la campaña como “puramente especulativos y teóricos”.Los planes descritos aquí se derivan de lo que Trump ha pregonado en la campaña, lo que ha aparecido en su sitio web de campaña y de entrevistas con asesores de Trump, incluido uno que habló con The New York Times a petición de la campaña.Trump quiere usar al Departamento de Justicia para vengarse de sus adversarios políticosSi vuelve a ganar la presidencia, Trump ha declarado que usaría el Departamento de Justicia para iniciar investigaciones en contra de sus adversarios y acusarlos de cometer delitos, incluso dijo en junio que nombraría a “un fiscal especial de verdad para ir tras” Biden y su familia. Más tarde declaró en una entrevista con Univisión que, si alguien lo desafiaba por motivos políticos, podría hacer que esa persona fuera acusada formalmente.Los aliados de Trump también han estado desarrollando un proyecto intelectual para desechar la norma posterior al Watergate sobre la independencia investigadora del Departamento de Justicia respecto a la dirección política de la Casa Blanca.Anticipándose a eso, Trump ya había violado las normas en su campaña de 2016, cuando prometió “encarcelar” a su oponente, Hillary Clinton, por usar un servidor de correo electrónico privado. Durante su presidencia, dijo en varias ocasiones a sus asesores que quería que el Departamento de Justicia presentara cargos contra sus enemigos políticos, incluidos funcionarios a quienes había despedido como James Comey, exdirector del FBI. El Departamento de Justicia abrió varias investigaciones de este tipo, pero no presentó cargos, lo cual enfureció a Trump y provocó una ruptura en 2020 con Bill Barr, su fiscal general.Se propone llevar a cabo una represión extrema de la migraciónTrump planea un ataque a la migración a una escala nunca antes vista en la historia moderna de Estados Unidos. A millones de migrantes que entraron ilegalmente en Estados Unidos se les prohibiría estar en el país o se les deportaría años o incluso décadas después de haberse establecido aquí.Reforzados por agentes reasignados de otros organismos federales de procuración de justicia, la policía estatal y la Guardia Nacional, los funcionarios del Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas llevarían a cabo redadas masivas destinadas a deportar a millones de personas cada año. Se emplearían fondos militares con el propósito de construir campamentos para albergar a los detenidos. Se invocaría una ley de emergencia de salud pública para suspender las solicitudes de asilo de las personas que llegan a la frontera. Y el gobierno trataría de poner fin a la ciudadanía por derecho de nacimiento para los bebés nacidos en suelo estadounidense de padres sin estatus legal.Trump tiene planes para usar la fuerza militar estadounidense más cerca de casaMientras estaba en el cargo, Trump pensó en usar el Ejército para atacar a los cárteles de drogas en México, una idea que violaría el derecho internacional a menos que México consintiera. Desde entonces, esa idea ha recibido un respaldo republicano más amplio y Trump pretende hacerla realidad si vuelve al Despacho Oval.Aunque la Ley Posse Comitatus prohíbe en general el uso de soldados federales con fines policiales, otra ley, la Ley de Insurrección, establece una excepción. Trump quería invocar la Ley de Insurrección a fin de utilizar al Ejército para reprimir a los manifestantes después de la muerte de George Floyd a manos de la policía en 2020, pero no lo logró y la idea sigue siendo importante entre sus asistentes. Entre otras cosas, su principal asesor de migración ha dicho que invocarían la Ley de Insurrección en la frontera sur para usar soldados con la finalidad de interceptar y detener a los migrantes que ingresan a Estados Unidos de manera ilegal.Trump y sus aliados quieren un mayor control sobre la burocracia federal y la fuerza laboralTrump y sus partidarios quieren aumentar el poder que tiene el presidente sobre las agencias federales, lo cual implicaría concentrar en la Casa Blanca un mayor control sobre toda la maquinaria del gobierno.Para ello han adoptado una versión maximalista de la llamada teoría del ejecutivo unitario, según la cual el presidente tiene autoridad directa sobre toda la burocracia federal y es inconstitucional que el Congreso cree reductos de autoridad independiente en la toma de decisiones.Como parte de ese plan, Trump también pretende revivir una iniciativa del final de su presidencia para alterar las normas de servicio civil que protegen a los profesionales de carrera del gobierno, lo que le permitiría despedir a decenas de miles de trabajadores federales y remplazarlos por partidarios. Después de que el Congreso fracasó en su intento de promulgar una ley para impedir que ese cambio sucediera, el gobierno de Biden decidió redactar un reglamento para blindar a los empleados federales contra Trump. Sin embargo, dado que se trata solo de una acción ejecutiva, el próximo presidente republicano podría dejarla sin efecto de la misma manera.Los aliados de Trump quieren abogados que no lo limitenLos abogados con designación política frustraron en ocasiones los deseos de Trump al plantear objeciones legales a sus ideas y a las de sus principales asesores. Esta dinámica ha provocado una división silenciosa en la derecha, ya que los partidarios leales a Trump han llegado a ver con desdén al típico abogado de la Sociedad Federalista, en esencia, un conservador republicano de la corriente dominante.En un posible nuevo mandato, los aliados de Trump están planeando instalar de forma sistemática guardianes legales más agresivos y alineados ideológicamente, que serán más propensos a aprobar acciones contenciosas. En un sondeo de The New York Times sobre candidatos presidenciales para 2024, Trump y su equipo de campaña se negaron a responder a una serie de preguntas detalladas sobre qué límites, de haberlos, reconocería a sus poderes en una serie de asuntos bélicos, de confidencialidad y de aplicación de la ley, muchos de ellos planteados en su primer mandato.Jonathan Swan es periodista de política especializado en campañas y el Congreso estadounidense. Como reportero de Axios, ganó un Emmy por su entrevista de 2020 al entonces presidente Donald Trump, así como el Premio Aldo Beckman de la Asociación de Corresponsales de la Casa Blanca por “excelencia en general en la cobertura de la Casa Blanca” en 2022. Más de Jonathan SwanMaggie Haberman es corresponsal política sénior y autora de Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. Formó parte del equipo que ganó un premio Pulitzer en 2018 por informar sobre los asesores del presidente Trump y sus conexiones con Rusia. Más de Maggie HabermanCharlie Savage escribe sobre seguridad nacional y política legal. Es periodista desde hace más de dos décadas. Más de Charlie Savage More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Judge Puts Off Decision on Whether to Delay Trump Documents Trial

      by

      Judge Aileen M. Cannon said she would meet with prosecutors and defense lawyers in March to settle on a schedule for the former president’s trial in federal court in Florida.A federal judge on Friday put off until at least March the fraught and consequential decision of whether to delay the start of former President Donald J. Trump’s trial on charges of illegally holding on to a trove of highly classified national security secrets after he left office.But acknowledging “the evolving complexities” in the proceeding, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, also said it would be “prudent” to push back several deadlines she had set for pretrial motions to be filed, especially those involving the classified materials at the heart of the case.While Judge Cannon’s ruling left the question of the trial’s timing unresolved, it staked out a temporary middle ground between Mr. Trump’s lawyers and federal prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith.Mr. Trump’s legal team, pursuing a persistent strategy of delay, has repeatedly asked the judge to postpone the trial until after the 2024 election. Prosecutors under Mr. Smith have admitted that the case is complicated, but have asked Judge Cannon to hold the line and stick to the current trial date of May 20.At a hearing last week in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, signaled that she was ready to make some “reasonable adjustments” to the timing of the case. She expressed concern in particular that her trial in Florida might “collide” with Mr. Trump’s other federal trial, a Washington-based proceeding on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election that is set to begin in early March.In an order on Friday explaining her decision, Judge Cannon reiterated her concern that the schedules for the two federal trials “as they currently stand overlap substantially.” That, she noted, could make it difficult to ensure that Mr. Trump had “adequate time to prepare for trial and to assist in his defense.”But Judge Cannon also said that Mr. Trump’s legal calendar — he is facing a total of four criminal cases — was “less important at this stage” than the challenges presented by the large volume of discovery evidence that the defense needs to digest. It was also less significant, she said, than the various difficulties involved in handling the sensitive materials at the center of the case under a law known as the Classified Information Procedures Act, or CIPA.Judge Cannon’s ruling left open the chance that the very sort of collision she has worried about might eventually take place. As part of her decision, she set a hearing on March 1 to determine the schedule for her case in Fort Pierce. That is only three days before Mr. Trump’s election subversion case is supposed to begin in Washington.Her ruling also did not foreclose the possibility that she might at some point delay the trial until after the election — a move that would be a major victory for Mr. Trump. Were that to happen, and were Mr. Trump to win the race, he could have the case thrown out entirely simply by ordering his attorney general to drop the charges.Notably absent from Judge Cannon’s ruling was any mention of how the trial calendar might intersect with Mr. Trump’s increasingly busy campaign schedule. It has been a challenge to find ample time for each of Mr. Trump’s four trials not merely in relation to one another, but also against the backdrop of a rapidly approaching set of primary elections and the Republican Party’s nominating convention in July.Judge Cannon chose to ignore Mr. Trump’s political calendar and to focus instead on logistical matters related to the nuts and bolts of the case. She pushed back several of her initial filing deadlines because of delays in constructing a secure facility in which she could review classified materials and because at least one lawyer in the case only recently obtained a full security clearance.She also said she was anticipating that the legal battles between the defense and the prosecution over how many — and precisely which — classified materials should be handed over as part of the discovery process would be “more robust than initially forecasted.”These fights, conducted under CIPA, she said, would require her to conduct a review of a “significant volume of information,” conduct more hearings and consider motions by the defense for additional disclosures. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Prosecutors Assail Trump’s Bid to Have Federal Election Case Dismissed

      by

      Prosecutors said that Mr. Trump’s barrage of motions to have the case tossed out were full of “distortions and misrepresentations.”Federal prosecutors on Monday asked a judge to reject a barrage of motions filed last month by former President Donald J. Trump that sought to toss out the indictment charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 election and said his claims were full of “distortions and misrepresentations.”In a 79-page court filing, prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, went one by one through Mr. Trump’s multiple motions to dismiss the case and accused him and his lawyers of essentially trying to flip the script of the four-count indictment filed against him in August.“The defendant attempts to rewrite the indictment, claiming that it charges him with wholly innocuous, perhaps even admirable conduct, — sharing his opinions about election fraud and seeking election integrity,” James I. Pearce, one of the prosecutors, wrote, “when in fact it clearly describes the defendant’s fraudulent use of knowingly false statements as weapons in furtherance of his criminal plans.”When Mr. Trump first filed his motions to dismiss the case, they represented a breathtaking effort to reframe the various steps he took to remain in power after losing the election as something other than crimes.For example, Mr. Trump sought to portray his repeated efforts to use false claims that the election had been stolen as “core political speech” protected by the First Amendment. He similarly tried to recast his lies about the election as “opinions” that he tried to use to build support for his wide-ranging efforts to overturn the results of the race.But Mr. Pearce shot back on Monday for the Justice Department, saying that the First Amendment did not protect “criminal conduct” like using lies in a plot to defeat the will of the voters. He also wrote that Mr. Trump’s efforts to recast the meaning of the special counsel’s indictment in his own favor were “based on an inaccurate and self-serving characterization of the charges.”In a separate motion, Thomas P. Windom, another prosecutor on the case, rejected Mr. Trump’s arguments that the charges should be dismissed because they are part of a “selective and vindictive prosecution.”As part of their flurry of filings last month, Mr. Trump’s lawyers sought to paint the election interference case as “a retaliatory response” by President Biden to go after Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.The lawyers made those accusations even though the indictment had been brought by Mr. Smith, an independent special counsel, and after an extensive grand jury investigation.Mr. Windom responded to the claims by noting they were “spurious” and “contrived from two newspaper articles citing anonymous sources.” Appearing to get his back up, he also mounted an angry defense of his colleagues on Mr. Smith’s team.“The special counsel and career prosecutors in the special counsel’s office collectively have served in the Department of Justice for decades,” Mr. Windom wrote. “They have sworn oaths to support and defend the Constitution, and they have faithfully executed their prosecutorial duties in this case.”As part of his selective prosecution claims, Mr. Trump had argued that even though he was not the first candidate in U.S. history to have created alternate slates of electors to the Electoral College in an effort to win an election, he was the only one to have suffered criminal charges for having done so.Mr. Windom acknowledged that alternate slates had indeed been sparingly used going back to the time of Thomas Jefferson. But he maintained that “none of the historical examples the defendant points to involved deceitful and corrupt efforts” to “block the certification of the legitimate results of a presidential election.”In yet a third filing, prosecutors rebuffed Mr. Trump’s attempt to strike from the indictment any mention of the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. As part of their motions to dismiss, his lawyers had asked Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to remove all references to the Capitol attack from the case given that none of the charges explicitly accuses Mr. Trump of inciting the mob of his supporters that stormed the building.But writing for the government, Molly Gaston, a prosecutor in Mr. Smith’s office, asserted that Mr. Trump was “responsible for the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6” despite the lack of an incitement charge and that evidence about the attack was instrumental to the government’s case.“That day was the culmination of the defendant’s criminal conspiracies to overturn the legitimate results of the presidential election,” Ms. Gaston wrote.The series of filings on Monday was the second time Mr. Smith’s office has rebutted Mr. Trump’s attempts to have the election case thrown out before it goes to trial. Last month, they assailed his initial motion to dismiss, rejecting sweeping claims that he enjoys “absolute immunity” from prosecution because the indictment arose from actions he took while in the White House.Last week, Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked Judge Chutkan to put the case on hold entirely as she considered the immunity claims — another example of the former president’s long-running efforts to delay the proceeding for as long as possible.On Monday, Ms. Gaston asked Judge Chutkan to deny the request to pause the case.“The defendant has an established record of attempting to disrupt and delay the court’s carefully considered trial date and pretrial schedule,” she wrote. “Now the defendant has timed his motion to stay these proceedings for maximum disruptive effect.” More