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      Watchdog to Examine Whether Justice Dept. Helped Trump Effort to Overturn Election

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWatchdog to Examine Whether Justice Dept. Helped Trump Effort to Overturn ElectionThe inquiry was announced after revelations about a plot between Donald Trump and a top former department official to promote false claims of voter fraud by replacing the acting attorney general.Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, said he would investigate whether officials aided President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.Credit…Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesJan. 25, 2021, 7:28 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The Justice Department watchdog announced Monday that he had opened an investigation into whether any of the department’s officials tried to undo the results of the presidential election, as scrutiny of former President Donald J. Trump and his associates builds ahead of his impeachment trial.The investigation by the department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, followed efforts by Mr. Trump and a top federal law enforcement official, Jeffrey Clark, to push other Justice Department leaders to falsely assert that continuing fraud investigations cast doubt on the election results. As detailed by The New York Times in recent days, Mr. Trump was said to have considered installing Mr. Clark as acting attorney general to carry out the scheme.“The inspector general is initiating an investigation into whether any former or current D.O.J. official engaged in an improper attempt to have D.O.J. seek to alter the outcome of the 2020 presidential election,” Mr. Horowitz said in a statement, adding that he was announcing the inquiry to reassure the public that the matter was being examined.The inquiry adds to the increasing scrutiny on Mr. Trump’s attempts to wield the power of the Justice Department to advance his false claims about the election in the final weeks of his presidency. It follows another inspector general investigation into whether a federal prosecutor in Georgia was improperly pushed to help and a broader Democratic-led Senate inquiry into pressure on the department to aid Mr. Trump’s cause.Mr. Trump sought repeatedly to compel the Justice Department to back his baseless claims of election irregularities, ultimately prompting the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, to publicly state early last month that the department had found no voting fraud on a scale that would affect the election results. Mr. Barr fell out of favor with Mr. Trump over the issue and left his post within weeks.A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.The investigation underscores fears among Senate Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, that if they do not distance themselves from Mr. Trump and undo his grip on the party, a steady drip of negative revelations paired with his own erratic behavior could damage their political fortunes.“If Trump loses credibility because it appears he’s acted in a way that no one can justify, the leverage that he might have over the Republican Party could be diffused,” said William Marshall, a professor at the University of North Carolina who teaches and writes on presidential power. “The more that indicates he behaved improperly makes it less easy to defend him and less easy to stand by him.”Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, had urged Mr. Horowitz over the weekend to open an investigation, saying that it was “unconscionable that a Trump Justice Department leader would conspire to subvert the people’s will.”The inspector general also noted that his inquiry would be limited to the Justice Department because other agencies did not fall within his purview, a nod to the array of people who sought during Mr. Trump’s final weeks in office to find a way to stop the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.This month, Mr. Horowitz opened an investigation into whether Trump administration officials pressured Byung J. Pak, at the time the U.S. attorney in Atlanta, who abruptly resigned after it became clear to Mr. Trump that he would not take actions to cast doubt on or undo the results of the election, according to a person briefed on the inquiry.Separately, the Senate Judiciary Committee said this weekend that it had initiated its own oversight inquiry into officials including Mr. Clark, who was the head of the Justice Department’s environmental and natural resources division and the acting head of its civil division.Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee, sent a letter to the Justice Department saying that he would investigate efforts by Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark to use the agency “to further Trump’s efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.”Jeffrey Clark pushed Justice Department leaders to falsely assert that continuing voter fraud investigations cast doubt on the election results.Credit…Susan Walsh/Associated PressMr. Durbin asked the acting attorney general, Monty Wilkinson, to preserve documents, emails and messages related to meetings between top Justice Department officials under Mr. Trump, the White House and Mr. Trump, as well as any communications related to Mr. Pak’s resignation.Mr. Biden’s win was deemed valid after recounts in Wisconsin and Georgia declared him the victor and after the Trump campaign team was unable to prove widespread fraud in court cases in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Dozens of F.B.I. investigations uncovered no voter fraud on a scale that would have changed the results of the election, according to Justice Department officials briefed on the cases.Dozens of Republicans in Congress were among those who backed Mr. Trump’s false claims, including Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania. On Monday, he confirmed a Times report that he had introduced Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark, giving the president access to the sole top Justice Department official willing to entertain the idea that Mr. Biden had not won the election.Mr. Perry, a member of the pro-Trump, hard-line Freedom Caucus, said in a statement to a Pennsylvania public radio affiliate that he spoke with Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark about election fraud claims.“Throughout the past four years, I worked with Assistant Attorney General Clark on various legislative matters,” Mr. Perry said. “When President Trump asked if I would make an introduction, I obliged.”Allies of Mr. Clark have characterized the conversations as simply laying out the legal options available to Mr. Trump. But Mr. Clark’s former colleagues have said there were no more legal remedies that Mr. Trump could have pursued through the department.Still, their assessment did not stop Mr. Trump from pressuring the Justice Department to fight harder to find a way to help him. When Mr. Barr declined to appoint special counsels to examine voting irregularities or take other measures that would have helped to throw the election results into doubt, he and Mr. Trump agreed that he should leave the department, according to three people familiar with their conversation. Mr. Barr stipulated that the deputy attorney general at the time, Jeffrey A. Rosen, replace him, the people said.Mr. Trump began to push Mr. Rosen to promote baseless suspicions about voting fraud the day after announcing that Mr. Barr would leave and kept up the pressure through the last weeks of December, pushing him to open investigations and to challenge Mr. Biden’s win before the Supreme Court.But as the department’s top officials pushed back, Mr. Trump separately opened a line of communication with Mr. Clark, who seemed more amenable to his theory that he had won the election, according to five people familiar with the matter, asking him to publicize inquiries that could cast doubt on the election.Mr. Trump’s deliberations over whether to replace Mr. Rosen with Mr. Clark also set off a crisis among other senior Justice Department officials, who pledged to quit should Mr. Rosen be fired. The vow was said to have helped persuade Mr. Trump not to act.Mr. Clark has said that this account is inaccurate without specifying further and has said that all of his conduct was legal.While the machinations between Mr. Trump, Mr. Clark and Mr. Perry will not be the focus of Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial — which accuses him of inciting the riot at the Capitol — Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, suggested the matter would be presented to senators.“This is powerful motive evidence,” Mr. Swalwell said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Jeffrey Clark Was Considered Unassuming. Then He Plotted With Trump.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJeffrey Clark Was Considered Unassuming. Then He Plotted With Trump.Justice Department colleagues said they were shocked by Mr. Clark’s embrace of the president’s falsehoods and plan to oust the acting attorney general in an effort to overturn Georgia’s election results.Colleagues said they had seen Jeffrey Clark, who was the head of the Justice Department’s civil division, as an establishment lawyer who was not particularly Trumpist.Credit…Pool photo by Yuri GripasKatie Benner and Jan. 24, 2021, 9:58 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — It was New Year’s Eve, but the Justice Department’s top leaders had little to celebrate as they admonished Jeffrey Clark, the acting head of the civil division, for repeatedly pushing them to help President Donald J. Trump undo his electoral loss.Huddled in the department’s headquarters, they rebuked him for secretly meeting with Mr. Trump, even as the department had rebuffed the president’s outlandish requests for court filings and special counsels, according to six people with knowledge of the meeting. No official would host a news conference to say that federal fraud investigations cast the results in doubt, they told him. No one would send a letter making such claims to Georgia lawmakers.When the meeting ended not long before midnight, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen thought the matter had been settled, never suspecting that his subordinate would secretly discuss the plan for the letter with Mr. Trump, and very nearly take Mr. Rosen’s job, as part of a plot with the president to wield the department’s power to try to alter the Georgia election outcome.It was clear that night, though, that Mr. Clark — with his willingness to entertain conspiracy theories about voting booth hacks and election fraud — was not the establishment lawyer they thought him to be. Some senior department leaders had considered him quiet, hard-working and detail-oriented. Others said they knew nothing about him, so low was his profile. He struck neither his fans in the department nor his detractors as being part of the Trumpist faction of the party, according to interviews.The department’s senior leaders were shocked when Mr. Clark’s machinations came to light. They have spent recent weeks debating how he came to betray Mr. Rosen, his biggest champion at the department, and what blend of ambition and conviction led him to reject the results of the election and embrace Mr. Trump’s claims, despite all evidence to the contrary, including inside the department itself.The plot devised by Mr. Clark and Mr. Trump would have ousted Mr. Rosen and used the Justice Department to pressure lawmakers in Georgia to overturn the state’s election results. But Mr. Trump ultimately decided against firing Mr. Rosen after top department leaders pledged to resign en masse.Mr. Clark declined to comment for this report, but he reiterated his assertion that The New York Times’s account of his conversations with Mr. Trump, first reported on Friday, and his colleagues was inaccurate. He said he could not detail those inaccuracies because of legal privilege issues. And he said all of his official communications “were consistent with law.”“The story kind of shocked me because this is not the Jeff that I know,” said Theodore H. Frank, a friend and former colleague. Credit…Justin T. Gellerson for The New York TimesSome of his friends said that those who told the press about his final days at the Justice Department painted a picture of a man they do not recognize. “The story kind of shocked me because this is not the Jeff that I know,” said Theodore H. Frank, a friend and former colleague. “I know Jeff as a guy who really cares about the rule of law and, you know, just a rumpled, thoughtful lawyer who is an intellectual — not a Machiavellian backstabber.”Mr. Clark had spent two years leading the Justice Department’s environmental division, where he was seen as a standard Republican lawyer political appointee — a member of the conservative Federalist Society with a skepticism of rules that cut into corporate profits.But now, Mr. Clark, 53, has become notorious. A person who has worked closely with Kirkland & Ellis, where Mr. Clark spent most of his career outside two stints in the George W. Bush and Trump Justice Departments, said there appeared to be scant chance that the law firm would rehire him.Friends and critics alike reject the notion that Mr. Clark is an operator, describing him as “nerdy” and “thoughtful.”Mr. Frank, who met Mr. Clark when both worked at Kirkland & Ellis in the 1990s and described himself as a Federalist Society member who voted for President Biden, said he was reserving judgment about the incident. Others were more direct.“This is the first wave of character assassination, of people going after the most effective lawyers in the Trump administration,” said Mandy Gunasekara, who worked with Mr. Clark when she worked at the Environmental Protection Agency in the clean air division and as chief of staff to Andrew R. Wheeler when he was the agency’s administrator. She was struck by the fact that Mr. Clark’s colleagues were so upset and fixated on an event that ultimately did not happen. Mr. Trump, after all, did not replace Mr. Rosen with Mr. Clark or have the Justice Department contact Georgia lawmakers.She said Mr. Clark was most likely discussing with his colleagues and the president “a range of options,” just as he was known for doing in his work advising her agency.Some of Mr. Clark’s associates said he could be pedantic. As a manager, he made no effort to hide when he had little respect for his career subordinates’ opinions.He is not known for being understated on the topic of himself. Where the typical biography on the Justice Department website runs a few paragraphs, Mr. Clark’s includes the elementary school he attended in Philadelphia, a topic he debated in college and that he worked for his college newspaper, The Harvard Crimson.After graduating from Harvard in 1989, Mr. Clark earned a master’s degree in urban affairs and public policy from the Biden School of Public Policy at the University of Delaware in 1993 and a law degree from Georgetown University in 1995. He clerked for an appeals court judge, Danny Boggs, who was known for giving prospective clerks quizzes that tested not just their knowledge of the law, but also a range of esoteric trivia.Mr. Clark then worked for Kirkland & Ellis from 1996 to 2001, followed by a stint in the Justice Department’s environmental and natural resources division during the Bush administration, before returning to Kirkland in 2005 as a partner, but not one with an equity stake in the firm, according to a person who worked closely with him at the law firm.He held the title of “non-equity partner,” which meant that he did not share in the firm’s profits or make leadership decisions.When Mr. Clark returned to the Justice Department as the head of the environmental division in 2018, he flew under the radar. Like other Republican officials, he narrowly interpreted the division’s legal authority and had a typically tense relationship with career lawyers when it came to enforcing anti-pollution laws.In one instance, Mr. Clark held up Clean Water Act enforcement cases because of a pending matter before the Supreme Court that career lawyers felt did not directly relate to their work, according to a lawyer with knowledge of those cases. The Supreme Court was hearing a matter that involved discharges that flowed through groundwater before reaching waters regulated by the federal government, and the department was working on a case that involved flows over land.His employees believed that Mr. Clark hoped the court would curtail the law’s reach in a way that would apply to overland spills, too, but by a 6-to-3 ruling, it did not.In a different case, he disagreed with a recommendation that the civil division made to the Office of the Solicitor General, and ultimately got his way after asking the general counsels of other agencies to also push back on the recommendation. Civil division employees said he did not tell them that he would do this, and felt that had circumvented the proper process.Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen had admonished Mr. Clark over his push to help President Donald J. Trump overturn the election.Credit…Ting Shen for The New York TimesWhile Mr. Clark oversaw environmental cases, sometimes working late into the night and personally reviewing briefs, the department’s civil division was in turmoil. Its leader, Jody Hunt, sometimes clashed with the White House Counsel’s Office and, later on, with Attorney General William P. Barr, over how best to defend the administration.Mr. Hunt resigned with no warning in July, leaving his deputy to run the division while Mr. Barr and Mr. Rosen searched for an acting leader among the department’s thinned-out ranks. Mr. Clark wanted the job, which was a considerable step up in stature, and Mr. Rosen supported the idea even though he was already a division head, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.After he took the helm of the civil division in September, colleagues began seeing flashes of unusual behavior. Mr. Clark’s name appeared on eyebrow-raising briefs, including what would turn out to be an unsuccessful effort to inject the government into a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Trump by a woman who has said he raped her more than two decades ago. He also signed onto an attempt to use the Justice Department to sue a former friend of the first lady at the time, Melania Trump, for writing a tell-all memoir.He made clear to lawyers who produced draft briefs that they must spell out his name in full, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, according to a former official.Others said he mounted an idiosyncratic push to remove the word “acting” from his official title — acting assistant attorney general of the civil division — citing an old department legal opinion from the 1980s. Officials denied his request.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting AG

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney GeneralTrying to find another avenue to push his baseless election claims, Donald Trump considered installing a loyalist, and had the men make their cases to him.Jeffrey Clark, who led the Justice Department’s civil division, had been working with President Donald J. Trump to devise ways to cast doubt on the election results.Credit…Susan Walsh/Associated PressJan. 22, 2021Updated 8:50 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s top leaders listened in stunned silence this month: One of their peers, they were told, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as acting attorney general and wield the department’s power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results.The unassuming lawyer who worked on the plan, Jeffrey Clark, had been devising ways to cast doubt on the election results and to bolster Mr. Trump’s continuing legal battles and the pressure on Georgia politicians. Because Mr. Rosen had refused the president’s entreaties to carry out those plans, Mr. Trump was about to decide whether to fire Mr. Rosen and replace him with Mr. Clark.The department officials, convened on a conference call, then asked each other: What will you do if Mr. Rosen is dismissed?The answer was unanimous. They would resign.Their informal pact ultimately helped persuade Mr. Trump to keep Mr. Rosen in place, calculating that a furor over mass resignations at the top of the Justice Department would eclipse any attention on his baseless accusations of voter fraud. Mr. Trump’s decision came only after Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark made their competing cases to him in a bizarre White House meeting that two officials compared with an episode of Mr. Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” albeit one that could prompt a constitutional crisis.The previously unknown chapter was the culmination of the president’s long-running effort to batter the Justice Department into advancing his personal agenda. He also pressed Mr. Rosen to appoint special counsels, including one who would look into Dominion Voting Systems, a maker of election equipment that Mr. Trump’s allies had falsely said was working with Venezuela to flip votes from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.This account of the department’s final days under Mr. Trump’s leadership is based on interviews with four former Trump administration officials who asked not to be named because of fear of retaliation.Mr. Clark said that this account contained inaccuracies but did not specify, adding that he could not discuss any conversations with Mr. Trump or Justice Department lawyers. “Senior Justice Department lawyers, not uncommonly, provide legal advice to the White House as part of our duties,” he said. “All my official communications were consistent with law.”Mr. Clark also noted that he was the lead signatory on a Justice Department request last month asking a federal judge to reject a lawsuit that sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the election.Mr. Trump declined to comment. An adviser said that Mr. Trump has consistently argued that the justice system should investigate “rampant election fraud that has plagued our system for years.”The adviser added that “any assertion to the contrary is false and being driven by those who wish to keep the system broken.”A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, as did Mr. Rosen. When Mr. Trump said on Dec. 14 that Attorney General William P. Barr was leaving the department, some officials thought that he might allow Mr. Rosen a short reprieve before pressing him about voter fraud. After all, Mr. Barr would be around for another week.Instead, Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Rosen to the Oval Office the next day. He wanted the Justice Department to file legal briefs supporting his allies’ lawsuits seeking to overturn his election loss. And he urged Mr. Rosen to appoint special counsels to investigate not only unfounded accusations of widespread voter fraud, but also Dominion, the voting machines firm.(Dominion has sued the pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who inserted those accusations into four federal lawsuits about voter irregularities that were all dismissed.)Mr. Rosen refused. He maintained that he would make decisions based on the facts and the law, and he reiterated what Mr. Barr had privately told Mr. Trump: The department had investigated voting irregularities and found no evidence of widespread fraud.But Mr. Trump continued to press Mr. Rosen after the meeting — in phone calls and in person. He repeatedly said that he did not understand why the Justice Department had not found evidence that supported conspiracy theories about the election that some of his personal lawyers had espoused. He declared that the department was not fighting hard enough for him.As Mr. Rosen and the deputy attorney general, Richard P. Donoghue, pushed back, they were unaware that Mr. Clark had been introduced to Mr. Trump by a Pennsylvania politician and had told the president that he agreed that fraud had affected the election results.Election workers performing a recount in Atlanta in November. Mr. Trump focused on Georgia’s election outcome after he lost the state.Credit…Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Trump quickly embraced Mr. Clark, who had been appointed the acting head of the civil division in September and was also the head of the department’s environmental and natural resources division.As December wore on, Mr. Clark mentioned to Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue that he spent a lot of time reading on the internet — a comment that alarmed them because they inferred that he believed the unfounded conspiracy theory that Mr. Trump had won the election. Mr. Clark also told them that he wanted the department to hold a news conference announcing that it was investigating serious accusations of election fraud. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue rejected the proposal.As Mr. Trump focused increasingly on Georgia, a state he lost narrowly to Mr. Biden, he complained to Justice Department leaders that the U.S. attorney in Atlanta, Byung J. Pak, was not trying to find evidence for false election claims pushed by Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and others. Mr. Donoghue warned Mr. Pak that the president was now fixated on his office, and that it might not be tenable for him to continue to lead it, according to two people familiar with the conversation.That conversation and Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find” him votes compelled Mr. Pak to abruptly resign this month.Mr. Clark was also focused on Georgia. He drafted a letter that he wanted Mr. Rosen to send to Georgia state legislators that wrongly said that the Justice Department was investigating accusations of voter fraud in their state, and that they should move to void Mr. Biden’s win there.Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue again rejected Mr. Clark’s proposal.On New Year’s Eve, the trio met to discuss Mr. Clark’s refusal to hew to the department’s conclusion that the election results were valid. Mr. Donoghue flatly told Mr. Clark that what he was doing was wrong. The next day, Mr. Clark told Mr. Rosen — who had mentored him while they worked together at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis — that he was going to discuss his strategy with the president early the next week, just before Congress was set to certify Mr. Biden’s electoral victory.Unbeknown to the acting attorney general, Mr. Clark’s timeline moved up. He met with Mr. Trump over the weekend, then informed Mr. Rosen midday on Sunday that the president intended to replace him with Mr. Clark, who could then try to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College results. He said that Mr. Rosen could stay on as his deputy attorney general, leaving Mr. Rosen speechless.Unwilling to step down without a fight, Mr. Rosen said that he needed to hear straight from Mr. Trump and worked with the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, to convene a meeting for early that evening.Mr. Clark asked Mr. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen, the acting attorney general.Credit…Ting Shen for The New York TimesEven as Mr. Clark’s pronouncement was sinking in, stunning news broke out of Georgia: State officials had recorded an hourlong call, published by The Washington Post, during which Mr. Trump pressured them to manufacture enough votes to declare him the victor. As the fallout from the recording ricocheted through Washington, the president’s desperate bid to change the outcome in Georgia came into sharp focus.Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue pressed ahead, informing Steven Engel, the head of the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel, about Mr. Clark’s latest maneuver. Mr. Donoghue convened a late-afternoon call with the department’s remaining senior leaders, laying out Mr. Clark’s efforts to replace Mr. Rosen.Mr. Rosen planned to soon head to the White House to discuss his fate, Mr. Donoghue told the group. Should Mr. Rosen be fired, they all agreed to resign en masse. For some, the plan brought to mind the so-called Saturday Night Massacre of the Nixon era, where Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and his deputy resigned rather than carry out the president’s order to fire the special prosecutor investigating him.The Clark plan, the officials concluded, would seriously harm the department, the government and the rule of law. For hours, they anxiously messaged and called one another as they awaited Mr. Rosen’s fate.Around 6 p.m., Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue and Mr. Clark met at the White House with Mr. Trump, Mr. Cipollone, his deputy Patrick Philbin and other lawyers. Mr. Trump had Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark present their arguments to him.Mr. Cipollone advised the president not to fire Mr. Rosen and he reiterated, as he had for days, that he did not recommend sending the letter to Georgia lawmakers. Mr. Engel advised Mr. Trump that he and the department’s remaining top officials would resign if he fired Mr. Rosen, leaving Mr. Clark alone at the department.Mr. Trump seemed somewhat swayed by the idea that firing Mr. Rosen would trigger not only chaos at the Justice Department, but also congressional investigations and possibly recriminations from other Republicans and distract attention from his efforts to overturn the election results.After nearly three hours, Mr. Trump ultimately decided that Mr. Clark’s plan would fail, and he allowed Mr. Rosen to stay.Mr. Rosen and his deputies concluded they had weathered the turmoil. Once Congress certified Mr. Biden’s victory, there would be little for them to do until they left along with Mr. Trump in two weeks.They began to exhale days later as the Electoral College certification at the Capitol got underway. And then they received word: The building had been breached.Maggie Haberman More

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      Trump Grants Clemency to Stephen Bannon and Other Allies

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential InaugurationliveWatchHighlightsScenes from the CapitalScheduleQuestions, AnsweredAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWith Hours Left in Office, Trump Grants Clemency to Bannon and Other AlliesThe president continued using his power to help his supporters, including his former chief strategist and one of his top 2016 fund-raisers.Stephen K. Bannon in 2017 at the White House. He was under indictment on charges that he misused money he helped raise for a group backing President Trump’s border wall.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesMaggie Haberman, Kenneth P. Vogel, Eric Lipton and Jan. 20, 2021Updated 2:15 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — President Trump used his final hours in office to wipe away convictions and prison sentences for a roster of corrupt politicians and business executives and bestow pardons on allies like Stephen K. Bannon, his former chief strategist, and Elliott Broidy, one of his top fund-raisers in 2016.The wave of clemency grants, hours before Mr. Trump’s departure from the White House, underscored how many of his close associates and supporters became ensnared in corruption cases and other legal troubles, and highlighted again his willingness to use his power to help them and others with connections to him.His decision to grant clemency to a raft of elected officials and business executives caught up in high-profile corruption cases also represented a final lashing out by Mr. Trump at a criminal justice system that he had come to view as unfairly hounding him and his allies. It came as the Senate prepared for his second impeachment trial, on a charge of inciting the deadly riot at the Capitol this month, and could be another factor in influencing whether Republicans join Democrats in voting to convict him.Mr. Trump retains the power to issue further pardons — including theoretically for himself and members of his family — until noon Wednesday, when his four-year tenure comes to an end. But officials said they did not anticipate him doing so.The latest round of pardons and commutations — 143 in total — followed dozens last month, when Mr. Trump pardoned associates like Paul Manafort and Roger J. Stone Jr., and four Blackwater guards convicted in connection with the killing of Iraqi civilians.Mr. Bannon was under indictment on charges that he misused money he helped raise for a group backing Mr. Trump’s border wall, but had not yet gone to trial. Mr. Broidy pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to violate foreign lobbying laws as part of a covert campaign to influence the Trump administration on behalf of Chinese and Malaysian interests.Rick Renzi in 2007. Mr. Renzi, a Republican and former member of the House, was sentenced in 2013 to three years in prison in connection with a bribery scheme involving an Arizona land swap deal.Credit…Pool photo by Sabah ArarAmong others receiving pardons from Mr. Trump were three prominent Republicans who had served in the House before their convictions. They were Rick Renzi, who was sentenced in 2013 to three years in jail in association with a bribery scheme involving an Arizona land swap deal; Robert Hayes of North Carolina, who pleaded guilty in 2019 to lying to the F.B.I.; and Randall “Duke” Cunningham of California, who pleaded guilty in 2005 to taking $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors.Mr. Trump commuted the sentence of Kwame M. Kilpatrick, a Democrat and former Detroit mayor who was convicted in 2013 for using his office to enrich himself and his family through shakedowns, kickbacks and bid-rigging schemes.And Mr. Trump commuted the sentence of William T. Walters, a wealthy sports gambler. A jury convicted Mr. Walters in 2017 on charges related to his role in an insider-trading scheme, and he was sentenced to five years in prison.Mr. Walters hired Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer John M. Dowd in 2018, after he stopped representing Mr. Trump, The New York Times reported this week. Mr. Dowd bragged to Mr. Walters and others that he could help them receive a pardon because of his close relationship with the president.Mr. Dowd had also said that Mr. Trump would look favorably upon those who had been investigated by federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, an office that the president has long viewed as hostile to him and that has been involved in other investigations touching on him and his allies, according to two people briefed on the matter. Mr. Walters has paid Mr. Dowd tens of thousands of dollars to represent him, the people said.The pardon of Mr. Bannon was particularly notable because he had been charged with a crime but had yet to stand trial. An overwhelming majority of pardons and commutations granted by presidents have been for those convicted and sentenced.The White House had planned to release the list of those granted clemency earlier in the day, but the debate over Mr. Bannon, who encouraged Mr. Trump publicly to fight the certification of the 2020 election, was part of the delay, officials said.By late afternoon Tuesday, advisers believed they had kept a pardon for Mr. Bannon from happening. But by about 9 p.m., Mr. Trump had changed his mind and Mr. Bannon was added to the list.Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon spoke by phone during the day as the president was weighing the pardon, as Mr. Bannon’s allies tried to apply pressure to make it happen and his detractors pushed the president not to go ahead with it.Among other things, Mr. Bannon has been a frequent antagonist of the Republican leader in the Senate, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who has blamed Mr. Trump for stoking the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Mr. McConnell has left open the possibility of voting to convict Mr. Trump in the upcoming Senate impeachment trial.Mr. Bannon in August leaving Federal District Court in Manhattan after his arrest and arraignment on fraud charges.Credit…Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s decision to grant Mr. Bannon a pardon is the latest twist in a complicated relationship between the two men that started during the 2016 presidential campaign, fell apart during Mr. Bannon’s time as the White House’s chief strategist and was resurrected in recent months as Mr. Bannon encouraged Mr. Trump’s bid for a second term and the efforts to overturn the election.Mr. Bannon was indicted and arrested in August by federal prosecutors in Manhattan on charges related to the money raised to promote the construction of the border wall long sought by Mr. Trump.The group said that it planned to use the funds to build portions of the wall that Mr. Trump had been blocked from using federal funding on. Conservative activists, like Mr. Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., appeared at an event for the group, which ultimately brought in $25 million in donations. Mr. Bannon used $1 million for his own personal expenses, according to the prosecutors.The Presidential Inauguration More

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      Book Review: ‘Saving Justice,’ by James Comey

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storynonfictionJames Comey’s View of Justice — and How It Differs From Donald Trump’sU.S. Attorney James Comey in his office, December 2002.Credit…Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesAmazonApple BooksBarnes and NobleBooks-A-MillionBookshopIndieboundWhen you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.Jan. 10, 2021, 6:00 p.m. ETSAVING JUSTICETruth, Transparency, and TrustBy James ComeyIn his second debate against Joe Biden last October, Donald Trump inadvertently stated his philosophy of life. The issue was refugees. He said that “low I.Q.” immigrants were the only ones who abided by the law and showed up for their refugee status hearings. A week or so later, The Washington Post reported a similar statement Trump made when he admitted to stiffing his creditors on a Chicago high-rise. He said the chicanery made him “a smart guy, rather than a bad guy.”A smart guy, according to Trump, is someone who is wise enough to cheat. Stupid people abide by the law and attend their refugee status hearings; smart ones abscond. Stupid people pay their debts; smart ones stiff their lenders and dare them to sue. Stupid people believe their elected officials; smart people know the game is rigged. The most distressing aspect of Trump’s enduring appeal, even in defeat, is how many Americans seem to agree with him.The former F.B.I. director James Comey is appalled. In his second attempt at a memoir, “Saving Justice,” there is a story about a small-time drug dealer named Vinnie who is placed in the federal witness protection program. Vinnie begins his new life, falls in love and gets married. The trouble is, Vinnie also was married in his old life. He now has two wives, which makes him a bigamist, which is a crime. “The Department of Justice has an obligation to tell defendants and their lawyers bad stuff about the government’s witnesses,” Comey writes. This is true, even if the “bad stuff” has nothing to do with the facts of the case — Vinnie’s testimony can convict a major drug dealer — and even if the revelation might ruin Vinnie’s new happiness, since Wife No. 2 doesn’t know about Wife No. 1. “I felt sorry for Vinnie in that moment,” Comey concludes. “But the truth was more important than his pain.” We never learn the fate of Vinnie’s marriages or the case in question — he is, after all, in the witness protection program — but Comey hammers the larger point: “The Department of Justice could not accept anything short of the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”Comey’s view of justice — both the concept and the department — is ecclesiastical. U.S. attorneys are members of a sacred order. They make an unequivocal vow to tell the truth, and they do so with a certain style: “They were almost always younger than the other lawyers and stood straighter, buttoned their jackets more quickly, answered more directly, met deadlines and admitted what they didn’t know.”In other words, they are the precise opposite of Donald Trump, who demanded “loyalty” rather than “honesty” from Comey, and fired him as director of the F.B.I. “Saving Justice” is a slight and repetitive book, but not an insignificant one. Comey revealed the crucial moments of his confrontation with the president in his 2018 memoir, “A Higher Loyalty.” They are rehashed here, but within the context of a larger theme: the national descent from strict, fact-based truth into a feckless mirage of “truthiness,” to use Stephen Colbert’s brilliant formulation. Can an institution religiously devoted to the truth, like the Justice Department, survive in a democracy where vast numbers of people believe that the 2020 election was a fraud?Comey is a curious figure. He is smart, admirable, hard-working — and yet slightly smarmy in his rectitude. He begins each chapter with a quote from sources ranging from Virginia Woolf to Malcolm X to the inevitable Dalai Lama. He tries to leaven his supreme pontification with stories of his own flaws, mixed emotions and humility. His height — 6-foot-8 — makes him testy in cramped spaces. His government salary makes it hard for him and his wife to raise five children. Annoyed, he throws his daughter’s obnoxious talking doll out the window of his automobile (of course, he drives back to retrieve it). His pursuit of transparency is rigorous to the point of myopia.But, of course, he is right: You can’t have a working democracy without an agreed-upon standard of truth. You need a “reservoir of trust” in our institutions if the government’s truth-work is to proceed. Conspiracy theories about the Deep State are debilitating. The Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the intelligence community have to be perceived as honest to a fault — even about their own faults.Comey is surprisingly tough on Robert Mueller. He believes Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election is devastating, but too complicated for mass consumption. Attorney General William P. Barr spins up a dust storm of inaccuracies while Mueller “chose to submit his unreadable — and unread — report and then go away without a sound,” Comey writes. “He could have found a way to speak to the American people in their language. … Department policy and tradition gave him plenty of flexibility to speak in the public interest. He chose not to, and, in the end, the only voices most Americans heard were lying to them. No truth, no transparency, and Justice paid the price in lost trust.”He should talk. It was Comey’s epic mishandling of the Hillary Clinton email case in 2016 that, arguably, gave Donald Trump the presidency. Comey defends his Clinton actions in both memoirs. He admits only to sins of honesty. The public was clamoring for a judgment. And the F.B.I.’s conclusion, after overwhelming work on the case, was that Clinton had been sloppy but not venal. “If we couldn’t prove bad intent, there was no prosecutable case,” he writes. Comey chose to announce this dramatically, in public, but not without a bone to his fellow Republicans: Clinton had been “extremely careless,” Comey said. He stewed about the adverb, which turned his report into an op-ed. And then, on the brink of the election, he reopened the case. A computer containing more Clinton emails was found in the possession of former Congressman Anthony Weiner, whose wife, Huma Abedin, worked for Clinton. Now, if there ever was a time for transparency, this was it. Comey could have said: “Look, we found no evidence of criminality in the Clinton case, and I would be very surprised — given the nature of the thousands of emails we’ve read — if this new batch proves otherwise. But we’ve got to look at them, and so we will.” Instead, he sent a damning letter to Congress, announcing that the investigation had been reopened. As Comey might say: No context, no transparency.In fairness, there was probably nothing that Comey could say about the Clinton case that would have stanched the “lock her up” conspiracy-mongering. His battle, and Mueller’s, is against a powerful sludge-tide of cynicism that has been flowing, especially in the media, for 50 years — and, for the past four years, from the White House itself. All politicians are crooked, aren’t they? All politicians lie.If nothing else, Comey has laid out the challenge of the next four years. Joe Biden’s quiet humanity will confront a noisy nation where too many citizens have become so sour that they’ve found solace, and entertainment, in an alternative reality. It will not be easy to lure them away from their noxious fantasies, but fact-based truth is not negotiable.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Donald Trump ha considerado otorgarse un perdón, según colaboradores

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesCalls for Impeachment25th Amendment ExplainedTrump Officials ResignHow Mob Stormed CapitolAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWashingtonDonald Trump ha considerado otorgarse un perdón, según colaboradoresEl presidente ha insinuado, de acuerdo con personas enteradas, su intención en las últimas semanas. No queda claro si lo había discutido después de alentar a sus seguidores a marchar hacia el Capitolio, al que algunos de ellos irrumpieron.El presidente Trump le ha dicho a sus asesores lo mucho que le gusta tener el poder de otorgar perdón.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMichael S. Schmidt y 7 de enero de 2021Actualizado 16:55 ETRead in EnglishEl presidente estadounidense, Donald Trump, ha insinuado a sus colaboradores que tiene intenciones de otorgarse un indulto a sí mismo en los últimos días de su presidencia, según dos personas con conocimiento de las discusiones. La medida implicaría un uso de los poderes presidenciales extraordinario e inexplorado en la historia de Estados Unidos.En varias conversaciones después del día de las elecciones, Trump ha comentado a sus asesores que considera la posibilidad de otorgarse un perdón y, en otras instancias, ha preguntado si debería hacerlo y qué impacto político y legal tendría en él, según dos personas. No estaba claro si ha tocado el tema después de incitar a sus seguidores el miércoles a irrumpir en el Capitolio en un ataque de turba.Trump ha mostrado que su interés en perdonarse a sí mismo va más allá de reflexiones ociosas. Hace mucho tiempo que insiste en que tiene el poder de perdonarse a sí mismo y típicamente cuando sondea a sus asesores es síntoma de que se prepara a avanzar con sus intenciones. También ha estado cada vez convencido de que quienes él percibe como sus enemigos utilizarán las palancas legales para atacarlo cuando abandone el cargo.Ningún presidente estadounidense se ha otorgado a sí mismo un perdón por lo cual la legitimidad de un posible acto de autoclemencia jamás ha sido puesta a prueba en el sistema legal. Los expertos legales no están de acuerdo en si las cortes lo reconocerían. Pero sí concuerdan en que un autoperdón presidencial crearía un peligroso nuevo precedente para que los presidentes declaren unilateralmente que se encuentran por encima de la ley y se protejan de tener que responder por los crímenes que hayan cometido en el cargo.Un portavoz de la Casa Blanca no respondió a una solicitud de comentario.Trump ha considerado una variedad de perdones preventivos para su familia, entre ellos sus tres hijos mayores —Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump e Ivanka Trump—, su yerno y asesor sénior de la Casa Blanca, Jared Kushner, y para sus aliados cercanos, como Rudolph W. Giuliani, abogado personal del presidente. Trump ha expresado preocupación a sus consejeros de que el Departamento de Justicia de Biden pudiera investigarlos a todos ellos.Trump, quien le ha contado a sus asesores que le complace mucho tener el poder de otorgar clemencia, durante semanas ha solicitado a sus ayudantes y aliados que le sugieran a quién perdonar. También ha ofrecido perdones preventivos a consejeros y funcionarios de su gobierno. Muchos de ellos se han sorprendido porque no consideraban encontrarse en riesgo legal y creyeron que aceptar el ofrecimiento sería visto como una admisión de culpabilidad, según las dos personas.Los perdones presidenciales solo aplican en casos de leyes federales y no protegen de ser enjuiciado o investigado por crímenes estatales. Un perdón serviría en contra de cargos que podrían ser presentados por los fiscales que investigan las finanzas de la Organización Trump en Manhattan.Las discusiones entre Trump y sus asesores sobre el tema de un perdón para el presidente surgieron antes de que el fin de semana presionara a funcionarios del estado de Georgia para que le ayudasen a cambiar los resultados de las elecciones presidenciales o de que incitara a una turba que luego atacó el Capitolio el miércoles. Los aliados de Trump creen que ambos episodios exponen aún más a Trump a verse involucrado en un proceso penal.Cuando los asesores instaron a Trump a que emitiera el miércoles una condena enérgica y él rechazó ese consejo, el abogado de la Casa Blanca, Pat A. Cipollone, advirtió a Trump que podría quedar legalmente vulnerable por los disturbios, dado que de antemano había instado a sus partidarios a marchar al Capitolio y a “luchar”, según personas informadas sobre la conversación. A los asesores de la Casa Blanca les pareció que Trump disfrutaba viendo las escenas que se transmitían en la televisión.Más allá de eso, no queda claro el alcance del riesgo de sometimiento a procesos penales de Trump. El exfiscal especial Robert S. Mueller III, identificó diez ocasiones en las que Trump pudo haber obstaculizado la justicia pero no dijo si el presidente había quebrantado la ley e invocó restricciones legales y de hecho que obstaculizan que se juzgue a un presidente en funciones. Exfuncionarios del Departamento de Justicia y expertos legales dijeron que varios de esos actos deberían ameritar un procedimiento judicial.En 2018, fiscales federales en Nueva York nombraron a Trump como conspirador en un esquema de financiación ilegal de campaña.Una turba de partidarios de Trump irrumpió en el Capitolio el miércoles, después de que el presidente los azuzó.Credit…Kenny Holston para The New York TimesLos indultos pueden ser amplios o específicamente diseñados. Los abogados defensores en casos de cuello blanco dijeron que Trump se beneficiaría más al citar crímenes específicos si se perdona a sí mismo, pero esos detalles podrían ser políticamente perjudiciales al sugerir que reconocía haber cometido esos crímenes.The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesUpdated 7 de enero de 2021 a las 21:15 ETBetsy DeVos, education secretary, is second cabinet member to resign.Here’s what Trump’s cabinet members have said about the storming of the Capitol.Lawmakers fear a coronavirus outbreak after sharing close quarters in lockdown.Un perdón presidencial autoconcedido complicaría la ya tensa cuestión que enfrenta el Departamento de Justicia de Biden sobre si investigar y eventualmente enjuiciar a Trump. Los demócratas y exfuncionarios del Departamento de Justicia aseguran que si Trump se perdonara a sí mismo y el Departamento de Justicia evitase procesar a Trump estaría mandando un inquietante mensaje a los estadounidenses sobre el Estado de derecho en el país y a los futuros presidentes sobre la posibilidad de burlar la ley.“El Departamento de Justicia de Biden no querrá acceder a un autoperdón de Trump, que implica que el presidente está literalmente por encima de la ley federal”, dijo Jack Goldsmith, profesor de Derecho en Harvard y ex alto funcionario del Departamento de Justicia en el gobierno de George W. Bush.Un autoperdón estaría alineado con el uso sin precedentes que Trump ha hecho del poder de clemencia. Los autores de la Constitución otorgaron a la figura del presidente casi total autoridad para perdonar crímenes federales y posicionaron así al jefe del poder ejecutivo como un contrapeso del poder judicial y también para intervenir en el sistema de justicia y mostrar misericordia y gracia a los oprimidos.Pero Trump ha desdeñado el proceso formal establecido por el Departamento de Justicia para asegurarse de que los perdones se otorguen de manera justa. En cambio, ha usado su poder de clemencia como ningún otro presidente para favorecer a sus aliados, socavar a sus rivales y beneficiar a su agenda política. De los 94 perdones y conmutaciones de pena que Trump ha otorgado, el 89 por ciento estuvieron destinados a personas que tienen vínculos personales con él, lo ayudaron políticamente o cuyos casos lo impactaron, según un conteo llevado a cabo por Goldsmith.El único presidente que recibió un indulto fue Richard Nixon. Un mes después de que Nixon dejó la presidencia, su exvicepresidente, Gerald Ford, lo perdonó por todos los crímenes que cometió en el cargo. La medida fue ampliamente criticada en ese momento por permitir que la presidencia estuviera por encima de la ley. Los partidarios de Ford culparon al indulto por su derrota en las elecciones dos años después aunque, en última instancia, el indulto llegó a ser visto como un movimiento que ayudó al país a pasar la página tras el caso Watergate.Trump ha sostenido a lo largo de su presidencia que dispone de la autoridad para perdonarse a sí mismo y discutió esa posibilidad por primera vez con sus asistentes durante su primer año en el cargo. Esas conversaciones empezaron cuando los vínculos de su campaña con Rusia estaban bajo el escrutinio de investigadores que intentaban determinar si había obstruido a la justicia.Los expertos jurídicos no están tan seguros de que Trump disponga de un “derecho absoluto” para otorgarse a sí mismo un perdón, como ha declarado.El Departamento de Justicia observó en un breve comentario de agosto de 1974, apenas cuatro días antes de la renuncia de Nixon, que “parecería” que los presidentes no pueden perdonarse a sí mismo “según la regla fundamental de que nadie puede ser juez en su propio caso”.Pero el presidente no se limita por dichas opiniones y no hay nada que impida que Trump firme un perdón para sí mismo. La duda sería si el Departamento de Justicia en otro gobierno estaría dispuesto a respetar un perdón así y con ello renunciar a procesar eventualmente a Trump y, de ser el caso, si el sistema judicial al final decidiría que el perdón protege al mandatario de enfrentar cargos.“Solo una corte puede invalidar un autoperdón, y puede hacerlo solo si el gobierno de Biden presenta un caso en contra de Trump”, dijo Goldsmith. “Un autoperdón de Trump haría entonces más probable que el equipo de Biden procese a Trump por crímenes cometidos en el cargo”.A lo largo de la presidencia de Trump, él y sus aliados han concebido los perdones presidenciales como un modo de ayudarle a protegerse en investigaciones penales. Durante la investigación sobre Rusia, Trump y su abogado personal John M. Dowd ofrecieron perdones a sus excolaboradores. Uno de ellos, su expresidente de campaña Paul Manafort, despreció un ofrecimiento de la fiscalía para llegar a un acuerdo de colaboración.Michael S. Schmidt es un corresponsal que cubre seguridad nacional e investigaciones federales desde Washington. Ha formado parte de dos equipos que ganaron premios Pulitzer en 2018: uno por un reportaje sobre el acoso sexual laboral y otro por la cobertura de los vínculos de la campaña del presidente Trump con Rusia. @NYTMikeMaggie Haberman es corresponsal de la Casa Blanca. Se unió al Times en 2015 como corresponsal de campaña y fue parte del equipo que ganó un premio Pulitzer en 2018 por informar sobre los asesores del presidente Trump y sus conexiones con Rusia.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Justice Dept. Asks Judge to Toss Election Lawsuit Against Pence

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