Special Prosecutors (Independent Counsel)

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares126 Views

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

    by

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

    More stories

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Rally in Michigan Dominated by More False Statements

      by

      Former President Donald J. Trump held a rally on Thursday in the key battleground state of Michigan that was notable mainly for his continued false statements and exaggerations on a number of subjects as varied as the 2020 election and the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene.In the roughly 85 minutes that Mr. Trump was onstage, he repeated a pattern of untrue assertions that have characterized many of his events as the 2024 presidential race heads into its final weeks. The crowd of supporters in Saginaw County, which he narrowly lost four years ago, included Mike Rogers, the former Michigan congressman and the Republican candidate for Michigan’s open Senate seat, and Pete Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican Party chairman.Mr. Trump reiterated his familiar false claim that he had won the 2020 election and made no acknowledgment of new evidence that was unsealed against him on Wednesday in the federal election subversion case. He also said his campaign was up in all polls in every swing state, while several public polls show close races and Vice President Kamala Harris leading narrowly in a number of battlegrounds.Mr. Trump also mischaracterized the state of funding at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying that the Biden administration had stolen disaster-relief money allocated to the agency to give to housing for undocumented immigrants so they would vote for Democrats.He cast electric cars as a threat to the auto industry, while at the same time praising Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive who has endorsed his candidacy and featured him prominently on X, the Musk-owned social media platform.Michigan was one of a handful of swing states where Mr. Trump and his allies tried to overturn his defeat in 2020 through a series of maneuvers that included breaching voting equipment and seeking to seat a set of fake presidential electors. Some of his supporters have been criminally charged in the state, where Mr. Trump was named as an unindicted co-conspirator this year.Mr. Trump spent time in his speech taking satisfaction over his choice of running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, whose debate performance this week was applauded by many.“I drafted the best athlete,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Vance. The audience — several thousand supporters at a recreation center at Saginaw Valley State University, roughly 100 miles north of Detroit — cheered.And he mused, at one point, that instead of being on a beach in Monte Carlo or someplace else, he was running for the presidency again. “If I had my choice of being here with you today or being on some magnificent beach with the waves hitting me in the face, I would take you every single time.”Overall as of Thursday, Ms. Harris led by two percentage points in Michigan, according to The New York Times’s polling average, 49 percent to 47 percent. The vice president is scheduled to return to the state on Friday, campaigning in Detroit and Flint. More

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      ‘Signs of Scorching Prejudice’ Doomed the Case Against Alec Baldwin for ‘Rust’ Shooting

      by

      A high-pressure manslaughter case against a movie star turned into an interrogation of the prosecution’s conduct.While dismissing the involuntary manslaughter case against Alec Baldwin on Friday, the judge did not hold back.She delivered a searing criticism of the prosecution and state law enforcement officials who oversaw the case, declaring that they had intentionally and deliberately withheld from the defense evidence related to the fatal shooting on the set of the film “Rust.”“If this conduct does not rise to the level of bad faith, it certainly comes so near to bad faith as to show signs of scorching prejudice,” Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said.The judge’s decision to end the case against Mr. Baldwin — without the option for the prosecutors to revive it — was the conclusion of a shocking day at the Santa Fe County Courthouse, in which a high-pressure trial against a movie star turned into an interrogation of the prosecution’s conduct. And it came after a series of missteps by different teams of prosecutors left Mr. Baldwin in legal limbo for more than two years.Shortly before the case was thrown out, the lead prosecutor, Kari T. Morrissey, took the unusual step of calling herself to the witness stand to defend how she handled the situation when a batch of live rounds with a possible connection to the “Rust” shooting was brought to the local sheriff’s office in March.Law enforcement officials testified on Friday that they had inventoried the evidence under a separate case number from other “Rust” evidence. Defense lawyers said they were not told about the ammunition despite asking for all ballistic evidence in the case.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Special Counsel Is Said to Be Planning to Pursue Trump Cases Past the Election

      by

      Jack Smith plans to continue two criminal cases against Donald J. Trump until Inauguration Day if the former president wins, according to a person familiar with his thinking.The special counsel Jack Smith plans to pursue his two criminal cases against former President Donald J. Trump through the election and even up until Inauguration Day if Mr. Trump wins the presidential race, according to a person familiar with Mr. Smith’s thinking.Mr. Smith believes that under Justice Department regulations, his mandate as special counsel and his authority to keep the cases going do not depend on a change of administration and extend until he is formally removed from his post, the person said.As a practical matter, that means that the special counsel’s office is prepared to push forward for as long as possible on the two indictments it has filed against Mr. Trump. One of those, brought in Washington, has accused the former president of plotting to subvert the 2020 election. The other, filed in Florida, has charged Mr. Trump with holding on to a trove of highly sensitive classified documents after he left office and then obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them.Mr. Smith’s decision to keep the cases going, reported earlier by The Washington Post, comes as a landmark Supreme Court ruling on executive immunity this week has effectively postponed the election interference case until after voters go to the polls in November.At the same time, Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the classified documents case in Florida, has declined to set a trial date as she grapples with an ever-expanding constellation of legal issues and court hearings.A spokesman for Mr. Smith declined to comment about his plans for the two cases.It is not unusual that a special counsel like Mr. Smith would seek to continue prosecuting cases under his command even after a change of presidential administrations. The Justice Department regulations governing special counsels give prosecutors like him day-to-day independence from the attorneys general who appointed them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Judge in Trump Documents Case Hears Arguments Over Special Counsel

      by

      Judge Aileen Cannon held a hearing to consider a question that has been quickly dismissed in other cases: whether there is a constitutional basis for the appointment of a special counsel.Former President Donald J. Trump’s defense team tried on Friday to persuade the judge overseeing the national security documents case to dismiss the indictment, pushing a long-shot argument that the special counsel, Jack Smith, was not properly appointed.Such defense motions are routinely denied in federal cases involving special counsels. But the judge presiding over this case, Aileen M. Cannon, has given Mr. Trump’s request extra import by holding hearings and allowing three outside lawyers time in court to make additional arguments about whether there is a constitutional mechanism for naming special counsels.“This has been very illuminating and helpful,” Judge Cannon said at the close of about four hours of arguments and a steady beat of her own questions, which often began with, “Would you agree that.”Mr. Trump’s team argued that the attorney general lacks constitutional authority to appoint someone with the powers of a special counsel. “The text of these statutes really matters,” said Emil Bove, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers. He also argued that Mr. Smith should have been confirmed by the Senate because his position is so powerful.Prosecutors argued that well-established precedents demonstrate that the attorney general does have that power, citing a string of court decisions upholding special counsel investigations. “We’re interpreting statutory terms consistent with the Constitution,” said James I. Pearce, a member of the special counsel’s team.Judge Cannon’s questions addressed language in specific laws, past precedents and excerpts from lawyers’ written briefs. At times on Friday, her courtroom sounded like a university seminar on the history of the Justice Department, national scandals that have drawn special counsels and the various interpretations of the meaning of words in decades-old laws.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Hallie Biden Is a Key Witness in Hunter Biden Gun Trial

      by

      Hallie Biden, Mr. Biden’s ex-girlfriend and the widow of his brother, Beau, described his self-destructive behavior around the time he applied for a gun in 2018.Hallie Biden, a former girlfriend of Hunter Biden and widow of his brother, Beau, took the stand on Thursday, telling jurors that she saw him buy, stash and smoke vast amounts of crack cocaine in the fall of 2018 when he claimed to be drug-free on a firearms application.Ms. Biden — speaking in nervous, clipped bursts as she faced Mr. Biden across the fourth-floor courtroom — admitted that he had introduced her to crack in the summer of 2018. She said she was ashamed and embarrassed by their behavior when the two briefly lived together in a rented house in Annapolis, Md., a time when both were in shock over Beau Biden’s death.“It was a terrible experience that I went through,” she said.Ms. Biden is, by far, the most important witness for the prosecution, offering the most detailed, and intimate, portrait of Mr. Biden’s reckless and self-destructive behavior at the time.Mr. Biden, she said, bought multiple rocks of crack in Washington, where he kept an apartment — some the size of “Ping-Pong balls, or bigger maybe” — and stored them in his “backpack or car.”Ms. Biden said she discovered the gun at the center of the case when she was rifling through Mr. Biden’s vehicle the morning after he showed up at her house. It was part of a “pattern” of erratic behavior, she added, saying he would be unreachable for weeks at a time and she or her children would scrounge through his car for drugs or alcohol to help him “start anew and deal with stuff” when he reappeared exhausted at her home.When she searched the car on Oct. 23, she described noticing “a dusting of powder” that she assumed to be “remnants of crack cocaine” before finding the gun in a case with a broken lock. Flustered, she said she improvised a way to dispose of it at a grocery store nearby.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      A Felon in the Oval Office Would Test the American System

      by

      The system of checks and balances established in the Constitution was meant to hold wayward presidents accountable, but some wonder how it will work if the next president is already a felon.The revolutionary hero Patrick Henry knew this day would come. He might not have anticipated all the particulars, such as the porn actress in the hotel room and the illicit payoff to keep her quiet. But he feared that eventually a criminal might occupy the presidency and use his powers to thwart anyone who sought to hold him accountable. “Away with your president,” he declared, “we shall have a king.”That was exactly what the founders sought to avoid, having thrown off the yoke of an all-powerful monarch. But as hard as they worked to establish checks and balances, the system they constructed to hold wayward presidents accountable ultimately has proved to be unsteady.Whatever rules Americans thought were in place are now being rewritten by Donald J. Trump, the once and perhaps future president who has already shattered many barriers and precedents. The notion that 34 felonies is not automatically disqualifying and a convicted criminal can be a viable candidate for commander in chief upends two and a half centuries of assumptions about American democracy.And it raises fundamental questions about the limits of power in a second term, should Mr. Trump be returned to office. If he wins, it means he will have survived two impeachments, four criminal indictments, civil judgments for sexual abuse and business fraud, and a felony conviction. Given that, it would be hard to imagine what institutional deterrents could discourage abuses or excesses.Moreover, the judiciary may not be the check on the executive branch that it has been in the past. If no other cases go to trial before the election, it could be another four years before the courts could even consider whether the newly elected president jeopardized national security or illegally sought to overturn the 2020 election, as he has been charged with doing. As it is, even before the election, the Supreme Court may grant Mr. Trump at least some measure of immunity.Mr. Trump would still have to operate within the constitutional system, analysts point out, but he has already shown a willingness to push its boundaries. When he was president, he claimed that the Constitution gave him “the right to do whatever I want.” After leaving office, he advocated “termination” of the Constitution to allow him to return to power right away without another election and vowed to dedicate a second term to “retribution.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Judge Blocks Trump’s Lawyers From Naming Witnesses in Documents Case

      by

      The special counsel had asked that the names of about two dozen government witnesses be redacted from a public version of a court filing to protect against potential threats or harassment.Granting a request by federal prosecutors, the judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case ordered his lawyers on Tuesday to redact the names of about two dozen government witnesses from a public version of one of their court filings to protect them against potential threats or harassment.In a 24-page ruling, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, told Mr. Trump’s lawyers to refer to the witnesses in their filing with a pseudonym or a categorical description — say, John Smith or F.B.I. Agent 1 — rather than identifying them by name.The special counsel, Jack Smith, had expressed a deep concern over witness safety, an issue that has touched on several of Mr. Trump’s criminal cases. Among the people prosecutors were seeking to protect were “career civil servants and former close advisers” to Mr. Trump, including one who had told them that he was so concerned about potential threats from “Trump world” that he refused to permit investigators to record an interview with him.Judge Cannon’s decision, reversing her initial ruling on the matter, was noteworthy, if only for the way it hewed to standard practice. After making a series of unorthodox rulings and allowing the case to become bogged down by a logjam of unresolved legal issues, the judge has come under intense scrutiny. Each of her decisions has been studied closely by legal experts for any indication of how she plans to proceed with other matters.But as she has in other rulings where she found in favor of Mr. Smith, Judge Cannon used her decision on Tuesday to take a shot at the special counsel, with whom she has been feuding. Although she agreed with him, she pointed out that his request to protect “all potential government witnesses without differentiation” was “sweeping in nature” and that she was “unable to locate another high-profile case” in which a judge had issued a similar decision.The fight over the witnesses began in earnest in early February when Mr. Smith’s prosecutors asked Judge Cannon to reconsider a decision she had made allowing Mr. Trump to publicly name about 24 witnesses in court papers they had filed asking the government for additional discovery information.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Poised and Precise, Hur Enters Fray Over Special Counsel’s Report on Biden

      by

      Robert K. Hur defended himself in the unhurried, forceful cadence of a veteran prosecutor, delivering his responses in a flat, matter-of-fact tone.The former special counsel Robert K. Hur, denounced by Democrats for his unsparing description of President Biden’s memory lapses, had one of his own during his testimony on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee.Representative James R. Comer, a Kentucky Republican, made passing reference to Dana A. Remus, a Democratic lawyer who had served as White House counsel under Mr. Biden from January 2021 to July 2022.Mr. Hur crinkled an eyebrow and corrected him: No, he said, she occupied that post under President Obama.The misstep was an isolated moment in an otherwise poised and precise appearance by Mr. Hur, 51, who was testifying about his report on the investigation into Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents.Mr. Hur, a Trump-era Justice Department official known among former colleagues for keeping a cool head in high-stress, high-stakes situations, incited a furor after describing the president as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” A transcript of his five-hour interview with Mr. Biden, released just before his appearance, raised questions about that characterization.Before his work as special counsel, Mr. Hur, a graduate of Stanford Law School who clerked for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, was best known for his 11-month stint as the top aide to the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, in 2017 and 2018. It was a time of extraordinary upheaval, when Mr. Rosenstein oversaw the installment of a special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to investigate President Donald J. Trump’s dealings with Russia. Both men lived under the constant threat of being fired by Mr. Trump, who saw the appointment as a personal betrayal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More