Tag: justice department

Trump Claims 9 White House Records Are His Personal Property

Posted on by Judith E. Ashton
  • Donald Trump is claiming several documents from his time in the White House are his personal property.
  • The DOJ filed a letter refuting his claims and saying the records belong at the National Archives.
  • The FBI secluded thousands of documents during an August raid at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.

Former President Donald Trump and the Justice Department are already at odds over the first batch of government-seized White House documents set to undergo early review by a special master — and there are still thousands of records let to be examined.

The DOJ outlined the dispute in a Thursday night letter to Judge Raymond J. Dearie, who has been tasked with overseeing a review of the more than 13,000 documents hidden by the FBI during an August raid at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

According to the letter, Trump is claiming that nine of the 15 documents included in the first batch to be reviewed are his personal property and should be returned to him. The government, however, disagrees and scoffed at Trump’s suggestion that the records from his time in the White House are protected by executive privilege, saying the official documents should be deposited to the National Archives.

The conflict likely signals further legal battles to come over the thousands of records yet to be reviewed in the DOJ’s probe into whether Trump mishandled official White House records following his departure from office.

Among the disputed documents in the initial bunch are materials related to six clemency requests from Trump’s time in office, according to the DOJ letter, which said the records include “supporting materials and relate to the president’s ‘power to grant reprieves and pardons for

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Trump attorneys don’t want to disclose which Mar-a-Lago documents he claims to have declassified

Posted on by Judith E. Ashton

Donald Trump‘s attorneys said in a filing Monday night that they don’t want to disclose to a court-appointed special master which Mar-a-Lago documents they assert the former president may or may not have declassified.

In a four-page letter to the special master, Trump’s attorneys pushed back against Senior US District Judge Raymond Dearie’s apparent proposal that they submit “specific information regarding declassification” to him in the course of his review.

Dearie issued an order Friday summoning both parties to the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, New York, for a preliminary conference Tuesday.

Trump’s attorneys have claimed that until or unless they decide to fight the FBI search warrant or if they decide to offer it as a defense following any potential indictment, they shouldn’t have to disclose details about declassification that would also be shared with the Justice Department .

On his Truth Social platform last month, Trump said, “It was all declassified.” But legal experts have pointed out that it may be irrelevant whether the documents were declassified or not depending on what, if any, charges are filed.

In their own letter to Dearie on Monday, Justice Department lawyers proposed that the special master’s review of the nonclassified material begin at once by scanning all the documents and having Trump’s legal team review about 500 pages a day, marking them as privileged or not so prosecutors can agree or disagree and forward them to the special master for his ultimate determination.

Federal prosecutors also suggested that also among the divided materials were “[n]on-documentary items (egitems of clothing)” that would be made available to Trump’s counsel and the special master for review at the FBI’s Washington field office.

A separate federal judge sets a deadline of Nov. 30 for Dearie to conclude his review and classifications,

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For Trump’s lawyers, legal exposure comes with the job

Posted on by Judith E. Ashton

A dark joke has begun circulating among lawyers following the many legal travails of former President Donald Trump: MAGA actually stands for “making attorneys get attorneys.”

Over six years and nine major investigations by Congress, the Justice Department and local prosecutors, as Trump has managed to avoid removal from the presidency and indictment, it has become clear that serving as one of his lawyers is a remarkably risky job — and one that can involve considerable legal exposure. Time after time, his attorneys have been asked to testify as witnesses to potential crimes — or come under scrutiny as possible criminal conspirators themselves.

While the consequences his lawyers faced were extraordinary when Trump was in the White House, the dangers have only intensified since he left office and have become increasing acute in recent weeks, as the former president has come under scrutiny in two different Justice Department investigations and has been forced yet again to find lawyers willing to represent him.

Last week, a Justice Department filing revealed that Trump’s lawyers had misled federal investigators about whether he had handed over to the Justice Department all the classified documents he took from the White House when he left office. That raised questions about whether the lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, could be prosecuted themselves and might ultimately be forced to become witnesses against their client. (Bobb recently retained a lawyer, according to a person familiar with the situation.)

The revelation capped a summer in which a team of lawyers that had been advising Trump as he tried to overturn the 2020 election faced a range of repercussions across the country from federal investigators, local prosecutors, state bar associations and government accountability groups.

One of Trump’s highest-profile lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, was named as a target in a state

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Explainer: How will attorney-client privilege affect the Trump records probe?

Posted on by Judith E. Ashton

A military aide carries a file box aboard the Marine One helicopter as US President Donald Trump departs for travel to Utah from the White House in Washington, US December 4, 2017. According to a report published in the New York Times, the boxes Trump would travel with contained documents including “unanswered letters, unread briefing books and unread newspapers.” REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

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Sept 5 (Reuters) – A federal judge on Monday agreed to appoint a special master to review records held by the FBI during its unprecedented Aug. 8 search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate.

Trump had asked for the review to determine whether documents covered contained materials that are covered by attorney-client privilege. read more

Below is an explainer on attorney-client privilege, and how it could feature in the documents investigation.

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WHAT IS ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE?

Attorney-client privilege is a long-standing doctrine in US law that permits people to keep communications with their lawyers private.

Lawyers cite the privilege in declining to share information about their conversations with clients. However, it only applies to legal advice and not clients’ other conversations with attorneys, said Peter Joy, a professor at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.

HAVE THE MATERIALS ALREADY BEEN REVIEWED FOR PRIVILEGE?

The Justice Department said it created a separate “filter” team to view the hidden documents and set them aside if they might be privileged.

In a court filing last month, the Justice Department said that the team found “only a limited subset” of records that might be privileged. It said it is prepared to take steps such as asking the judge who approved the search warrant to decide whether the privilege applies.

The team

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Christina Bobb and Evan Corcoran: Trump’s attorneys face scrutiny over level of cooperation with Justice Department on classified docs

Posted on by Judith E. Ashton

The FBI’s search on August 8 uncovering scores of classified material “cast serious doubt” on the sworn statement one of Trump’s lawyers made in June attesting that all classified material had been returned and a “diligent search” had been conducted, the Justice Department wrote.

Trump’s attorney Christina Bobb was the individual who signed the June 3 letter attesting that all materials requested by the subpoena issued to Trump had been turned over to the Justice Department, two sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

After receiving the subpoena, Trump’s team said it conducted a “diligent search” of boxes moved from the White House to Florida after Trump left office, according to the letter included in a DOJ court filing late Tuesday. Notably, the letter Bobb signed says she swears or affirms that “the above statements are true and correct to the best of my knowledge.”

Though her name was redacted in Tuesday night’s filing, sources tell CNN it was Bobb who signed the letter and was designated the custodian of records. Bobb and Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran attended the meeting with federal investigators at Mar-a-Lago in June, when the agents were shown a storage room where materials were kept.

The New York Times, which first reported that Bobb had signed the document, reported that Corcoran drafted the June statement that Bobb signed.

Bobb and Corcoran did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment. They have not been charged with any crimes.

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In its court filing Tuesday, the Justice Department said that the FBI “uncovered multiple sources of evidence indicating that the response to the May 11 grand jury subpoena

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Analysis: Donald Trump’s legal gambits offer fresh revelations and deepen his political risk

Posted on by Judith E. Ashton

But Trump is not done with the time-honored strategy of delaying, distorting and trying to tie the legal system up in knots, which has throughout his life in business and politics often succeeded in postponing or preventing accountability.

In a head-spinning pivot, Trump’s legal team effectively argued that no one should be shocked he had classified documents at his home — he was once president, after all.

“Simply put, the notion that Presidential records would contain sensitive information should have never been cause for alarm,” the filing said.

The bald-faced statement was a classic Trumpian tactic. It recalled the ex-President’s insistence that an official account of a conversation in which he self-evidently coerced the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden with the promise of military aid was, on the Contrary, evidence of “a perfect call.”
What to watch for at Thursday's hearing in Trump's bid for a special master over documents hidden at Mar-a-Lago

Trump’s approach immediately gives his supporters in the GOP and on conservative media new material to muddy the waters, distort the case against him and accuse the DOJ and the FBI of political motives.

But he did not address the core questions swirling around him in the documents case. These include: why did a former president need material, some bearing the highest designations of classification in the intelligence community? And why did he keep material that could potentially damage national security and endanger US agents overseas in insecure locations in his heavily visited resort?

And he also ignored a fundamental principle underlying the Justice Department investigation: According to US law, the papers of former presidents do not belong to the individual who once sat in the Oval Office. They belong to the nation and should be in the custody of the National Archives — an agency that made exhaustive efforts to retrieve Trump’s haul before turning to the Justice Department.
Often Trump’s political and
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Trump attorneys respond to latest Justice Department filing on classified documents at Mar-a-Lago

Posted on by Judith E. Ashton

Donald Trump‘s legal team on Wednesday renewed its request for a third party to review documents FBI agents hidden from his Mar-a-Lago estate, arguing that left to their own devices, “unchecked investigators” would selectively leak bits of their investigation with no recourse for the former president.

“Left unchecked, the DOJ will impun, leak, and publicize selective aspects of their investigation with no recourse for [Trump] but to somehow trust the self-restraint of currently unchecked investigators,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in response to Tuesday night’s filing from the Justice Department. “While DOJ may have succeeded in taking a partial filter to their rummaged proceeds, the need for a Special Master remains in place.”

Trump’s lawyers argue that appointing a special master would be a “modest step” to ensure access to a detailed inventory of confidential material and allow for independent assessments of attorney-client privilege and determinations of executive privilege.

The Justice Department opposed Trump’s request Aug. 22 for a special master. It said Trump’s request was “unnecessary,” adding that granting such a request “would significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests.”

The Justice Department also said it had developed evidence “that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” with government records “likely concealed and removed” in the months before the Aug. 8 searches.

In a footnote to Wednesday’s filing, Trump’s legal team said it will not respond to every allegation in the government’s filing, but it specifically disputed the Justice Department’s characterization of a June 3 meeting between Justice Department official Jay Bratt and Trump attorneys Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb .

The government has “significantly mischaracterized” the meeting and may have misled US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart if that description of the meeting was included in the search warrant affidavit that Reinhart signed off

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Trump Could Face 33 Years in Prison for Violating Federal Laws

Posted on by Judith E. Ashton
  • Trump may have violated three federal laws.
  • He could serve up to 33 years in prison if he’s charged and convicted, legal experts say.
  • Prosecutors would have to build a strong legal case against the former president.

Former President Donald Trump could receive up to 33 years in prison if he is charged and convicted of violating three federal laws following the FBI’s search at his Mar-a-Lago residence, legal experts say.

The search warrant revealed that federal authorities were looking for evidence to see if Trump violated the Espionage Act, which carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years. The Justice Department is also investigating whether Trump violated two other criminal status by trying to conceal or remove records, which carries a prison sentence of up to three years, and by trying to damage, alter, or falsify records, which carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years.

The former president has not been charged for any of these crimes. But Trump would be in severe legal peril if the Justice Department finds more evidence that he violated those laws, legal experts told Insider.

“The Espionage Act is a very broad statute that has been used in recent years very carefully by the government to cover situations that are egregious,” said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. “The general focus has been to look for something way beyond inappropriate possession of materials and look for some degree of dissemination and knowledge of wrongfulness on the part of the target.”

One legal expert noted that if Trump is charged and convicted of these crimes, the length of his prison sentence would likely depend on the type of evidence presented by prosecutors.

“It would be

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Judge to consider unsealing Trump search affidavit as legal worries mount | Donald Trump

Posted on by Judith E. Ashton

A federal judge in Florida will hear arguments on Thursday over whether to make public an affidavit used to justify a search of Donald Trump’s Florida estate, as broadening legal disputes on multiple fronts intensify against the former president and his allies.

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In a 13-page filing on Monday, the justice department objected to efforts to unseal the document, arguing that doing so would “jeopardize the integrity of this national security investigation” into Trump’s handling of some of the government’s most closely held records after leaving the White House. The prosecutors said that the affidavit that gave the FBI probable cause to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort contained sensitive information about witnesses who are key and acknowledged that its investigation involved “highly classified material”.

Bruce Reinhart, the federal magistrate judge who signed off on the search warrant, will decide whether to publish the affidavit, which would provide more details about the investigation and the FBI’s search of Trump’s private residence. Trump and his allies, including some members of Congress, have also pushed for the release of the affidavit.

But the prosecutors said the affidavit should not be unsealed because that could reveal the scope of the investigation into Trump’s unauthorized retention of classified White House records.

“The affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course,” prosecutors wrote. They also argued that releasing the document could compromise the continuing investigation.

“Disclosure of the government’s affidavit at this stage would also likely chill future cooperation by witnesses whose assistance may be sought as this investigation progresses, as well as in other high-profile investigations,” prosecutors added.

Last week, Reinhart agreed to unseal the search warrant and a list of items

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Pamela Karlan quietly leaves DOJ amid attacks on ‘unethical’ $1M salary

Posted on by Judith E. Ashton

WASHINGTON — Stanford University law professor Pamela Karlan, best known for her 2019 testimony in favor of impeaching then-President Donald Trump, quietly left the Justice Department this month as a conservative group ratcheted up attacks on an “unethical” arrangement in which she continued to earn nearly $1 million a year from Stanford while working for the government.

Karlan joined the department on Feb. 8, 2021, shortly after President Biden’s inauguration, and served about 17 months as principal deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights before she departed on July 1 with little fanfare.

Karlan’s role was slated to last until at least Aug. 22 and possibly run into September, meaning she stepped down about two months earlier than planned. She left one business day before the department delivered documents to the American Accountability Foundation pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request, bringing more attention to her unusual pay provisions.

A Justice Department official told The Post that Karlan updated her departure date in March to allow more time to prepare for the school year, but declined to share documentation.

Tom Jones, president of the American Accountability Foundation, said the timing of Karlan’s departure — which wasn’t advertised except for with an update to verb tenses on her DOJ biography — was curious given his group’s escalating campaign against her.

“As the old cliche goes, you cannot serve two masters. Pamela Karlan was a paid employee at Stanford University when she was supposed to be serving the Department of Justice,” said Jones, a former Republican staffer on Capitol Hill.

A Justice Department official told The Post that the Stanford professor updated her departure date in March.
A Justice Department official told The Post that the Stanford professor updated her departure date in March.
Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

“President Biden and [Attorney General] Merrick Garland enabled this unethical sweetheart deal to go after Americans. We’re glad that

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