Who Is Looking At What
The Manhattan District Attorneys office started looking into the Trump Organization after Michael Cohen, Trumps former personal attorney and fixer, turned on his boss in 2018. Under Cyrus Vance Jr. and now Alvin Bragg Vance chose not to run for reelection last year the Manhattan district attorney is currently conducting a wide-ranging criminal investigation.
The big themes are tax evasion and fraud. Questions include whether the Trump Organization, largely a real estate company, improperly inflated the value of its assets in order to secure loans and then deflated the value of its assets in order to pay less tax.
New York Attorney General Letitia James is also majorly involved here. James has been running a civil investigation into the Trump Organizations business practices, and last year added a criminal investigation to run alongside it. James office and Braggs office are working closely together on the criminal side of things.
Trump Impeachment Trial: Live Updates
House Democratic managers stressed in their presentation how close a mob of Trump supporters got to Pence, and that some rioters had yelled, “Hang Mike Pence.” Managers’ reconstructed timeline of the events also included Trump’s tweets throughout Jan. 6.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the lead impeachment manager, was first to respond to Romney’s question. He noted the events of Jan. 6 were broadcast on live television and on the radio, saying Trump had to know that the rioters had already breached the building and were armed with weapons, and that the police were outnumbered.
“Here are the facts that are not in dispute,” Raskin said. “Donald Trump had not taken any measures to send help to the overwhelmed Capitol police. As president, when you see all of this going on and the people around you are imploring you to do something, and your vice president is there, why wouldn’t you do it?”
Raskin also noted remarks by Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who has told reporters that he spoke to Trump over the phone as the mob began ransacking the Capitol. During their brief conversation, Tuberville said he told the former president that Pence had been evacuated from the chamber moments earlier.
“Sen. Tuberville specifically said that he told the president, ‘Mr. President, they just took the vice president out, I’ve got to go,’ ” Raskin said.
That conversation took place shortly after 2 p.m., Raskin noted.
How Often Is A Crime Like This Prosecuted
Not very often. Sharman said that the majority of witness tampering cases happen in the context of a judicial proceeding, like a grand jury. Its rare to have these cases revolve around someone preventing testimony to Congress.
That doesnt mean these kinds of prosecutions cant happen it just means the Jan. 6 committee could be fighting an uphill battle if it refers such a case to the Justice Department.
The Jan. 6 committee has referred four people to the Justice Department for prosecution so far all for contempt of Congress charges, for refusing to comply with a subpoena to testify. The Justice Department has prosecuted two: former Trump political adviser Stephen K. Bannon, who faces a trial this month and former White House adviser Peter Navarro.
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Toronto Blames Woman Who Was Pushed On To Subway Tracks For Travelling Alone
According to Torontos public transit agency, the woman ought to have known it was unsafe for her to travel on public travel alone and unassisted. A truly outstanding example of victim-blaming. Remember, ladies, never leave the house without a male chaperone otherwise youre asking for bad things to happen.
The 6 Trump Bombshells Still Waiting To Explode
Reporters and historians describe the things we still dont know about the president.
06/25/2020 11:33 AM EDT
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Altitude is a column by POLITICO founding editor John Harris, offering weekly perspective on politics in a moment of radical disruption.
We have known since nearly the beginning of Donald Trumps presidency that he believes his first attorney general was a dangerous idiot. We have known for nearly as long that his first secretaries of state and defense think the same thing about Trump.
We know, because Bob Woodward told us in a book two years ago, that some advisersare so anxious that the president could do something impulsive or boneheaded that they skulk into the Oval Office to take papers off his desk.
We know, because former national security adviser John Bolton told us this month in a book of his own, that Trump allegedly shreds ethical lines between the nations foreign policy and his personal considerations, proposing crude bargains with the dictator of China to help his reelection or trying to help the dictator of Turkey to shut down a bothersome criminal case.
We know that the president lives in a state of agitated grievance, spending countless dark hours when most people are sleeping fulminating against his enemies and bemoaning that he is being insufficiently praised. We know this, of course, because Trump compulsively narrates his own thought stream in real time on Twitter.
POLITICO Dispatch: June 25
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What To Watch For
The House committees hearings will resume Thursday, and at least six more hearings are scheduled to take place laying out Trumps plan to overturn the election and how he summoned the mob of supporters that attacked the Capitol on January 6. The committee will also release a of its findings, likely in the fall.
The Biggest Jan 6 Question: Where Does The Evidence Lead Next
Filing criminal charges against Trump in connection with his efforts to overturn the election will very likely spark civil unrest, and maybe even civil war, said Barbara McQuade, an NBC legal analyst and a former U.S. attorney.
But, she said, I think not charging is even worse, because not charging means you failed to hold someone criminally accountable who tried to subvert our democracy.
Either way, Its a momentous and unprecedented decision not as easy as some folks might imagine it to be, said Chuck Rosenberg, an NBC News legal analyst who is a former federal prosecutor and former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The contours of a possible criminal case against Trump have been clear to legal experts for some time. A federal judge said in a ruling in a civil case in March that Trump more likely than not committed federal crimes in seeking to obstruct the congressional count of the Electoral College ballots on Jan. 6, 2021, citing two statutes: obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
At the time, a Trump spokesperson called the judge’s assertions absurd and baseless. Trump has consistently denied all wrongdoing.
In her opening comments, Cheney sought to lay out all the elements of what she had previously said amounted to a criminal plot.
Trumps campaign to get Vice President Mike Pence to reject state electors and block the vote certification on Jan. 6 was illegal and it was unconstitutional, she said.
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What Is Witness Tampering And Could This Charge Apply To Trump
If any criminal referrals come out of the Jan. 6 committees investigation, witness tampering could be a big one. At the end of Tuesdays hearing, the committee shared messages they said two of their witnesses received urging them not to testify to the committee.
Rep. Liz Cheney , the No. 2 on the committee, said that after being asked whether any former colleagues had contacted them before their testimony, one witness described receiving phone calls:
What they said to me is as long as I continue to be a team player, they know that Im on the team, Im doing the right thing, Im protecting who I need to protect, you know, Ill continue to stay in the good graces in Trump world And they have reminded me a couple of times that Trump does read transcripts and just keep that in mind as I proceed through my depositions and interviews with the committee.
She also quoted a witness describing a call they received:
let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know that hes thinking about you. He knows youre loyal, and youre going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.
I think most Americans know that attempting to influence witnesses, to testify untruthfully, presents very serious concerns, Cheney said.
War On The Environment
Trump hasnt just gone after regulations. At the EPA, his administration has sought to undermine the way the government uses science to make public-health decisions.
The scale of the threat came into focus on 31 October 2017 Halloween when then EPA administrator Scott Pruitt signed an order barring scientists with active EPA research grants from serving on the agencys science-advisory panels, making it harder for people with the most expertise to help the agency assess science and craft regulations. The order made it easier for industry scientists to replace the academic researchers, who would be forced to either give up their grants or resign.
That was when I said, Oh my god, the fix is in, says John Bachmann, who spent more than three decades in the EPAs air-quality programme and is now active in a group of retired EPA employees that formed to advocate for scientists and scientific integrity at the agency, after Trump officials began their assault. Its not just that they have their own views, its that they are going to make sure that their views carry more weight in the process.
Pruitt resigned in July 2018, but the trend at the EPA continues. Under its new administrator, Andrew Wheeler, the agency has accelerated efforts to weaken regulations targeting chemicals in water and air pollution.
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Takeaways From The Trump Impeachment Trial After Defense Wraps Up
Trump’s lawyers, however, did not stick to a narrow constitutional argument. Instead, they accused Democrats of using the impeachment process for partisan gain and of trying to disenfranchise the people who voted for Trump’s reelection. The defense declined to provide evidence of what the president knew about the violence, when he knew it and what he did about it.
The Democratic House impeachment managers argued that the former president, who addressed a rally outside the White House ahead of the insurrection, was “singularly responsible” for the violence on Jan. 6.
They relied, in large measure, on video to prove their case, including never-before-seen Capitol security footage. The videos showed on the Senate floor during what was an, at times, emotional trial brought back the vivid images of the Capitol violence to the very place it happened.
Trump On Trial: A Guide To The January 6 Hearings And The Question Of Criminality
President Joe Biden legitimately won a fair and secure 2020 presidential electionand Donald Trump lost. This historical fact has been uncontroverted by any evidence since at least November 7, 2020, when major news outlets projected Bidens victory. But Trump never conceded. Instead, both before and after Election Day, he tried to delegitimize the election results by disseminating a series of far-fetched and evidence-free claims of fraud. Meanwhile, with a ring of close confidants, Trump conceived and implemented unprecedented schemes toin his own wordsoverturn the election outcome. Among the results of this Big Lie campaign were the terrible events of January 6, 2021an inflection point in what we now understand was nothing less than an attempted coup.
With Congress undertaking landmark hearings on all of that, our new Brookings report Trump on Trial: A Guide to the January 6 Committee Hearings and the Question of Criminality is a comprehensive guide to the proceedings. The report covers the Committees work to date, the key players in the attempt to overturn the election, the known facts regarding their conduct that are expected to be covered at the hearings, and the criminal law applicable to their actions.
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‘he Must Be Convicted It’s That Simple’: Impeachment Managers’ Close Their Case
Van der Veen reiterated one of the defense team’s central arguments: that a president no longer in office can not be impeached, a claim disputed by many constitutional scholars.
He also argued that Trump’s due-process rights were violated and that his speech is protected under the First Amendment.
“They have carried out a grossly unconstitutional effort to punish Mr. Trump for protected First Amendment speech. It’s an egregious violation of his constitutional rights,” he said. “It is an unprecedented action with the potential to do grave and lasting damage to both the presidency, and the separation of powers and the future of democratic self government.”
Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., had spent a good deal of his arguments this week claiming that as a president, not all of his words are, in fact, protected as free speech.
“They present President Trump as merely, like a guy at a rally expressing a political opinion that we disagree with and now we’re trying to put him in jail for it,” he said earlier this week. “That has nothing to do with the reality of these charges or his constitutional offense.”
Republican Sen. Mitt Romney arrives at the Capitol for the fifth day of the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump on Saturday. Romney was one of the seven GOP senators who voted to convict.hide caption
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Whats Trumps Potential Liability
Its unclear. The committee shared only two messages that it said witnesses received from Trump allies. We dont know the identity of the witnesses who received these messages or who sent them and, crucially, whether the senders were acting at Trumps behest. Cheney said the committee would reveal more in later hearings.
But the seeds are there for a witness tampering charge, either against the president or the people who made the calls, said Jeffrey Jacobovitz, a prominent white-collar criminal lawyer. To me its clear tampering if an upcoming witness is told the president reads the transcripts, he said. The person who called engaged in tampering. If Trump encouraged or asked someone to make the call, he would be criminally liable, as well.
One of the messages the committee shared said that Trump does read transcripts meaning, the former president will be following your testimony very closely. Jacobovitz said that alone could tie Trump directly to these allegations.
And Trump has a long history of pressuring witnesses who must testify about him or his business practices in one of his many legal disputes, report The Posts Rosalind S. Helderman, Josh Dawsey and Jacqueline Alemany.
With regard to the Jan. 6 committee, The Post and other media outlets reported that former top White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson was one of the people whom Trump world tried to influence with calls before her testimony.
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