[quote=“Meno_”]
Protesters gathered in major cities around the U.S. on Thursday over President Trump’s firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, rallying in support of Robert Mueller, the special counsel in charge of the investigation into Russian election meddling.
The hashtag “#ProtectMueller” was the top trending term on Twitter in the U.S. Thursday night as demonstrators gathered in Washington, D.C., New York and Boston, as well as other cities around the country.
This is not over until it’s over.
POLITICO
Judges order Mueller to explain impact of Sessions-Whitaker DOJ shakeup
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN 11/09/2018 10:33 AM EST
Robert Mueller
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had previously been special counsel Robert Mueller’s boss because of Jeff Sessions’ recusal. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Facebook Twitter Google + Email Print
A federal appellate court panel on Friday ordered Robert Mueller as well as attorneys trying to knock the special counsel out of his job to file new legal briefs that explain how this week’s shake-up atop the Justice Department could influence their case.
In a one-paragraph order, the three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit told Mueller and lawyers for a former aide to Roger Stone that they have until Nov. 19 to turn in briefs that sift through Wednesday’s firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the legal reaction it may have created.
Story Continued Below
President Donald Trump’s decision to oust Sessions, who recused himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation, opened the door for Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker to take over the job of supervising the Mueller probe into alleged collusion between the Republican’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had previously been Mueller’s boss because of Sessions’ recusal.
The new DOJ arrangement for Mueller has prompted calls for Whitaker’s recusal because of conflicts of interest tied to past statements he’s made about the investigation and his own connections to a former Trump adviser who has been called as a witness before the Mueller grand jury.
Whitaker has given no sign he’s going to recuse himself. “We don’t discuss recusals but there is no reason to think that is the case,” a DOJ spokeswoman said Wednesday soon after word of Sessions’ resignation was made public.
The Whitaker-Sessions shake-up came up briefly Thursday during oral arguments in the D.C. Circuit courtroom as it considered the case between Mueller and Andrew Miller, the former Stone aide who is challenging the special counsel’s appointment on constitutional grounds.
There, Judge Karen Henderson said the judges would set aside Sessions’ departure for the hearing but likely would ask for supplemental briefing to address the legal issues tied to the handover from Rosenstein to Whitaker.
“Argue this case as if it was being argued yesterday morning,” said Henderson, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush.
The court’s order came less than 24 hours later and instructed Mueller and Miller’s attorney to turn in briefs limited to 10 pages that address “what, if any, effect the November 7, 2018 designation of an acting Attorney General different from the official who appointed Special Counsel Mueller has on this case.”
JOIN
LOG IN
Benefits Overview
Exclusive Content
My Account
Your Turn
Log Out
‹ HOMEPAGE
SDNY VS. POTUS
Feds Now Have Evidence Trump Broke the Law to Become President. Will Whitaker Bury It?
Mimi Rocah,
Elie Honig
11.10.18 12:27 PM ET
OPINION
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast
Friday’s in-depth Wall Street Journal report suggests the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York and the FBI appear to possess evidence of Donald Trump’s involvement in a criminal scheme that helped get him elected president. This raises serious questions about what comes next, particularly in light of Trump’s appointment of Matthew Whitaker, a political loyalist, as acting attorney general.
Trump played a central role in hush-money payments made to Karen McDougal and Stephanie Clifford during the 2016 presidential campaign, the Journal reports, adding more detail to the case of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer-lawyer who pled guilty to federal campaign finance violations in the Southern District in August.
Recall that when Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court, he stated under oath that he had made the payments “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office”—many assumed that that candidate was Trump, of course. We now know from the Journal that the person who directed Cohen in this criminal scheme was, indeed, Donald Trump. The charging document to which Cohen pled guilty states that he “coordinated with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature, and timing of the payments.” The Journal reports that “[t]he unnamed campaign member or members referred to Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the document.”
“SDNY had evidence of Trump’s involvement even before Cohen pled guilty and began cooperating.”
In addition, we now know that the evidence of Trump’s involvement in this criminal scheme is not limited to Cohen. Even accounting for the likelihood that the piece relies in some part on information provided by Cohen himself, there are plenty of other sources weighing in; the reporters note they obtained information from “interviews with three dozen people who have direct knowledge of the events or who have been briefed on them, as well as court papers, corporate records and other documents.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Of course there is an important caveat here that what can be reported in the Wall Street Journal doesn’t always translate into usable evidence in the grand jury—in other words, people who are willing to talk to the press may not be as willing or as thorough when it comes to giving testimony to federal prosecutors or a grand jury. But, the Journal article contains an important nugget along these lines: “In August, [prosecutors] outlined Mr. Trump’s role—without specifically naming him—in a roughly 80-page draft federal indictment they had been preparing to file against Mr. Cohen.” As former federal prosecutors, that tells us that the SDNY had evidence of Trump’s involvement even before Cohen pled guilty and began cooperating.
CONFIDENTIAL SOURCES
Prosecutors May Not Be Done With Trump’s Men Yet
Elie Honig,
Mimi Rocah
All of this, taken together, indicates that evidence of Trump’s involvement in the hush-money scheme would be a combination of witnesses and other evidence not limited to Cohen, which makes it much more difficult for Trump to brush this off as lies concocted by Cohen to save himself, which Trump’s team have already begun arguing.
And, we know more about Trump’s role in this scheme from the article. For example, the story opens with a detailed recounting of a crucial and previously unreported August 2015 meeting between Trump and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker (who reportedly has been granted immunity to testify by the SDNY) during which Trump asked Pecker how he could help the campaign. Pecker reportedly offered to use his tabloid newspaper to purchase and squash the stories of women alleging affairs with Trump (which he did months later with McDougal).
This conversation, on its own, establishes Trump’s direct involvement with and direction of the hush money payment: precisely as Cohen stated when he pled guilty and goes to the heart of the question of Trump’s intent, namely, did he know and intend that these hush money payments would benefit his campaign for president?
So, can President Trump be charged by the SDNY with a crime of violating the federal campaign finance laws? Probably not. First, even assuming that the quality of the evidence is to the level that prosecutors demand, it is currently DOJ policy not to indict a sitting president, and SDNY, fiercely independent as it is, is still part of DOJ.
If the feds have evidence of criminality but do not believe they can indict, then what becomes of the information?
If the SDNY charges other people or entities involved in the campaign finance scheme, Trump’s involvement as an unindicted co-conspirator could be laid out in those documents for the public to see. Short of that, it will be challenging for the SDNY to share its evidence and information with other authorities. Rule 6e of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure strictly governs disclosure of grand jury materials. We do not know how much, if any, of the SDNY’s evidence falls into this category. Even if it does, there is precedent in an opinion by Judge John Sirica in the Watergate case from 1974 that the SDNY grand jury could provide evidence to Congress in the form of a report. A third option is that the SDNY could share the evidence it has, pursuant to a court order, with a state prosecuting authority, such as the New York Attorney General’s Office which is not necessarily limited in its ability to charge a sitting president, assuming there are parallel state crimes.
Further complicating matters is the DOJ’s new boss, who has taken the view that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump’s finances would cross a “red line.” In 2017, Whitaker wrote an opinion piece for CNN that if Mueller’s office “were to continue to investigate the financial relationships without a broadened scope in his appointment, then this would raise serious concerns that the special counsel’s investigation was a mere witch hunt.” Will the fact that this investigation is now in the hands of the SDNY and not Mueller change that conclusion for Whitaker? It should.
But, given Whitaker’s unusually partisan past and his statements hostile to any criminal investigation of Trump, the American public and Congress need to ensure that any evidence that the SDNY possesses of Trump’s participation in an illegal campaign finance scheme to help get him elected does not get buried by political forces looking to protect him.
NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN
‘He’s a F*cking Fool’: Justice Dept Officials Trash Whitaker
Erin Banco
Sponsored Stories
Try the best invisible and rechargeable hearing aid risk-free for $0 down.
Eargo
[Photos] Athlete Gave Fans Something To Remember
[Photos] Athlete Gave Fans Something To Remember
Tie Breaker
12 Highest Paid Real Housewives
12 Highest Paid Real Housewives
Fame10
Private Health Forum 2018
Portfolio Conferences
NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN
‘He’s a F*cking Fool’: Justice Department Officials Trash Matt Whitaker, Their New Boss
Erin Banco
11.09.18 2:47 PM ET
The appointment this week of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general has sparked sharp concerns among lawmakers over the possibility that he may bottle up Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia meddling in the 2016 election.
Inside the Department of Justice, however, the fears are more expansive. Whitaker is seen as a rogue and under-qualified new leader whose impact won’t just be felt on the Mueller probe but throughout the federal government.
“He’s a fucking fool,” one trial attorney inside the department said of the new AG. “He’s spent so much time trying to suck up to the president to get here. But this is a big job. It comes with many responsibilities. He just simply doesn’t have the wherewithal.”
RIGHT-WING MEDIA PRESIDENCY
Mueller’s New Boss: There Was ‘No Collusion’ With Russia
Maxwell Tani,
Will Sommer,
Betsy Woodruff
Whitaker’s ascension to the rank of top law enforcement officer in the country has been as swift as it’s been controversial. A former U.S. attorney-turned-conservative media pundit, he served for months as former AG Jeff Sessions’ chief of staff before being appointed to fill his old boss’s post. That résumé hasn’t instilled confidence.
“We’ve seen this over and over again with the Trump administration. They never vet these people,” said one former official from the department. “It shows that they don’t really have a strategy when it comes to these things and then they end up having to backtrack.”
But there are some in the department who are willing to give him a chance. One attorney who knew and worked with Whitaker said that when he entered his job as U.S. attorney for the southern district of Iowa in 2004, he faced a “steep learning curve.” But another attorney who encountered Whitaker said he was “humble enough to recognize that he didn’t know everything.”
“When I first encountered Matt I thought he was a bright guy who struck me as someone packaged in a very sort of good old farm boy football player package,” one of the attorneys said. “He was not a know-it-all. He asked a lot of questions. He really wanted to carry out the job effectively.”
But Whitaker is no longer occupying a post where he has time to learn and adjust. He now is running a department with more than 100,000 employees, a budget of roughly $30 billion, and with oversight of and input into every federal law enforcement matter in the country. Already, Whitaker has signed off on a controversial new regulation that will allow President Trump to prohibit certain immigrants from seeking asylum. The department is currently prepping for December hearings in the AT&T-Time Warner case, in which DoJ has appealed the $85 billion merger. It is also also knee-deep in its lawsuit to block California’s new net neutrality law from going into place.
“We’ve seen this over and over again with the Trump administration. They never vet these people. It shows that they don’t really have a strategy when it comes to these things and then they end up having to backtrack.”
— A former official from the department.
Kerri Kupec, acting principal deputy director at the DoJ, defended Whitaker from his critics, saying that he is a "respected former U.S. Attorney and well-regarded at the Department of Justice. As Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said today, he is a superb choice.”
But the vast powers that Whitaker has not been given have left officials and trial attorneys at DoJ fearful that, in an effort to impress President Trump, he will try to make up for his inexperience by making rash decisions about the direction of the department, including implementing policy changes in the Division of Civil Rights.
“This guy has spent his whole life trying to climb the rungs of power to get to a federal appointment,” one DOJ official said. “Now that he is here, and who knows for how long, he’s going to try and make a name for himself. And that could make things harder for us.”
Originally from Iowa, Whitaker started his career as an attorney in Des Moines before running unsuccessfully for state treasurer in 2002. In 2004, President George W. Bush appointed him as the U.S. attorney. After leaving that office in 2009, he sought to build up his political connections, often meeting with influential lawmakers and think-tank leaders, two individuals who worked alongside him in the Department of Justice said.
Whitaker headed Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s presidential campaign in Iowa in 2012 before moving on to work in a similar capacity for Texas Gov. Rick Perry during his short-lived bid that same year. In 2014, he ran for a U.S. Senate seat in Iowa but lost in the GOP primary to eventual winner Joni Ernst. That same year, he worked as chairman for then-Republican candidate for State Treasurer Sam Clovis. Clovis, a former Trump campaign official, has been questioned by the Special Counsel’s office.
During the first year of the Trump presidency, Whitaker shuttled back and forth between Washington, D.C. and New York, making numerous media appearances in an attempt to catch the president’s attention. In those appearances, Whitaker blasted the Mueller investigation, claiming there was “no collusion” between the Russians and the Trump campaign.
It worked. Though there are constitutional questions surrounding the appointing, Whitaker was named acting AG this Wednesday after Sessions’ forced resignation. On Friday, President Trump claimed he did not know Whitaker. But three people inside DOJ said that after stepping into his role of DoJ chief of staff in September 2017, Whitaker frequented the White House with Sessions and developed a working relationship with the president and his advisers.
It’s not just Whitaker’s efforts to appease the president that have people inside the Department of Justice on edge. His past business dealings and connection to FACT, a partisan watchdog group, have raised concerns that, as attorney general, he will make rash decisions about how to revamp department policies, including those that deal with immigration, criminal justice reform, gun rights, and antitrust.
Inside DOJ, Whitaker’s political views are known to be similar to Sessions’. But officials there said that his unpredictability, and lack of institutional experience, could lead the department in a more conservative direction. Whitaker has written several opinion pieces in the national media and spoken publicly about about his conservative take on the law.
“I have a Christian worldview,” Whitaker said in a 2014 interview while campaigning in Iowa. “Our rights come from our Creator and they are guaranteed by the Constitution.”
Whitaker has also said he thought Marbury vs. Madison—a landmark decision that gives courts the power to declare legislative and executive acts unconstitutional—was a “bad ruling.” It’s those comments that have trial attorneys inside the civil rights division of the Department of Justice worried.
“The civil rights division is always more political than the other divisions,” said one trial attorney. “But the feeling is this guy is going to come in and take a tougher stance on policy matters like immigration.”
A previous version of this story said that a spokesperson at DoJ did not comment. The reason they did not, however, was because of a technological mishap. Their comment has since been added to the sto[/quote
American Stalemate
By ROSS DOUTHAT
A rebuke to President Trump in the overall returns, but not a presidency-ending repudiation. Two years of chaos and hysteria ending in a return to standoff.
CONTRIBUTING OP-ED WRITER
The Success in Beto’s Failure
By MIMI SWARTZ
O’Rourke gave Texans who have long felt disenfranchised a glimpse of what could be.
CONTRIBUTING OP-ED WRITER
The Thrill of a Women’s Wave
By JILL FILIPOVIC
Watching anti-Trump female candidates win is exciting, but I’m worried about all they’re being asked to do.
How the Midterms Made Us Feel: Afraid, Then Upset
By THE NEW YORK TIMES OPINION
The midterm election has been divisive and difficult for many Americans. Now that it’s coming to an end, how do we feel? This live map shows reactions from readers across the country through Election Day.