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In an open display of frustration, federal prosecutors on Tuesday night told the judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case that a “fundamentally flawed” order she had issued was causing delays and asked her to quickly resolve a critical dispute about one of Mr. Trump’s defenses — leaving them time to appeal if needed. The unusual and risky move by the prosecutors, contained in a 24-page filing, signaled their mounting impatience with the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, who has allowed the case to become bogged down in a logjam of unresolved issues and curious procedural requests. It was the most directly prosecutors have confronted Judge Cannon’s legal reasoning and unhurried pace, which have called into question whether a trial will take place before the election in November even though both sides say they could be ready for one by summer. In their filing, prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, all but begged Judge Cannon to move the case along and make a binding decision about one of Mr. Trump’s most brazen claims: that he cannot be prosecuted for having taken home a trove of national security documents after leaving office because he transformed them into his own personal property under a law known as the Presidential Records Act. The prosecutors derided that assertion as one “not based on any facts,” adding that it was a “justification that was concocted more than a year after” Mr. Trump left the White House.
Persons: Donald J, Trump’s, Aileen M, Cannon, Jack Smith, Judge Cannon, ” Mr, Trump Organizations: Presidential, White
Donald J. Trump watched anxiously from the White House in April 2018 as news broke about federal agents searching the home of Michael D. Cohen, the man entrusted to conceal some of the president’s deepest secrets. After initially coming to Mr. Cohen’s defense, Mr. Trump washed his hands of his fixer within weeks, brushing aside Mr. Cohen’s feelers about a pardon and disavowing his legal bills. Mr. Trump took a different tack when prosecutors shifted their scrutiny to Allen H. Weisselberg, the Trump family’s longtime financial gatekeeper. Mr. Trump’s company paid Mr. Weisselberg’s legal bills and awarded him a $2 million severance, with a condition: He could not voluntarily cooperate with any law enforcement agency. But prosecutors say Mr. Weisselberg lied during his testimony, and this month he pleaded guilty to perjury.
Persons: Donald J, Trump, Michael D, Cohen, Cohen’s, Allen H, Weisselberg, Mr Organizations: White House, Trump Locations: Manhattan, U.S
John Eastman Should Lose Law License, Judge Finds
  + stars: | 2024-03-27 | by ( Alan Feuer | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
A judge in California recommended on Wednesday that the lawyer John Eastman be stripped of his law license, finding he had violated rules of professional ethics by persistently lying in his efforts to help former President Donald J. Trump maintain his grip on power after losing the 2020 election. In a 128-page ruling, the judge, Yvette Roland, said Mr. Eastman had willfully misrepresented facts in lawsuits he helped file challenging the election results and acted dishonestly in promoting a “wild theory” that Mr. Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, could unilaterally declare him the victor during a certification proceeding at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “In sum, Eastman exhibited gross negligence by making false statements about the 2020 election without conducting any meaningful investigation or verification of the information he was relying upon,” Judge Roland found, adding that he had breached “his ethical duty as an attorney to prioritize honesty and integrity.”
Persons: John Eastman, Donald J, Trump, Yvette Roland, Eastman, Trump’s, Mike Pence, , Roland Organizations: Capitol Locations: California
is a national security correspondent for The Times, focusing on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism issues overseas, topics he has reported on for more than three decades.
Organizations: The Times
Mr. Trump, casting the disclosure as evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, has asked Justice Merchan to delay the trial 90 days, or throw out the case altogether. The tentative April 15 trial date, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors said in a court filing Thursday, provides “a more than reasonable amount of time” for Mr. Trump to review the information. It is unclear whether the judge will set a trial date on Monday or rule later this week. If he sets the case for trial next month, Mr. Trump would for the first time face the prospect of time behind bars. Here’s what else you need to know about Mr. Trump’s daunting day:
Persons: Donald J, Trump, Mr, Stormy Daniels, Juan M, Merchan, Michael D, Cohen, Trump’s, Alvin L, Bragg Organizations: New, Mr Locations: Manhattan, American
The schedule seemed stacked against Donald J. Trump: four criminal trials in four cities, all in the same year he is running for president. But rather than doom Mr. Trump, the chaotic calendar might just save him. Mr. Trump, who as president helped reshape the federal judiciary, has already persuaded the Supreme Court to delay his trial in Washington. The case in Manhattan, where Mr. Trump is accused of covering up a sex scandal during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, was the only one not mired in potential postponements. On Friday, Justice Juan M. Merchan, who is overseeing the case, delayed the trial at least three weeks, until mid-April.
Persons: Donald J, Trump, Juan M, Merchan Organizations: Trump Locations: Washington, Florida, Georgia, Manhattan
Donald Trump’s New York hush money case — the only one of his four criminal cases that looked as if it would soon go to trial — suddenly faced the likelihood of delay on Thursday when a big batch of potential new evidence abruptly became available. The news of the likely postponement arrived as the former president was in federal court in Florida for a separate hearing in a different case — the one in which he stands accused of mishandling classified documents, which even now has no solid start date. The judge there rejected one of a multitude of motions from Mr. Trump to dismiss the case. And in Washington, prosecutors and Mr. Trump’s lawyers are preparing for a showdown at the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments next month on his claim that he is immune from charges in the federal indictment that accuses him of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss. That case was originally supposed to go in front of a jury this month.
Persons: Donald Trump’s, , Trump Organizations: Supreme Locations: York, Florida, Georgia, Washington
The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s prosecution on charges of mishandling classified documents on Thursday rejected one of his motions seeking to have the case dismissed, the first time she has denied a legal attack on the indictment. In a two-page order, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, rebuffed arguments by Mr. Trump’s lawyers that the central statute in the indictment, the Espionage Act, was impermissibly vague and should be struck down entirely. The decision by Judge Cannon followed a nearly daylong hearing in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., where she entertained arguments from Mr. Trump’s legal team and from prosecutors in the office of the special counsel Jack Smith about the Espionage Act. The government says the former president violated that law 32 times by removing a trove of highly sensitive classified material from the White House after he left office. Mr. Trump’s lawyers had claimed that certain phrases in the text of the law — for instance, its requirement that prosecutors prove defendants took “unauthorized possession” of documents “relating to the national defense” — were so ambiguous and open to debate as to be unenforceable.
Persons: Donald J, Aileen M, Cannon, Judge Cannon, Jack Smith, ” — Organizations: Federal, Court, White Locations: Fort Pierce, Fla
In the last decade, it has proved surprisingly hard to put politicians accused of corruption behind bars. And juries have occasionally thought the officeholders’ behavior didn’t meet the high standard for corruption. Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who was arraigned yesterday in a federal bribery case, is both an example of the conundrum and a test of whether federal prosecutors now know how to overcome it. In the senator’s last corruption trial, in 2017, jurors couldn’t make sense of the gifts and favors he’d received from a wealthy eye doctor. In exchange, prosecutors say, he attempted to disrupt criminal cases and used his position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee inappropriately.
Persons: didn’t, Bob Menendez, he’d, Menendez Organizations: Bob Menendez of New, Democrat, Benz, Senate Foreign Relations Locations: Bob Menendez of, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Egypt
All the opinions focused on legal issues, and none took a position on whether Mr. Trump had engaged in insurrection. In an interview on a conservative radio program, Mr. Trump said he was pleased by the ruling. The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed the first part of the ruling — that Mr. Trump had engaged in an insurrection. Mr. Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, setting out more than half a dozen arguments about why the state court had gone astray and saying his removal would override the will of the voters. 23-719, is not the only one concerning Mr. Trump on the Supreme Court’s docket.
Persons: Donald J, Trump, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson —, , , John G, Roberts, ” “, Amy Coney Barrett, Barrett, Bush, Gore, George W, Mr, ” Mr, Trump’s, Anderson, Michael Gold Organizations: Trump, Congress, Jackson, Health Organization, Colorado, Republican, United, The, The Colorado Supreme, Colorado Supreme, Mr, U.S, Supreme Locations: Dobbs v, United States, Colorado, The Colorado, New York
A federal judge in Florida will hold a hearing on Friday to pick a new date for former President Donald J. Trump’s trial on charges of mishandling classified documents, a move that is likely to have major consequences for his legal and political future. What remains to be seen is just how long of a delay Judge Cannon ends up imposing. On Thursday evening, Mr. Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, sent Judge Cannon their proposals about when the trial should begin. Mr. Smith’s legal team, hewing to its long-held position of trying to conduct the trial before Election Day, requested a date of July 8. But after months of seeking to delay the trial until next year, Mr. Trump’s lawyers suddenly reversed themselves and suggested a date of Aug. 12.
Persons: Donald J, Aileen M, Cannon, Jack Smith, Judge Cannon, hewing Organizations: Federal, Court Locations: Florida, Fort Pierce, Fla
As former President Donald J. Trump was indicted a first time, a second, a third and a fourth last year, he and his legal team cycled through disbelief, anger and a recognition that he would have to spend much of 2024 facing juries as he campaigned to return to the White House. But even as Mr. Trump made the charges against him a rallying cry for his supporters and sought to hijack courtrooms for his political purposes, his lawyers sought ways to delay the trials by using pretrial motions to drive the proceedings into legal cul-de-sacs. It was not clear even to them that the strategy would work. But they nonetheless threw all kinds of arguments at judges intended to push some or all of the trials past Election Day, when a victory by Mr. Trump would give him ways to further postpone judgment or wipe away the charges entirely. The substantial success they have had came into clearer focus on Wednesday, when the Supreme Court decided to take up one of his long-shot legal arguments: that presidents are all but immune from prosecution for actions they take in office.
Persons: Donald J, Trump Organizations: Supreme
The Supreme Court that former President Donald J. Trump helped to shape tossed him a legal lifeline on Wednesday night, making a choice that substantially aided his efforts to delay his federal trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. By deciding to take up Mr. Trump’s claim that presidents enjoy almost total immunity from prosecution for any official action while in office — a legal theory rejected by two lower courts and one that few experts think has any basis in the Constitution — the justices bought the former president at least several months before a trial on the election interference charges can start. It is not out of the question that Mr. Trump could still face a jury in the case, in Federal District Court in Washington, before Election Day. At this point, the legal calendar suggests that if the justices issue a ruling by the end of the Supreme Court’s term in June and find that Mr. Trump is not immune from prosecution, the trial could still start by late September or October. But with each delay, the odds increase that voters will not get a chance to hear the evidence that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the last election before they decide whether to back him in the current one.
Persons: Donald J, Trump, Trump’s Organizations: Court Locations: Washington
Federal prosecutors on Monday rejected former President Donald J. Trump’s claims that he was unfairly charged with holding on to classified documents after he left office, saying that his case bore no comparison to the one in which President Biden was cleared of wrongdoing even though he was found in possession of classified materials after leaving the vice presidency. In rebuffing what was known as a “selective prosecution” claim by Mr. Trump, the prosecutors said that while many government officials over the years had taken classified materials with them after leaving office — often inadvertently, but occasionally willfully — Mr. Trump’s case remained unique because of the extent to which he had “resisted the government’s lawful efforts to recover them.”“There has never been a case in American history in which a former official has engaged in conduct remotely similar to Trump’s,” they wrote. In their 12-page filing, the prosecutors dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” a separate claim that Mr. Trump has raised in his own defense — that Mr. Biden had “secretly directed” the classified documents case and used the special counsel who filed the indictment, Jack Smith, as a “puppet” and a “stalking horse.”
Persons: Donald J, Trump’s, Biden, Trump, , , , Jack Smith
Trump Seeks to Dismiss Classified Documents Case
  + stars: | 2024-02-23 | by ( Alan Feuer | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump launched a flurry of attacks on Thursday night against the federal charges accusing him of illegally holding on to classified documents after he left office, filing more than 70 pages of court papers seeking to have the case thrown out. In four separate motions to dismiss the case, Mr. Trump’s lawyers made a barrage of legal arguments in seeking to circumvent a criminal case that many legal experts consider the most ironclad of the four against him. Some of the arguments tested the boundaries of credulity and flew in the face of prior court rulings. Many appeared designed to delay the case from moving toward trial, a strategy that Mr. Trump has pursued in all of the criminal proceedings he is facing. In one of their most brazen motions, Mr. Trump’s lawyers claimed that he was immune from prosecution on the classified documents charges even though a federal appeals court roundly rejected that argument this month when he sought to use it in a separate case, in which he stands accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.
Persons: Donald J, Trump Locations: credulity
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The ruling by the judge, Cormac J. Carney, found that prosecutors had unfairly engaged in “a selective prosecution” against the two men — members of the Rise Above Movement, or R.A.M. — and targeted them chiefly because of their vitriolic speech and white supremacist ideology. While Judge Carney acknowledged that he found the ideas that the movement promoted “reprehensible,” he also said it was “constitutionally impermissible” to bring charges against one group, but not the other, based on politics alone. members such as defendants while ignoring the violence of members of antifa and related far-left groups because R.A.M. engaged in what the government and many believe is more offensive speech,” he wrote.
Persons: counterprotesters, Cormac J, Carney, Judge Carney, , R.A.M Organizations: Nazi, Trump Locations: California
informant accused of making false bribery claims about President Biden and his son Hunter — which were widely publicized by Republicans — claimed to have been fed information by Russian intelligence, according to a court filing on Tuesday. But Mr. Smirnov told federal investigators that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden. Those disclosures, including Mr. Smirnov’s unverifiable claim that he met with Russian intelligence officials as recently as three months ago, made him a flight risk and endangered national security, Justice Department officials said. Mr. Smirnov had been held in custody in Las Vegas, where he has lived since 2022, since his arrest last week. He was released from custody on Tuesday on a personal recognizance bond after a detention hearing, said his lawyers, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld.
Persons: Biden, Hunter —, Republicans —, Alexander Smirnov, Smirnov, Hunter Biden, David Chesnoff, Richard Schonfeld Organizations: Republicans, Justice Locations: Las Vegas
The ruling left Mr. Trump with the opportunity to raise different objections to Mr. Vance’s subpoena. AUTUMN 2020Prosecutors interviewed employees of the main bank and insurance company that serve Mr. Trump and issued several new subpoenas. The brief unsigned order was a decisive defeat for Mr. Trump and a turning point in Mr. Vance’s investigation. Just hours later, eight years of financial records were handed over to Mr. Vance’s office. After Mr. Bragg expressed reservations about the case, Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne suspended the presentation of evidence about Mr. Trump to a grand jury.
Persons: Donald J, Michael D, Cohen, Trump, , Cyrus R, Vance Jr, Vance’s, Stefani Reynolds, Trump’s, Allen H, Weisselberg, Vance, Alvin L, Bragg, Mark F, Carey Dunne, Pomerantz, Dunne, Bragg’s, Allen Weisselberg, Stormy Daniels, Mr, Midwinter Organizations: Mr, New, Trump Organization, The New York Times, Trump Locations: Manhattan, New York State, U.S
But the scheduling of the election interference case, which is taking place in Washington, is now in the hands of the Supreme Court. The justices will soon have to decide whether — and how quickly — to hear Mr. Trump’s arguments about having the underlying charges in that case dismissed with a sweeping claim of executive immunity. The election trial in Washington had initially been set to begin on March 4. But the judge overseeing it, Tanya S. Chutkan, recently scrapped that date as Mr. Trump pursued his immunity claims. Justice Merchan has set the hush money case for March 25 in Manhattan, noting on Thursday that the trial could last about six weeks.
Persons: Juan M, Donald J, Tanya S, Trump, Justice Merchan, Chutkan Locations: Manhattan, Washington
Trump’s Legal Cases: Here, There and Everywhere
  + stars: | 2024-02-12 | by ( Alan Feuer | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: 1 min
Former President Donald J. Trump sped in and out of the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Fla., on Monday for a closed-door hearing in the case accusing him of illegally holding on to classified documents after he left office. In Washington, the Supreme Court received a filing that same day from Mr. Trump involving his last-ditch efforts to claim immunity from separate charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. The judge in Georgia overseeing the case accusing him of seeking to overturn his election loss in that state will hold a hearing on Thursday about whether to disqualify the district attorney who filed the charges. And in New York, two proceedings related to Mr. Trump were set to take place later in the week on two consecutive days, in two different courthouses, just two blocks from each other, with major implications for both him and his real estate business.
Persons: Donald J, Trump Locations: Fort Pierce, Fla, Washington, Georgia, New York
Prosecutors have asked a federal judge to protect the identities of several witnesses involved in the criminal case accusing former President Donald J. Trump of illegally retaining classified documents, saying that if their names were revealed before trial they could be exposed to “intolerable and needless risks.”“There is a well-documented pattern in which judges, agents, prosecutors and witnesses involved in cases involving Trump have been subject to threats, harassment and intimidation,” the prosecutors wrote. The request to protect the witnesses — made in court papers filed late Thursday night — came after Mr. Trump’s legal team asked Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the case, for permission to name some of the witnesses in court papers it recently filed related to arguments about discovery evidence. Judge Cannon ultimately ruled in favor of Mr. Trump and said the witnesses could be identified. The government responded on Thursday night by accusing her of having committed a “clear error” and by asking her to rethink her decision and to keep the identities of more than two dozen witnesses from being revealed.
Persons: Donald J, Trump, , Judge Aileen M, Cannon, Judge Cannon Organizations: Trump, Mr
In analyzing whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment applied to Mr. Trump, a trial court judge in Denver and Colorado’s top court concluded that his actions met that standard. Mr. Trump’s allies — as well as even some of his critics — tend to argue that “insurrection” is hyperbole. Still, the special counsel, Jack Smith, did not include inciting an insurrection in the charges he brought against Mr. Trump in connection with his attempts to stay in office. Mr. Trump has argued that all his actions were protected by the Constitution, including the First Amendment. But other politicians have faced similar legal challenges in connection with the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
Persons: Donald J, Trump, Trump’s, , Trump —, Donald Trump, Pete Marovich, Mike Pence, Jack Smith, Marjorie Taylor Greene, , Couy Griffin, Griffin, Organizations: Capitol, Trump, Electoral, Union, United, Capitol ., The New York Times, Justice Department, Washington, Mr Locations: Denver, United States, Georgia, New Mexico, New Mexico’s Otero County
A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected former President Donald J. Trump’s claim that he was immune to charges of plotting to subvert the results of the 2020 election, ruling that he must go to trial on a criminal indictment accusing him of seeking to overturn his loss to President Biden. The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit handed Mr. Trump a significant defeat, but was unlikely to be the final word on his claims of executive immunity. Mr. Trump is expected to continue his appeal to the Supreme Court. Still, the panel’s 57-page ruling signaled an important moment in American jurisprudence, answering a question that had never been addressed by an appeals court: Can former presidents escape being held accountable by the criminal justice system for things they did while in office?
Persons: Donald J, Biden, Trump Organizations: U.S ., Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, Supreme
In December, when a federal appeals court agreed to hear former President Donald J. Trump’s sweeping claims to be immune from charges of plotting overturn the 2020 election, it laid out a lightning-fast briefing schedule, asking the defense and prosecution to file their papers on successive Saturdays during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. But after sending up what appeared to be clear signals that they intended to swiftly resolve this phase of the immunity dispute — which lies at the heart of both the viability and timing of Mr. Trump’s trial on the election subversion charges — the appeals court judges have yet to issue a decision. The implications are already coming into focus. On Friday, the Federal District Court judge overseeing election case, Tanya S. Chutkan, formally scrapped her plan to start the trial on March 4. She was bowing to the reality that time had run out to get the proceeding going by then, mostly because of the wrangling over Mr. Trump’s immunity claim, and said she would set a new date “if and when” that matter is resolved.
Persons: Donald J, Trump’s, Tanya S, Chutkan Organizations: U.S ., Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, Federal
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