The Tiny Scandals and Trials

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Trump charged in secret documents case
The former president is first ever to face federal criminal charges

The charges include illegal retention of government secrets, obstruction of justice and conspiracy, according to people familiar with the matter. It is the second time he has been criminally charged since March, when he was indicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments from 2016.
By Devlin Barrett, Perry Stein and Josh DawseyUpdated 53 minutes ago

Former president Donald Trump said Thursday night that he’s been charged by the Justice Department in connection with the discovery that hundreds of classified documents were taken to his Mar-a-Lago home after he left the White House — a seismic event in the nation’s political and legal history.

Trump, who is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said he has been summoned to appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday at 3 p.m. Several Trump advisers confirmed the charges.

A seven-count indictment has been filed in federal court naming the former president as a criminal defendant, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a case that has yet to be unsealed.

The charges include illegal retention of government secrets, obstruction of justice and conspiracy, according to people familiar with the matter. It is the second time Trump has been criminally charged since March, when he was indicted in state court in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments from 2016. Trump, who has denied wrongdoing in both cases, is the only former president ever charged with a crime.

“I have been indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” Trump posted on social media site Truth Social. He claimed he was being treated unfairly. “I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States,” he said in a screed that ended: “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”

A spokesman for special counsel Jack Smith, who has been running the investigation since November, declined to comment.

The charges cap a high-stakes investigation that began in early 2022 and slowly built steam over the summer, until FBI agents conducted a court-ordered search of Trump’s home and private club in early August that turned up more than 100 classified documents, even after Trump’s advisers had claimed they had conducted a diligent search in June for such papers and — in response to a subpoena — handed over all they could find.

(...)

While a president has never been charged with such crimes, prosecutions related to the mishandling of classified materials are not rare, said Steven Aftergood, a classified information expert. “This reflects the Justice Department applying the law to a former president, and that is really encouraging,” Aftergood said. “It really underscores the fact that no one is above the law.”

Much of the Justice Department’s investigation centered around the actions of Trump and his closest advisers following a May subpoena from the government for the return of all documents with classified markings. Witness and videotape evidence gathered by the FBI indicated that Trump may have sought to keep documents, people familiar with the investigation said, despite having turned over some material to authorities in response to the subpoena.

In November, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith to serve as special counsel and take charge of the Mar-a-Lago case, saying that Trump’s announced candidacy for the presidency and President Biden’s likely reelection bid meant there should be another layer of independence for the investigations involving Trump.

A separate special counsel, Robert Hur, has been appointed to investigate how a much smaller number of classified documents were taken to Biden’s home and office. Trump has claimed that he should not be charged because Biden’s conduct was worse, but to date the known evidence against the former president appears to dwarf the facts of the Biden case.

For many months, Justice Department prosecutors have questioned witnesses in the case before a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C.

The secret proceedings yielded evidence of potential mishandling as well as obstruction of justice, people familiar with the investigation have said, making the federal courthouse in the nation’s capital the focal point of a waiting game: Would Trump be the first former president indicted by the Justice Department?

In early May, the parade of witnesses to that grand jury appeared to stop, but in fact it had been redirected to a federal courthouse a thousand miles south, in Miami. That courthouse is much closer to Mar-a-Lago, where most of the alleged conduct under scrutiny took place.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Justice Department lawyers had concluded the case against Trump would be more safely brought in Florida than Washington, in order to avoid potentially time-consuming legal fights over the proper venue.

After months of speculation and anticipation, it had become clear the case of the United States vs. Donald J. Trump was moving toward a momentous decision.

After receiving a formal notice that Trump was a target of the criminal investigation, the former president’s lawyers met Monday at Justice Department headquarters with Smith and other officials, including a senior career lawyer. Trump’s lawyers tried to convince the prosecutors not to file charges.

People familiar with the conversation said the meeting did not go well, and Trump’s team left the meeting expecting their client would soon be indicted.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... ar-a-lago/

TL;dr

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Another day, another crime. It's worth clicking on the "read more" link.



Jack Smith, Fani Willis and Tish James right now

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Ricky Davila
@TheRickyDavila
Starting Monday, the Main Street in front of the Fulton County courthouse will shut down for two weeks.

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Twitter was fined $350,000 for failing to turn over Trump’s data

By Rachel Weiner
Updated August 9, 2023 at 5:28 p.m. EDT|Published August 9, 2023 at 1:48 p.m. EDT

The social media company Twitter was forced to hand over records from former president Donald Trump’s account to the special counsel investigating the events leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and pay sanctions for failing to do so more quickly, as disclosed in an appellate court ruling unsealed Wednesday.

A lower-court judge, Beryl A. Howell, ruled in March that Twitter, now renamed X, had to comply with a sealed search warrant issued by the special counsel and pay $350,000 for missing a court-ordered deadline by three days. The filing also reveals that Howell had found reason to believe that should the search warrant be made public, Trump might engage in obstructive conduct or flee prosecution.

Twitter appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which in July upheld Howell’s ruling. Now that Trump has been charged with four felonies related to his attempts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, the appellate decision has been unsealed.

Attorneys for Twitter did not oppose the search warrant but argued that a gag order preventing the company from alerting Trump to the search violated the First Amendment. The company argued that it should not have to hand over the records until that issue was resolved. Howell sided with the government, finding Twitter in contempt Feb. 7 for failing to comply with the search warrant. She gave Twitter until 5 p.m. to produce the records, with sanctions of $50,000 per day, to double every day that Twitter did not comply. Twitter produced the records three days later.

The following month, Howell upheld the nondisclosure order and imposed a $350,000 contempt sanction on Twitter. She found that there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that disclosing the warrant to Trump “would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation” by giving him “an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates,” according to the appellate ruling. Howell also found the former president might “flee from prosecution,” although the special counsel’s team later said they did not intend to make that argument and it was not included in her final analysis.

In June, the government moved to modify the gag order, saying Twitter could alert Trump to the contents of the warrant — just not the identity of the case agent. That request came shortly after another judge in D.C. unsealed a ruling compelling former vice president Mike Pence to testify against Trump.

Trump was banned from Twitter two days after the Jan. 6 attack. Elon Musk restored Trump’s Twitter access after buying the company in 2022, but the former president has not returned to the platform.

The ruling does not specify what was turned over, but a subpoena could cover draft tweets and direct messages, as well as information on who had access to the account. The grand jury indictment against Trump handed down this month includes references to 18 of Trump’s tweets, including seven from the day of Jan. 6. In those messages, Trump spread false fraud claims, attacked officials who tried to correct the record, rallied supporters to Washington for Jan. 6 and pressured Pence to help overturn the election results.

The panel of three appellate judges found Twitter’s First Amendment rights were not violated, because “the nondisclosure order was a narrowly tailored means of achieving compelling government interests” — protecting the integrity of a grand jury investigation. The appellate court panel — two Biden appointees and one appointee of President Barack Obama — found it was within Howell’s discretion to refuse to delay execution of the search warrant.

The appellate court also upheld Howell’s $350,000 sanction, saying it was reasonable “given Twitter’s $40-billion valuation and the court’s goal of coercing Twitter’s compliance.”

Attorneys and a spokesman for X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va ... n-6-trump/

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Teri Kanefield
@Teri_Kanefield@law-and-politics.online
If there are incriminating DMs in Trump's Twitter Account, here is how the government would know:

A cooperating witness turned over incriminating DMs.

Also nobody knows what the DOJ knows which is one reason investigations are done away from the public view.

So if you try to suppress something that the DOJ knows exists . . . ding.

Similarly, they'd have reason to think someone else was putting out some of his key Tweets concerning the leadup to January 6 from evidence already uncovered.

Everyone knows the standard by now: To get the warrant the government needs to present probable cause to believe there is evidence of a crime in the specific place they are looking.

[patrick]

Trump charged in secret documents case
The former president is first ever to face federal criminal charges

The charges include illegal retention of government secrets, obstruction of justice and conspiracy, according to people familiar with the matter. It is the second time he has been criminally charged since March, when he was indicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments from 2016.
By Devlin Barrett, Perry Stein and Josh DawseyUpdated 53 minutes ago

Former president Donald Trump said Thursday night that he’s been charged by the Justice Department in connection with the discovery that hundreds of classified documents were taken to his Mar-a-Lago home after he left the White House — a seismic event in the nation’s political and legal history.

Trump, who is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said he has been summoned to appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday at 3 p.m. Several Trump advisers confirmed the charges.

A seven-count indictment has been filed in federal court naming the former president as a criminal defendant, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a case that has yet to be unsealed.

The charges include illegal retention of government secrets, obstruction of justice and conspiracy, according to people familiar with the matter. It is the second time Trump has been criminally charged since March, when he was indicted in state court in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments from 2016. Trump, who has denied wrongdoing in both cases, is the only former president ever charged with a crime.

“I have been indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” Trump posted on social media site Truth Social. He claimed he was being treated unfairly. “I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States,” he said in a screed that ended: “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”

A spokesman for special counsel Jack Smith, who has been running the investigation since November, declined to comment.

The charges cap a high-stakes investigation that began in early 2022 and slowly built steam over the summer, until FBI agents conducted a court-ordered search of Trump’s home and private club in early August that turned up more than 100 classified documents, even after Trump’s advisers had claimed they had conducted a diligent search in June for such papers and — in response to a subpoena — handed over all they could find.

(...)

While a president has never been charged with such crimes, prosecutions related to the mishandling of classified materials are not rare, said Steven Aftergood, a classified information expert. “This reflects the Justice Department applying the law to a former president, and that is really encouraging,” Aftergood said. “It really underscores the fact that no one is above the law.”

Much of the Justice Department’s investigation centered around the actions of Trump and his closest advisers following a May subpoena from the government for the return of all documents with classified markings. Witness and videotape evidence gathered by the FBI indicated that Trump may have sought to keep documents, people familiar with the investigation said, despite having turned over some material to authorities in response to the subpoena.

In November, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith to serve as special counsel and take charge of the Mar-a-Lago case, saying that Trump’s announced candidacy for the presidency and President Biden’s likely reelection bid meant there should be another layer of independence for the investigations involving Trump.

A separate special counsel, Robert Hur, has been appointed to investigate how a much smaller number of classified documents were taken to Biden’s home and office. Trump has claimed that he should not be charged because Biden’s conduct was worse, but to date the known evidence against the former president appears to dwarf the facts of the Biden case.

For many months, Justice Department prosecutors have questioned witnesses in the case before a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C.

The secret proceedings yielded evidence of potential mishandling as well as obstruction of justice, people familiar with the investigation have said, making the federal courthouse in the nation’s capital the focal point of a waiting game: Would Trump be the first former president indicted by the Justice Department?

In early May, the parade of witnesses to that grand jury appeared to stop, but in fact it had been redirected to a federal courthouse a thousand miles south, in Miami. That courthouse is much closer to Mar-a-Lago, where most of the alleged conduct under scrutiny took place.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Justice Department lawyers had concluded the case against Trump would be more safely brought in Florida than Washington, in order to avoid potentially time-consuming legal fights over the proper venue.

After months of speculation and anticipation, it had become clear the case of the United States vs. Donald J. Trump was moving toward a momentous decision.

After receiving a formal notice that Trump was a target of the criminal investigation, the former president’s lawyers met Monday at Justice Department headquarters with Smith and other officials, including a senior career lawyer. Trump’s lawyers tried to convince the prosecutors not to file charges.

People familiar with the conversation said the meeting did not go well, and Trump’s team left the meeting expecting their client would soon be indicted.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... ar-a-lago/

TL;dr

Is this why Musk bought Twitter?

[ti-amie]

Trump charged in secret documents case
The former president is first ever to face federal criminal charges

The charges include illegal retention of government secrets, obstruction of justice and conspiracy, according to people familiar with the matter. It is the second time he has been criminally charged since March, when he was indicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments from 2016.
By Devlin Barrett, Perry Stein and Josh DawseyUpdated 53 minutes ago

Former president Donald Trump said Thursday night that he’s been charged by the Justice Department in connection with the discovery that hundreds of classified documents were taken to his Mar-a-Lago home after he left the White House — a seismic event in the nation’s political and legal history.

Trump, who is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said he has been summoned to appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday at 3 p.m. Several Trump advisers confirmed the charges.

A seven-count indictment has been filed in federal court naming the former president as a criminal defendant, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a case that has yet to be unsealed.

The charges include illegal retention of government secrets, obstruction of justice and conspiracy, according to people familiar with the matter. It is the second time Trump has been criminally charged since March, when he was indicted in state court in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments from 2016. Trump, who has denied wrongdoing in both cases, is the only former president ever charged with a crime.

“I have been indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” Trump posted on social media site Truth Social. He claimed he was being treated unfairly. “I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States,” he said in a screed that ended: “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”

A spokesman for special counsel Jack Smith, who has been running the investigation since November, declined to comment.

The charges cap a high-stakes investigation that began in early 2022 and slowly built steam over the summer, until FBI agents conducted a court-ordered search of Trump’s home and private club in early August that turned up more than 100 classified documents, even after Trump’s advisers had claimed they had conducted a diligent search in June for such papers and — in response to a subpoena — handed over all they could find.

(...)

While a president has never been charged with such crimes, prosecutions related to the mishandling of classified materials are not rare, said Steven Aftergood, a classified information expert. “This reflects the Justice Department applying the law to a former president, and that is really encouraging,” Aftergood said. “It really underscores the fact that no one is above the law.”

Much of the Justice Department’s investigation centered around the actions of Trump and his closest advisers following a May subpoena from the government for the return of all documents with classified markings. Witness and videotape evidence gathered by the FBI indicated that Trump may have sought to keep documents, people familiar with the investigation said, despite having turned over some material to authorities in response to the subpoena.

In November, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith to serve as special counsel and take charge of the Mar-a-Lago case, saying that Trump’s announced candidacy for the presidency and President Biden’s likely reelection bid meant there should be another layer of independence for the investigations involving Trump.

A separate special counsel, Robert Hur, has been appointed to investigate how a much smaller number of classified documents were taken to Biden’s home and office. Trump has claimed that he should not be charged because Biden’s conduct was worse, but to date the known evidence against the former president appears to dwarf the facts of the Biden case.

For many months, Justice Department prosecutors have questioned witnesses in the case before a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C.

The secret proceedings yielded evidence of potential mishandling as well as obstruction of justice, people familiar with the investigation have said, making the federal courthouse in the nation’s capital the focal point of a waiting game: Would Trump be the first former president indicted by the Justice Department?

In early May, the parade of witnesses to that grand jury appeared to stop, but in fact it had been redirected to a federal courthouse a thousand miles south, in Miami. That courthouse is much closer to Mar-a-Lago, where most of the alleged conduct under scrutiny took place.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Justice Department lawyers had concluded the case against Trump would be more safely brought in Florida than Washington, in order to avoid potentially time-consuming legal fights over the proper venue.

After months of speculation and anticipation, it had become clear the case of the United States vs. Donald J. Trump was moving toward a momentous decision.

After receiving a formal notice that Trump was a target of the criminal investigation, the former president’s lawyers met Monday at Justice Department headquarters with Smith and other officials, including a senior career lawyer. Trump’s lawyers tried to convince the prosecutors not to file charges.

People familiar with the conversation said the meeting did not go well, and Trump’s team left the meeting expecting their client would soon be indicted.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... ar-a-lago/

TL;dr

Is this why Musk bought Twitter?

As I was reading this I thought the exact same thing.

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MLive Curated
@mlive_curated@social.iheartmichelle.com
All 16 pro-Trump electors have pleaded not guilty to Michigan felony charges

from MLive.com
by Simon Schuster

#Michigan #Fascism

https://www.mlive.com/politics/2023/08/all

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Meanwhile AG Fani Willis is moving at a faster pace than anticipated. There's also this.

George Takei :verified:
@georgetakei@universeodon.com
I am no lawyer, but telling a witness who is supposed to testify before a grand jury in your case tomorrow that he “shouldn’t” is obstruction of justice. It's witness tampering. And that’s a crime that can get added to all the others.

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Someone on the inside giving TFG a heads-up?







Rebekah Jones @GeoRebekah

And yet, this document DOES have a case number, file date and all of those details.....?

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Andrew Feinberg
@AndrewFeinberg
NEW: If I am reading this right, Judge Engoron has found that Donald Trump committed fraud and has ordered the cancellation of all of his New York business certificates and the dissolution of the Trump Organization.