Tag: federal prosecutors
William Barr

Federal Prosecutors Urge Barr To End ‘Election Fraud’ Charade

Reprinted with permission from DailyKos

Even election losing, lame duck, impeached Donald Trump's pet Attorney General William Barr can't find an excuse to help him overthrow the results of this election. Sixteen assistant U.S. attorneys who were tapped specifically to monitor the 2020 election for malfeasance have written to Barr urging him to rescind his memo authorizing federal prosecutors to conduct probes of supposed election fraud in an attempt to stop certification of elections in certain cases.

Read NowShow less
More Than 450 Former Federal Prosecutors See Trump Obstruction Case

More Than 450 Former Federal Prosecutors See Trump Obstruction Case

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

More than 370 former federal prosecutors have signed a letter asserting Donald Trump would have been charged with obstruction of justice based on the information in special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report for the Russia investigation, were he not a sitting president of the United States.

The signatures were gathered by a group called Protect Democracy, which includes U.S. Justice Department alumni of every presidential administration since that of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower (who was elected president in 1952 and left office in January 1961). As of Monday afternoon, at least 375 people have signed the letter—including Bill Weld, a former U.S. attorney and Justice Department official under President Ronald Reagan; Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general under President George H.W. Bush; and Jeffrey Harris, who served as an assistant to Rudy Giuliani when he was in the Justice Departure during the Reagan Administration in the 1980s. Giuliani, a Republican and former Democrat, went on to serve two terms as mayor of New York City. [Update: By Monday evening, the number of former prosecutors who signed the letter had increased to more than 450, according to the Washington Post.]

Another Justice Department alumnus who signed the letter was Paul Rosenzweig, who served as senior counsel to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.

After Mueller delivered his final report for the Russia investigation to Attorney General William Barr in March, Trump asserted that the report was a total vindication of himself. But that was not what Mueller’s report said.

The special counsel concluded that based on the evidence gathered during his investigation, the 2016 Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians did not reach the level of a criminal conspiracy; however, Mueller did not say that his investigation completely ruled out the possibility that obstruction of justice had been committed during the Russia probe. Mueller, rather, declined to state whether or not Trump should have been charged with obstruction of justice.

In the letter, the DOJ alumni state: “Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting president, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.”

The DOJ alumni also agreed that “the Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge: conduct that obstructed or attempted to obstruct the truth-finding process, as to which the evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming.” And the letter goes on to offer some examples, including “the president’s efforts to fire Mueller and to falsify evidence about that effort” as well as “the president’s efforts to limit the scope of Mueller’s investigation to exclude his conduct” and “the president’s efforts to prevent witnesses from cooperating with investigators probing him and his campaign.”

The letter addresses “witness tampering and intimidation,” asserting that, according to Mueller’s report, Trump “tried to influence the decisions” of his former personal attorney Michael Cohen and his former 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort “with regard to cooperating with investigators. Some of this tampering and intimidation, including the dangling of pardons, was done in plain sight via tweets and public statements.”

Protect Democracy has said that it will continue to update the letter daily when more signatures are added.

You can read the full letter here.

After Acquittals, Federal Prosecutors Prepare For Second Malheur Trial

After Acquittals, Federal Prosecutors Prepare For Second Malheur Trial

PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors on Friday regrouped to strategize for their next trial of armed militants who occupied a wildlife center in Oregon the day after seven others at a related trial were surprisingly acquitted of all charges.

The group’s leader, Ammon Bundy, and six others were declared not guilty on Thursday of conspiracy charges stemming from their role in the armed takeover and 41-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

The stinging defeat left federal prosecutors scrambling as they prepare to try in February seven others who were part of the same occupation.

The criminal counts brought against them, which include conspiracy to impede federal officers, are similar to the charges on which Bundy and other were acquitted.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Portland abruptly canceled a news conference to discuss Thursday’s verdict.

“We’re just regrouping with our trial team for pending litigation,” said Kevin Sonoff, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oregon.

Bundy and his brother, Ryan, still face assault, conspiracy and other charges from a separate armed standoff in 2014 in Nevada.

The acquittal on criminal conspiracy counts and weapons charges delivered in federal court in Portland on Thursday also encouraged the group’s supporters.

Bundy and others cast the occupation of the wildlife refuge as a patriotic act of civil disobedience. Prosecutors called it a lawless scheme to seize federal property by force.

The relative silence of U.S. prosecutors on Friday gave little indication of how they will proceed with the trial against the Bundys in Nevada and the case against the second group of defendants in the Oregon occupation.

U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden in Nevada in a statement on Friday said the criminal case in that state is proceeding as planned with trial set for February, the same month as the second trial in Oregon.

“The Oregon case and charges are separate and unrelated to the Nevada case and charges,” Bogden said.

The Nevada case stems from a face-off the Bundy brothers and their supporters had near the Nevada ranch of their father, Cliven Bundy, with federal agents who had seized his cattle for his failure to pay grazing fees for his use of public land.

The Bundy brothers and their father remain jailed while awaiting trial in Nevada.

(Additional reporting by Joseph Ax in New York, Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

IMAGE: clockwise from top left) Ryan Bundy, Ammon Bundy, Brian Cavalier, Peter Santilli, Shawna Cox, Ryan Payne and Joseph O’Shaughnessy, limited-government activists who led an armed 41-day takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, are seen in a combination of police jail booking photos released by the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office in Portland, Oregon January 27, 2016.   Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office/Handout via Reuters/File Photo