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The Many Crimes For Which Trump Hasn't Been Indicted -- Yet

The Many Crimes For Which Trump Hasn't Been Indicted -- Yet

How quickly we forget some of the outrageous acts Donald Trump was accused of committing while president. Let us review:

We begin with Trump’s incitement of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol and his multi-pronged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election by illegal means. There was his attempt to strong-arm the Georgia secretary of state into “finding” enough votes that Trump would be declared victor in that state. Trump also called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and urged him to call a special session of the legislature at which the election results would be thrown out and a new slate of electors appointed. He called the Pennsylvania Speaker of the House and attempted to strong-arm him into doing the same thing with the Pennsylvania legislature.

Trump met in the White House with members of the Michigan legislature and urged them to take similar steps in their state. He also made numerous phone calls to state officials and legislators in other battleground states, trying to pressure them to throw out the results of the elections in their states and submit slates of fake electors to the Congress. These calls resulted in the appointment of fake slates of electors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Trump’s phone calls and meetings about submitting fake slates of electors would appear to be an overt act in furtherance of an attempt to interfere with a legitimate function of the government, i.e., the certification of electoral ballots on January 6.

Trump was behind attempts in several states to get law enforcement agencies to seize voting machines and turn them over to the Trump legal team. Voting machines were seized by officials or Trump-backers in Georgia and Colorado and voting machine data was copied by people working on Trump’s behalf in Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona. Tampering with voting data is illegal in every state in the Union, as is conspiracy to tamper with such data. Trump was in direct contact with his lawyer, Sidney Powell, who filed numerous lawsuits in battleground states on his behalf and was behind attempts to seize voting machines in Michigan and tampering with voting machine data in Nevada and Colorado.

Trump met with Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn in the Oval Office where they discussed suspending the Constitution, imposing martial law, and “re-running” the election using the U.S. military. Discussing such illegal schemes amounts to a conspiracy to overthrow the legitimate functions of the federal government, and the conspiracy need not bear fruit, i.e., be carried out, in order for an indictment for engaging in the conspiracy to be brought. The plot to impose martial law went far enough and was taken seriously enough that on December 18, Army Chief of Staff General James McConville and Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy issued a joint statement telling all active-duty Army forces that "There is no role for the US military in determining the outcome of an American election.”

And then of course there is the matter of Trump’s theft of government documents from the White House and his refusal over a period of 18 months to return them to the federal government, specifically to the National Archives, where they belonged. He is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice for having violated no less than three federal statutes involving obstruction of justice (he defied a subpoena and appears to have attempted to silence certain witnesses), mishandling of national security information (over 100 highly classified documents seized by the FBI from his office and residence at Mar a Lago) and the theft of the documents themselves.

There are unresolved allegations by the Mueller Report that Trump engaged in multiple acts of obstruction of justice and obstruction of a congressional committee. Mueller held that a sitting president could not be indicted and so dropped the matter. Trump isn’t president anymore. He’s indictable on every count of obstruction established by Mueller’s investigation. In case you forgot or haven’t checked lately, the Mueller investigation lasted nearly two years, from May of 2017 to March of 2019. The Mueller report itself survives, as does all the evidence his team of investigators painstakingly amassed, currently held by the National Archives.

The New York Times reported today that six countries spent more than $750,000 at the Trump Hotel in Washington D.C. while their officials were attempting to influence the Trump administration on behalf of their governments. The House Oversight Committee previously estimated that the Trump Hotel received as much as $3.7 million from foreign governments between 2017 and 2020. Trump refused to put his assets in a blind trust during his time in the presidency, instead turning over the running of his many businesses to his sons Eric and Donald Jr. and his daughter Ivanka. All the proceeds of Trump’s businesses go directly to Donald Trump as the sole owner of more than 500 separate companies under the umbrella of the Trump Organization.

The Trump Hotel, which was located in the Old Post Office building in Washington D.C. while Trump was president, is one of his companies, thus all profits derived from the hotel would accrue to his benefit. The Constitution’s Emoluments Clause states: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State. An emolument has been defined as anything of value including money. Trump’s profiting from monies spent at his hotel in Washington would appear to violate the U.S. Constitution, which is the Supreme Law of the Land.

And now we arrive at another late-breaking Trump crime. The New York Times also reported today that John Kelly, Trump’s second and longest-serving chief of staff, revealed to the paper that Trump had, on multiple occasions, attempted to have the IRS conduct audits of his political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe. On other occasions, Trump discussed with Kelly having the Department of Justice and the IRS investigate Hillary Clinton, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (who also owns The Washington Post), Peter Strzok, the lead FBI agent working on the Mueller investigation team, and Lisa Page, another FBI agent with whom Strzok was having an affair, and with whom he exchanged text messages critical of Trump.

No audits were conducted by the IRS on the incomes of either Comey or McCabe during the time Kelly was White House chief of staff. However, after Kelly left that position and Mark Meadows was appointed in his place, the IRS audited both Comey and McCabe, conducting a type of extensive audit described by experts as “an autopsy without being dead.”It is a violation of federal law for any federal official, including the president, “to request, directly or indirectly” that the IRS audit or conduct any kind of investigation of specific American taxpayers. Trump’s conversations with Kelly appear to fit the definition of that crime.

I’m sure I’ve missed something. Trump was a very busy man when it came to lining his own pockets, retaliating against political rivals and enemies, and attempting to either fix the results of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, or in the case of the 2020 election, overturn its results. He seems to have committed enough crimes while in office to make even the second most corrupt president in recent memory, Richard Nixon, swivel in his grave.

It appears likely at this writing that the Department of Justice will seek to indict Trump on multiple counts of interfering with government operations, the mishandling of national security information, and obstruction of justice. The DOJ has seated two grand juries in Washington D.C., where they have presented multiple witnesses over the past year. One grand jury is hearing evidence on Trump’s crimes surrounding January 6 and his attempts to overturn the election of 2020. The other grand jury is hearing evidence concerning his theft and mishandling of government-owned documents after he left office.

Which is precisely what matters today. Donald Trump, who believed he was invulnerable while he was president and so did pretty much anything he decided to do and damn the consequences, is now a civilian. He is, in a word, indictable, whether he makes himself a candidate in the next presidential election or not.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter

Former White House Counsel  McGahn To Testify On Russia  Probe

Former White House Counsel  McGahn To Testify On Russia  Probe

Former White House counsel Don McGahn has agreed to testify in a private congressional hearing about the Russia investigation, ending a long court battle sparked by former President Donald Trump's effort to stonewall lawmakers. McGahn, a key figure in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, will answer questions from the House Judiciary Committee behind closed doors, but a transcript will be released about a week later, according to federal court papers filed Wednesday. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) hailed the breakthrough agreement with the Justice Depa...

Peter Strzok

Ex-FBI Agent Strzok Says Trump Was ‘Badly Compromised’ By Russians In 2016

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok — who was removed from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation in July 2017 because of texts critical of President Donald Trump and fired by the FBI in 2018 — is still under fire from Trump's sycophants. They will insist that his new book, Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump, has no validity. But it won't keep him quiet.

Outside of the Trumpian bubble, those who followed Mueller's probe carefully will want to hear what Strzok has to say — even if they are critical of some of his actions. And Strzok maintains that Trump, as the book's title indicates, was "compromised" during the 2016 election.

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Fox News Was Right About Authoritarian Bill Barr

Fox News Was Right About Authoritarian Bill Barr

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters

If you listened to some leading members of the U.S. legal establishment after President Donald Trump appointed William Barr attorney general, you might have expected him to serve as an institutionalist who would maintain the Justice Department’s hallowed independence. You would have been better off paying attention to Fox News’ pro-Trump propagandists. They had Barr pegged from the first as a yes man who would systematically dismantle the rule of law in order to benefit the president.

A year into Barr’s tenure, there is no question that Barr and Trump are corrupting the legal system. In the latest example, the DOJ’s leadership on Tuesday intervened to reduce the tough sentencing recommendation prosecutors had sought for Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser. This blatant political interference led to all four prosecutors withdrawing from the case in apparent protest. It triggered alarms from former Justice Department officials and current prosecutors. But the move drew praise from the president, who had publicly railed against the initial recommendation and now credits Barr with its revocation. And hours later, NBC News reported that the sequence was part of a broader pattern in which Barr consolidated control of “legal matters of personal interest” to Trump. 

None of this is subtle.

Fox’s Trumpists, meanwhile, have responded with glee to the prospect that the Justice Department has become a tool of presidential retribution. They are ginning up attacks on the prosecutors who conducted the case and urging Trump to pardon his former consigliere. And they are openly rejecting the notion that Barr should be ensuring the independence of his department.

Fox’s propagandists had a better handle on how Barr would act as attorney general because they understood — and agreed with — Trump’s authoritarian view of the Justice Department. They view the Trump-era DOJ as a shield for the president and his allies — and a weapon against his foes. When Barr’s predecessor, Jeff Sessions, failed to live up to this vision, Trump’s Fox cabinet successfully pushed the president to fire him. The network’s commentators subsequently backed Barr because they had reason to believe he would be more compliant — and they have been proved correct.

When Barr took office in February, Trump was imperiled by the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller’s probe of Russian interference had resulted in indictments, plea deals, or convictions for his political fixer, Stone; his longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen; his first White House national security adviser, Michael Flynn; and his 2016 campaign chair, Paul Manafort, among others. Trump himself had staggering legal exposure because of the evidence Mueller’s team had amassed of the president’s efforts to obstruct Mueller’s inquiry. 

But Barr’s brand is cover-up, and he quickly moved to protect a president who had put him in place for that precise reason. CNN broke the news just days after his confirmation that he was preparing to announce the Mueller probe’s conclusion. Over the following weeks, Barr personally cleared Trump of obstruction, then dishonestly spun Mueller’s findings in an effort to deaden the impact of the special counsel’s final report. 

What followed was a bureaucratic shuffle that led to the Justice Department’s leniency for members of Trump’s circle. The special counsel’s investigation had special protections designed to shield it from political influence, and its dissolution made it easy for Barr to seize personal control of the cases Mueller’s team had initiated. Jessie Liu, the U.S. attorney who had been overseeing the cases against Stone and Flynn, was replaced by Barr’s handpicked choice last month (and resigned today). The same day Liu lost her DOJ post, senior DOJ officials reportedly intervened to reduce the sentencing recommendation in Flynn’s case. The reduction for Stone would follow in turn.

Barr also shielded Trump on Ukraine: Even though Trump had asked Ukraine’s president to work with Barr on his scheme to investigate Trump’s political opponent, Barr did not recuse himself from the matter. And his department both intervened to prevent a whistleblower report on the scandal from reaching Congress and cleared the president of related campaign finance violations. After the president’s actions triggered his impeachment and acquittal by the Senate, he created a back channel Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani could use to send his Ukraine disinformation directly to the DOJ.

Barr has also launched a legal counterattack aimed at the current and former federal officials Trump blames for generating the Mueller probe. In October, the DOJ opened a criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation, and Barr has been closely overseeing the probe. Its reported contours appear to overlap with a sprawling conspiracy theory concocted by Fox News host Sean Hannity and his circle which posits that the Russia investigation was ginned up by anti-Trump “deep state actors” to prevent his election in 2016.

None of this makes any sense, but Barr appears to have bought into it. He has been personally traveling the globe to push foreign intelligence officials to aid the inquiry, and he received unprecedented authority from Trump to unilaterally declassify its fruits. Meanwhile, his handpicked replacement for Liu is overseeing politically charged investigations into former FBI Director James Comey and his former deputy Andrew McCabe, both frequent targets of Trump and his Fox allies. 

Fox’s pro-Trump commentators have cheered Barr’s every effort. They view him as the “new sheriff in town” and “the perfect man at this great inflection point.” They feel that way because he is protecting the president while turning their conspiracy theories about his foes into federal criminal investigations.

The attorney general’s decisions are barely distinguishable from the whims of a Fox host. And that means things can still get much worse. Trump’s Fox talking heads want pardons for Flynn, Stone, and other criminal members of Trump’s cabal. They are eager for a “cleansing” of federal law enforcement agencies, with anti-Trump figures “taken out in handcuffs” for their role in trying to investigate the president and his circle. They want criminal investigations into the purported crimes of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and they will surely add the next Democratic presidential nominee to that list as soon as that person is determined.

And they are all sure that William Barr is just the man to make their dreams come true. They have been right about Barr all along — there’s little reason to doubt their hopes will be vindicated.