Tag: subpoenas
Trump Escalates Struggle With Congress, Inviting Impeachment

Trump Escalates Struggle With Congress, Inviting Impeachment

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Many Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, appear hesitant to impeach President Donald Trump. But he may force them to do so.

That’s becoming clearer as the Washington Post reported Tuesday night that Trump said in an interview that he will refuse to cooperate with the House’s investigative efforts.

“There is no reason to go any further, and especially in Congress where it’s very partisan — obviously very partisan,” Trump told the Post.

It’s not clear if he’ll formally invoke executive privilege, but even if he does, these claims will likely be weak in many instances. But his decision to dig in his heels shows he gearing up for a massive fight with a co-equal branch of government.

There have long been signs we were getting to this point. The administration is fighting nearly every request for documents sent by Congress at this point. The Post has reported that the White House is trying to stop Don McGahn, a key witness in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, from testifying before Congress after the Judiciary Committee sent him a subpoena. The White House has similarly told Carl Kline, who is implicated in the scandal around security clearances of Trump’s family members, not to comply with a House subpoena. House Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings is planning on holding a vote on whether to hold Kline in contempt for refusing to testify.

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is refusing to hand over Trump’s tax returns after a request from the House Ways and Means Committee, despite a law clearly saying that the department is obligated to comply with the request. And Trump has sued Cummings for sending a subpoena to obtain the president’s financial records from an accounting firm.

Trump may think all of this is just “partisanship,” but the House is controlled by either one of two parties — so this complaint is trivial and meaningless. The Congress is in the Democrats’ control because the voters decided to elect more Democrats in 2018, and the House has the constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the president and the executive branch.

And while Trump may think the investigations are too far-reaching, that’s not his call to make. The Constitution grants Congress the responsibility for overseeing the president, and he doesn’t get to say how that’s done. Trump has only brought these investigations on himself, by interfering in the Mueller probe, by concealing his taxes while running for president, by continuing to have control over his businesses while in office, and through his wild abuses of power. He’s forced the Democrats into the position of needing to conduct extensive investigations, whether they want to or not.

With Mueller’s report showing the extensive evidence that Trump obstructed justice, the intensity and stakes of these investigations have only gotten higher. Impeachment, which once seemed like a Democratic fantasy, now seems like a real possibility. And that’s likely why the White House has decided to fight tooth and nail over everything investigative step, to bog the House down in the minutiae and to drag the process out as much as possible.

But by playing hardball, Trump will only force Democrats to escalate further. The House will have a stronger hand to play in court if it makes clear that the documents and witnesses subpoenaed are part of an impeachment probe. Even if Democrats aren’t thrilled with the idea, they may realize that forcing formal impeachment proceedings is the only option they have left in the tit-for-tat with the White House.

IMAGE: The U.S. Capitol building is seen behind a security fence in Washington, U.S., January 19, 2017. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

U.S. Attorney Subpoenas Christie Campaign, GOP State Committee

U.S. Attorney Subpoenas Christie Campaign, GOP State Committee

New York (AFP) – New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s re-election campaign and the state’s Republican Party committee have been served subpoenas from federal prosecutors investigating a scandal over the deliberate shutdown of a key bridge to spite a political rival, an attorney confirmed Thursday.

“We can confirm that the Christie for Governor reelection campaign and the New Jersey Republican State Committee received subpoenas for documents from the U.S. attorney’s office” in New Jersey, Mark D. Sheridan, a lawyer with the law firm representing the two entities, told AFP Thursday.

These latest subpoenas come “in addition to the subpoena the campaign previously received from the state legislative committee,” which is conducting a parallel investigation, Sheridan said.

“All three subpoenas focus on the closure of lanes on the George Washington Bridge,” he said.

Christie, regarded as a frontrunner for the Republican presidential campaign in 2016, has been on the defensive since it emerged his office was behind the shutting down of lanes on the George Washington Bridge in September.

The closures were apparently meant to punish a mayor who refused to endorse Christie’s successful reelection bid.

Christie maintains he had been unaware of any political motive behind the action.

After the scandal emerged, he quickly sacked a senior assistant.

“The campaign and the state party intend to cooperate with the U.S. attorney’s office and the state legislative committee and will respond to the subpoenas accordingly,” Sheridan said.

Some twenty people and entities last week received subpoenas from the committee.

Adding to Christie’s woes, the Democratic mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey, Dawn Zimmer, accused New Jersey’s lieutenant governor over the weekend of threatening to withhold money for Hurricane Sandy relief from her Democratic stronghold city unless she approved a redevelopment plan which Christie supported.

Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno has categorically denied the accusations.

Photo: Walter Burns via Wikimedia Commons

Lawmakers Issue 20 Subpoenas In New Jersey Bridge Scandal

Lawmakers Issue 20 Subpoenas In New Jersey Bridge Scandal

By Andrew Seidman and Maddie Hanna

The Philadelphia Inquirer

(MCT)

TRENTON, N.J. — A Democratic lawmaker leading the investigation of the George Washington Bridge scandal that has engulfed the Christie administration issued 20 more subpoenas to individuals and organizations Thursday.

Assemblyman John S. Wisniewski, who leads one of two special legislative inquiry panels created Thursday, said he would not identify the recipients of the subpoenas — 17 individuals and three organizations — until they had been served.

Late Thursday, a Democratic source confirmed that former top Christie aides Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Stepien had been subpoenaed, along with the Christie campaign organization. Also subpoenaed was Matt Mowers, Christie’s former regional political director, who is now the executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party.

“Matt is an extremely talented worker and a valued member of our team,” Jennifer Horn, the New Hampshire GOP chairwoman, said in a statement. “He has not been accused of any wrongdoing and there is zero indication that he is in any way connected to the decision to close the bridge lanes.”

Wisniewski’s subpoenas came on a day when both houses in the Legislature voted unanimously to expand their investigation, even as they disagreed on how best to proceed.

Earlier Thursday, Christie’s office announced that it had retained a former assistant U.S. attorney and top aide to former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as outside legal counsel. Giuliani has been a Christie supporter.

Legislators made clear that they wanted to continue the inquiry into how and why some of Christie’s deputies orchestrated a plot in September to shut down access lanes leading from Fort Lee to the world’s busiest bridge. But Assembly Democrats rebuffed an attempt by the Senate to establish a joint committee.

So the Senate launched its own separate investigation, in a move that suggested to some that Democrats in both houses are seeking to claim credit for tackling corruption.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage, a Democrat, said on MSNBC of the two committees. “It’s a waste of taxpayer money and it’s all about who can get on television first.”

Just hours after establishing those committees, Republicans accused Wisniewski of running a partisan “committee of one.”

Last week, Assembly Democrats made public thousands of pages of documents they obtained via previous subpoenas showing that at least one member of Christie’s inner circle had corresponded with one of the governor’s appointees at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey about creating gridlock in Fort Lee, apparently to punish the borough’s Democratic mayor for not endorsing the Republican governor.

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Kelly, Christie’s deputy chief of staff, wrote in an Aug. 13 e-mail to David Wildstein, the appointee.

“Got it,” he replied.

Christie fired Kelly and severed ties with Stepien, another close political adviser, last week. Wildstein and another Christie appointee at the Port Authority, former Republican State Sen. Bill Baroni, resigned last month.

Baroni had said the lane closures were part of a traffic study overseen by Wildstein. On Thursday, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D.-W.Va., who has also inquired about the closures, said information provided by the Port Authority showed “zero evidence” of a “legitimate” traffic study.

The documents released last week showed that a number of Christie’s staff members, including newly appointed chief of staff Regina Egea and Michael Drewniak, the governor’s press secretary, were notified of the traffic jams as early as September.

On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, a Democrat, the chairwoman of the new Senate committee and an early critic of the lane closures, said she intends to subpoena Egea as well as David Samson, chairman of the board of commissioners at the Port Authority.

Christie appeared in Manahawkin on Thursday to tout Sandy recovery but did not address the controversy directly.

Christie said he had “accepted the task of leading this state for eight years, not four years, and no one, I can assure you, ever told me or anybody on my team that it was going to be easy.”

The governor’s office said its outside legal team is being led by Randy Mastro, former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he specialized in organized-crime cases. Mastro is a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher L.L.P.

“Gov. Christie made clear last week that he will conduct an internal review to uncover the facts surrounding the lane closures in Fort Lee,” the governor’s office said in a statement. “His administration is fully cooperating with the U.S. attorney inquiry and other appropriate inquiries and requests for information.”

They did not say how much the firm would charge.

“Just as the outside counsel hired by Assembly Democrats will be compensated by the public, so too will the team hired by the administration,” said Christie spokesman Colin Reed.

The Assembly retained Reid Schar, a former federal prosecutor who tried former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, as outside counsel to assist in its investigation. The Assembly will pay partners at Schar’s firm $350 an hour, plus other charges, out of its budget.

On the Assembly floor Thursday, Wisniewski said his investigation’s goal was to restore the public’s trust and work to prevent similar abuses of power from recurring.

“We have no predetermined outcome. We have no predetermined agenda,” he said. “We’ve been following a trail that followed the operations and finances of the Port Authority. … Unexpectedly we wound up in the governor’s office.”

The subpoenas issued Thursday ask for documents related to the traffic jams, Wisniewski said. He said his committee would review documents before compelling testimony.

Wisniewski said he did not anticipate receiving any documents until February.

Republicans commended Wisniewski for uncovering possible wrongdoing but expressed concern that they had not been informed of new developments in a timely manner or consulted on key decisions, such as hiring outside counsel to assist with the Assembly’s investigation.

“Here we are, an hour into this process, and the bipartisanship is falling apart,” GOP Assemblyman Greg McGuckin said at a news conference after the special committee’s first meeting.

Over objections from Republicans, the committee authorized a resolution that gives Wisniewski, as chair, the authority to issue subpoenas, and control and determine access to documents the committee receives.

In the Senate, several Republicans voiced support for the investigation but questioned what shape it would take. As in the Assembly, the resolution passed by the Senate gave the committee authority to investigate “abuse of government power” including, “but not limited to,” the bridge incident.

Cautioning against a rush to judgment was GOP Sen. Kevin O’Toole, a Christie ally who was among the three Republicans appointed to the committee.

Division was also evident among Democrats on Thursday. In explaining why the lower house had not formed a joint committee with the Senate, Assembly Majority Leader Louis D. Greenwald, a Democrat, said on the floor: “We are way ahead of where the Senate is. You want to slow this down? You think the people of Fort Lee want to slow this down so (the Senate) can catch up?”

Photo:  Joe Shlabotnik via Flickr