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Capitol Insurrection Congress January 6 Justice Department

Jordan And McCarthy Are ‘Quite Likely’ Under Investigation By DOJ For Their Role In Jan. 6: Report

As they prepare to take control of powerful committees and leadership positions in the House, two members of the new Republican majority are also facing serious legal jeopardy, according to former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade.

McQuade said that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) are facing serious scrutiny for their roles in the January 6, 2022 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to Newsweek.

The biggest threat to both men, according to McQuade, is what the Justice Department may have planned for them.

“I think they’re quite likely under investigation. Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy, I mean we know that they were having direct communications with Donald Trump on January 6. At this point, I suppose they [the January 6 committee] consider them to be witnesses, but I think they’d want to know what they have to say.”

Additionally, McQuade said that Jordan and McCarthy may be invited for a interview by DOJ officials. If they refuse, a subpoena for their testimony before a grand jury will likely be used to “compel” their cooperation.

The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection released an 845-page report on Thursday which mentiones Jordan as a”significant player” in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election:

“He participated in numerous post-election meetings in which senior White House officials, Rudolph Giuliani, and others, discussed strategies for challenging the election, chief among them claims that the election had been tainted by fraud.”

The Jan. 6 panel subpoenaed Jordan earlier this year, but he failed to comply and appear for a scheduled deposition on May 27.

McQuade noted that while it’s controversial for the DOJ to go after members of Congress, it’s not unprecedented.

“It’s highly sensitive to go after information from a sitting member of Congress, but they’re not being targeted because they’re members of Congress, they’re being targeted because of their conduct and conversations with Donald Trump on January 6.”

Categories
Crime Donald Trump Justice Department

The DOJ Has Opened A New Front In Their Probe Of Donald Trump: Report

A subpoena issued by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed to oversee all of the Trump investigations for the Department of Justice, suggests that DOJ is opening a new front that could well lead to criminal charges against failed former president Donald Trump.

NBC News correspondent Ken Dilianian explained on MSNBC that Smith’s demand for documents from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger concerning Trump’s request that officials in the Peach State “find” the votes necessary to make him the winner is a significant escalation of the case against the ex-president.

“This is a very important moment in this investigation. Until now, it hadn’t been clear that the Justice Department was aggressively pursuing the conduct in Georgia, given the fact that there’s a state investigation down there. That was always a mystery, though. If it was illegal in other states, or potentially illegal, Georgia was the best example, actually with the best evidence. They had the president of the United States on tape pressuring, trying to pressure Brad Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes, and if you remember from the famous conversation, Trump also tried to suggest that they knew the election was corrupt, and it was very risky not to act on that.”

Dilianian continued:

“Andrew Weissmann, our NBC News legal analyst who is known as a very aggressive prosecutor, said early on that Jack Smith is a golden retriever puppy compared to Andrew Weissmann, and you’re really seeing evidence of that, not only with this set of subpoenas to now a total of six states, but also with this secret battle going on in the grand jury where the DOJ is trying to hold in contempt the Trump team over Mar-a-Lago.”

Smith is moving at a rapid pace, which suggests charges against Trump are coming soon, Dilianian concluded:

“He’s moving forward quickly and aggressively, in terms of the subpoenas to the state, if you look at the subpoena, there’s a list of people. Almost everyone we know of who was involved in the effort to overturn the election, Rudy Giuliani, Cleta Mitchell, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn — the DOJ wants communications between those people and state and local election officials and they’re vacuuming them up.”

 

Categories
Congress GOP Justice Department

Jim Jordan’s 1,050-Page ‘Report’ On The DOJ Gets A Brutal Fact Check From The Washington Post

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee (led by Ohio’s Jim Jordan) told the media on Friday that they would be releasing a “1000-page report” documenting the alleged politicization of the Justice Department and FBI.

And yet, when the report came out and was examined by Philip Bump of The Washington Post, it soon became clear that Jordan had just dumped a massive nothing burger that was little more than attachments, letters, and other worthless information that has been public knowledge for months.

News broke early Friday: The Republican minority on the House Judiciary Committee was releasing a “1,000 Page Report” on alleged politicization of the FBI and the Justice Department. The length was mentioned in the group’s tweet and in its press release, reinforcing the heft that 1,000 pages of documentation would obviously convey.

There’s just one problem with this assertion: The report itself was less than 50 pages. Most of the rest of the document was letters sent by the minority members of the committee to various people. In fact, there were more than 1,000 pages of material that wasn’t the report itself, instead mostly those letters.

Included were pages with nothing but signatures on the letters: There were more than seven times as many pages that had nothing of substance on them except signatures than there were pages in the report.

Letters. Signatures. A 50-page missive that had been hyped as a giant tome that would blow the lid off the DOJ.

As Bump notes, the entire thing was laughable and suggests just how desperately Republicans are clutching at straws in the final days before next week’s midterm election.

Here’s a graph breaking down what was in the ballyhooed report:

Impressive, huh? A lot of fluff and not much actual content.

And a quick fact-check by The Post also put a serious dent in the report’s credibility.

This is an intentional tactic, of course. Conservative media outlets like the Daily Caller (“ ‘Rotted At Its Core’: House Judiciary GOP Releases Massive 1,000-Page Report On Alleged FBI Misconduct”) and Fox News (“House Republicans release 1,000-page report alleging politicization in the FBI, DOJ”) included the purported length of the document in their article headlines. The idea is that the Judiciary Republicans either have 1,000 pages of analysis to share with the country or, at least, 1,000 pages of evidence to bolster their claims. At most, they have about two dozen.

So what exactly did we learn Friday as a result of Jim Jordan’s pathetic bid for attention and relevance? That the GOP is running (yet again) on lies and misinformation. It’s all they have.

Categories
Crime Donald Trump Justice Department

DOJ Has Evidence Against Trump In Document Heist Case It Has Yet To Unseal: Court Filing

The Justice Department has more evidence against failed, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump that it has not yet unsealed and could be what sends him to prison for espionage and other crimes, according to a court filing made Friday in a federal appeals court, according to The New York Times.

In a 53-page brief before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, the Justice Department broadly challenged the legal legitimacy of orders last month by Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who blocked investigators from using the materials and appointed an independent arbiter to sift them for any that are potentially privileged or Mr. Trump’s personal property. The Justice Department already succeeded in persuading a panel of the Atlanta-based court to exempt about 100 documents marked classified from Judge Cannon’s move — a decision the Supreme Court declined to overturn this week.

The brief also addresses the issue of evidence the DOJ has not yet unsealed.

“Here and before the district court, the government has referred to evidence developed in its investigation to inform the courts of the relevant facts,” DOJ wrote. “Where possible, the government refers to portions of the affidavit accompanying its search warrant application that have been unsealed or to other information in the public record.

“Of necessity, however, the government cannot publicly disclose all the sources of its evidence, particularly while the investigation remains ongoing.”

What could the additional evidence be? Potentially, statements from witnesses who may have seen the former president hiding or moving classified documents from one location to another, which could also mean that the DOJ is already planning to serve more search warrants at other Trump properties. The FBI could also have Trump and other figures under audio and video surveillance to determine what he may be doing with any materials still in his possession.

The very fact that the Justice Department has to keep some evidence under wraps suggests that it must be explosive and could wind up serving as the foundation of a legal case against Trump.

Categories
Crime Donald Trump Justice Department

Latest Moves By DOJ Suggest An Indictment Of Trump Is ‘Inevitable’: Report

With each new day and revelation about the full extent of what failed, one-term former president Donald Trump has done regarding classified documents he stole when he left office, the pressure increases on Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Justice Department to charge the ex-president with serious crimes, including violations of the Espionage Act.

But will the DOJ actually indict Trump?

Franklin Foer of The Atlantic writes that Garland will indeed charge Trump, if only to prove that no one is above the law.

An indictment would be a signal to Trump, as well as to would-be imitators, that no one is above the law. This is the principle that has animated Garland’s career, which began as the Justice Department was attempting to reassert its independence, and legitimacy, after the ugly meddling of the Nixon years.

Foer notes that he believes Garland would love nothing more than to avoid the inevitable shitstorm that indicting Trump will touch off, but the former president has made the move necessary.

When Trump began to assail the search of Mar-a-Lago, Garland asked the court to unseal the inventory of seized documents, essentially calling out the ex-president’s lies. Rather than passively watching attacks on FBI agents, whom Trump scurrilously accused of planting evidence, Garland passionately backed the bureau. As Trump’s lawyers have tried to use a sympathetic judge to slow down the department’s investigation, Garland’s lawyers have responded with bluntly dismissive briefs, composed without the least hint of deference.

Pay attention to what Garland repeatedly said when asked about the Trump case, Foer concludes, and you can find a map for what is likely to happen shortly after the midterm elections.

Every time he’s asked about the former president, he responds, ‘No one is above the law,'” he writes. “He clearly gets frustrated that his answer fails to satisfy his doubters. I believe that his indictment of Trump will prove that he means it.