Tag: Jack Smith

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Crime Donald Trump Justice Department

Jack Smith Is About To Get Trump’s ‘Trove Of Secrets’

A court filing from Special Counsel Jack Smith makes it clear Smith is demanding that failed former president Donald Trump either “put up or shut up” regarding whether or not he wants to use a specific legal defense in the 2020 election interference case brought against him by the Department of Justice, according to a former U.S. Attorney.

Barbara McQuade, who served as U.S. Attorney for Eastern District of Michigan in the Obama administration, notes in an article she wrote for MSNBC that the motion is to the point and could prove devastating for Trump’s legal team and his overall defense.

In a motion filed this week, the special counsel asked Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to order Trump to provide formal pre-trial notice of any intent to rely on advice of counsel as a defense in the federal election interference case. According to the motion, Trump and his lawyers have ‘repeatedly and publicly’ stated an intent to assert the defense at trial. The Dec. 18 exhibit list deadline, Smith argues, is the time for Trump to put up or shut up.

If Trump uses the defense, McQuade explains, he’ll lose the protections found in the attorney-client provisions of the law, which means he could then be forced to turn over any and all documents between him and his lawyers, which is about as risky as it gets when dealing with a criminal case.

Smith’s demand is important because this defense would trigger two significant consequences — a waiver of attorney-client privilege and a duty to produce all documents related to the advice. Until now, Trump has been able to have it both ways — protect testimony and documents from disclosure as privileged, while also claiming that his conduct was lawful because he simply relied on what his lawyers told him.

Those documents could prove especially damning, as they might well show exactly how Trump planned and carried out his attempted coup that culminated in the horror of January 6, 2021.

No matter what happens with the motion in the long run, McQuade concludes, it will force Trump to make a decision that could send him to prison for decades.

Regardless of whether Smith’s motion succeeds, at some point Trump will have to decide whether asserting what may be a flimsy defense is worth sharing his trove of secrets.

Will he or won’t he? We’re about to find out.

 

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Crime Donald Trump Justice Department

Jack Smith May Have Discovered Trump’s Motive For Stealing Classified Documents

A court filing from Special Counsel Jack Smith in the case of former president Donald Trump’s theft of classified documents which he later stored in boxes at his Mar-a-Lago resort makes it clear that Smith has indeed found the underlying motive for why Trump thought he needed those documents in the first place.

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post took a close look at the filing and writes that one particular “nugget” caught his eye.

While arguing against the motion by Trump’s lawyers to delay the May 20 trial, special counsel Jack Smith’s lawyers assured they’re ready to go and that such a delay isn’t necessary, unsurprisingly. But they also said they are ready to prove something significant that, to this point, has remained shrouded and the subject of much speculation: why Trump allegedly took and kept the documents.

In the filing, Smith and his team of prosecutors write, “That the classified materials at issue in this case were taken from the White House and retained at Mar-a-Lago is not in dispute.”

The filing continues:

“What is in dispute is how that occurred, why it occurred, what Trump knew, and what Trump intended in retaining them — all issues that the Government will prove at trial primarily with unclassified evidence.”

Keep in mind that proving intent isn’t necessary for Trump to be found guilty. After all, the evidence shows he had the documents in his possession and knew he wasn’t allowed to have them, despite his public protestations that he had every right to take any document under his powers as president. But of course those powers went away the second he left office, as Blake notes.

You have documents, you fail to return them when the government comes calling and that’s a crime regardless of why you did it, the argument goes. Trump’s indictment in the case made no direct claims about a potential motive.

Proving a motive, however, might be incredibly helpful to convince a jury that Trump had bad intentions and wasn’t just a pack rat.

Indeed, establishing a motive would seem to drive home the intention of Trump’s actions and combat any arguments that this was all a misunderstanding — or that Trump somehow didn’t know what he had (which the government has taken care to undermine).

What might that motive be? Well, it involves Iran, which is suddenly very much in the headlines after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

Perhaps the most significant document in the indictment deals with a plan for attacking Iran, which Trump allegedly showed to a writer and a publisher. A recording of the scene has been made public.

The document and recording are significant because they show Trump acknowledging, in real time, that the document is classified and that he never declassified it — contrary to his public suggestions about the documents. (Trump had also initially said the document didn’t exist and that his talk was mere bravado — before Smith’s team added the actual alleged document to a superseding indictment.)

More specifically, Trump may have wanted to use the documents as a way to attack his critics, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who has been highly critical of the disgraced ex-president.

Whether other evidence points in this direction, we don’t yet know. But Smith’s team has clearly shown an interest in whether Trump used the documents for his personal advantage. In April it subpoenaed information about the dealings of Trump’s businesses with foreign countries, for instance, apparently in search of a possible financial motive.

Revenge and profit. Those certainly sound like perfect motives for a man as hateful and greedy as Donald Trump. In time, it appears we’ll know for sure.

 

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Crime Elections GOP Justice Department

Jack Smith Looking At Recordings Of Ted Cruz Discussing How To Overturn The 2020 Election

Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith is about to have some important new evidence as he continues to investigate the plot to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

According to CNN, Smith is interested in tapes of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) conspiring to help former president Donald Trump illegally remain in office.


Special Counsel Jack Smith has expressed interest in audio tapes recorded by former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg while she worked at the right-wing network, her lawyer said.

Grossberg attorney Gerry Filippatos told CNN on Wednesday that he has given a spreadsheet to the special counsel’s team, detailing the nearly 90 audiotapes in Grossberg’s possession. Talks are underway for a subpoena, so Grossberg can turn over the material to Smith’s team of federal prosecutors, who are investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election.

[…]

In a related development, MSNBC on Tuesday aired a new snippet of one of Grossberg’s tapes. The previously undisclosed audio featured Republican Sen. Ted Cruz talking with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo about his plans to delay Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021.

In the taped conversation with Bartiromo, Cruz outlines a plan for delaying the certification by establishing a “commission” to further investigate claims of voter fraud. The Texas senator had proposed a commission in a press release on the same day as the audio recording.

That could wind up resulting in Smith charging Cruz with multiple felonies for conspiring to keep Trump in office, even after it was clear that Joe Biden was the clear victor in both the popular and electoral vote.

In the tape Smith has obtained, Cruz can be heard telling Bartiromo, “As we were looking at this January 6 certification, all of the options that were being discussed were problematic. And so I wanted to find a path that was consistent with the Constitution and the law and that address these very real serious claims.”

According to Cruz, what he said on the tape is no big deal, posting on Twitter:

“This @msnbc [clown] is breathlessly reporting that I ‘secretly’ said in a phone call … the EXACT same thing I said on national television the next morning! And then said again on the Senate floor four days later.”

 

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Crime Donald Trump

Jack Smith Has The Perfect Way To ‘Sidestep’ Judge Aileen Cannon If She Rules Against Him

With some legal experts already worried that the appointment of U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon for the federal trial of former president Donald Trump could all but guarantee an acquittal of Trump, it now appears that Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith has thought ahead and has a backup plan.

In a column for The Atlantic, two noted legal experts, Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissmann explain that Trump’s indictment also suggests he committed crimes in other locations, which gives Smith lots of options.

According to the Justice Department and a taped recording of the former president, Trump took classified records from Mar-a-Lago to Bedminster (New Jersey), where he showed off the contents of such records to others.

The two then elaborate on their thesis:

“The indictment alleges that Trump showed a map to a political ally and also showed a writer and a publisher a secret military plan to attack Iran. These two episodes were arguably the most egregious allegations of criminal wrongdoing mentioned in the indictment; they allege not just the improper retention of our nation’s most highly classified information, but the intentional communication of such information.”

That’s bad news for Trump, they allege, because New Jersey then becomes a viable option for more charges against the former president.

Trump’s Bedminster conduct, as described in the indictment, appears to fit the description of two federal offenses designed to keep America’s national-security secrets safe. One makes it a crime to intentionally communicate national-defense information to people not authorized to receive it, and the other makes it a crime to intentionally disclose classified information to the same.

These are more serious crimes than willful retention of such documents, which is done to prevent possible leakage. Deliberate dissemination is the leakage itself.

So if indeed Cannon short-circuits the case in Florida by refusing admit crucial evidence or by other methods, Smith can easily charge Trump in New Jersey.

The legal uncertainties that surround bringing charges in Florida for dissemination of national-security secrets in Bedminster leaves open the possibility that charges might yet be brought in New Jersey — a backup plan of sorts for Smith.

If Aileen Cannon, the Florida judge assigned to the case, were to seek to pocket-veto the charges before her by, say, scheduling the trial for after the 2024 presidential election, the special counsel would be able to sidestep her tactic by proceeding with charges in New Jersey.

Could it be any clearer that Jack Smith is playing three dimensional chess while Trump’s attorneys and others who might try to get in his way are still busy with checkers?

 

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Crime Donald Trump Espionage Russia

Did Trump’s Motive For Stealing Classified Documents Involve Russia?

As he continues to investigate the matter of classified documents former president Donald Trump illegally removed from the White House and took with him to Mar-a-Lago when he left office, Special Counsel Jack Smith is focusing in on Russia as the motive for why the failed ex-president took thousands of secret files and stored them at his Palm Beach golf resort.

In what may wind up being the greatest irony of all, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Murray Waas, Special Counsel Smith and a grand jury he impaneled believe Trump’s obsession with Russia led him to steal the information.

As he left office, Waas has learned, Trump desperately tried to declassify thousands of pages of secret documents that detailed Russia’s efforts to help defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

But Trump was stymied in his efforts to make the records public, leading the outgoing president to rage to aides that the documents would never see the light of day.

Now, sources close to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation tell me that prosecutors have questioned at least three people about whether Trump’s frustrations may have been a motive in Trump taking thousands of pages of classified papers from the White House to Mar-A-Largo, in potential violation of federal law. One of those people was compelled to testify before a federal grand jury, the sources say.

The sources say that prosecutors appear to believe the episode may be central to determining Trump’s intent for his unauthorized removal from the White House of the papers.  Insight into the president’s frame of mind—his intent and motivation, are likely to be the foundational building blocks of any case that the special counsel considers seeking against Trump.

That has led Smith to take a close look at conversations between the White House counsel, the Justice Department, and then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the last frantic hours of the Trump administration.

The sources familiar with some aspects of the special counsel’s investigation further disclosed to me that prosecutors sought information regarding the following issues:   the witnesses were asked about any conversations they personally had with then-president Trump or any of their White House colleagues about the Russia papers; they were asked about conversations between senior Justice Department officials and attorneys with the White House counsel’s office, including two former senior lawyers in the office, John Eisenberg and Pat Philbin, regarding Trump’s presidential order to declassify the Russia papers; and they also were asked about the circumstances surrounding a memo written by Trump’s then Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, the day following Trump’s declassification order, in which Meadows appeared to reverse course and related that the papers would not be released before the concerns of other agencies regarding the Privacy Act were fully assuaged.

“It was very clear from what they asked that their emphasis was on Trump and Meadows,” one person said.

Another former aide to Trump, Kash Patel, has publicly stated that he saw all of the records the disgraced ex-president wanted declassified, telling Breitbart:

 “It’s information that Trump felt spoke to matters regarding everything from Russiagate to the Ukraine impeachment fiasco to major national security matters of great public importance—anything the president felt [the public] had a right to know is in there and more.”

So it was Russia that allegedly helped elect Trump, Russia that led to his impeachment, and Russia that may wind up sending him to prison for the rest of his life if Smith’s investigation proves Russiagate was what Trump clung to even after he left the White House.

Right about now, Donald Trump is probably wishing he had never heard of Russia or his BFF, Vladimir Putin.