Trump and the rest of us have known for years his presidency was his most efficient protection. And that he faced any number of dangers once he lost it. And yet The Don fed the case against him right to the very end. That's Donald. That's their man.
Donald Trump at the White House on 7 December 2020. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
David Smith in Washington @smithinamerica Wed 17 Feb 2021 06.09 AEDT Last modified on Wed 17 Feb 2021 12.56 AEDT
Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/rudygiuliani , the former president’s personal lawyer, have been accused of conspiring to incite the violent riot at the US Capitol, in a legal action filed under a historic law known as the Ku Klux Klan Act.
It comes three days after Trump was acquitted by the US Senate on a charge of inciting the 6 January insurrection, only for the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, who voted to acquit, to point out that presidents are “not immune” to being held accountable by criminal or civil litigation.
The suit alleges that Trump, Giuliani and the extremist groups the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers conspired to incite the attack on the Capitol with the goal of preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s win in the presidential election.
It argues that they therefore violated a law often referred to as the Ku Klux Klan Act, passed in 1871 in response to Klan violence and intimidation preventing members of Congress in the Reconstruction south from carrying out their constitutional duties. The NAACP, founded in 1909, says the statute was designed to protect against conspiracies.
Joseph Sellers, who is with the Washington law firm Cohen Milstein and filed the lawsuit on Thompson’s behalf, told the Associated Press .. https://apnews.com/article/bennie-thompson-sues-trump-capitol-riot-7eb83edae942014d4a6e4a047ef641a9 : “Fortunately, this hasn’t been used very much. But what we see here is so unprecedented that it’s really reminiscent of what gave rise to the enactment of this legislation right after the civil war.”
Thompson, who chairs the House homeland security committee, was among members of Congress who donned gas masks and were rushed to shelter in an office building during the mayhem of 6 January, in which five people died. Members of he Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have been charged with taking part in the riot.
Thompson said in a statement that Trump’s “gleeful support of violent white supremacists led to a breach of the Capitol that put my life, and that of my colleagues, in grave danger. It is by the slimmest of luck that the outcome was not deadlier.
“While the majority of Republicans in the Senate abdicated their responsibility to hold the President accountable, we must hold him accountable for the insurrection that he so blatantly planned. Failure to do so will only invite this type of authoritarianism for the anti-democratic forces on the far right that are so intent on destroying our country.”
Filed on Tuesday in federal district court in Washington, the suit charts an expansive effort by Trump and Giuliani to undermine the election result despite state officials and courts rejecting their false allegations of fraud. The two men portrayed the election as stolen while Trump “endorsed rather than discouraged” threats of violence from his supporters leading up to the attack on the Capitol, the suit says.
“The carefully orchestrated series of events that unfolded at the Save America rally and the storming of the Capitol was no accident or coincidence,” it continues. “It was the intended and foreseeable culmination of a carefully coordinated campaign to interfere with the legal process required to confirm the tally of votes cast in the Electoral College.”
Presidents are typically shielded from the courts for actions carried out in office but this one focuses on Trump in his personal rather than official capacity. Seeking unspecified punitive and compensatory damages, it alleges that none of the conduct at issue is related to Trump’s responsibilities as president.
03:02 Mitch McConnell lambasts Donald Trump but votes not guilty in impeachment trial – video
Sellers explained: “Inciting a riot, or attempting to interfere with the congressional efforts to ratify the results of the election that are commended by the constitution, could not conceivably be within the scope of ordinary responsibilities of the president. In this respect, because of his conduct, he is just like any other private citizen.”
Trump faces a potential slew of lawsuits now he has lost the legal protections of office. Additional actions could be brought by other members of Congress or police officers injured in the riot, a prospect acknowledged by the White House on Tuesday.
Jen Psaki, the press secretary, told reporters Biden “certainly supports the rights of individuals, members of Congress and otherwise, to take steps through the judicial process but I don’t think we have a further comment on it than that”.
She added: “I am not going to speculate on criminal prosecution from the White House podium. The president has committed to having an independent justice department that will make their own decision about the path forward.”
Trump defence lawyers are expected to argue that his speech was protected by the first amendment to the constitution and point out that, in a speech on 6 January, he told supporters to behave “peacefully”.
Jason Miller, a Trump adviser, said in a statement Trump had not organised the rally that preceded the riot and “did not incite or conspire to incite any violence at the Capitol on 6 January”.
Jason Johnson On NAACP’s Insurrection Lawsuit | Deadline | MSNBC
•Feb 18, 2021
MSNBC
Contributor to The Grio Jason Johnson and former U.S. attorney Chuck Rosenberg discuss the lawsuit filed by the NAACP and Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) contending that Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani violated the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act and how they could face costly penalties. Aired on 02/17/2021.
The former president’s accountants will give New York prosecutors the financial records he has spent years trying to shield.
The case concerned a subpoena to former President Donald J. Trump’s accountants, Mazars USA, by the office of the Manhattan district attorney. Pete Marovich for The New York Times
By Adam Liptak, William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Benjamin Weiser
Feb. 22, 2021
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a last-ditch attempt by former President Donald J. Trump to shield his financial records, issuing a brief, unsigned order .. https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/022221zor_2cp3.pdf .. that ended Mr. Trump’s bitter 18-month battle to stop prosecutors in Manhattan from poring over his tax returns as they investigate possible financial crimes.
The court’s order was a decisive defeat for Mr. Trump, who had gone to extraordinary lengths to keep his tax returns .. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/us/trump-tax-returns.html .. and related documents secret, taking his case to the Supreme Court twice. There were no dissents noted.
From the start, Mr. Trump’s battle to keep his returns under wraps had tested the scope and limits of presidential power. Last summer .. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/us/trump-taxes-supreme-court.html , the justices rejected Mr. Trump’s argument that state prosecutors cannot investigate a sitting president, ruling that no citizen was above “the common duty to produce evidence.” This time, the court denied Mr. Trump’s emergency request to block a subpoena for his records, effectively ending the case.
The ruling is also a big victory for the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat. He will now have access to eight years’ worth of Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, as well as other financial records that Mr. Vance’s investigators view as vital to their inquiry into whether the former president and his company manipulated property values to obtain bank loans and tax benefits.
“The work continues,” Mr. Vance said in a statement.
In his own lengthy statement, Mr. Trump lashed out at the Supreme Court’s decision and the investigation. He characterized the inquiry as a politically motivated attack by New York Democrats, calling it “a continuation of the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of our Country.” He also falsely asserted, again, that he had won the 2020 election.
“The Supreme Court never should have let this ‘fishing expedition’ happen, but they did,” Mr. Trump said. He added, “For more than two years, New York City has been looking at almost every transaction I’ve ever done, including seeking tax returns which were done by among the biggest and most prestigious law and accounting firms in the U.S.”
Prosecutors in Manhattan now face a monumental task. Dozens of investigators and forensic accountants will have to sift through millions of pages of financial documents. Mr. Vance has brought in an outside consulting firm and a former federal prosecutor with significant experience in white-collar and organized crime cases to drill down into the arcana of commercial real estate and tax strategies.
The Supreme Court’s order set in motion a series of events that could lead to the startling possibility of a criminal trial of a former U.S. president. At a minimum, the ruling wrests from Mr. Trump control of his most closely held financial records and the power to decide when, if ever, they would be made available for public inspection.
The court’s ruling concerned a grand jury subpoena issued by Mr. Vance’s office in August 2019 .. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/nyregion/trump-taxes-cyrus-vance.html .. and sent to Mr. Trump’s accountants, Mazars USA. The firm has said it will comply with the final ruling of the courts, meaning that the grand jury should receive the documents in short order. On Monday, Mazars issued a statement saying it “remains committed to fulfilling all of our professional and legal obligations.”
The crucial next phase in the Manhattan inquiry will begin this week when investigators collect a vast trove of digital records from a law firm that represents Mazars, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigation, as well as former prosecutors and others who described the next steps.
Armed with the subpoena, the investigators will go to the law firm’s Westchester County office outside New York City and take away copies of tax returns, financial statements and other records and communications relating to Mr. Trump’s taxes and those of his businesses.
The inquiry, which began in 2018, initially examined hush-money payments to two women who had said they had affairs with Mr. Trump, relationships the former president has denied. But it has since grown to include potential crimes like insurance, tax and banking fraud.
Even before the Supreme Court ruling, Mr. Vance’s investigation had heated up, with his office issuing more than a dozen subpoenas in recent months and interviewing witnesses, including employees of Deutsche Bank, one of Mr. Trump’s top lenders.
One focus of Mr. Vance’s inquiry is whether Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, inflated the value of some of his signature properties to obtain the best possible loans, while lowballing the values to reduce property taxes, people with knowledge of the matter have said. The prosecutors are also examining the Trump Organization’s statements to insurance companies about the value of various assets.
The records from Mazars — including the tax returns, the business records on which they are based and communications between the Trump Organization and its accountants — may allow investigators to see a fuller picture of potential discrepancies between what the company told its lenders and told tax authorities, the people said.
It remains unclear whether the prosecutors will ultimately file charges against Mr. Trump, the company, or any of its executives, including Mr. Trump’s two adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
The court’s order will not put Mr. Trump’s tax returns in the hands of Congress or make them automatically public. Grand jury secrecy laws will keep the records private unless Mr. Vance’s office files charges and enters the documents into evidence at a trial.
The New York Times obtained tax return data .. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/us/donald-trump-taxes-guide.html .. extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office.
Last year, The Times published a series of investigative articles based on an analysis of the data .. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html , which showed that Mr. Trump had paid virtually no income tax for many years and that he is under an audit in which an adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million. He and his companies file separate tax returns and employ complicated and sometimes aggressive tax strategies, the investigation found.
As a candidate in 2016, Mr. Trump promised to disclose his tax returns, but he never did, breaking with White House tradition. Instead, he fought hard to shield the returns from scrutiny, for reasons that have been the subject of much speculation.
In 2019, Mr. Trump went to court to fight the subpoena, arguing that as a sitting president, he was immune from criminal investigation. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled against that argument and said state prosecutors may require third parties to turn over a sitting president’s financial records for use in a grand jury investigation.
Mr. Trump appealed to the Supreme Court. In July 2020, the justices soundly rejected Mr. Trump’s central constitutional argument against the subpoena in a landmark ruling.
“No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority .. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19-635_o7jq.pdf .. in that decision.
Although Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented from other aspects of the decision, all nine justices agreed with that proposition. But the court gave Mr. Trump another opportunity to challenge the subpoena, on narrower grounds.
Mr. Trump did just that, arguing that the subpoena was overly broad and amounted to political harassment .. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/nyregion/donald-trump-taxes-cyrus-vance.html?searchResultPosition=6 . Those arguments were rejected by a trial judge and the federal appeals court in New York. The appeals court noted the documents turned over to the grand jury would not be made public, undermining the argument that Mr. Vance was seeking to embarrass Mr. Trump.
[Insert: Your honor, yes, my client robbed the fucking bank, but if you find him guilty his reputation will be damaged. Shite. Trump's reputation has been damaged beyond repair, by his own actions, before now.]
Legal experts said the court order had effectively ended Mr. Trump’s legal quest, and further attempts to thwart the subpoena could undermine his defense.
“Trump will not be given deference as a former president,” said Anne Milgram, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan who later served as New Jersey’s attorney general and has been critical of Mr. Trump. “Under the eyes of the laws of the state of New York, he has the same rights as others in the state. Neither more nor less.”
Jonah E. Bromwich and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002. @adamliptak • Facebook
William K. Rashbaum is a senior writer on the Metro desk, where he covers political and municipal corruption, courts, terrorism and broader law enforcement topics. He was a part of the team awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. @WRashbaum • Facebook
Ben Protess covers the Trump administration, including its overhaul of Obama-era regulations and potential conflicts of interest arising out of the president's personal business dealings. He previously covered white-collar crime, Wall Street lobbying and the private equity industry. @benprotess
Benjamin Weiser is a reporter covering the Manhattan federal courts. He has long covered criminal justice, both as a beat and investigative reporter. Before joining The Times in 1997, he worked at The Washington Post. @BenWeiserNYT
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