Thread: Legal Charges Against Trump

Seems that Trump's old "buddy", Michael Avenatti is going away for 14 years.

Rise and fall of Avenatti- A short story

Katie S. Phang - Womp womp. https://twitter.com/KatiePhang/statu...15888715304961

Judge Aileen Cannon Dismisses Donald Trump Mar-a-Lago Case

Trump Lawsuit Seeking the Return of Files Seized from Mar-a-Lago Is Officially Dismissed by Judge Who First Came to Former President’s Aid

Following a pair of brutal rulings from a federal appeals court, former President Donald Trump’s lawsuit seeking the return of thousands of files seized from Mar-a-Lago officially has been dismissed.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s single-page dismissal order has been inevitable since she received the 11th Circuit’s mandate to close the docket.

Earlier this month, a three-judge panel — comprised of two Trump appointees and one George W. Bush appointee — found that Cannon had no jurisdiction to hear the former president’s lawsuit. Trump sued after the FBI seized tens of thousands of documents from Mar-a-Lago, including more than 200 records marked classified up to “Top Secret” and above. Search warrant materials indicate that the authorities suspect possible violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice, and concealment and removal of government records.

• Special counsel subpoenas secretaries of state in Georgia, New Mexico

Special counsel Jack Smith has subpoenaed the secretary of state's offices in Georgia and New Mexico for communications with or involving former President Donald Trump, his 2020 campaign aides, and a list of Trump allies involved in his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

As ABC News has previously reported, Smith has also sent subpoenas to the secretary of state's offices in Michigan and Arizona and to local election officials in Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin -- battleground states targeted by Trump and his allies in their efforts to contest the election.

The subpoena sent to New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, which was obtained by ABC News, is dated November 22 and is also signed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Burke.

Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, was the recipient of Trump's now-famous phone call in January 2021, in which has asked Raffensperger to "find" the exact number of votes he needed to win the state. Trump has repeatedly defended the call, calling it "perfect."

Smith, a longtime federal prosecutor and former head of the Justice Department's public integrity section, was tapped last month by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee the DOJ's investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election and Trump's handling of classified materials after leaving office.

Rudy Giuliani Reportedly Failed To ‘Answer Basic Questions’ At His Misconduct Hearing

Rudy Giuliani allegedly lost his composure last week while appearing as the first witness in his own attorney-misconduct hearing. As reported by Business Insider, the former New York City mayor, 78, seemed unable to answer simple and straightforward questions from the opposing counsel, and frequently “veered off course.”

What Does The Ethics Case Entail?

The ethics case in question was brought by the Washington DC bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, and focuses on the politician’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania. This was when Giuliani was the personal attorney of then-President Donald Trump.

The office alleges that Giuliani filed a “frivolous” lawsuit and sought out to nullify Pennsylvania’s presidential-election results. Giuliani’s claims of widespread voter fraud, the office alleges, occurred despite “no factual or legal basis.”

Giuliani ultimately violated the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct by filing this lawsuit, according to the office, and he also “engaged in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.”

Snip

And Fox wasn't alone, as Robert Bernius, a retired lawyer who presided over the hearings, also apparently "tried multiple times" to bring Giuliani back to the actual matter at hand. "Mr. Giuliani, I understand your frustration, but this is not the point at which you should argue your claims," he said. "Just answer the questions. Thank you."

Earlier in the day, Bernius also interrupted another "long-winded rant" from Giuliani to remind him yet again that his purpose for the day was to testify as a witness. Giuliani then said he had been "persecuted for three or more years" and that his actions were somehow taken out of context. "You've been a trial lawyer for a long time, and you understand how the process works," Bernius noted. "The process is regularized."

Rudy Giuliani D.C. Law-License Hearing: His 5 Worst Excuses

He is just as bad as Trump.

Giuliani must go down as one of the most corrupt cretins in the history of American politics.

No wonder he and Trump gelled so well.

To my mind the prick far worse than Trump.

He is a Rudy Bastard.

Jan. 6 panel to release criminal referrals Monday

The committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol will hold its final event on Monday, during which it will release publicly its list of criminal referrals and vote to publish its final report two days later.

Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told reporters Tuesday that the committee has escalated its timeline for a public-facing event that will cap its more than yearlong investigation.

“We looked at the schedule, and it appears we can complete our work a little bit before that. So why not get it to the public as quick as we can,” he said.

Thompson said they have still not finalized the referrals but are considering “five or six categories,” with the committee flagging behavior for entities such as the Justice Department, the House Ethics Committee, and professional associations including different bar associations.

“Some referrals go one place, some go another,” he said.

While the committee’s final meeting was set to be Dec. 21, the panel will instead release its final report that day.

Originally Posted by S Landreth

While the committee’s final meeting was set to be Dec. 21, the panel will instead release its final report that day.

Yep. Make it public before the GOP gets control.

The orange turd is still desperately trying to stay relevant...

Former President Donald Trump's mysterious "major announcement" is sparking speculation over what he may be preparing to publicize later this week.
On Wednesday, Trump posted a video on his Truth Social account with the caption, "AMERICA NEEDS A SUPERHERO! I will be making a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT tomorrow. Thank you!"

Kinzinger says Trump ‘absolutely guilty’ of crimes ahead of Jan. 6

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said Wednesday that former President Trump is “absolutely guilty” of a crime surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“I think he’s guilty of a crime. I mean, look, he knew what he did. We’ve made that clear. He knew what was happening prior to January 6th. He pressured the Justice Department officials to say, ‘Hey, just say the election was stolen and leave the rest to me.’ And then the Republicans all need to put the stamp of approval on it,” Kinzinger told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead.”

The outgoing Republican lawmaker, a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, highlighted the 187 minutes between the start of the riot and Trump’s eventual attempt to diffuse tensions by telling rioters in a video to “go home.”

“I think he is absolutely guilty. If he is not guilty of some kind of a crime, I mean, what we’ve basically said is presidents are above the law and they can do everything short of a coup as long as it doesn’t succeed,” Kinzinger said, though he gave the caveat that, even as a member of the Jan. 6 panel, he doesn’t have the DOJ’s power to press charges.

Calling Trump “indecisive” to excuse his inactivity during that period would be “probably complementary to him,” Kinzinger said.

“He was actively resisting pressure from his family and from his staff to stop that from happening. And when he finally saw that law enforcement had turned the tide and that the occupation wasn’t going to succeed, only then did he typically come out,” he said.

As the next Congress approaches, the Jan. 6 committee is readying to release its much-anticipated final report, a culmination of the long investigation into the Capitol riots.

The panel is reportedly considering making criminal referrals for Trump and at least four others to the DOJ.

FFS

Former President Donald Trump declared on Wednesday that he would make a "MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT" the following day, but the big announcement on Thursday apparently turned out to be the sale of collectible digital trading cards.
"AMERICA NEEDS A SUPERHERO! I will be making a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT tomorrow. Thank you!" Trump had posted Wednesday on Truth Social — an accompanying video featured an animation of a muscular Trump figure with lasers coming out of his eyes.
But after hyping the upcoming announcement, Trump revealed on Thursday that the big surprise is that people can purchase collectible digital cards for $99 each.
"MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT! My official Donald Trump Digital Trading Card collection is here!" Trump declared in a post on Truth Social. "Collect all of your favorite Trump Digital Trading Cards, very much like a baseball card, but hopefully much more exciting," the post said. "Would make a great Christmas gift. Don’t Wait. They will be gone, I believe, very quickly!"

Even The Blaze sounds less than enthusiastic.

Trump pledged major announcement, revealed digital cards - TheBlaze

Christ on a fucking bike... The raffle prizes....




CollectTrumpCards | Donald Trump Digital Trading Card NFTs

• D.C. bar panel finds Giuliani violated attorney rules in bid to overturn 2020 election

A bar discipline committee in Washington, D.C., has concluded that Rudy Giuliani violated at least one professional rule in his efforts to help former President Donald Trump challenge the results of the 2020 election — a preliminary finding that could result in the suspension or loss of his law license.

The three-member disciplinary committee agreed that Giuliani’s handling of litigation in Pennsylvania crossed ethical lines. Their finding came after a week of testimony by Giuliani — who said Trump waived attorney-client privilege to permit him to testify — and some of his allies, including Trump advisers Bernie Kerik, Christina Bobb and Corey Lewandowski.

“Mr. Giuliani has testified on several occasions that he believes there was a conspiracy,” said D.C. Bar counsel Phil Fox, who investigated and argued the case for Giuliani’s punishment. “There was a conspiracy, and he was the head of it.”

Fox’s case relied on Giuliani’s rushed effort to file lawsuits to throw out hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania votes without any direct evidence of election fraud. Giuliani testified about his hurried drive to Pennsylvania on Nov. 4 in a car with former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to challenge the Pennsylvania election results and to begin spreading discredited claims that the election had been stolen.

Fox said the panel should disbar Giuliani for his conduct.

“I think the harm that was done is unprecedented,” Fox said. “The only sanction that’s appropriate for this kind of misconduct is disbarment.”

Fox and Giuliani will now submit written submissions that the committee will consider before issuing a final finding.

Giuliani contended that his efforts were extraordinarily rushed because of the narrow time frames required in litigating election challenges. He described efforts to obtain affidavits and evidence of election fraud.

After the presentations concluded, Giuliani launched into an extended and furious defense of his conduct, even as his lawyer tried to stop him from speaking.

“It is a typical, unethical, cheap attack,” Giuliani said of Fox’s presentation, reiterating his contention that there’s a legitimate case that the 2020 election was stolen. “I’ll put my work on democracy … up against Mr. Fox and anyone else. For that man to engage in that kind of a personal attack when there was no record of that, and for you to allow him to do that, I consider an outrage.”

“I don’t know what has happened to the defense of lawyers who take on unpopular causes,” Giuliani continued.

Giuliani and his lawyers raised repeated frustrations with their inability to respond to the specific charges against him because the committee didn’t immediately reveal which professional rules it considers him to have violated.

“How can we respond?” wondered John Leventhal, Giuliani’s attorney, after the panel revealed its finding.

The disciplinary committee noted that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit imposes a six-part test for determining whether an attorney should be disbarred, and they noted that an attorney who sued a dry cleaner for $90 million over a lost pair of pants received a 90-day suspension of his law license.

But Fox said that case paled in comparison to Giuliani’s efforts to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters.

“I don’t think that the comparison of an extremely frivolous complaint over a pair of pants against a dry cleaner compares with violating the basic oath we all take to support the constitution and to try to undermine the legitimacy of the election,” Fox said.

Leventhal argued that Giuliani’s long history of service in the Justice Department and as New York City mayor during the 9/11 attacks and aftermath are worth factoring into his discipline.

“Why not treat Mr. Giuliani like any other lawyer,” Leventhal said.

Looking ahead to next week. Monday and Tuesday, could be a bad start for the failed former short-term occupant of the white house.

Monday –

January 6 panel considering Trump referral to justice department for obstruction of Congress

The House January 6 select committee is considering a criminal referral to the justice department against Donald Trump for obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States on the recommendation of a special subcommittee, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The recommendations on the former president – made by the subcommittee examining referrals – were based on renewed examinations of the evidence that indicated Trump’s attempts to impede the certification of the 2020 election results amounted to potential crimes.

Tuesday –

Trump Tax Returns May Be Released After House Panel Meets Tuesday

The House Ways and Means Committee scheduled a closed-door meeting for Tuesday at which lawmakers are likely to review former President Donald Trump’s tax returns and may vote to release some of them.

What a pointless exercise if all they can do is a bit of "urging".

As pointless as all those Benghazi investigations.

The US House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riots is preparing to vote on urging the Justice Department to pursue criminal charges against former President Donald Trump, according to US media reports.


The charges proposed for Mr Trump include insurrection, Politico reported on Friday, citing two unidentified people familiar with the matter.


House committee investigating Capitol riots to vote on recommending criminal charges be pursued against Donald Trump, reports | US News | Sky News

Trump Organization ‘willfully’ hindered probe, hit with secret contempt finding

Donald Trump’s company impeded a grand jury investigation last year by repeatedly failing to turn over evidence in a timely fashion, leading to a secret contempt finding and a $4,000 fine, according to court records made public Tuesday.

The Trump Organization was found to have been “willfully disobeying” four grand jury subpoenas and three court orders, to the detriment of Manhattan prosecutors who were left ill-prepared to question witnesses, Judge Juan Manuel Merchan ruled.

The subpoenas, issued in March, April, May and June 2021, preceded the Trump Organization’s July 2021 indictment on criminal tax fraud charges for helping executives avoid taxes on company-paid perks. The company was convicted this month and faces a fine of up to $1.6 million.

The $4,000 contempt fine was the maximum allowable by law.

It’s yet another kerfuffle involving Trump and allegations of mishandling or withholding records. In April, a judge held Trump in contempt and fined him $110,000 for being slow to respond to a civil subpoena issued by New York’s attorney general. The former president has also been under investigation for storing classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Merchan vaguely referenced the Trump Organization’s contempt proceeding while presiding over the company’s criminal trial, saying he would wait until after it was over to unseal records related to an unspecified proceeding held last year.

That proceeding turned out to be the Trump Organization’s closed-door contempt trial on Oct. 7, 2021 and Merchan’s partially redacted 28-page ruling finding the company in contempt, which he issued on Dec. 8, 2021.

While the company’s name was blacked out in the court record released Tuesday, the details in the decision and the manner in which it was unsealed by the judge made it clear who was involved.

Manhattan prosecutors, frustrated with the company’s lack of compliance, had sought “coercive sanctions” of $60,000 per day, Merchan said.

Trump Organization lawyers argued that the company had been providing a steady stream of records, at one point totaling more than 3.5 million pages of records, but Merchan said that was “just enough to fend off” the prosecution’s request for penalties “while never fully meeting any of the deadlines.”

“When challenged (the company) provided one excuse after another,” Merchan wrote. “At times it claimed it was impossible to meet deadlines because the demands were too voluminous, overbroad or vague. On other occasions, it blamed delays and omissions on human error” or technical issues.

In the recently concluded criminal tax fraud trial, two corporate entities at the Trump Organization were convicted Dec. 6 of charges including charges of conspiracy and falsifying business records. Sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 13.

Didn't Rudy take on the mafia and clean up NY?

I think it's a very uncool thing to do to release trump's tax info just because they can unless there's heavy debt to Russia or the North Koreans.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Christ on a fucking bike... The raffle prizes....




CollectTrumpCards | Donald Trump Digital Trading Card NFTs

He's short on brains, not on ego....

^^^^. $4,000 ? That will learn him.

Not.

^that was filler

• Judge unseals new details of contacts among Rep. Perry, Trump-connected attorneys

A federal judge revealed Friday that earlier this year she granted Justice Department investigators access to emails between three Trump-connected attorneys and Rep. Scott Perry as part of the federal investigation into election subversion efforts by the former president and others.

At the request of DOJ, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell unsealed a June opinion in which she determined that 37 emails sent among Trump-era Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, his aide Ken Klukowski and conservative attorney John Eastman and Perry (R-Pa.) — another top Donald Trump ally who chairs the House Freedom Caucus — were not protected by attorney-client privilege.

Notably, Howell indicated in her opinion that investigators had prioritized accessing any emails sent to or from Perry’s account.

Howell also unsealed a second opinion, issued in September, in which she determined that 331 documents from Clark — whom Trump nearly installed as acting attorney general as part of his bid to seize a second term — were similarly not protected by attorney-client privilege.

The documents were largely versions of a potential autobiography Clark had outlined in mid-October 2021, writing that recounted a bizarre effort to have Trump install him as acting attorney general in order to get more traction to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. The outline included a description of a pivotal Jan. 3, 2021, meeting between Trump and senior DOJ officials where almost the entire top echelon of the department threatened to resign if the then-president put Clark in charge.

Clark’s legal team waded into the fight over the apparent book outline. But Howell seemed to disapprove of aspects of the approach Clark’s lawyers took to the document dispute, describing their strategy at one point as “throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.”

The information revealed in the opinions is the most significant insight yet into what prosecutors are doing with evidence they have obtained in their review of figures associated with Trump’s quest to remain in power despite losing reelection.

FBI agents seized Eastman’s phone in June, the same week they searched Clark’s home. Perry’s phone was also seized by FBI agents in August. Eastman lost a legal bid to reclaim his phone, and Perry, who mounted a similar effort, quickly dropped it.

The judge’s June order appears to have been issued without the involvement of Clark, Klukowski, Eastman or Perry and was based on filings from a “filter team” that DOJ set up to handle the potentially sensitive information.

Howell’s opinion indicated that the filter team, set up to vet any seized communications for potential attorney-client privilege, had reviewed 130,000 documents for attorney-client and attorney work-product privilege.

According to Howell’s opinion, the filter team flagged three exchanges between Eastman and Perry that occurred between Dec. 11 to Dec. 13, 2020. But she described them as nonsubstantive and said they merely referenced a phone call.

The filter team also flagged three emails between Klukowski and Perry as well — including one on Nov. 11, 2020, in which Klukowski attached a document titled “Electors Clause/The Legislature option.” The judge said the emails were non-substantive and did not implicate attorney-client privilege.

In addition, the filter team flagged 19 exchanges between Clark and Perry, including a batch that occurred between June and October 2020, a second batch that occurred just after Biden’s 2021 inauguration and a third batch that came in February 2021.

Rachel Semmel, a spokeswoman for the Center for Renewing America, where Clark is the director of litigation, attacked the unexpected release of the grand jury materials.

“Just to show how desperate they are, the Friday before Christmas when nobody is paying attention, they ‘uncover’ an essay on how the communists are taking over — a foreshadowing of what the Justice Department and the J6 committee are doing now, and articles on how Biden’s global warming plan is going to destroy the economy — it’s hard to take these guys seriously,” she said.

Originally Posted by Topper

I think it's a very uncool thing to do to release trump's tax info just because they can unless there's heavy debt to Russia or the North Koreans.

Or maybe other tax fraud evidence?