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Here We Go Again?
A career federal prosecutor in Virginia is reportedly poised to decline to bring a criminal case against New York Attorney General Letitia James on bogus mortgage fraud charges drummed up by the Trump administration.
In light of the pressure from President Trump to charge James, the refusal by Elizabeth Yusi in the Eastern District of Virginia has attorneys in the office bracing for her firing, MSNBC reports. Yusi oversees major criminal prosecutions in the Norfolk office; the James property under scrutiny is in Norfolk. The Guardian subsequently confirmed the gist of the MSNBC report that Yusi doesn’t believe she has probable cause to charge James.
The exact timing of the unfolding clash remain unclear. MSNBC reported that Yusi expects to present her declination decision in the James case to newly installed interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan “in the coming weeks.”
Halligan’s predecessor, Erik Siebert, was forced out by Trump for refusing to bring politically motivated prosecutions against former FBI Director Jim Comey and against James. Facing a looming statute of limitations deadline, Halligan’s first act as U.S. attorney was to immediately indict Comey on bogus charges of lying to Congress. Without pressing statute of limitations concerns, the James case doesn’t appear to be on a similar fast track.
As Molly Roberts writes at Lawfare, the James case is even weaker than the case against Comey: “It seems wholly unlikely that a prosecutor could reasonably expect to secure a conviction on any of the charges included in the criminal referral — which explains why, after interviewing and presenting to the grand jury witnesses from insurers to underwriters to realtors to James’s niece herself, the Eastern District team didn’t find evidence they felt was sufficient to prove that James knowingly made a false statement intended to influence a bank.”
John Durham Undercut Case Against Comey
ABC News reported that former Special Counsel John Durham “told federal prosecutors investigating James Comey that he was unable to uncover evidence that would support false statements or obstruction charges against the former FBI director.”
Durham’s controversial tenure as special counsel included the highly politicized prosecution of Hunter Biden and the investigation of the investigators who probed Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Durham met with federal prosecutors in August, according to the ABC News report: “[H]is conclusions raise the prospect that [he] could now become a key figure aiding Comey’s defense.”
Durham wasn’t alone. Investigators in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office had scrutinized Comey for years without finding any chargeable offenses.
After two months, Virginia prosecutors came to the same conclusions, ABC News reported.
But as we now know, Halligan rebuffed the decision not to charge Comey and personally brought the case to a grand jury, which indicted him on two of the three charges she had sought.
News of Durham being interviewed recently by investigators came as a judge moved up Comey’s arraignment to Wednesday to accommodate the large crowd expected at the courthouse in Alexandria.
A New Round of Investigating the Investigators Begins
The Republican noise machine is seizing on newly released information that in its early days the Jan. 6 criminal investigation sought phone records of several GOP senators, including Lindsey Graham (SC), Bill Hagerty (TN), Josh Hawley (MO), Ron Johnson (WI), Dan Sullivan (AK), Tommy Tuberville (AL), Cynthia Lummis (WY), and Marsha Blackburn (TN). Phone records for Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) were also obtained for the period right around the certification of the election, suggesting investigators were looking into whether the lawmakers were involved in the fake electors scheme.
To be clear, the information about the Jan. 6 investigation was released by the Trump FBI to Republicans on the Hill as a way to rewrite the history of the failed coup attempt and continue to attempt to cast it as a Biden-era abuse of power. Hill Republicans held a press conference yesterday to trumpet the new information.
Not all news outlets saw through the charade. Punchbowl headlined it a “New Jan. 6 controversy …”
Good Read
TPM’s Josh Kovensky: The Trump Administration’s Mostly Unnoticed Move to Crack Down on the Opposition
Trump Assault on the Rule of Law Even Worse Than Expected
Emily Bazelon returns to a group of former high-level officials in the DC legal establishment whom she surveyed last year before the election on the threat a Trump II presidency would pose to the rule of law. The group’s new assessment of what’s happened in the first months of Trump’s second term is exceedingly grim.
Abrego Garcia Still Twisting in the Wind
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland continues to get slow-rolled by the Trump administration in one of the Kilmar Abrego Garcia cases. But in a hearing yesterday in Abrego Garcia’s habeas corpus case, she gave the administration a deadline of this week to show that it has plans to deport him to a third country or she’ll order him released from detention.
Illinois Sues to Block Trump’s National Guard Deployment
A federal judge in Chicago declined to rule immediately on Illinois’ request for an injunction blocking President Trump from deploying national guard troops to the state.
Finally, Some Kind of Legal Rationale for Trump’s Cartel War?
The Trump DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel has produced a classified legal memo “that justifies lethal strikes against a secret and expansive list of cartels and suspected drug traffickers,” CNN reports:
The opinion is significant, legal experts said, because it appears to justify an open-ended war against a secret list of groups, giving the president power to designate drug traffickers as enemy combatants and have them summarily killed without legal review. Historically, those involved in drug trafficking were considered criminals with due process rights, with the Coast Guard interdicting drug-trafficking vessels and arresting smugglers.
The administration has not provided a fully fleshed-out legal rationale for the lawless and lethal attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats on the high seas. It has also rebuffed congressional requests for the OLC memo.
Trump Pentagon Eases Worst of its Press Restrictions
After negotiations with national news organizations, the Pentagon has withdrawn a new rule that was interpreted as requiring it to sign off on news reports that included defense information it had not officially released, the NYT reports.
Uncle Walter Is Turning in His Grave
The new owners of CBS have officially installed Bari Weiss as the new editor-in-chief of CBS News.
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