Prosecutors hint at probe into ‘possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization’

The Hill logoThe Manhattan district attorney’s office on Monday hinted that its subpoena for President Trump‘s tax returns is part of an investigation into “possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization,” including potential fraud allegations detailed in media reports in recent years.

In response to the latest legal challenge by Trump’s attorneys, New York County prosecutors said that news reports about the president’s financial history provide sufficient justification for requesting the extensive amount of information from the accounting firm Mazars in their grand jury investigation.

“In light of these public reports of possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization, there was nothing facially improper (or even particularly unusual) about the Mazars Subpoena, which [was] issued in connection with a complex financial investigation, requesting eight years of records from an accounting firm,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing submitted Monday.nContinue reading. Continue reading.

Berman Testifies That Barr Fired Him — And Then Lied

A former top prosecutor testified under oath on Thursday that Attorney General William Barr lied about the events surrounding his departure from his job last month.

Barr had announced on June 19 that Geoffrey Berman would be resigning from his role as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Berman testified in a closed-door hearing of the House Judiciary Committee that Barr had pushed him out of his job in order to install the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, in the position. Continue reading.

Prosecutor spills about Bill Barr’s ‘unprecedented, unnecessary and unexplained’ efforts to oust him

AlterNet logoGeoffrey Berman, the man who until recently served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, told members of Congress on Thursday about Attorney General Bill Barr’s “unprecedented, unnecessary and unexplained” efforts to oust him.

In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Berman explained how Barr contacted him and repeatedly pressed him to step down from his position at SDNY to take another high-profile position within the government.

Berman, however, told Barr that he wanted to stay at his current job until a replacement was nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the United States Senate. Continue reading.

READ: Ousted Manhattan US Attorney Berman testifies Barr ‘repeatedly urged’ him to resign

The Hill logoGeoffrey Berman, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, on Thursday testified that Attorney General William Barr “repeatedly urged” him to resign before forcing him out in June.

Berman told the House Judiciary Committee that prior to his ouster, he resisted Barr’s urging because “there were important investigations in the office that I wanted to see through to completion.”

Those investigations included whether President Trump‘s personal attorney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, violated laws on lobbying for foreign interests as it relates to Ukraine. Continue reading.

Schiff: Court Papers Show Trump Could Have Been Charged

New evidence emerged Thursday related to the campaign finance crime that helped put former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen in prison. A judge unsealed court documents in the case, indicating that the investigation has concluded and revealing extensive communications between Cohen, then-candidate Donald Trump, and campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks.

According to House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, the new materials show that were Trump not the president, “he would be criminally charged as Cohen’s co-conspirator.”

“The documents unsealed in the SDNY case against Michael Cohen demonstrate that Donald Trump was intimately involved in devising and executing a corrupt scheme to prevent his affair with Stormy Daniels from being revealed in the final weeks of the 2016 election,” Schiff said. “They show that contrary to his public statements for months afterwards seeking to distance himself from the payments that were made to Daniels, and another woman, Karen McDougal, he authorized the illegal payment of hush money, and coordinated doing so with his attorney, Cohen, and his Press Secretary, Hope Hicks.”

View the complete July 18 article by Cody Fenwick from AlterNet on the National memo website here.

Trump’s legal troubles are far from over even as Mueller probe ends

For 22 months, Donald Trump’s presidency has been haunted largely by one legal foe, a Washington prosecutor with seemingly unlimited power but who was also a single target for Trump to portray as the leader of an unfair “witch hunt.”

Yet even as one legal cloud lifts with the conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, others loom large on the horizon — creating additional threats to the president’s standing as he seeks to shift attention toward his 2020 reelection campaign.

Nearly every organization Trump has run over the past decade remains under investigation by state or federal authorities, and he is mired in a variety of civil litigation, with the center of gravity shifting from Mueller’s offices in Southwest Washington to Capitol Hill and state and federal courtrooms in New York, the president’s hometown and the headquarters of his company.

View the complete March 23 article by Rosalind S. Helderman and David A. Fahrenthold on The Washington Post website here.

‘The president is a crook’: Legal experts tear into Trump as he lies and says new court filings ‘clear’ him

Trump claims that the court filings against Cohen “clear” him. They do not.

In response to the two court filingsmade by federal prosecutors against Michael Cohen on Friday, President Donald Trump took to the internet.

And this time, unlike his early morning outburst in which the president seemed to be on the verge of panic, Trump confidently proclaimed that the new filings mean he is proven innocent and home free.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Totally clears the President. Thank you!

123K people are talking about this

Only one problem: he isn’t.

View the complete December 7 article by Matthew Chapman on the AlterNet.org website here.