Federal prosecutors resign over dropping corruption charges against NYC mayor

A federal prosecutor assigned to the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams resigned Friday in a blistering letter that accused top leaders at the Justice Department of looking for a “fool” to dismiss the criminal charges, reported CNN.

The attorney, Hagan Scotten, is the seventh person to resign over the calamitous effort to dismiss charges against Adams. Scotten was a line prosecutor on the case and had been placed on administrative leave Thursday for refusing to sign off on its dismissal.

In a letter to acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, Scotten slammed what he called a “dismissal-with-leverage.”

“Any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way,” Scotten told Bove, who is President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney.

“If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion,” Scotten added. “But it was never going to be me.”

Scotten, a Harvard law graduate awarded two bronze stars as a troop commander in Iraq, is a seasoned prosecutor who has handled several corruption cases in New York including three associates of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He has also worked on other cases, against Bishop Lamor Whitehead, who is close to Adams and was convicted at trial on multiple counts of fraud. Scotten was also a clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts.

CNN has reached out to Scotten for comment.

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Creators: What Does It Take To Be The 'Trial of the Century'

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators
May 28, 2024

This week we can expect a verdict in New York v. Donald Trump. This might be the most important criminal trial in the history of our country — a former president and current frontrunner in the race for another shot at the White House is on trial in Manhattan accused of falsifying business records to cover up a tryst with a porn star.

We have heard talk in the past of "trials of the century." The People v. Simpson generated some renewed interest with the recent death of O.J. Simpson. In 1994, the football Hall of Famer's ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ronald Goldman were stabbed to death outside her home in Los Angeles. After more than a year of mesmerizing television coverage, Simpson was acquitted.

The Simpson trial riveted the nation. Every moment of the trial was televised on cable news channels. News programs and talk shows analyzed every facet of the trial. The same is not true for New York v. Trump. The lack of cameras has contributed to a lack of interest.

The criminal prosecution of a former president seems to have generated less interest than the 2022 civil trial involving Johnny Depp and his ex-wife, Amber Heard. According to Axios, from April 4 to May 16, 2022, news articles about the trial had generated more social-media interactions per article in the United States than the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion on abortion, Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, and the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Live streaming is the difference between the incredible interest in Depp's trial and the ho-hum view of Trump's trial.

The 20th century had more than one "trial of the century." In fact, exactly 100 years ago, there was a murder trial splashed across newspapers nationwide.

Two men accused of murder, and their names have withstood the test of time even without livestreaming.

In 1924, Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb, two wealthy University of Chicago students, rented a car and stocked it with tools to commit the "perfect crime." They drove to a nearby Chicago park and waited for the perfect victim. They found Bobby Franks.

The two young men lured the 14-year-old Franks into the car. They were subsequently accused of murdering and mutilating Franks for the thrill of the kill.

Although the prosecution of Leopold and Loeb was heralded as the "trial of the century," the case was not really a trial at all. Renowned criminal defense attorney Clarence Darrow changed the young men's pleas from not guilty to guilty and focused his efforts on preventing their execution.

Darrow chose to focus on saving the lives of Leopold and Loeb, his two young sadistic clients. Darrow asked the judge, "Why did they kill little Bobby Franks? Not for money, not for spite; not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly, for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way."

He continued to argue, "Kill them. Will that prevent other senseless boys or other vicious men or vicious women from killing? No!"

Darrow's condemnation of the death penalty concluded, "Your Honor, what excuse could you possibly have for putting these boys to death? You would have to turn your back on every precedent of the past. You would have to turn your back on the progress of the world. You would have to ignore all human sentiment and feeling — you would have to do all this if you would hang boys of 18 and 19 years of age who have come into this court and thrown themselves upon your mercy."

Leopold and Loeb were saved from the death penalty and sentenced to life in prison. Trump is not facing the death penalty, but maybe the death of his political ambitions. Can his lawyers save the life of his campaign?

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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The first of Trump's much avoided criminal trials is finally underway in New York City

The former president refers to the four prosecutions he faces as “witch hunts” motivated by partisanship and part of a nefarious scheme to keep him from returning to the White House. opined the editorial board of The New York Times. Donald Trump has repeated this narrative even though the prosecutions have been brought by different prosecutors around the country, and even though different grand juries, each composed of a random selection of regular citizens in different states, handed up indictments that now total 88 felony charges against him.

In the weeks leading up to the start of this trial, Mr. Trump has argued, dishonestly, that the judge and the prosecutor have treated him unfairly, and that it will be impossible for him to get a fair trial in Manhattan because New Yorkers are biased against him. But the opening days of the trial, devoted to jury selection, have already demonstrated the great care and respect with which everyone involved in the trial, except for Mr. Trump, has treated the process. Joshua Steinglass, a member of the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, told potential jurors on Tuesday that the case “has nothing to do with personal politics.”

“We don’t suggest you need to have been living under a rock for the last eight years, or the last 30 years,” he said. “We don’t expect you not to have heard about this, or not to have discussed this case with friends. What we do need is for you to keep an open mind.”

Dozens of potential jurors took those instructions seriously and admitted they could not be impartial. One man was excused from service after telling the judge that it was “going to be hard for me to be impartial,” since many of his family members and friends were Republicans. Justice Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing the trial, excused him, as other potential jurors stepped up. So far, seven jurors have been seated. At least two potential jurors were dismissed by the judge because of social media posts.

If anything, Justice Merchan has exhibited an extra degree of tolerance for Mr. Trump’s strategy of systematically attacking the legitimacy of the courts and court officials through repeated verbal outbursts and countless legal motions and other attempts to delay his trials. In the New York case, Mr. Trump received a short extension last month when federal prosecutors found a tranche of documents that had not been turned over to the defense team. In the week before the start of the trial, he filed three emergency appeals in three days, as The Times reported, including a civil action against the judge, which were quickly rejected by an appeals court.

The fact that he was able to have each of these motions fully considered is evidence of the justice system operating as it should, with deliberation and due process. Especially in criminal prosecutions, courts take the legal rights of litigants very seriously, to ensure that defendants receive fair trials. An appeals court is still considering Mr. Trump’s request to throw out a gag order that prevents him from verbally attacking witnesses, prosecutors or the judge’s family, but it will not delay the trial before the ruling. (Mr. Trump is not prevented from publicly criticizing the judge.)

In the other criminal cases against him, Mr. Trump has also been able to take full advantage of every legal protection available to him as a defendant.

He appealed his federal prosecution related to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol on the grounds that he enjoys absolute immunity for actions he took as president. This argument has been rejected by every judge to consider it. Still, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal later this month, delaying the start of his trial in that case indefinitely, and possibly until after the election. While the Supreme Court weighs his immunity claim, the trial judge in the federal Jan. 6 case, Tanya Chutkan, put the proceedings on hold. In the other federal prosecution, on charges of illegally withholding highly classified national-security documents, Mr. Trump has had numerous favorable rulings from the judge handling that case.

The election-interference case out of Georgia was delayed by an extensive hearing on a possible conflict of interest for the lead prosecutor, Fani Willis, who had been in a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, an outside prosecutor she hired to lead the case. After taking testimony from a series of witnesses, the judge decided Ms. Willis could remain on the case, but not with Mr. Wade. (Mr. Wade ultimately withdrew.) Mr. Trump appealed that decision, which the Georgia Court of Appeals is now considering.

The ability to file such appeals, successful or not, is essential to how the law functions in the United States. Despite having benefited from its protections, to Mr. Trump, the rule of law is nothing more than an obstacle to be overcome, an instrument of power to use at will.

Mr. Trump’s vision of an American legal system that protects his interests goes beyond his trial, of course, and extends in particular to the Justice Department. He has been explicit about his desire, if elected in November, to bring the Justice Department more fully under his control, to use it to protect his friends and, more important, punish his enemies. As president, Mr. Trump had an unparalleled record of abusing presidential pardons, and if he is re-elected, he appears likely to order the Justice Department to drop the criminal cases against him or to try to pardon himself for potential crimes. To Mr. Trump, independent prosecutors and Justice Department officials are precisely the problem. They will say no to him when he wants to do things that are illegal or unconstitutional, choosing to be faithful to the Constitution rather than to him. This Mr. Trump cannot abide.

Mr. Trump has said he intends to find a prosecutor to “go after” Mr. Biden and his family, suggesting that he intends to pursue prosecution with little regard to evidence or facts. According to The Washington Post, he also wants to investigate figures in his administration whom he perceives as being disloyal to him, including John Kelly, his former chief of staff; William Barr, his former attorney general; and Gen. Mark Milley, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (Mr. Trump has separately suggested General Milley should be executed for treason.)

As Mr. Kelly told The Post, “There is no question in my mind he is going to go after people that have turned on him.”

Mr. Trump has also repeatedly said that his prosecution is like no other. In fact, there are numerous examples of politicians, of both parties, who faced prosecution, and in some cases were convicted, during their candidacies. The former Texas governor Rick Perry, a Republican, ran for president in 2016 while under indictment for abuse of power. (Those charges were later dismissed.) Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat of New Jersey, was indicted on federal bribery charges, and may run for re-election as an independent.

The former president is singular in one respect: As much as he accuses others of warping the justice system, he is the one who consistently demeans and disparages the role of the courts and the exercise of due process. The leaders of the Republican Party, echoing the views of Mr. Trump’s fervent base of followers, have fallen in line behind him, indicating that they will continue to support his candidacy even if he is a convicted felon.

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GOP appointed judge warns of violence and tyranny

A Republican-appointed judge denounced Donald Trump’s social media attacks against the judge presiding over the former president’s hush money trial in Manhattan and his daughter, calling them assaults on the rule of law that could lead to violence and tyranny, reported the Washington Post.

“When judges are threatened, and particularly when their family is threatened, it’s something that’s wrong and should not happen,” U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in a live interview Thursday. He added, “It is very troubling because I think it is an attack on the rule of law.”

The unusual media statement by a sitting federal judge came after Trump blasted New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan and his daughter, Loren Merchan, criticizing her affiliation with a digital marketing company that works with Democratic candidates and erroneously attributing to her a social media post showing Trump behind bars.

Walton, who was appointed by presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to courts in Washington in 1981 and 1991, said “any reasonable, thinking person” would appreciate the impact of Trump’s rhetoric on some followers, intentional or not. The judge recalled how a disgruntled litigant killed the son and wounded the husband of New Jersey federal Judge Esther Salas at her home in a 2020 shooting.

Since late 2020, as Trump began escalating his attacks on the judiciary, serious investigated threats against federal judges have more than doubled, from 224 in 2021 to 457 in 2023, according to the U.S. Marshals Service, as first reported by Reuters. Federal judges in Washington say at least half of trial judges handling cases arising from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol have received a surge in threats and harassment, including death threats to their homes, with Trump’s election obstruction trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, placed under 24-hour protection.

“The rule of law can only be maintained if we have independent judicial officers who are able to do their job and ensure that the laws are in fact enforced and that the laws are applied equally to everybody who appears in our courthouse,” Walton told CNN. He was prompted to speak out of concern for the “future of our country and the future of democracy in our country,” Walton said, “because if we don’t have a viable court system that’s able to function efficiently, then we have tyranny.”

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Fani Willis hearing not a good look for DA's office or special county prosecutor

At some point in the coming weeks or months, the Georgia criminal case against former President Donald J. Trump and his allies will presumably focus once again on the defendants and whether they conspired to overturn Mr. Trump’s election loss there in 2020, reported The New York Times.

But the extraordinary detour that the case has taken, plunging into the intimate details of a romantic relationship between the two lead prosecutors and forcing them to fight accusations of impropriety, may have changed it fundamentally. Now it is unclear whether the case will even remain with Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, since lawyers for Mr. Trump and other defendants are seeking to have her entire office disqualified.

Even if the presiding judge allows Ms. Willis to keep the case, she is likely to face tough scrutiny from now on, including from a new state commission that will be able to remove prosecutors and from the Georgia Senate, which has opened an investigation.

The controversy has also provided fresh fodder for Mr. Trump and his allies, who are adept at exploiting their opponents’ vulnerabilities. Mr. Trump was already making inflammatory attacks on Ms. Willis even before her relationship with Nathan J. Wade, the lawyer she hired to help run the election interference case, came to light.

If nothing else, Ms. Willis’s decision not to disclose her relationship with Mr. Wade from its outset has created a messy diversion from an extremely high-stakes prosecution. Even if the revelations do not taint a jury pool in Fulton County, where Democrats far outnumber Republicans and Ms. Willis has many admirers, her world-famous case could face a lasting perception problem. And if the case gets taken from her, more serious problems may follow.

Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court suggested on Friday that he is likely to not rule next week on whether the relationship created a disqualifying conflict of interest. But already, state officials are considering what might happen if Ms. Willis, who has given no indication that she will step aside voluntarily, has to hand off the case to another district attorney in the state.

“You have to find an office that has the resources to handle this type of case, and there are less than a handful,” Pete Skandalakis, the executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, said in an interview. “You can’t go to a rural D.A.’s office that only has seven or eight prosecutors and say, ‘Can you take on this case?’”

The Trump case is an expansive racketeering prosecution involving 15 defendants and a hive of assistant district attorneys who have been steeped in it for several years. One of the nation’s top racketeering experts works on Ms. Willis’s team and helped draw up the case.

Ms. Willis herself has years of experience in prosecuting racketeering cases, and has so far extracted guilty pleas from four of the initial 19 defendants. Before the conflict-of-interest allegations emerged, she had hoped to go to trial in August, a prospect that now seems less likely than ever.

Skandalakis would be in charge of reassigning the case, if it comes to that. Among the considerations, he said, would be “how far” from Fulton County a new prosecutor would be. That probably means that the case would fall to a district attorney’s office in the Atlanta region. A new prosecutor could essentially do as he or she pleased with the case, and could even decide to drop all the charges.

Flynn D. Broady Jr., the district attorney of Cobb County, next to Atlanta, and a Democrat like Ms. Willis, said that if he were asked to take over the Trump case, “I would review the case file, to make an informed decision” about moving forward with the prosecution.

Underscoring the risks for Ms. Willis, Judge McAfee has said that even the appearance of a conflict could lead to disqualification. The fact he allowed an evidentiary hearing on the allegations against her revealed that he viewed the matter seriously.

The crux of the defense team’s argument is that the romantic relationship between Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade presented an untenable conflict of interest, because it gave the two prosecutors a financial incentive to draw out the case. Ms. Willis’s office has paid Mr. Wade more than $650,000 since his hiring in November 2021.

Both Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade have denied that she benefited financially from his hiring. They have said that their relationship started in early 2022, after she hired him, and that it ended last summer. But in court this week, a former friend of Ms. Willis testified that the relationship had started much earlier. (The witness, Robin Bryant-Yeartie, had worked in Ms. Willis’s office, but they stopped speaking after Ms. Bryant-Yeartie resigned in 2022 to avoid being fired.) 

If nothing else, the hearing created a spectacle, not least when Ms. Willis took the witness stand for several hours on Thursday.

There were furious volleys among lawyers, spiced with accusations of lies and perjury, and details about the onetime couple’s travels to vacation destinations like Belize, where they may or may not have visited a tattoo parlor. There was Ms. Willis’s tart assessment of their breakup. Her office even called her 79-year-old father to the stand to corroborate his daughter’s assertions that she reimbursed Mr. Wade with thousands of dollars in cash for their trips; he said storing up large amounts of cash was “a Black thing.”

Ms. Willis did try at one point during the melodramatic hearing to remind those tuning in of her case against Mr. Trump, which at times has seemed a distant memory since the conflict-of-interest allegations came about. “These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020!” she exclaimed at one point. “I’m not on trial. No matter how hard you try to put me on trial.”

There is already precedent within the Trump case for disqualification. In July 2022, a judge blocked Ms. Willis from developing a case against Burt Jones, a fake Trump elector in Georgia 2020, because Ms. Willis had hosted a fund-raiser for one of Mr. Jones’s political rivals.

A year and a half later, no replacement prosecutor has yet been named to look into a potential case against Mr. Jones, now Georgia’s lieutenant governor.

But Mr. Skandalakis noted that unlike back then, indictments have been handed up. “That makes it different,” he said.

A weakened or deposed Fani Willis is a win for Mr. Trump. Half a dozen swing states are now conducting criminal investigations of the 2020 plot to keep the former president in power, but Ms. Willis remains the only one of those prosecutors who has brought charges against Mr. Trump himself.

Sherry Boston, the district attorney of DeKalb County, in suburban Atlanta, declined to comment on whether she would consider taking the case should Ms. Willis be disqualified. Patsy Austin-Gatson, the district attorney of Gwinnett County, also outside Atlanta, said in an email, “We of course do not have a predisposition about whether our office would consider accepting the case.”

Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and a former White House ethics lawyer, said he did not think the evidence so far met Georgia’s legal standard for disqualifying Ms. Willis.

Still, he said he thought it would be “best for the case that Willis voluntarily resign and that Wade also not continue to work on the case.”

Finding another prosecutor willing to take over her case will not be easy, particularly given the menacing threats that led Ms. Willis to abandon her house and require constant security.

Testifying at the hearing this week, Roy Barnes, a former governor of Georgia, recounted what he told Ms. Willis when she asked him, early on, to help lead the Trump prosecution.

“I’d lived with bodyguards for four years, and I didn’t like it,” he said. “I wasn’t going to live with bodyguards for the rest of my life.”

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NRA concocted plan to conceal luxury expenses by chief executive

At a meeting in June 2009, the treasurer of the National Rifle Association worked out a plan to conceal luxury expenses involving its chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, according to audio of the meeting obtained by The Trace and ProPublica. 

The recording was unknown to New York’s attorney general, who is pursuing the NRA and LaPierre over a range of alleged financial misdeeds. It shows, in real time, the NRA’s treasurer enlisting the group’s longtime public relations firm to obfuscate the extravagant costs.

Captured on tape is talk of LaPierre’s desire to avoid public disclosure of his use of private jets as well as concern about persistent spending at the Beverly Hills Hotel by a PR executive and close LaPierre adviser.

During the meeting, which took place in the Alexandria, Virginia, office of PR firm Ackerman McQueen, executives agreed that Ackerman would issue a Platinum American Express card to Tyler Schropp, the new head of the NRA’s nascent advancement division, which was responsible for bringing in high-dollar contributions from wealthy donors. Ackerman would then cover the card’s charges and bill them back to the NRA under nondescript invoices.

“It’s really the limo services and the hotels that I worry about,” William Winkler, Ackerman’s chief financial officer, said. “He’s going to need it for the hotels especially.”

The use of the Ackerman American Express card, according to a report by New York Attorney General Letitia James’ expert witness on nonprofits, skirted internal controls that existed to ensure proper disclosure and regulatory compliance and to prevent “fraud and abuse” at the nonprofit. As a result, outside of a tiny group of NRA insiders, everyone was in the dark about years of charges by Schropp — who is still the head of the nonprofit’s advancement division — for luxury accommodations, including regular sojourns to the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton. The NRA, in response, said the report was “rife with inadmissible factual narratives, impermissible interpretations and inferences, and improper factual and legal conclusions.”

James’ investigation into the NRA began in 2019, after The Trace, in partnership with The New Yorker, and later with ProPublica, reported on internal accounting documents that indicated a culture of self-dealing at the gun-rights group. In 2020, James sued the NRA and LaPierre, who presided over the organization for three decades, over claims of using nonprofit resources for personal enrichment, luxury travel and bloated contracts for insiders, allegations that the parties deny. The attorney general is seeking financial restitution from the defendants and was until last week petitioning for LaPierre’s removal, which was preempted on Friday when LaPierre announced he would resign at the end of January.

The attorney general’s office was unaware of the audio until it was contacted by The Trace and ProPublica and did not respond to a request for comment.

Ackerman McQueen and Winkler declined to comment. None of the other individuals mentioned in this story responded to requests for comment. The gun-rights group’s attorney, William A. Brewer III, said in an email: “The tape has not been authenticated by the NRA but, if real, we are shocked by its content. The suggested contents would confirm what the NRA has said all along: there were certain ‘insiders’ and vendors who took advantage of the Association. If true, it is an example of a shadowy business arrangement — one that was not brought to the attention of the NRA board.”

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Cardinal sentenced to prison following Vatican criminal trial

Inside the high walls of the Holy See, Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu — former head of the office of “miracles” that minted saints — was considered papabile, a possible next pope.

Then his career collided with church prosecutors, who charged the 75-year-old Italian and nine other officials with corruption, setting up the Vatican’s trial of the century, reported the Washington Post.

On Saturday, Becciu — the first cardinal to be tried by the Vatican’s little-known criminal court — was found guilty of three counts of embezzlement and sentenced to five years and six months in a verdict read out in a converted quarter of the museum that houses the Sistine Chapel. He was acquitted of charges of money laundering, abuse of office and influencing a witness.

Becciu’s lawyers said they would appeal the decision. But the ruling put the cardinal closer to one of Vatican City’s handful of jail cells — a result that amounts to both an affirmation of accountability and an embarrassment for an institution that has struggled for decades to root out corruption.

Becciu was barred from holding any Vatican office and fined 8,000 euros (around $8,700).

The trial, a hodgepodge of charges heard over a marathon of 86 courtroom hearings, offered an unusual glimpse into the murky world of Vatican finances and Pope Francis’s campaign for accountability — even, critics argued, at the cost of due process.

Eight of Becciu’s co-defendants — Vatican officials, Italian business executives, consultants and brokers — were found guilty of financial crimes or abuse of office. A ninth was acquitted of all charges.

But the star defendant was Becciu, a papal confidant before a surprise 2020 meeting during which Francis dramatically confronted him with the accusations against him.

In response, Becciu resigned as head of the Vatican department that leads the canonization process. Francis stripped him of his privileges as cardinal before any finding of guilt. Later, some of those rights were unofficially reinstated.

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Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenas billionaire benefactors of Justices Thomas and Alito

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee announced plans to vote to subpoena a pair of billionaires who reportedly gave lavish gifts to Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, reported Axios.

Why it matters: It's a major escalation of the panel's investigation into Supreme Court ethics as Democratic senators push legislation to strengthen disclosure requirements and create a judicial code of conduct.

Driving the news: Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in a statement that they plan to subpoena billionaires Harlan Crow and Robin Arkley, as well as conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo.

"[I]t is imperative that we understand the full extent of how people with interests before the Court are able to use undisclosed gifts to gain private access to the justices," the senators said.

Reports this year from nonprofit news organization ProPublica revealed years worth of luxury trips and other gifts Crow provided to Thomas. The outlet also reported that Arkley partially funded Alito's attendance on a luxury fishing trip organized by Leo.

The backdrop: The committee asked Crow in May for itemized lists of gifts, travel and lodging he provided to Thomas, but Crow's lawyers responded that they "do not believe the Committee has the authority to investigate Mr. Crow's personal friendship with Justice Thomas."

After months of back and forth, Crow's team proposed providing some of the information from the last five years, but Senate Democrats rejected the offer as an inadequate compromise.

The panel sent similar letters to Arkley, Leo and billionaire Paul Singer, who reportedly flew Alito to the 2008 fishing trip.

Leo responded with a letter saying the committee "is not entitled to the personal information it seeks" and declining to cooperate.

The other side: Crow's office, in a statement, blasted his subpoena as "unnecessary, partisan, and politically motivated" despite "Mr. Crow's good faith efforts at a reasonable compromise that respects both sides."

"Mr. Crow, a private citizen, won't be bullied by threats from politicians. However, as previously conveyed to the Committee, we remain committed to respectful cooperation and a fair resolution."

Leo said in a statement: "I will not bow to the vile and disgusting liberal McCarthyism that seeks to destroy the Supreme Court simply because it follows the Constitution rather than their political agenda."

Between the lines: The subpoenas are aimed in part on building pressure on Chief Justice John Roberts to institute a binding code of conduct, which he has so far refused to do.

"The Chief Justice could fix this problem today and adopt a binding code of conduct.  As long as he refuses to act, the Judiciary Committee will," Durbin and Whitehouse said.

What's next: The vote could come as soon as Nov. 9, a committee aide told Axios.

Democrats hold a majority on the panel and could authorize the subpoenas unilaterally.

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NJ Senator Menendez charged with being an agent for Egypt

U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey has now been charged  with conspiring for years to act as an agent of the Egyptian government while he held a powerful role in shaping U.S. foreign policy, putting the Democrat in deeper legal trouble as he continues to reject calls to resign, reported The Associated Press.

The superseding indictment in Manhattan federal court accuses Menendez of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires people to register with the U.S. government if they act as “an agent of a foreign principal.” As a member of Congress, Menendez was prohibited from being an agent of a foreign government.

The new charge comes weeks after Menendez and his wife were accused of accepting bribes of cash, gold bars and a luxury car from three New Jersey businessmen who wanted the senator’s help and influence over foreign affairs.

The new indictment says a conspiracy occurred from January 2018 to June 2022, alleging that Menendez “promised to take and took a series of acts on behalf of Egypt, including on behalf of Egyptian military and intelligence officials.” It said he conspired to do so with his wife, Nadine, and a business associate and fellow defendant, Wael Hana.

According to the indictment, Hana and Nadine Menendez also communicated requests and directives from Egyptian officials to Menendez.

Hours after the latest charge was revealed, Menendez issued a statement, saying it “flies in the face of my long record of standing up for human rights and democracy in Egypt and in challenging leaders of that country, including President (Fattah) El-Sisi on these issues.”

“I have been, throughout my life, loyal to only one country — the United States of America, the land my family chose to live in democracy and freedom,” he added. ”Piling new charge upon new charge does not make the allegations true. ... I again ask people who know me and my record to give me the chance to present my defense and show my innocence.”

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Special counsel Jack Smith comes with a wealth of experience

Jack Smith, the Justice Department’s newly appointed special counsel, will come to the task of investigating former President Donald J. Trump with a wealth of experience: He has been prosecuting criminal cases for nearly three decades, reported The New York Times.

Mr. Smith got his start in the 1990s as a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and soon moved to a similar job at the United States Attorney’s office in Brooklyn. There, he served in a number of supervisory positions, according to his Justice Department biography, and worked on an assortment of cases, many involving public corruption.

From 2008 to 2010, Mr. Smith worked as the investigation coordinator in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. In that role, he oversaw high-profile inquiries of foreign government officials and militia members wanted for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

Returning to the United States, Mr. Smith served from 2010 to 2015 as chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity section, which investigates politicians and other public figures on corruption allegations.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Mr. Smith has also worked in top positions at the United States Attorney’s office for the Middle District of Tennessee in Nashville.

Mr. Smith will take on the role of special counsel after leaving his current position as a specialist prosecutor based in The Hague investigating war crimes. He will remain in the Netherlands for some time, according to the Justice Department, in order to recover from a recent bicycle accident.

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John Dean: 'Richard Nixon had a conscience'--something nearly absent from current politics

“You can’t look at Watergate today without looking through the lens or at least a filter of the Trump presidency,” John Dean told the Los Angeles Times. Dean was White Counsel during the presidency of Richard Nixon. He is part of four-part CNN documentary series “Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal.” 

Trump’s demands for unyielding loyalty from staff and statements such as asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes that would overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election in the state rival what was heard on Nixon’s tapes, but were delivered with far less discretion.

While Nixon had a dangerous lust for power, Dean still believes the 37th president and the only one to ever resign still compares favorably to Trump.

“I think Richard Nixon had a conscience,” said Dean. “He could be embarrassed. Was he hard-nosed and tough? Yeah. But I think he could experience shame. I don’t think it’s an emotion that Donald Trump could ever muster.”

If the Watergate scandal happened today, Dean believes Fox News and other conservative outlets would give more oxygen to Nixon’s defenders and perhaps enable the disgraced president to at least finish out his term instead of resigning.

Former Trump officials have been criticized for waiting to express their misgivings over what was happening in the White House until after they left and made book deals. But Dean understands how it’s not so easy to walk away from the center of power.

“If it was a county sheriff they wouldn’t [stay],” Dean said. “It’s the White House in the remarkable city at the top of the government. It’s a fascinating place to see what’s going on.”

Dean tried to leave the White House in September 1971, a year after he arrived and well before the Watergate break-in. But he was told by his immediate boss, John Ehrlichman, that his post-White House career would be difficult if he left.

“I had some unsolicited offers that I really wanted to explore. Ehrlichman said, ‘If you leave, you’ll be persona non grata with this administration, so don’t take a job where you need any connections to us.’ Of course, the jobs did want me to have relationships with the Nixon White House. Ehrlichman said, ‘John, you’ll have better job offers after Nixon gets reelected.’ Yeah, making license plates.”

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TN Governor's office involved in 1979 murder-for-hire

A former Tennessee governor’s administration helped fund a contract murder of a key federal witness decades ago while embroiled in the state’s largest political scandal, law enforcement officials announced according to AL.com.

The new details revealed for the first time Wednesday have elements that ring of a movie: a trusted ally of union boss Jimmy Hoffa gunned down after testifying about a corrupt governor selling prison pardons and a gunman who donned a wig and blackface to throw authorities off the scent.

Investigators in Hamilton County, which encompasses Chattanooga, have been chipping away at the 42-year-old cold case of Samuel Pettyjohn since they renewed their investigation in 2015. No new charges will be filed because all of the major players involved are now dead, but authorities say closing the case provides closure to one aspect of a complicated piece of Tennessee history.

Pettyjohn, a Chattanooga businessman and close friend of Hoffa, was fatally shot in 1979 in downtown Chattanooga after testifying before a federal grand jury during the early phases of Tennessee’s notorious “cash-for-clemency” scandal.

“Essentially, Mr. Pettyjohn cooperated with authorities and knew too much about what was going on locally, as well as the state level, and individuals didn’t like that and so individuals hired someone to murder him,” Hamilton County District Attorney Neal Pinkston said. “Here we are some 42 years later.”

The scandal ultimately led to the ousting of Democratic Gov. Ray Blanton, who was never indicted in the investigation — but three of his aides were. However, questions have lingered about the extent to which the governor’s administration actively worked to thwart the investigation. Officials say at least five witnesses in the case were murdered or killed themselves.

Pinkston told reporters that Pettyjohn would meet with inmates to indicate that money would help secure an early release from prison starting in 1976. Pettyjohn was joined by William Thompson, who had been involved in Blanton’s election campaign and would later be convicted in the cash-for-clemency scandal.

According to Pinkston, Pettyjohn and Thompson would drop payments off at the governor’s office in the Capitol.

As federal investigators began examining whether the governor’s office was exchanging cash for parole, Pettyjohn was subpoenaed to testify about the ongoing scheme. Pettyjohn eventually agreed to cooperate with FBI agents, even going as far as providing a list of people who made payments to the governor’s office for the early release of certain prisoners.

Shortly after, Pettyjohn was killed in what authorities describe as an “execution style hit.” Witnesses told authorities that they saw a Black man in a trench coat exiting Pettyjohn’s store. Meanwhile, Pettyjohn was found with his pistol nearby, which had not been fired, and more than $100,000 on him.

According to Pinkston, Ed Alley — a known bank robber who died in 2005 in federal prison — was hired by several sources to kill Pettyjohn. Pinkston said those sources included an undisclosed third party who paid some of the contract money on behalf of the Blanton administration. The estimated total murder price was between $25,000 and $50,000.

“I’m very sure. I’m proof positive,” Pinkston said when asked how certain he was that the Blanton administration helped pay for Pettyjohn’s murder.

Officials say Alley, who was white, wore a wig, glasses and covered his skin in heavy brown makeup to deceive any witnesses.

“Cooperating individuals indicated Alley admitted Pettyjohn was murdered for various reasons including he was a source of cooperation for the FBI in investigations of Gov. Ray Blanton,” according to findings from a Hamilton County grand jury.

The grand jury concluded that if Alley were alive today, he would be charged with first-degree premeditated murder of Pettyjohn.

Mike Mathis, supervisor of Hamilton County’s cold case unit, acknowledged that it was highly unusual for a prosecutor’s office to pursue a grand jury when most of the involved parties were dead but said the county chose to do so for the first time it because “it gives you a legal closing.”

Saadiq Pettyjohn, one of Samuel Pettyjohn’s sons, said his mother often described his father as someone with a “heart of gold” and “very generous, giving person,” while acknowledging his father was associated with criminal activity. Authorities say Pettyjohn was part of an organized effort to blow up a building to collect insurance payouts, but he was never brought to trial due to his untimely death.

“It’s a curse and a blessing to grow up in a family that’s connected to crime,” he added. “When that person dies, you can go that route or you can go a different route; all of us chose to try to do better in our lives.”

Blanton, who died in 1996, had sparked outrage after he pardoned and commuted prison terms for more than 50 state inmates in the waning days of his gubernatorial term. Blanton’s fellow Democrats worked with Republicans in the Legislature to move up the inauguration of his Republican successor, Lamar Alexander, by three days.

Blanton was never charged in the scandal, but in 1981, he was convicted of unrelated charges of extortion and conspiracy for selling a liquor license for $23,000 to a friend while in office.

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Legalized marijuana leads to corruption

In the past decade, 15 states have legalized a regulated marijuana market for adults over 21, and another 17 have legalized medical marijuana, reported Politico. But in their rush to limit the numbers of licensed vendors and give local municipalities control of where to locate dispensaries, they created something else: A market for local corruption.

Almost all the states that legalized pot either require the approval of local officials — as in Massachusetts — or impose a statewide limit on the number of licenses, chosen by a politically appointed oversight board, or both. These practices effectively put million-dollar decisions in the hands of relatively small-time political figures — the mayors and councilors of small towns and cities, along with the friends and supporters of politicians who appoint them to boards. And these strictures have given rise to the exact type of corruption that got Correia in trouble with federal prosecutors. They have also created a culture in which would-be cannabis entrepreneurs feel obliged to make large campaign contributions or hire politically connected lobbyists.

 “All government contracting and licensing is subject to these kinds of forces,” said Douglas Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University who authors a blog on marijuana policy. But “there are unique facets to government contracting in [the cannabis] space that makes it uniquely vulnerable to corruption.”

It’s not just local officials. Allegations of corruption have reached the state level in numerous marijuana programs, especially ones in which a small group of commissioners is charged with dispensing limited numbers of licenses. Former Maryland state Del. Cheryl Glenn was sentenced to two years in prison in July for taking bribes in exchange for introducing and voting on legislation to benefit medical marijuana companies. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s administration is the target of law enforcement and legislative probes into the rollout of its medical marijuana program.

“The state Is given full control in an industry where there is so much competition — where everyone realizes how valuable these licenses are,” said Lorenzo Nourafchan, CEO of Northstar Financial Consulting, which works with cannabis businesses.

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GateHouse: Border Wall brings down Trump insider

Matthew T. Mangino
GateHouse Media
August 21, 2020

You’ve probably never heard of Brian Kolfage. He was the founder of “We Build the Wall,” a grassroots effort to raise money, through the internet platform Gofundme, to build a wall on the U.S-Mexico border.

Within the last week, he made news when he tweeted, “Because @Gofundme supports the racist attacks by #blackLivesMatter, @WeBuildtheWall has officially deleted its campaign from their site and we are moving to @FundRzr We had the largest Gofundme campaign in history.”

While Kolfage fumed at Black Lives Matter for their “racism” he boasted about his efforts to keep latinx out of America by producing the largest fundraiser in internet history.

However, that wasn’t the biggest story of the week for Kolfage and his associates. In fact, Kolfage wasn’t even the biggest story in his own big story. Former President Donald Trump campaign CEO and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was indicted in New York on fraud charges related to the We Build the Wall campaign.

Manhattan federal prosecutors and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service allege that Bannon, Kolfage and two others “received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donor funds from We Build the Wall, which they each used in a manner inconsistent with the organization’s public representations.”

Bannon is another in a line of former Trump advisors that have ended up on the wrong side of the law. Bannon was brought on as the chief executive officer of President Trump’s presidential campaign after a staff shakeup just months before the election.

He left his job at Breitbart News, an agency Bannon described as ”(T)he platform for the alt-right,” to help refocus Trump’s campaign message.

Bannon pushed the Trump campaign, and later the administration, toward race-baiting through the buzz words of crime, immigration and foreign competition. According to former newspaper editor Tom Murse, writing on ThoughtCo.com, “Under his stewardship, Breitbart has emerged as the leading source for the extreme views of a vocal minority who peddle bigotry and promote hate.”

Bannon later infused racism, hate and fear mongering into the first seven months of the Trump administration as chief White House strategist.

Bannon was a strong proponent of the border wall. After leaving the White House he latched on to We Build the Wall seemingly with the intent of being an altruistic “volunteer” leader of a campaign to fulfill his vision of halting illegal immigration and helping his former boss fulfill his campaign promise.

We have now learned that was not exactly what Bannon had in mind. Bannon and his co-conspirators started in December 2018 to defraud hundreds of thousands of donors from the We Build the Wall campaign that raised more than $25 million.

Part of the conspiracy to induce donors was Kolfage repeatedly assuring the public that he would “not take a penny in salary or compensation” and that “100% of the funds raised ... will be used in the execution of our mission and purpose” and Bannon publicly stated, “we’re a volunteer organization.”

It appears that Bannon and Kolfage lied. In truth, the two of them and their co-conspirators allegedly took hundreds of thousands of dollars in donor funds. The U.S. Attorney’s office said in a statement, Kolfage took for his personal use more than $350,000 in funds. Bannon funneled to a non-profit organization under his control over $1 million - much of it used for personal expenses.

The conspirators set up non-profits and shell corporations to conceal the fraud. They furthered the fraud by using fake invoices and sham “vendor” arrangements to ensure, as Kolfage noted in a text message, that his pay arrangement remained “confidential” and kept on a “need-to-know” basis.

Inspector-in-Charge Philip R. Bartlett of the New York Field Division of the United States Postal Inspection Service said in a statement, “This case should serve as a warning to other fraudsters that no one is above the law, not even ... a millionaire political strategist.”

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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Bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee concludes Trump's campaign chair worked closely with Russia during 2016 election

 Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked closely with a Russian intelligence officer who may have been involved in the hack and release of Democratic emails during the election, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a bipartisan report released Tuesday.

It’s the furthest U.S. officials have gone in describing Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime Manafort business associate, as an agent of the Russian government, reported Politico. The disclosure was part of the committee’s fifth and final installment of its investigation of the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

In particular, the committee’s investigation found that Manafort “represented a grave counterintelligence threat” due to his relationship with Kilimnik and other Russians connected to the country’s intelligence services — a bombshell conclusion that underscores how Russia developed a direct pipeline to the upper echelons of a U.S. presidential campaign.

“Kilimnik quickly became an integral part of Manafort’s operations in Ukraine and Russia,” the report states, adding that the pair “formed a close and lasting relationship that would endure to the 2016 U.S. elections and beyond.”

Tuesday’s report, the product of a three-year bipartisan probe by the committee, focuses on counterintelligence aspects of the U.S. government’s Russia investigation, including allegations that Trump campaign officials coordinated with Russian operatives. It outlines in exhaustive detail the extent of Trump campaign officials’ contacts with Russians, though it stops short of alleging a direct coordination effort.

The committee, which conducted the only bipartisan investigation on Capitol Hill centering on Russia’s 2016 meddling, also raised the possibility that Manafort was personally connected to the “hack-and-leak operations” that targeted Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The committee states that “some evidence suggests Kilimnik may be connected” to the effort, which was helmed by Russia’s GRU, its main military-intelligence directorate. WikiLeaks eventually released the documents obtained in the GRU cyberattack, which included Democratic National Committee emails.

The committee cautioned that Manafort’s personal involvement with the operation is “largely unknown” because investigators were unable to learn the full extent of many of the conversations between Manafort and Kilimnik, which included several in-person meetings, about which “no objective record of their content exists.”

“Kilimnik was in sustained contact with Manafort before, during, and after the GRU cyber and influence operations, but the committee did not obtain reliable, direct evidence that Kilimnik and Manafort discussed the GRU hack-and-leak operation,” the report states.

Kilimnik’s role as a Russian intelligence officer is one of several findings in the 966-page report showing that Trump campaign contacts with Russian intelligence-connected operatives were more extensive than previously known. The report also showed that at least two participants in a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Manafort, senior adviser Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. were more deeply tied to Russian intelligence than other reports have indicated.

 “The committee assesses that at least two participants in the June 9, 2016 meeting, [Natalia] Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, have significant connections to the Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services,” the panel concluded. “The connections the committee uncovered, particularly regarding Veselnitskaya, were far more extensive and concerning than what had been publicly known.”

Kilimnik is described as not only aiding the Russian interference effort but working with Manafort and allies in Ukraine to help cover up evidence of Russia’s involvement — and spread false allegations that it was Ukrainians who interfered instead.

Manafort was convicted of a raft of financial crimes in August 2018 and pleaded guilty to additional crimes in August 2019, briefly pledging to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller's team before prosecutors accused him of telling additional lies and breaking off the deal. Manafort was sentenced to 7 and ½ years in prison but was released to home confinement amid the coronavirus pandemic after serving 23 months.

Although Mueller’s report described Kilimnik as simply having “ties” to Russian intelligence, the Senate panel said a more probing analysis revealed him to be a Russian intelligence officer carrying out Kremlin-backed influence operations abroad. In a heavily redacted section of the report, the committee delves into its own assessment of Kilimnik, describing an extensive body of evidence, including communications that reveal Kilimnik misleading even close associates about his connections to Russia.

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DHS Secretary's former clients earn $160 million in government contracts

Several former lobbying clients of Chad Wolf, now the acting secretary of Homeland Security, have received millions of dollars’ worth of government contracts while he has held senior positions within the department, reported CNBC. 

Wolf, who became the acting chief of the department late last year, was a lobbyist for over a decade at Wexler & Walker before he took leadership roles with DHS under President Donald Trump. Wolf served as the acting chief of staff at the Transportation Security Administration in 2017 and later became the chief of staff for former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.  

Since then, several of Wolf’s former clients reaped a total of at least $160 million in contracts from DHS, according to a CNBC analysis of the public filings. 

A DHS spokesman told CNBC that Wolf has no involvement with any government contracts. 

“Acting Secretary Wolf has had zero involvement in DHS contract awards, including contracts won by his former clients. He leaves those matters to the career professionals in the DHS Chief Procurement Office,” the agency spokesman said. 

After joining TSA, Wolf recused himself from DHS matters that involved his former clients. He has maintained that recusal throughout his tenure at the department. 

Still, Democrats pounced on the revelation, arguing that it marks the latest example of how the Trump administration acts against the president’s own promise of “draining the swamp.” 

“Donald Trump and Chad Wolf’s flagrant conflicts of interest screw taxpayers over while rewarding their crony friends and special interests. When voters sent Trump to Washington, they thought he would ‘drain the swamp,’” Kyle Morse, a spokesman at Democratic super PAC American Bridge, told CNBC.

Trump signed an executive order in 2017 that banned former lobbyists and lawyers from taking part in government matters linked to their previous clients for the first two years of their tenure in the administration. Some Trump officials, however, have been given waivers to that rule. Wolf’s name is not on the public waiver list that was issued in April of this year.  A list created by ProPublica showing Trump aides who signed the ethics waiver also does not include Wolf. 

The executive order also called on former Trump officials not to take part in lobbying for the five years following their appointments. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics shows that even after being a member of the Trump White House, many do go on to work for lobbying firms. 

The developments also come as Wolf and the department are under scrutiny by Democrats for how they treated protesters in Portland, Oregon. The protests stemmed from the unrest following the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, on Memorial Day. 

Among the former Wolf clients to receive multimillion-dollar contracts are American Science and Engineering, an X-ray equipment manufacturer; ABB, an automation company based in Switzerland, and Analogic Corporation, a technology business owned by private equity firm Altaris. These companies did have other contracts with DHS before Wolf arrived there. 

One American Science and Engineering contract, which took effect on July 1, 2018, is worth just over $80 million, a filing says. The company, in this case, is dedicated to supplying U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is under DHS, with maintenance and support services. AS&E, which, according to its website, is now owned by Rapiscan Systems, saw at least $93 million in DHS contract obligations in 2018.

Analogic received over $9 million in DHS contracts between 2017 and 2018. In 2017, Analogic announced a $4 million base contract with TSA, another agency under Homeland Security.  

The contract allowed Analogic “a 12-month development phase and 24 months of prototype warranty, with options for additional ConneCT prototypes and warranty for a period of 24 months at the TSA’s discretion,” the release, dated Nov. 2, 2017, says. 

From 2008 until 2010, Wolf lobbied TSA for Analogic on issues related to security equipment, lobbying disclosure reports say. The New York Times reported that Wolf tried to help Analogic sell its carry-on baggage equipment to TSA when he was still working at Wexler & Walker. Wolf, who also worked at TSA during the Bush administration, later became the agency’s acting chief of staff under the Trump presidency. 

ABB, which had tapped Wolf to lobby Congress on its behalf, also saw a major contract go its way while Wolf held top positions at DHS. ABB received a DHS government contract worth $5.6 million for services dedicated to the U.S. Coast Guard. 

Wolf lobbied for ABB until 2016. Filings show that during his last year of work for the company, he focused, in part, on issues related to the “United States Coast Guard Icebreaker,” a fleet of ships that have the ability to go through thick sheets of ice in places such as the Arctic.  

An ABB spokesman gave details about the focus of the contract and noted that the company has had no contact with Wolf since he finished his tenure as a lobbyist. 

“The contract referenced in your email is a service and maintenance contract for a vessel commissioned with an ABB Azipod propulsion system back in 2006,” the spokesman, Chris Shigas, explained. “To our knowledge, ABB representatives did not meet or discuss any agreements with Mr. Wolf since he left Wexler Walker.”  

Representatives for Analogic and AS&E did not respond to requests for comment. 

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