DOJ goes after SPLC despite IRS clearing group of wrong doing

 Federal agents previously investigated the Southern Poverty Law Center's paid informant program for possible tax crimes, but the probe failed to yield any charges after Internal Revenue Service lawyers determined it was legally structured, sources familiar with the matter told CBS News.

Agents from IRS Criminal Investigation in 2019 and 2020 homed in on shell bank accounts that a former chief financial officer at the civil rights nonprofit opened to pay informants in exchange for intelligence about hate groups. The agents sought to determine whether the SPLC unlawfully failed to file tax returns for those payments, sources said.

But a Treasury Department rule exempts 501(c)(3) nonprofits from filing tax returns in connection with payments to informants who provide information about potential criminal activity. As a result, IRS lawyers later cautioned against seeking an indictment on tax charges, several of the sources said.

A spokesperson for IRS Criminal Investigation declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined to comment beyond its filings in the criminal case.

The tax portion of the investigation, which has not been previously reported, was initiated during President Trump's first term as an expansion of an FBI probe into whether that same former chief financial officer may have embezzled money from the SPLC, the sources said.

The Justice Department in April obtained an 11-count wire and bank fraud indictment against the SPLC over the center's informant program, alleging it defrauded its donors and duped its banks by creating shell accounts to funnel money to insiders who belonged to the same hate groups it pledged to dismantle.

The group denies wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty.

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Noncitizens are not voting in massive numbers, and our elections are secure

Suppose you were to believe the narrative from certain candidates, social media, high-profile lawsuits, and numerous ballot initiatives this year. In that case, you might think that noncitizen voting is a major problem. As with most issues these days, the facts are obscured in favor of false narratives aimed at stirring up a frenzy, reports The Washington Monthly.

But facts should matter: Noncitizens are not voting in massive numbers, and our elections are secure.

That reality has not stopped those who sow divisiveness and undermine people’s confidence in our elections. The false narrative can also create negative changes in the law that undermine the constitutional protection for the right to vote. We must disseminate the truth so that the American public can distinguish fact from myth.

Federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections. Several state laws forbid it as well. From a practical perspective, it is unlikely that noncitizens will flout these laws purposefully and vote en masse, as they will probably be caught and face both criminal and immigration consequences.

It is true that sometimes, noncitizens mistakenly appear on voter registration lists, usually because they validly obtain a driver’s license, and the lists are copied over to the voter registration database. States routinely audit those lists to remove ineligible voters. And reports of noncitizens on the rolls are almost always inflated. For example, Texas officials likely embellished the number of noncitizens it purged from its voter rolls; news organizations found that the number Texas cited almost certainly included valid U.S. citizens. Alabama’s Secretary of State admitted that his initial allegation of 3,200 noncitizens on the voter rolls was massively wrong—at least 2,000 of the people he flagged were citizens. Of course, people often don’t hear the correction; they only focus on the initial claim.

In 2022, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced he was referring for investigation 1,634 cases of potential noncitizens attempting to register between 1997 and 2022—a paltry number given the millions of valid Georgia voters. None of those people voted because of the various safeguards in place. Raffensperger noted, “The audit proved that Georgia’s citizenship check procedures are working and are vital to ensuring secure elections.”

Moreover, state and local election officials routinely perform post-election audits to verify the results. They have also specifically looked for noncitizen voting and found hardly any instances of it. Even the conservative Heritage Foundation lists only 21 cases of ineligible voting in its entire “election fraud” database. Numerous other studies also show that noncitizen voting is minuscule.

But the claims persist. A recent survey found that 67 percent of respondents said they encountered information on social media about noncitizen voting, with 77 percent of Republicans reporting that they had seen this content, compared to 63 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of independents who saw it. These false claims will likely be part of any post-election attempt to sow seeds of doubt about the election’s outcome. Maybe that’s the whole point,

Some states have attempted aggressive purges of their voter rolls, only to end up in court. The Department of Justice, for example, was forced to sue Alabama and Virginia for trying to flag potential noncitizens in their rolls too close to the election. Florida sued the federal government, alleging that the Department of Homeland Security had not provided the requisite information for Florida to review its voter registration list. But creating this kind of dispute so close to the election—during the 90 days before Election Day when federal law prohibits voter purges—does little but sow doubt about the voting process. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida wants to add further uncertainty by introducing a bill that would let states remove noncitizens from the rolls at any time.

Meanwhile, eight states (Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin) will vote on ballot initiatives to amend their state constitutions to prohibit noncitizens from voting. These initiatives follow similar measures that passed in 2020 and 2022 in six states—Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, North Dakota, and Ohio. The Arizona Constitution also prohibits noncitizens from voting.

The ballot propositions will impose a very minor change in the constitutional language.

Virtually every state’s constitution before 2020 said that “every” citizen shall be entitled to vote. The amendments alter that language to “only a citizen” may vote. But the change is not mere semantics. State constitutions provide much stronger protection for the right to vote than does the U.S. Constitution, especially given the restrictive rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court. Changing the language of state constitutions will water down these vital sources of protection. Already, some state judges are reluctant to apply their state constitutions robustly, preferring instead to follow the U.S. Supreme Court’s lead—even though state constitutions textually and explicitly confer broader rights. Narrowing the protection of state constitutions will give these judges even further reason not to construe their state constitutions as more protective of voters. Refusing to apply the state constitution properly leads to deference to state politicians, who often craft voting rules to help keep themselves in power.

If passed, these “noncitizen voting” ballot propositions will also forbid localities in these states from allowing noncitizens to vote in local or school board elections. A few cities in California, Maryland, and Vermont currently—and legally—let noncitizens vote in these municipal elections. New York City also passed a similar ordinance, but it has been held up in court.

A state constitution that says “every” citizen may vote does not necessarily preclude a locality from legally adding noncitizens to the voter rolls for local elections, as the state constitution is a floor, not a ceiling, of voter eligibility. A change in the state constitutional language to say that “only” a citizen may vote in any elections in the state would outlaw that practice by imposing a strict limitation for all elections. We can debate whether it’s a good idea to let noncitizens vote in local elections, though the idea of federalism would suggest that it really should be up to each city to decide for itself. Moreover, many states considering these ballot propositions already have state statutes that forbid noncitizens from voting in any election, so the constitutional change will have no legal effect. The propositions instead are a solution in search of a problem.

They also create their own problem: fostering the false claim that noncitizen voting is happening. It is not. Perhaps, instead of chasing the boogeyman of noncitizen voting, our elected leaders should focus on improving turnout among the U.S. citizens who routinely do not vote. After all, even in the best years, about one-third of eligible voters do not cast a ballot. If they participate, millions of nonvoters could fundamentally alter our elections. A few noncitizens who might mistakenly end up on the voter registration lists and almost never vote have little effect.

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Law & Crime--George Santos: A cautionary tale in an important election year

Matthew T. Mangino
Law & Crime News
August 22, 2024

 As we move toward Labor Day and the traditional start of the election season, the run-up to the 2024 election has not disappointed in its historic twists and turns. President Joe Biden is out, Vice President Kamala Harris is in, and former president Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt and is about as agitated as he has been since losing his reelection bid in 2020.

The recalibrated Democratic National Convention is underway in Chicago. It’s not quite the show we expected several weeks ago, when there was talk of an open convention to force out Biden. Instead, Biden magnanimously stepped down and is being exalted by Democrats far and wide.

While all this is going on, there is little mention of the guilty plea of George Santos – a cautionary tale for everything that is wrong, misleading and impossible to understand about modern American politics.

Santos, whose trial on 23 felony charges was scheduled to begin on Sept. 9, entered a guilty plea on Monday. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, and admitted he committed other crimes that could land him in prison for about seven years under the terms of a plea agreement, ABC News reported.

When Santos flipped New York’s Third Congressional District in 2022, he became the first openly gay non-incumbent Republican elected to Congress. Although his campaign biography said he lived in Long Island with his husband and four dogs, his husband never campaigned with Santos and there was no marriage license on record for a marriage to a man.

There was a marriage license to a woman in 2012 and a divorce in 2019.

That was only the beginning of the lies that Santos apparently told. He created a bio out of whole cloth. He was running for Congress, for the second time, in New York City. NYC may have one of the greatest newspapers in the world, The New York Times, and Santos’ deceit wasn’t exposed to the voters.

It wasn’t as though Santos had a sophisticated cover story that insulated him when he told mistruths. Santos apparently lied about everything. He lied about where he went to high school, where he went to college and where he worked.

This is the 21st Century — I can do a search to find out what Donald Trump had for breakfast this morning.

Santos said his mom was at the World Trade Center on 9/11. She was not.

He said his grandmother died during the Holocaust. She didn’t.

He said four of his employees died as a result of the Pulse Nightclub mass shooting. Not true.

Don’t forget this guy got elected to Congress! Then he used campaign money for Botox, travel and clothes. He deposited campaign contributions into private accounts. He used donor credit card information to make unauthorized charges.

He lied to Congress, and became only the sixth member of the House of Representatives to be expelled — although 114 members of Congress voted not to expel him.

Then, he was indicted.

He showed up for Biden’s State of the Union this year and announced he would be running for Congress in 2024, but that did not happen — and now he is more than likely headed to prison.

In Santos’ wake of lies and crimes, we are reminded of a couple important failures. As newspapers struggle to sustain their important role in American politics — remember Watergate? — failure to vet candidates opens the door to charlatans like Santos.

Social media has blurred the line between truth and fiction. Trump has reminded us, time and time again, that it does not matter what the media says about you as long as they keep talking about you.

Voters need to demand answers. There are red flags when things seem too good to be true. In the case of Santos, the red flags were revealed long before his election — but simply ignored. As former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters in January 2023, “I always had a few questions” about Santos’ resume.

However, McCarthy needed every vote he could get to become Speaker of the House, including Santos’ vote. McCarthy was apparently willing to overlook, downplay or hide the truth about Santos – and in politics, acts of omission can be as dangerous as the commission of mistruth, lies or deceit.

Voters — as the 2024 election approaches, keep up your guard.

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

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Trump's election subversion case heads toward evidentiary hearing

The stalled criminal case against Donald Trump for seeking to subvert the 2020 election is starting to move, reported Politico.

The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on presidential immunity — a breathtaking legal victory for Trump’s bid to sideline his criminal prosecutions — had kept the election-subversion case on ice for months. Even after the July 1 ruling, the high court’s rules required a one-month delay to give prosecutors the chance to ask the justices to reconsider the outcome.

On Friday, that window closed. The case was returned to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which took just minutes to send the matter back to the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who has been in a holding pattern since December awaiting the outcome of the immunity fight.

On Saturday, Chutkan took her first steps in the case in months, setting an August 16 hearing to consider setting a new schedule. She has asked for prosecutors and Trump to offer their own thinking on the matter in writing by August 9. The court session won’t force Trump off the campaign trail, since Chutkan said she won’t require him to be present.

Still, the flurry of actions signals new life for the gravest of the four criminal cases against Trump — and it comes at a time when other Trump cases have stalled. Special counsel Jack Smith charged the former president in August 2023 with four counts, alleging a sweeping conspiracy to disenfranchise millions of voters and pressure government officials to overturn the legitimate 2020 election results.

There appears to be no real prospect of a trial in the case before the November election, but some Trump critics have been eagerly awaiting the Supreme Court’s ministerial action of returning the case to the trial court, hoping that it results in a series of swift decisions from Chutkan that could again put Trump on the defensive.

The Supreme Court ruled that former presidents have immunity from prosecution for many of their “officials acts,” and it said that some of Smith’s allegations in the election case must be tossed out. But it’s not yet clear how, or whether, the special counsel can proceed with other portions of his indictment.

Some Trump critics have urged Chutkan to hold a hearing to assess the effect of the immunity ruling on the evidence Smith intends to present. That proceeding could feature witness testimony from key figures in the case.

Trump opponents hope this “mini-trial” would showcase Trump’s ties to the violence that unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021, and remind voters of the most chaotic day of Trump’s presidency, even if it doesn’t carry the same stakes as a jury trial.

In her one-page order, filed around 9:30 a.m. Saturday morning, Chutkan did not directly address the possibility of a “mini-trial” — often referred to by lawyers as an evidentiary hearing. However, she did signal that she’s aware the Supreme Court ruling leaves her with decisions to make about what part of the charges against Trump can proceed and what sort of evidence prosecutors will be permitted to introduce.

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Creators: When Clemency Is Not Enough

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators Syndicate
March 11, 2024

Ever hear of Philip Esformes? If you haven't, chances are you will hear about him this summer or fall.

Philip Esformes was raised in an Orthodox Jewish community outside Chicago. His father, Morris Esformes, a rabbi, business executive and well-known philanthropist, made a fortune in the nursing home industry.

Philip eventually took over the family business, expanding the health care chain in Florida. According to The Washington Post, as Esformes' wealth expanded, he bought private planes, multiple residences and exotic cars; he drove a $1.6 million Ferrari and wore a $360,000 wristwatch.

The son of a rabbi was living the high life. That all came crashing down in 2016. Esformes was charged by the United States Department of Justice as part of the largest health-care fraud scheme ever prosecuted.

At the time, prosecutors said Esformes bribed doctors to put patients into his nursing homes, where they often received inadequate care or were given unnecessary services that were then billed to Medicare and Medicaid.

Esformes personally netted more than $37 million from the yearslong scheme. According to CNBC, a federal prosecutor described Esformes as "a man driven by almost unbounded greed."

The jury convicted him of 20 criminal counts at trial, but deadlocked on six other counts. A judge sentenced Esformes to twenty years in prison.

After his incarceration, Esformes immediately sought the influence of high-ranking former government officials to seek clemency. An attorney with the Aleph Institute, a Jewish charity affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement and frequent object of the elder Esformes' charity, began lobbying the White House. Esformes' team enlisted help from Edwin Meese and Michael Mukasey, two former U.S. attorneys general; and Larry Thompson, a former second in command at the DOJ.

With the support of then Attorney General William Barr, the fruits of their labor paid off. Having served less than five years of a 20-year sentence, Esformes walked out of federal prison. In the waning days of Donald Trump's presidency, Trump granted him clemency.

Esformes had seemingly caught a big break. He was a free man. However, the Biden Justice Department had a different idea. The DOJ announced that it intended to retry Esformes on the six counts that the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict.

Retrying a defendant on charges in which the jury is deadlocked, commonly known as "hung," is not unusual. Retrying a defendant after a few charges are hung but a majority of charges result in convictions is unusual. Retrying a defendant on hung charges after clemency is granted is also extremely unusual.

It was Trump who left the door open to new prosecutions. Trump granted clemency, cutting short the length of the sentence, on the 20 charges Esformes was convicted of but did not grant relief on the six charges he was not convicted.

The questions surrounding the case come down to whether trying Esformes again violated the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — being tried twice for the same crime.

According to The Washington Post, prosecutors argued that if Trump had wanted to make sure Esformes could not be retried on the hung counts, "he could easily have done so" by granting him a pardon or specifically referencing those counts. "He did neither," they wrote.

Although the decision to retry Esformes was universally assailed on the "right," it appears to have been accepted by his legal team.

Last month, Esformes pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and was sentenced to time served, with prosecutors agreeing to dismiss the remaining five counts.

In the meantime, the Federal Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's judgment on Esformes' original convictions and sentence, the restitution award of $5.5 million and the forfeiture judgment in the amount of $38.7 million.

It was a rather subdued conclusion to what started out as a highly charged decision by the DOJ. If this were any other year or any other time, that might be the end of the story. But this is 2024, anything is political fair game in the Trump v. Biden rematch.

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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What is next for Donald Trump?

He will be fingerprinted. He will be photographed. He may even be handcuffed.

If he surrenders Tuesday, Donald J. Trump is expected to walk through the routine steps of felony arrest processing in New York now that a grand jury has indicted him in connection with his role in a hush-money payment to a porn star, reported The New York Times. But the unprecedented arrest of a former commander in chief will be anything but routine.

Accommodations may be made for Mr. Trump. While it is standard for defendants arrested on felony charges to be handcuffed, it is unclear whether an exception will be made for a former president. Most defendants are cuffed behind their backs, but some white-collar defendants deemed to pose less danger have their hands secured in front of them.

Mr. Trump will almost certainly be accompanied at every step — from the moment he is taken into custody until his appearance before a judge in Lower Manhattan’s imposing Criminal Courts Building — by armed agents of the U.S. Secret Service. They are required by law to protect him at all times.

Security in the courthouse is provided by state court officers, with whom the Secret Service has worked in the past. But the chief spokesman for the federal agency, Anthony J. Guglielmi, said he could not comment on measures that would be put in place for Mr. Trump.

It may take several days for Mr. Trump to appear at the courthouse. Now that the grand jury has voted to indict him — meaning to charge him with felony crimes — the indictment will remain sealed until his expected arraignment on Tuesday, when the charges will be formally revealed.

After the indictment, prosecutors contacted Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers and negotiated the terms of his surrender, a common practice in white-collar investigations.

Lawyers for Mr. Trump, who is running for president a third time, said late Thursday that he will surrender and he is expected to be arraigned on Tuesday.

After he is arraigned, he is almost certain to be released on his own recognizance, because the indictment will likely contain only nonviolent felony charges; under New York law, prosecutors cannot request that a defendant be held on bail in such cases.

The former president is already using the charges as part of a campaign strategy to energize his base.

Surrender is not in the confrontational former president’s DNA, and he often seems to relish antagonizing and attacking prosecutors who have investigated him, such as Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who secured Thursday’s indictment. He has called Mr. Bragg, who is Black, “a racist” and an “animal” and said that his investigation was politically motivated.

In the unlikely event that the former president refuses to surrender, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has already said that his state “will not assist in an extradition request,” should one come from New York authorities. Still, if the New York prosecutors were to actually seek Mr. Trump’s extradition, and Mr. DeSantis attempted to protect his Republican rival, he could possibly face legal action himself.

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Wife of SCOTUS justice contacted Wisconsin legislators asking to reverse election

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, emailed Wisconsin legislators in November 2020 and asked them to effectively reverse then-President Donald Trump’s election loss to President Joe Biden in that state, according to emails disclosed Thursday.

It was already known that the conservative advocate Ginni Thomas had contacted legislators in Arizona with a similar request seeking to undo Biden’s victory there, reported CNBC.

The Washington Post first reported Thursday that she wrote two Republican legislators in Wisconsin, state Sen. Kathy Bernier and state Rep. Gary Tauchen, on Nov. 9, 2020, at “virtually the same time the Arizona lawmakers received a verbatim copy of the message from Thomas.”

Bernier at the time was the chair of the state Senate elections committee.

Thomas sent the emails days after Trump refused to concede the election to Biden, vowing, “We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court.” The subject lines of her messages read, “Please do your Constitutional duty!”

 “Please stand strong in the face of media and political pressure,” those emails said, according to The Post, which obtained them from the watchdog group Documented.

“Please reflect on the awesome authority granted to you by our Constitution. And then please take action to ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen for our state,” Thomas wrote.

Documented obtained the emails through a request under Wisconsin’s public records laws. The group posted a copy of the emails online later Thursday.

The report comes more than a month after Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said the select House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol was considering issuing a subpoena to Ginni Thomas.

Thomas sent the emails to Arizona and Wisconsin lawmakers via the online site FreeRoots, which provides pre-written messages that can be sent to multiple elected officials.

Arizona and Wisconsin sent Biden electors to the Electoral College, as he won the popular vote in both states. The Electoral College then named him the winner of the 2020 vote.

A lawyer for Thomas and a spokeswoman for the Supreme Court did not immediately respond to requests for comment from CNBC about her emails.

Thomas’ advocacy for conservative causes while her husband serves on the high court has generated controversy in recent years.

Thomas sent 29 messages to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows after the 2020 election encouraging him to pursue then-ongoing efforts to undo Biden’s victory, CBS News reported in March.

“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!! ...You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice,” she wrote Meadows on Nov. 10, 2020. “The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”

Several efforts to effectively overturn Trump’s losses in battleground states ended up at the Supreme Court after the election. None of those efforts succeeded.

In January, Clarence Thomas was the only Supreme Court justice to support Trump’s request to block White House records from being sent to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot.

That riot began after Trump and his allies falsely claimed for weeks that he had actually won the presidential election and that Biden’s victory was the result of widespread ballot fraud in states that included Arizona and Wisconsin.

The violence disrupted a joint session of Congress for hours as lawmakers gathered to confirm Biden’s Electoral College win.

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Rep. Kelly staff member involved in 2020 false electors scheme

U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania concluded an internal review into his office's potential involvement in the false elector scheme with few answers — finding only that staff members did not know about his former chief of staff's "reported actions," reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

"To date, our current chief of staff has not found staff members to have prior knowledge of Mr. Stroia’s reported actions," Kelly's press secretary Matt Knoedler said, referencing Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson's claims that former Kelly chief of staff Matt Stroia had a call with Johnson's team on Jan. 6 about giving them false elector paperwork from Wisconsin and Michigan.

"Further, Mr. Kelly is unaware of Mr. Stroia’s reported actions. We have closed the internal review," Knoedler added. 

The conclusion of the three-week internal probe offered little information about Kelly's alleged involvement in passing false elector documents to Johnson's team in the hours before Congress was set to certify Joe Biden's 2020 election victory on Jan. 6, 2021.

Johnson's office told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Wednesday that Johnson chief of staff Sean Riley had a two-minute phone call with Stroia, who was Kelly's chief of staff at the time, at 11:58 a.m. on Jan. 6 "about how Kelly's office could get us the electors because they had it."

Kelly has repeatedly denied involvement in the effort.

When asked by the Journal Sentinel if the investigation found that Stroia had contact with Johnson's office, Knoedler responded: "I cannot speak to the actions of Mr. Stroia as reported."

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Former president fights New York Attorney General subpoena

An empire under scrutiny. The New York State attorney general is currently conducting a civil investigation into former president Donald Trump’s business practices. Here’s what to know:

The origins of the inquiry. The investigation started after Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, testified to Congress that Mr. Trump and his employees had manipulated his net worth to suit his interests.

The findings. Ms. James detailed in a recent filing what she said was a pattern by the Trump Organization to inflate the value of the company’s properties in documents filed with lenders, insurers and the Internal Revenue Service.

The potential impact. Because the investigation is civil, the attorney general cannot file criminal charges and would have to sue Mr. Trump. Ms. James could seek financial penalties and try to shut down certain aspects of Mr. Trump’s business.

Mr. Trump’s response. Mr. Trump has filed a lawsuit against Letitia James, the New York attorney general, seeking to halt the inquiry. The suit argues that the attorney general’s involvement in the inquiry was politically motivated.

Subpoena requests. The attorney general has subpoenaed Mr. Trump, and is also seeking to question Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, two of his children, as part of the inquiry. Eric Trump, another of Mr. Trump’s sons, was questioned in 2020.

As reported by The New York Times.

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Baltimore prosecutor cries foul after indicted by grand jury

A federal grand jury has indicted Baltimore’s top prosecutor Marilyn Mosby on charges of perjury and making false statements with a series of financial transactions that helped her buy a condo on Florida’s Gulf Coast and another property near Orlando, Florida, reported The Baltimore Sun.

Mosby, 41, is charged with falsely claiming to suffer financial hardship from the coronavirus to obtain an early withdrawal from her retirement savings to purchase the homes. In addition, federal prosecutors allege she lied on a mortgage loan application by hiding an outstanding federal tax debt. And they accuse her of entering into an agreement to rent out a home she bought in Kissimmee, near Disney World, while at the same time promising not to rent the property — all to obtain a lower interest rate.

The cloud of indictment has loomed over Mosby for nearly a year, since federal prosecutors issued subpoenas in March for a wide range of financial records from her and her husband, City Council President Nick Mosby. Marilyn Mosby is now charged with four felonies that could bring prison time, even as her election for a third term looms in June.

Federal prosecutors have not accused Nick Mosby of wrongdoing.

The indictment alleges Marilyn Mosby sought a $40,000 withdrawal from her city retirement account in May 2020, citing financial hardship she had experienced due to the pandemic. In fact, her salary that year had increased by $10,000 to $248,000, according to the charges.

“Mosby had not experienced adverse financial consequences stemming from the coronavirus as a result of ‘being quarantined, furloughed or laid off’ or ‘having reduced work hours’ or ‘due to lack of childcare’ or ‘the closing or reduction of hours of a business I own or operate’” — all prerequisites for obtaining the loan, which Mosby attested to under penalty of perjury, federal prosecutors wrote in the indictment.

Her attorney, A. Scott Bolden, pledged Thursday to fight the federal charges, again accusing prosecutors of harboring a personal grudge against her.

“We will fight these charges vigorously, and I remain confident that once all the evidence is presented, that she will prevail against these bogus charges — charges that are rooted in personal, political and racial animus five months from her election,” he said in a statement.

The case against Mosby has been a matter of much public debate and speculation. Federal authorities kept silent about the case for months, even as her lawyer publicly demanded answers from them.

The criminal charges are narrowly focused on withdrawals from her retirement savings and her purchase of the Florida homes. The indictment, however, provides no clues as to what prosecutors were after by issuing subpoenas to a city dance studio where the Mosbys sent their children, to Black churches where the Mosbys gave money, and to their private companies and election campaigns.

“The indictment is more telling for what is not in the indictment, rather than what is in there,” Bolden said.

He called the charges “a far cry from criminal tax evasion and tax related charges that were at the heart of this federal investigation. More importantly, Ms. Mosby has never lied or made a false statement in connection the allegations contained in the charging document.”

The indictment says Mosby received $36,000 from her request to withdraw $40,000 from her retirement account. She then put the money toward a down payment on a rental property near Orlando, Florida. But prosecutors say in purchasing that property, she lied about whether she had any federal tax debts when the IRS had issued a lien on her Baltimore property.

Prosecutors also allege that she falsely said the property was a second home, which lowered the interest rate.

She already had lined up a management company to operate it as a short-term rental, the indictment says.

Mosby purchased the eight-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot Kissimmee property in September 2020 for $545,000 and was using it as a rental property. She sold it in November for a $150,000 profit, to a buyer from Baltimore County.

Mosby was elected to become the city’s top prosecutor in 2014, and rocketed to national prominence by bringing charges in the police custody-related death of Freddie Gray and pushing progressive policies. She was reelected in 2018 and is up for reelection this year.

Supporters have said she is being targeted for her progressive policies and Black leaders are often unfairly targeted for investigations. In October, a group including civil rights attorney Ben Crump called for an end to the investigation.

Joining them, Bolden said federal prosecutors were pursuing perjury charges against his client, but would not give him details. He said he was only told that it related to her signature on a document.

“I say, what document?” Bolden said. “You can’t prosecute me for perjury, or that I lied about a document, without telling me what the document is. Without telling me what the lie is. That’s denial of due process. Every one of them, there were eight in the room, refused to tell us what the lie was, what document they saw.”

Bolden repeated that line of attack Thursday, saying federal tax authorities “went completely dark” and refused to say whether they were considering the evidence he submitted to support Mosby’s innocence.

“You would only conduct a criminal investigation in that manner, if you were not interested in the truth or exculpatory evidence or justice, but rather only concerned with obtaining an indictment and bringing false charges against my client — at all or any costs,” he said.

Federal prosecutors accuse Mosby of making a second withdrawal from her retirement savings, this one in December 2020 for $45,000, and again falsely claiming financial hardship related to the coronavirus. She used that money as a down payment for a $476,000 condominium on a barrier island in Longboat Key, Florida, according to the indictment. She bought the condo last February.

Retirement account holders such as Mosby are allowed to withdraw funds before a certain age and avoid the typical 10% tax penalty under the federal coronavirus relief passed in 2020. Those taxpayers, who must meet hardship conditions, can either repay their accounts or report the extra income over the next three years on tax returns.

Ed Jacobson, president and CEO of Glass Jacobson, said many of the Owings Mills tax, accounting and financial services firm’s clients benefited from that provision, making withdrawals from 401(k) or IRA accounts after losing income in the pandemic.

”It provides somebody who needs cash a way to pull from a retirement account and do it with relatively minor tax consequences,” Jacobson said. “It was a wonderful provision of the CARES act … Clearly you have to have a negative, adverse effect to avail yourself of some of the relief.”

But he said, until news of Thursday’s indictment, he hadn’t heard of the IRS challenging any withdrawals.

“It’s a brand new law,” he said. And, “the IRS is so far behind in processing returns and processing refunds … I have not seen it challenged before.”

He called allegations of false statements on mortgage applications “pretty serious charges.” Mortgage applicants typically can get lower mortgage rates on a second home than on an investment property. And “having a lien would make a borrower a higher risk, if a borrower could even get the loan.”

Typically, a lender would turn up a tax lien before approving a loan.

If convicted, Mosby faces a maximum of five years in prison for each of the two counts of perjury and a maximum of 30 years for each of the two counts of making a false statement. Actual sentences take into account a defendant’s history and are typically far less.

A fundraising website has been established to accept donations for Mosby’s legal defense, but it remains unclear who is in charge of the money. Mosby and her attorney have said they have nothing to do with the fund. The fund manager has not responded to questions from The Baltimore Sun.

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Potter, Holmes and Maxwell await verdicts in three sensational criminal trials

Three women on trial for very different crimes are currently in verdict watch.  The three juries are deciding the fate of Kim Potter, Elizabeth Holmes and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Kim Potter a former Minnesota police officer pulled her service weapon thinking it was a Taser and shot Daunte Wright killing him. 

Elizabeth Holmes is on trial for fraud. Holmes, through her company Theranos, is charged with bilking millions from investors by misleading investors, doctors and patients over a blood testing devise.

Ghislaine Maxwell, the companion of Jeffrey Epstein, is accused of sex-trafficking and enticing young girls into sexual contact with Epstein.

All three trials have garnered national attention. To watch the verdicts CLICK HERE

PLW: SCOTUS Narrows Statute That Could Expose ‘Millions’ to Prosecution

Matthew T. Mangino
The Legal Intelligencer
July 6, 2021

The U.S. Supreme Court recently narrowed the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA), 18 U. S. C. Section 1030, a federal law that makes it illegal “to access a computer with authorization and to use such access to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accessor is not entitled so to obtain or alter.”

The high court decided, by a 6-3 margin, a former police officer who used his position to search a computer database for license-plate records for an illicit purpose, did not violate the CFAA.

The officer, Nathan Van Buren, from Georgia, sought a loan from a man he befriended. The man went to the FBI. As part of a sting operation the man agreed to offer Van Buren $5,000 if he would search the license-plate database for a specific vehicle owner. Van Buren’s job gave him access to the database; however, his search on that occasion violated department policy because it was not done in connection with his duties.

Van Buren was charged with violating the CFAA. The act subjects a person to criminal liability who “intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access,” and thereby obtains computer information. According to Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s majority opinion, “It defines the term ‘exceeds authorized access’ to mean ‘to access a computer with authorization and to use such access to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accessor is not entitled so to obtain or alter.’”

Barrett’s opinion was joined by an unusual coalition made up of the other two justices appointed by President Donald Trump— Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh—and the court’s three-member progressive wing, Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The government argued that Van Buren’s violation of department policy—accessing the computer for nonpolice-related data—resulted in a violation of the CFAA. Barrett disagreed. “This provision covers those who obtain information from particular areas in the computer—such as files, folders or databases—to which their computer access does not extend,” wrote Barrett. “It does not cover those who, like Van Buren, have improper motives for obtaining information that is otherwise available to them.”

Barrett wrote, “If the ‘exceeds authorized access’ clause criminalizes every violation of a computer-use policy, then millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens are criminals.”

Barrett continued, “So on the government’s reading of the statute, an employee who sends a personal e-mail or reads the news using her work computer has violated the CFAA.” Barrett goes on to site amici briefs that expound on the potential to “criminalize everything from embellishing an online-dating profile to using a pseudonym on Facebook.”

Barrett summed up her opinion in this way, “The parties agree that Van Buren accessed the law enforcement database system with authorization. The only question is whether Van Buren could use the system to retrieve license-plate information. Both sides agree that he could. Van Buren accordingly did not ‘exceed authorized access’ to the database, as the CFAA defines that phrase, even though he obtained information from the database for an improper purpose.”

Interestingly, in this case Van Buren has the mens rea to commit an illicit act. However, his conduct was a violation of the police department policy and not federal law.  Barrett’s concern that an overly broad interpretation of the CFAA could mean “millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens are criminals.” Her position is laudable. Yet, the federal crimes code is loaded with crimes that don’t require ill intent.

In fact, the government argues in Van Buren’s case that the “mens rea requirement ‘might” preclude liability in some cases.”

That is an interesting argument in light of the tireless effort by Congress to expand the number of federal criminal laws that do not require mens rea.  Mens rea is the intent to commit a crime or more simply a guilty mind.

People who do their best to remain law-abiding members of society can no longer be confident that they are safe from prosecution.

This is not the sentiment of some bleeding heart criminal defense attorneys. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, issued a report suggesting, “Honest mistakes should not result in prison time. Every criminal conviction should require proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the person acted with criminal intent.”

Even the conservative Koch brothers are alarmed. A report by The Charles Koch Institute reported that when the federal criminal code was enacted in 1790, there were just 30 crimes. By the 1980s, the number had exploded to more than 3,000. Today, the number of federal crimes and regulations is unknown. Some studies estimate that there are as many as 5,000 statutes and 300,000 regulations that carry federal criminal penalties.

With too many criminal statutes and too little needed to get a conviction everyone is at risk.

Here are a couple examples, cited by The Charles Koch Institute, of the ridiculousness of crime without intent. A river guide was charged with “obstructing government operations” when he dove into the water to save a child instead of waiting for a search and rescue team to arrive. A Christian outreach group offered food to homeless people in a Fort Lauderdale park and its members were arrested because a local regulation disallowed such food sharing.

Even Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged in his dissent in Van Buren that, “It is understandable to be uncomfortable with so much conduct being criminalized.”

Throughout history, criminal statutes have required some form of criminal intent such as negligence, recklessness, knowledge, intent or willfulness. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged the need for an adequate mens rea requirement in criminal cases.

In Elonis v. United States, 575 U.S. ___ (2015) the court declined to identify exactly what the appropriate mens rea standard is under that statute used to prosecute Anthony Elonis. The court recognized that a defendant’s mental state is critical when he faces criminal liability and, as The Federalist Society—another bastion of conservative thought—suggested, when a federal criminal statute is “silent on the required mental state,” a court should read the statute as incorporating “that mens rea which is necessary to separate wrongful conduct from ‘otherwise innocent conduct.’”

There is more work to be done. Courts should demand clear standards for mens rea in criminal statutes; Congress should begin to review statutes that lack mens rea; and closely scrutinize future legislation when it comes to criminal intent.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George. He is the author of “The Executioner’s Toll,” 2010. Contact him at matthewmangino@aol.com, www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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PA Supreme Court rules against Trump campaign

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that the Trump campaign’s election observers were not entitled to observe Philadelphia’s ballot counting at close range, reported Jurist.

Throughout the ballot counting process, Trump campaign observers were allowed to stand within 20 feet of election workers processing ballots. However, campaign lawyers claimed that this was not sufficient to allow “meaningful observation.”

The Trump campaign has used their “meaningful observation” argument in a number of post-election and mid-election filings, including in other battleground states such as Nevada. Pennsylvania’s law does not require “meaningful observation” and only requires that observers be allowed to be “present” while election workers process mail-in ballots.

The Trump campaign has argued that presence during ballot processing is insufficient unless their observers are allowed to be closer to the ballot processing. A Trump attorney who observed ballot processing in Philadelphia complained of not being close enough to read the writing on the ballots, according to the court’s ruling. Ultimately, the court ruled that the law did not require observation to require specific activities, such as reading ballots. Philadelphia’s ballot processing observation procedures were sufficient and complied with Pennsylvania law.

This lawsuit is another in a string of defeats for the Trump campaign, after failures in Michigan, Arizona and Nevada, among others. The US Department of Homeland Security has said that the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history.”

To read more CLICK HERE

 

AG Barr authorizes federal prosecutors to pursue 'substantial allegations' of voting irregularities

Attorney General William Barr has authorized federal prosecutors across the U.S. to pursue “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities, if they exist, before the 2020 presidential election is certified, despite little evidence of fraud, according to Talking Points Memo.

Barr’s action comes days after Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump and raises the prospect that Trump will use the Justice Department to try to challenge the outcome. It gives prosecutors the ability to go around longstanding Justice Department policy that normally would prohibit such overt actions before the election is certified.

Trump has not conceded the election and is instead claiming without evidence that there has been a widespread, multi-state conspiracy by Democrats to skew the vote tally in Biden’s favor.

Biden holds a sizable lead in multiple battleground states and there has been no indication of enough improperly counted or illegally cast votes that would shift the outcome. In fact, election officials from both political parties have publicly stated the election went well, though there have been minor issues that are typical in elections, including voting machines breaking and ballots that were miscast and lost.

In a memo to U.S. attorneys, obtained by The Associated Press, Barr wrote that investigations “may be conducted if there are clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State.”

He said any allegations that “clearly not impact the outcome of a federal election” should be delayed until after those elections are certified and prosecutors should likely open so-called preliminary inquiries, which would allow investigators and prosecutors to see if there is evidence that would allow them to take further investigative measures.

Barr does not identify any specific instances of purported fraud in the memo.

“While it is imperative that credible allegations be addressed in a timely and effective manner, it is equally imperative that Department personnel exercise appropriate caution and maintain the Department’s absolute commitment to fairness, neutrality and non-partisanship,” Barr wrote.

States have until Dec. 8 to resolve election disputes, including recounts and court contests over the results. Members of the Electoral College meet Dec. 14 to finalize the outcome.

Barr, a loyal ally of President Donald Trump, helped broadcast Trump’s claims of voter fraud before the election, attacking mail-in voting as prone to undue influence and coercion, despite multiple studies debunking the notion of pervasive voter fraud in general and in the vote-by-mail process. 

To read more CLICK HERE

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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Court permits fraud suit to move forward against Trump and his children

This week, a federal judge on denied requests by defendants to stay proceedings in a civil case in which President Donald Trump, three of his children and his company are accused of participating in a scheme to defraud investors, reported Jurist.

The civil complaint, brought by unnamed plaintiffs who were among a potential class of plaintiffs, alleges that The Trump Corporation, President Trump, Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, received millions in secret payments between 2005 and 2015 from a multilevel marketing company called ACN. The complaint alleges that President Trump falsely told prospective investors that his endorsement was “not for any money” and that ACN was doing hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.

The denial of the request for stay comes weeks after the defendants’ request for mandatory arbitration was denied and means that the lawsuit is set to continue in district court. However, an appeal of the denial is currently pending and was a factor in consideration of Monday’s denial for stay.

Judge Lorna Schofield considered the four-factor standard for whether a stay in the proceedings would be appropriate:

(1) whether the stay applicant has made a strong showing that he is likely to succeed on the merits;
(2) whether the applicant will be irreparably injured absent a stay;
(3) whether issuance of the stay will substantially injure the other parties interested in the proceeding; and
(4) where the public interest lies.

Schofield reasoned that the first factor weighed “heavily in favor of denying the stay” because neither the Trumps nor ACN demonstrated a “likelihood of success on appeal” regarding the pending appeal for the recent denial of a request for mandatory arbitration. Schofield further supported her conclusion by asserting that there is no legal requirement to arbitrate the underlying dispute. In terms of the second factor, the defendant Trumps and ACN argued that they were open to substantial prejudice absent the stay due to their being subject to third-party discovery that might otherwise not be available in arbitration, and which may injure their reputation. However, Schofield asserted that no matter if the defendants had a credible appeal, it does not entitle them to prevent the case from moving forward pending that appeal. 

Additionally, the strong likelihood of failure on appeal outweighed the possibility of injury to the defendants. In evaluating the third factor, Schofield held that further delays suffered by the plaintiffs do weigh “somewhat against a stay,” but it was not enough to outweigh the first two “most critical” factors. Lastly, Schofield considered that the because the nature of the lawsuit is merely a private business dispute, no public interest was present, therefore, the fourth factor weighed slightly in favor of implementing a stay.

The next matter for consideration in the case is whether the plaintiffs may continue the case under pseudonyms or whether they must reveal their identities to the defendants. The parties are set to submit briefs on this issue by June 30, 2020 supporting their support or opposition to the pseudonym. Meanwhile, the parties are set to continue to meet and confer regularly to negotiate a timeline for the production of documents and discuss the remaining disputes.

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