Tag: Justice Department

Justice Dept. investigated potential ‘bribery-for-pardon’ scheme involving White House

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The Justice Department in August investigated a potential “bribery-for-pardon” scheme in which a large political contribution would be offered in exchange for a presidential pardon by the White House, according to court records unsealed Tuesday.

The documents show that U.S. prosecutors were scrutinizing whether two individuals approached senior White House officials as unregistered lobbyists, and a related scheme in which cash would be funneled through intermediaries for a pardon or reprieve of a sentence for a defendant apparently in Federal Bureau of Prisons custody at some point. The status of the investigation is unclear.

The slender record is heavily redacted and does not identify the investigation’s targets or whether anyone has been or will be charged. It also does not indicate what senior White House officials did after allegedly being approached. Continue reading.

Trump’s attempts to smear Christopher Steele just hit a roadblock

Trump’s attempts to smear Christopher Steele just hit a roadblock

For months, President Donald Trump and his allies have tried to smear Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous Steele Dossier, as someone bent on bringing down the president through lies and deceit.

But after this week’s revelations, they might have to try a new strategy.

As Reuters first reported, attorneys from the Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General’s Office grilled Steele early last month in the U.K. A report in Politico added that the two-day interview took a total of 16 hours.

View the complete July 10 article by Casey Michel on the ThinkProgress website here.

Former acting FBI chief Andrew McCabe: Trump’s ties to Russian mobsters are ‘absolutely unprecedented’

“Trump, Inc.” and Former FBI Deputy Chief Andrew McCabe Compare Notes

Before he became infamous for working on the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails and the Trump Russia investigation, former acting FBI chief Andrew McCabe investigated the Russian mob in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. McCabe has been asking some of the questions we at “Trump, Inc.” have asked ourselves about Trump’s business. So today, we compare notes.

In this conversation with Andrea Bernstein and Heather Vogell, of “Trump, Inc.,” McCabe talks about why it makes sense that some of the people he investigated in the 1990s have resurfaced in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, what questions he still has after the Mueller report and why he and former FBI director Jim Comey have said Trump’s management style reminds them of the mob.

Trump has long denied any wrongdoing, and he has said he was simply acting as an ordinary businessman in his Russia dealings.

View the following May 29 article from ProPubica on the AlterNet website here.

Mueller says he does not want to testify before Congress

Special counsel Robert Mueller said Wednesday that he does not want to testify before Congress on his investigation into Russian interference.

“I hope and expect this to be the only time that I will speak to you about this matter,” Mueller said in remarks that lasted about eight minutes from the Justice Department. “I am making that decision myself — no one has told me whether I can or should testify or speak further about this matter.”

Mueller also said that any testimony his office would give “would not go beyond” what is already laid out in the public version of his 448-page report.

View the complete May 29 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Report: Mueller Team Had Enough Evidence To Charge Trump

The Mueller team collected enough evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice — and Trump would most likely be under indictment right now if he were not a sitting president, according to a Friday report by Murray Waas in the New York Review of Books.

Prosecutors working for Mueller said that, if not for current Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president, they would have advocated that Trump should face federal criminal charges for pressuring former FBI Director James Comey to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Waas spoke to two Justice Department officials who confirmed they were told this information personally by two prosecutors on Mueller’s team. A third person present for the conversation confirmed that it occurred.

View the compete April 27 article by Dan Desai Martin on the National Memo website here.

McCabe says he quickly opened FBI investigation of Trump for fear of being fired

Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that he was concerned the Russia investigation would “vanish in the night without a trace.” (Reuters)

Former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe said in an interview that aired Thursday that he authorized an investigation into President Trump’s ties to Russia a day after meeting with him in May 2017 out of fear that he could soon be fired.

“I was very concerned that I was able to put the Russia case on absolutely solid ground in an indelible fashion that, were I removed quickly or reassigned or fired, that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace,” McCabe told CBS.

The comments marked the first time that McCabe has publicly addressed why he opened an investigation into Trump following the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey, whose post McCabe took over. They came as CBS broadcast a portion of an interview scheduled to air in full Sunday on “60 Minutes.”

View the complete February 14 article by Matt Zapotosky and John Wagner on The Washington Post website here.

Justice Department plans to alert public to foreign operations targeting U.S. democracy

The following article by Ellen Nakashima was posted on the Washington Post website July 19, 2018:

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Credit: Mary Turner/Reuters

The Justice Department plans to alert the public to foreign operations targeting U.S. democracy under a new policy designed to counter hacking and disinformation campaigns such as the one Russia undertook in 2016 to disrupt the presidential election.

The government will inform American companies, private organizations and individuals that they are being covertly attacked by foreign actors attempting to affect elections or the political process.

“Exposing schemes to the public is an important way to neutralize them,” said Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who announced the policy at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. Rosenstein, who has drawn President Trump’s ire for appointing a special counsel to probe Russian election interference, got a standing ovation.“The American people have a right to know if foreign governments are targeting them with propaganda,” he said.

View the complete article here.

Peter Strzok just gave a hard-to-rebut defense of the objectivity of the Russia investigation’s origins

The following article by Philip Bump was posted on the Washington Post website July 12, 2018:

Peter Strzok Credit: Jack Gruber, USA Today Network

To hear President Trump tell it, FBI agent Peter Strzok was hopelessly biased against him and his candidacy. Trump has tweeted criticisms of Strzok repeatedly, often in personally disparaging terms, and on at least two occasions has suggested that Strzok’s involvement in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election had a specific goal: preventing him from becoming president.

Strzok was a central player in the dueling investigations during the 2016 campaign. He was involved in the initial investigation into former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and opened the investigation into possible connections between Trump’s campaign and the Russian effort to influence the election’s outcome. He was subsequently involved in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s continuation of that investigation until Mueller learned of texts Strzok sent to Lisa Page, another FBI employee with whom the agent was engaged in an extramarital relationship. Those texts included some disparaging Trump in stark terms, prompting Mueller to remove him from the effort last July.

Trump has highlighted those texts as evidence that the investigation into him is biased for months. The president retweeted a particularly significant one last month.

View the complete article on the Washington Post website here.

Dana Boente, former top Justice Department official now at FBI, has been interviewed by Mueller and turned over notes

The following article by Matt Zapotosky was posted on the Washington Post website April 10, 2018:

Dana Boente is now general counsel at the FBI. Credit: Evan Vucci/AP

Dana Boente, the former acting attorney general who now serves as general counsel at the FBI, has been interviewed by the special counsel’s office and turned over handwritten notes that could be evidence in the ongoing investigation into whether President Trump obstructed justice, according to people familiar with the matter.

Boente was interviewed months ago by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team on a wide range of topics, including his recollections of what former FBI director James B. Comey told him about troubling interactions with Trump, one of the people said. Continue reading “Dana Boente, former top Justice Department official now at FBI, has been interviewed by Mueller and turned over notes”

Justice Dept. officials appealed to White House to halt release of memo alleging FBI abuses related to author of Trump dossier

The following article by Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett was posted on the Washington Post website January 30, 2018:

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein warned White House Chief of Staff John Kelly Monday about the risks of releasing the document. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Top Justice Department officials made a last-ditch plea Monday to White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly about the dangers of publicly releasing a memo alleging abuses by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to people briefed on the meeting.

Shortly before the House Intelligence Committee voted to make the document public, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein warned Kelly that the four-page memo prepared by House Republicans could jeopardize classified information and implored the president to reconsider his support for making it public, those people said. Rosenstein was joined in the meeting at the White House by FBI Director Christopher A. Wray. Continue reading “Justice Dept. officials appealed to White House to halt release of memo alleging FBI abuses related to author of Trump dossier”