New York AG files motion to hold Trump in CONTEMPT for refusing to turn over documents
Attorney General James’s contempt move against Donald Trump is just the latest in a long line of legal entanglements for the former president.
He also faces a criminal investigation from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which struck a major roadblock in late February with the departure of the two lead prosecutors in the case.
However, Bragg said on Thursday that his investigation is still progressing.
Both James’s civil and criminal investigations are investigating whether the Trump organization used misleading financial statements to obtain loans and negotiate other deals.
Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen accused the company of this during a Congressional hearing in February 2019.
Along with the investigations into tax fraud, the House Select Committee Investigation’s Jan. 6 Attack on the US Capitol is conducting an investigation into last year’s insurgency — which is getting closer and closer to ensnaring the former president.
Here’s a look at the former president’s most recent legal battles:
Alvin Bragg’s Criminal Investigation ‘Continues’, Manhattan Office Says
Manhattan’s new district attorney is under mounting pressure to provide an update in his criminal investigation into the Trump Organization, which appeared to have stalled in late February.
However, in a statement released Thursday shortly after James’ filing, Bragg vowed that his office “examines thoroughly and follows the facts without fear or favour.”
He gave no new details and declined to discuss “investigative steps” and “grand jury cases,” but said he would make public if and when the investigation ended.
“Basically, as we said before, the investigation continues,” he said.
Capitol Riot Commission May Want To Talk To Trump
The chairman of the House Capitol riot committee told reporters on Thursday, “We’ll talk about the likelihood of an interview with Trump in the not-too-distant future.”
The Democrat-led panel has been vague for months about if and when it plans to talk to the former president himself, as more and more members of his inner circle become entangled in the extensive and fast-moving investigation.
Trump himself left the door open for cooperation with the commission. In an interview with the Washington Post published hours before Thompson’s comments, the former president said he would decide based on “what the request is.”
Thompson called that response “interesting” on Thursday.
Biden’s Justice Department ‘plans to examine White House documents’ Trump took to Mar-a-Lago
The House Oversight Committee has accused President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) of “interfering” in her panel’s investigation into possible accounting violations by the Trump White House.
The DOJ is “taking steps” to investigate the transfer of records by the former president — some of which were allegedly top secret — from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the Washington Post reported Thursday.
In February, the National Archives said it had to pick up 15 boxes of presidential documents from the West Palm Beach estate the month before.
The records had said at the time that the records should have been handed over for safekeeping at the end of the Trump administration.
It came after the agency claimed Trump tore up several documents during his administration that were intended to remain intact.
The Post’s Thursday report noted that a possible investigation on the horizon could be why the DOJ is withholding the contents of those boxes from Congress.
Bill Clinton-appointed judge slaps Trump’s lawsuit against Hillary
Reporting by Rob Crilly
A federal judge Thursday rejected Donald Trump’s request to drop his lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, saying there was no legitimate reason why his nomination by President Bill Clinton should disqualify him.
In a strongly worded five-page statement, Judge Donald Middlebrooks said he had never met the Clintons and hinted that Trump was “judge shop.”
“Every federal judge is appointed by a president affiliated with a major political party, and therefore every federal judge could theoretically be held responsible to some degree,” he wrote.
Trump last month sued Clinton and a slew of other Democrats, accusing them of trying to spread defamation against him during the 2016 campaign.
The case was assigned to Middlebrooks, who was appointed to the Southern District of Florida Federal Court by President Clinton in 1997.
In his ruling on Thursday, he said that all judges – by virtue of their appointment may be regarded as having a political background – but without any evidence to the contrary, should be regarded as impartial.
Ivanka Trump grilled by a January 6 Democrat-led panel
The closest member of Donald Trump’s job to sit with the Capitol Riot Commission is his oldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, who also served as a senior adviser during his administration.
Ivanka was grilled by the panel for a whopping eight hours via an external video link, ending around 6pm
Her husband Jared Kushner, also a former high-ranking Trump administrative aide, spoke to the committee in March.
Little is known about the details of her testimony, although Chairman Thompson said she “answered questions.”
She would not have invoked the Fifth Amendment or any other claim to silence, according to the New York Times, although her father told the Washington Post on Thursday that he had offered to protect her with an undisclosed “privilege.” .
He called her interview “harassment” and “shame.”
The commission previously said it has “first-hand testimony” that Ivanka personally appealed to her father to stop the violence on Jan. 6.
Kushner’s interview was described as “helpful” and Trump’s son-in-law is said to be “friendly” and “cooperative” with the commission, NPR reported.
Federal judge says Trump ‘more likely than not’ broke the law on Jan. 6
U.S. District Judge David Carter of California said last month that Trump was likely trying to obstruct a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. Lawmakers gathered to confirm Biden’s election victory was interrupted by the former president’s supporters storming the Capitol.
The opinion, which is the first time a judge has suggested Trump was directly involved in the uprising, was part of an ongoing legal battle waged by pro-Trump attorney John Eastman.
Eastman wrote a now infamous memo with a legal theory about how then Vice President Mike Pence could have unilaterally reversed the election.
The attorney had filed a lawsuit to prevent the Jan. 6 commission from receiving a huge amount of documents, including emails between him and Trump about the 2020 election.
Carter ruled that 101 sensitive emails should be turned over to the commission, while 10 remain privileged.
“The illegality of the plan was clear. Our nation is founded on the peaceful transfer of power epitomized by George Washington laying down his sword to make way for democratic elections,” Carter argued of Eastman’s legal theories.
“With a plan this ‘BOLD’, President Trump was knowingly trying to undermine this fundamental principle. Based on the evidence, the court considers it more likely that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”
Trump loses bid to indict rape prosecutor E. Jean Carroll
The former president unsuccessfully sought financial compensation from writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of raping her in a New York City department store in the mid-1990s.
Manhattan federal court Judge Lewis Kaplan said on March 11 that Trump’s argument had been made in bad faith in an effort to delay Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against him.
Carroll sued Trump in November 2019 when he dismissed her graphic and disturbing accusations as financially and politically motivated lies.
It comes after Biden’s Justice Department said last June that it would continue to replace Trump in Carroll’s lawsuit, not because of the facts of the case, but because of the legal basis presented by the ex-president’s office when he met him. denied her allegations.
Kaplan had previously ruled in 2020 that Trump should remain a defendant in the case. Trump’s DOJ appealed the decision in November of that year, weeks after he lost the election.
Top prosecutors withdraw from Manhattan Trump Organization investigation
Bragg’s criminal investigation into Trump faced massive public reckoning when two prosecutors who led the Manhattan District Attorney’s tax fraud investigation into Donald Trump and his family business abruptly resigned in late February.
Attorneys Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz dropped out of the case after Manhattan’s new district attorney expressed doubts about pursuing a case against Trump, the New York Times reported.
Sources close to the investigation said it had stalled for a month in the midst of prosecutors’ presentation of evidence to a grand jury.
At the time of reporting, Bragg’s team also reportedly hadn’t questioned witnesses for more than a month, after shelved a plan to grill at least one person without the prosecutor’s approval.
The sudden uproar threatened to derail the investigation, which was started in 2018 by former prosecutor Cyrus Vance Jr..
Meanwhile, the grand jury met to see if Trump’s real estate empire’s term expires this month.
Supreme Court denies Trump’s request to block documents
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the ex-president’s struggle to keep his records away from the Democrat-led Capitol Riot Commission.
Trump had challenged a DC Circuit Court opinion that ordered the National Archives to hand over the documents, after the Biden administration had already said it wouldn’t get in the way.
The Supreme Court took note of the DC Circuit statement, pointing out that Trump would have lost the case even if he was still in office.
“The questions of whether and under what circumstances a former president can obtain a court order prohibiting the disclosure of privileged documents from his term in office, in light of a decision by the incumbent president to waive the privilege, are unprecedented and give rise to to serious and substantial concern,” the Supreme Court said.
Only Judge Clarence Thomas, husband of conservative activist and Trump supporter Virginia Thomas, voted to overturn the lower court’s ruling. He didn’t explain why.
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