November 20, 2024

November 20, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

Both Trump and his embarrassing nominees face resistance.

Hacker Is Said to Have Gained Access to File With Damaging Testimony About Gaetz

The computer file is said to contain testimony from the woman who said she had sex with Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to be attorney general, when she was 17.

An unidentified hacker has gained access to a computer file shared in a secure link among lawyers whose clients have given damaging testimony related to Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman who is President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice to be attorney general, a person with knowledge of the activity said.

The file of 24 exhibits is said to include sworn testimony by a woman who said that she had sex with Mr. Gaetz in 2017 when she was 17, as well as corroborating testimony by a second woman who said that she witnessed the encounter.

The information was downloaded by a person using the name Altam Beezley at 1:23 p.m. on Monday, according to the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly. A lawyer connected to the case sent an email to the address associated with Altam Beezley, only to be informed in an automated reply that the recipient does not exist.

The material does not appear to have been made public by the hacker.

The documents include information that is under seal with the Justice Department, which investigated Mr. Gaetz but did not file charges, and the House Committee on Ethics, which has completed its own inquiry into the former congressman. The Ethics panel’s members are scheduled to meet on Wednesday to decide on whether to vote to release material it has gathered.

But the hacked trove of documents stems from an altogether different source: a civil suit being pursued by a friend of Mr. Gaetz’s, Christopher Dorworth, a Florida businessman. Mr. Dorworth filed the suit against both the woman who says she had sex with Mr. Gaetz when she was a minor and Joel Greenberg, an erstwhile ally of Mr. Gaetz who is serving an 11-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to federal sex trafficking charges involving the woman.

Mr. Dorworth has claimed that he was defamed by Mr. Greenberg and the woman, both of whom had told federal authorities that Mr. Dorworth hosted parties where he, they, Mr. Gaetz and others took drugs and openly had sex.

In mustering their defense, lawyers for Mr. Greenberg and the woman have solicited sworn statements from others who they say were witnesses. The 24 exhibits were attached to a motion prepared by lawyers for Mr. Greenberg and the woman in response to Mr. Dorworth’s suit.

The hacked information also includes sworn testimony from Mr. Dorworth and his wife, as well as testimony from Michael Fischer, Mr. Gaetz’s former campaign treasurer, who is also said to have attended the party. It also contains various supporting material, such as the gate logs showing who entered the property of the Dorworth home on the evening in July 2017 when the two women said the sexual encounter with Mr. Gaetz occurred.

The material apparently taken is unredacted and includes the names and other personal information of the witnesses but is otherwise said to be more damaging to Mr. Gaetz than to his accusers, according to the person familiar with the hack. The hacker had not contacted the lawyers as of Tuesday morning, and it was not clear what motive the person might have. (New York Times)

Group Sues Justice Department for Gaetz Investigation Documents

Staff members cleaning out the office of former Representative Matt Gaetz, who resigned after President-elect Donald J. Trump tapped him for attorney general

The nonpartisan watchdog group American Oversight has been trying since last year to get the documents related to the sex-trafficking investigation into Matt Gaetz.

A nonpartisan watchdog group has filed a motion in federal court seeking to compel the Justice Department to release all material relating to its now-shuttered sex trafficking investigation of Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to be attorney general.

The motion was filed on Tuesday night by the group, American Oversight, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The F.B.I., which was investigating the case for the Justice Department, has refused to release the documents, stating that it is exempt from Freedom of Information Act inquiries.

The group has been trying to get the documents since last year, when the Justice Department ended its two-year inquiry into whether Mr. Gaetz, then a House member from Florida, had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him. Mr. Gaetz was never charged, and he has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

The case is before Judge Dabney L. Friedrich, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2017.

Mr. Trump announced last week that he would nominate Mr. Gaetz, sparking a furor in Washington. The House Committee on Ethics was also investigating allegations that Mr. Gaetz had engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, and was prepared to vote on releasing a highly critical report about him. But within hours of Mr. Trump’s announcement, Mr. Gaetz resigned his seat and the report’s contents instantly became moot, at least as far as the House was concerned.

American Oversight argued in its motion that there was now “an elevated and significant public interest in the quick release of these records” owing to “the unusual circumstances of Mr. Gaetz potentially leading the agency holding the records relating to his investigation.”

The documents sought by American Oversight include all F.B.I. forms describing interviews with witnesses at the heart of both the sex-trafficking inquiry and any efforts to obstruct it. The group seeks a deadline of Dec. 16 for the release of the documents. (New York Times).

Briefing. Brennan Center for Justice

Since Election Day, according to Forbes, stock prices of private prison companies have risen faster than the share price of Tesla. (A stun gun company’s stock has, too.) Private prison companies, after all, are key to the incoming administration’s mass deportation drive. If Donald Trump and his aides go through with their plans to seize millions of people, they need to find somewhere to put them as they are processed. Hence the good times ahead for private prison companies, which will be enlisted to build detention facilities.

Immigration is a fraught topic. We are a nation of immigrants and also a nation of laws. Americans from across the political spectrum recognize that the immigration system has not been reformed in decades. More should be done to secure the border and address the overwhelmed asylum system. We don’t know how far Trump and his squad will go. It is far easier to tweet about deporting millions of people than to actually do it. Mass roundups — without consideration of the capacity of our legal system or the unique situation of each individual and family — would tear apart families, violate our ideals of due process and equal protection, and upend the economy. The indications are, though, that Trump’s campaign trail threat that it will be “a bloody story” should be taken both seriously and literally.

On Sunday, conservative activist Tom Fitton proclaimed on Truth Social that Trump “will declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program.” At around 4 a.m., Trump replied, “TRUE!!!”

As I’ve described before, the Brennan Center’s experts have mapped out the ways that presidents can wield little-used laws to unlock astonishingly broad powers. But even these emergency powers, which have inadequate restrictions, must be subject to the rule of law.

The Posse Comitatus Act generally bars the use of the military on American soil. That is a core element of a liberal democracy. But other dusty and obscure laws provide exceptions to that rule. Over the past few months, we’ve explained those laws and the risks they pose.

Trump has threatened, for example, to use the Insurrection Act. (No, that’s not where he gets to stage another insurrection.) It is an amalgamation of laws that lets presidents use the military to help civilian authorities when they get overwhelmed by unrest. Although there are rare situations when this authority is necessary, the Insurrection Act has not been meaningfully updated in more than 150 years. As my colleague Joseph Nunn points out, the law is dangerously overbroad and ripe for abuse. It grants the president nearly limitless discretion to deploy federal troops domestically, and courts have been excessively deferential to the executive in the past. And the federal judiciary is increasingly obsequious to Trump and his followers.

Trump has even said that he will use the last remaining part of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 — laws decried by Thomas Jefferson as reflecting a “reign of witches” — to treat immigrants as an invading army. The law has been used only three times, most recently to intern Japanese and other foreign nationals during World War II. Its use would be flatly illegal, since the statute allows its use only when the nation is at war with a sovereign government. (Though judges in the past have been reluctant to overrule the executive’s judgment, as my colleague Katherine Yon Ebright reports.)

Then there’s the National Emergencies Act, a 1976 law that gives presidents vast power with few guidelines about what constitutes an emergency. My colleague Liza Goitein has written and testified for years about how this law can be abused — for example, when President Biden wrongly tried to use it to cancel student debt. Staunch conservative Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has also called for change, noting that “this kind of lawmaking-by-proclamation runs directly counter to the vision of our Founders and undermines the safeguards protecting our freedom.”

Trump wielded the National Emergencies Act to steer funds to his half-hearted effort to build a border wall. Stephen Miller last year told the New York Times that this time around, the law will be used to redirect funds to build “‘vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers’ for immigrants as their cases progressed and they waited to be flown to other countries.”

All of these statutes give presidents too much power. All need to be repealed or reformed, as we have argued for years, working with conservatives and liberals to press for change. But all continue to be subject to the Constitution and the rule of law. We are now working with coalition partners to prepare legal challenges to abuses of these laws.

Judges in courtrooms across the nation will soon face a test. Will they use their power to enforce long-standing protections for individuals? Will they uphold the rule of law? Or will they bow to political pressure and allow the executive to expand its already ample power?

All this will unfold not in some distant future, but just weeks from now. The Brennan Center will do our part, using our years of expertise on these once-arcane topics to fight for the Constitution. (Michael Waldman, Brennan Center for Justice)

---

Your Daily Reminder

Trump is a convicted felon.

On May 30th, he was found guilty on 34 felony counts by the unanimous vote of 12 ordinary citizens.

The Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump was scheduled to be sentenced on July 11th and September 18th. He will now be sentenced on November 26.

In a decision issued November 12th, Judge Merchan granted the stay until Nov. 19. He gave the prosecution until then to file an outline of appropriate next steps.

Note - yesterday was the day!

Manhattan D.A. Suggests Freezing Trump’s Case While He Is President

With President-elect Donald J. Trump’s sentencing on hold, his lawyers are pushing to dismiss the case. The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, is opposing the effort.

Prosecutors for Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, proposed freezing the case.

Manhattan prosecutors on Tuesday rebuffed President-elect Donald J. Trump’s request to dismiss his criminal conviction in the wake of his electoral victory, signaling instead their willingness to freeze the case while he holds office.

In a letter to the judge overseeing the case, prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office emphasized that a jury had already convicted Mr. Trump of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal. Prosecutors and judges are often loath to unravel a jury’s verdict.

But acknowledging the unprecedented nature of the case — Mr. Trump would be the first felon to serve as president — the prosecutors raised the prospect of a four-year freeze so that he will not be sentenced for his crimes until he is out of office.

The judge, Juan M. Merchan, will decide in the coming weeks whether to freeze the case or dismiss it outright, a momentous ruling that will shape the outcome of the only one of Mr. Trump’s four criminal cases that made it to trial. Dismissing the case would further embolden Mr. Trump as he enters his second presidential term, solidifying an aura of invincibility around him.

In their letter, the prosecutors spoke out against a dismissal, urging the judge to balance the interests of the presidency with “the integrity of the criminal justice system.”

“The people deeply respect the office of the president, are mindful of the demands and obligations of the presidency, and acknowledge that defendant’s inauguration will raise unprecedented legal questions,” the prosecutors wrote. “We also deeply respect the fundamental role of the jury in our constitutional system.”

In a recent letter to the district attorney’s office, Mr. Trump’s lawyers requested that the prosecutors proactively move to dismiss the case. They argued that doing so would “avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern,” citing the “complex, sensitive and intensely time-consuming” presidential transition process.

The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, a career prosecutor and elected Democrat, had limited and unappealing options for responding. He could have either dropped the case, a move that would have voided the jury’s verdict and alienated his liberal Manhattan base, or suggested some way to pause it, potentially intensifying Mr. Trump’s ire and drawing a legal challenge.

His prosecutors, who took a week to deliberate before delivering Tuesday’s much-anticipated response, ultimately determined that there was no law requiring the dismissal of a jury conviction obtained before a defendant was elected president. They raised the four-year freeze as a preferable alternative to a dismissal, highlighting “the need to balance competing constitutional interests.”

But Mr. Trump, eager to clear his criminal record, will now take his dismissal request to Justice Merchan as soon as this week, setting in motion a legal battle that could cast a shadow on his second presidential term and ultimately reach the Supreme Court. That fight will almost certainly delay Mr. Trump’s sentencing, which had been scheduled for next week, as prosecutors asked the judge to pause the case while both sides submit formal arguments.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Steven Cheung, celebrated the delay, calling it “a total and definitive victory for President Trump and the American people.”

He added: “The lawless case is now stayed, and President Trump’s legal team is moving to get it dismissed once and for all.”

That effort will tee up a legally and politically fraught decision for Justice Merchan, the no-nonsense judge who presided over Mr. Trump’s seven-week trial this year.

Even as Mr. Trump has accused Justice Merchan of being “biased” and “corrupt” — and leveled personal attacks at his daughter, a Democratic political consultant — the judge has vowed to apply “the rules of law evenhandedly.”

It is unclear how Justice Merchan will eventually rule as he balances the weight of a jury verdict against the extraordinary status of the defendant.

A former prosecutor known for his law-and-order leanings, Justice Merchan might be hesitant to throw out the verdict. Instead, he could be more amenable to freezing the case, having already postponed the sentencing twice.

Long sentencing delays are not unheard-of. When defendants are ill — or cooperating with prosecutors against other defendants — it can take months or years for them to be sentenced.

But another delay for Mr. Trump, this one lasting four years, would underscore the sharp reversal in his legal fortunes. Just a few months ago, Mr. Trump was facing the prospect of time behind bars in New York, as well as trials in three other criminal cases.

Now, all four cases may unravel. In July, a judge Mr. Trump appointed during his first term dismissed his federal classified-documents case in Florida in its entirety. The same month, his federal election-interference case in Washington was upended after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision granting him broad immunity for official actions taken as president.

While the federal special counsel who brought those cases sought to revive them, Mr. Trump’s victory thwarted those plans. The judge overseeing his election-interference case in Washington recently paused all filing deadlines while the special counsel, Jack Smith, weighed whether to drop the case.

The future is less clear in Georgia, where Mr. Trump’s state racketeering case has been on hold for months while an appeals court weighs whether to disqualify the prosecutor. At some point, Mr. Trump’s lawyers are expected to call for a long delay, if not an outright dismissal.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers will not settle for a delay in Manhattan, and should Justice Merchan decide against a dismissal, he will not have the final word.

The former and future president could appeal the judge’s decision in either state or federal court. If he loses, the case might wind its way to the Supreme Court, where the 6-to-3 conservative majority includes three justices Mr. Trump appointed.

As he gears up for a legal dogfight, Mr. Trump might eventually revamp his legal team. Last week, he picked two of the lawyers who represented him at trial, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, for senior roles at the Justice Department, most likely creating an opening for a new group of appellate lawyers to take over.

A new legal team could also inherit Mr. Trump’s separate effort to overturn his conviction based on the Supreme Court’s immunity decision. Within hours of the ruling in July, Mr. Trump’s lawyers had moved to throw out the verdict.

Manhattan prosecutors have argued that the immunity ruling had “no bearing” on their case, noting that Mr. Trump’s cover-up of the sex scandal was unrelated to his presidency. Justice Merchan was poised to rule on the matter last week but shelved the decision in light of Mr. Trump’s new bid to have the case dismissed.

Mr. Trump’s two-pronged attack on the Manhattan case — wielding both the immunity ruling and the election results — demonstrated his expansive view of presidential power.

In arguing that the case should be dismissed because of his election, Mr. Trump’s lawyers are likely to rely on broad interpretations of a 1963 law that enshrined the importance of a smooth transition into the presidency, as well as a longstanding Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot face federal criminal prosecution.

That policy undoubtedly applies to both of Mr. Trump’s federal criminal cases, but its authority over Mr. Bragg, a local prosecutor who secured Mr. Trump’s conviction before the presidential election, is an open question.

The stakes remain high for Mr. Trump. He faces up to four years in prison after he leaves the White House, though he would most likely be sentenced to far less time or to probation.

A New York Times examination found that over the past decade in Manhattan, more than a third of convictions for falsifying business records resulted in jail or prison time for the defendants.

Mr. Trump has maintained his innocence and blasted Mr. Bragg for bringing the charges against him, which culminated in May with a jury of 12 New Yorkers handing down a guilty verdict on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

The case arose from the porn star Stormy Daniels’s account of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, which threatened to derail his first presidential run in 2016. To keep the story under wraps, Mr. Trump’s fixer, Michael D. Cohen, reached a $130,000 hush-money deal with Ms. Daniels.

Mr. Trump eventually repaid Mr. Cohen, who later broke with his boss and became a star witness at his trial. The former president, Mr. Cohen testified, orchestrated a scheme to falsify records and hide the true purpose of the reimbursement. (New York Times).

---

Catching up with the Vice President and the 2nd Gentleman.