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‘Nothing’ Should Stop DOJ From Investigating Trump – Not Even 60 Day ‘Unwritten Rule’ Says Former Inspector General

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Former Dept. of Justice Inspector General Michael Bromwich says “nothing” should stop the DOJ from investigating Donald Trump, not even the department’s unwritten “60-day rule” about not intentionally influencing the outcomes of elections.

Bromwich’s resumé reads like a walk through late 20th century political history. As a federal prosecutor at the vaunted U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), which was once headed by Robert Morgenthau, Jim Comey, Preet Bharara, and even the now-disgraced Rudy Giuliani, Bromwich prosecuted Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver L. North.

As Inspector General at DOJ, Bromwich investigated the FBI’s investigation into the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and the Bureau’s investigation into former Central Intelligence Agency counterintelligence officer Aldrich Ames, convicted in 1994 of espionage for spying for the USSR and Russia. He’s also represented former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, and served as the Director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management under President Barack Obama.

READ MORE: ‘Disingenuous Grandstanding’: Kevin McCarthy Mocked for Trying to Bully Merrick Garland With Powers He Does Not Have

“Nothing–not even the unwritten rule– should stop DOJ from following up on the scores of investigative leads generated by the Mar-A-Lago search,” Bromwich writes, “including interviews of the people seen moving the doc[uments]. That’s not ‘overt’ unless Trump or his employees choose to make it so.”

Bromwich was responding to a tweet from The New York Times that reads: “As the midterms near, Justice Department officials are weighing whether to temporarily scale back work in criminal investigations involving Donald Trump because of an unwritten rule forbidding overt actions that could improperly influence the vote.”

That tweet points to a Times’ article that says, “As the midterm elections near, top Justice Department officials are weighing whether to temporarily scale back work in criminal investigations involving former President Donald J. Trump because of an unwritten rule forbidding overt actions that could improperly influence the vote.”

“Under what is known as the 60-day rule,” the Times adds, “the department has traditionally avoided taking any steps in the run-up to an election that could affect how people vote, out of caution that such moves could be interpreted as abusing its power to manipulate American democracy.”

READ MORE: ‘Jerked Around’: Bill Barr Destroys Trump, Says It’s ‘Unprecedented for a President to Take All This Classified Info’

Then-FBI Director Jim Comey infamously violated that rule when he announced in a letter to Congress barely weeks before the 2016 presidential election that he was re-opening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. That move “probably” threw the race to Donald Trump, according to FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver.

Bromwich is not the only attorney speaking out in reference to the Times piece.

Civil rights lawyer and former President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) Sherrilyn Ifill writes: “Trump is not on the ballot, and won’t be for two years. He has not even declared his candidacy. It can’t be the ‘rule’ that a DOJ investigation or indictment ‘might’ affect or influence a vote in *any* election. Otherwise they could never act. Come. On.”

 

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CRIME

Giuliani Booking Photo Released

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4 months ago

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August 23, 2023

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Former Trump attorney and former Republican Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani was booked in Fulton County, Georgia Wednesday afternoon on racketeering charges and charges related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

He was released on a $150,000 bond after being arraigned on 13 charges.

“Conditions include prohibitions against intimidating co-defendants or witnesses, and against communicating with co-defendants other than through their lawyers. Giuliani must check in with pretrial services every 30 days,” USA Today reports.

READ MORE: ‘Wrong on the Law, Wrong on the Facts’: Fani Willis Smacks Down Jeff Clark’s Legal Move in Scathing Response

Former Trump attorneys Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell were also booked and their photos have been made public as well.

See all three mug shots below or at this link.

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CRIME

‘Moral Turpitude’: Bill Barr Hammers Donald Trump

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4 months ago

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August 17, 2023

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Former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr delivered one of his harshest criticisms to date of his former boss on Thursday, accusing Donald Trump of “moral turpitude.”

“You know, you don’t get immunity for two years in the run-up to an election just by saying, ‘Hey, I’m a candidate,'” Barr told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto.

“These investigations have been going on for a while, everyone knew about them even before he announced his candidacy,” Barr continued. “So if there’s a chance to get it resolved before the election, it should be because the American people should know these are crimes involved – or potential crimes – involving moral turpitude.”

Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute says moral turpitude is “wicked, deviant behavior constituting an immoral, unethical, or unjust departure from ordinary social standards such that it would shock a community.”

READ MORE: ‘Truly Scandalous: Jim Jordan Slammed by Former Top DOJ Official

Barr also talked about the two federal cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, one for Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, and one for his refusal to return classified and other documents.

“I think the federal cases are legitimate,” Barr said. “At the end of the day, at the core of this thing he engaged in – in the case of the documents – in outrageous behavior where anyone would be prosecuted. I don’t know of any attorney general who could walk away from it.”

“He’s not being prosecuted for having the documents, he’s being prosecuted for obstruction, two egregious instances are alleged so I think that’s a very simple case.”

Barr also said for him, Trump “crossed the line” when “he used this device of impaneling imposter electors, swearing that they were the electors, but the key point there was, they were in tandem with a plan whereby the vice president would use that as a pretext for nullifying the legal and certified votes. So it was a calculated and deceitful plan to remain in office by nullifying and negating certified legal votes.”

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CRIME

Special Counsel Wanted Trump’s Twitter Direct Messages When He Obtained a Search Warrant: Report

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4 months ago

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August 15, 2023

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Special Counsel Jack Smith obtained a search warrant for access to Donald Trump’s Twitter account in January, but was looking for non-public information from the account.

That non-public information was Trump’s direct messages, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reports, noting there were “many.” DMs are private.

Smith, who has already obtained indictments against Donald Trump for the ex-president’s removal and refusal to return classified documents and for the ex-president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, appears to have accessed an important resource.

“The special counsel was seeking Trump’s direct messages on Twitter, of which there were many, federal prosecutors and lawyers for Twitter revealed in newly unsealed transcripts from hearings about the search warrant,” Collins reported Tuesday evening.

RELATED: Special Counsel Obtained Search Warrant for Trump’s Twitter Account Amid Court Concerns He Could ‘Flee’ Prosecution

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti said, “I’m surprised that Trump had “many” direct messages. Given that he doesn’t use text and email, they could more directly reveal his intent than other evidence Jack Smith has.”

Experts have wondered why Smith would have wanted access to Trump’s Twitter account, which was suspended after the 2021 insurrection. Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in late 2022, has since reinstated Trump’s account, but the ex-president has not made any public posts on the social media site, now renamed X.

Noted technologist John Gruber last week when news broke that Smith had obtained a search warrant for Trump’s Twitter account wrote, “I’m keenly interested in what the search warrant was after. It wasn’t Trump’s tweets, which are public.”

READ MORE: Democratic Senator Slams ‘Racist’ Videos That Will Be ‘Piped Straight Into the Bloodstream’ of Florida Schoolchildren

“So the obvious conclusion: his direct messages. Trump, famously, does not use email and, until this year, apparently didn’t use text messaging either. But did he send or receive DMs on Twitter? And was he stupid enough to put anything incriminating in them?”

“We also know,” Gruber continued, “that ‘deleted’ tweets were just hidden, not actually deleted — and a bug resulted in deleted tweets resurfacing. Was that (or is it still) true for ‘deleted’ direct messages as well? I think it’s quite likely that every single DM ever sent on Twitter is still around.”

A filing had said “the court ‘found probable cause to search the Twitter account for evidence of criminal offenses,’” according to an Associated Press report last week.

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license

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