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Former FBI Counsel Says DOJ’s Trump Investigation Appears Much Further Along Than Previously Thought
Andrew Weissmann, the former counsel of the FBI and prosecutor for Robert Mueller’s special counsel team, said that recent reports that the FBI is questioning more and more people suggests that the investigation into the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago is moving much quicker than previously understood.
On a panel with former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, Frank Figliuzzi, Weissmann explained that the fact that the Justice Department is seeking information from Trump’s personal valet, Walt Nauta and the Presidential Records Act appointed aide Kash Patel “is a real sign that the investigation is way past the beginning stages.”
“I’m particularly intrigued by the fact that the government appears to be seeking an order from the chief judge of the D.C. District Court compelling Mr. Patel to testify,” Weissmann continued. “That is — that’s a very bold step to be taking at this point. It makes it clear that the government is not looking to bring a criminal case against Mr. Patel, but is willing to immunize him and put him in the grand jury, because they want to know the inside story of what he has to say, particularly, I would think, about the alleged declassification of documents. And the same with Mr. Nauta.”
He explained that the “strong grand jury process” gives the government the ability to compel testimony from those aides closest to Trump.
IN OTHER NEWS: Bob Woodward says Trump told me something ‘I’ve never heard’ from any of the 10 presidents I’ve covered
“Obviously, if you’re the target of an investigation, that is a difficult situation to be in because you’re constantly guessing about what the government knows,” Weissmann continued. “And I think in Donald Trump’s case, trying to think how to thwart that — can be a form of obstruction if he engages in it.”
Over the past several months since the document scandal began, Kash Patel has been all over the map when it comes to his defense of Donald Trump. At one point he falsely claimed that the former president can declassify documents by simply standing over them and saying “they’re declassified.” In another interview, he claimed that Trump will never get in trouble because the General Services Administration (GSA) packed up Trump’s boxes and they were the ones who somehow forced Trump to steal the documents.
It isn’t true, as Figliuzzi explained, noting that the GSA asked the White House to sign a form saying that they packed the boxes “and that whatever is in there is necessary for you when you move out of the office.” It’s unknown who signed that document from the White House, but it is likely available via a Freedom of Information Act request.
Figliuzzi also said that Patel can get out of trouble by saying he simply didn’t know, despite his legal education, that Trump had no right to the documents and couldn’t magically declassify them.
READ MORE: ‘Absurd’: Experts say Justice Clarence Thomas ‘giving the finger to the court’
“But the key to Patel is whether he had direct conversations with Trump or those immediately around Trump about obstructing, by saying, ‘Hey, I’m going to do this for you, boss. I’m going to say, you declassified these. And I’m going to make that argument that I somehow knew about that.’ Maybe he’s clairvoyant. I don’t know. You and I talked about this before. There has to be a tangible process. There has to be a defensible process around the declassification of documents. And there’s no evidence here. And Trump knows that, and Kash Patel knows that.”
Figliuzzi also said that Patel might be someone, like many of those around Trump, who wants to take the fall and save Trump, regardless of what that means.
“Let’s remember something, Trump was thinking about making Patel either the deputy director of the CIA or the deputy director of the FBI,” he also recalled. “By the way, those are career positions. You just don’t grab somebody off the street for those. But that is the influence that Patel had with Trump, and vice versa. So, he’s the fascinating piece of this.”
Watch video below or at this link.
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South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem has been under bipartisan fire since Friday after an excerpt from her soon-to-be published book reveals her bragging about shooting to death her 14-month old puppy, and later that day, a goat. Noem, considered at least until last week a top contender to be Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, is doubling-down defending herself but now she’s serving up some “legal cover” as well.
“I can understand why some people are upset about a 20 year old story of Cricket, one of the working dogs at our ranch, in my upcoming book — No Going Back. The book is filled with many honest stories of my life, good and bad days, challenges, painful decisions, and lessons learned,” she wrote on Sunday, after The Guardian‘s damning report. “The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down. Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did.”
Law & Crime on Monday reports the governor is “providing herself legal cover for the act.”
Noem “acknowledged that ‘some people’ were upset about the story — and she specified that it happened two decades ago, seeming to place the incident well beyond the statute of limitations.”
RELATED: Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’
“Noem additionally cited South Dakota law in support of her decision,” Law & Crime adds, noting the “reported book excerpt had said that Cricket tried to bite Noem and attacked her chickens.”
“The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down,” Noem wrote, an apparent attempt to preempt any possible legal issues. “Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did.”
Law & Crime explains that “South Dakota notes that an exemption to animal cruelty laws is the ‘destruction of dangerous animals.’ The law specifies that ‘[a]ny humane killing of an animal’ and ‘[a]ny reasonable action taken by a person for the destruction or control of an animal known to be dangerous, a threat, or injurious to life, limb, or property’ are exempt from prosecution.”
Noting that Noem’s attempt “to lean into the right’s embrace of political incorrectness … didn’t fly with members of her own party,” The Daily Beast pointed to well-known Republicans including former Trump White House communications director Alyssa Farrah Griffin and Meghan McCain who publicly condemned Noem’s actions.
READ MORE: President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off
The Guardian’s excerpt from Noem’s book does not state that Cricket bit people, although Noem states Cricket “whipped around” to bite her. It’s possible biting others is in the book but did not make it into The Guardian’s report.
Describing Cricket killing chickens, Noem “grabbed Cricket, she says, [and] the dog ‘whipped around to bite me’. Then, as the chickens’ owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check ‘for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime’.”
“Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was ‘the picture of pure joy’,” The Guardian reports. “’I hated that dog,’ Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself ‘untrainable’, ‘dangerous to anyone she came in contact with’ and ‘less than worthless … as a hunting dog’.”
Meanwhile, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on Monday said Noem’s pride and decision making surrounding killing the puppy make her unfit to be “in charge.”
Describing how she grew up on a family farm, Brzezinski said they hunted, and “there was absolutely a dense of life and death.” There was “never a joy in killing and there was a respect to it, and a process if you were hunting.”
READ MORE: CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial
“But this story was more about how she felt killing an animal, and that’s what’s scary about it – the impatience, kind of like a switch flipped in her brain and she decided she needed to kill it? Like this is not someone you want in charge, not someone thinking through the process of life and death.”
“The most remarkable part of it,” Scarborough added, “is that the conservative movement has been so corrupted by Donald Trump and his reached such new lows, that she actually put that in, about the killing of a happy puppy because she thought it would help her with the base.”
Watch below or at this link.
“The conservative movement has been so corrupted by Trump and has reached such new lows that [Kristi Noem] actually put that in [her book], about killing a happy puppy, because she thought it would help her with the base.”
— @JoeNBC on Noem’s story about killing her puppy pic.twitter.com/MAMbY3K9Re
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) April 29, 2024
Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.
“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.
“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.
READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’
Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.
On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”
On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”
After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:
“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.
“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”
READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’
Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is responding to Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court hearing on Donald Trump’s claim he has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution because he was a U.S. president, and she delivered a strong warning in response.
Trump’s attorney argued before the nation’s highest court that the ex-president could have ordered the assassination of a political rival and not face criminal prosecution unless he was first impeached by the House of Representatives and then convicted by the Senate.
But even then, Trump attorney John Sauer argued, if assassinating his political rival were done as an “official act,” he would be automatically immune from all prosecution.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, presenting the hypothetical, expressed, “there are some things that are so fundamentally evil that they have to be protected against.”
RELATED: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’
“If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person, and he orders the military, or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?” she asked.
“It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act,” Trump attorney Sauer quickly replied.
SCOTUS Justice Sonia Sotomayor: “If the president … orders someone to assassinate [a rival], is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?”
Trump attorney D. John Sauer: “It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act.” pic.twitter.com/RddEEYIUrR
— The Recount (@therecount) April 25, 2024
Sauer later claimed that if a president ordered the U.S. military to wage a coup, he could also be immune from prosecution, again, if it were an “official act.”
The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor and an expert on Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs, was quick to poke a large hole in that hypothetical.
“If the president suspends the Senate, you can’t prosecute him because it’s not an official act until the Senate impeaches …. Uh oh,” he declared.
RELATED: Justices Slam Trump Lawyer: ‘Why Is It the President Would Not Be Required to Follow the Law?’
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted the Trump team.
“The assassination of political rivals as an official act,” the New York Democrat wrote.
“Understand what the Trump team is arguing for here. Take it seriously and at face value,” she said, issuing a warning: “This is not a game.”
Marc Elias, who has been an attorney to top Democrats and the Democratic National Committee, remarked, “I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act.’ I am in despair that several Justices seemed to think this answer made perfect sense.”
CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen, a former U.S. Ambassador and White House Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform under President Barack Obama, boiled it down: “Trump is seeking dictatorial powers.”
Watch the video above or at this link.
READ MORE: ‘They Will Have Thugs?’: Lara Trump’s Claim RNC Will ‘Physically Handle the Ballots’ Stuns
Noem Doubles Down With ‘Legal Cover’ For Shooting Her Puppy to Death
Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’
President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off
CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial
