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US Justice Department Proposes Redactions to Trump Search Affidavit

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday proposed redactions to an affidavit that FBI agents used to obtain a search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate as part of an investigation into Trump’s handling of classified government documents.

The sealed affidavit – essentially the legal justification for conducting the controversial and unprecedented search of the former president’s property – is being sought by a number of U.S. news organizations and other groups.

But federal prosecutors have opposed making the document public, saying it contains critical details about the ongoing investigation, including information about the government’s investigative techniques and witnesses interviewed by the FBI.

Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said the DOJ’s submission was made under seal in response to an August 22 court order directing prosecutors to propose redactions to the affidavit.

“The Justice Department respectfully declines further comment as the Court considers the matter,” Coley said in a brief statement.

It remains unclear whether Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who issued the court order, will ultimately decide in favor of releasing the document.

That is because prosecutors have argued in court that the information in the affidavit is so sensitive that blacking it out will render the document meaningless.

Reinhart has said that “the Government has not met its burden of showing that the entire affidavit should remain sealed.”  But he’s held out the possibility that he may accept the prosecutors’ argument.

“I cannot say at this point that partial redactions will be so extensive that they will result in a meaningless disclosure, but I may ultimately reach that conclusion after hearing further from the Government,” Reinhart wrote in his Monday court order.

The August 8 search of Mar-A-Lago set off a political firestorm, prompting Trump and his allies to accuse the Biden administration of “weaponizing” the Justice Department and the FBI.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, who authorized the Justice Department to seek a search warrant for Mar-A-Lago, has dismissed the accusation.

During the search, FBI agents removed 11 sets of classified documents labeled confidential, secret or top secret, according to a property receipt given to Trump’s lawyer.

The content of the documents remains secret.  But the information was deemed sensitive enough that Garland personally intervened in the case.

The search came months after Trump turned over to the National Archives 15 boxes of government records that he’d taken to Mar-A-Lago after leaving the White House in January 2021.

Under the Presidential Records Act, all presidential records are the property of the U.S. government and must be turned over to the National Archives by outgoing presidents.

In a May 10 letter to a Trump lawyer, Debra Wall, acting archivist of the United States, wrote that the boxes included more than 100 classified documents consisting of more than 700 pages. The National Archives released the letter this week.

The FBI investigation of Trump’s handling of classified records represents the latest legal headache for the former president as he mulls another run at the White House in 2024.

In the 21 months since he lost his re-election bid in November 2020, Trump has been probed by congressional investigators and prosecutors in connection with his efforts to reverse the results of the vote.
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US Judge Blocks Idaho Abortion Ban in Emergencies

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked Idaho from enforcing an abortion ban when women with pregnancy complications require emergency care, a day after a judge in Texas ruled against President Joe Biden’s administration on the same issue. 

The conflicting rulings came in two of the first lawsuits over the Democratic administration’s attempts to ease abortion access after the conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized the procedure nationwide. 

Legal experts said the two state rulings, if upheld on appeal, could force the Supreme Court to wade back into the debate. 

About half of all U.S. states have or are expected to seek to ban or curtail abortions following Roe’s reversal. Those states include Idaho and Texas, which like 11 others adopted “trigger” laws banning abortion upon such a decision. 

Abortion is already illegal in Texas under a separate, nearly century-old abortion ban that recently took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision. Idaho’s trigger ban takes effect on Thursday, the same day as those in Texas and Tennessee. 

In Idaho, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill agreed with the U.S. Justice Department that the abortion ban taking effect Thursday conflicts with a federal law that ensures patients can receive emergency “stabilizing care” at hospitals. 

Threat to patients cited

Winmill, an appointee of former Democratic President Bill Clinton, issued a preliminary injunction blocking Idaho from enforcing its ban to the extent it conflicts with federal law, citing the threat to patients. 

“One cannot imagine the anxiety and fear she will experience if her doctors feel hobbled by an Idaho law that does not allow them to provide the medical care necessary to preserve her health and life,” Winmill wrote. “From that vantage point, the public interest clearly favors the issuance of a preliminary injunction.” 

The Justice Department has said the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act requires abortion care in emergency situations. 

Winmill’s decision came after a late-night Tuesday ruling in Texas by U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix holding the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under Biden went too far by issuing guidance holding the same federal law guaranteed abortion care. 

Hendrix agreed with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, that the guidance issued in July “discards the requirement to consider the welfare of unborn children when determining how to stabilize a pregnant woman.” 

Hendrix, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump, said the federal statute was silent as to what a doctor should do when there is a conflict between the health of the mother and the unborn child and that Texas’s law “fills that void.” 

He issued an injunction barring the federal government from enforcing HHS’s guidance in Texas and against two groups of anti-abortion doctors who also challenged it, saying the Idaho case showed a risk the Biden administration might try to enforce it. 

Hendrix declined, though, to issue a nationwide injunction as Paxton wanted, saying the “circumstances counsel in favor of a tailored, specific injunction.” 

Appellate courts

Appeals are expected in both cases and would be heard by separate appeals courts, one based in San Francisco with a reputation for leaning liberal and another in New Orleans known for conservative rulings. 

Greer Donley, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School and expert on abortion law, said should those appeals courts uphold this week’s dueling rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court may feel pressured to intervene and clarify the law. 

“Without a federal right to abortion, this is the type of legal chaos that most people were predicting would be happening,” she said. 

Shannon Selden, a lawyer at Debevoise & Plimpton who represents several medical associations supporting the Justice Department’s Idaho case, said “there’s a huge cloud over physicians’ ability to provide stabilizing care for patients who need it.” 

“The Justice Department is trying lift that cloud through its Idaho action, and the Texas court has made that cloud darker,” she said.
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US Justice Department Releases 2019 Memo Advising Against Charging Trump 

The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday released a confidential 2019 memo that advised then-Attorney General William Barr not to pursue criminal charges against then-President Donald Trump for obstructing the special counsel investigation of Russian election meddling.

The memo by Steven Engel, then head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, and Edward O’Callaghan, another senior official, was written on March 24, 2019, the same day Barr told Congress that there was “not enough” evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice in connection with the Russia probe.

“We recommend that you conclude that, under the Principles of Federal Prosecution, the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense,” the memo stated.

The nine-page document was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, a left-leaning ethics watchdog based in the nation’s capital.

The Justice Department had resisted releasing the full report, arguing that it reflected sensitive internal deliberations. But a federal appeals court panel last Friday ordered the law enforcement agency to make the report public.

The memo came at the conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of allegations the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia to change the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

In his final report to Barr, Mueller wrote that he had not found enough evidence that Trump or his associates had criminally conspired with the Russian government.

But Mueller left unresolved the question of whether Trump had obstructed the federal investigation, leaving it to Barr to decide the matter.

Partly relying on the internal DOJ memo, Barr determined that Trump could not be prosecuted for obstruction of justice.

Barr’s announcement led Trump to tweet at the time: “No collusion. No obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION.”

Barr, who was a critic of the special counsel investigation before becoming Trump’s second attorney general in early 2019, drew fire from Democrats and other critics for giving Trump a pass.

In their memo for Barr, the two top DOJ officials wrote that Mueller’s findings did not warrant the prosecution of Trump.

“While cataloging actions that the President took, many of which took place in public view, the Report identifies no actions that, in our judgment, constituted obstructive acts, done with a nexus to a pending proceeding, with the corrupt intent necessary to warrant prosecution under the obstruction-of-justice statutes,” the officials wrote.

They also noted that Trump had not been charged with any crime or criminal conspiracy in connection with Russian election meddling.

“It would be rare for federal prosecutors to bring an obstruction prosecution that did not itself arise out of a proceeding related to a separate crime,” the memo stated.

In a statement, CREW said the memo “presents a breathtakingly generous view of the law and facts for Donald Trump.”

“It significantly twists the facts and the law to benefit Donald Trump and does not comport with a serious reading of the law of obstruction of justice or the facts as found by Special Counsel Mueller,” CREW said.

CREW faulted the memo for premising its conclusion on “the fact that there was no underlying criminal conduct, which is not what Mueller found.”
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2 New York Democrats Ousted from US House in Primary Losses 

In a cluster of contentious Democratic primaries Tuesday, two New York incumbents were ousted from the U.S. House after redistricting shuffled congressional districts in one of the nation’s largest liberal states. 

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a 15-term incumbent who chairs a powerful House committee, lost to longtime colleague Rep. Jerry Nadler, while Rep. Mondaire Jones, a first-term progressive who was one of the first openly gay Black members of Congress, was defeated by Daniel Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who served as counsel to House Democrats in the first impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump. 

In other races in the state, the chair of the House Democrats’ campaign arm, Sean Patrick Maloney, survived a primary challenge of his own from a progressive. Democrats held on to a swing district in a special election — at least for a few more months. 

In Florida, an incumbent Republican narrowly defeated a far-right provocateur. Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a conservative firebrand, won his primary with the specter of a federal investigation looming over him. 

Some of the highest-profile elections: 

End of an era 

Nadler and Carolyn Maloney each chair powerful committees and had spent 30 years representing Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Upper East Side, respectively. But they ended up in the same race after new redistricting maps merged much of their longtime congressional districts. 

The race for New York’s 12th District, between Maloney, 76, and Nadler, 75, became contentious. The two stopped speaking after deciding to run against each other, Nadler said, and the campaign became barbed, with Maloney questioning his mental acuity. 

Nadler, who was endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, has talked up his role overseeing Trump’s impeachments while serving as chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Maloney has touted her own check on the former president while serving as chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee and positioned herself as a feminist champion. 

Challenging them both was 38-year-old lawyer Suraj Patel, who argued it was time for a new face in Congress. 

Crowded field for an open seat 

With Nadler and Maloney running in the district immediately north, a congressional seat covering southern Manhattan, including Wall Street, and Brooklyn, was a rare open contest in one of the most liberal and influential areas of the country. 

Goldman, a Democratic attorney who built his reputation as a federal mob and securities fraud prosecutor but made a national name for himself as House Democrats’ lead counsel in Trump’s first impeachment hearing, won a crowded primary for New York’s 10th District, which attracted a bevy of progressive candidates. Among the contenders was Jones, a congressman from the New York City suburbs, who moved to the area to run and finished third in the primary. 

House Democrats’ campaign chief wins primary 

Sean Patrick Maloney, who became New York’s first openly gay congressman when he was elected a decade ago, survived a primary challenge from state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi in New York’s new 17th District, home to idyllic towns along the historic Hudson River Valley. 

Maloney, who had the backing of former President Bill Clinton, campaigned on Democrats’ recent legislative wins in Congress and warned that the congressional seat could fall to Republicans in November if the Democratic nominee is too liberal. 

Biaggi, a 36-year-old progressive endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is a granddaughter of former Bronx congressman Mario Biaggi. She had sought to portray Maloney as out of touch and part of the establishment. 

State GOP chair defeats controversial candidate 

New York’s Republican Party chair, Nick Langworthy, won a primary in western New York by defeating controversial Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino in New York’s redrawn 23rd District. 

Paladino, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2010, has a long history of inflammatory and offensive remarks, including recent comments that praised Adolf Hitler and circulated conspiracy theories around mass shootings. 

The heated primary came as Langworthy and Paladino sought to replace GOP Rep. Chris Jacobs, who decided not to seek reelection after facing backlash from his own party for voicing support for an assault weapons ban following a racist mass shooting in his hometown of Buffalo in May. 

A win for Republicans, a win for Democrats in special elections 

In addition to the primary races, New Yorkers elected two new House members to fill vacancies for the rest of the year. 

Democrat Pat Ryan won one of the special elections, a battleground race in southern and central New York to replace Democrat Antonio Delgado, who became New York’s lieutenant governor. Ryan defeated Republican Marc Molinaro in what is currently New York’s 19th Congressional District. 

In western New York, Republican Joe Sempolinski defeated Democrat Max Della Pia in a special general election to serve out the rest of the year in what is currently New York’s 23rd District. Sempolinski will replace Republican Rep. Tom Reed, who resigned in May after being accused of sexual misconduct. 

Far-right provocateur loses again 

Florida Republican Rep. Dan Webster defeated Laura Loomer, a far-right provocateur in Florida who’s been banned on some social media networks because of anti-Muslim and other remarks. 

Webster, who has served central Florida districts since 2011, won the unexpectedly tight primary in Florida’s 11th District, which is home to The Villages, the nation’s largest retirement community and a GOP stronghold. 

Loomer unsuccessfully ran for the House in 2020, winning a Republican primary but losing the general election that year to incumbent Democrat Lois Frankel for a Palm Beach-area seat that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. 

On social media, Loomer regularly posted conspiracy theories and misinformation around Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar, the first Somali American elected to Congress. Among them was the false claim that Omar and other Democrats were plotting to institute Sharia law in Minnesota. 

Gaetz wins republican primary amid scandal 

Gaetz, a Trump protégé under federal investigation in a sex trafficking case, won a primary contest that was seen as a test of whether he could keep support among moderate Republicans. 

Gaetz has not been charged and denies wrongdoing. He was facing a challenge from Mark Lombardo, a former Marine and executive at FedEx who had blanketed the western Panhandle with attack ads centering around the investigation as he tried to take him on in Florida’s 1st Congressional District. 

Rebekah Jones, a former Department of Health employee who questioned the state’s COVID-19 data, won the Democratic primary for the seat in the heavily Republican district. A state inspector general’s report concluded Jones’ allegations were unfounded, but in her race for Congress, she tapped into national support for fundraising, bringing in more than $500,000. 
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US National Archives: Trump Took 700 Pages of Classified Documents to Florida

Former U.S. President Donald Trump left Washington with more than 700 pages of classified documents, including some containing the government’s top secrets, when his presidency ended last year, the National Archives disclosed Tuesday. 

The disclosure came in a letter dated May 10 from the acting U.S. archivist, Debra Steidel Wall, to one of Trump’s lawyers, Evan Corcoran, as she rejected claims from Trump’s representatives that the former president should be allowed to keep some of the documents by claiming executive privilege from his time in the White House. 

Wall described the growing alarm in the Justice Department’s National Security Division about the “potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported” to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate rather than being turned over the National Archives when his presidency ended, as required by U.S. law.  

Her letter said there were “over 100 documents with classification markings” in the 15 boxes of materials the government retrieved from Mar-a-Lago in January, the first of three times this year that the FBI and U.S. archivists have collected boxes of classified materials from Trump’s wintertime residence and private club on the Atlantic coastline. 

Trump and his aides handed over more documents in June, and then FBI agents, acting with a court-approved search warrant, retrieved another two dozen boxes, including 11 boxes of classified files on August 8, as they searched his office, a basement storage area and other rooms at the estate. 

Some of the documents retrieved have been classified as “TS/SCI,” which stands for “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information,” or labeled as “Special Access Programs,” which contain some of the government’s most closely held secrets and are supposed to be viewed only in secure government facilities, not a residence like Mar-a-Lago. Aside from being Trump’s home several months a year, it is a high-end dinner club and hotel for dues-paying members. 

Trump has claimed that he declassified the materials before his term ended on Jan. 20, 2021, and Joe Biden became the U.S. president, but neither Trump nor his aides have produced any documented evidence of such a declassification. 

John Solomon, one of Trump’s allies in the news media and one of the former president’s liaisons to the archives, first disclosed the Wall letter Monday night and the archives then released it on Tuesday. 

The new disclosure came as Trump’s lawyers on Monday asked a federal court to temporarily block the FBI from reviewing documents recovered from his Florida estate until a special master can be appointed to separate out any materials covered by executive privilege and return them to him.  

Federal investigators are probing whether Trump illegally kept the records at Mar-a-Lago, contending in a search warrant it used for the August 8 search that he might have violated three U.S. laws, including the U.S. Espionage Act. 

The New York Times reported Monday that overall, the government has recovered more than 300 classified documents from Trump’s estate, including CIA, National Security Agency and FBI materials, although the content of the material has not been disclosed.  

Trump has criticized the proceedings, and his legal filing called the August 8 FBI search a “shockingly aggressive move.”  

Attorney General Merrick Garland said he had authorized the search, and a federal magistrate approved it after the FBI asserted in an affidavit that it believed a crime could have been committed.  

Trump’s allies have asserted that he had a “standing order” to declassify material taken out of the Oval Office at the White House, but no paperwork has been produced confirming he did so.  

Following the August 8 search, some of the biggest U.S. news organizations asked federal magistrate Bruce Reinhart in Florida to make public the FBI affidavit detailing the probable cause for conducting the search. The Justice Department opposes release of the document for fear it would jeopardize its investigation and divulge the names of cooperating witnesses.  

The magistrate judge said he was considering releasing a redacted version of the affidavit but acknowledged Monday that if key portions of it were blacked out, as requested by government prosecutors, its release would be virtually meaningless. He has ordered prosecutors to present their proposed redactions by Thursday.  

 
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Husband of House Speaker Pelosi Gets 5 Days in Jail, 3 Years of Probation in DUI

The husband of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pleaded guilty Tuesday to misdemeanor driving under the influence charges related to a May crash in California’s wine country and was sentenced to five days in jail and three years of probation. 

Paul Pelosi already served two days in jail and received conduct credit for two other days, Napa County Superior Court Judge Joseph Solga said. Paul Pelosi will work eight hours in the court’s work program in lieu of the remaining day, Solga said during Paul Pelosi’s sentencing, which he did not attend. 

State law allows for DUI misdemeanor defendants to appear through their attorney unless ordered otherwise by the court. 

As part of his probation, Paul Pelosi will also be required to attend a three-month drinking driver class, and install an ignition interlock device, where the driver has to provide a breath sample before the engine will start. He will also have to pay nearly $7,000 in fines, the judge said. 

Paul Pelosi was arrested following a May 28 crash in Napa County, north of San Francisco, after a DUI test showed he had a blood alcohol content of .082%, just over the legal limit. 

Officers responding to the crash after 10 p.m. near the wine country town of Yountville said they found Pelosi in the driver’s seat of a 2021 Porsche Carrera and the other driver standing outside a sport utility vehicle, according to the complaint. 

California Highway Patrol officers reported that Pelosi was “unsteady on his feet, his speech was slurred, and he had a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage.” 

Pelosi offered to officers his driver’s license along with an “11-99 Foundation” card when asked for identification, the complaint says. The 11-99 Foundation supports CHP employees and their families. 

Prosecutors filed the case as a misdemeanor because of injuries to the 48-year-old driver of the SUV. They have declined to identify the driver, saying the person has requested privacy. 

In an interview with investigators from the district attorney’s office, the driver reported pain in his upper right arm, right shoulder and neck the day after the crash. He said he also had headaches. 

Pelosi was released on $5,000 bail after his arrest. Speaker Pelosi was in Rhode Island to deliver the commencement address at Brown University at the time. Her office has declined to comment. 

 
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