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Judge Rules Trump, Eldest Children Must Testify in Fraud Case

A New York State Supreme Court judge on Thursday ruled that former President Donald Trump and his two oldest children will have to submit to questioning by the state’s attorney general in a civil investigation into potential fraud at the Trump Organization.

Attorneys representing Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and his daughter Ivanka Trump had moved to have subpoenas for their testimony canceled. They contended that it was improper for New York Attorney General Letitia James to be pursuing both a civil and a criminal investigation at the same time. James is cooperating in a criminal case that was brought by the district attorney of Manhattan.

Judge Arthur Engoron said that the Trumps’ legal argument “completely misses the mark” and that the attorney general was within her rights to demand testimony from Trump and his children.

However, while the name of the court on which Engoron sits, the Supreme Court of the state of New York, seems to suggest the ruling’s finality, the outcome is not so certain. The state of New York has two levels of judicial review that are above the Supreme Court — first the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, and finally the Court of Appeals.

This means that the Trumps have the right to appeal Engoron’s ruling, something their attorneys signaled Thursday that they planned to do.

Case background

The case James is pursuing against Trump has its roots in revelations dating to the closing days of the Trump presidency, when Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, testified before Congress that he was aware of financial irregularities in the Trump Organization’s bookkeeping.

Specifically, Cohen alleged that Trump and Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, systematically under-reported the value of the company’s assets when disclosing them for tax purposes, in order to minimize the firm’s tax liability. Additionally, Cohen said, they would overstate the value of the same assets when pledging them as collateral for bank loans and other financial transactions.

Last month, James submitted a filing to the court listing multiple instances in which the Trump Organization had provided information to different parties in different transactions that was contradicted elsewhere.

In the same filing, James referred to testimony from Weisselberg indicating that Trump kept paper records of his financial transactions, but despite requests from her office, none of those records had been disclosed to investigators.

A raucous hearing

The judge’s ruling on Thursday followed a hearing Wednesday in which the attorney representing Donald Trump, Alina Habba, complained that the investigation was political in nature and ought to be shut down.

More than once, Habba had to be warned to stop interrupting Engoron when he was speaking, and she was also criticized for directly addressing Kevin Wallace, an attorney working for James’ office, a breach of courtroom protocol.

“I want to know, Mr. Wallace, Ms. James, are you going to go after Hillary Clinton for what she’s doing to my client?” Habba demanded at one point. “That she spied at Trump Tower in your state? Are you going to look into her business dealings?”

Habba was referring to a debunked claim that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had somehow conspired to spy on Trump while he was president.

Unsparing ruling

The claims from Trump’s attorney that James’ investigation has a political taint are based pledges she made as a candidate running for attorney general. James regularly promised to investigate Trump’s business dealings.

In his ruling, Engoron acknowledged that fact, but said that in his view, the significant evidence suggesting potential wrongdoing by the Trump Organization meant that failing to mount an investigation “would have been a blatant dereliction of duty” on James’ part.

“Indeed, the impetus for the investigation was not personal animus, not racial or ethnic or other discrimination, not campaign promises, but was sworn congressional testimony by former Trump associate Michael Cohen that respondents were ‘cooking the books’” he wrote.

Engoron also dismissed the claim by attorneys representing the Trumps that, by forcing them to testify in a civil case, the attorney general would be collecting statements that could be used against them in the criminal probe.

Engoron noted that the Trumps would retain their “absolute right” under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to refuse to answer any questions that they feel might incriminate them. He reminded them that a third Trump child, Eric Trump, had invoked his right more than 500 times in testimony provided in the same case.

Trump, James respond

After the ruling was issued Thursday, Trump issued a rambling statement that repeated the claim that Clinton had spied on him while he was in the White House, attacked James for comments she made about him during her run for office, and insisted there was no basis for either her civil case or the criminal case being pursued by the Manhattan district attorney.

“It is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in history—and remember, I can’t get a fair hearing in New York because of the hatred of me by Judges and the judiciary. It is not possible!” Trump wrote.

“Today, justice prevailed,” James said in a statement released by her office.

It continued, “No one will be permitted to stand in the way of the pursuit of justice, no matter how powerful they are. No one is above the law.”
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Judge Rejects Effort by Trump to Toss January 6 Lawsuits

A federal judge on Friday rejected efforts by former President Donald Trump to toss out conspiracy lawsuits filed by lawmakers and two Capitol police officers, saying in his ruling that the former president’s words “plausibly” led to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta said in his ruling that Trump’s words during a rally before the violent storming of the U.S. Capitol were likely “words of incitement not protected by the First Amendment.”

“Only in the most extraordinary circumstances could a court not recognize that the First Amendment protects a president’s speech,” Mehta wrote. “But the court believes this is that case.”

The order is the latest example of growing legal peril for the former president. Just hours earlier, the National Archives said records found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort contained classified information and that it had notified the Justice Department.

On Thursday, a judge in New York ruled that Trump and two of his children must answer questions under oath in New York state’s civil investigation into his business practices. Another judge ordered that his company’s financial chief be subjected to questioning in another probe by the District of Columbia attorney general’s office. And earlier this week, the firm that prepared Trump’s annual financial statements said the documents, used to secure lucrative loans and burnish Trump’s image as a wealthy businessman, “should no longer be relied upon.”

During a planned rally on the Ellipse just hours before Congress was to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, Trump told his supporters to “Fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” He said, “(We’re) going to try to and give (weak Republicans) the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country,” and then told the crowd to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Mehta said Trump’s speech could have directed people to break the law. But the judge dismissed similar charges made against Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and lawyer Rudy Giuliani, saying their speech was protected by the First Amendment. Mehta did not yet rule on another motion to dismiss from Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks, also named in the suits.

The lawsuits, filed by Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., officers James Blassingame and Sidney Hemby and initially by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., argued that Trump, Trump Jr., Giuliani and Brooks made “false and incendiary allegations of fraud and theft, and in direct response to the Defendant’s express calls for violence at the rally, a violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol.”

Thompson later dropped out of the lawsuit when he was named to lead the Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. The NAACP continued in his stead.

The lawsuits cite a federal civil rights law that was enacted to counter the Ku Klux Klan’s intimidation of officials. They spell out in detail how the Trumps, Giuliani and Brooks spread baseless claims of election fraud, both before and after the 2020 presidential election was declared and charged that they helped to spin up the thousands of rioters before they stormed the Capitol. Five people died as a result of the violence on Jan. 6, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer.

They have all denied the allegations.

Mehta said Trump’s efforts to dismiss the case ignored the theory that his words sparked what followed, but that argument was plausible.

“In this one-of-a-kind case, the First Amendment does not shield the president from liability,” Mehta wrote. 
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National Archives: Trump Took Classified Items to Mar-a-Lago

Classified information was found in the 15 boxes of White House records that were stored at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, the National Archives and Records Administration said Friday in a letter that confirmed the matter had been sent to the Justice Department. 

The letter from the agency followed numerous reports about Trump’s handling of sensitive and even classified information during his time as president and after he left the White House. The revelation could also interest federal investigators responsible for policing the handling of government secrets, though the Justice Department and FBI have not indicated they will pursue the case. 

Federal law bars the removal of classified documents to unauthorized locations, though it is possible that Trump could try to argue that, as president, he was the ultimate declassification authority.  

No matter the legal risk, it exposes him to charges of hypocrisy given his relentless attacks during the 2016 presidential campaign on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server as secretary of state. The FBI investigated but ultimately did not recommend charges.  

Trump recently denied reports about his administration’s tenuous relationship with the National Archives, and his lawyers said that “they are continuing to search for additional presidential records that belong to the National Archives.”

Social media records not preserved 

The letter from the archivists in response to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which is investigating, also details how certain social media records were not captured and preserved by the Trump administration. And it also says that the agency learned that White House staff frequently conducted official business using unofficial messaging accounts and personal phones.  

Those staff did not copy or forward their official messaging accounts, as required by the Presidential Records Act, the letter said.

The letter also reveals that additional paper records that had been torn up by the former president were among those transferred to the National Archives.  

“Although White House staff during the Trump administration recovered and taped together some of the torn-up records, a number of other torn-up records that were transferred had not been reconstructed by the White House,” the letter said.  

Lawmakers are also seeking information about the contents of the boxes recovered from Mar-a-Lago, but the agency cited the records act as holding them back from divulging.

Representative Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., the chairwoman of the Oversight Committee, said in a statement Friday that “these new revelations deepen my concern about former President Trump’s flagrant disregard for federal records law and the potential impact on our historical record.” 

She added, “I am committed to uncovering the full depth of the Presidential Records Act violations by former President Trump and his top advisers and using those findings to advance critical reforms and prevent future abuses.” 

House investigators will be looking to see if Trump’s actions, both during his presidency and after, violated the Presidential Records Act, which was enacted in 1978 after former President Richard Nixon wanted to destroy documents related to the Watergate scandal. 

The law mandates that presidential records are the property of the U.S. government, rather than the president himself. A statute, punishable by up to three years in prison, makes it a crime to conceal or intentionally destroy government records. 
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Republican Lawmakers in Several US States Bar Journalists From House Floors

Republican lawmakers in several states are scaling back access to government business, extending pandemic-era rules that restrict when journalists can report from the floors of state legislative chambers and, in effect, making it easier to dodge the press. 

As the public returns to the corridors of state capitols, new rules approved in Iowa last month and in Utah this week critically limit reporters’ access to lawmakers, sparking an outcry from media organizations and press advocates.

“It is critical that there is some accountability with respect to those who have tremendous power, such as you,” Lauren Gustus, the executive editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, told Utah lawmakers in a committee hearing last week, where she testified against such rules.

These rule changes limit when journalists can work on the floor of the legislature where lawmakers sit, making it easier for elected officials to avoid interacting with the press, even when they take up high-profile topics like election laws, taxes and abortion.

Rules governing where journalists can work vary across the nation’s 50 statehouses. Most allow credentialed reporters to observe from the chamber floors; some allow reporters to ask questions before or after proceedings; others require they remain in press boxes or alcoves separated from lawmakers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In states that are now moving to change their procedures, lawmakers argue that creating formal rules allays security concerns and prevents bad actors from disrupting governance. Press advocates say the proposed rules make it more difficult for journalists to ask questions and impede the reporters’ ability to keep tabs on fast-paced statehouse action.

In Iowa, Republican leaders this year did not issue credentials to journalists to work at press benches on the state Senate floor as they had previously. They said the policy change addressed “confusion” because of changing media that now includes blogs and newsletters that identify themselves as the press.

In Utah, reporters are now being required to ask for permission each time they’d like to interview a lawmaker on the Senate floor or in certain adjacent hallways. There and in the Iowa Senate, reporters now must work from a gallery high above the chambers though they can still work from the floor in the House of Representatives. 

Under new rules passed through Utah’s Senate and advancing through the House, camera crews will be required to ask for permission to film in certain parts of committee rooms.

In a hearing on the rule last week, Utah lawmakers said daily press conferences and efforts to stream all proceedings online demonstrated their commitment to transparency. They said putting a clear rule on the books would help both lawmakers and the press know what’s allowed.

“The barriers of civility and discourse that have been respected in this state and this country for years and for decades are changing and they’re changing rapidly,” said Utah GOP Sen. Todd Weiler, who supported the rule change, adding that “if they are pushing the barriers, it is nice to have a rule in place.”

In Kansas, new rules from leaders in the state Senate relegate newspaper reporters to the chamber’s gallery, which has made it easier for senators to avoid reporters after sessions. In exceptional circumstances, like when the gallery is filled with other members of the public, journalists are allowed to report from the floor like the rules allowed before.

“Placing restrictions on journalists in the Senate chamber suggests there is something to hide, or that leadership is taking unwarranted and unnecessary retaliation against reporters,” former Kansas lawmaker Steve Morris wrote in an editorial in the Kansas Reflector.

Morris, who led Republicans in the Kansas Senate from 2005 to 2013, said that as a politician and a news consumer he saw the benefits of having journalists able to observe and report from a statehouse floor. When discussions draw considerable public interest, he said, people want to know how their lawmakers are reacting, which at times can mean body language like eye rolls or enthusiastic gestures.

“Reporters are our avenue to see what’s going on,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“Especially when there’s something controversial,” he added. “The session adjourns and members skedaddle out of there rapidly so it’s hard for journalists to get to them, unlike when they’re on the floor they can immediately get to them.”

The new limits come in an environment of increasing attacks on the media and parallel new restrictions placed on journalists covering protests and courtroom proceedings.  They also come as states and cities loosen coronavirus restrictions that have returned restaurants, sporting events and offices to pre-pandemic capacity.

Parker Higgins, the advocacy director at the Freedom of The Press Foundation, said the ways transparency and access increased during the pandemic — for example, when  courtrooms allowed members of the public to hear and watch trials remotely — were being reversed.

After speaking with reporters in Kansas and Iowa, he said “most say it’s not impossible to do their jobs without floor access. But, in terms of doing your job quickly and effectively, you can’t get that from the public gallery.
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Biden Visits Ohio to Tout Infrastructure Investments, Court Voters

President Joe Biden on Thursday visited a small, deindustrialized Ohio steel town to tout his ambitious multi-trillion-dollar proposed spending plan, to announce a $1 billion initiative for environmental cleanup and restoration, and to court voters in a crucial state ahead of this year’s tightly contested midterm elections.

“Today, we’re announcing an investment of $1 billion — $1 billion — from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill,” he said, speaking to about 60 invited guests, including members of Congress, local elected officials and labor leaders at a shipyard in the lakeside town of Lorain, Ohio.

“It’s going to allow the most significant restoration of the Great Lakes in the history of the Great Lakes. We’re going to accelerate cleanup of sites across six states in the Great Lakes Basin — from Duluth, Minnesota, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Gary, Indiana, to Buffalo, New York, and everywhere in between,” Biden said.

Lorain is a town of about 65,000 people whose moribund main street runs straight into Lake Erie. The town was hit hard by the decline of American manufacturing. Yet both of Biden’s predecessors have made a point of visiting the once-bustling steel town to tout their accomplishments and to court voters. This corner of America is especially important this year, as swing-state Ohio will see the retirement of Republican Senator Rob Portman.

Or, as former President Donald Trump put it when he visited a nearby town in June for his first post-presidential rally: “Next year, the Republican red wave is going to begin right here,” Trump told the crowd at the Lorain County Fairgrounds, which is in the nearby town of Wellington. “We will fight for more jobs for Ohio families, fair trade for Ohio workers, and more Ohio factories forging more products stamped with that beautiful, beautiful phrase, ‘Made in the U.S.A.'”

And a small corner of southern Lorain is represented by one of Biden’s harshest critics, Republican U.S. Representative Jim Jordan, who voted against Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill. His opposition to the bill echoes that of many in his party.

“Democrats’ economic plan is basically the dumbest plan in history because it is ‘lock down the economy, spend like crazy, pay people not to work, and oh, for everyone who has been working, we’re now going to raise your taxes,'” he said shortly after the bill passed late last year.

Environmental advocates praised the expenditure — and Biden’s choice to visit the area to talk about it.

“The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is clear that these are the types of environmental remediation projects that the $1.2 trillion should be used for,” said Steve Cochran, associate vice president of state affairs for the Environmental Defense Fund. “The President is making it a priority, which shows that the solutions are not only important but have broad support in the region and for these constituencies. Given the problems in the Great Lakes, and how much the communities depend on them, this is an excellent use of resources.”

Bipartisan observers agree.

“The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was a significant achievement. It makes political sense to barnstorm the country touting it,” said Andy Winkler, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center. “But there’s also real value in these visits. The U.S. needs to make transformational investments in infrastructure to address climate change and stay economically competitive. To the extent the administration can, it must encourage state and local officials to take advantage of every resource the law offers and invest wisely.”

But, Winkler added: “President Biden should visit red states and blue states alike, in places he won and places he didn’t, to meet with Republicans and Democrats and explain why the bill was a significant bipartisan achievement and a win for the country.”

Biden, who said his priority taking office was to bring unity to this divided nation, evoked that in Lorain by mentioning the town’s most famous daughter, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison. In her seminal novel, “Beloved,” she wrote: “Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.”

“Places like Lorain have a lot of proud yesterdays,” Biden said. “Now you’re going to have some brighter tomorrows — and because of all of you.”
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Senate Sends Biden Bill Averting Federal Shutdown

The Senate gave final approval Thursday to legislation averting a weekend government shutdown, sending President Joe Biden a measure designed to give bipartisan bargainers more time to reach an overdue deal financing federal agencies until fall. 

Final passage was by a bipartisan 65-27 vote, five more than the 60 votes needed. The House easily approved the legislation last week. Each party had concluded that an election-year shutdown would be politically damaging, especially during a pandemic and a confrontation with Russia over its possible invasion of Ukraine.  

Yet as with virtually all must-pass bills, politics hitched a ride. Before passage, conservatives forced votes on amendments including on one of the year’s hot-button issues: COVID-19 vaccine mandates. They were defeated along party lines. 

One by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and several colleagues would have blocked existing federal vaccine requirements for the military, government employees and contractors and health care workers. 

Another by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, would have halted federal funds for school districts imposing their own vaccine requirements. Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., proposed another requiring Congress’ non-binding federal budgets to balance within 10 years.  

United Democrats can defeat GOP proposals in the 50-50 Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote. But with Harris in Europe and some Democrats missing because of illness or ailing spouses, Democrats prevailed after several Republicans also left for travel or to begin the chamber’s recess. 

A separate GOP move to block federal spending on pipes used to smoke crack faded away after the Biden administration said it never planned to do that and would not. The money is part of a program aimed at helping drug abusers avoid hurting themselves further.  

Amending the bill would have caused complications because the House is also gone for recess but would have had to pass the revamped version before sending it to Biden.  

Without Senate passage of the identical House bill, agencies would have had to stop functioning over the weekend. The legislation will finance the government through March 11. 

 
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US Congress Stalled on Russia Sanctions

U.S. lawmakers struggled to agree this week on sanctions to deter Russia’s Vladimir Putin from a possible Ukraine invasion. VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson says that despite the snag, there is still pressure to mount a unified U.S. response.

Producer: Katherine Gypson.
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Sandy Hook Families Settle with Remington After 2012 Massacre 

The families of nine victims of a massacre at an elementary school nearly ten years ago in the northeastern U.S. state of Connecticut reached a $73 million settlement Tuesday in a lawsuit against Remington Arms, the maker of the rifle used in the mass killing. 

The settlement is a rare instance of a U.S. gunmaker paying damages for bloodshed arising from the criminal use of a firearm. 

“While this settlement does not erase the pain of that tragic day, it does begin the necessary work of holding gun manufacturers accountable for manufacturing weapons of war and irresponsibly marketing these firearms,” President Joe Biden said in a statement Tuesday.

Biden encouraged state and local lawmakers, as well as victims of gun violence, to pursue similar actions.

“Together, we can deliver a clear message to gun manufacturers and dealers: they must either change their business models to be part of the solution for the gun violence epidemic, or they will bear the financial cost of their complicity,” the president said. 

Twenty first grade students and six educators were killed on December 12, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut by Adam Lanza, who repeatedly fired a Remington semi-automatic rifle as he made his way through the school. 

The families and a survivor of the massacre sued Remington in 2015, maintaining the company should have never sold such a dangerous military-style weapon to the public. They also said they are focused on preventing other mass shootings.

“Today is not about honoring our son Benjamin. Today is about how and why Ben died,” said Francine Wheeler, whose 6-year-old son was killed in the massacre. “Our legal system has given us some justice today, but David and I will never have true justice. True justice would be our fifteen-year-old healthy and here with us.”

The civil lawsuit in Waterbury Superior Court focused on how the Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle was marketed, maintaining Remington singled out younger, at-risk males in marketing and in product placements in violent video games. 

Remington did not immediately comment on the settlement but the gunmaker had argued there was no evidence that its marketing of the rifle was linked to the killings. 

The gun manufacturer also had said the lawsuit should have been dismissed because of a federal law that grants broad immunity to the gun sector. The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled, however, that Remington could be sued under state law over how it marketed the rifle. 

Remington appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. 

The gunmaker offered to pay the plaintiffs nearly $33 million in July. In 2018, Remington filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and emerged from it later that year under the control of its creditors. The company filed for bankruptcy again in July 2020 after more retailers restricted gun sales after other school shootings in the U.S. 

The plaintiffs said four insurers for Remington agreed to pay the full amount of coverage available, totaling $73 million. 

“This victory should serve as a wake-up call not only to the gun industry, but also the insurance and banking companies that prop it up,” said Josh Koskoff, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. “For the gun industry, it’s time to stop recklessly marketing all guns to all people for all uses and instead ask how marketing can lower risk rather than court it.” 

The rifle used by Lanza, who was 20 years old at the time of the shootings, was legally owned by his mother. He used to the rifle to kill his mother at their Newtown home before committing the mass shooting at the school. Lanza killed himself with a handgun as police arrived. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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