Free Republic

Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers see a major opportunity this week to use his criminal document mishandling case in Florida to create an impasse on his calendar for the two federal judges overseeing his major criminal cases. Juggling his campaign and court calendar and playing his cases off one another is a key part of Trump’s legal strategy. The ultimate goal, his team has said openly, is to prevent Trump from being tried in federal court before voters cast their ballots in the 2024 general election. A primary aim for Trump’s legal team, according to people familiar with the strategy,...

Prominent conservative legal scholars are increasingly raising a constitutional argument that 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump should be barred from the presidency because of his actions to overturn the previous presidential election result. The latest salvo came Saturday in The Atlantic magazine, from liberal law professor Laurence Tribe and J. Michael Luttig, the former federal appellate judge and prominent conservative, -snip “The people who wrote the 14th Amendment were not fools. They realized that if those people who tried to overturn the country, who tried to get rid of our peaceful transitions of power are again put in power, that...

CNN — Federal prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.

A federal judge in Minnesota has rejected Mike Lindell’s challenge to the FBI search and seizure of his phone in a 2020 election-related criminal probe.Judge Eric Tostrud said Lindell, CEO of My Pillow and a prominent backer of former President Donald Trump’s false voter fraud claims, had not shown that the search was unconstitutional, and said he could not have his phone returned or get more access to details from the search.“The Government has demonstrated a compelling interest in preventing the premature disclosure of search-warrant materials during its ongoing federal criminal investigation. Multiple factors here justify keeping the search warrant...

A federal judge in Washington, DC, questioned former President Donald Trump's actions during his speech on January 6, 2021, as he considers for the first time whether Trump is immune from liability related to his supporters attacking the US Capitol. During a court hearing Monday, Judge Amit Mehta pointed out repeatedly that Trump on January 6 asked the crowd to march to the Capitol, but that he didn't speak up for two hours asking people to stop the violence. In the year since the US Capitol attack, judges remind us what it means to be American "The words are hard...

The Justice Department is asking for the so-called QAnon Shaman, who wore a headdress and posed shirtless on the Senate floor during the siege of the US Capitol, to be sentenced to a prison term of more than four years, the longest incarceration prosecutors have asked for any guilty January 6 defendant so far, according to a new court filing. Prosecutors' request for the high-profile Capitol riot defendant Jacob Chansley is as a harsh assessment of his crime and calls him "quite literally, their flagbearer" among the mob on January 6. In their sentencing request to the judge filed late...

Washington(CNN)The US intelligence community said in a landmark report Tuesday that the Russian government meddled in the 2020 election with an influence campaign "denigrating" President Joe Biden and "supporting" former President Donald Trump, detailing a massive disinformation push that successfully targeted, and was openly embraced, by Trump's allies. Russia's objectives were not limited to hurting Biden's candidacy and aiding Trump's reelection bid, the report says, as US intelligence found that Moscow also sought to undermine "public confidence in the electoral process and exacerbate sociopolitical divisions in the US." Overall, the report released by the Office of the Director of National...

A federal judge in Washington on Monday denied a request by House Democrats to block President Donald Trump from transferring funds from appropriated accounts to construct his wall. Judge Trevor McFadden said the House lacks standing to bring the challenge and also he does not believe the court should step into the fight between the President and Congress. "The Court declines to take sides in this fight between the House and the President," McFadden wrote.

As Robert Mueller exits stage left, the Justice Department will continue to pursue a handful of investigations—and potentially more prosecutions -- that began with or were bolstered by the special counsel's work. And a significant group of them still focus around President Donald Trump. The still-live investigations range from an expansive probe into the Trump inaugural committee, to various investigations relating to former top Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, to tips that stemmed from Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen's experience with Trump and his family's company. It's possible other investigations are being conducted quietly, as well.

A federal judge has extended special counsel Robert Mueller's federal grand jury six months. The Washington-based grand jury was seated for an 18-month term that began in July 2017 and was set to expire in the coming days. Chief Jude Beryl Howell of the D.C. District Court oversees the Mueller grand jury and granted the extension, CNN’s Katelyn Polantz reported. Under federal rules, the court is able to extend a grand jury's term for another six months if it is "in the public interest."

---snip--- "When we published the Steele Dossier in 2017, we were met with outrage from many corners -- a major news anchor and President Trump both deemed it 'fake news'; and several Russian businessmen, plus Michael Cohen, sued for defamation," Smith said. "As we have said from the start, a document that had been circulating at the highest levels of government, under active investigation by the FBI, and briefed to two successive presidents, is clearly the subject of 'official action.' Moreover, its publication has contributed to the the American people's understanding of what is happening in their country and their...

Fridays at the DC federal courthouse are typically days of high alert for the press corps trying to discern what special counsel Robert Mueller's next legal action will be. But this Friday, court officials went to extreme measures to ensure it was as difficult as possible to figure out what Mueller's team was doing as the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held a secret and mysterious argument about a grand jury subpoena challenge. An entire floor of the courthouse was closed to the public and press for more than an hour. During that time, attorneys...

Prosecutors Ryan Dickey and Brian Richardson are no longer working for the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, the Justice Department confirmed. Both lawyers were relatively junior but frequently spotted members of Mueller's corps. Both have worked on court cases that Mueller opened as part of his investigation into Russian interference and coordination with the Trump campaign in the 2016 presidential election. Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel, declined to explain on Thursday what the departures mean for the state of Mueller's office. Over this summer, as Mueller opened more criminal cases, other Justice Department units including the...