Judge to consider blocking FBI from assembling list of agents who investigated Jan. 6
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(NEW YORK) — A federal judge on Thursday will consider whether to block the Federal Bureau of Investigation from assembling a list of agents involved in cases related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack for potential disciplinary action or firings.
A class action lawsuit filed anonymously by a group of FBI agents alleges that the country’s leading law enforcement agency is planning to engage in “potential vigilante action” to retaliate against government employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases or Donald Trump’s classified documents case.
The lawsuit warned that the effort to survey thousands of FBI agents about their past work could be “catastrophic to national security” and result in the termination of as many as 6,000 FBI agents.
The plaintiffs warned that the Department of Justice may seek to publicly disseminate the names of agents that investigated the conduct that allegedly stemmed from the sitting president.
“Such public disclosures would directly put the safety of all impacted individuals at risk as well as their family members,” the lawsuit said. In a court filing submitted Thursday morning, the Justice Department urged the judge hearing the case to reject the plaintiffs’ request to impose a restraining order blocking the collection the list.
DOJ attorneys argued in the filing that the motion for the restraining order is based largely on speculation and that the FBI agents have failed to show they face any imminent threats in connection with the list.
Trump’s federal classified documents case and his Jan. 6 case were both dropped following Trump’s reelection in November due to a longstanding Justice Department policy prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president.
(SEATTLE, Wash.) — The right wing of a taxiing Japan Airlines flight hit the tail of a parked Delta plane at Seattle’s SeaTac Airport on Wednesday, according to the airport and the Federal Aviation Administration.
No one was injured but passengers on both flights were forced to deplane, SeaTac Airport said.
Delta Flight 1921 was set to fly to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, with 142 customers on board.
Delta said in a statement, “While in sequence for deicing, the tail of a Delta 737 aircraft reportedly made contact with a wing tip of another airline’s aircraft. There are no reports of injuries for crew or customers on the flight, and we apologize for the experience and delay in travels.”
The FAA said it will investigate.
“The aircraft were in an area that is not under air traffic control,” the FAA noted.
The airport said the incident had a “minimal impact” on its operations.
(NEW YORK) — A New York appeals judge has denied President-elect Donald Trump’s request to delay the Jan. 10 sentencing in his criminal hush money case.
Trump’s sentencing will proceed as planned on Friday, pending potential additional legal maneuvers by the president-elect’s lawyers.
Judge Ellen Gesmer rejected Trump’s claim that the case should be delayed because of presidential immunity, after his attorney argued before the court that Trump is covered by presidential immunity that extends to him while he waits to be sworn in.
The appellate court heard arguments Tuesday in Trump’s lawsuit against the judge in the case, Juan Merchan, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, as part of Trump’s effort to halt his sentencing following his criminal conviction in May.
“We should get a stay so that no further action happens,” defense attorney Todd Blanche said during oral arguments at the Appellate Division’s First Judicial Department. “The imposition is extraordinary.”
Judge Ellen Gesmer questioned whether immunity granted to sitting presidents extends to presidents-elect.
“I’m curious about that,” she said. “Do you have any support for a notion that presidential immunity extends to Presidents-elect?”
Blanche replied that he did not. “There has never been a case like this before, so no,” Blanche said.
Prosecutors said there is no evidence “whatsoever” to back the claim that presidential immunity applies to Trump prior to his inauguration on Jan. 20.
“The claim is so baseless that there is no support for an automatic stay here,” said Steven Wu of the Manhattan district attorney’s office. “There is a compelling public interest in seeing this process come to an end.”
The prosecutor noted that Trump’s sentencing was originally scheduled for July 11 and every delay since has been done at Trump’s request.
“If sentencing is to happen at all, now is the best time for it to happen,” Wu said.
Trump was found guilty in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
Merchan initially scheduled Trump’s sentencing for July 11 before pushing it back in order to weigh if Trump’s conviction was impacted by the Supreme Court’s July ruling prohibiting the prosecution of a president for official acts undertaken while in office. Merchan subsequently ruled that Trump’s conviction related “entirely to unofficial conduct” and “poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch.”
Trump’s lawyers asked the appeals court to stop the proceedings — including his Jan. 10 sentencing — and to dismiss his conviction outright based on presidential immunity grounds.
“Justice Merchan’s erroneous decisions threaten the institution of the Presidency and run squarely against established precedent disallowing any criminal process against a President-Elect, as well as prohibiting the use of evidence of a President’s official acts against him in a criminal proceeding,” they argued in their suit.
Blanche and fellow defense lawyer Emil Bove, both of whom Trump has picked for top Justice Department posts in his incoming administration, claimed in the suit that Trump’s “undisputed absolute immunity” extends to his time as president-elect — an argument that Judge Merchan roundly denied last week.
The lawyers also claimed that the jury’s verdict was “erroneous” because they saw evidence related to official acts.
“President Trump brings this Article 78 proceeding to redress the serious and continuing infringement on his Presidential immunity from criminal process that he holds as the 45th and soon-to-be 47th President of the United States of America,” the filing said.
The president-elected faces up to four years in prison, but Merchan last week indicated that he would sentence Trump to an unconditional discharge — effectively a blemish on Trump’s record, without prison, fines or probation — saying that would strike a balance between the duties of president and the sanctity of the jury’s verdict.
Merchan on Monday denied a separate request by Trump to halt the sentencing in the case.
(LOS ANGELES) — Less than 24 hours after President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden and criticized his prosecution as a “miscarriage of justice,” prosecutors in special counsel David Weiss’ office defended the integrity of their work in a court filing and fiercely rebutted the president’s allegation that their charges were motivated by politics.
“In total, eleven different [federal] judges appointed by six different presidents, including his father, considered and rejected the defendant’s claims, including his claims for selective and vindictive prosecution,” wrote prosecutor Leo Wise in a ten-page filing Monday.
President Biden on Sunday issued a blanket pardoned to his son, who earlier this year was convicted earlier on federal gun charges and pleaded guilty to tax-related charges, and was due to be sentenced in both cases later this month.
In Monday’s filing, prosecutors urged the federal judge overseeing Hunter Biden’s tax case in California not to dismiss his indictment, and instead close the docket — which would allow the record to continue to exist.
“The government does not challenge that the defendant has been the recipient of an act of mercy. But that does not mean the grand jury’s decision to charge him, based on a finding of probable cause, should be wiped away as if it never occurred,” Wise wrote. “It also does not mean that his charges should be wiped away because the defendant falsely claimed that the charges were the result of some improper motive.”
Mark Osler, an expert in presidential pardons at the University of St. Thomas, said Weiss’ overture raises “a technical issue — either way, the case goes away — but an important one.”
“[Prosecutors] want the indictment to remain on the record,” he told ABC News.
Without directly addressing President Biden’s criticism of the case as selective and unfair, the filing highlighted how Hunter Biden’s lawyers made “every conceivable argument” to dismiss the case and failed to provide evidence that prosecution was vindictive.
“The court similarly found his vindictive prosecution claims unmoored from any evidence or even a coherent theory as to vindictiveness,” the filing said. “And there was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case. The defendant made similar baseless accusations in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. Those claims were also rejected.”
