by Diane Rufino, December 20, 2023

Americans, it seems, have never been more polarized about religion and politics. With minds made up and combat-ready, we have a hard time bridging the chasms that divide us. It boils down to virtue and morality, as well as views regarding the Constitution and the foundations and principles upon which our American union was founded. Morality and principled views are seen to be critical when it comes time to forge large, cohesive, cooperative groups.

Conservatives have complained for years (since the Obama administration) that they have been discriminated against and targeted by the weaponized departments and agencies of the federal government. They have been silenced, they’ve had their essential First Amendment rights of Free Speech and Expression violated, they’ve been targeted by the IRS, Homeland Security, and the Justice Department, they’ve been stigmatized, they’ve been slandered and even tarnished by libelous verbiage, they’ve been targeted on social media by “fact-checkers” (and even been thrown off the platform), and they’ve been outright physically harassed (SWAT team surveillance, search and seizure of personal property). They see a dual system of justice. If you dare to think differently, you have been, and will be, slandered (or trashed in print or on social media, “libel”).

We, as Americans, classify ourselves as either Democrats or Republicans, as liberals and even progressives or conservatives. We either respect the foundations and principles that our Founding Fathers created and memorialized (in our founding documents) or we dismiss them as being outdated and unworkable for our current times. The division is so stark that we often find it impossible to work side by side. We see this country as one facing its fatal demise, facing the impracticability of the Constitution defining our Republic, and sliding towards a civil war, philosophical division, or secession. I often believe the latter is most desirable.

Former President Trump remains obsessed with what he repeatedly calls, the “Greatest Political Crime in the History of the U.S., the Russian Witch-Hunt.”

The investigation into Russian interference and Donald Trump has sprung so many offshoots, it’s hard to keep track. Here’s a comprehensive list. It’s long and detailed, and suspicious. And utterly sickening and despicable.

While most Americans today remember Watergate as five DNC burglars leading inexorably to Richard Nixon’s resignation two years later, history recalls that the case and special prosecutor’s investigation at the time were much broader; ultimately 69 people were charged as part of the investigation, 48 of whom pleaded guilty or were found guilty at trial. And most conservatives remember the unscrupulous D.C. Democrats efforts to impeach him. I remember that most vividly as I traveled to the nation’s Capitol to witness those attempts. It was disgraceful.

After back-to-back bombshells by federal prosecutors and special counsel Robert Mueller, it was increasingly clear that, as 2018 wound down, Donald Trump faces a legal assault unlike anything previously seen by any president—at least 17 distinct court cases stemming from at least seven different sets of prosecutors and investigators, all related to a politically-fabricated sham – Russiagate (aka, the fabricated Russian Collusion scandal). When Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, we thought (HOPED) that the relentless harassment would finally end. But it did not. It continued and perhaps, to many, it continued on a more vicious and unconstitutional basis. In short, the relentless political and personal persecution of Donald Trump is threatening to destroy our precious American Republic.

While the media has long short-handed Mueller’s probe as the “Russia investigation,” a comprehensive review of the cases unfolding around the president and the question of Russian influence in the 2016 presidential campaign harkens back to another lesson of Watergate: Deep Throat’s dictum, “Follow the money.”

If one remembers, with respect to the Russian Collusion scandal, the constellation of investigations involves questions about foreign money and influence targeting the Trump campaign, transition, and White House from not just Russia but as many as a half-dozen countries. Prosecutors had been studying nearly every aspect of how money flowed both in and out of Trump’s interconnected enterprises, from his hotels to his company, to his campaign, and ultimately to his inauguration. The FBI initiated an investigation into Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election. While President Trump once said that he’d see investigations into his business dealings as crossing a “red line,” it appears that Trump himself obliterated that line, intermingling his business and campaign until it was impossible for prosecutors to untangle one without forensically examining the other. Or so the D.C. Democrats would have us believe.

The incessant harassment and slandering of Donald Trump began during his 2016 presidential campaign (thanks to Hillary Clinton for that) and has increased in vitriol and aggressiveness ever since. It’s obvious how deep their hatred of him has grown. America got a glimpse of this hatred when the Democrat-controlled House tried twice to impeach him and when Speaker of the House, the deranged Nancy Pelosi, ripped up his State of the Union remarks live on television immediately after Trump concluded. [By the way, those remarks have been summed up as among the very best ever given]. The incessant harassment of Trump has inspired groups to support him, to support his 2024 presidential candidacy, to get involved in election integrity, and to get involved in local politics.

Eventually, calls were made for the appointment of a Special Counselor. Robert Mueller was appointed as the Special Counsel to oversee the FBI investigation of Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election and related matters. The appointment was made by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein on May 17, 2017. The decision was “apparently” made in the interest of the public to ensure that the investigation was conducted independently and again “apparently” without any political considerations. The Mueller investigation primarily focused on three major points:

• Russian interference in the 2016 United States election.
• Trump associates and their connection to Russian officials and espionage
• Possible obstruction of justice by Trump and his associates

The Mueller investigation culminated with the Mueller report, which concluded that the Trump campaign likely welcomed Russian interference and expected to benefit from it. The Mueller Report and its findings were used to support several government and state-sponsored lawsuits against individuals and organizations that otherwise would never have caused anyone to take notice. I’ve listed several below.

Obviously, some of the investigations I’ve listed below may, or will eventually, overlap. Many of the players, particularly those like Michael Cohen, may end up central to multiple cases. And the existence of an investigation does not necessarily mean convictions will follow. There’s also plenty we don’t know about who else Mueller and other investigators might have in their sights, or who might be cooperating. Notably, most of the open investigations involve known cooperators, not to mention likely millions of documents, telephone calls, recordings, emails, communications, and tax returns assembled by the special counsel and other prosecutors.

Here is a  rundown of the various known investigations involving Donald Trump and the sham allegations relating to his 2016 presidential candidacy – from local, state, and federal prosecutors:

INVESTIGATIONS BY SPECIAL COUNSEL, ROBERT MUELLER —

1. The Russian Government’s Election Attack: The special counsel moved aggressively to outline and charge the Russian government’s core attack on the 2016 election, which included both active cyber intrusions and data theft by the military intelligence unit GRU and the GRU’s attempted attacks on the US voting system, as well as online information influence operations by the Internet Research Agency, known by the moniker “Project Lakhta.” Numerous threads from this investigation remain unseen—including a possible cooperator inside the Internet Research Agency, Putin’s own involvement, whether any Americans contributed knowingly to the attack, the role of the FSB’s “Cozy Bear” hackers, and whether or how Russia’s expensive and multipronged attack coordinated with contacts between Russian nationals and the Trump campaign over the course of 2016, including the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. Mueller has also investigated the role of late GOP activist Peter Smith, who had apparently tried to locate stolen emails and make contact with Russian hackers. It’s also unclear what has sparked Mueller’s apparent continued interest in Trump’s campaign tech firm, Cambridge Analytica.

Status: 12 Russian military intelligence officers from the GRU indicted, 13 people indicted from the Internet Research Agency, alongside three Russian companies, and a guilty plea from one California man who unwittingly aided their identity theft. Manafort aide Sam Patten cooperated with investigators.

2. WikiLeaks: Whether WikiLeaks’ publishing of the emails stolen by Russian hackers connects from Moscow to Trump Tower itself remains an open question. But a leaked aborted plea agreement from conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi makes clear that Trump associates had at least some advance knowledge of what WikiLeaks was planning to publish. How any of that may connect with looming charges facing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and another apparently abandoned deal for him to leave the Ecuador embassy in London is also unclear.

Status: Both Trump aide Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi were indicted.

3. Middle Eastern Influence: Potentially the biggest unseen aspect of Mueller’s investigation has been his year-long pursuit of Middle Eastern influence targeting the Trump campaign, which the Daily Beast reported: “The ‘Russia investigation’ is set to go global.” The investigation appeared to have centered on the role of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, which were eager to help the campaign and, in some cases, have business ties to Trump or presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner specifically appears to have been a key focus of these foreign efforts: [The New Yorker and other news outlets have carefully traced how China, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia targeted the White House senior adviser].

Status: Two key figures have cooperated: Middle East would-be power broker George Nader and Blackwater mercenary group founder Erik Prince.

Status of any action against Jared Kushner: Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, has insisted he “did not collude” with Russia during the presidential election, and dismissed the significance of a meeting with Donald Trump Jr and a Russian lawyer. In an 11-page statement released early on July 24, 2017 before his appearance in front of the Senate intelligence committee, Kushner claimed he had four contacts with Russian officials during the presidential election and transition, but said they were part of his role as a Trump campaign point man for foreign governments. “I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government….. I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector.”

4. Paul Manafort’s Activity: Paul Manafort was Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman who briefly ran the 2016 campaign before being ousted amid questions about his consulting work for Ukrainian political figures, which earned him millions. After Trump was elected president, the Justice Department continued to investigate Manafort, indicting him as part of the investigation by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III into the Trump campaign. He pleaded guilty and was convicted of financial crimes in 2017 by a Virginia jury and sentenced to more than seven years in prison but released early in 2020 due to health concerns surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. He was pardoned by then-President Trump, on December 23, 2020 (as he was preparing to leave office) but that wasn’t the end of his legal troubles. Soon afterwards, in April 2022, he was sued by the Justice Department, which was seeking $3 million over undeclared foreign bank accounts.

Status:  Paul Manafort has agreed to pay $3.15 million he owes to the US government over misrepresentations he made on his tax returns almost a decade ago, bringing to a close the former Trump campaign chairman’s financial tangles in court. Manafort hadn’t disclosed to the Treasury Department nearly two dozen bank accounts in Cyprus, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the UK that he used for political consulting business he did in Ukraine in 2013 and 2014, according to court filings. The offshore accounts had tens of thousands of dollars in them, making it necessary for him to report them to the IRS. But on his tax returns, Manafort said he had no foreign bank accounts. In other words, he pleaded not guilty to charges of money laundering.

5. Investigation of Papadopoulos. George Papadopoulos was a foreign policy adviser on the 2016 Trump campaign. He was charged with lying to FBI agents regarding Russian involvement in the election and pleaded guilty.

Status: The government recommended a sentence in line with what Alex van der Zwaan, the Dutch attorney who also pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, received: 30 days in jail. Papadopoulos, was also ordered to pay a fine of $9,500, was the second person sentenced in Mueller’s investigation.

6. Case Against General Michael Flynn. A criminal case was filed against former National Security Advisor and retired US. Army Lt. General Michael Flynn (United States v. Flynn) in the US District Court for the District of Columbia of making false statements to the FBI. (The lawsuit stemmed from a 2016 investigation by the FBI during the Obama administration over Flynn’s suspected ties to Russia; in 2017, he pled guilty to lying to the FBI regarding his association with Russian contacts). Shortly after the 2020 election, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) received a pardon from Trump.

The filing states that as a result of the government’s actions Flynn was “falsely branded as a traitor to his country, lost at least tens of millions of dollars of business opportunities and future lifetime earning potential, [and] was maliciously prosecuted and spent substantial monies in his own defense.” Defendants named in the filing include the Department of Justice, FBI, former Special Counsel Robert Muller, former FBI Director James Comey, and former FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. The suit argues that Flynn was unfairly targeted by federal investigators because of his “lawful association with the 2016 Presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump and his position as National Security Advisor in the Trump Administration.”

Status: Former National Security Advisor and retired US. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is now suing the U.S. government on grounds of wrongful prosecution. As the filings reads: “wrongful and malicious” and a “gross abuse of process” and is seeking $50 million in compensatory damages.

7. The Trump Tower Moscow Project: Just days before attorney Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in federal prison for the eight felonies he pleaded guilty to in August, Robert Mueller surprised everyone with a ninth charge. Cohen admitted that he lied to Congress about the status of the Trump Organization’s pursuit of a Trump Tower Moscow, a proposed project that extended longer into the campaign and proceeded into more serious conversations than previously admitted. The special counsel also noted how the project would be worth “hundreds of millions” of dollars, far more than a normal Trump licensing deal, leading to questions about why it would have been so lucrative. The case also connects the Trump Organization’s business deals, and the campaign, directly to the office of Russian president Vladimir Putin, whose government was at the time busily engaged in the attack on the US election. Moreover, according to statements by congressional investigators and documents released from Congress’s own Russia investigation, other figures, including Donald Trump Jr., may face legal exposure about their own testimony on the Trump Tower Moscow project.

Status. As of this past July, Michael Cohen, the former Trump lawyer turned ferocious critic, has settled his lawsuit seeking $1.3 million in legal fees from the Trump Organization in New York state Supreme Court, in Manhattan. He has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the status of the project and is cooperating with investigators.

8. Other Campaign and Transition Contacts With Russia: As mainstream media journalists have pieced together, at least 14 Trump associates had contact with Russia during the campaign and transition, from foreign policy aide Carter Page to would-be attorney general Jeff Sessions. Questions continue to surround many of those contacts, not least of all the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 that included Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort, and which involved hints that the meeting was only “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” as the email setting up the meeting first promised.

Status: Both national security adviser Michael Flynn and foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos have pleaded guilty to charges related to their campaign and transition contacts with Russia. Cohen and Flynn have both provided extensive cooperation to Mueller about the campaign and transition contacts.

9. Obstruction of Justice Against Then-President Trump: Part of the reason for the Mueller Inquiry was to look for obstruction of justice by then-President Donald Trump. The House’s decision to appointment Robert Mueller as Special Counsel stemmed from their determination to show that Trump’s decision to fire FBI director James Comey was an attempt to obstruct the initial stages of the Russia investigation. But Mueller appeared to have assembled a broader obstruction-of-justice case against Trump, one that could potentially argue that the president’s public statements intentionally misled the public in an attempt to limit the scope of the Russia investigation. Even if Mueller decided that there was enough evidence to bring such a case, it seemed more likely that it would have passed along to Congress for consideration of impeachment rather than prosecuted in court.

Status: No action was ever taken in this matter.

Side Note – The investigation of Tony Podesta. On September 24, 2019, federal prosecutors ended an investigation into Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta and former Rep. Vin Weber, R-Minn., in a case connected to lobbying for Ukraine and Paul Manafort without filing criminal charges.

The investigation by the Southern District of New York (federal trial court), which focused on whether several prominent Washington lobbyists violated foreign lobbying rules, grew out of special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into the finances of Manafort, a former Trump campaign chairman, as mentioned above.

10.  Allegations by Stormy Daniels against Trump: Sexual Abuse. The case involves a hush-money scheme during the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to the adult film star Stormy Daniels to quash her story about having an extramarital affair with the former president. Trump has denied the affair took place. Prosecutors accuse the former president of illegally reimbursing Cohen for the hush-money payment by falsely classifying the transaction, executed by the Trump Organization, as legal expenses.

In January 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen arranged a payment of $130,000 to Daniels a month before the 2016 election to prevent her from speaking publicly about the alleged affair with Trump.

In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges of bank fraud, tax fraud and campaign finance violations in New York. Cohen claimed that Trump arranged the payment to Daniels, but the then-president was not charged.

— In July 2021, the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, were indicted on tax fraud charges.

— In August 2022, Weisselberg pleaded guilty to 15 charges, and he agreed to testify against the Trump Organization as part of his deal with prosecutors.

— In December 2022, the Trump Organization was found guilty on all counts of criminal tax fraud and falsification of business records.

— In January, the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, began presenting evidence to a grand jury on Trump’s role in the hush-money scheme.

— In March, Bragg’s office indicted Trump on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records.

— In April, Trump pleaded not guilty to all counts, and he was released from custody on his own recognizance.

Status: Trump’s most recent court date in the case was set for early this month, December 4. In July, the US district judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected Trump’s bid to move the case out of state court to federal court. The trial, nonetheless, is scheduled to begin in Manhattan on March 25, 2024.

11. Allegations by E. Jean Carroll against Trump: Sexual Abuse. This second sexual harassment case centers on allegations by writer E. Jean Carroll that Trump sexually assaulted her at a department store in 1996. Trump has denied the allegations while repeatedly attacking Carroll’s character, and his actions are now at the center of two civil lawsuits.

— In June 2019, Carroll published an excerpt of her memoir, in which she accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. Trump quickly issued a statement denying the accusation, claiming he had never met Carroll.

— In November 2019, Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump, accusing him of having “smeared her integrity, honesty and dignity”.

The case was repeatedly delayed amid legal wrangling over whether the federal government was allowed to step in to represent Trump in the case because he was a government official at the time. A judge eventually rejected that effort, ruling the justice department could not fill Trump’s shoes in the case because he was not acting in his official capacity as a government official when he made the defamatory comments about Carroll.

— In November 2022, on the same day that the Adult Survivors Act went into effect in New York, Carroll filed a second lawsuit against Trump accusing him of defamation and sexual battery. The Adult Survivors Act gave victims of sexual violence over the age of 18 a one-year window to file civil lawsuits against their alleged abusers, despite the statute of limitations.

— In March, a judge denied Carroll’s request to consolidate the two lawsuits into one. Instead, the first lawsuit was put on pause as the second lawsuit moved forward.

— In April, the trial for Carroll’s second lawsuit began. Carroll testified to the New York jury that Trump forcibly pulled down her tights in the department store dressing room, and the experience left her unable to explore romantic relationships. She also claimed that she was fired from her job as an advice columnist for Elle Magazine, where she worked for 26 years, because of Trump’s defamatory comments.

— In May, the jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, although the former president was not found liable for rape. The jury awarded Carroll about $5 million in damages, but because it was a civil case, Trump did not face criminal charges in connection to the judgment. Trump has filed an appeal in the case.

Status: In June, a federal judge ruled that the original defamation lawsuit, in which Carroll is seeking damages of $10 million, could move forward. A trial date has been set for January 2024.

12. Investigation of Carter Page (and his “alleged” connections to the 2016 Trump campaign).  Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to the 2016 Trump campaign, was the subject of four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants, which allowed the FBI to monitor his online communications and scrutinize his ties to Russia. The FBI obtained the warrants based on allegations that Page was coordinating with the Russian government in an espionage conspiracy to influence the 2016 election. However, two of the four surveillance warrants against Page were declared invalid by the Justice Department, as the FBI had made a series of misstatements and omissions in the applications to get secret court warrants to eavesdrop on Page. The Justice Department’s concession to the court means the department now believes, at a minimum, the surveillance of Page should have ended after the second warrant expired in early 2017. The Justice Department has not taken a position on the validity of the other two surveillance authorizations on Page.

Carter Page fought the law, and the law lost.

The former Trump campaign adviser was one of the first four suspects identified by the FBI in the early days of its investigation of President Trump’s 2016 campaign aides, and the only one of that group to have his electronic communications secretly targeted by a U.S. foreign intelligence court. But when the dust settled three years later, he was also the only one of the four without a criminal conviction — a feat all the more remarkable in that he did much of it without a lawyer.

Former Trump National Security Adviser Michael T. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during a relatively brief interview at the White House in early 2017. Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to agents in a separate interview that same month. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort pleaded guilty in one case and was convicted in another for a host of financial crimes.

Page, who is now 52, defiantly testified before Congress without a lawyer. He spoke to the FBI for about 10 hours in March 2017, also without a lawyer. He went on television, repeatedly, to declare his innocence and offer sometimes hard-to-follow explanations for his trips to Moscow and his meetings there. It was a bold strategy. Page declared that the year-long surveillance of his communications was an abuse of government power, and he received a significant measure of vindication when Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued a 434-page report, concluding that the FBI made 17 significant errors or omissions in its applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court to surveil Page. Yes, the FBI and DOJ used a process that was riddled with errors and mistakes, and then engaged in intentional overall sloppiness to secure the warrants.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said, “If I was Mr. Carter Page, I’d hire me a lawyer and I’d sue the hell out of the United States.” Acting as his own attorney, Page has already sued the government, claiming that news stories about the investigation made him a victim of terrorism, but a judge rejected that argument. He has filed a separate suit alleging violations of the Privacy Act, which was also rejected/

He said the report is “a positive initial step, but it is just that,” arguing that the Justice Department needs to change how it handles FISA investigations, because, as he described it, FISA has become a high national priority.

Page, who had worked in Moscow years earlier as an investment banker, met with a Russian official in January 2013 at an energy conference in New York. That official, Victor Podobnyy, was known as a Russian diplomat to the United Nations but was in fact a Russian intelligence agent, according to U.S. officials. In the months that followed, Page provided Podobnyy documents about the energy business. Prosecutors filed charges against the Russian suspects in the case in 2015. Court papers did not identify Page, but he was on the FBI’s radar. In March 2016, Trump named Page as one of his foreign policy advisers. The next month, counterintelligence officials opened an investigation of him.

That summer, as the political parties had their nominating conventions, files and emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee were released publicly via the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. U.S. intelligence officials had already determined that Russian intelligence hackers had stolen the files. Were the Russians now using them to try to influence the election?

In late July, an Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, notified the U.S. government that at a meeting in Great Britain with Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos, the latter suggested that the Russians were interested in helping the campaign. That tip led senior FBI officials in Washington to open its investigation of Papadopoulos and take over the inquiry of Page. As investigators pursued Page, they realized that other agents in the bureau had been sitting on an explosive set of allegations against him made by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, who had been hired by the American firm Fusion GPS with more than $1 million flowing from the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee (DNC) to the law firm of Perkins Coie. Perkins Coie used the money to fund opposition research company Fusion GPS. 

That set of allegations, which has become known as the Steele dossier, was used by FBI agents to get approval from a FISA court in October 2016 to secretly monitor Page’s communications. The court-approved surveillance was reauthorized three times, amounting to a year of surveillance. The inspector general found major problems with the assertions the FBI made to the court — relying on damaging accusations that the FBI could not substantiate, and not disclosing exculpatory information. Among the most damning findings in the report was that an FBI lawyer had retroactively altered an email to make it look as though Page was not a source for the CIA, when in fact the agency had told the FBI as early as August 2016 that it had a previous relationship with Page.

The inspector general’s report does not identify the CIA by name, but people familiar with the case said that it was the agency in question. Page announced on television that he had spoken to the CIA in the past, forcing officials to scramble to figure out whether that was true. To determine whether Page was a secret agent of Russia, the FBI sent a confidential informant to talk to him about his alleged relationship with Manafort. But in that secretly recorded conversation, Page denied knowing Manafort, saying that Manafort wouldn’t even respond to Page’s emails, according to the inspector general’s report.

But the investigation continued. In April 2017, while Page’s calls and emails were still under surveillance, The Washington Post reported what the FBI had been doing. Page said the activity was “unjustified, politically motivated government surveillance,” comparing the eavesdropping to secret recordings the FBI and the Justice Department made against civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. In short, Page was alleging FBI abuse.

Rather than hire a lawyer, Page decided to speak out, giving media interviews and asking lawmakers to dig into his case. “I want to get as much information out there as possible.” he told reporters in early 2017. Page ultimately hired a lawyer to help him navigate his interviews with prosecutors working for Robert S. Mueller III, but for the most part he remained a one-man, non-lawyer advocate for his cause.

Status: Carter Page fought the law, and the law lost. Thank God! The Trump campaign, was not charged with any crime. However, he was subjected to government surveillance due to his Russian ties during the 2016 presidential campaign. Federal investigators obtained permission from the FISA court to wiretap Page, and the surveillance continued for roughly one year. The FBI and DOJ used a process that was riddled with errors, mistakes, and overall sloppiness to secure the warrants. Two of the four surveillance warrants granted by the secretive FISA court have since been declared invalid and the Department of Justice has rightfully acknowledged that it was negligent in using the FISA court as it did. Page sued the DOJ and FBI and an array of ex-FBI officials, including former Director James Comey, former top counterintelligence official Peter Strzok, and former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who was convicted of doctoring an email related to the FISA application. In the lawsuit, Page accused the federal agencies and ex-officials of violating his constitutional rights and demanded $75 million in damages. Unfortunately, district judge Dabney Friedrich rejected his lawsuit.

12. The Attempted Impeachment of Donald Trump. The D.C. Democrats were determined in their attempts to remove Donald Trump from the presidency, and to that end, the US House held impeachment hearings against him. In fact, they attempted to impeach him twice – first on December 19, 2019 and again on January 13, 2021.

The first impeachment trial adopted two articles of impeachment against Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. On February 5, 2020, the Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump. Trump’s impeachment came after a formal House inquiry found that he had solicited foreign interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election to help his re-election bid, and then obstructed the inquiry itself by telling his administration officials to ignore subpoenas for documents and testimony. The inquiry reported that: (a) Trump withheld military aid, and (b) withheld an invitation he extended to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the White House in order to influence Ukraine to announce an investigation into Trump’s political opponent Joe Biden, and to promote a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind interference in the 2016 presidential election. A phone call between Trump and Zelenskyy on July 25, 2019, was particularly important according to Congressional testimony from Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a member of the National Security Council who listened to the call from the White House Situation Room.

Trump was impeached for the second time on January 13, 2021. Ten Republican representatives voted for the second impeachment, the most pro-impeachment votes ever from a president’s party. This was also the first presidential impeachment in which the majority caucus voted unanimously for impeachment. Trump was indicted on August 1, 2023 for the conduct for which he was impeached but again, the Senate refused to remove him from office.

Impeachment alone isn’t the only step to take a President out of office; it is actually the first part of a two-pronged process. To impeach an official, the House of Representatives must pass articles of impeachment, which formally accuse the President of misbehavior. Once the House votes to impeach, the Senate must hold a trial to decide if the President should be removed from office. The House Judiciary Committee informally begins the probe and its final vote finalizes it. By authorizing the inquiry, the White House is forced to cooperate. Only two US presidents before Trump were “impeached” by the House – Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. Both were saved by a vote of the Senate. The House and Senate threatened President Richard Nixon with guaranteed impeachment and removal and offered him the chance to save his reputation by resigning his office, an option he decided to take.

To be impeached, a President or other federal official must have committed one of the violations described by the Constitution as “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” But history shows that if a President is to be impeached, the biggest factor may be political will — whether members of a President’s own party are willing to turn against him, and whether enough members of Congress believe that trying to remove the President is worth the risk of losing popular support.

On January 11, 2021. he House of Representatives of the 117th U.S. Congress adopted one article of impeachment against Trump of “incitement of insurrection,” (or as the press referred to it – “an act of sedition”) and “lawless action at the Capitol” stating that he had incited the January 6 attack of the U.S. Capitol. The article was introduced with more than 200 co-sponsors.

Many Republican Senators opposed the impeachment charges. On January 8, Senator Lindsey Graham (R–SC) tweeted that impeachment “will do more harm than good.” In a follow-up tweet, he implied that Pelosi and Schumer wanted to impeach Trump because they were concerned about their own political survival. Also, on January 11, Graham tweeted “It is past time for all of us to try to heal our country and move forward. Impeachment would be a major step backward.” On January 11, three senators spoke out against impeachment. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) said “Let’s get through the 10 days. He will leave the office and let’s get on with things.” Senator John Hoeven (R-ND) said “We need to work together to heal the divisions in our nation and impeachment would instead serve to further divide our country.” Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) said “I’m not going to do what the Democrats are doing. I think we need to lower the rhetoric. We need to get some unity going.”  On January 13, seven senators spoke out against impeachment. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) said “At a time when the United States needs national healing and a true commitment to the rule of law, the American people should look to their legislators not to deepen partisan division, but to bring us together. There are seven days to go in the President’s term, and he has fully committed to a peaceful transfer of power.”

On January 20, Senator John Boozman (R-AR) said “With Trump already being gone, impeachment would be a significant expense and waste of time.” On January 21, five senators spoke out against impeachment. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said “It’s one thing, according to the constitution, to impeach a president, but can you impeach a citizen? Because now it’s not President Trump, it’s citizen Trump.”] Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) said “Democrats appear intent on weaponizing every tool at their disposal — including pushing an unconstitutional impeachment process — to further divide the country. Missourians will not be canceled by these partisan attacks.”[187] Senator Mike Braun (R-IN) said “I think the key point is, is it constitutional to do this when somebody is out of office — and then, is it purely retribution when you try to push it forward.”[188] Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) said “I believe an impeachment trial of a former president is unconstitutional and would set a very dangerous precedent.”[189] Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said “It seems that Senate Democrats, the response they have to that is they want to start the new Congress the very first thing, with a vindictive and punitive impeachment trial.”

Status: President Donald Trump was impeached twice by the U.S. House but saved each time by the Senate.

13. The January 6, 2021 “Capitol Riot” Event. In the early afternoon of Wednesday, January 6, 2021, two months after the defeat of 45th U.S. president Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, an assembly of his supporters showed up at the US Capitol building in Washington D.C. to hear him speak.

Here is a transcript of Trump’s Remarks at the US Capitol on January 6: “Well, thank you very much. This is incredible. The media will not show the magnitude of this crowd. Even I, when I turned on today, I looked, and I saw thousands of people here. But you don’t see hundreds of thousands of people behind you because they don’t want to show that. We have hundreds of thousands of people here and I just want them to be recognized by the fake news media. Turn your cameras please and show what’s really happening out here because these people are not going to take it any longer. They’re not going to take it any longer. Go ahead. Turn your cameras, please. Would you show? They came from all over the world, actually, but they came from all over our country.

     I just really want to see what they do. I just want to see how they covered. I’ve never seen anything like it. But it would be really great if we could be covered fairly by the media. The media is the biggest problem we have as far as I’m concerned, single biggest problem. The fake news and the Big tech. Big tech is now coming into their own. We beat them four years ago. We surprised them. We took them by surprise and this year they rigged an election. They rigged it like they’ve never rigged an election before. And by the way, last night they didn’t do a bad job either if you notice.

     I’m honest. And I just, again, I want to thank you. It’s just a great honor to have this kind of crowd and to be before you and hundreds of thousands of American patriots who are committed to the honesty of our elections and the integrity of our glorious republic. All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing. And stolen by the fake news media. That’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing. We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.

     Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that’s what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with: We will stop the steal. Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election.

     You know, I say, sometimes jokingly, but there’s no joke about it: I’ve been in two elections. I won them both and the second one, I won much bigger than the first. OK. Almost 75 million people voted for our campaign, the most of any incumbent president by far in the history of our country, 12 million more people than four years ago.

     And I was told by the real pollsters — we do have real pollsters — they know that we were going to do well and we were going to win. What I was told, if I went from 63 million, which we had four years ago, to 66 million, there was no chance of losing. Well, we didn’t go to 66, we went to 75 million, and they say we lost. We didn’t lose.

     And by the way, does anybody believe that Joe had 80 million votes? Does anybody believe that? He had 80 million computer votes. It’s a disgrace. There’s never been anything like that. You could take third-world countries. Just take a look. Take third-world countries. Their elections are more honest than what we’ve been going through in this country. It’s a disgrace. It’s a disgrace. Even when you look at last night. They’re all running around like chickens with their heads cut off with boxes. Nobody knows what the hell is going on. There’s never been anything like this.

     We will not let them silence your voices. We’re not going to let it happen, I’m not going to let it happen. (Audience chants: “Fight for Trump.”)  Thank you.

     And I’d love to have if those tens of thousands of people would be allowed. The military, the secret service. And we want to thank you and the police law enforcement. Great. You’re doing a great job. But I’d love it if they could be allowed to come up here with us. Is that possible? Can you just let him come up, please?

     And Rudy, you did a great job. He’s got guts. You know what? He’s got guts, unlike a lot of people in the Republican Party. He’s got guts. He fights, he fights.

     And I’ll tell you. Thank you very much, John. Fantastic job. I watched. That’s a tough act to follow, those two. John is one of the most brilliant lawyers in the country, and he looked at this and he said, “What an absolute disgrace that this can be happening to our Constitution.”

     And he looked at Mike Pence, and I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We’re supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our Constitution.

     States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people. And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: “Mike, that doesn’t take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage.” And then we’re stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We’re just not going to let that happen.

     Many of you have traveled from all across the nation to be here, and I want to thank you for the extraordinary love. That’s what it is. There’s never been a movement like this, ever, ever. For the extraordinary love for this amazing country, and this amazing movement, thank you.    (Audience chants: “We love Trump.”)

     By the way, this goes all the way back past the Washington Monument. You believe this? Look at this. That is.  Don’t worry, we will not take the name off the Washington Monument. We will not cancel culture.

     And they could use Rudy back in New York City. Rudy. They could use you. Your city’s going to hell. They want Rudy Giuliani back in New York. We’ll get a little younger version of Rudy. Is that OK, Rudy?

     We’re gathered together in the heart of our nation’s capital for one very, very basic and simple reason: To save our democracy. You know, America is blessed with elections. All over the world they talk about our elections. You know what the world says about us now? They said, we don’t have free and fair elections.

     And you know what else? We don’t have a free and fair press. Our media is not free, it’s not fair. It suppresses thought, it suppresses speech and it’s become the enemy of the people. It’s become the enemy of the people. It’s the biggest problem we have in this country. No third-world countries would even attempt to do what we caught them doing. And you’ll hear about that in just a few minutes.

According to the Democrats, the assembly turned fanatical and attacked the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. The “assembly” sought to keep Trump in power by preventing a joint session of Congress from counting the Electoral College votes to formalize the victory of President-elect Joe Biden. According to the House select committee that investigated the incident, the attack was the culmination of a seven-part plan by Trump to overturn the election.

Called to action by Trump, thousands of his supporters gathered in Washington, D.C., on January 5 and 6 to support his claim that the 2020 election had been “stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats” and to demand that Vice President Mike Pence and Congress reject Biden’s victory. Starting at noon on January 6, at a “Save America” rally on the Ellipse, Trump gave a speech in which he repeated claims of election irregularities, and though he encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol to peacefully make their voices heard, he said, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”  Sounds like the Democrats are harassing American citizens who, through disappointment with the election they fought so hard to win, felt entitled to exercise their Constitutional guarantee to free speech and expression. During and after his speech, thousands of attendees walked to the Capitol; hundreds breached police perimeters as Congress was beginning the electoral vote count.

On that afternoon, according to Democrats, “a group of Trump’s supporters staged a violent attack on the US Capitol in an effort to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.” A bipartisan Senate report later concluded that seven people died in connection to the insurrection. Five people died either shortly before, during, or following the event: one was shot by Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, and three died of natural causes, including a police officer. Many people were injured, including 138 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months. As of July 7, 2022, monetary damages caused by attackers have exceeded $2.7 million.

The House impeached Trump for inciting the insurrection, but the former president was acquitted by the Senate. He now faces criminal charges over his role in the attack.

— In June 2021, the House of Representatives voted to create a select committee to investigate the causes and consequences of the January 6 attack.

— In May 2022, a grand jury investigating the January 6 attack issued a subpoena to the National Archives requesting all White House documents given to the House select committee, indicating that federal prosecutors were following similar lines of inquiry.

— In November 2022, shortly after Trump announced his re-election campaign, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to oversee both the federal investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the classified documents case.

— In December 2022, the House select committee voted unanimously to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for potential criminal charges over his role in the attack. The suggested charges include obstructing an official proceeding, conspiring to defraud the government and inciting or assisting an insurrection.

The grand jury has continued to issue subpoenas and hear witness testimony in recent weeks. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former White House adviser, testified before the panel in June, the New York Times reported. Trump said on Truth Social on July 18 that he received a letter informing him that he is a target in Smith’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. According to the Guardian’s reporting, Smith’s letter cited three potential charges against Trump, including conspiracy to violate civil rights and obstruction of an official proceeding.

— On August 1, Trump was informed he was indicted by a grand jury on four counts involving trying to overturn the 2020 election.

— On August 3, Trump was arrested and arraigned in Washington. He pleaded not guilty to all four felony counts.

— In October, Chutkan issued a limited gag order barring Trump from attacking prosecutors, witnesses and other parties connected to the election-interference case.

Status: On August 28, US district court judge Tanya Chutkan set a trial date of March 4, 2024, rejecting Trump’s request to delay the trial until 2026.

14. 2020 Election Meddling Case in Georgia. As part of his frantic efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Trump instructed the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger (Rep), to “find” enough votes to rob Joe Biden of his win in the battleground state. The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has been investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia for more than two years.

— In May 2022, a special purpose grand jury was seated to hear evidence in the case.

— In August 2022, prosecutors informed Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s former lawyers, that he was a target of the grand jury’s investigation.

— In January, the grand jury finished its final report after hearing from 75 witnesses, and a judge recommended that the panel be dissolved. Willis suggested at the time that decisions of charges in the case were “imminent”, but no such announcement has yet been made.

— In February, portions of the grand jury report were made public, although a judge ruled the full report would remain secret. The publicly released portions revealed that the grand jury suspected multiple witnesses may have lied and committed perjury, but they did not shed light on whether Trump will face criminal charges.

— In late February, the forewoman of the grand jury revealed the panel had recommended that multiple people be indicted for interfering with the election. The names of those people were not disclosed, but the forewoman told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “You’re not going to be shocked.”

— In April, Willis said she expected to announce charging decisions this summer.

— In May, a court filing showed that half of the so-called fake electors who sought to declare Trump the winner of Georgia had accepted immunity deals from prosecutors.

— On August 14, Trump and 18 others were named in a 98-page indictment at the Fulton county courthouse.

— On August 24, Trump surrendered at Fulton county jail, where he became the first former US president to ever have his mugshot taken. He was released on a $200,000 bond.

— In October, the former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts in connection to efforts to overturn the Georgia election results. Powell, who agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the case, was sentenced to six years’ probation, a $6,000 fine and $2,700 in restitution to the state of Georgia.

Status: Trump was found liable in one lawsuit and another lawsuit will be going to trial.

INVESTIGATIONS BY THE US DEPT. OF JUSTICE, TO BE HEARD IN FEDERAL COURT IN THE STATE OF FLORIDA —

15. Confiscation of “Classified Documents from Trump’s Mar-A-Lago Estate. In the weeks before he left the White House in January 2021, Trump and his aides allegedly packed up hundreds of classified documents with his personal belongings and transported those documents to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Federal officials repeatedly tried to recover the classified materials, but prosecutors say Trump intentionally withheld dozens of documents from investigators and misled them as they attempted to locate the missing files.

— In May 2021, the National Archives sent a letter to Trump’s lawyers asking them to return all presidential records, after officials realized that several important documents were missing.

— In January 2022, Trump’s aides transferred 15 boxes of records to the National Archives. Some were marked as classified national security information, prompting a referral to the Department of Justice.

— In May 2022, a grand jury convened by the Department of Justice issued a subpoena to Trump, requiring him to return all remaining classified documents.

— In August 2022, a federal judge approved a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago amid concerns that additional classified documents remained in Trump’s possession. FBI agents carried out the search days later, and they recovered more than 100 documents with classified markings.

— In November 2022, shortly after Trump announced his re-election campaign, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to oversee both the documents case and the federal investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

— In June, Smith indicted Trump on 37 federal counts, including 31 violations of the Espionage Act. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges and was released on bail.

Judge Aileen Cannon set a trial start date of August 14, in line with Smith’s request for a “speedy trial.” Smith requested an December 11th start date for the trial, while Trump’s team asked the judge to postpone the trial indefinitely.

— In July, Trump’s valet and co-defendant in the documents case, Walt Nauta, pleaded not guilty to five criminal charges.

— On September 15, Judge Cannon selects Raymond Dearie, a former chief judge of the US District Court for the Eastern District (federal court), as the special master.

— On September 21, A federal appeals court allows the Justice Department to regain access to the seized records. The judges ruled that there was no evidence that Trump declassified the documents, and questioned why he needed the classified documents.

— October 4, Trump files an emergency request asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the special master to review the 100 classified documents. An earlier court ruling had removed those documents from the special master’s review. On October 13, the Court denied Trump’s motion.

— On November 15, Trump announces he will run for president in 2024.

— On November 18, Garland appoints Jack Smith as special counsel to investigate the handling of documents found at Mar-a-Lago. Smith is also directed to investigate whether anyone illegally interfered with the transfer of power after the 2020 election.

— On December 1, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit reversed Cannon’s order allowing a special master. As the judge’s order states: “The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant.” 

Status: Trump continues to plead not guilty. Judge Cannon has rejected his motion to delay the trial until after the 2024 presidential election but agreed to push the trial date to May 20, 2024.

INVESTIGATIONS BY THE US ATTORNEY FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK –

16. Campaign Conspiracy and the Trump Organization’s Finances: Despite the myriad cases unfolding from the special counsel, the White House’s most immediate legal jeopardy increasingly appears to stem from federal prosecutors in New York digging into Trump’s alleged financial shenanigans. Perhaps the biggest political bombshell from 2017 has been the new revelations around Michael Cohen, “Individual 1” (as court documents have identified Trump), and the hush money payments to cover up extramarital affairs in the final weeks of the 2016 election. Prosecutors have written that Donald Trump himself directed the payments—an indication that they have solid documentary evidence that hasn’t become public yet—and have apparently lined up nearly every other participant in the scheme as a cooperator.

Status: After hearing from 40 witnesses in over two and a half months, Judge Arthur Engoron, sounded almost wistful as he presided over the last day of testimony in former President Donald Trump’s civil business fraud trial. “In a strange way, I’m gonna miss this trial,” he said.

Things aren’t over yet in the case, in which New York Attorney General Letitia James has accused Trump of inflating his wealth on financial statements used to secure loans and make deals.

Closing arguments are scheduled for early January 2024. The judge has already ruled that Trump is liable for making fraudulent statements, but other claims and a potential final penalty still need to be decided. Trump denies any wrongdoing. He says the financial documents actually understated his net worth and came with caveats that should shield him from liability.

17. Inauguration Funding: W. Samuel Patten is an American political consultant and lobbyist who received international attention in spring 2018 in relation to the Special Counsel investigation led by former FBI director Robert Mueller. This was due to Patten’s relationship with Konstantin Kilimnik, a subject of the investigation. In summer 2018, attention intensified due to Patten’s emergence as a subject of the investigation in his own right, followed by his guilty plea, after being charged in August 2018 with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act for failing to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department when he represented the Opposition Bloc, a Ukrainian political party, from 2014 through 2018.

On April 12, 2019, Patten was sentenced to three years’ probation, ordered to complete 500 hours of community service and ordered to pay a $5,000 fine after pleading guilty in August 2018 to violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by failing to register as a foreign agent for his work on behalf of the Opposition Bloc, a Ukrainian political party. [Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort also worked for the group].

Late in 2018, The Wall Street Journal broke word that prosecutors were digging into the record $107 million raised and spent by the Trump inauguration committee, potentially with concerns about where that money came from and where it went, based in part on documents and evidence seized during the Michael Cohen investigation. Journalists have long raised questions about where the inauguration money went, and the FBI expressed concern about the Russian elites who appeared at the event. We already know that at least some shady money was involved: Manafort associate Sam Patten’s plea agreement includes that he helped a Ukrainian businessman funnel $50,000 to the inauguration.

Status: No court activity yet beyond Patten, but he is cooperating with investigators.

18. Trump SuperPAC Funding: Related to the news about the inauguration inquiries was word that prosecutors are digging into the funding of a Trump SuperPAC, Rebuilding America Now, where Paul Manafort also played a role.

Status: No public court activity yet, but Manafort aide Sam Patten is cooperating with investigators.

19. Foreign Lobbying: Robert Mueller handed off information he uncovered during the Manafort money laundering probe to prosecutors in New York. According to news reports, he referred questions about at least a trio of other lobbyists—Tony Podesta, Vin Weber, and Greg Craig—and whether they allegedly failed to appropriately register as foreign agents for work related to Ukraine. Podesta abruptly closed his eponymous lobbying firm last year, and Mueller had previously been interested in the work done by Mercury LLC, Weber’s firm, as well as the law firm Skadden Arps, where Craig worked until earlier this year. Skadden Arps also employed the Dutch lawyer Alex van der Zwaan, who pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his contacts with Rick Gates.

Status: Rick Gates is cooperating with investigators.

INVESTIGATIONS BY THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE –

20. FISA Court Investigation. In the last weeks of December 2019, FISA, the secret federal court, created on October 20, that approves orders for conducting surveillance on suspected foreign terrorists or spies, issued a strong and highly unusual public rebuke to the FBI, ordering the agency to say how it intends to correct the errors revealed the previous week by the Justice Department report on one aspect of the FBI’s investigation of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said the FBI made serious and repeated mistakes in seeking under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to conduct surveillance of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser. The FBI’s submission to the court made assertions that were “inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation,” the report said.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), also known as the FISA Court, is a US federal court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). The court was founded on October 25, 1978. It was created to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Established by Congress, the secret Court consists of 11 federal judges chosen by the Supreme Court’s chief justice and meets in secret in a federal courthouse in Washington. It has long been criticized by civil libertarians who consider it simply an arm of the government and not sufficiently independent.

Rosemary Collyer, the presiding judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, said in the unusual public order that the report “calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.” She ordered the FBI “to explain in writing by January 10, 2020 how it intends to remedy those problems.”

Judge Collyer said the FBI’s handling of the Page case “was antithetical to the heightened duty of candor” required by the law that established the surveillance court. Judges on the court rely entirely on the government’s submissions. Because they are the only documents the court sees, the government has a heightened duty of candor, she explained.

Her order said the FBI must explain “what it has done, and plans to do, to ensure the statements of facts in each FBI application accurately and completely reflects information possessed by the FBI.”

Inspector General Michael Horowitz had already announced (the previous week) that he has already opened a new review, looking at whether the FBI is complying with its duty to provide accurate information to the FISA court in seeking to conduct surveillance of Americans in terrorism and spying investigations. FBI Director Christopher Wray announced shortly after the inspector general’s report was issued that he has ordered changes in how the FBI submits requests to the FISA court. “The FBI has some work to do,” he said.

Status: In response to Judge Collyer’s order, the FBI said (in a statement) that it is committed to working with the FISA Court and the Justice Department to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the process. “FISA is an indispensable tool in national security investigations,” the FBI said.

“This was not the first time the government abused its surveillance powers, nor was it the first time the intelligence court was made aware of surveillance abuses,” said Neema Singh Guliani  According to the spokeswoman for the ACLU: “Congress must radically reform the FISA process to increase accountability, and to ensure that there is a meaningful opportunity to challenge the government’s allegations in FISA applications. We can’t trust the secret intelligence court alone to police this process.”

INVESTIGATIONS BY NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK STATE, & OTHER STATE ATTORNEYS GENERAL —

21. Tax Case (Financial Fraud). In the wake of a New York Times investigation that found Donald Trump had apparently benefited from upwards of $400 million in tax schemes, city officials said they were investigating Trump’s tax payments, as did the New York State Tax Department. Longtime lawyer and Trump fixer Cohen also reported in his own court filing that he met with investigators from the New York Attorney General’s Office, although the court filings didn’t explain what the investigation entailed.

In February 2019, Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, testified to Congress that the then president had repeatedly lied on financial forms about the value of his assets to procure better tax and loan terms. “It was my experience that Mr. Trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes, such as trying to be listed amongst the wealthiest people in Forbes and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes,” Cohen told the House oversight committee.

His testimony triggered a civil inquiry, led by New York attorney general Letitia James, into the Trump Organization’s business practices:

— In December 2021, Trump filed a lawsuit against James in an attempt to block her investigation from moving forward. Pointing to James’s public criticism of the former president, Trump’s legal team argued the investigation was politically motivated and infringed upon his constitutional rights.

— In April 2022, Judge Engoron held Trump in contempt for failing to respond to a subpoena from James’s office and imposed a fine of $10,000 per day until the former president fully responded to the subpoena. The contempt order was lifted two weeks later but only after Trump agreed to pay a fine of $110,000.

— In May 2022, a federal judge dismissed Trump’s lawsuit against James, rejecting the former president’s claims that the investigation violated his rights.

— In August 2022, Trump was deposed by lawyers from James’s office, but he refused to answer their questions. Over four hours of questioning, Trump invoked his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination more than 400 times.

— In September 2022, James filed a lawsuit against Trump, his three eldest children and his company, accusing the former president of falsely inflating his net worth to secure more favorable loan terms and gain tax benefits. The lawsuit seeks $250m and several sanctions to severely curtail Trump’s business dealings in New York, including a five-year ban on acquiring real estate there. Because James’s investigation was a civil inquiry, she did not bring criminal charges against Trump, but she referred potential criminal concerns to federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the IRS.

— In November 2022, Trump filed a federal lawsuit in Florida seeking to block James from gaining access to files from a family trust that owns the Trump Organization. The lawsuit was largely viewed as frivolous, and according to the New York Times, Trump’s own lawyers advised him against filing it.

— In November 2022, Engoron granted James’s request to install an independent monitor to oversee the Trump Organization’s finances before the case goes to trial. The monitor’s duties included preventing the Trump Organization from transferring assets to another entity in advance of a potential financial penalty.

— In January 2023, Engoron rejected Trump’s motion to have James’s lawsuit dismissed, describing some of the arguments presented by Trump’s legal team as “frivolous”.

— In late January 2023, Trump dropped his federal lawsuit against James after a Florida judge raised serious doubts about its merits.

— In April 2023, Trump was questioned for several hours in connection to the case. Unlike his first deposition, Trump reportedly did not invoke his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination and instead answered lawyers’ questions about the case.

— In June 2023, a New York appellate court dismissed Ivanka Trump from James’s lawsuit, ruling that the statute of limitations had expired because she was no longer working at the Trump Organization by 2016.

— In August 2023, James’s office said in a filing it was “ready for trial”, after Trump’s legal team repeatedly failed to get the trial delayed. The trial is set to begin 2 October.

— On September 26, Engoron issued a summary judgment finding that Trump had committed fraud by inflating the value of his assets, marking a major win for James ahead of the trial.

— On October 2, the trial began with opening statements and testimony from Trump’s former accountant. Trump was in attendance for the opening of the trial, and throughout the day, he attacked James and Engoron, claiming political persecution.

 
Status: The trial concluded this month (December 2023) and found Trump guilty. Litigation is not over.

22. Emoluments Lawsuit: The attorneys general for Maryland and DC sent out subpoenas earlier this month for Trump Organization and hotel financial records relating to their lawsuit alleging that the president is in breach of the so-called Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which appears to prohibit the president from accepting payments from foreign powers while in office. The lawsuit’s discovery phase could push voluminous amounts of information into public view about how foreign governments have funneled business to Trump’s organization, like how the Saudi government evidently purchased more than 500 rooms at Trump’s hotel in DC in the months after the election.

Status: In January 2021, the US Supreme Court put an end to two lawsuits that had accused President Donald Trump of violating the Constitution’s emoluments clauses by profiting from his hotels and restaurants in New York and Washington. The Court dismissed them as being moot. The move means that there will be no definitive Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of the two provisions of the Constitution concerning emoluments, a term that means compensation for labor or services. One provision, the domestic emoluments clause, bars the president from receiving “any other emolument” from the federal government or the states beyond his official compensation. The other provision, the foreign emoluments clause, bars anyone holding a federal “office of profit or trust” from accepting “any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state” without the consent of Congress. [

23. The Trump Foundation: The New York Attorney General sued the Trump Foundation this summer, charging it with, as The New York Times summarized, “sweeping violations of campaign finance laws, self-dealing and illegal coordination with the presidential campaign.” A judge just ruled last month that the lawsuit can proceed. Now the incoming attorney general has promised even more wide-ranging inquiries in the Trump business world.

Status: Case is proceeding, having cleared initial court hurdles.

24. Investigation and Impeachment of Joe Briden.  Note that this is about an “inquiry” into potential charges of impeachment.  Last month (November 2023), the US House of Representatives has voted to formally open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, moving forward a process that has been promised by Republican leaders since they regained control of the lower chamber in midterm elections in 2022. The president responded to the vote by saying his opponents were attacking him “with lies,” but the official announcement set in train a process which could lead to impeachment – the ultimate penalty for a president. House Republicans informally began the probe into Biden three months ago, but last month’s vote by the House Judiciary Committee formalized it. Republicans say that by authorizing the inquiry, the White House will be forced to cooperate.

Republicans have accused the president and his family of profiting from his time as vice-president and have zeroed in on his son, Hunter, who had business ventures in Ukraine and China during that period.

Congressional investigators have obtained nearly 40,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records and dozens of hours of testimony from key witnesses. In July, one of Hunter Biden’s former business associates, Devon Archer, gave sworn testimony to congressional investigators that Hunter had sold his foreign clients “an illusion of access to his father.” Archer recounted how Hunter would put his father on speakerphone to impress clients and business associates, however he also stated that Joe Biden was never directly involved in their financial dealings. Republicans have also pointed to a couple of falsehoods in Biden’s public statements about his son’s business dealings. For example, during the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden said that his son had never made any money off business transactions in China. That was later contradicted by Hunter Biden himself.

Status: The US House Judiciary Committee has authorized an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. The vote was along party lines, with every Republican rallying behind the politically charged process despite lingering concerns among some in the party that the investigation has yet to produce evidence of misconduct by the president. The committee chairmen are now authorized to further their case that President Biden benefitted from Hunter Biden’s business dealings. [It is important to note that this is an ongoing investigation and no formal charges have been filed against President Biden yet. The impeachment inquiry is still in its early stages and it is unclear whether it will lead to formal charges against the President].

25. Investigation of Hillary Clinton.  The source of the fabricated Russia Collusion Conspiracy and all it entailed, was Hillary Clinton and her failed 2016 presidential campaign. Yet, with all the information collected and confirmed, as well as her bizarre behavior, no investigations were undertaken, no indictments filed, and most importantly and despicably, no charges were ever filed against her.

Status:  No investigations have been authorized or conducted and no lawsuits against her have been filed, if you can believe that.

I think I have made a strong case for the politically-motivated and fatally vengeful actions of the liberal/progressive left as opposed to the views of the conservative right. The D.C. Democrats, as well as the Democratic Party in general has, and continues to, harass Donald Trump for the political goal of making sure he never runs or becomes president again. The conservative right, especially those fighting to see him run for president on the 2024 ballot, are doggedly supportive of the US Constitution, for an equitable system of justice, and for rational and considered thought and action. The left has dominated all three areas. The most powerful arguments can be made in these two areas: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The treatments of these two very flawed and criminal Democrats have been, to use a term coined by Hillary Clinton – “Deplorable.” It’s simply not fair for a former president that has done so much for our country to be treated so utterly unconscionable.

President Trump remains obsessed with what he repeatedly calls, the “Greatest Political Crime in the History of the U.S., the Russian Witch-Hunt.”  Do you believe this?  Do you believe he needs to be punished by the various institutions and agencies of the government and by the liberal/progressive voting block?

Garrett M. Graff, “A Complete Guide to All 17 (Known) Trump and Russia Investigations,” Wired, December 17, 2018. Referenced at:  https://www.wired.com/story/mueller-investigation-trump-russia-complete-guide/

References:

“Donald Trump Case Tracker: Where Does Each Investigation Stand?”, The Guardian, July 28, 2023. Referened at:  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/28/donald-trump-investigations-criminal-charges-tracker

Nik Popli, “A Guide to All of Trump’s Indictments and Where Each Case Stands,” TIME, August 25, 2023. Referenced at:  https://time.com/6301112/trump-criminal-cases-status/

Haroon Siddique, “Russian Sources Disappeared After Trump Declassified Ex-Spy’s Evidence,” The Guardian, October 17, 2023.  Referenced at: https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/17/russian-sources-disappeared-after-trump-declassified-ex-spys-evidence-uk-court-told

Joan E. Greve, “House Votes to Formally Authorize Biden Impeachment Inquiry,” The Guardian, December 13, 2023. Referenced at:  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/13/biden-impeachment-house-vote-republicans

Jeffrey Toobin, “Why the Mueller Investigation Failed,” The New Yorker, June 29, 2020. Referenced at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/why-the-mueller-investigation-failed

Olivia Beavers, “Mueller Probe: A Timeline From Beginning to End,” The Hill.  Referenced at: https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/435547-mueller-probe-a-timeline-from-beginning-to-end/

Katyeln Polantz, “Paul Manafort Agrees to Pay $3.5 Million to Settle Case With the US Government,” CNN, April 6, 2023.  Referenced at: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/06/politics/paul-manafort-settlement/index.html

Ken Delanian, “Papadapoulos Sentenced to 14 Days in Jail for Lying to FBI in Mueller Probe,” NBC News, September 7, 2018.  Referenced at:  https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/papadopoulos-sentenced-14-days-jail-lying-fbi-mueller-probe-n907266

Nikki McCann, “Michael Flynn is Suing the Government for $50 Million,” Rolling Stone, March 7, 2023.     Referenced at: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/michael-flynn-lawsuit-government-50-million-1234692512/ 

Michael Sisak, “Donald Trump’s Civil Fraud Case Enters the Final Phase After 40 Witnesses and a Judge Wistfully Saying, ‘In a Strange Way, I’m Gonna Miss This Trial’,” FORTUNE, December 15, 2023.  Referenced at:  https://fortune.com/2023/12/15/trump-civil-fraud-trial-what-we-learned/

Pete Williams, “Secret FISA Court Issues Highly Unusual Public Rebuke of FBI for Mistakes,” NBC News, December 17, 2018.  Referenced at: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/secret-fisa-court-issues-highly-unusual-rebuke-fbi-mistakes-n1103451   

Adam Liptak “Supreme Court Ends Emoluments Cases Against Trump,” New York Times, January 25, 2021. Referenced at:  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/25/us/emoluments-trump-supreme-court.html