https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-lines-up-next-target-as-bolton-could-face-life-in-prison
President Donald Trump’s unprecedented efforts to pressure the Justice Department into prosecuting his perceived enemies have, so far, netted swift results — and more may be on the way.
In a matter of only two weeks, his handpicked U.S. attorney in Alexandria, Lindsey Halligan, obtained indictments against two frequent targets: former FBI Director James B. Comey and, on Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Federal prosecutors across the country are pursuing several other investigations, many of which Trump has personally called for. Those include investigations into a sitting U.S. senator, former top leaders of the FBI and CIA and the Georgia prosecutor who charged Trump in a massive 2020 election conspiracy case.
The next set of charges could be coming quickly. Under pressure from senior Justice Department officials, federal prosecutors in Maryland are preparing to ask a grand jury to indict John Bolton, Trump’s first-term national security adviser, in a classified documents case. Charges could come as soon as the coming week, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation.
Many of Trump’s targets, including Comey, charged with lying to Congress, and James, indicted on allegations of mortgage fraud, have derided the cases against them as baseless and driven by political retribution.
Here’s what to know about where investigations of Trump’s other perceived foes stand:
John Bolton, former Trump national security adviser
Federal authorities in Maryland have been investigating Bolton, a veteran diplomat turned fierce Trump critic, since earlier this year on allegations he illegally retained classified material after his 2019 resignation.
Multiple people familiar with the evidence against him have described the case as generally stronger than those against James and Comey. Court records unsealed last month indicate that FBI agents recovered documents marked classified while searching Bolton’s downtown Washington office.
In seeking a warrant to search the facility, investigators revealed they believed they would find classified records there in part because of information they learned through a foreign adversary hacking into Bolton’s AOL email account years ago.
Kelly O. Hayes, acting U.S. attorney in Maryland, a veteran federal prosecutor whom the Trump administration elevated to the office’s top job this year, is overseeing the case. The prosecution is being led by Tom Sullivan, who heads the national security and cyber divisions in Hayes’s office. Sullivan was previously part of the special counsel team that investigated former president Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents in 2023.
Bolton’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has said the documents marked classified found in Bolton’s office stem from his time in the administration of George W. Bush and had been cleared for his use decades ago.
“An objective and thorough review will show nothing inappropriate was stored or kept by Amb. Bolton,” Lowell said in a statement.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California)
Schiff, a vocal Trump critic who led the House investigation that resulted in Trump’s first impeachment, is facing investigation on mortgage fraud allegations similar to those lodged Thursday against James.
Both inquiries were initiated by criminal referrals from Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and pursued by Ed Martin, a former interim U.S. attorney in Washington turned Justice Department official.
In recent weeks, Martin has met with Hayes, the Maryland U.S. attorney, who is also overseeing the investigation of the senator, to discuss the progress of the investigation.
The inquiry is centered on Pulte’s assertion that Schiff misled lenders while buying a second home in Potomac in 2003 by claiming the property would be his primary residence.
Schiff and his lawyer — former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara — dismiss Pulte’s claims as politically motivated, “transparently false, stale and long debunked.” Bharara privately wrote to the Justice Department in July arguing there was “no factual basis” for those claims and provided documentation to exonerate the senator.
Schiff’s mortgage lender was aware from the start that he and his wife were buying the Maryland house so his family could live there when he was working in Washington, Bharara wrote, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by The Washington Post. To convict Schiff of mortgage fraud, prosecutors would have to prove that Schiff intended to deceive.
Still, after James’ indictment this week, Schiff is now bracing for the prospect that he could be indicted within a matter of weeks, according to two people familiar with his thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
“Those of us on the president’s enemies list — and it is a long and growing list — will not be intimidated, we will not be deterred,” the senator told reporters Thursday. “We will do our jobs. We will stand up to this president.”
Lisa Cook, Federal Reserve governor
Federal prosecutors in Georgia are also pursuing a mortgage fraud investigation targeting Cook, the Biden-appointed Federal Reserve governor whom Trump is seeking to fire from the central bank.
Last month, investigators issued subpoenas as part of the inquiry, which began with a referral from Pulte, and Martin has conferred with law enforcement officials in the state. Pulte has accused Cook of claiming both a home in Michigan and a condominium in Georgia as “primary residences” on mortgage applications.
Cook’s lawyers deny she committed a crime and have suggested in court papers that she “mislabeled” her homes in her mortgage applications.
John Brennan, former CIA director
The Justice Department acknowledged in July that it had opened an investigation into Obama-era CIA director John Brennan, one of many targets the president has said should be prosecuted for involvement in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
John Ratcliffe, the current CIA director, and Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, referred Brennan and others, including Comey, to the Justice Department. They alleged that Brennan and others manipulated a 2017 intelligence assessment to wrongly tie the Trump campaign to Moscow’s efforts and later lied about it to Congress.
In recent weeks, federal investigators in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania have conducted some interviews as part of the investigation, though its full scope remains unclear, one person familiar with its progress said.
One other current and one former official familiar with the matter suggested Gabbard may have undermined the investigation’s progress. Earlier this year, she publicly revoked the security clearances of 37 people who had been drafting the 2017 intelligence assessment, accusing them of politicizing intelligence and failing to safeguard classified information.
Her comments may have damaged their credibility as witnesses in any potential case against Brennan, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the ongoing investigation.
FBI officials under former director Christopher A. Wray
In a separate investigation centered on the 2016 election, federal authorities in the Roanoke-based Western District of Virginia are investigating claims that senior bureau officials under former FBI director Christopher A. Wray mishandled or sought to destroy documents related to the Russia investigation.
That inquiry appears to have been sparked by allegations first floated by current FBI Director Kash Patel, who said in July he had discovered thousands of pages of records in “burn bags” at the bureau’s headquarters in Washington. He has suggested they were placed there to cover up wrongdoing by his predecessors at the FBI.
Some of those records — linked to an investigation by special counsel John Durham about the origins of the Russia investigation — have since been released by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Current and former national security officials have questioned the premise of Patel’s allegations, noting that many of the records he claims to have uncovered had also been stored on government computer servers for years.
Fani T. Willis, Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney
The New York Times reported last month that the Justice Department had issued a subpoena for travel records of Willis, the Atlanta-area prosecutor who brought a sprawling racketeering case against the president and more than a dozen allies, accusing them of illegally seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
The investigation of Willis is being overseen by Theodore S. Hertzberg, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. But the scope of the inquiry remains unclear — including which records were subpoenaed and from whom.
The Times reported that the subpoena sought information tied to overseas trips Willis took around the time of the 2024 election. But Willis had not personally received a subpoena, her spokesman Jeff DiSantis said.
Trump has railed against Willis since her office charged him in 2023, calling his prosecution a “witch hunt.” The case remains the only remaining criminal matter in which Trump is charged, though Willis and her office are no longer leading the prosecution.
Last month, the Georgia Supreme Court denied Willis’s appeal of a lower court decision that removed her and her office from the proceedings after she was accused of an improper relationship with an outside attorney she appointed to the lead the case.
A state agency is now looking for a new prosecutor to take on the case. Willis has acknowledged she would likely continue to be a target of the president and his supporters.
“I am fully aware that there will be people in power over the next four years who may seek to use that power to lash out at those who are working to uphold the rule of law,” Willis told The Post in January. “I will not be intimidated by threats or acts of revenge.”
Donald Trump was hit with a legal smackdown after trying to remove Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.
Cook can stay in her job, a federal judge ruled in Washington, D.C., blocking Trump’s unprecedented attempt to boot her using allegations of mortgage fraud.
She will now be present at the Fed’s Sept. 16 meeting, but Cook’s trouble with Trump is not yet over.
“President Trump has not identified anything related to Cook’s conduct or job performance as a board member that would indicate that she is harming the board or the public interest by executing her duties unfaithfully or ineffectively,” U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb said after issuing a preliminary injunction.
The judge also ruled that removing Cook caused her “irreparable harm” and that the president had likely violated her procedural right to due process by posting his letter to her on social media.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the Federal Reserve for comment.
Trump posted a public termination letter on his Truth Social account last month, addressed to Cook, who was confirmed by the Senate in 2022 as the first Black woman to serve as a Federal Reserve governor.
His post contained allegations that Cook had committed mortgage fraud, claims that predated her time on the board, and said she was being removed from her position “effective immediately.”
At the time, Cook released her own statement, claiming Trump had “no authority” to fire her. She added, “I will not resign. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022.”
Cook hired lawyer Abbe Lowell, who said in a statement last month that Trump’s “demands lack any proper process, basis or legal authority” and they would take whatever actions were necessary to prevent “his attempted illegal action.”
Governors can only be removed by a president with a valid reason for termination, known as “for cause.” Otherwise, they serve in long, fixed roles to add to financial stability. Cook, who was nominated to the post by Joe Biden, is not due to finish her current term until 2038.
The preliminary injunction Judge Cobb granted on Tuesday also found that Trump had likely violated the Federal Reserve Act by using social media to air his allegations about her mortgage fraud and also to fire her in public.
“The court is highly doubtful that Cook should have been required to piece together the evidentiary basis for a ‘for cause’ removal from a scattered assortment of social media posts and news articles,” Cobb wrote. “Even if the notice provided had been sufficient, Cook’s due process rights were nevertheless likely violated because she was not given a ‘meaningful opportunity’ to be heard.”
Cobb also barred Reserve Chair Jerome Powell or Fed officials from carrying out Trump’s wishes of firing Cook.
“This ruling recognizes and reaffirms the importance of safeguarding the independence of the Federal Reserve from illegal political interference,” Cook’s counsel Lowell said in a statement.
“Allowing the president to unlawfully remove Governor Cook on unsubstantiated and vague allegations would endanger the stability of our financial system and undermine the rule of law.”
He added, “Governor Cook will continue to carry out her sworn duties as a Senate-confirmed Board Governor.”
Trump did not answer a reporter’s question about a court overruling his firing when he was leaving a seafood dinner on Tuesday.
However, White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai told Politico that Trump’s firing of Cook was “lawful” and boosted accountability for the body that sets interest rates.
“The president determined there was cause to remove a governor who was credibly accused of lying in financial documents from a highly sensitive position overseeing financial institutions,” Desai said.
“The removal of a governor for cause improves the Federal Reserve board’s accountability and credibility for both the markets and American people.”
Judge Cobb’s ruling said this was the first purported “for cause” removal of a governor in the 111-year history of the Federal Reserve.
In her finding, Cobb said Trump’s attempt to remove Cook “was done in violation” of the “for cause” provision.
She said the best reading of that provision was that it was limited to “actions relating to that governor’s ‘behavior in office.’” And because the allegations of mortgage fraud occurred before Cook’s role as governor, Cobb said that “for cause” did “not contemplate removing an individual purely for conduct that occurred before they began in office.”
Trump has also attempted to fire Powell this year, unhappy with his refusal to cut interest rates.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-hit-with-fresh-court-blow-after-revenge-firing
A federal judge on Thursday found that acting U.S. Attorney Alina Habba’s appointment was “unlawful” and her actions since July as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey may be declared void.
“The Executive branch has perpetuated Alina Habba’s appointment to act as the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey through a novel series of legal and personnel moves,” U.S. District Judge Matthew W. Brann wrote in a 77-page ruling.
“Faced with the question of whether Ms. Habba is lawfully performing the functions and duties of the office of the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, I conclude that she is not,” Brann added.
Because the former Trump lawyer is “not currently qualified to exercise the functions and duties of the office in an acting capacity, she must be disqualified from participating in any ongoing cases,” the judge wrote.
Brann said his order is on hold pending appellate proceedings, meaning it will not take immediate effect to allow the Trump administration time to appeal the decision.
In his ruling, Brann cited numerous issues with how Habba was appointed. She was initially named interim U.S. attorney by President Donald Trump on March 24, replacing another person who’d been named interim U.S. attorney three weeks earlier.
Habba was sworn in on March 28, but interim appointments are capped at 120 days. Trump nominated her to be the permanent U.S. attorney on June 30, but the “Senate did not act,” Brann noted.
On July 22, the judges of the District Court of New Jersey invoked their statutory power to appoint a new U.S. attorney — Habba’s deputy.
“Trump Administration officials were not pleased with that appointment,” Brann noted, and “conceived a multi-step maneuver” to keep Habba on the job.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi fired Habba’s successor and appointed Habba as “Special Attorney to the Attorney General” and then named her to the opened deputy spot, which allowed her to become acting U.S. Attorney.
Brann found the moves were improper, and a way to sidestep the Senate’s role in the process. He also found that Habba hadn’t legally been appointed deputy, and that her appointment as interim U.S. attorney expired earlier than the government maintains it did.
The challenge to Habba’s appointment came from two criminal defendants, and the judge found she was disqualified from having any involvement with their cases.
Abbe Lowell and Gerald Krovatin, the attorneys for one of the men, said in a statement that Habba’s “appointment ignored the rules that give legitimacy to the U.S. Attorney’s office. We appreciate the thoroughness of the court’s opinion, and its decision underscores that this Administration cannot circumvent the congressionally mandated process for confirming U.S. Attorney appointments.”
The Justice Department and New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Brann, a Republican who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, is chief judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania and was specially designated to hear the case.
The ruling comes on a day when Habba scored a huge legal victory dating back to her time representing Trump — an appeals court dismissed the New York attorney general’s $500 million fraud judgment against the president.
Habba, who’d been one of the attorneys on the case, posted about the ruling on X earlier in the day, calling the fraud action against him “politically motivated” and “legally baseless.”
“President Trump won — and justice won with him,” she wrote.
Prominent national security attorney Mark Zaid has filed a preliminary injunction request to restore his security clearance that the Trump administration revoked.
In late March, President Donald Trump rescinded the security clearance of Zaid and other well-known lawyers, politicians, and officials. Zaid sued the Trump administration in early May over this revocation, arguing the president’s executive order represented “dangerous, unconstitutional retaliation.”
…
“We say enough of Trump taking away security clearances out of retaliation & with no basis,” attorney Norman Eisen added on social media, along with a photo of the motion.
At least half a dozen USAID employees who spoke to reporters after they thought they had been fired by the Trump administration have now received notices from the foreign aid agency’s internal human resources office that they are facing investigation for participating in interviews.
The workers, whose formal dismissal date was delayed after leaders encountered bureaucratic snags, received an email in recent days carrying the subject line, “Administrative inquiry.” The email accused them of having “engaged with the press/media without authorization” and threatened “disciplinary action” including “removal from the U.S. Agency for International Development.”
…
“It’s total intimidation,” said Randy Chester, the vice president of the American Foreign Service Association, which is the union that represents USAID employees. He said employees started receiving notices on Monday. The union shared the email exclusively with CBS.
How can they be disciplined after they’ve been fired?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doge-usaid-federal-workers-spoke-to-reporters-investigation
