Trump leak investigation scandal: what do we know (analysis)

(CNN) – We first learned that former President Donald Trump had secretly obtained records of communications from members of the judiciary.

We learned that he was secretly seeking information about the communications of his political opponents in Congress.

We now know that he was secretly seeking information about communications from Don McCann, Trump ‘s own White House lawyer.

Regardless of politics, the stumbling block of revelations raises more questions than the answers to why people invested in businesses – a federal agency accused of establishing the rule of law in the United States. Enemies.

In the years of public outcry about what the department did under Trump, the department under Biden is realizing what happened under the previous leadership and did not come right.

Democrats are preparing the whole matter for a full-scale inquiry. Appearing on CNN, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi compared judicial subcommittees to former President Richard Nixon’s infamous “list of enemies.”

Richard Nixon had a list of enemies. This undermines the rule of law, “he told CNN’s” Union State “.

Last Friday, before we knew the judiciary would reach for the leak into the White House, I tried to figure out what we had done, and I had no idea how the judiciary was used during the Trump era.

A lot has happened over the weekend, so I spoke again with CNN crime and justice correspondent Caitlin Poland and CNN’s Adam Levine, who will oversee our information on this story, about what we all need to understand about what happened here. For recent thoughts. The following is largely based on my conversations with them.

The most worrying element of the method

We see only one form of extraordinary investigation that appears to be a leak investigation, almost all of which were declared to be somewhat anti-Trump, and those who held high government positions would generally not be pursued so aggressively.

It is clear that the judiciary has secretly searched the accounts of various reporters, politicians, people around politicians and the White House lawyer. Presumably, the judges were looking for reasons from investigators to keep the subpoenas and court data warrants confidential, and the trial juries had reasons to investigate subpoenas worthy offenses. We do not know who the target of these investigations was.

Democrats are likely to be involved in the legislature – that is, representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swallowell, both members of the House Inquiry Committee – would not have been particularly fond of the February subpoena. 2018. Apple was now advised to change the records for 109 phone numbers and emails we know. That large number suggests that researchers may have already extracted phone records of a target and tried to determine the identities of the numbers they found. On the other hand, we know that Trump called for a leak investigation and declared Schiff a leak.

So now an important question for judicial leaders is: If Schiff and Swallowwell were not the target of these investigations, why didn’t the judiciary come out and say it?

We must be careful not to compile all of this

We quickly learned about the success of the judiciary in collecting data on reporters and seeking information about the political opposition investigating the campaign of President and former White House lawyer Dan McCain. Just because we learn about them in quick succession does not mean they are relevant.

We know that under Trump’s first Attorney General Jeff Sessions, there were dozens of open leak investigations in the judiciary. (However, the sessions were excluded from the hearings involving Trump and Russia.) Under William Barr, the heir to the sessions, CNN also reported that the department was pressuring for an open inquiry.

This research takes at least a few years

All of these sub phones were under the Trump administration. We are now learning about them as the abstract secrets related to them expire at once, or the new administration abandons the intelligence triggers.

But all the sapphires for Apple and Microsoft and the media systems released in recent weeks were for inquiries into events in 2017 and 2018, when Trump publicly complained about the leaks.

So another way of looking at all of this is that the judiciary may have gathered communication information from members of Congress and the White House attorney, and then remained silent even after Trump stepped down.

Trump’s public complaints suggest, but he has not proven involved in the investigation

The judiciary must function independently of political influence. Mentioning these revelations thus means that he particularly complained to the press about the leaks, and the judiciary sought communications from the press. He complained that Democrats were leaking in Congress and that the judiciary was seeking communications from Democrats. He disagreed with McCann, who prevented Trump from firing on then-Special Adviser Robert Mueller, and a month later the judiciary was looking into McCann’s data.

They all look pretty bad, but it’s totally situational. There are many things we do not know what is the cause of each. The Inspector General of the Judiciary will inquire.

No one wants to be held responsible for this

Sessions say he was unaware of the saponies coming from the House Democrats. Said Bar Politics Although he insisted that the pending leak investigations last week, he did not recall them last week. He brought in a New Jersey lawyer to oversee the completion of the cases, which may have been an incentive to close the cases.

Despite this, neither Bar nor former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein nor anyone else has said they are aware of any attempts to prosecute lawmakers. If they were to be believed, they would not have told senior judicial officials or officers, even after investigators learned they had information on Swallow and Schiff. If no one takes action to ensure that congressional speech protections are not misused, this seems like a violation of unconventional protocol and divides the issue of power if prosecutors act without complete supervision.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler announced Monday that his committee will open a formal investigation into the department’s surveillance of members of Congress, journalists and others.

“These cases … isolated incidents are still possible. Although these statements are irrelevant, they raise serious constitutional and separatist concerns,” he said in a statement. “Spying on Congress or the media should be extraordinarily difficult for the department.” It’s hard for lawyers to hide behind brief secrets for years. We cannot trust the department alone to make these changes.

On Monday, CNN reported that Trump-appointed head of the Department of Justice’s national security, John Demers, will step down later this month as planned.

Heat Saponas from House Democrats

It is one thing to seek information from journalists who actively report on the government. The other is seeking information about the White House attorney. There can be legitimate reasons for both types of investigations and policies that will allow the judiciary to execute them. We are leaning more towards the autonomous territory of a banana republic when federal lawyers control political opposition, especially elected officials in another branch of government, through unusually aggressive leak investigations.

Pay special attention to Fiden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland

The current attorney general on Monday met with attorneys for news organizations subject to sub-bonuses of the Trump-era judiciary. He also met with House Democrats, including Schiff, one of the targeted Democrats. These investigations will have a lot to do with how quickly and openly Carland can calculate and how big this story will turn out to be for sub-phones.

In a statement on Monday, Garland promised that his deputy secretary was already working to “bring issues to the surface” and “strengthen the department’s current policies and procedures for obtaining records from the legislature.”

“We need to make sure that full weight is given to the separation of powers in the future,” Garland said.