Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
- Bad news for Trump and associates as a key Democrat confirms DOJ asked for January 6 transcripts.
- A federal grand jury also returned more charges against the ex-chair of Trump's 2017 inaugural committee.
- And DOJ filed a civil lawsuit against the casino mogul and informal Trump advisor Steve Wynn.
From New York down to Washington, DC, associates of former President Donald Trump were surely feeling new heat from the Justice Department on Tuesday.
In Brooklyn, a federal grand jury returned additional charges against Thomas Barrack, the onetime chairman of Trump's inaugural committee, whom prosecutors initially accused last year of secretly lobbying for the United Arab Emirates.
Meanwhile, in the nation's capital, the Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against the casino mogul and informal Trump advisor Steve Wynn, arguing that he should register as a foreign agent in connection with his past efforts to secure a diplomatic favor for China.
And then came a revelation with a wider ripple effect: Rep. Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, confirmed the New York Times' report that the Justice Department has asked for transcripts of interviews the congressional panel has been conducting for months.
The Justice Department's request marked the clearest signal to date of the breadth of its expanding inquiry into the attack on the Capitol. More than a year after the insurrection, authorities have arrested more than 800 people in connection with January 6, most of them accused of trespassing on Capitol ground with the pro-Trump mob that day.
But the request for transcripts — combined with the scrutiny of the funding of the Trump rally that immediately preceded the Capitol attack — signaled that the Justice Department is working its way into the inner circles of the former president's orbit.
Norm Eisen, who served as counsel for House Democrats in Trump's first impeachment in late 2019 and early 2020, described the string of recent developments as "flashing neon arrows pointing towards Trump."
"I have long been of the view that DOJ was starting to turn their investigation toward the higher-ups involved in January 6, including Donald Trump. So the fact that DOJ is now seeking these transcripts is really a further indication of the legal peril," Eisen, a former Obama White House ethics official now with the Brookings Institution, told Insider.
"What the request for this transcript shows is they're doing a complete review," he added. "When you put it together with the other indicators, it's bad news indeed for the former president."
Even as he confirmed DOJ's request, Thompson said Tuesday that the House panel would not hand over its "work product" but might permit Justice Department officials to review transcripts in committee offices.
"My understanding is they want to have access to our work product. And we told them, no, we're not giving that to anybody," Thompson told reporters.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
Trump allies in trouble
Earlier on Tuesday, federal prosecutors alleged in a superseding indictment that Barrack, the billionaire fundraiser for Trump, sought investments from a pair of UAE sovereign wealth funds when he was illegally lobbying the Trump administration.
In 2017, Barrack's investment firm received capital commitments totaling $374 million from the two UAE funds, according to the superseding indictment filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Barrack pleaded not guilty when he was first indicted last year, and he is set to stand trial later this year.
"Of course, it's not just Barrack who will be on trial. It's the practices of the Trump years, Trump's cronies trading on their proximity and access to the president and those around him," Eisen told Insider. "Barrack was just following the model of monetizing the presidency that Trump established. "
By day's end, another member of the Trump orbit was also facing fresh allegations of leveraging White House access to lobby for foreign powers.
In a civil lawsuit, the Justice Department argued that Wynn, the former CEO of Wynn Resorts, should register as a lobbyist in connection with his efforts to persuade US officials to deport a Chinese businessman in New York, Guo Wengui, to China, where authorities consider him a fugitive.
Charles Krupa/AP Photo
The lawsuit seeks to force Wynn to identify himself as a lobbyist under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, a decades-old law requiring the disclosure of political activities for overseas powers. According to the lawsuit, Wynn appealed directly to Trump over dinner and over the phone in the summer of 2017 and had multiple discussions with the former president and White House officials, driven by a desire to protect his business interests in Macau.
"Where a foreign government uses an American as its agent to influence policy decisions in the United States, FARA gives the American people a right to know," said Matthew Olsen, the Senate-confirmed head of the Justice Department's national security division.
Announcing the lawsuit, Olson said it was the first affirmative civil lawsuit filed under FARA in more than three decades. The lawsuit underscored the Justice Department's stepped-up enforcement of the law, which went largely unenforced for decades until Special Counsel Robert Mueller III returned it to prominence with high-profile prosecutions against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and other members of Trump's orbit.
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/FkUJXYf
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