Tag: trump derangement syndrome

DOJ Reveals How Much Jack Smith’s Special Counsel Probe Is Costing Taxpayers

Special counsel Jack Smith’s wide-ranging investigation into former President Donald Trump has cost taxpayers over $9 million since he was appointed last year, according to a newly released government report on Friday.

His team has incurred some $5.4 million in rent, personnel, and other costs, while another $3.8 million in “component expenses” was also incurred by other Justice Department (DOJ) agencies over four months, according to figures (pdf) released by the DOJ on Friday. Last year, Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped Smith, a former Hague prosecutor, to oversee multiple probes targeting the former president, while Mr. Trump has characterized Smith as a partisan actor who is working on behalf of the Democrats to undermine him.

“Although not legally required, DOJ components that support the [Smith special counsel office] were asked to track non-reimbursed expenditures attributable to this investigation, which includes hours worked by agents and investigative support analysts, as well as the cost of protective details for the Special Counsel when warranted,” the DOJ report said. “The expenditures for this period totaled $3,818,818.”

About $2 million was used for federal employee salaries, another $1 million was paid for investigative support, and some $80,000 was used to help employees relocate while they worked for Smith. The report runs through March 31 of this year.

In comparison, special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the controversial FBI Crossfire Hurricane probe cost about $1 million in the same time period, while special counsel Robert Hur’s probe has cost some $600,000, according to reports. Meanwhile, former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, which ultimately did not reveal that Mr. Trump colluded with the Russian government, cost a whopping $32 million upon its conclusion.

Months after Mr. Smith was appointed, Mr. Hur was named by Mr. Garland to head the investigation into the handling of classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s home and private office. A report issued by the DOJ showed that he spent most of his expenses on employee pay.

Overall, Mr. Durham’s team spent about $9.4 million over several years, according to a filing, starting in late 2020 after then-Attorney General Bill Barr named him to head the investigation into the origins of the Trump–Russia probe and collusion narrative. His work ended in May after releasing a significant, 300-page report that faulted the FBI’s leadership for approving the investigation into Mr. Trump—although no charges were filed against any current employees at the FBI or DOJ and no one was fired.

That investigation netted one guilty plea from a former FBI lawyer who admitted to falsifying an email about a surveillance warrant for a former Trump aide. Mr. Durham’s prosecutions against a Democratic campaign lawyer, Michael Sussmann, and Igor Danchenko, who was used as a source for a controversial and widely discredited dossier, ended up in acquittals, respectively.

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A Post-Clemency Prosecution Shines a Light on a Broken System

A month before he left office, then-President Donald Trump freed Philip Esformes, a Florida nursing home operator who had served nearly five years of a 20-year sentence for bilking Medicare and Medicaid. Despite that commutation, the Justice Department plans to retry Esformes for the same conduct that sent him to prison in the first place.

Critics of that unprecedented move say it undermines the pardon power and violates the Fifth Amendment’s ban on double jeopardy. As witnesses at a recent congressional hearing emphasized, the case also illustrates the sorry state of the federal clemency system, which in recent decades has become increasingly stingy, inefficient, and haphazard.

Esformes was arrested in 2016 and charged with numerous crimes related to a scheme that prosecutors said involved bribes, kickbacks, and medically unnecessary treatments, all of which helped fund a “lavish lifestyle.” After an eight-week trial in 2019, U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola Jr. directed the jury to acquit Esformes of six charges, including two counts of health care fraud, deeming the evidence underlying them insufficient as a matter of law.

The jury convicted Esformes of 20 other charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, money laundering, payment and receipt of kickbacks, and obstruction of justice. But it failed to reach verdicts on six counts, including the central charge of conspiring to commit health care fraud.

Based on the 20 convictions, Right on Crime Executive Director Brett Tolman noted in his congressional testimony, “Mr. Esformes was facing 5 years in prison.” But prosecutors successfully urged Scola to sentence Esformes as if he had been convicted of health care fraud, which “increased Mr. Esformes’ sentence by 15 years.”

Although it defies conventional notions of justice, federal judges are allowed to punish defendants for crimes that have not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In this case, Scola explicitly said he considered the six undecided counts in determining Esformes’ sentence.

The Justice Department nevertheless wants to take another stab at convicting Esformes of those crimes. It argues that the commutation Esformes received does not preclude another prosecution, because it says nothing about the unresolved counts.

Trump explicitly left in place three years of post-release supervision, plus restitution and forfeiture totaling about $44 million. But it is hard to believe he thought he was leaving the door open to a trial that could send Esformes back to prison. That prospect instead seems to be the result of a mistake that could have been avoided if Trump had been better advised.

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Russiagate’s Missing Pieces

The first thing to understand about John Durham is that he was a fearless prosecutor who went after organized crime and put in prison retired and active FBI agents who protected the mob for money or other enticements. One of the agents he stopped had enabled James “Whitey” Bulger Jr., once one of America’s most wanted men, the Winter Hill Gang boss who evaded arrest for sixteen years.

In his forty-five years as a state and federal prosecutor in Connecticut and Virginia, Durham worked often and closely with FBI agents, especially on cases that involved violations of federal racketeering statutes.

Durham also handled two inquiries into the CIA’s conduct in the War on Terror, and he did so without angering his superiors in the executive branch. In one case he was asked to investigate the alleged destruction of CIA videotapes of detainee interrogations, the so-called torture tapes. His final report on the matter remains secret, and he recommended that no charges be filed. He was later asked to lead a Justice Department inquiry into the legality of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” that resulted in the death of two detainees. In that case, he was told that officers who were given and obeyed what were determined to be illegal orders—there were many of those after 9/11—could not be prosecuted. No charges were filed.

Durham’s 306-page report was made public on May 15, and it pleased no one with its focus on the obvious. The journalist Susan Schmidt, whose byline was a must-read when she was a reporter for the Washington Post, pointed out on Racket News that Durham said the FBI would have done less damage to its reputation if it had scrutinized the questionable actions of the Clinton campaign in 2016: the Feds “might at least have cast a critical eye on the phony evidence they were gathering.”

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Schiff Aide Threatened Researchers Who Refused to Investigate False Trump–Russia Links

Staffers for Democratic congressman Adam Schiff (Calif.) and Senator Jack Reed (R.I.) threatened two university researchers to force them to help with an investigation into former president Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, the researchers told Special Counsel John Durham.

The researchers, from Georgia Tech University, told Durham that they were invited to Washington, D.C., in November 2018 to provide what they thought was a briefing about the school’s federal research contracts. Instead, they were lured into a meeting with staff members working for Schiff at the House Intelligence Committee and for Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. The researchers said the Democratic staffers asked them to analyze a news article about alleged links between Trump’s company and Russia’s Alfa Bank.

When they balked at the request because it was “inappropriate” conduct for a public university, the Democratic staffers issued what one researcher believed was a “mild threat.” A staffer for Reed told the researchers that “we are now in charge,” and a staffer for Schiff pointed out the Democrat would soon take over as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, one researcher told Durham.

Durham’s office investigated whether the Democrats’ pressure campaign merited prosecution “for contract fraud or abuse of government resources,” though no charges were filed.

The revelation marks yet another black eye for Schiff in his failed quest to establish ties between Trump and Russia. The California Democrat, who is running for Senate, infamously claimed in 2017 that he had seen “more than circumstantial evidence” of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. He also read portions of the discredited Steele dossier at a congressional hearing on March 20, 2017. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) stripped Schiff of his House Intelligence position in January, citing the Democrat’s promotion of Trump conspiracy theories.

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John Durham releases final report, concludes FBI had no verified intel when it opened probe on Trump

Special Counsel John Durham released a damning final report Monday after more than three years investigating the Russia collusion probe, declaring the FBI had no verified intelligence or evidence when it opened the Crossfire Hurricane probe of President Donald Trump’s campaign in the summer of 2016. The prosecutor, however, recommended no new criminal charges.

“Neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Durham wrote in a 300-plus page report sent to Congress and others and obtained by Just the News.

DOJ was slated to make the report public later Monday.

The prosecutor faulted the department and the FBI for failing to follow their own standards and allowing a probe to persist, including the surveillance of an American citizen, without basis under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we concluded the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report,” Durham wrote.

“The FBI personnel also repeatedly disregarded important requirements when they continued to seek renewals of that FISA surveillance while acknowledging – then and in hindsight – that they did not genuinely believe there was probably cause to believe that the target was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of foreign power.”

You can read the full report here:

 Durham Report

The report’s release touched off instant outrage and impact on Capitol Hill, where House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan tweeted he planned to summon Durham for testimony next week.

The FBI immediately reacted, saying Durham’s findings justified the changes that current Director Christopher Wray made after taking over from fired Director James Comey.

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Billionaire Who Funded E. Jean Carroll’s Lawsuit Against Trump Visited Epstein’s Island

The Democrat billionaire who funded E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit against Donald Trump visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island and met him on at least two other occasions, records show.

Trump was ordered by a New York City jury to pay $5 million in damages to E Jean Carroll for “sexually abusing” her nearly three decades ago in a department store changing room.

The former president was also found responsible for defaming Carroll by calling her a “liar” after asserting that he had never even met the woman.

Trump called the case a “con job,” posting on Truth Social that he has “absolutely no idea who this woman is” and that the verdicts is “a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time.”

The civil verdict, which was overseen by Clinton-appointed judge Lewis Kaplan, is likely to remain tied up in appeal for a significant amount of time, during which Trump won’t have to pay Carroll anything.

Carroll’s secret funding source has been outed as being Democrat billionaire and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.

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Dem Megadonor Funding Trump Rape Lawsuit Visited Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Pedophile Island’

A Democratic megadonor who is helping bankroll a rape and defamation lawsuit against former president Donald Trump visited the private Caribbean island of Jeffrey Epstein years after Epstein registered as a sex offender for soliciting underage girls.

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman visited Epstein’s compound in the Virgin Islands in 2014, known as “Pedophile Island” because he allegedly housed young girls there. Hoffman may have also stayed overnight at Epstein’s New York City residence in December 2014, according to the Wall Street Journal. Those visits came years after it was publicly revealed that Epstein pleaded guilty on charges that he solicited sex from underage girls. Hoffman has been funding former journalist E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit against Trump since 2020.

“It gnaws at me that, by lending my association, I helped his reputation, and thus delayed justice for his survivors,” Hoffman told the Journal. It’s not the first time Hoffman has come under fire for meeting Epstein. He apologized after Epstein’s death in 2019 after revelations that he hosted Epstein at a dinner in 2015. Hoffman did not disclose his earlier encounters with the registered sex offender.

Hoffman is one of the Democratic party’s largest donors. He contributed $1.5 million in 2020 to a super PAC supporting President Joe Biden and has given tens of millions more to other Democratic groups. He has also funded several controversial political operations on behalf of the Democratic party. In 2017, he funded a tech firm that created fake online personas to pressure conservatives not to vote in the Alabama special election. He has funded ACRONYM, the group behind a network of partisan news sites that are disguised to look like legitimate local news organizations.

He donated $2 million to Integrity First for America, a legal advocacy group that gave $620,000 to a legal defense fund for Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm behind the infamous Steele dossier, which falsely accused the Trump campaign of colluding with Russia.

Hoffman, who serves on the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board, began funding the Trump lawsuit in 2020. He backed the lawsuit through one of his nonprofits, American Future Republic, court filings revealed.

Hoffman says he supports the lawsuit because of “Trump’s hostility towards women.”

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Trump Accuser E. Jean Carroll Keeps Calling Rape ‘Sexy’, As Social Media Notices Her Story Matches a 2012 Law & Order Episode.

Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll has how claimed that simulated rapes in the Game of Thrones television series were “sexy” and used to excite viewers and draw an audience, in a bid to contextualize comments made to CNN host Anderson Cooper.

In doing so, some contend Carroll herself comes across as a rape fantasist. The notion is perhaps underscored by the fact that her story about Donald Trump raping her appears in a 2012 episode of Law and Order, featuring rape fantasists and the very same Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing rooms she claims the former President used in an attack on her.

Carroll – a Law and Order fan – first made her allegations against Trump in a 2019 book.

The former Elle advice columnist, 79, made her most remarks in reference to an interview she gave to Anderson Cooper on CNN, in which she bizarrely suggested that “most people think of rape as sexy”. She had also previously told Britain’s leftist Guardian newspaper that rape is “a fantasy” and “very sexual” and that this is why she previously refused to describe her alleged attack as “rape”.

The live, televised interview was so strange that even Cooper, scarcely an example of traditional values, balked and cut to commercial.

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Trump Commuted His Sentence. Now the Justice Department Is Going To Prosecute Him Again.

When Philip Esformes walked out of prison in December 2020, he’d spent four and a half years behind bars, the majority of which were in solitary confinement. He reportedly weighed about 130 pounds. He was, in many ways, a broken man. But Esformes’ luck was changing: He had recently received clemency from former President Donald Trump, giving him the chance to rebuild his life after paying a debt to the country.

That fortune has quickly soured.

In a move that defies historical precedent, the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden is using a legal loophole to reprosecute Esformes’ case—raising grave questions about double jeopardy, the absolute power of the clemency process, and the weaponization of the criminal legal system against politically expedient targets. 

A former executive overseeing a network of skilled nursing and assisted living facilities, Esformes was arrested in 2016. The prosecutors, who were found to have committed substantial misconduct throughout the case, alleged he paid doctors under the table to send patients his way and subsequently charged Medicare and Medicaid for unnecessary treatments. The government held him without bond in the years leading up to his trial, placing him in solitary. He was ultimately found guilty of money laundering and related charges, as well as bribing regulators to give him notice of upcoming inspections so he could attempt to obscure shoddy conditions at those facilities. 

But Esformes was not convicted of the most serious charges leveled against him. The government failed to convince a jury, for example, that he committed conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud. So his 20-year sentence—handed down by U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola of the Southern District of Florida—may appear grossly disproportionate to his convictions. 

Until you realize the judge explicitly punished Esformes for charges on which the jury hung.

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With the Trump Arraignment, Americans Are Seeing the Power of the Local Prosecutor

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has written himself into the history books and future pub trivia questions by becoming the first prosecutor to pursue criminal charges against a former president. Whether his case against Donald Trump is successful or not, Americans nationwide are now seeing the power that local prosecutors wield, sometimes capriciously.

The Manhattan D.A.’s investigation took nearly five years, and both Bragg’s predecessor and the Federal Election Commission declined to file charges on the same evidence. Reason‘s Jacob Sullum wrote in a recent breakdown of the case against Trump that Bragg is “relying on debatable facts, untested legal theories, and allegations that are tawdry but far from earthshaking.” The New York Times somewhat more gently described the meanderings of Bragg’s investigation as a “circuitous and sometimes uncertain road.”

Political opponents of Trump may insist it’s the destination, not the journey, that matters, but Republicans and conservative commentators have lambasted Bragg’s decision to file charges as nakedly political abuse of prosecutorial discretion. Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis called it the “weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda.”

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