- Barbra Streisand Says Judy Garland Warned Her About Hollywood: “Don’t Let Them Do to You What They Did to Me” Hollywood Reporter
- Barbra Streisand Is Ready to Tell All. Pull Up a Seat. The New York Times
- Barbra Streisand Says Judy Garland Warned Her ‘Don’t Let Them Do to You What They Did to Me’ Yahoo Entertainment
- Barbra Streisand Reveals Her Cheeky Quip to JFK When They Met in 1963: ‘It Just Slipped Out’ PEOPLE
- Barbra Streisand shares Judy Garland’s advice on Hollywood: ‘Don’t let them do to you what they did to me’ Fox News
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: Garland
Garland appoints special counsel to investigate Biden docs
WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday appointed a special counsel to investigate the presence of classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, and at an unsecured office in Washington dating from his time as vice president.
Robert Hur, a onetime U.S. attorney appointed by former President Donald Trump, will lead the investigation and plans to begin his work soon. His appointment marks the second time in a few months that Garland has appointed a special counsel, an extraordinary fact that reflects the Justice Department’s efforts to independently conduct high-profile probes in an exceedingly heated political environment.
Both of those investigations, the earlier one involving Trump and documents recovered from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, relate to the handling of classified information, though there are notable differences between those cases.
Garland’s decision caps a tumultuous week at the White House, where Biden and his team opened the year hoping to celebrate stronger economic news ahead of launching an expected reelection campaign. But the administration faced a new challenge Monday, when it acknowledged that sensitive documents were found at the office of Biden’s former institute in Washington. The situation intensified by Thursday morning, when Biden’s attorney said an additional classified document was found at a room in his Wilmington home — later revealed by Biden to be his personal library — along with other classified documents in his garage.
The attorney general revealed that Biden’s lawyers informed the Justice Department of the latest discovery at the president’s home on Thursday morning, after FBI agents first retrieved documents from the garage in December.
Biden told reporters at the White House that he was “cooperating fully and completely” with the Justice Department’s investigation into how classified information and government records were stored.
“We have cooperated closely with the Justice Department throughout its review, and we will continue that cooperation with the special counsel,” said Richard Sauber, a lawyer for the president. “We are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake.”
Garland said the “extraordinary circumstances” of the matter required Hur’s appointment, adding that the special counsel is authorized to investigate whether any person or entity violated the law. Federal law requires strict handling procedures for classified information, and official records from Biden’s time as vice president are considered government property under the Presidential Records Act.
“This appointment underscores for the public the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters, and to making decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law,” Garland said.
Hur, in a statement, said: “I will conduct the assigned investigation with fair, impartial and dispassionate judgment. I intend to follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor and will honor the trust placed in me to perform this service.”
While Garland said the Justice Department received timely notifications from Biden’s personal attorneys after each set of classified documents was identified, the White House provided delayed and incomplete notification to the American public about the discoveries.
Biden’s personal attorneys found the first set of classified and official documents on Nov. 2 in a locked closet as they cleared out his office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, where he worked after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until he launched his presidential campaign in 2019. The attorneys notified the National Archives, which retrieved the documents the next day and referred the matter to the Justice Department.
Sauber said Biden’s attorneys then underwent a search of other locations where documents could have been transferred after Biden left the vice presidency, including his homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Garland said that on Dec. 20, the Justice Department was informed that classified documents and official records were located in Biden’s Wilmington garage, near his Corvette, and that FBI agents took custody of them shortly thereafter.
A search on Wednesday evening turned up the most recently discovered classified document in Biden’s personal library at his home, and the Justice Department was notified Thursday, Garland revealed.
The White House only confirmed the discovery of the Penn Biden Center documents in response to news inquiries Monday and remained silent on the subsequent search of Biden’s homes and the discovery of the garage tranche until Thursday morning, shortly before Garland announced Hur’s appointment. Biden, when he first addressed the matter Tuesday while in Mexico City, also didn’t let on about the subsequent document discoveries.
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted that despite the public omissions, Biden’s administration was handling the matter correctly.
“There was transparency in doing what you’re supposed to do,” she said, declining to answer repeated questions about when Biden was briefed on the discovery of the documents and whether he would submit to an interview with investigators.
Pressed on whether Biden could guarantee that additional classified documents would not turn up in a further search, Jean-Pierre said, “You should assume that it’s been completed, yes.”
The appointment of yet another special counsel to investigate the handling of classified documents is a remarkable turn of events, legally and politically, for a Justice Department that has spent months looking into the retention by Trump of more than 300 documents with classification markings found at the former president’s Florida estate.
Though the situations are factually and legally different, the discovery of classified documents at two separate locations tied to Biden — as well as the appointment of a new special counsel — would almost certainly complicate any prosecution that the department might bring against Trump.
New House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, said of the latest news, “I think Congress has to investigate this.”
“Here’s an individual that sat on ‘60 Minutes’ that was so concerned about President Trump’s documents … and now we find that this is a vice president keeping it for years out in the open in different locations.”
Contradicting several fellow Republicans, however, he said, “We don’t think there needs to be a special prosecutor.”
The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee has requested that intelligence agencies conduct a “damage assessment” of potentially classified documents. Ohio Rep. Mike Turner on Thursday also requested briefings from Garland and the director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, on their reviews by Jan. 26.
“The presence of classified information at these separate locations could implicate the President in the mishandling, potential misuse, and exposure of classified information,” Turner wrote the officials.
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Associated Press writers Nomaan Merchant and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
Garland praises Oath Keepers verdict, won’t say where Jan. 6 probe goes
Throughout the trial, prosecutors highlighted the defendants’ links to key allies of President Donald Trump, such as Roger Stone, “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani.
But Garland declined to say Wednesday if he expected prosecutors to eventually file charges against them or any other people who did not physically participate in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I don’t want to speculate on other investigations or parts of other investigations,” Garland told reporters at a briefing where he also touted Justice Department efforts to establish federal oversight of the water supply system in Jackson, Miss.
Garland called the sprawling Jan. 6 investigation, and Jackson’s water crisis, “significant matters of public interest.”
“I’m very proud of the attorneys, investigators and staff whose unwavering commitment to rule of law and tireless work resulted in yesterday in these two significant victories,” he said.
Tuesday’s verdicts upheld a key Justice Department argument laid out in the seven-week-long trial: that the breach of the Capitol was not an isolated event, but rather a culmination or component of wider plotting by extremists who wanted to stop the transfer of power from Trump to Biden. In this case, the jury found Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and a top deputy, Kelly Meggs, at least partially responsible for staging firearms and preparing to forcibly oppose federal authority. Both were convicted of “seditious conspiracy,” a rarely used charge that is among the most serious levied so far in the sprawling Jan. 6 investigation.
Justice Department officials had been eyeing the Oath Keepers verdict to help decide whether to file criminal charges against other high-profile, pro-Trump figures who had roles in the buildup to the violence, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.
The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said prosecutors will also consider the outcome of an upcoming trial involving members of another extremist group, the Proud Boys, scheduled to start in mid-December.
At the briefing with reporters Tuesday, Garland also said that he has asked the House Jan. 6 committee — which has been pursuing a separate investigation into the attack — for all interview transcripts and evidence that it has collected. That’s long been a point of tension between the Justice Department and Congress, with the committee yet to hand over all the materials.
“We would like to have all the transcripts and all the other evidence collected by the committee so that we can use it in the ordinary course of our investigation,” Garland said.
After Trump announced in mid-November that he would run for president in 2024, Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee investigations related to Trump and his advisers after he lost the 2020 election, as well as a separate investigation of Trump’s possession of classified documents after he left the White House.
Defined in the law as an effort by two or more people to “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States,” or to forcibly oppose its authority or laws, seditious conspiracy is rarely charged. Prosecutors often view it as difficult to prove at trial, particularly when other, simpler crimes can be charged for the same conduct.
Praveen Fernandes, vice president of the Constitutional Accountability Center — a liberal think tank and law firm that had been closely tracking the Rhodes trial — said the guilty verdict is significant.
“It’s not just a delivery of justice in respect to Rhodes and Kelly Meggs — but it is a sign that a jury was able to understand what happened that day as seditious conspiracy,” Fernandes said. “It at least opens up a universe that says it is at least possible to secure such a conviction on acts that led up to Jan. 6.”
But legal experts also warned that the verdict wasn’t a slam-dunk for the government, highlighting how difficult seditious conspiracy cases are to pursue. Three other Oath Keeper associates who were on trial were acquitted on the sedition charges. All five defendants were found guilty of obstructing Congress as members met on Jan. 6 to confirm the results of the 2020 election, a key step in the country’s peaceful transfer of power.
In deciding the seditious conspiracy charge, jurors appeared to focus on written or recorded evidence of conspiratorial intent, a warning sign for prosecutors that the threshold to convict people on this rare charge is high.
Rhodes attorney James Lee Bright said he expects the Justice Department nevertheless to take the mixed verdict as a sign to move “full-steam ahead” with prosecutions against others allegedly involved in the planning of what unfolded on Jan. 6.
The federal prosecutors at Rhodes’ trial made clear that Stone, a long-serving political adviser to Trump who has consistently denied any knowledge of or involvement in illegal acts at the Capitol on Jan. 6, was a focus of inquiry, introducing evidence they said the government obtained from his phone in December 2021.
On the day that television networks declared Biden had won the election, prosecutors alleged, Rhodes shared a text with Stone, Alexander and Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and others asking: “What’s the plan?”
They also alleged that Rhodes shared a plan with that same “Friends of Stone” encrypted chat group that included bullet points from an anti-government uprising in Serbia that included storming its parliament.
Rhodes also wrote public letters to Trump, urging him to invoke the Insurrection Act to mobilize the military and private militia to ensure he remained in power.
But attorneys for people who worked for Trump, and other Oath Keepers members, expressed skepticism that Trump received or acted on those messages.
“Of the 10 terabytes of evidence that we’ve had available to us in this trial, I can tell you that there is nothing in the body of evidence that we’ve been given or shown that would in any way be indicative of the ability to indict former president Trump for January 6th,” Bright, one of Rhodes’ attorneys, told reporters after Tuesday’s verdict.
On Wednesday, Garland said that the work of Justice Department attorneys in securing the guilty verdicts “makes clear the department will work tirelessly to hold account those responsible for crimes related to attacks on our democracy on Jan 2021.”
Tom Jackman contributed to this report.
Attorney General Merrick Garland vows Justice Department ‘will not permit voters to be intimidated’ ahead of midterms
Washington
CNN
—
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday vowed that the US Justice Department “will not permit voters to be intimidated” during November’s midterm elections.
“The Justice Department has an obligation to guarantee a free and fair vote by everyone who’s qualified to vote and will not permit voters to be intimidated,” Garland said during a press briefing.
More than 7 million ballots have already been cast across 39 states as of Monday, according to data from election officials, Edison Research and Catalist. But with two weeks until November 8, law enforcement agencies and officials are turning their attention toward Election Day and the potential for violence amid threats to election workers and reports of voter intimidation.
In one instance in Arizona, which has been referred to the Department of Justice and Arizona Attorney General’s Office, an unidentified voter reported that they were approached and followed by a group of individuals when trying to drop off their ballot at an early voting drop box. The group made accusations against the voter and their wife, as well as took photographs of them and their license plate and followed them out of the parking lot, according to the report.
In another instance, two armed individuals – dressed in tactical gear – were spotted at a ballot drop box in Mesa, Arizona, on Friday night, according to Maricopa County officials. The pair left the scene when the County Sheriff’s Office arrived.
“We are deeply concerned about the safety of individuals who are exercising their constitutional right to vote and who are lawfully taking their early ballot to a drop box,” Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates and Recorder Stephen Richer said in a joint statement on Saturday.
Dozens of Republicans trying to be elected in 2022 as governor, state secretary of state or US senator have joined former President Donald Trump in baselessly rejecting or questioning the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, with some having attempted to overturn the 2020 results. Such unfounded allegations of widespread election fraud inspired a slew of restrictive new voting laws and has led to growing safety concerns around elections.
Last year, the Justice Department launched a task force to address the rise in threats against election officials, and safety preparations are already well underway for Election Day across the country.
In Colorado, for example, a state law – the Vote Without Fear Act – prohibits carrying firearms at polling places or within 100 feet of a ballot drop box. And in Tallahassee, Florida, officials have added Kevlar and bullet-resistant acrylic shields to the Leon County elections office, said Mark Earley, who runs elections in the county.
Samantha Vinograd, Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for counterterrorism, threat prevention, and law enforcement, on Monday said the agency is “certainly very focused on what we consider to be an incredibly heightened threat environment” ahead of November’s elections. She cited conspiracy theories swirling online and the history of extremist groups in the United States as reason for concern.
“We know that there’s a historical basis for violence associated with elections,” said Vinograd, a former CNN contributor, while speaking at the 2022 Homeland Security Enterprise Forum. “At the same time, anybody with a Twitter account or a Facebook account, or who watches the news is aware that myriad conspiracy theories continue to proliferate with various narratives associated with false claims about the election.”
Amid the threat, she said that DHS – and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in particular – is working to protect election security infrastructure.
The FBI and sheriffs representing some of America’s biggest counties, meanwhile, have discussed the possibility of misinformation fueling violence at polling stations during the midterm elections, a representative of a sheriff’s association told CNN.
The briefing last week covered how law enforcement can balance supporting the security needs of election officials without risking intimidating voters by being “out in force” near polling stations, said Megan Noland, executive director of Major County Sheriffs of America, which represents the 113 largest sheriff’s offices in the country. The recent surveillance by private citizens of ballot drop boxes was also discussed, Noland said.
Neal Kelley, a former election official who also presented at the briefing, told CNN that the potential for confrontations at ballot drop boxes “is something that we need to watch.” The FBI declined to comment on the briefing.
The FBI, Kelley said, gave an overview of the threat environment facing election officials.
“The whole idea was to give [sheriffs] an idea on how they can collaborate with their election officials because there’s not a lot of that happening nationwide,” Kelley, the former chief election official of Orange County, California, said of his presentation. Big counties have some of that collaboration between cops and election officials, but smaller ones often don’t, he said.
One idea discussed at the briefing was giving patrol officers a list of election criminal codes that they could keep in their pockets when responding to any incidents on Election Day, Kelley told CNN.
“If you’re calling 9-1-1 on Election Day as an election official, it’s too late,” he said.
This story has been updated with additional information Monday.
Garland says DOJ files to unseal Trump Mar-a-Lago search warrant
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday that the Department of Justice is filing a motion to unseal parts of the search warrant for former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.
Driving the news: Garland also said that he “personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter.”
- “The department does not take such a decision lightly. Where possible, it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search and to narrowly scope any search that is undertaken,” Garland said.
The big picture: The FBI on Monday searched Trump’s Florida residence in what is likely related to documents Trump took from the White House that may have been classified, two sources familiar with the matter told Axios’ Jonathan Swan.
- When a search warrant is requested for a major figure, such as a former president, “it goes through a long review process,” Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor, previously told Axios.
Details: “Both the warrant and the FBI property receipt were provided on the day of the search to the former president’s counsel, who was on site during the search,” Garland said.
- The Justice Department has moved to unseal the search warrant signed and approved by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Aug. 5, “including Attachments A and B” and “the redacted Property Receipt listing items seized pursuant to the search, filed with the Court on August 11, 2022.”
- “In these circumstances involving a search of the residence of a former President, the government hereby requests that the Court unseal the Notice of Filing and its attachment (Docket Entry 17), absent objection by former President Trump,” the filing states.
State of play: Garland also addressed “unfounded attacks on the Justice Department agents and prosecutors” in the aftermath of the search.
- “I will not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked. The men and women of the FBI and the Justice Department are dedicated patriotic public servants every day.”
- “Every day they protect the American people from violent crime, terrorism and other threats to their safety, while safeguarding our civil rights.”
- “They do so at great personal sacrifice and risk to themselves. I am honored to work alongside them,” he said.
Trump said in a Truth Social post Thursday after Garland’s press conference that Mar-a-Lago was raided “out of nowhere and with no warning” by “very large numbers of agents.” He claimed he and his representatives had been cooperating fully.
- ” The government could have had whatever they wanted, if we had it,” he said.
- “They got way ahead of themselves,” he added.
Between the lines: Hours before Garland’s remarks, an armed person tried to break into the FBI building in Cincinnati, leading to a lockdown in the nearby area.
What he’s saying: “Faithful adherence to the rule of law is the bedrock principle of the Justice Department and of our democracy. Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly, without fear or favor,” Garland said.
- “Much of our work is by necessity conducted out of the public eye. We do that to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans and to protect the integrity of our investigations.”
Go deeper: Presidential Records Act and Trump search explained
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional details throughout.
Garland Moves to Release Details on F.B.I. Search of Trump’s Home
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland moved on Thursday to make public the legal authorization for the F.B.I.’s search of former President Donald J. Trump’s home in Florida, which was carried out as part of the government’s effort to account for documents that one person briefed on the matter said related to some of the most highly classified programs run by the United States.
Mr. Garland said he had personally approved the search after the failure of “less intrusive” attempts to retrieve material taken from the White House by Mr. Trump.
Mr. Garland provided no details, but the person briefed on the matter said investigators had been concerned about material from what the government calls “special access programs,” a designation even more classified than “top secret” that is typically reserved for extremely sensitive operations carried out by the United States abroad.
Government officials have expressed concern that allowing highly classified materials to remain at Mr. Trump’s home could leave them vulnerable to efforts by foreign adversaries to acquire them, according to another person familiar with the Justice Department’s thinking.
In a clipped, two-minute statement to reporters at the Justice Department’s headquarters, Mr. Garland said he decided to break his silence and make a public statement because Mr. Trump had disclosed the action himself. The attorney general also cited the “surrounding circumstances” of the case and the “substantial public interest in this matter.”
But Mr. Garland also used the brief appearance to defend, at least implicitly, the Justice Department’s handling of the case against the torrent of criticism directed at it by Mr. Trump and his allies.
“Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly, without fear or favor,” Mr. Garland said. “Under my watch that is precisely what the Justice Department is doing.”
Minutes before Mr. Garland took the podium, a top official in the Justice Department’s national security division filed a motion to unseal the search warrant and an inventory of items retrieved in the search on Monday.
While the inventory provided to Mr. Trump’s team after the search is unlikely to reveal details about the specific documents he kept, it refers to an array of sensitive material, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Some of Mr. Trump’s aides were leaning toward opposing the motion to release the warrant and the inventory, people familiar with their discussions said, a step that could delay or block release of the material.
More Coverage of the F.B.I. Search of Trump’s Home
Judge Bruce Reinhart, the federal magistrate in the Southern District of Florida who approved the search warrant and is handling to motion to unseal it, issued an order requiring the Justice Department to serve a copy of its motion to Mr. Trump’s lawyers. It said the department must then tell the judge by 3 p.m. on Friday whether Mr. Trump opposes the motion.
Mr. Garland’s statement amounted to a challenge to Mr. Trump, who has been free to release the search warrant and the list of items taken during the search but has declined to do so. Many Trump allies and Republicans have also called on Mr. Garland to explain his decision, adding political complexity — or hypocrisy — to any decision by Mr. Trump to oppose making the search warrant public.
The Justice Department did not seek to release the affidavits — which contain much more information about the behavior of Mr. Trump and evidence presented by others — that were used to obtain the warrant.
The public statement by Mr. Garland came at an extraordinary moment, as a sprawling set of investigations into the former president on multiple fronts gained momentum even as Mr. Trump continued to signal that he might soon announce another run for the White House.
Mr. Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination on Wednesday in a civil investigation into his business practices by the New York attorney general, and a close ally in the House had his phone seized by federal agents this week in one strand of the investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in power despite his election loss in 2020.
Mr. Garland also spoke on the same day that law enforcement officers shot and killed a man who they said tried to break into the F.B.I.’s Cincinnati office on Thursday. Investigators were looking into whether he had ties to extremist groups, including one that participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, according to two law enforcement officials familiar with the matter.
The search on Monday of Mr. Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago, his private club, was the most explosive development yet in the various inquiries. The investigation centers on whether he improperly took sensitive materials with him from the White House when his term ended and then failed to return all of them — including classified documents — when the National Archives and the Justice Department demanded that he do so.
Months before the F.B.I. arrived at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump had received a subpoena this spring in search of documents that federal investigators believed he had failed to turn over earlier in the year, when he returned 15 boxes of material to the archives, three people familiar with the matter said.
What we consider before using anonymous sources.
How do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.
The existence of the subpoena helps to flesh out the sequence of events that led to the search, and suggests that the Justice Department tried methods short of a search warrant to account for the material before taking the politically explosive step of sending F.B.I. agents unannounced to Mar-a-Lago.
Mr. Garland did not address a subpoena during his appearance on Thursday, but said that “where possible, it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means,” indicating that other measures were tried before a search took place.
Two people briefed on the classified documents that investigators believed remained at Mar-a-Lago indicated that they were so sensitive, and related to national security, that the Justice Department had to act.
The subpoena was first disclosed by John Solomon, a conservative journalist who has also been designated by Mr. Trump as one of his representatives to the National Archives.
The existence of the subpoena is being used by allies of Mr. Trump to make a case that the former president and his team were cooperating with the department in identifying and returning the documents in question and that the search was unjustified.
Christina Bobb, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, did not respond to messages. It is not clear what precise materials the subpoena sought or what documents the former president might have provided in response.
The subpoena factored into a visit that Jay Bratt, the Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, made with a small group of other federal officials to Mar-a-Lago in early June, one of the people said.
The officials met with Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Evan Corcoran. Mr. Trump, who likes to play host and has a long history of trying to charm officials inquiring about his practices, also made an appearance. During the visit, the officials examined a basement storage area where the former president had stowed material that had come with him from the White House.
A few days after the visit, Mr. Bratt emailed Mr. Corcoran and told him to further secure the remaining documents, which were kept in the storage area with a stronger padlock, one of the people said. The email was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.
Then, they subpoenaed surveillance footage from the club, which could have given officials a glimpse of who was coming in and out of the storage area, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. They received footage specifically from areas of the club where they believed the documents might have been stored, the person said.
During the same period, investigators were in contact with a number of Mr. Trump’s aides who had some visibility into how he stored and moved documents around the White House and who still worked for him, three people familiar with the events said.
Among those whom investigators reached out to was Molly Michael, Mr. Trump’s assistant in the outer Oval Office who also went to work for him at Mar-a-Lago, three people familiar with the outreach said.
Investigators have also reached out to Derek Lyons, the former White House staff secretary, whose last day was Dec. 18, 2020, and no longer works for Mr. Trump, with questions about the process for handling documents, according to a person familiar with the outreach.
Federal officials came to believe that Mr. Trump had not relinquished all the material that left the White House with him at the end of his term, according to three people familiar with the investigation.
Less than two months later after Mr. Bratt and the other officials visited Mr. Trump’s home, about two dozen F.B.I. agents, intentionally not wearing the blue wind breakers emblazoned with the agency’s logo usually worn during searches, appeared at Mar-a-Lago with a warrant.
The club was closed; Mr. Trump was in the New York area; the F.B.I. startled a crew fixing a large fountain, a maid who was dusting and a handful of Secret Service agents who guard the complex.
The search warrant was broad, allowing the agents to investigate all areas of the club where classified materials might have been stored. They went through the basement, Mr. Trump’s office and at least part of his residence at the club.
After hours of searching, they left with several boxes that were not filled to the brim and in some cases simply contained sealed envelopes of material that the agents took, one person familiar with the search said.
The person said the F.B.I. left behind a two-page manifest of what was taken. If the manifest is made public, it is likely to be heavily redacted to shield any classified material.
Some senior Republicans have been warned by allies of Mr. Trump not to continue to be aggressive in criticizing the Justice Department and the F.B.I. over the matter because it is possible that more damaging information related to the search will become public.
When Mr. Trump left the White House, he took with him boxes containing a mishmash of papers, along with items like a raincoat and golf balls, according to people briefed on the contents. The National Archives tried for months after Mr. Trump left office to retrieve the material, engaging in lengthy discussions with his representatives to acquire what should have been properly stored by the archives under the Presidential Records Act.
When archivists recovered 15 boxes this year, they discovered several pages of classified material and referred the matter to the Justice Department. Officials later came to believe that additional classified material remained at Mar-a-Lago.
During his appearance on Thursday, Mr. Garland, a former midlevel prosecutor, went out of his way to counter claims by Mr. Trump and his supporters that agents with the bureau or Justice Department lawyers were motivated by politics or behaved inappropriately in the course of requesting and executing the search warrant.
“I will not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked,” Mr. Garland said.
Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, said in an internal email earlier in the day that he would adjust the bureau’s “security posture” as needed. He also defended the work of the agents involved in the Trump case.
“We don’t cut corners,” he wrote. “We don’t play favorites.”
AG Merrick Garland says he signed off on Trump search, denounces attacks on law enforcement
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday afternoon spoke for the first time since FBI agents raided former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida.
Citing “the substantial public interest in this matter,” Garland said the government had filed a motion to unseal the warrant authorizing Monday’s search, which Trump has sharply criticized as a partisan attack.
It was not immediately clear how quickly the judge in the case may release the warrant and federal prosecutors noted in their request, filed Thursday, that it should be granted only “absent objection by former President Trump.”
Garland said that Trump’s attorney had been provided on Monday with a copy of both the warrant and a list of what was taken from Mar-a-Lago by the agents — contradicting past statements by Trump’s son Eric.
In his four-minute remarks, Garland did not discuss any specifics of law enforcement’s work or the larger investigation related to Trump.
“Faithful adherence to the rule of law is the bedrock principle of the Justice Department and of our democracy. Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly without fear or favor,” he said. “Under my watch, that is precisely what the Justice Department is doing.”
“The search warrant was authorized by a federal court upon the required finding of probable cause,” he said.
Sources previously told ABC News that Monday’s search was in connection to documents that Trump took with him when he departed Washington, including some records the National Archives said were marked classified.
Garland said Thursday he “personally approved” the unprecedented decision to seek a search warrant against a former president but stressed that “the department does not take such a decision lightly.”
“Where possible, it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search and to narrowly scope any search that is undertaken,” he said.
ABC News reported earlier Thursday that, according to sources, Trump previously received a subpoena in the spring for documents related to what he is believed to have failed to turn over to the National Archives, which had recovered 15 boxes of material from Mar-a-Lago in January.
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 11, 2022.
ABC News
Garland acknowledged there was still much he could not say — given longstanding department policy not to comment on ongoing investigations and unduly harm those caught in law enforcement’s wake before charges, if ever, are brought.
The search of Trump’s home marked a significant development in one of several legal issues that Trump faces. (He denies wrongdoing in each.)
“All Americans are rightly entitled to the even-handed application of the law, to due process of the law and to the presumption of innocence,” Garland said. “Much of our work is by necessity conducted out of the public eye. We do that to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans and to protect the integrity of our investigations.”
Finally, he said, he wanted to “address recent unfounded attacks on the professionalism of the FBI and Justice Department agents and prosecutors.”
The search of Mar-a-Lago drew a resounding chorus of criticism from Republicans and some others over what the detractors said was a lack of clarity about why such a move was necessary.
“The American people want transparency when you are raiding the home of a former president,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said Wednesday. “The FBI is raiding the home of a former president. The American people deserve to know why.”
Speaking at a separate event Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said of the search, “I’m sure you can appreciate that’s not something I can talk about.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks at the Justice Department Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022, in Washington, D.C.
Susan Walsh/AP
As Trump has many times before, he and his allies cast the federal investigation as a partisan sham. Trump said the search was “not necessary or appropriate”; he has not released any information about the court-authorized search warrant.
“These are dark times for our Nation. … It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024,” Trump said in a statement on Monday night, in the first public confirmation of a search that Garland said Thursday officials had worked to keep out of view.
He also pushed back on the denunciation of law enforcement.
“The men and women of the FBI and the Justice Department are dedicated, patriotic public servants, every day,” Garland said. He would “not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked.”
“They protect the American people from violent crime, terrorism and other threats to their safety while safeguarding our civil rights,” Garland said. “They do so at great personal sacrifice and risk to themselves. I am honored to work alongside them.”
“This is all I can say right now,” Garland concluded, rebuffing questions from journalists in the room. “More information will be made available in the appropriate way and at the appropriate time.”
In its request to unseal the search warrant, filed Thursday in federal court in Florida, the Justice Department wrote that its decision was made in light of “the public’s clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred under these circumstances.”
The government’s filing notes the warrant was signed on Friday and also requests the unsealing of a redacted inventory of what was taken by agents at Mar-a-Lago. Prosecutors did not seek to release any supporting affidavit for the warrant, in which law enforcement would have explained, in narrative style, why they sought to search Trump’s home.
Prosecutors wrote that that Trump “should have an opportunity to respond to this Motion and lodge objections, including with regards to any ‘legitimate privacy interests’ or the potential for other ‘injury’ if these materials are made public.”
Court records show that responses will be due in the matter by Aug. 25.
Former President Donald Trump waves while walking to a vehicle in New York City on Aug. 10, 2022.
Stringer/AFP via Getty Images
About an hour after Garland spoke, the judge in the case ordered prosecutors to confer with Trump’s lawyers and report back at or before 3 p.m. ET Friday as to whether Trump opposes the motion to unseal the warrant.
The head of the Department of Justice’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, Jay Bratt, is one of two DOJ officials who signed off on the request to unseal — along with U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Juan Gonzalez.
The head of DOJ’s national security division, Matt Olsen, was also present in the room for Garland’s remarks Thursday, a reflection of the NSD’s prominent role in the investigation.
ABC News’ Jack Date, Katherine Faulders, Isabella Murray and John Santucci contributed to this report.
Cleveland Cavaliers, Darius Garland agree to five-year rookie extension worth up to $231M, agent says
Cleveland Cavaliers All-Star guard Darius Garland has agreed to a five-year, $193 million designated maximum rookie contract extension that could be worth as much as $231 million, his agent, Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul, told ESPN on Saturday.
Garland’s deal is the richest in Cavaliers history and comes after a breakout third season that included him averaging 21.7 points and 8.6 assists per game, being named an All-Star for the first time and elevating the franchise into the Eastern Conference play-in tournament.
He is one of the cornerstones of a promising Cavaliers core that includes All-Star center Jarrett Allen and emerging star Evan Mobley.
Garland is supermax eligible if he makes one of the All-NBA’s first, second or third teams twice.
The No. 5 pick in the 2019 NBA draft, Garland helped the Cavaliers finish over .500 for the first time since LeBron James left in 2018.
A24’s ‘Men’ Review – Alex Garland Unsettles With Surreal Folk Horror!
Director Alex Garland established a distinct penchant for surrealistic genre fare in just two features, Ex Machina and Annihilation. In his latest, Men, the filmmaker tries his hand at more straightforward horror, imbuing folk horror with his distinct style. It results in a more elusive effort that bides its time with a measured unsettling until an insane, unforgettable third act.
Harper (Jessie Buckley) retreats to the English countryside to heal and start anew in the wake of her husband James’ (Paapa Essiedu) untimely death. The estate’s owner, Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), awkwardly gives her a tour of the place and then leaves her to get settled. Harper’s plans for peace and quiet get shattered quickly, though, when a walk through the neighboring woods catches the attention of someone who appears to stalk her. Unsettling dread escalates into a full-blown nightmare for Harper, forcing her to confront fears internal and external.
Garland takes a more streamlined approach to Harper’s story. Though straightforward, her past unfurls slowly, spliced with an increasingly precarious present. Harper’s walks into the nearby village result in various encounters with men, all played by Kinnear. Each new meeting and conversation personify different anxieties or fears and gender division.
What’s less straightforward is the imagery and symbolism laden throughout. Harper wears pinks and earthy tones, and the cottage’s walls are blood red. It’s contrasted by the lush greenery outside. The Green Man, floating dandelion seeds, an apple tree, and pitch-black tunnels in the middle of an emerald green forest all hint at larger fertility-heavy mythology. There’s an intentional enigmatic quality to the overarching nightmare Harper finds herself in, one far larger than the domestic trauma that led her to this point. Garland wants audiences to connect those bread crumbs on their own. Men‘s intangible, arthouse style will polarize.
Buckley brings Harper’s intrinsic conflict to the surface with deft and understated nuance. This protagonist is at war with herself, struggling with feelings of guilt and remorse that clashes with a newfound sense of freedom. The relief she feels is at odds with lingering questions stemming from tragedy. That Buckley is the grounded character against Kinnear’s complicated juggling act of multiple characters means he consistently threatens to steal the film from under her. Especially considering the places that he takes those characters. Where Buckley impresses, Kinnear astounds and pushes boundaries; the actor makes a strong case for why he’s one of the best working today.
As for the horror, Garland opts for a slow build of unsettling dread. It coils with mounting pressure, increasing in scares and intensity until it explodes in an insane, jaw-dropping third act that veers into Grand Guignol. It’s an audacious finale full of “holy shit” moments that satisfies from a horror standpoint, bringing the overarching themes full circle. Garland is less successful in bringing Harper’s arc to a satisfying or fully coherent close.
It’s ultimately how Garland tries to marry Harper’s history to the large picture that muddies up a gloriously unhinged piece of folk horror. Garland delivers one jaw-dropping showstopper and demonstrates a knack for dread and atmosphere. The nightmare fuel provided alone ensures Men is a success regardless of its elusiveness, but Buckley and Kinnear are powerhouses that keep you firmly in their grip. Garland’s adherence to the abstract will be divisive, but those that don’t mind enigmatic descents into surrealistic, gruesome horror will find this a trip worth taking.
Men releases in theaters on May 20, 2022.
Why the Jan. 6 Investigation Is a Test for Biden and Merrick Garland
WASHINGTON — Immediately after Merrick B. Garland was sworn in as attorney general in March of last year, he summoned top Justice Department officials and the F.B.I. director to his office. He wanted a detailed briefing on the case that will, in all likelihood, come to define his legacy: the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
Even though hundreds of people had already been charged, Mr. Garland asked to go over the indictments in detail, according to two people familiar with the meeting. What were the charges? What evidence did they have? How had they built such a sprawling investigation, involving all 50 states, so fast? What was the plan now?
The attorney general’s deliberative approach has come to frustrate Democratic allies of the White House and, at times, President Biden himself. As recently as late last year, Mr. Biden confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted, according to two people familiar with his comments. And while the president has never communicated his frustrations directly to Mr. Garland, he has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Mr. Garland said that he and the career prosecutors working on the case felt only the pressure “to do the right thing,” which meant that they “follow the facts and the law wherever they may lead.”
Still, Democrats’ increasingly urgent calls for the Justice Department to take more aggressive action highlight the tension between the frenetic demands of politics and the methodical pace of one of the biggest prosecutions in the department’s history.
“The Department of Justice must move swiftly,” Representative Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia and a member of the House committee investigating the riot, said this past week. She and others on the panel want the department to charge Trump allies with contempt for refusing to comply with the committee’s subpoenas.
“Attorney General Garland,” Ms. Luria said during a committee hearing, “do your job so that we can do ours.”
This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen people, including officials in the Biden administration and people with knowledge of the president’s thinking, all of whom asked for anonymity to discuss private conversations.
In a statement, Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said the president believed that Mr. Garland had “decisively restored” the independence of the Justice Department.
“President Biden is immensely proud of the attorney general’s service in this administration and has no role in investigative priorities or decisions,” Mr. Bates said.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
The Jan. 6 investigation is a test not just for Mr. Garland, but for Mr. Biden as well. Both men came into office promising to restore the independence and reputation of a Justice Department that Mr. Trump had tried to weaponize for political gain.
For Mr. Biden, keeping that promise means inviting the ire of supporters who say they will hold the president to the remarks he made on the anniversary of the assault on the Capitol, when he vowed to make sure “the past isn’t buried” and said that the people who planned the siege “held a dagger at the throat of America.”
Complicating matters for Mr. Biden is the fact that his two children are entangled in federal investigations, making it all the more important that he stay out of the Justice Department’s affairs or risk being seen as interfering for his own family’s gain.
The department is investigating whether Ashley Biden was the victim of pro-Trump political operatives who obtained her diary at a critical moment in the 2020 presidential campaign, and Hunter Biden is under federal investigation for tax avoidance and his international business dealings. Hunter Biden has not been charged with a crime and has said he handled his affairs appropriately.
Justice Department officials do not keep Mr. Biden abreast of any investigation, including those involving his children, several people familiar with the situation said. The cases involving Hunter Biden and Ashley Biden are worked on by career officials, and people close to the president, including Dana Remus, the White House counsel, have no visibility into them, those people said.
Still, the situation crystallizes the delicate ground that Mr. Biden and Mr. Garland are navigating.
When it comes to Jan. 6, Justice Department officials emphasize that their investigation has produced substantial results already, including more than 775 arrests and a charge of seditious conspiracy against the leader of a far-right militia. More than 280 people have been charged with obstructing Congress’s duty to certify the election results.
And federal prosecutors have widened the investigation to include a broad range of figures associated with Mr. Trump’s attempts to cling to power. According to people familiar with the inquiry, it now encompasses planning for pro-Trump rallies ahead of the riot and the push by some Trump allies to promote slates of fake electors.
The Justice Department has given no public indication about its timeline or whether prosecutors might be considering a case against Mr. Trump.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack can send criminal referrals to the Justice Department, but only the department can bring charges. The panel is working with a sense of urgency to build its case ahead of this year’s midterm elections, when Republicans could retake the House and dissolve the committee.
Mr. Biden, a longtime creature of the Senate, is aghast that people close to Mr. Trump have defied congressional subpoenas and has told people close to him that he does not understand how they think they can do so, according to two people familiar with his thinking.
Mr. Garland has not changed his approach to criminal prosecutions in order to placate his critics, according to several Justice Department officials who have discussed the matter with him. He is briefed every afternoon on the Jan. 6 investigation, but he has remained reticent in public.
“The best way to undermine an investigation is to say things out of court,” Mr. Garland said on Friday.
Even in private, he relies on a stock phrase: “Rule of law,” he says, “means there not be one rule for friends and another for foes.”
He did seem to acknowledge Democrats’ frustrations in a speech in January, when he reiterated that the department “remains committed to holding all Jan. 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law.”
Quiet and reserved, Mr. Garland is well known for the job he was denied: a seat on the Supreme Court. President Barack Obama nominated him in March 2016 after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, but Senate Republicans blockaded the nomination.
Mr. Garland’s peers regard him as a formidable legal mind and a political centrist. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he clerked for a federal appeals court judge and Justice William J. Brennan Jr. of the Supreme Court before becoming a top official in the Justice Department under Attorney General Janet Reno. There, he prosecuted domestic terrorism cases and supervised the federal investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing.
His critics say that his subsequent years as an appeals court judge made him slow and overly deliberative. But his defenders say that he has always carefully considered legal issues, particularly if the stakes were very high — a trait that most likely helped the Justice Department secure a conviction against Timothy J. McVeigh two years after the Oklahoma City attack.
During the presidential transition after the 2020 election, Mr. Biden took his time mulling over candidates to be attorney general, according to a senior member of the transition team. He had promised the American people that he would reestablish the department as an independent arbiter within the government, not the president’s partisan brawler.
Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key Developments
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Justice Department widens inquiry. Federal prosecutors are said to have substantially widened their Jan. 6 investigation to examine the possible culpability of a broad range of pro-Trump figures involved in efforts to overturn the election. The investigation was initially focused on the rioters who had entered the Capitol.
In meetings, the incoming president and his aides discussed potential models at length: Did Mr. Biden want a strong personality in the job, like Eric H. Holder Jr., who held the post under Mr. Obama? The relatively quick consensus was no.
Did he want someone who would be seen as a political ally? Some in his circle suggested that might be a good model to follow, which is why former Senator Doug Jones of Alabama, a longtime friend of Mr. Biden’s, was once on his shortlist.
But in the end, Mr. Biden went with Mr. Garland, who had a reputation for being evenhanded and independent.
Despite Mr. Biden’s private frustrations with the attorney general, several people who speak regularly to the president said he had praised Mr. Garland as among the most thoughtful, moral and intelligent people he had dealt with in his career.
The two men did not know each other well when Mr. Biden selected him for the job. Mr. Garland had a closer relationship with Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, than he did with the incoming president.
Officials inside the White House and the Justice Department acknowledge that the two men have less contact than some previous presidents and attorneys general, particularly Mr. Trump and his last attorney general, William P. Barr.
Some officials see their limited interactions as an overcorrection on the part of Mr. Garland and argue that he does not need to color so scrupulously within the lines. But it may be the only logical position for Mr. Garland to take, particularly given that both of Mr. Biden’s children are involved in active investigations by the Justice Department.
The distance between the two men is a sharp departure from the previous administration, when Mr. Trump would often call Mr. Barr to complain about decisions related to his political allies and enemies. Such calls were a clear violation of the longtime norms governing contact between the White House and the Justice Department.
Mr. Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, came to his job as president with a classical, post-Watergate view of the department — that it was not there to be a political appendage.
Still, there is unrelenting pressure from Democrats to hold Mr. Trump and his allies accountable for the violence that unfolded at the Capitol on Jan. 6. While there is no indication that federal prosecutors are close to charging the former president, Mr. Biden and those closest to him understand the legal calculations. What Mr. Garland is confronting is anything but a normal problem, with enormous political stakes ahead of the next presidential election.
Federal prosecutors would have no room for error in building a criminal case against Mr. Trump, experts say, given the high burden of proof they must meet and the likelihood of any decision being appealed.
A criminal investigation in Manhattan that examined Mr. Trump’s business dealings imploded this year, underscoring the risks and challenges that come with trying to indict the former president. The new district attorney there, Alvin Bragg, would not let his prosecutors present a grand jury with evidence that they felt proved Mr. Trump knowingly falsified the value of his assets for undue financial gain.
One of the outside lawyers who oversaw the case and resigned in protest wrote in a letter to Mr. Bragg that his decision was “a grave failure of justice,” even if he feared that the district attorney’s office could lose.
At times, Mr. Biden cannot help but get drawn into the discourse over the Justice Department, despite his stated commitment to stay away.
In October, he told reporters that he thought those who defied subpoenas from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack should be prosecuted.
“I hope that the committee goes after them and holds them accountable criminally,” Mr. Biden said. When asked whether the Justice Department should prosecute them, he replied, “I do, yes.”
The president’s words prompted a swift statement from the agency: “The Department of Justice will make its own independent decisions in all prosecutions based solely on the facts and the law. Period. Full stop.”