Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe is just one of many ongoing investigations into President Trump and his associates, and the biggest batch of related ones to watch are emerging from federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.
They have jurisdiction over the president’s political operation and businesses — subjects that aren’t protected by executive privilege, a tool Trump is considering invoking to block portions of Mueller’s report. From a PR perspective, Trump has been unable to run the same playbook on SDNY that he’s used to erode conservatives’ faith in Mueller, the former George W. Bush-appointed FBI director. Legal circles are also buzzing over whether SDNY might buck DOJ guidance and seek to indict a sitting president.
The threat was highlighted when SDNY prosecutors ordered officials from Trump’s inaugural committee to hand over donor and financial records. It was the latest aggressive move from an office that has launched investigations into the president’s company, former lawyer and campaign finance practices. New York prosecutors have even implicated Trump in a crime.
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... SDNY stands poised to carry on Mueller’s efforts whenever the special counsel’s office closes shop, and it’s likely to draw even more attention if freshly confirmed Attorney General William Barr — who now oversees the Russia probe as DOJ head — clamps down on the public release of Mueller’s findings.
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Mueller can take credit for spawning significant parts of SDNY’s work. The two DOJ units have shared staff, witnesses and leads, and SDNY has been well-positioned to pick up anything that is outside Mueller’s primary lane of investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
A Mueller referral to SDNY, for example, triggered an FBI raid on Michael Cohen's office and hotel room, according to Cohen’s former lawyer ...
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The New York federal prosecutors are far from finished. They’re still seeking interviews with Trump Organization executives, according to a source with knowledge of the probe. And Trump’s inaugural committee confirmed earlier this month that it had received a wide-ranging subpoena from SDNY for documents as part of a probe into how the group raised and doled out a record $107 million. Investigators are looking at everything from potential mail and wire fraud to illegal foreign contributions and money laundering.
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SDNY poses a potent threat because the office has accumulated a perfect storm of witnesses who have guided Trump throughout his career, from his businesses to his meteoric rise in presidential politics up through his inauguration to the White House.
The list of cooperators includes Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer; David Pecker, the CEO of the National Enquirer’s parent company who has admitted to working with Trump for years to kill incriminating media stories; and Rick Gates, who served as Trump campaign deputy and then de facto leader of the inaugural committee. Gates pleaded guilty in the Mueller probe to lying to the FBI last February but his sentencing has been delayed while he cooperates in “several ongoing investigations,” according to a filing last month from the special counsel’s office.
Then there’s Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer who is scheduled to begin serving a three-year prison sentence next month ...
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The president’s hand-selected SDNY head, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, has been recused from the Cohen probe, deferring to a pair of longtime federal prosecutors: Robert Khuzami and Audrey Strauss ...
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Trump's attack-Mueller playbook can’t be replicated in New York. For starters, the bounds of what SDNY is looking at don’t deal with Trump’s tenure in the White House, meaning any pushback on executive privilege grounds won’t fly. Trump’s lawyers have said they’ve resisted Mueller’s attempts to get the president to answer questions about potential obstruction of justice matters dealing with his time in the Oval Office. And they continue to signal the president’s team should be allowed to review the special counsel’s finished report to ensure it doesn’t violate the president’s rights.
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In a floor speech last week announcing his opposition to Barr’s confirmation, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned that any Trump pardons for people tied up in either the Mueller or SDNY investigation “would represent an abuse of power that would require a response by Congress.”
Barr said SDNY’s work stands on the other side of a red line that he wouldn’t let Trump cross. Pressed by Democratic senators during his confirmation hearing last month, the soon-to-be attorney general said he’d protest the removal of SDNY’s head if he thought the president had nefarious intentions.
“I would not stand by and allow a U.S. attorney to be fired for the purpose of stopping an investigation,” Barr said.
Trump can’t run the Mueller playbook on New York feds (Politico)