Attention to the Unseen

Ken White writes: Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn on Tuesday got an unpleasant lesson on the difference between politically effective arguments and legally astute ones. Backed by an array of well-wishers including President Trump, and buoyed by widespread conservative arguments that the FBI had violated his rights, Flynn walked into a federal courtroom in Washington hoping for the probationary sentence that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had recommended. Instead he was threatened with jail by a furious United States District…

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Timothy L. O’Brien writes: The Trump Foundation, a tiny New York outfit masquerading as a philanthropy but operating, essentially, as a personal piggy bank for the president of the United States, is no more. Barbara Underwood, the New York state attorney general, announced on Tuesday that her office and the foundation signed a stipulation agreeing to dissolve Donald Trump’s long-standing but chronically underfunded gesture toward charitable giving. Trump launched his foundation in 1988 as a vehicle, he claimed, for distributing…

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Politico reports: President Donald Trump’s use of the word “rat” to attack his former personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen is more evocative of a “mob boss” than a president, a Democratic senator said Monday. Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, painted Trump’s claims that the FBI “broke into” Cohen’s office earlier this year — the bureau had a warrant to do so — as a clear attempt to undermine law enforcement and mislead Americans about…

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Glenn Greenwald writes: A children’s speech pathologist who has worked for the last nine years with developmentally disabled, autistic, and speech-impaired elementary school students in Austin, Texas, has been told that she can no longer work with the public school district, after she refused to sign an oath vowing that she “does not” and “will not” engage in a boycott of Israel or “otherwise tak[e] any action that is intended to inflict economic harm” on that foreign nation. A lawsuit…

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Garrett M Graff writes: While popular memory today remembers Watergate as five DNC burglars leading inexorably to Richard Nixon’s resignation two years later, history recalls that the case and special prosecutor’s investigation at the time was much broader; ultimately 69 people were charged as part of the investigation, 48 of whom pleaded guilty or were found guilty at trial. After three weeks of back-to-back-to-back-to-back bombshells by federal prosecutors and special counsel Robert Mueller, it’s increasingly clear that as 2018 winds…

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The Washington Post reports: Two years after Donald Trump won the presidency, nearly every organization he has led in the past decade is under investigation. Trump’s private company is contending with civil suits digging into its business with foreign governments and with looming state inquiries into its tax practices. Trump’s 2016 campaign is under scrutiny by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, whose investigation into Russian interference has already led to guilty pleas by his campaign chairman and four advisers….

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George T. Conway III, Trevor Potter and Neal Katyal write: Last week, in their case against Michael Cohen, federal prosecutors in New York filed a sentencing brief concluding that, in committing the felony campaign-finance violations to which he pleaded guilty, Cohen had “acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1,” President Trump. And this week, prosecutors revealed that they had obtained an agreement from AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer, in which AMI admitted that it,…

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The New York Times reports: The latest revelations by prosecutors investigating President Trump and his team draw a portrait of a candidate who personally directed an illegal scheme to manipulate the 2016 election and whose advisers had more contact with Russia than Mr. Trump has ever acknowledged. In the narrative that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and New York prosecutors are building, Mr. Trump continued to secretly seek to do business in Russia deep into his presidential campaign…

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Benjamin Wittes writes: It is better to have an attorney general nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate in an undoubtedly legal fashion than to have an acting attorney general serving in circumstances of dubious legality. It is better to have an attorney general who is steeped in the traditions and culture of the Justice Department than to have an acting attorney general who is understood at the department to be operating as the “eyes and ears” of…

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Barry Berke, Noah Bookbinder and Norman Eisen write: On Friday, federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the special counsel, Robert Mueller, delivered a potentially devastating one-two punch against President Trump. Coming late in the day, they made for bracing end-of-the-week reading. Calling on the court to impose a sentence of substantial imprisonment against Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal attorney, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York stated that Mr. Trump, the Trump Organization and the campaign were all directly…

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Garrett M Graff writes: We are deep into the worst case scenarios. But as new sentencing memos for Trump associates Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen make all too clear, the only remaining question is how bad does the actual worst case scenario get? The potential innocent explanations for Donald Trump’s behavior over the last two years have been steadily stripped away, piece by piece. Special counsel Robert Mueller and investigative reporters have uncovered and assembled a picture of a presidential…

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The Washington Post reports: Late Friday, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York filed a document arguing that Michael Cohen, until last year President Trump’s personal attorney, should receive a substantial prison sentence for violations of federal law to which Cohen admitted guilt in August. The document went further than simply articulating the punishment the government believes Cohen should receive. It also fleshed out two of those charges in particular, related to violations of campaign finance laws…

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Mikhaila Fogel and Benjamin Wittes write: “Today is the first day I actually thought Donald Trump might not finish his term in office,” said the legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin on CNN last Thursday. “This is the beginning of the end for Trump,” declared Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general, on MSNBC. “The deal may be among the biggest news in the nearly 18-month investigation,” wrote Barry Berke, Noah Bookbinder, and Norman Eisen in The New York Times. It happens…

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Peter Zeidenberg writes: It appears that the Mueller investigation is reaching its endgame. After a two-month hiatus for the midterms, special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is prepared to once again show its work. These developments are ominous for President Donald Trump. In short order, expect to see a case of conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 election to be laid out in court. Defenders of the president have, despite the obvious progress of the Mueller investigation — more than 30…

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The Washington Post reports: President Trump took to Twitter Monday morning, haranguing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and witnesses to his ongoing Russia investigation. His tweets have become a common morning occurrence, particularly in recent weeks. But legal experts are calling Monday’s missives a newsworthy development that amounts to evidence of obstructing justice. Trump’s first statement went out after Michael Cohen, his former personal attorney who pleaded guilty last week for lying to Congress about the president’s real estate…

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