BREAKING: AG Garland names special counsel to oversee DOJ's criminal investigation into the alleged unlawful retention of national defense information at former Pres. Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.
Federal agents believe there is enough evidence to criminally charge Hunter Biden with tax crimes and with lying about his drug use when he bought a handgun in 2018, the Washington Post and CBS News have reported.
But the US attorney in Delaware, who is overseeing the investigation of the president’s son, has not yet decided whether to file criminal charges in the case, the Post reported.
The Monday search of Trump’s home by FBI agents has caused a political furor, with Trump and many of his Republican defenders accusing the FBI of acting out of politically motivated malice. Some have threatened the agency on social media.
It was Garland’s first public appearance or comment since agents executed the warrant at Mar-a-Lago Club, taking about a dozen boxes of material after opening a safe and entering a padlocked storage area. The search was one of the most dramatic developments in a cascade of legal investigations of the former president, several of which appear to be growing in intensity.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed John L. "Jack" Smith as special counsel to oversee the entirety of the Justice Department's criminal investigation into the alleged unlawful retention of national defense information at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, as well as key aspects of its probe into the events of Jan 6.
Trump's announcement Tuesday that is running for president for a third time created a conflict of interest and triggered the appointment of a special counsel, according to the DOJ special counsel guidelines.
One former Justice Department official, who in the past oversaw investigations of leaks of classified information, said the type of top-secret information described by the people familiar with the probe would probably cause authorities to try to move as quickly as possible to recover sensitive documents that could cause grave harm to U.S. security.The first question is why, in an investigation that began in 2018, the Justice Department only now believes it could charge over false statements on a gun registration form and on tax evasion. Both crimes were well established years ago.Thegun charge is based on the fact that Hunter Biden reportedly answered “no” to a standard question about whether he was an “unlawful user of, or addicted to” a narcotic drug .
Now, after years of investigation, reports indicate that FBI agents are convinced ample evidence exists to charge the president’s son Hunter Biden on gun- and tax-related charges. Those charges (and a possible plea) may be the best-case scenario for the Bidens and many others in Washington.or any other controlled substance.MIAMI - A bombshell Washington Post report reveals that FBI agents who searched former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate last month found a document describing a foreign government's military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities.
The report did not identify the foreign government named in the document.
The Post's report highlights the concerns of U.S. intelligence officials about classified material that Trump kept in the home.
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EXCLUSIVE
FBI searched Trump’s home to look for nuclear documents and other items, sources say
The former president said on social media that he won’t oppose a Justice Dept. request to unseal the search warrant
By Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey, Perry Stein and Shane Harris
Updated August 12, 2022 at 2:50 p.m. EDT|Published August 11, 2022 at 2:16 p.m. EDT
Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke Aug. 11 about a search warrant executed at former president Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residence. (Video: The Washington Post)
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Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation
Experts in classified information said the unusual search underscores deep concern among government officials about the types of information they thought could be located at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and potentially in danger of falling into the wrong hands.
The people who described some of the material that agents were seeking spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. They did not offer additional details about what type of information the agents were seeking, including whether it involved weapons belonging to the United States or some other nation. Nor did they say if such documents were recovered as part of the search. A Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department and FBI declined to comment.
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Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday that he could not discuss the investigation. But in an unusual public statement at the Justice Department, he announced he had personally authorized the decision to seek court permission for a search warrant.
Garland spoke moments after Justice Department lawyers filed a motion seeking to unseal the search warrant in the case, noting that Trump had publicly revealed the search shortly after it happened.
It is important to look at the manner of what is being done, and not just the substance of what is being done,” Parker said. “And it’s just as important to depoliticizing the department to ensure that no one is above the law as it is to try to avoid prosecuting the president or someone from the opposite political party.”
But some lawyers questioned why the Justice Department and FBI would execute such a high-profile search on a former president’s residence over missing documents, even if some of them are classified (sitting presidents have broad powers to declassify documents, further complicating the situation).
Stanley Brand, a former House counsel who represents some of the Jan. 6 defendants and witnesses, said that search warrants don’t always yield any blockbuster or useful information. He called the FBI search of Trump’s property a huge escalation in the investigation of documents improperly taken to Mar-a-Lago. If investigators don’t recoup materials that showed that there were serious national consequences for the materials he potentially kept, Brand said, it could tarnish the Justice Department’s reputation.
