FBI agents who participated in investigations related to President Donald Trump have sued over Justice Department efforts to develop a list of employees involved in those inquiries that they fear could be a precursor to mass firings. The class-action complaint, filed Tuesday in federal court in Washington, seeks an immediate halt to the Justice Development's plans to compile a list of investigators who participated in probes of the Jan 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol as well as Trump's hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The lawsuit notes that Trump on the campaign trail "repeatedly stated that he would personify the vengeance' or the retribution, for those whom he called "political hostages, for their actions during the Jan 6 attack. The agents contend the very act of compiling lists of persons who worked on matters that upset Donald Trump is retaliatory in nature, intended to intimidate FBI agents and other personnel and to discourage them from reporting any
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Trump administration officials are moving to fire FBI agents engaged in investigations involving President Donald Trump in the coming days, two people familiar with the plans said Friday. It was not clear how many agents might be affected, but officials acting at the direction of the administration were working to identify individual agents who could be terminated, said the people who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations. Among the politically explosive investigations involving Trump over the last four years are inquiries into his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his hoarding of classified documents, as well as hundreds of criminal cases against rioters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment, and an FBI spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment. The terminations would be a major blow to the historic independence of the nation's premier federal law ...
In a tense Senate hearing, Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel faced tough bipartisan scrutiny over their past statements, foreign policy stances, and ties to controversial figures
For years, conservative activist Ed Martin has promoted Donald Trump's false claims about a stolen 2020 election, railed against the prosecution of the rioters who stormed the US Capitol and represented some of them in court. Now he's leading the office that prosecuted the nearly 1,600 defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot before Trump now back in the White House ended the largest investigation in Justice Department history with the stroke of a pen. Martin's first week as the interim US attorney for the District of Columbia ushered in a dizzying sea change for the office's rank-and-file prosecutors. He oversaw the dismissals of hundreds of Jan. 6 cases and celebrated Trump's pardons for police officers and anti-abortion activists who had been prosecuted by attorneys in the office. And on Monday, Martin ordered an internal review of prosecutors' use of a felony charge brought against hundreds of Capitol rioters, directing employees to hand over files, emails and other ...
After Trump's speech urging a march to Congress with fraud claims, the Capitol riot occurred; he was charged with conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, but the case was dropped post-re-election
Trump's lawyers argued in the latest brief that he only had to clear a 'low bar' of showing that his actions after the 2020 election could be 'reasonably' understood as official conduct
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended his decision to pardon people who were charged and convicted of assaulting police officers during the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot, despite having run as an ally of law enforcement. "I am the friend of police, more than any president who's ever been in this office," he said. Trump told reporters at the White House that those he pardoned have already served years in prison, claiming murderers often aren't charged for their crimes. "We pardoned people who were treated unbelievably poorly," he said. Trump pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or vowed to dismiss the cases of all of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes connected to the riot on his first day back in office.
Donald Trump is ushering in a Golden Age for people that break the law and attempt to overthrow the government
President Donald Trump on Monday said he was pardoning about 1,500 of his supporters who have been charged in the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack, using his sweeping clemency powers on his first day back in office to dismantle the largest investigation and prosecution in Justice Department history. The pardons were expected after Trump's yearslong campaign to rewrite the history of the January 6 attack that left more than 100 police officers injured and threatened the peaceful transfer of power. Yet, the scope of the clemency still comes as a massive blow to the Justice Department's effort to hold participants accountable over what has been described as one of the darkest days in American history. Trump said he was also commuting the sentences of six defendants, though the White House did not immediately provide further details. Trump had suggested in the weeks leading up to his return to the White House that he was going to look at the January 6 defendants on a case-by-case ...
President Joe Biden on Monday pardoned Dr Anthony Fauci, retired Gen Mark Milley and members of the House committee that investigated the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol, using the extraordinary powers of his office in his final hours to guard against potential revenge by the incoming Trump administration. The decision by Biden comes after Donald Trump warned of an enemies list filled with those who have crossed him politically or sought to hold him accountable for his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss and his role in the storming of the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021. Trump has selected Cabinet nominees who backed his election lies and who have pledged to punish those involved in efforts to investigate him. The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offence, Biden said in a statement. Our nation owes these public servants a debt of ...
Pardoning rioters who stormed the US Capitol four years ago can't erase the truth about what happened that day, the top federal prosecutor for Washington, DC, said on Tuesday as he prepares to leave office. "There is no undoing these prosecutions," US Attorney Matthew Graves told AP. "The vindication of the rule of law is something that has already occurred. And no one can take that away." Graves helped lead the largest investigation in Justice Department history, overseeing hundreds of cases against rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. His successor, whoever that will be, may preside over an abrupt end to that work. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to pardon Capitol rioters when he returns to the White House next week, but Graves said pardons can't undo "the record that was built through these prosecutions and the accountability that has already been imposed". "There will always be a public record of what occurred on January 6, and people who care to know the
US Vice-President-elect JD Vance says people responsible for the violence during the Capitol riot "obviously" should not be pardoned, as President-elect Donald Trump is promising to use his clemency power on behalf of many of those who tried on January 6, 2021, to overturn the results of the election that Trump lost. Vance insisted in an interview on Fox News Sunday that the pardon question is "very simple", saying those who "protested peacefully" should be pardoned and "if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn't be pardoned". He later said there was a "bit of a grey area" in some cases. Trump said he would issue pardons to rioters on "Day 1" of his presidency, which begins January 20. "Most likely, I'll do it very quickly," he said recently on NBC's Meet the Press. He added that "those people have suffered long and hard. And there may be some exceptions to it. I have to look. But, you know, if somebody was radical, crazy". More than 1,500 people have been charge
President Joe Biden is decrying what he calls an unrelenting effort to downplay a mob of Donald Trump supporters overrunning the US Capitol in an attempt to block certification of the 2020 election seeking to contrast that day's chaos with what he promises will be an orderly transition returning Trump to power for a second term. In an opinion piece published Sunday in The Washington Post, Biden recalled Jan. 6, 2021, writing that violent insurrectionists attacked the Capitol. We should be proud that our democracy withstood this assault," Biden wrote. "And we should be glad we will not see such a shameful attack again this year. Congress will convene amid snow in Washington on Monday to certify Trump's victory in November's election in a session presided over by the candidate he defeated, Vice President Kamala Harris. No violence, or even procedural objections, are expected this time, marking a return to a US tradition that launches the peaceful transfer of presidential power. Tha
A harrowing chapter in American history remains shrouded in mystery: Who planted pipe bombs outside offices of the Democratic and Republican national committees in Washington on the eve of the attack on the Capitol? Hoping to generate new tips from the public, the FBI is releasing more information about its pipe bomb investigation, including an estimate that the unidentified suspect is about 5 feet 7 inches tall. The bureau also is posting previously unreleased video of the suspect placing one of the bombs. A host of basic questions remains unanswered four years later. For starters, investigators haven't determined if the suspect is a man or a woman. Nor have they established a clear link between the pipe bombs and the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump's supporters. The FBI can't work on assumptions," said David Sundberg, assistant director in charge of the bureau's Washington field office. Without being able to confirm the suspect's identity, it is very
Meta owns Facebook and Instagram, platforms that Trump used heavily during his first term until his accounts were suspended following the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol
Donald Trump was reelected as US President despite being a convicted felon awaiting sentencing in a New York hush money case and as he fights against prosecution in other US state and federal cases
Trump lost the 2020 election to Democratic President Joe Biden but falsely claimed victory. For weeks after his loss, he urged Congress not to certify the election result
A Kentucky man who was the first rioter to enter the US Capitol during a mob's attack on the building was sentenced on Tuesday to more than four years in prison. A police officer who tried to subdue Michael Sparks with pepper spray described him as a catalyst for the January 6 insurrection. The Senate that day recessed less than one minute after Sparks jumped into the building through a broken window. Sparks then joined other rioters in chasing a police officer up flights of stairs. Before learning his sentencing, Sparks told the judge that he still believes the 2020 presidential election was marred by fraud and completely taken from the American public." I am remorseful that what transpired that day didn't help anybody, Sparks said. I am remorseful that our country is in the state it's in. US District Judge Timothy Kelly, who sentenced Sparks to four years and five months, told him that there was nothing patriotic about his prominent role in what was a national disgrace. I don't
Special counsel Jack Smith filed a new indictment Tuesday against Donald Trump over his efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election that keeps the same criminal charges but narrows the allegations against him following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents. The new indictment removes a section of the indictment that had accused Trump of trying to use the law enforcement powers of the Justice Department to overturn his election loss, an area of conduct for which the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 opinion last month, said that Trump was absolutely immune from prosecution. The stripped-down criminal case represents a first effort by prosecutors to comply with a Supreme Court opinion likely to result in a significant revision of the allegations against Trump over his efforts to block the peaceful transfer of power. It was filed three days ahead of a deadline for prosecutors and defense lawyers to tell the judge in the case how they wanted to proceed in ..