[Law Crime]
Current and former FBI agents are asking the judge who barred former special counsel Jack Smith from speaking about his Mar-a-Lago report on President Donald Trump to clarify whether they can safely testify as part of the DOJ's "grand conspiracy" probe in Florida.
The motion to intervene, first reported by Politico, said that federal agents and analysts "participated in the investigation and prosecution of" Trump and the 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, which led to his indictment in the classified documents and conspiracy case.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon famously tossed out the indictment by finding that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel, deeming him little more than a "private citizen."
The Trump-appointed jurist went on to bury Volume II of Smith's report as a consequence of the dismissal, criticizing Smith for his "brazen" move to create the document in the first place.
After Cannon permanently blocked the DOJ and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi "or her successor(s)" from "releasing, sharing, or transmitting Volume II of the Final Report or any drafts of Volume II outside the Department of Justice" or "otherwise releasing, distributing, conveying, or sharing with anyone outside the Department of Justice any information or conclusions in Volume II or in drafts thereof," Smith was severely restricted in what he could say publicly about the classified documents case.
The intervenors, not wanting to be on the receiving end of a Cannon scolding for violating her injunction, asked for clarification on how the order applies to them in a grand jury subpoena context.
"Absent clarification, Clients cannot testify before the grand jury without risking violating terms of the Order. DOJ has reportedly taken the position that any disclosure of nonpublic information that may be contained in Volume Two would violate the Order, even if such disclosure was made in response to congressional inquiry, in response to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act, or during privileged communications with counsel," the filing said.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
