Bribery-For-Pardon Scheme Involves An Unidentified Lawyer

CNN was first to report that the Justice Department is investigating a potential presidential pardon bribery scheme, court records reveal:

The Justice Department is investigating a potential crime related to funneling money to the White House or related political committee in exchange for a presidential pardon, according to court records unsealed Tuesday in federal court.

Note: The document is heavily redacted.

The case is the latest legal twist in the waning days of President Donald Trump’s administration after several of his top advisers have been convicted of federal criminal charges and as the possibility rises of Trump giving pardons to those who’ve been loyal to him.

The disclosure is in 20 pages of partially redacted documents made public by the DC District Court on Tuesday afternoon. The records show Chief Judge Beryl Howell’s review in August of a request from prosecutors to access documents obtained in a search as part of a bribery-for-pardon investigation.

The filings don’t reveal a timeline of the alleged scheme, or any names of people potentially involved, except that communications between people including at least one lawyer were seized from an office that was raided sometime before the end of this summer.

No one appears to have been publicly charged with a related crime to date.

CNN has previously reported that associates of the President are making appeals to him in the hopes of obtaining pardons before he leaves office. There is no indication that any of those associates are being investigated by DOJ in relation to Tuesday’s filing.

The New York Times also reported that Trump Has Discussed With Advisers Preemptive Pardons for His 3 Eldest Children and Giuliani, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Bloomberg previously reported that Giuliani is under federal investigation for possible campaign-finance violations, as well as a failure to register as a foreign agent. And Giuliani is the subject of a criminal investigation and a counterintelligence investigation for his dealings in Ukraine.

New York previously reported “Giuliani’s clients, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were indicted [last] October for hiding the source of a $325,000 donation to the super-PAC America First. Then came the arrest of California businessman Andrey Kukushkin, who worked with Parnas and Fruman to move $10,000 of foreign money into Nevada politics in order to help a Russian businessman obtain commercial marijuana licenses. And on October 16, David Correia was arrested for his alleged involvement in the Nevada scheme.”

And then there was Giuliani’s “October Surprise” Russian disinformation campaign against Hunter Biden. A tabloid got a trove of data on Hunter Biden from Rudy Giuliani. Now, the FBI is probing a possible disinformation campaign.

So we know that Giuliani is under multiple FBI investigations, and that he has apparently discussed a pardon with Donald Trump from the Times. While he appears to be a likely suspect, I’ll caution that we don’t know for certain that this court document has anything to do with him or his Ukraine cronies. It’s possible that this is an entirely unrelated investigation. Still not looking good for Rudy.

CNN continues:

A Justice Department official told CNN that “no government official was or is currently a subject or target of the investigation disclosed in this filing.”

It is DOJ policy to “neither confirm nor deny” the existence of a criminal investigation, so there’s that.

According to the court records, at the end of this summer, a filter team, used to make sure prosecutors don’t receive tainted evidence that should have been kept from them because it was privileged, had more than 50 digital devices including iPhones, iPads, laptops, thumb drives and computer drives after investigators raided the unidentified offices.

Prosecutors told the court they wanted permission to the filter team’s holdings. The prosecutors believed the devices revealed emails that showed allegedly criminal activity, including a “secret lobbying scheme” and a bribery conspiracy that offered “a substantial political contribution in exchange for a presidential pardon or reprieve of sentence” for a convicted defendant whose name is redacted, according to the redacted documents.

Communications between attorneys and clients are typically privileged and kept from prosecutors as they build their cases, but in this situation, Howell allowed the prosecutors access. Attorney-client communications are not protected as privileged under the law when there is discussion of a crime, among other exceptions.

This is the Crime-Fraud Exception to the Attorney-Client Privilege.

“The political strategy to obtain a presidential pardon was ‘parallel’ to and distinct from [redacted]’s role as an attorney-advocate for [redacted name],” Howell wrote in her court order.

This intriguing passage, if unredacted, would reveal the scheme and the parties.

Just to be clear, there is only one person who has the power to grant a pardon or clemency, and that is the president. He is a necessary party to any bribery-for-pardon scheme. Although it is possible that this scheme only reached as far as the White House counsel’s office, and we don’t know whether the scheme was rejected.

The grand jury investigation also appears to relate to unnamed people acting as unregistered “lobbyists to senior White House officials” as they sought to secure a pardon and use an intermediary to send a bribe, the unsealed court records say.

Well, this would seem to fit what we know about Rudy Giuliani, but I’ll caution again, we don’t know for certain that this court document has anything to do with him or his Ukraine cronies. It’s possible that this is an entirely unrelated investigation. Still not looking good for Rudy.

Prosecutors hadn’t provided evidence to the judge, however, of any direct payment, and instead showed evidence that a person was seeking clemency because of past and future political contributions.

The investigators indicated in court that they intended to “confront” three people with the communications and complete their investigation.

Over the last week, the Justice Department told Howell it wanted to keep filings related to the matter confidential in court, because “individuals and conduct” hadn’t yet been charged.

As the Times reports:

In July, the president commuted the sentence of his longtime adviser Roger J. Stone Jr., who had refused to cooperate with the special counsel’s investigators and was eventually convicted of seven felonies.

Last week, Mr. Trump pardoned his former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, who had backed out of his cooperation agreement with the special counsel’s office for “any and all possible offenses” beyond the charge he had faced of lying to federal investigators.

* * *

Mr. Giuliani has expressed concern that any federal investigations of his conduct that appear to have been dormant under the Trump administration could be revived in a Biden administration, according to people who have spoken to him.

Legal experts say that if Mr. Trump wants to fully protect Mr. Giuliani from prosecution after he leaves office, the president would most likely have to detail in the language of the pardon what crimes he believed Mr. Giuliani had committed.

The Supreme Court has ruled that a pardon carries with it an imputation of guilt, and acceptance carries a confession. Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79 (1915).

I am sure numerous reporters are tracking down this developing story. If and when the grand jury issues an indictment and charges are filed, there will be a DOJ announcement.