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Ex-Trump ethics lawyer’s Jan. 6 Committee lawsuit dismissed

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 25 Jan 2025 14:08:54 +0000

Stefan Passantino appearing on The Tucker Carlson Show in November 2024 (YouTube).

A federal judge in Georgia has tossed out a lawsuit filed by a former Trump White House ethics lawyer accusing members of the House Committee to Investigate Jan. 6 of civil conspiracy and invasion of privacy in connection with their investigation into the attack on the Capitol.

U. S. District Judge Eleanor L. Ross on Wednesday granted the government’s request to dismiss the case brought by Stefan Passantino, who claimed that members of the Committee leaked transcripts of confidential interviews to CNN to “ensure maximum damage” was done to his “reputation and his existing and future legal, political, and business clients.”

Passantino was deputy White House counsel during the first Trump administration who went back to the private sector during the Biden administration and worked for the Trump-supporting political action committee, Save America Leadership. There, he represented several people who testified before the Jan. 6 Committee.

Passantino was the first lawyer to represent Cassidy Hutchinson, the former special assistant to President Trump and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, in her meetings with the Committee.

According to Passantino, then-Congresswoman Liz Cheney and Senior Investigative Counsel Dan George in May 2022 contacted Hutchinson without his knowledge and advised his client that he “would not be advancing her interests” because he “was being paid by a Trump-affiliated third-party,” which ultimately led to her seeking new counsel.

Hutchinson participated in several additional interviews and in December 2022, a CNN reporter contacted Passantino and said an unreleased transcript from one of Hutchinson’s interviews suggested he had counseled her “not to answer the Committee’s questions fully and honestly.”

Hutchinson testified that before her initial sessions with the Committee, Passantino would dangle potential jobs “in Trumpworld” and tell her she would be “taken care of.”

“I want to make this clear to you: Stefan never told me to lie,” she told the committee. “He specifically told me, ‘I don’t want you to perjure yourself, but ‘I don’t recall’ isn’t perjury. They don’t know what you can and can’t recall.””

CNN then published an article entitled “Trump’s former White House ethics lawyer told Cassidy Hutchinson to give misleading testimony to January 6 committee, sources say.”

Passantino claimed the interview transcripts contradicted CNN’s own story about him advising Hutchinson to be deceptive, but asserted the network went through with it anyway because it was given to them directly by the Committee.

He then filed a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), which allows injured plaintiffs to file tort lawsuits against the federal government in certain circumstances, typically when a government actor causes injury through negligence.

In dismissing his lawsuit, the court reasoned that Passantino’s claims of invasion of privacy and civil conspiracy arose out of alleged libel and slander, both of which are explicitly exempted from FTCA claims.

Essentially, because Passantino’s allegations are based on the Committee allegedly leaking false statements about him to the media, those allegedly false statements cannot form the basis of a valid claim under the FTCA’s Intentional Tort Exception (other exceptions include assault, battery, malicious prosecution, false arrest).

Ross summed up the reasoning as follows:

“At bottom, ‘all of the [Committee’s] allegedly tortious actions here are based on statements, representations, or imputations’ — actions that would form the basis of a claim barred by the libel/slander exception. And Passantino cannot point to any action by the Committee independent of these ‘statements, representations, or imputations’ upon which to base his claims. Passantino insists that this ‘suit is not based on the defamatory sting of the ensuing publication’ but rather ‘the publication of private information.’ But this assertion contradicts the whole of Passantino’s claims, which necessarily depend on the falsity of the information the Committee leaked to the media. Without that false information, Passantino cannot attribute any of the harm alleged in the Complaint to an act by the Committee.
Passantino calls his claims ‘invasion of privacy’ and ‘civil conspiracy,’ but in substance, he asserts a claim for defamation.

According to Ross, when the defamation claims from Passantino’s complaint are removed, the only remaining conduct alleged is that the Committee leaked information relating to his attorney-client relationship with Hutchinson. However, Passantino failed to clarify what that “private information” was, she wrote.

Ross further asserted that a subsequent report released by the House Committee on House Administration entitled “The Failures and Politization of the January 6th Select Committee” only “further undermined” Passantino’s claim by “showing that the private information about Passantino the Committee disclosed to the media and in a complaint to the D.C. Bar was, in fact, defamatory.”

“Passantino’s injury is ‘wholly attributable’ to the Committee’s defamatory statements — conduct expressly immunized by,” Ross wrote. “And no reading of the Complaint, even in a light most favorable to Passantino, supports Passantino’s argument that his claims are based upon ‘other independent government action.’”

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Ex-Trump adviser Peter Navarro must report to federal prison

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 06:57:46 +0000

FILE — Former Trump White House trade adviser Peter Navarro arrives at the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Federal Courthouse, in Washington, Aug. 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

Former Trump White House trade adviser Peter Navarro on Monday lost a last-ditch bid with the U.S. Supreme Court to stay out of prison while he appeals his contempt of Congress conviction.

Navarro will now have to report to a federal prison in Miami by Tuesday afternoon where he will serve a four-month sentence.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles emergency requests for Washington, D.C., federal cases, issued the terse, one-paragraph ruling in an atypical “in-chambers opinion” saying he found “no basis to disagree with” a prior appeals court ruling on the release issue.

“The Court of Appeals disposed of the proceeding on the ground that Navarro ‘forfeited’ any argument in this release proceeding challenging the District Court’s conclusion that ‘executive privilege was not invoked,”” Roberts explained.

Late last week, a panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia denied the defendant’s request — instead ordering him to surrender to federal lockup authorities by March 19.

Navarro’s emergency application cited “the unprecedented nature” of his conviction — arguments that Roberts did not even address.

“Dr. Navarro is the only former senior presidential advisor to be prosecuted for contempt of congress following an assertion of executive privilege by the president that advisor served,” the application reads. “To be clear, the District Court found that Dr. Navarro reasonably believed he was obligated to assert executive privilege on behalf of former President Donald Trump and there is no dispute that Dr. Navarro actually asserted executive privilege in response to the congressional subpoena he received.”

The House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol believed Navarro had information relevant to the probe on the events leading up to, during, and after the pro-Trump riots.

When Navarro was asked for such records by Congress, he did not comply voluntarily. When facing the threat of subpoena, he did not comply. When finally under subpoena, he also failed to comply.

An essayed executive privilege defense did not pan out when charges were eventually filed — for factual and procedural reasons. Trump never supplied Navarro or the court with evidence that he claimed executive privilege — or that Trump planned to claim executive privilege over what his former trade specialist might testify about.

And, instead of showing up to Congress to claim the privilege, Navarro more or less just ignored his subpoenas, a court determined.

In September 2023, he was found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress — following a daylong trial and four hours of deliberations.

More Law&Crime coverage: ‘Utmost importance’: Trump demands RICO judge allow immediate appeal of decision keeping Fani Willis on case

In January, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta sentenced the 74-year-old to four months in prison and a fine of $9,500 for his stonewalling.

In his Supreme Court application, Navarro said the judge did not allow him to present a full defense while allowing the state something like free rein.

From the stay request, at length (emphasis in original):

Moreover, the district court precluded Dr. Navarro from presenting any evidence in his defense explaining that even though he did in fact default on the congressional subpoena, he felt duty-bound to assert executive (the district court acknowledged that Dr. Navarro at the very least thought he had invoked), while simultaneously allowing the government to summarize its case to the jury as Dr. Navarro’s assertion of executive privilege unequivocally did not excuse him from complying with the subpoena and his failure to do so put him, “above the law.”

During the trial, the defense — reeling from pretrial rulings on the privilege — did not call any witnesses or present any evidence.

In Monday’s opinion, Roberts agreed with the appeals court that “Navarro forfeited” various arguments “in the release proceedings” on executive privilege but contrasted the pre-appeal release case with the defendant’s broader appeal on the merits.

Brandi Buchman contributed to this report.

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Ex-Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg admits to felony perjury

homesafetytechpros — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 18:32:36 +0000

Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump, Allen Weisselberg, Donald Trump, Jr. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)

The former longtime CFO of the Trump Organization, himself already convicted of a slew of financial crimes, has now admitted to perjuring himself as New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) undertook a massive civil fraud probe into former President Donald Trump’s business empire.

Allen Weisselberg appeared in New York Supreme Court to plead guilty to two felonies on Monday morning before Judge Laurie Peterson. Thereafter, the judge set sentencing for April 10.

In New York, first-degree perjury is committed when someone “swears falsely and when his false statement (a) consists of testimony, and (b) is material to the action, proceeding or matter in which it is made.” A class D nonviolent felony, first-degree perjury is punishable by up to 7 years in prison. But between Weisselberg’s decision to plead guilty, his age — 76 — and the reported five-month sentence recommended by prosecutors, the defendant does not appear to face a stiff punishment, as was the case when he was sentenced the first time around and released from Rikers Island early for good behavior.

The court docket reviewed by Law&Crime in the criminal case against Weisselberg lists the date of the two first-degree perjury offenses as July, 16, 2020, which is the first day of Weisselberg’s two-day initial sworn testimony in AG James’ investigation pursuant to a subpoena.

According to prosecutors’ criminal information in the case, however, the lies to which Weisselberg pleaded guilty were told on July 17, 2020, when the AG pressed him on whether he was “ever present” when Trump described the size of his Trump Tower triplex.

“No,” Weisselberg responded to that question.

Prosecutors in Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s (D) office said that, on the contrary, Weisselberg was “present” on Sept. 21, 2015 when Trump “stated to a Forbes reporter that the size of his triplex was 33,000 square feet,” overestimating the square footage by a factor of three.

Recall that, well before the civil fraud case led to a $364 million dollar penalty and then some, Trump attorneys in the former president’s civil fraud case incited the ire of Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron when they argued that calculating square footage was a “subjective process.”

“In opposition, defendants absurdly suggest that ‘the calculation of square footage is a subjective process that could lead to differing results or opinions based on the method employed to conduct the calculation,”” Engoron wrote, before adding: “A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud.”

Weisselberg was also asked if he “advised any financial institutions” that a 2015 statement of financial condition contained the triplex calculation “error.”

“Well, we didn’t find out about the error until the Forbes article came out,” he answered.

Prosecutors said that, again, that was not true.

“Whereas, in truth and in fact, as the defendant knew, that testimony was false, and the truth was that the defendant was informed that the triplex was 10,996 square feet—not 30,000 square feet—prior to the publication of the May 2017 Forbes article and before the finalization on March 10, 2017 of the 2016 SOFC, which valued the triplex based on the misstatement of 30,000 square feet,” prosecutors said.

Weisselberg’s defense attorney Seth Rosenberg, reached for comment by Law&Crime, said his client “looks forward to putting this situation behind him.”

Read Weisselberg’s criminal information here (h/t Adam Klasfeld).

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Fake citations in legal brief were generated by Google Bard AI program, says ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 13 Jan 2024 07:41:47 +0000

Legal Writing

Fake citations in legal brief were generated by Google Bard AI program, says ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 2, 2024, 10:08 am CST

Michael Cohen, who was once a lawyer for former President Donald Trump, exits the courtroom of Trump’s civil business fraud trial at the New York Supreme Court in New York in October. Photo by Yuki Iwamura/The Associated Press.

Former lawyer Michael Cohen has informed a federal judge that the nonexistent cases cited in a legal brief were generated by Google Bard, an artificial intelligence program.

Cohen, who was once a lawyer for former President Donald Trump, was under the impression that Google Bard was a “super-charged search engine,” rather than an AI program, said his lawyer E. Danya Perry, a lawyer with Perry Law, in a letter to the judge unsealed Friday.

Thinking that the cases that he found were real, Cohen provided them to the lawyer seeking an early end to his supervised release, David M. Schwartz, Cohen said in an affidavit submitted with Perry’s letter. Cohen, who is now disbarred, pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations and bank and tax fraud.

The New York Times, Reuters and Courthouse News Service are among the publications covering the declaration.

Cohen had used Google Bard in the past to “to successfully identify accurate information in other contexts before and did not appreciate its unreliability as a tool for legal research,” Perry said in her letter.

Schwartz included the citations in his brief without checking them because he was under the mistaken impression that Perry, who was representing Cohen in another matter, had provided them. Perry did give Cohen “very cursory notes on an early draft of the motion” that did not, at that time, include the fake citations. But she did not review future drafts of the motion, as Schwartz came to believe, she said in her letter to the judge.

Perry had represented Cohen in a separate case against Trump in New York state court. Perry sought to enter the supervised release case on Cohen’s behalf because she thought that government lawyers had mischaracterized Cohen’s testimony in the Trump case. In preparing a reply motion to the government filing, Perry discovered that the citations were fake and disclosed the problem to U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York.

The disclosure led Furman to issue an order to show cause why Schwartz should not be sanctioned. The judge has not yet ruled on the issue.

Perry said she did not intend to imply bad faith on Schwartz’s part. But, she added, “even a quick read of the nonexistent cases at issue here should have raised an eyebrow.”

One citation, for example, had a 2021 docket number, suggesting that the defendant had been indicted in 2021. But the defendant had purportedly served a 120-month sentence and been placed on supervised release, a decision said to be affirmed by a federal appeals court. That would be “a chronological impossibility,” Perry wrote.

AI has ensnared at least a dozen lawyers or litigants who used its case citations in legal filings, Eugene Volokh, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law, told the New York Times.

Chief Justice John Roberts focused on AI in his 2023 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary, report the National Law Journal and SCOTUSblog.

AI could be used in the future to help increase access to justice by providing answers to basic questions and directing litigants where to find templates and court forms, Roberts said. As the technology evolves, courts will have to consider its proper use in litigation, he wrote.

“Any use of AI requires caution and humility,” Roberts added.

He referred to a previous instance in which an AI “hallucination” produced citations to nonexistent cases, which were then included in a brief.

“Always a bad idea,” he observed.

“Lawyers who ‘doubled down’ and defended ChatGPT’s fake cases must pay $5K, judge says”

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