Just days ago, Rudy Giuliani <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rudy-giuliani-hospitalized-after-vehicle-struck-from-behind-at-high-speed?author=Tim+Pearce&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Rudy+Giuliani+Hospitalized+After+Vehicle+%E2%80%98Struck+From+Behind+At+High+Speed%E2%80%99">made headlines</a> for surviving a car accident after stopping on the side of a highway to help a woman reporting domestic violence.
This recent act of public service from &#8220;America’s Mayor&#8221; reflects a lifetime of public service, from taking down the Mafia in the Southern District of New York’s famed 1980s &#8220;Commission Trial,&#8221; to prosecuting high-profile terrorism cases that were tied to the first World Trade Center bombing in the 1990s with Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy.
Unfortunately, that history of fearless, nonpartisan justice stands in sharp contrast to the SDNY’s posture today, where partisan lawfare seems to dominate.
That’s why it’s so encouraging that a group of judges <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/08/18/us-news/judges-approve-trump-pick-jay-clayton-to-remain-interim-us-attorney-for-southern-district-of-new-york/">ruled</a> in late August that Trump appointee Jay Clayton can remain in place as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Clayton has the potential to restore the SDNY back to its former glory during the Giuliani years.
He is a longtime Republican who clerked for a Reagan-appointed judge and served as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission during the first Trump administration.
For far too long, the SDNY has seemed to specialize in partisan lawfare.
For example, SDNY Judge Lewis Kaplan presided over journalist E. Jean Carroll’s 2019 civil <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1226626397/trump-defamation-trial#:~:text=What%20this%20case%20is%20about,former%20president%20was%20also%20liable.">lawsuit</a> against Trump, which accused the sitting president of rape and defamation.
Carroll <a href="https://dailydodge.com/e-jean-carroll-testifying-in-civil-case-says-she-cant-recall-date-of-alleged-trump-attack/">couldn’t remember</a> what year the alleged assault took place, never mentioned it in her diary, and claimed that the numerous similarities between her account and a 2012 &#8220;Law and Order&#8221; episode were an “astonishing” coincidence.
But despite all these holes in Carroll’s story, the Left saw a chance to undermine Trump and leaped at it. Democrat billionaire megadonor Reid Hoffman <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2023/05/10/what-was-reid-hoffmans-role-in-funding-e-jean-carrolls-case/">funded</a> the entire lawsuit through his nonprofit American Future Republic, and it was anti-Trump commentator George Conway who <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usxxlZosnNs">urged</a> Carroll to sue in the first place.
Kaplan not only oversaw this farce but also put his thumb on the scale for Carroll. He <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-rape-case-lawyers-banned-from-speaking-about-dna-judge-rules-2023-3">ruled</a> male DNA found on Carroll’s dress inadmissible, even after Trump offered to provide a sample. He <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-fails-narrow-rape-accusers-case-trial-looms-2023-03-28/">admitted</a> additional defamation charges that punished Trump for defending himself on social media. He even <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23793781-tacopina-mistrial-filing/">interrupted</a> a line of questioning from Trump’s lawyer in a way that signaled clearly to the jury where his sympathies lay.
<div id="attachment_968215" style="width: 875px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-968215" class="size-large wp-image-968215" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/GettyImages-2173736897-865x576.jpg" alt="Jocelyn Strauber, commissioner of New York City's Department of Investigation, speaks during a new conference at the US Attorney's Office-Southern District of New York (SDNY) in New York, US, on Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. New York City Mayor Eric Adams was indicted on bribery and fraud charges following a federal corruption investigation, calling into question the political future of the man in charge of running the biggest US city. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images" width="865" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/GettyImages-2173736897-865x576.jpg 865w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/GettyImages-2173736897-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/GettyImages-2173736897-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/GettyImages-2173736897.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 865px) 100vw, 865px" />Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
The SDNY also conveniently <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/new-york-city-mayor-eric-adams-charged-bribery-and-campaign-finance-offenses">charged</a> New York City Mayor Eric Adams with bribery shortly after he started <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/15/nyregion/eric-adams-mexico-border-migrants.html">speaking out</a> against the Biden administration’s open border policies.
When the Trump administration ordered the charges dropped, multiple prosecutors <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/02/13/nx-s1-5297120/eric-adams-federal-prosecutors-resignations">resigned</a> in outrage after failing to make a single peep about the lawfare campaign against Trump.
These partisan prosecutions even extend to the realm of antitrust enforcement. 
 
The SDNY is currently <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/video/justice-department-sues-visa-monopolizing-debit-markets#:~:text=Description:%20Today%2C%20the%20Justice%20Department,developing%20new%20and%20innovative%20alternatives.&amp;text=Review%20the%20YouTube%20Terms%20of%20Service%20and%20the%20Google%20Privacy%20Policy%20.">playing host</a> to a Biden-era Justice Department lawsuit against Visa. Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland accused the company of driving up “the price of nearly everything” by monopolizing the debit transaction market.
In fact, it was Biden’s own inflationary policies that were driving up prices. Visa, which has a high market share because of its popularity but nothing close to a monopoly, just provided a handy scapegoat.
Meanwhile, the district always seems to drop the ball when it comes to getting actual justice for actual victims.
They <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/27/business/sam-bankman-fried-campaign-finance-charge.html#:~:text=Federal%20prosecutors%20pursuing%20the%20criminal,The%20authorities%20have%20said%20Mr.">failed</a> to charge crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried until his whole fraudulent empire was collapsing around him, even though the writing was on the wall long before the crash.
By that point, it was already too late. Bankman-Fried was the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-political-donations-2022/">largest single donor</a> to Democrats in the 2022 midterms, ploughing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/14/sbf-ftx-political-donations/">over $40 million</a> into PACs that helped Democrats keep the Senate and hold Republican gains in the House to historic lows.
Damian Williams, then the U.S. attorney for the SDNY, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/united-states-attorney-announces-charges-against-ftx-founder-samuel-bankman-fried#:~:text=BANKMAN%2DFRIED%20was%20arrested%20yesterday,fraud%2C%20plain%20and%20simple.%E2%80%9D">made it clear</a> that these donations from SBF and his cronies were funded with “stolen customer money.” The people SBF defrauded might get their money back, but voters have no such remedy. There’s no way to un-air the ads his ill-gotten gains bankrolled.
The sex trafficking case against rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs provides another example of the SDNY’s failure. Maurene Comey, the lead prosecutor on the case, botched it so badly that the Justice Department <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrxDE8izOUc">fired</a> her just weeks after the verdict came down.
Although Combs was <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/07/03/nx-s1-5454769/sean-combs-found-guilty-on-2-counts-but-acquitted-on-most-serious-charges">convicted</a> of prostitution offenses and faces up to 20 years in prison, the jury <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jury-reaches-verdict-sean-diddy-combs-sex-trafficking-trial-rcna214785">found</a> him not guilty on the more serious charges of sex trafficking and racketeering.
Incidentally, Comey also <a href="https://apnews.com/article/justice-department-james-comey-maurene-trump-dda5d1f40f08346bd97696ce4791e8ec">worked</a> on district’s prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. That case <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/ghislaine-maxwell-sentenced-20-years-prison-conspiring-jeffrey-epstein-sexually-abuse">ended</a> with a conviction and a 20-year prison sentence but left so many unanswered questions that it’s difficult to call it an unqualified win.
During her confirmation hearings, Attorney General Pam Bondi <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pam-bondi-senate-confirmation-hearing-attorney-general-nominee-planned-remarks/">promised</a> to end “partisan weaponization” and “restore confidence and integrity to the Department of Justice – and each of its components.”
The SDNY is a particularly dysfunctional component that’s been fouling the gears of our justice system for far too long.
By ending the disastrous tradition of “blue slips,” the administration can take a major step toward the restoration of truly impartial justice.
There is no better way to honor the now recovering “America’s Mayor” than by restoring one of his top legacies back to its former glory.
* * *
James Skyles is a legal policy analyst and the principal of Skyles Law Group. He has written for some of the largest legal publications in the United States, including Law.com and Law360.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

MixCollage-03-Sep-2025-10-30-AM-275

Giuliani’s DAs Tackled The Mob. Now The Same Office Targets Political Enemies.

Andrew McCarthy

Conservatives

Court

Democrats

E. Jean Carroll

Eric Adams

Leftists

New York

Rudy Giuliani

Sam Bankman-Fried

Sean 'Diddy' Combs

The following is an edited transcript of a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/trump-s-new-legal-peril-jack-smith-s-latest-move-9-2-24" target="_blank" rel="noopener">special Labor Day edition of Morning Wire</a>. Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley sat down with former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy to discuss what comes next for Donald Trump in lawsuits filed by Democrat prosecutors.
The &#8220;lawfare&#8221; effort against Donald Trump is not dead yet, as Special Counsel Jack Smith files a revised indictment and multiple appeals loom. While Democrats still hope to take down the former president, Team Trump says they’re confident that the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling has doomed the cases against him.
* * *
JOHN: Joining us now to discuss is former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy. So we’ve had some new developments in the “lawfare” effort against Donald Trump. Special prosecutor Jack Smith has revised and refiled charges against Donald Trump for election interference. Can you tell us what exactly we’ve just witnessed?
ANDY: Well, I think what we&#8217;ve witnessed is probably, from a prosecutor&#8217;s standpoint, the cleanest and most efficient way to deal with the Supreme Court&#8217;s opinion in the immunity case. Remember that when The Court decided the immunity decision on July 1, which held that the president has absolute immunity for core executive actions and, at the very least, presumptive immunity for everything he does within the ambit of his executive power, The Court basically directed the lower Court, which would be Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, to do a searching examination of the allegations in the indictment to sort out what allegations are based on or implicate official acts of the presidency and which ones don&#8217;t. Long story short, Smith was supposed to, by this coming Friday, make his submission about what he thought the case would look like going forward. And I think he decided rather than make a submission on Friday, he would simply supersede the indictment on Tuesday. And what he&#8217;s done in superseding the indictment is take out some of the allegations that can&#8217;t stand after the Supreme Court opinion. I should be clear, he hasn&#8217;t taken out any counts, like he hasn&#8217;t taken out any charges, but there are certain aspects of the evidence that can&#8217;t withstand the Supreme Court&#8217;s opinion and had to go, so he pared them down.
JOHN: And that&#8217;s because it relied on evidence connected to Trump&#8217;s official duties, is that correct?
ANDY: Not just his official duties, but his duties at the core of his article to constitutional executive power. What Chief justice Roberts said in the majority opinion was that that — Trump&#8217;s control over his subordinates in the executive branch exercising law enforcement authority, which is a plenary power of the executive branch — is something that Trump has absolute immunity for. So those allegations had to come out of the indictment.
<div id="attachment_788505" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-788505" class="size-large wp-image-788505" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/GettyImages-2168108886-864x576.jpg" alt="LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - AUGUST 23: Republican Presidential candidate, former U.S. president, Donald Trump speaks at II Toro E La Capra on August 23, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event focused on Trump’s proposed policy to eliminate taxes on tips for service industry employees." width="864" height="576" />Ian Maule/Getty Images</div>
JOHN: So where does that leave things now? What are the next steps for this case?
ANDY: The first thing that everybody is most concerned about, and I think rightly so, is — what&#8217;s the impact on the election? We&#8217;re seven weeks from the election where we&#8217;re going to have a new president on January 25. So I think this is really a big nothing. Because what people need to retain as they think about this is that the first thing that Judge Chutkan has to do, no matter when it&#8217;s done, is examine the superseding indictment to determine which allegations get immunity in which don&#8217;t. Whatever she decides about that. Immunity is one of the few issues in federal criminal law that a defendant is allowed to appeal pretrial. So whatever she decides, even if she leans in Jack Smith&#8217;s direction, Trump is going to be able to appeal that to the D.C. Circuit and then ultimately to the Supreme Court. So that issue has to be decided first, and then there are a slew of other issues that would have to be litigated before this case could get anywhere near being able to go to trial. So there&#8217;s no way that happens between now and the end of next January. So then we come to what happens after we have a new president. Obviously, if Trump wins the presidency, I imagine if he gets sworn in at 12:00, by 12:01 Jack Smith will be fired. And they&#8217;ll try at that point to dismiss the case. There may be some complications with that we can talk about. Obviously, it&#8217;s one approach if Trump wins, namely the case goes away or he does his best to make it go away. And then the other question is what happens if Harris wins? You would think, and I think this is probably right, that Harris will just retain Jack Smith and let him carry on and then, however long it takes to try the case or litigate these pre-trial issues, and then ultimately have a trial. He&#8217;ll be able to be back in business doing that. The alternative, which I think would be very sensible – but it would shock me, unfortunately, if Harris did that – would be for Harris to say, “Look this lawfare campaign has run its course. It hasn&#8217;t been good for the country. I&#8217;m supposed to be the candidate who&#8217;s making a pre-clean break from the past…” to the extent that she has appeal. It&#8217;s because she&#8217;s not Trump, she&#8217;s not Biden. And it would be a smart thing, I think, for her to say, “We&#8217;ve looked at the Supreme Court&#8217;s immunity decision, and it&#8217;s a very good decision for the executive branch. We don&#8217;t want to continue with a litigation against a 78-year-old former president that has the potential of cutting back on the executive branch&#8217;s immunity interests.” And if I were her, I would drop the case on that, for that reason — because let&#8217;s face it, the Democrats only ever brought this in order to have an impact on the election. Once the election&#8217;s over, does she really want this headache?
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/trump-s-new-legal-peril-jack-smith-s-latest-move-9-2-24" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LISTEN: Catch the full interview with Andy McCarthy on a special Labor Day edition of Morning Wire.</a></h4>
JOHN: I can imagine the blowback from her own party if she did something like that being very severe. Now the picture you&#8217;ve painted here is that there will be immediate appeals from Trump&#8217;s team. If it is allowed to move forward, the appeals process, does this end up in the hands of the Supreme Court again?
ANDY: Yeah, it&#8217;ll end up in the hands of the Supreme Court again. And I think a second issue will end up in the hands of the Supreme Court, which is the question of whether, Jack Smith has been properly appointed under the Constitution. So that&#8217;s another, issue that&#8217;s out there that&#8217;ll have to be resolved pre trial. And I, I think it&#8217;s important to make our listeners understand there&#8217;s a difference between, obviously, immunity and guilt. If the courts were to rule against Trump on at least some of the allegations in Smith&#8217;s indictment, that is to say that those allegations are based on private conduct, not official acts, and the indictment can go forward as a prosecution, that wouldn&#8217;t mean that Trump is guilty. He still has a lot of arguments to make, with respect to the legal validity of the charges that have been filed. And even if that, even if he prevails there, you still have to go to trial and Smith still has to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, including proving. Trump&#8217;s intent to commit fraud, which is, it may be harder to do than, than the prosecutor seems to think. So there&#8217;s a lot of rounds to be played here yet.
JOHN: You brought up a key issue, which is whether or not Special Counsel Jack Smith was actually appropriately appointed. Where does that stand now — and where do you see that going?
ANDY: Yeah. Well, it&#8217;s very interesting. So, the Florida case, the Mar-a-Lago documents case, was dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon in what I thought was a scholarly 93 page opinion. No matter whether you agree with her bottom line or not, it&#8217;s clear that she worked very hard on it and took it very seriously and did I&#8217;d say better than workman-like job on the opinion. But she has found that Smith was not qualified to be special counsel because to be, to wield the kind of power a special counsel has you have to have one of two conditions: Either you have to be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, which Smith was not, or you have to have a position that&#8217;s created by an act of Congress, a statute. Smith, instead, was appointed under Justice Department rules and regulations that were promulgated during the Clinton administration. He also claims that there are a slew of congressional statutes that uphold his appointment but when you parse them carefully, I really don&#8217;t think they do. More important than what I think, Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion in the recent immunity case, raised this very issue and went through those statutes and clearly doesn&#8217;t think that Smith is properly appointed. So, instead of doing what I think he should have done — this is Attorney General Garland — which is simply shift Smith, transfer him so that he&#8217;s under the supervision of the Biden appointed U.S. Attorney in South Florida. Then you make this whole issue under the appointments clause of the constitution go away and you could be up and running with that case again in five minutes. Rather than doing that, what he&#8217;s decided to do is appeal to the 11th Circuit, which I think is a peculiar choice because I think there&#8217;s a very good chance they&#8217;re going to lose in the 11th Circuit. In the meantime, the same issue is going to be raised in the Washington case in front of Judge Chutkan. I think in that case, she&#8217;s going to uphold Smith&#8217;s appointment because, regardless of whether she thinks Judge Cannon was right or wrong, Judge Cannon&#8217;s decision does not bind Judge Chutkan. Chutkan has to follow the law of the D.C. Circuit, and a few years back, the D.C. Circuit upheld a challenge on similar grounds to the status of Special Counsel Robert Mueller in connection with the Russia investigation. So, she&#8217;s going to uphold Smith&#8217;s appointment. I think the 11th Circuit, and I think the D.C. Circuit will uphold it as well, I think the 11th Circuit will agree with Judge Cannon that Smith is improperly appointed, which means that will land in the Supreme Court&#8217;s lap too, because when you have a dispute, In the circuits over,  an issue of this importance, the Supreme Court ultimately has to decide it.
<div id="attachment_788701" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-788701" class="size-large wp-image-788701" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/GettyImages-1480229648-864x576.jpg" alt="NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 04: (EDITOR'S NOTE: Alternate crop) Former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives for his arraignment at Manhattan Criminal Court on April 04, 2023 in New York City. With the indictment, Trump becomes the first former U.S. president in history to be charged with a criminal offense." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/GettyImages-1480229648-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/GettyImages-1480229648-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/GettyImages-1480229648-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/GettyImages-1480229648.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Credit: Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images.</div>
JOHN: Sounds like a big mess, and two conflicting, sort of paradoxical moments there. To put a button on the lawfare campaigns against Trump, we&#8217;ve got the Atlanta case, we&#8217;ve also got the hush money case that&#8217;s being appealed. Just in sort of summary fashion, where do we stand with those two cases?
ANDY: Well, the Atlanta case is a clown show. I mean, at the moment it&#8217;s in complete suspense because you&#8217;ll also have immunity litigation in that connection. But before you can even get to that, there&#8217;s a big litigation under state law regarding whether Fani Willis, the prosecutor, has to be disqualified from the case. The lower Court has already disqualified the prosecutor-boyfriend that was involved in the case. And that decision, I don&#8217;t think made a lot of sense because it seemed to me that you could make an argument that both of them should go or neither of them should go, but having one go and the other stay doesn&#8217;t make much sense to me. So the Georgia Court, the Appellate Court, is going to hear arguments in that case, but not until December. So we&#8217;re a long way even from deciding the disqualification issue, and then they&#8217;ll have to figure out all the immunity stuff. So I think that case isn&#8217;t going anywhere. And if Willis ultimately gets removed, it could get transferred to another prosecutor who decides to drop the whole thing, which would be the best outcome, I think. As far as the Manhattan case, Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on September 18 on the 34 counts on which he was convicted at trial during the spring. But that case has now been complicated by the immunity issue as well, because I think, quite recklessly, the prosecutors introduced during the trial evidence of Trump&#8217;s official acts. I think it was foolish of them to do that because they didn&#8217;t need that evidence to prove the charges in the case but they did it anyway, even though they knew the Supreme Court was considering this very issue. So the problem they have is that they have this evidence in the case and the Supreme Court has said that the immunity evidence shouldn&#8217;t have come into the case. Trump did object. So right now the schedule is Judge Juan Merchan is supposed to decide the immunity issue on his schedule on September 16 and then Trump is supposed to get sentenced September 18. But the problem Merchan has is Trump has a right to appeal the immunity ruling. So even if Merchan rules against him as everyone expects, he should be able to appeal that to the Appellate Courts in New York and ultimately to the Supreme Court. And even the District Attorney Alvin Bragg has conceded that Trump has appellate rights and therefore has suggested or agreed with Trump that the sentencing should be postponed. As we are speaking today, Judge Merchan has not yet postponed the sentence, but I think he really is going to have to.
JOHN: Yeah, one would think. Andy, thank you so much for talking with us.
ANDY: My pleasure.
JOHN: That was former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy and this has been a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/trump-s-new-legal-peril-jack-smith-s-latest-move-9-2-24" target="_blank" rel="noopener">special Labor Day edition of Morning Wire</a>.
***

US Special Counsel Jack Smith Statement

Andy McCarthy On Trump’s New Legal Peril And Jack Smith’s Next Move

2024 Election

Biden Administration

Donald Trump

Fani Willis

Jack Smith

Morning Wire

Readers Pass

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy, who led the successful 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and eleven others in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, <a href="https://grabien.com/story.php?id=472713&amp;utm_source=cliplist&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=cliplist20240514&amp;utm_content=story472713">commented</a> on the ongoing trial of former President Donald Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush money case.
The indictment, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, accuses Trump of falsifying internal records held by the Trump Organization to hide the intent of payments made to Michael Cohen, who paid off porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal so the stories of their alleged trysts with Trump would not become public in 2016. Cohen claims the Trump Organization reimbursed him along with bonuses; prosecutors contend that the money was falsely logged as legal expenses.
“They haven’t come close to proving that fraud has taken place,” McCarthy stated. “And it’s — they don’t just have to prove that fraud has taken place, they have to prove that it was fraud that included a specific intent to commit another crime, which we believe is a federal campaign finance crime. It’s astonishing that we don’t — we can’t say that with complete certainty, and that’s supposed to be spelled out in the indictment. But there’s not a scintilla of evidence that Trump was even thinking about federal campaign law, let alone that they conspired to violate it.”
“And I think it’s important to make this distinction: You can make an agreement, which as Jonathan just said, is a legal arrangement, to not disclose, or to try to bury politically embarrassing information; you can absolutely intend to do that,” he continued. “That doesn’t mean that you were even thinking about the federal campaign finance laws, much less willfully violating them beyond a reasonable doubt.  This is what Bragg has to prove here to at least get a conviction, at least as a matter of law. Whether they can sway the jury is another matter.”
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He then referred to Cohen&#8217;s testimony: “And the final thing I would say about this is you can put somebody who is even a convicted perjurer on the stand, but generally the agreement that a prosecutor makes to a jury in terms of the commitment that you make in the opening statement and the way you try the case, is that we’re not gonna ask you to convict on the basis of a perjurer’s testimony unless we can show you a document or other testimony or something that corroborates that witness on this disputed point.”
“They are asking this jury, they have to ask this jury, if they’re gonna convict on fraud, to accept this guy’s uncorroborated testimony despite his mountainous credibility problems. That is not something a prosecutor would ordinarily do, which is why I think the prosecutors in my old office, the Southern District of New York, decided not to pursue this case,” he concluded.

Former Federal Prosecutor Holds Briefing On Muslim Brotherhood

‘They Haven’t Come Close’: Andy McCarthy Says Prosecution In Trump Hush Money Case Cannot Prove Fraud

Alvin Bragg

Courts

Hush money

Politics

Stormy Daniels

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy dismissed the special counsel investigation into <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/hunter-biden" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hunter Biden</a> as a “sham” on Friday.
McCarthy, who led the prosecution of terrorists behind the 1993 World Trade Center attack, said Attorney General <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/merrick-garland" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Merrick Garland</a>’s decision to appoint <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/delaware" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Delaware</a> U.S. Attorney David Weiss as special counsel violated Justice Department (DOJ) guidelines. Weiss, as a top official in the DOJ, does not have the requisite independence from the U.S. government to credibly prosecute a case involving the president’s son, McCarthy said.
“This is a sham. There is no special counsel investigation, and there is no Biden investigation,” McCarthy said on Fox News on Friday. “What makes a special counsel special is that you’re a lawyer who’s brought in from outside the United States government – not just outside the Justice Department, outside the government.”
“This is the Biden Justice Department’s vehicle for maintaining control of an investigation that they are not pursuing. They’ve had the case for five years. They’ve never indicted it. They’re strategically allowing the statute of limitations to run to the point that the 2014 and 2015 conduct, which covers most of the $21 million that the congressional investigation report showed this week, that’s already time barred. And it’s time barred because David Weiss himself decided to let those charges die rather than bring an indictment,” McCarthy continued.
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Andrew McCarthy: &quot;This is a sham. There is no special counsel investigation, and there is no Biden investigation. This U.S. attorney is being appointed notwithstanding that he is a top official in the Biden Justice Department.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/gDsZIUNzWg">pic.twitter.com/gDsZIUNzWg</a>
&mdash; Chris Plante Show (@ChrisPlanteShow) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisPlanteShow/status/1690356746265751552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 12, 2023</a></blockquote>
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Garland announced Weiss’ appointment to special counsel on Friday, a shocking twist to a case that was stopped just short of a resolution last month when a judge questioned the terms of a plea deal that prosecutors acknowledged had no precedent. Garland said Weiss requested the designation last week, and the attorney general granted it because of the case’s “extraordinary circumstances.”
The special counsel appointment has raised skepticism among Republicans who have long called for a special counsel in the case. Biden’s defense team is also doubtful of the need for a special counsel.
Republicans do not trust Weiss, and they see his appointment as a possible attempt to shield the U.S. attorney from testifying to Congress about his investigation into Biden.
“This action by Biden’s DOJ cannot be used to obstruct congressional investigations or whitewash the Biden family corruption,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) <a href="https://twitter.com/speakermccarthy/status/1690049403824807939" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted</a> on X. “If Weiss negotiated the sweetheart deal that couldn’t get approved, how can he be trusted as a Special Counsel?”
Biden defense attorney Abbe Lowell appeared on CBS News over the weekend and said that after a five-year investigation, there is no chance Weiss uncovers evidence that has not already been considered.
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“If anything changes from his conclusion, which was two tax misdemeanors and a diverted gun charge, the question should be asked: What infected the process that was not the facts and the law?” Lowell said. Biden’s failed plea deal included two misdemeanor tax charges, as well as a felony gun charge that Biden would have the opportunity to expunge if he completed a diversion program.
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Hunter Biden&#39;s attorney Abbe Lowell says while U.S. attorney David Weiss has been appointed special counsel, &quot;he&#39;s the same person he&#39;s been for the last five years.&quot;
&quot;If anything changes from his conclusion&#8230;what infected the process that was not the facts and the law?&quot; <a href="https://t.co/uQANuFDdm2">pic.twitter.com/uQANuFDdm2</a>
&mdash; Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) <a href="https://twitter.com/FaceTheNation/status/1690758821000482818?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 13, 2023</a></blockquote>
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Hunter Biden

Andrew McCarthy Rips ‘Sham’ Hunter Biden Special Counsel: ‘Vehicle For Maintaining Control’

Andrew McCarthy Rips ‘Sham’ Hunter Biden Special Counsel

Crime

Delaware

Department of Justice

Merrick Garland

The historic arraignment of a former president of the United States and the current leading Republican presidential candidate took place last week, raising unprecedented political and legal questions. Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley sat down with former Federal Prosecutor Andrew McCarthy for an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/trump-s-legal-and-political-jeopardy-saturday-extra" target="_blank" rel="noopener">extra edition of Morning Wire</a> to address the most pressing of those questions. 
Bickley: Here to discuss the legal and political questions surrounding the Trump federal case is National Review Institute senior fellow and former Federal Prosecutor Andrew McCarthy. Andy, thanks for joining us.
McCarthy: Yeah, it&#8217;s my pleasure.
Bickley: First, let’s start with who is presiding over this case. There&#8217;s been some controversy about the judge handling this case.
McCarthy: I don&#8217;t think there should be any controversy about it other than it&#8217;s a media curiosity. It&#8217;s not at all unusual in ordinary litigation, but Judge Aileen Cannon, who has been randomly assigned the prosecution by the government against former President Trump, was also the judge who presided over his effort right after the Mar-a-Lago search in August of 2022 to get a special master to review the stuff that the government had seized for purposes of determining whether there was attorney-client privilege or executive privilege materials in it. She leaned heavily in his direction and made a determination that there should be a special master. The court of appeals reversed her decision, and that was the end of that. That&#8217;s the kind of thing that happens all the time in litigation. Obviously, her performance will be carefully scrutinized by people because she&#8217;s a Trump judge. On the other hand, I think Democrats would be offended by the notion that cases, for example, involving the January 6 defendants ought to be reassigned away from Obama judges or Biden judges, even though they&#8217;ve tried to make political hay out of that whole event. So I think we should just sit back and wait and watch and see how she performs. I also think it&#8217;s ironic under circumstances where the Biden Justice Department and its special counsel went out of its way to try to do this case in the District of Columbia, until they finally realized that that wasn&#8217;t practical — and therefore are as guilty of forum shopping as anybody can imagine. For them to be complaining about Judge Canon, I think is rich.
Bickley: From what we have heard so far from Trump’s team, what do we expect his attorneys’ approach to this case will be?
McCarthy: First, we have to find out who they&#8217;re going to be. He&#8217;s having some trouble. He needs local counsel in Miami, and the last I looked into it, that had not been locked in yet. But I do think that they have some cards to play, particularly if they want to drag this out. If special counsel Smith had really wanted to get this case to trial quickly, he would have charged it lean and mean and stayed with just the obstruction counts. Because he&#8217;s gotten into these Espionage Act counts, which I was frankly surprised there was much more of a description of them in the indictment than I expected, if he brought those charges. Usually the government says, because of national security considerations, we can&#8217;t even whisper what any of this stuff is about. They had a fairly detailed description of the general nature of these documents. But that invites the defense to make a big deal of these documents and say they need the jury to understand more about what&#8217;s in them in order to put the case in context. That raises the possibility of what&#8217;s known as the “Graymail situation” where, in a national security case involving classified information, what defendants always push for is more disclosure of the classified information — not because that information necessarily is exculpatory or will help them much, but because they know the government doesn&#8217;t want to reveal it. And as a result, it makes it more difficult to prosecute people because if the government fights it and the judge rules the government&#8217;s way, that sets up the potential argument that Trump&#8217;s due process rights and his ability to conduct his defense have been compromised. So, I expect there’s going to be a lot of litigation about that. It&#8217;ll be under what&#8217;s known as the Classified Information Procedures Act. Those issues — I had them when I prosecuted terrorism cases – are very time-consuming. So if the prosecution&#8217;s objective was to try to get this case moving quickly and done prior to the election, I think that&#8217;s going to be very difficult.
Bickley: So, you&#8217;re projecting that this is likely going to stretch beyond the election? 
McCarthy: Because of the way it&#8217;s been charged, yes. 
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/trump-s-legal-and-political-jeopardy-saturday-extra">LISTEN: Catch the full interview with Andrew McCarthy on Morning Wire.</a>
Bickley: Well, there&#8217;s been a lot of debate over the political arguments versus the legal arguments surrounding this case. From a legal perspective, is Trump in trouble? 
McCarthy: Yeah, he&#8217;s in big trouble. And I&#8217;m glad you make that distinction between the political arguments and the legal arguments, because they kind of meld in terms of what the best argument is in Trump&#8217;s favor — which is that the Hillary Clinton precedent argues against his being charged. But I think people will find that the selective prosecution argument works much better as political rhetoric and as a reason for the government to exercise its discretion not to bring charges. Once the prosecutor decides to bring charges anyway, it doesn&#8217;t have much legal heft because, to the extent Trump raises a motion to dismiss the case based on selective prosecution, the legal test that&#8217;s employed is not going to compare Trump to Hillary Clinton — it&#8217;s going to compare Trump to defendants generally charged with Espionage Act violations or obstruction. And he’s simply not going to be able to say that he&#8217;s uniquely been singled out because the government actually does prosecute other people for that. In fact, the real travesty is not that Donald Trump is being charged — it’s that Hillary Clinton wasn&#8217;t charged. And then the other thing about selective prosecution, which Trump will want to make “the point of the spear” of his defense, is it doesn&#8217;t really work well in a jury trial because the court is going to limit the amount of evidence that Trump would be permitted to put in regarding Hillary Clinton. And the jury will be told, at the end of the case, that the only issue for them is whether the government has proved Trump&#8217;s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and it&#8217;s not a defense if there&#8217;s somebody else who committed analogous crimes. So, the selective prosecution claim will continue to be very effective for Trump as political rhetoric as he makes his campaign, but the legal effectiveness of it is spent at this point. 
Bickley: What about the precedent here? Does this case open up the possibility of reviving Hillary Clinton&#8217;s classified documents case, and could it mean legal trouble for Biden in the future? 
McCarthy: Well, let&#8217;s start with Hillary Clinton. That case was dead at the time that the Obama administration exited, and the new Justice Department came in. And what I mean by that is not just that at this point in time, as we sit here in 2023, the statute of limitations has run on the major offenses in that case so they couldn&#8217;t be prosecuted. What I&#8217;m saying is that the way the Obama Justice Department investigated that case sabotaged the possibility of bringing it successfully. So, even by the time you got a Republican administration and a Republican Justice Department in, had they reviewed the case, they would have concluded that they couldn&#8217;t prosecute it. Not because she didn&#8217;t deserve to be prosecuted, but because the steps that the Obama people had taken — between giving people immunity who shouldn&#8217;t have had immunity and a variety of other things they did — made it basically impossible to bring the case. So that ship has sailed. And we&#8217;ll have to see what effect it has as precedent going forward. Obviously if it was applied as ironclad precedent, Trump wouldn&#8217;t be being charged. As far as Biden is concerned, I guess we&#8217;re going to see, aren&#8217;t we? It&#8217;s interesting, the reason the Biden prosecutor — and he is a Biden prosecutor —  Jack Smith, the special counsel, was brought in was really political, not legal. There was no conflict of interest reason that this case needed a special counsel. The Biden administration is trying to delude the country into thinking that Biden and the Biden Justice Department don&#8217;t have any input in the prosecution of Trump. But that&#8217;s ridiculous because the special counsel reports to the attorney general, and he exercises the power of the president. So they are involved in it, whether they want to own up to that or not. But the interesting thing about the way he&#8217;s approached the case is that he put the Espionage Act offenses front and center. This is at a time when there is a significant controversy regarding president Biden&#8217;s illegal retention of classified information, which is an offense in his case that evidently goes back decades to his time in the Senate. So I think what they&#8217;ve necessarily done here is really spotlighted Biden&#8217;s offenses in a way that invites Trump to hammer away at them every single day on the campaign trail. And it&#8217;s going to make it very difficult for the Biden Justice Department to make that case disappear, which I think they&#8217;d like to do.
Bickley: Final question — a pretty open one. Is there anything you think is not being emphasized enough in the national conversation regarding this case?
McCarthy: Let me put it this way: I&#8217;ve been asked many times, “Do you think that they can get this case to trial before the election, and what would be the impact of this case on the election?” It seems like every six weeks or so, another iteration of those kinds of questions comes up because Trump has these multiple litigations going. It would be hard enough if this was the only thing on his dance card. To imagine how this case gets to trial before next November with all the potential litigation, having a criminal case against a former president, he will have arguments to make, and it&#8217;s going to take time to litigate them. As I said before, there&#8217;s significant classified information issues, and the admissibility of them and relevance of them have to be litigated at the trial — and they&#8217;re not easy litigations because it&#8217;s classified information. If you imagine that this was the only case he had, this would be hard to schedule. But in the reality that we&#8217;re dealing with, next week or the week after he&#8217;s got to be back in federal court to argue whether the New York state case should be brought to the federal court. I think they&#8217;re going to lose that, but they&#8217;re going to have a big hearing at the end of the month. In August, he&#8217;s more than likely going to be indicted by the Fulton County prosecutor in Georgia in connection with the 2020 election. On October 3rd, he’s scheduled to go to trial in a massive civil fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. That case could go on for a few weeks, and there&#8217;s a lot of information that&#8217;s going to come out that&#8217;s going to have to be addressed. In December, they&#8217;re back in front of the New York judge in the Alvin Bragg case to the Manhattan district attorney&#8217;s case. That case has been scheduled for trial on March 25th, 2024, which is in the middle of the primaries, two weeks after Super Tuesday. And within all of that, you have to schedule this federal case. Smith is also investigating the January 6 riots in connection with Trump. I don&#8217;t think Trump is going to be charged in connection with that, but I do think that the special counsel was going to write a report that&#8217;s going to be dropped sometime during the 2024 campaign. There&#8217;s a lot going on here.
Bickley: There certainly is. Andy, thanks so much for talking with us. That was former Federal Prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, senior fellow at National Review.
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Listen to the full interview with Andrew McCarthy on <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/trump-s-legal-and-political-jeopardy-saturday-extra">Morning Wire</a>.

Former President Donald Trump Speaks At Trump National Golf Club Bedminster

Trump’s Legal And Political Jeopardy: An Interview With Former Federal Prosecutor Andrew McCarthy

Indictment

Joe Biden