"Under Color Of"
Just the other day, Halperin, Spicer, and Turrentine pontificated at length over where Trump and Putin might meet to resolve the Ukraine war -- maybe it would be Geneva. Maybe it would be Iceland or Greenland. Two days later, it turns out to be Alaska. In other words, they could blather on about Trumpworld or Putinworld, know absolutely nothing, and get away with it for days. Why shoud anyone waste time watching them?
The various commentators enumerating the potential charges that might be brought against Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and others in Russiagate, mostly just perjury, are in the same class. I'm having more and more of a feeling that the major cases will have little or nothing to do with perjury, and people like Jonathan Turley will have been clueless.
Two cases that came up yesterday give what I think is a much better idea of which way the Justice Deparment is more likely to go. The first is a Massachusetts county sheriff:
Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins was arrested Friday after a federal grand jury indicted him for allegedly extorting a cannabis company seeking to open a dispensary in Boston.
Tompkins, 67, is accused of extorting $50,000 from an executive with the unnamed national cannabis retailer by leveraging a key partnership between his office and the dispensary. Federal prosecutors allege Tompkins first pressured the executive into selling him equity interest in the company, then into refunding his buy-in when share prices dipped.
Tompkins was arrested in Florida Friday morning on two counts of extortion under color of official right, U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley’s office said in a news release.
According to the Justice Department,
[T]he Hobbs Act (18 U.S.C. § 1951) defines extortion in terms of "the obtaining of property from another, with his consent . . . under color of official right." In fact, the under color of official right aspect of the Hobbs Act derives from the common law meaning of extortion.
. . . In order to show a violation of the Hobbs Act under this provision, the Supreme Court recently held that "the Government need only show that a public official has obtained a payment to which he was not entitled, knowing that the payment was made in return for official acts."
In the Massachusetts case, according to the first link,
According to court documents, the cannabis company in question sought to open a retail dispensary in Boston in 2019[.]
. . . The state’s Cannabis Control Commission approved the company’s license to operate a dispensary in Boston in March 2021. But while the licensing process was still underway, federal prosecutors allege Tompkins began pressuring the executive to sell him stock before the company went public. According to court documents, Tompkins specifically told the executive he “wanted to get in on the stock so [he] could make some cannabis money.”
When the executive rebuffed Tompkins, the sheriff allegedly upped the ante with a reminder that the company still needed his help for future license renewals. Purportedly fearing Tompkins would use his position to jeopardize the company’s partnership with the sheriff’s office and imperil both the dispensary license and the company’s initial public offering, the executive relented.
. . . When the value of his shares later decreased and his stake dipped below his initial investment, Tompkins allegedly demanded — and received — a full refund of $50,000.
The second, much closer to the lawfare against Trump, is a federal grand jury inmvestigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James:
The US attorney’s office for the Northern District of New York issued two subpoenas seeking information about James’ investigations into the Trump Organization and National Rifle Association, the sources said.
A grand jury investigation into James has also convened in Albany, New York, according to a source familiar. The grand jury probe into James is said to be looking into deprivation of rights, which means violating someone’s constitutional rights, against Trump.
According to the Justice Department,
Section 242 of Title 18 makes it a crime for a person acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States. For the purpose of Section 242, acts under "color of law" include acts not only done by federal, state, or local officials within their lawful authority, but also acts done beyond the bounds of that official's lawful authority, if the acts are done while the official is purporting to or pretending to act in the performance of his/her official duties.
Since the grand jury investigation is still under way, we don't know the precise acts Letitia James is alleged to have done to violate Trump's constitutional rights. If there's an indictment, we'll learn more. But it seems reasonable, as only a few people have suggested up to now, that the Mar-a-Lago search could also constitute a deprivation of Trump's Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure "under color of authority".Since this took place under Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, this could make them vulnerable to charges connected with an overall conspiracy to deprive Trump of his civil rights, which would have covered serveillance under the FISA court in 2016-17 as well.
I'm convinced that the Justice Department action in the Russiagate cases will be much wider-ranging than just the perjury charges commentators have envisioned, and if they cover actions during the Biden administration at all, they will have to involve figures like Garland and Wray, who aren't on current lists of the usual suspects. But if the federal grand jury investigating Russiagate is empaneled in Miami, which it appears to be, that means the Mar-a-Lago raid is within its scope and is going to be treated as an act in furtherance of the whole conspiracy.
I think indictments will come faster than the conventional wisdom currently thinks, and they'll involve more people than just Brennan, Clapper, and Comey.
