00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosseol from Bloomberg Radio.
00:00:08
Speaker 2: On Friday, the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas threatening a criminal indictment related to my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June.
00:00:19
Speaker 3: In an unusual, forceful written in video statement released Sunday evening, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced an unprecedented move by the Trump administration the threat of a criminal indictment over Powell's congressional testimony in June on ongoing renovations of the Fed's headquarters. But Powell said the move should be seen in the broader context of the administration's threats and ongoing pressure.
00:00:49
Speaker 2: The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the present. This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions, or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.
00:01:12
Speaker 3: There was rare pushback from the Republicans over the criminal investigation. Senator Tom Tillis vowed to oppose any Trump nominees to the FED until the matter of the grand jury investigation into Powell is resolved, and other Republican senators also offered pushback on the investigation. Joining me is Elliott Stein Bloomberg Intelligence senior litigation analyst Elliott So this investigation is connected to his congressional testimony, tell us more about it.
00:01:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right. The FED has been undergoing renovations of its building for several years now, and Chairman Powell testified to Congress in June about those renovations because the Trump administration had been lobbying criticisms at at the chair and I think Republicans in Congress picked up on that as well. Although you know, the larger context, of course, is that the Trump administration and Trump himself have been very dissatisfied with Chairman Powell and his policy on interest rates. So that's sort of a broader context, which Chairman Powell alluded to in his video response last night. But yeah, the allegations that the subpoenas are based on are that Derman Powell lied to Congress in his testimony in June concerning the renovations, and the alleged cost overruns of those renovations.
00:02:34
Speaker 3: So it's about the renovations. Do we know exactly what they're claiming Powell lied about.
00:02:40
Speaker 4: Well, it relates to certain aspects of the renovation that have to do with like VIP dining rooms and the special elevators, and the type of marble that's being used, and the discrepancies between what are in the documents that were submitted to the relevant agencies several years ago versus what Powell testified about in June. And so, you know, more specifically, the accusations are that these details, you know, concerning the marble and the VIP dining room, et cetera, are you know, extravagant and too expensive. And even though those details were in the planning documents, when Powell was asked about them in his testimony, he seemed to suggest that those weren't exactly the types of material that was going to be used or the type of specifications that were going to be included in the project. So it's sort of those discrepancies that the administration was criticizing, and following his testimony to Congress in June, a congresswoman from Florida referred the matter to the Justice Department, you know, sort of along the lines of what the Trump administration had been criticizing.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosseol from Bloomberg Radio.
00:00:08
Speaker 2: On Friday, the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas threatening a criminal indictment related to my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June.
00:00:19
Speaker 3: In an unusual, forceful written in video statement released Sunday evening, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced an unprecedented move by the Trump administration the threat of a criminal indictment over Powell's congressional testimony in June on ongoing renovations of the Fed's headquarters. But Powell said the move should be seen in the broader context of the administration's threats and ongoing pressure.
00:00:49
Speaker 2: The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the present. This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions, or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.
00:01:12
Speaker 3: There was rare pushback from the Republicans over the criminal investigation. Senator Tom Tillis vowed to oppose any Trump nominees to the FED until the matter of the grand jury investigation into Powell is resolved, and other Republican senators also offered pushback on the investigation. Joining me is Elliott Stein Bloomberg Intelligence senior litigation analyst Elliott So this investigation is connected to his congressional testimony, tell us more about it.
00:01:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right. The FED has been undergoing renovations of its building for several years now, and Chairman Powell testified to Congress in June about those renovations because the Trump administration had been lobbying criticisms at at the chair and I think Republicans in Congress picked up on that as well. Although you know, the larger context, of course, is that the Trump administration and Trump himself have been very dissatisfied with Chairman Powell and his policy on interest rates. So that's sort of a broader context, which Chairman Powell alluded to in his video response last night. But yeah, the allegations that the subpoenas are based on are that Derman Powell lied to Congress in his testimony in June concerning the renovations, and the alleged cost overruns of those renovations.
00:02:34
Speaker 3: So it's about the renovations. Do we know exactly what they're claiming Powell lied about.
00:02:40
Speaker 4: Well, it relates to certain aspects of the renovation that have to do with like VIP dining rooms and the special elevators, and the type of marble that's being used, and the discrepancies between what are in the documents that were submitted to the relevant agencies several years ago versus what Powell testified about in June. And so, you know, more specifically, the accusations are that these details, you know, concerning the marble and the VIP dining room, et cetera, are you know, extravagant and too expensive. And even though those details were in the planning documents, when Powell was asked about them in his testimony, he seemed to suggest that those weren't exactly the types of material that was going to be used or the type of specifications that were going to be included in the project. So it's sort of those discrepancies that the administration was criticizing, and following his testimony to Congress in June, a congresswoman from Florida referred the matter to the Justice Department, you know, sort of along the lines of what the Trump administration had been criticizing.
00:03:58
Speaker 3: I mean, if everyone who had describedancies in their testimony before Congress was prosecuted, the Justice Department wouldn't have time for much else. These cases are not easy to prove. Where's the materiality and where's the intent?
00:04:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, in general, it's hard to prove criminal intent on a matter like this. It seems very unlikely that this is the type of thing that the chairman of the Federal Reserve would intentionally be lying about to Congress. It seems like there's reasonable explanations for the discrepancies, including what Powell has explained and what the Federal Reserve itself posted on its website in a FAQ after his testimony, and that is that the Federal Reserve is allowed to make modest modifications to what was in the planning documents. And so that's really what's happening here. And so there really isn't, you know, any material discrepancy between what Powell said and his testimony and what's in the planning documents. Certainly nothing that would rise to a criminal offense. And I think that's, you know, in part why you're seeing even Republican senators and congressman pushing back on the news of the subpoena, saying, you know, this is too much, and you know we value an independent FED and we want to see this issue resolved quickly. And Senator Tom Tillis in particular noted, and he's on the Senate Banking Committee, who will oversee the nominations and confirmations of whoever Trump names to replace Stephen Myron with the anticipation of that person becoming the Chair of the FED when Chairman Powell's term ends in May. We're seeing Senator Tillis saying, look, I'm going to be reluctant to push forward any nomination, certainly not going to confirm anyone until this investigation is resolved.
00:05:46
Speaker 3: With Tillis's and some other Republican senator's opposition, this could backfire on Trump. It could also backfire because it could give Powell motivation to stay on as if we had governor after his term as chair expires in May.
00:06:05
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:06:05
Speaker 4: No, I think that's exactly read. I think there's a number of unintended consequences that could backfire in the Trump administration.
00:06:10
Speaker 1: Here.
00:06:10
Speaker 4: You named a couple of them. One is the nomination process could be stalled. Another is, like you said, it could motivate Powell to stay on as a governor even after his term as chair ends. There's been a question about what he intends to do.
00:06:23
Speaker 1: You know.
00:06:24
Speaker 4: Traditionally chairs, you know, resigned from the board after their term as chair ends and they don't stay on as governor. But you know, in an effort to maintain FED independence, this may motivate him to stay on. And then don't forget next week on January twenty, first, we have argument in the Supreme Court in at LIASA. Cookcase. You know, the Supreme Court is not completely isolated from you know, news headlines, and they may see this as yet another effort to get rid of FED independence. And we've already seen comments from Justice Kavanaugh recently in the FTC Slaughter case suggesting that he was very concerned about FED independence. So to the extent the Supreme Court is already leaning towards the ruling in Lisa Cook's favor that would support FED independence and make it harder for the President to get rid of FED governors. This news, this subpoena may motivate the Supreme Court to write an opinion that actually makes it harder for the president to fire a Federal Reserve Board governor without you know, real cause.
00:07:27
Speaker 3: Has President Trump been attacking the independence of the FED since the beginning of his term? Is it something new?
00:07:37
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure this has been going on since his term started, maybe even before, where he's been criticizing Tarmn Powell. But I mean the broader context is, you know that one of the hallmarks of this administration has been, you know, this unitary executive theory, where the president aims to establish and maintain complete control over the executive brand. And you know, we see that in obviously many many respects, but in particular we've seen it with the firing of commissioners of independent agencies like the FTC, which I mentioned earlier, and the President has tried to extend that to the Federal Reserve. But the Supreme Court, you know, a couple times now, in particular in a ruling last May and then in the argument in the Slaughter case last month, has indicated that the FED is a little bit different. It's a plasi private entity. It's not like other federal agencies. And as a result, this theory of the unitary executive advance may only go so far.
00:08:33
Speaker 3: What also doesn't make much sense to me is if they start this investigation now and take it to a grand jury, and let's say a grand jury does return with it some kind of indictment. I mean, this would take years to prosecute and go through the appellate courts. Trump might be out of office before the case is over.
00:08:52
Speaker 4: That's exactly right. I mean I think the trial itself, you know, could move relatively quickly. Criminal cases move relatively quickly. But yeah, if there is an indictment, this is going to drag on past, certainly past May, which is when terror Powell's term as chairman ends. And so you know, to the extent Tom Tillis is serious about stalling the nomination and confirmation process of anybody who is named to replace Tairman Powell's chair you know, we could be in limbo.
00:09:24
Speaker 3: Whenever I hear about perjury cases, I always think about the Barry Bonds case, which had a lot of unique circumstances, but still it took seven years and his conviction was eventually reversed.
00:09:37
Speaker 4: You know, I always tell clients don't take the under and if you're betting in terms of how long a litigation takes.
00:09:44
Speaker 3: It almost always takes longer than you think. Thanks so much for joining me, Elliott. That's Bloomberg Intelligence Senior litigation analyst, Elliott Stein. I'm June Grass. When you're listening to Bloomberg, a jury has been listening to emotion testimony in the trial of a former Uvalde school's police officer accused of endangering dozens of students during the May twenty fourth, twenty twenty two attack at rob Elementary School.
00:10:14
Speaker 5: I yelled to the kids to get in the classrooms.
00:10:19
Speaker 2: The second grade teachers had opened their doors.
00:10:22
Speaker 1: To let us in.
00:10:24
Speaker 2: I went to the first classroom and I stood outside the door to make sure everybody had gone off the playgrom It.
00:10:33
Speaker 3: Was one of the worst school shootings in US history, leaving nineteen students and two teachers dead. Nearly four hundred federal, state, and local officers arrived at the school, but seventy minutes passed before a tactical team finally breached the room and killed the shooter. I kept asking the operator, where are the cops?
00:10:57
Speaker 4: Where are the cops?
00:10:59
Speaker 3: The defendant and Adrian Gonzalez was among the first officers to arrive on the scene, but prosecutors argue that he failed to stop or delay the gunman.
00:11:09
Speaker 6: He gets on the radio and says shots are fire. He's wearing black, he's in the parking part. He knows where he is. But Adrian Gonzalez remains.
00:11:24
Speaker 3: But the defense says Gonzalez is being scapegoated, arguing that he was one of the first officers to enter the school and that he evacuated children as police arrived.
00:11:35
Speaker 1: The monster who hurt those children, he's dead.
00:11:41
Speaker 3: My guest is trial attorney David Ring, a partner at Taylor and Ring. Dave tell us about the charges in the case.
00:11:48
Speaker 1: The defendant is a former police officer for the Uvaldi School District and he was one of the very first responders to this horrific scene of this school shooting. And he's being criminally charged with twenty nine counts felony counts of abandoning or endangering a child. And what is that about. The prosecution is basically claiming that officer Gonzalez failed to act when he came on the scene. He failed to do what he was trained to do. And the twenty nine counts are for these children that were killed or harmed in this horrific shooting.
00:12:30
Speaker 3: There were nearly four hundred officers from various agencies involved in some degree to the police response, and they waited more than seventy minutes before a tactical team finally reached the room and killed the shooter. Why is Gonzalez being charged and not any of the hundreds of others.
00:12:50
Speaker 1: The prosecution's theory as to why Officer Gonzales is being charged is because he was one of the first, if not the first, first officer on the scene, and the prosecution claims that Gonzalez had the opportunity to engage the gunman before he really got to fire off too many shots, and he failed to do so. They can't make that argument about many of the other officers because they obviously arrived later on the scene. The other important part of this prosecution is that the prosecution can argue that Officer Gonzalez had received active shooter training as part of his training as a police officer, and that he knew what he was supposed to do and yet disregarded that training and, according to the prosecution, did really nothing. That's why he's being charged. The other person, whose case has not started yet is the commanding officer, and it's similar counts and dangering children. But basically, the theory against him is that he failed to put in action all the things he was supposed to do to control this scene.
00:14:02
Speaker 3: So what is Gonzalez's basic defense so far?
00:14:06
Speaker 1: Gonzalez's defense is that he came onto the scene and he never saw the shooter. He did not know where the shooter was, never saw the shooter. You couldn't engage the shooter if you didn't know where he was. He also says he actually did things. He helped kids evacuate from the school from a different part of the building, and then at some point, he says, when other officers arrived, he was being fired upon, or at least there were bullets flying from some location that would put his life in danger if he tried to engage the shooter. So he's got several defenses to these criminal charges that, if believed by the jury, should exonerate him.
00:14:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just wondering how the jury weighs the effect of them the officers waiting seventy minutes, how that sort of weighs in here with his guilt.
00:14:58
Speaker 1: It's really difficult. Like you said, there are four hundred officers eventually at this scene, and really one of them is being singled out for not doing his job. This is a very very unique type of prosecution. You rarely see this type of prosecution of a police officer, and the reason it's unique. Most of the times when you see a criminal case involving a police officer, it's because they did something actively wrong. They used excessive force and shot and killed someone, or they used excessive violence to harm someone. They actually did something that was criminal. Here, the argument is he did nothing. It's an omission, not an act, and that is a very very difficult crime to prove against a police officer. There have only been a handful of these prosecutions accusing an officer of not doing something, and none of them have been successful.
00:15:56
Speaker 3: The evidence that the prosecution has been present photos of the scene and the damage left behind that the judge warned were gruesome and shocking. You have witness testimony from former teachers who were sheltered in classrooms, parents of children who lost their lives, forensic experts about weapons and ammunition. So the prosecution is showing this nightmare scenario, this devastating shooting, but so far it doesn't seem to be showing what the defendant dealer didn't do.
00:16:32
Speaker 1: Look, the prosecution is putting on a case that is they're laying out this horrific, horrific scene, tragedy, horrible photos. So when you hear what's what happened in the number of rounds that were fired by this gunman and all the things that he did, and testimony from the parents and teachers who survived, it's horrific. But so far, not a lot of evidence against Officer Gonzales. And there's been a very very crucial ruling because one of the key issues in this case is that a witness is going to have to place Officer Gonzalez on the south side of this school building early on, because that's where the shooter entered from. And if there's no one, no witnesses that can place him on the south side, then he's going to successfully argue I never saw the shooter. Well early in this trial, a teacher testified that she in fact saw Gonzalez on the south side of the building very very early on. The problem with that was that that was the very first time she had ever told anyone that she had told prosecutors years ago that she never saw officer Gonzalez anywhere, and so when she testified to that at trial, that made the defense bring a mistrial motion because they basically got sandbagged by that testimony. That was something the prosecution had to share with the defense because it is such crucial testimony. And the first time it ever came out was when she was on the witness stand. And so what did the judge do. He didn't grant a mistrial, but he struck this witness's testimony in its entirety. And what does that mean. That means like it never happened. And so she was one of the very few witnesses that would place Officer Gonzalez on the south side of the building. And now her testimony has been stricken. It's a major blow for the prosecution.
00:18:31
Speaker 3: The judge told the jury to disregard her testimony. That's sort of like unringing the bell. How do they disregard it?
00:18:41
Speaker 1: It's true, it is unringing the bell. But it happens in every trial where a judge says, you know, someone testified to something improperly or incorrectly, and I'm telling you you are to disregard it. If the jurors follow the law. When they're in deliberations, they are not allowed to discuss that testimony at all. Juris follow the law, and so they're going to be back in the jury room. They're going to say there wasn't a single witness who placed Officer in Gonzales on the south side of the building where the shooter was. And if someone says, well, this teacher did, they say, well, we can't consider that, so therefore there's no evidence of that. So that's how it plays out. And the other way it plays out is if he is convicted and it goes to the court of appeal, that will be a very significant issue.
00:19:25
Speaker 3: The way for us, the benefits and disadvantages of having him testify.
00:19:32
Speaker 1: It's going to be very interesting if Officer Gonzalez testifies. You know, the prose of him testifying is that he takes the witness stand and he can explain his actions to the jury. He can tell them I arrived on the scene, and I did this, and I did that, and I helped kids evacuate, and I didn't know where the shooter was. And I was never on the south side, and I never saw the shooter. I didn't know where he was. I didn't know where the bullets were coming from. And that's powerful testimony coming from him. And if he's a likable person, a sympathetic person, he gets to talk about his career in law enforcement, it makes it very difficult for a jury to convict him and put all the blame on him. So that's the pro for him taking the stand and testifying. I mean, obviously the downside is any time a criminal defendant takes the stand, they're open to cross examination and cross examination that the prosecution can really go after him on his training and his failure to follow his training and all the things we've discussed about what their theories are.
00:20:38
Speaker 3: Do you think the defense will try to present the picture that we discussed about all these officers waiting more than seventy minutes before they entered the building and what effect that had.
00:20:52
Speaker 1: I mean, that's obviously been part of the trial. But I also think that the defense is really going to hone in on because it is undisputed that officer Gonzalez was one of the first to the scene. So I think the defense will really focus in on one, he did not know where the shooter was. Two, he was not just sitting around doing nothing. He was helping children escape the school from a different location, and three bullets were flying. He didn't know where they were coming from. And if he tried to enter the school and tried to engage the shooter, not knowing where he was all by himself, he probably would have ended up killed.
00:21:35
Speaker 3: Is this the kind of case that usually is not prosecuted criminally but where we see civil actions for damages?
00:21:43
Speaker 1: Very very rare you see this type of case prosecuted criminally because, as we discuss, it's an O mission to act, and so you very very rarely see that on the civil side of things. I mean, not to get too deep into the weeds. The problem with that is that the law doesn't allow individuals to sue police officers of law enforcement for not doing a perfect job. Otherwise, every time there was a crime and the crime wasn't solved or the investigation wasn't done perfectly, there'd be a lawsuit against a police officer like, hey, you should have done this, you should have done that, And we a society don't want that. That's not efficient or effective, and so it'd be very difficult for a civil case to survive against officer Gonzalez.
00:22:34
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for joining me. Dave that's trial attorney David Ring of Tailor and Ring this is Bloomberg. A Trump appointed judge has ordered Lindsay Halligan to explain why she's continuing to call herself the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, even though another judge found in November that she'd been illegally appointed to the position. That November finding led to the dismissal of cases against former FBI Director James Comy and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Judge David Novak's order on Tuesday gave Halligan seven days to file a pleading that justifies why the court shouldn't strike her title from indictments and explain why her identification does not constitute a false or misleading statement. The order came in the case of a man indicted last month on charges of carjacking and attempted bank robbery. The judge noted that his order was on his own initiative, rather than in response to any motion by litigants in the case, and on a side note, the second highest ranking federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia was fired today after he reportedly refused to help lead the department's prosecution of Komy. My guest is constitutional law expert Harold Krant, a professor at the SHO Chicago Kent College of Law.
00:24:02
Speaker 5: Yes, so, Mintya Halligan has been deemed to be unlawfully appointed because the President hasn't followed Congress's diagram or activity in the Appointments Act, and so the President decided not to seek Senate confirmation for a number of posts. There have been five interim US attorneys who's been appointed by President Trump who's been found disqualified simply because the President has decided not to follow the statute and not to present the name of the candidate to the Senate for ratification. Now, in this case, after the judge has found her to be improperly appointed, she just decided to stay on pending appeal. So she made her own decision that it was okay for her to continue.
00:24:45
Speaker 3: Acting even though there was an orders.
00:24:47
Speaker 5: For founding that she had been disqualified. So another judge is contesting that, and basically they were saying, is you should have stepped away while the appeal was pending and to see if you could be reinstated or not.
00:25:00
Speaker 3: How unusual is it for a judge to issue an order like this on his or her own In other words, there was no defendant here asking him to issue this order.
00:25:10
Speaker 5: Well, what's interesting is that she has been seeking activities that can only be done by a US attorney, And so what the judge is saying, which is similar to what a judge that in New York in a different case. I'm sure we'll turn to in Letitia James case, you know, said is you have no authority to take this particular action, whether it's a tax action, it's indictment, or something else, because you're not the official US attorney, and therefore you may be making a false statement and subject to either a federal violation or to contempt a court because you are basically lying to the court by affirming that you have the authority to take the action that you did.
00:25:48
Speaker 3: He also alluded to the possibility that she could be disbarred from practicing in that jurisdiction.
00:25:54
Speaker 5: Yeah, because if she's making false statements to the court, that is a reason for disbarment, and the bar Association, if it's refer to case, we'll have to take that under its advisement.
00:26:04
Speaker 3: The judge Novak ordered that Halligan sign her response, and that sort of goes towards this growing trend of federal judges doubting whether the Justice Departments in court statements can be trusted. I mean, we had the judge in Chicago in the case over the use of the National Guard there accused the Trump administration of making false statements in court. The judges just don't know that they can believe what said.
00:26:35
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, obviously judge also looked at tape information at testimony basically found the testimony of the border patrol to be simply not credible in light of all the other evidences introduced. I'm afraid that's just said. The same thing in the Minnesota shooting is that there's going to be false statements that just are inconsistent with all the video footage about what really happened in that case.
00:26:58
Speaker 3: Turn to Letitia James for moment. What's happening there.
00:27:01
Speaker 5: Well, the President simply is using the Justice Department to try to fare it out wrongdoing against his political enemies. This is the oldest sort of trick of a kind of you know, autocratic ruler is using what he can to sort of take revenge upon individuals who he perceived has wronged him. Obviously, the Tisha James foiled that huge civil lawsuit against him as Attorney General of New York, and he first tried to get her on mortgage fraud that was thrown out, and now he's continuing an investigation. This investigation goes back to twenty eighteen and is inquiring whether or not she improperly used campaign funds to stiphen them off to her hairdresser, who evidently was helping her in the campaign. You know, who knows what happened in twenty eighteen, But for the Justice Department to get involved in something almost eight years ago is just written all over it.
00:27:54
Speaker 1: Just vengeance.
00:27:55
Speaker 5: They're just scouring the record to see how they can make life miserable for Letitia James. And so that's what's transpiring at the moment in her case.
00:28:04
Speaker 3: And that's a prosecutor in Northern New York.
00:28:07
Speaker 5: It's used to train John Starcne and in that case he's an interim. In that case, the court found that John Starcone, like Lindsay Halligan, like others, improperly stayed in office passed the time allotted to him under the vacancies Act and therefore is inappropriate and should not be involved in any kind of power that is required of a head prosecutor. In another case, she threw out his peanut for tax information that he signs, saying you're not legitimate. And therefore that is the fifth again fight between a acting you as attorney and the courts simply on the basis that they're not properly appointed to their jobs because the presidents refused to go before the Senate for no reason that I can understand.
00:28:55
Speaker 3: So there are several cases you mentioned. Judge in California ruled in October at the US Attorney there Bill as Sale couldn't serve as the acting US Attorney in Los Angeles, but allowed him to keep supervising the Federal Prosecutor's office, but without the acting US Attorney title. So why do that? Why not? You know, if you make a decision, enforce it.
00:29:19
Speaker 1: Well.
00:29:19
Speaker 5: I think the trick here is that there are certain things by statute that only a US Attorney or someone in that position can do, such as the tax returney that we discussed earlier. Courts can fudge it if they want to say, well, you can serve as a prosecutor and you could actually help in the office. You just can't take certain responsibilities that Congress has allocated only to the top official. So that's sort of a compromise that some courts have taken. You know, in each case there's a little bit of confusion, there's little pandemonium chaos in the offices. But again, all that has to be clarified is the president can submit the name to the Senate for ratification.
00:29:56
Speaker 3: And in the case of the new Jersey US attorney who Trump appointed his former personal attorney, Alina Habba, the Third Circuit, they are ruled that that was not legal and she resigned, But there's still no one in that position. I mean, all these instances, doesn't this open up prosecutions and you know, grand jury indictments to challenges by the defense. I mean, the Trump administration is preferring to keep these people in rather than to have solid prosecutions.
00:30:31
Speaker 5: It seems to me, Yeah, it's undermining the rule of the opposites. It's undermining potential prosecutions, and as far as I can see, for no reason other than stubbliness, and it's just not doing a favor to the criminal justice system.
00:30:46
Speaker 3: And on the other side of the Ledger sort of we have the Trump administration trying to get people out of their positions, and so, you know, it was revealed that subpoenas were issued to FED shared Jr. Own Powell. And I'm one wondering, you know, how much of this is because the Supreme Court has refused to draw a line about Trump firing people, and even the presidential Immunity decision gives him so much leeway that how much of this can be blamed on Supreme Court.
00:31:19
Speaker 5: I don't think entirely, because the Supreme Court twice at least in dicta have said that the FED is different, that they're going to sort of signaling that there's going to be a carve out for the FED to keep its independency. I think this is more sort of a petty vindictiveness on the part of the administration because your own pile hasn't count out to what the President wants him to do, so he's going to use the power of the office to sort of make life miserable for Powell. And you know it's silly, is his term as chair is up in within a matter of months. But nonetheless, the President is you know, sort of continuing to hound him through these subpoenas, and even some publican centers say, why are you doing this? This is going to upset the stability of our financial system.
00:32:00
Speaker 3: The Justice Department under Trump, in many instances, has struggled to get prosecutions off the ground, even at times having grand jury say no. And there's that old saying that we all know that a grand jury will and die to ham Sandwich, but apparently not. I'm wondering about the level the quality of prosecutors now at the Justice Department, whether it's you know, the quality or they're just afraid to do their to do what they have to do.
00:32:29
Speaker 1: No.
00:32:29
Speaker 5: Everybody who I think is witnessing what's happening to the justice part, I think there's been a huge hit on the quality and the talent and the attitude of people who are still there. And so if you put those factors together, you're not going to be as effective as a prosecutor. And because of that, you know, we're going to see sort of a hit to some of the criminal prosecution efforts by the Justice Department all around the country because again morale, lack of personnel, because of personal frictions, and because of the loss of faith in the court system. You put all that together, and you know this is going to be a heyday for defense players.
00:33:09
Speaker 3: Thanks so much, Hal. That's Professor Harold Krent of the Chicago Kent College of Law. And that's it for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law podcasts. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www dot bloomberg dot com, slash podcast Slash Law, and remember to tune into The Bloomberg Law Show every weeknight at ten pm Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg