- Trump did force almost 50 US attorneys to resign from the Justice Department because, the claim was, he thinks maybe they are the leakers. But also one of those US attorneys, who had originally been asked to stay, the US attorney from New York, Preet Bharara, was involved in multiple investigations such as Trump, Russian money laundering through certain banks, Fox News and Tom Price, who Trump appointed as Health and Human Services Secretary, over his unethical stock trades. Preet Bharara refused to resign and made Trump fire him and that allowed him to stay an additional 24 hours so some people are speculating about what Preet Bharara did during that 24 hours such as perhaps he may have preserved some evidence. Trump is appointing one of his friends, the former head of Fox News Roger Ailes’ personal attorney, Marc Mukasey, as the New York US attorney.
On The Rachel Maddow Show Rachel Maddow notes that Donald Trump is looking at candidates from his own lawyer’s firm and Rudy Giuliani’s firm to fill prominent US attorney positions that would likely have jurisdiction over investigations into Trump and his associates.
Preet Bharara, the prominent former US attorney ousted by Trump, said that he reported to the Justice Department efforts by the president to “cultivate some kind of relationship” with him, describing phone calls from Trump that made him increasingly uncomfortable. In a television interview, Bharara said he reported one of the phone calls to the chief of staff for Attorney General Jeff Sessions because it made him uneasy. He said he was dismissed from the important prosecutor’s job in Manhattan only 22 hours after he finally refused to take a call from the president. The recollections add a new dimension to the intensifying debate over Trump’s firing of former FBI director James B. Comey, who was removed from his job after private conversations with Trump that he viewed as inappropriate. Comey testified before Congress that Trump told him he hoped the FBI would drop an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Trump has said Comey’s version of events is untrue. Bharara sat behind Comey throughout the explosive testimony, which led Democrats to suggest that Trump may have obstructed justice. Bharara told host George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” that Comey’s account “felt a little bit like deja vu.” “And I’m not the FBI director,” he said, “but I was the chief federal law enforcement officer in Manhattan with jurisdiction over a lot of things including, you know, business interests and other things in New York.” Here on The Rachel Maddow Show Senator Chuck Schumer, top Democrat in the Senate, talks with Rachel Maddow about possible explanations for why Donald Trump fired Preet Bharara after first telling him he could stay as US attorney. And Rachel Maddow relays a new report claiming that Donald Trump’s lawyer, Marc Kasowitz boasted of getting former US Attorney Preet Bharara fired by telling Donald Trump, “This guy is going to get you.”
Even though Trump managed to stop US Attorney Preet Bharara’s Russian money laundering (which is a crime) investigations by firing him, the Senate is following the money too and Trump can not stop the Senate by firing them. The Senate Intelligence Committee has requested information about Trump and his top aides from a financial intelligence unit in the Treasury Department, the agency, known as FinCEN, imposed a $10 million civil penalty on Trump Taj Mahal in 2015 for multiple violations of money laundering laws. The Senate Intelligence Committee wants to see any information relevant to its Russia investigation the Treasury agency has gathered, including evidence that might include possible money laundering. Also at issue: to what extent, if at all, people close to Vladimir Putin have invested in Trump’s real estate empire.
