Judge agrees to delay Trump’s deposition in FBI case

[ad_1]

Washington — In the same Washington, DC, courthouse where the Justice Department is convening grand juries to investigate former President Donald Trump’s actions in the 2020 presidential election and his handling of classified documents, federal prosecutors in charge in a separate case were successful on Friday in their request to delay a Trump deposition scheduled for later this month in a four-year-old civil lawsuit filed by former FBI officials.

Former FBI counterintelligence officer Peter Strzok and one-time Bureau attorney Lisa Page are suing the Justice Department after they were both fired during the federal probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. During the course of the investigation, text message exchanges between the two revealed anti-Trump sentiments.

Strzok’s lawsuit claims he was unfairly fired for political reasons and seeks reinstatement at the FBI and back pay. Page argued that the text messages were unlawfully released and violated his privacy.

In a one-minute order issued Friday night, Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled in favor of the Justice Department’s request to fire FBI Director Christopher Wray before Strzok had a chance to question Trump.

Both Strzok and Page have moved to impeach multiple former and current government officials, and earlier this year, Jackson ruled that Strzok had the right to interview Trump and FWray. But according to an emergency filing Thursday, federal prosecutors said Trump’s deposition, which was supposed to take place on May 24, was scheduled before any such meeting was set for Wray. The Justice Department said this violates a long-standing standard that federal officials should be questioned in order of seniority.

“Contrary to the request of the United States, Mr. Strzok sought to impeach former President Trump in the presence of Director Wray,” prosecutors wrote Thursday, “thereby making it impossible to determine whether the Director’s impeachment could preclude the impeachment requirement the former President.”

They asked the judge to order a new schedule for depositions and threatened to take the issue to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals if he did not agree.

“The Solicitor General has authorized the government to petition the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit for a writ of mandamus regarding this Court’s determination that former President Trump may be impeached in this matter,” the Justice Department disclosed in the filing. . Writs of Mandamus are rare orders issued by higher courts that supersede the findings of lower court judges.

“For decades, the DC Circuit and virtually every other court of appeals has recognized that subjecting high-level government officials—to say nothing of current or former Presidents—’to oral depositions is does not normally count,'” prosecutors wrote in their redacted motion .

In his order Friday, Jackson wrote that “the parties have done nothing but dispute the order of the two depositions.”

“The government appears to be upset that the Court did not order the FBI Director to complete the deposition first, but it may recall that the Court’s view was that Director Wray, the only current high-ranking public official among the group of proposed deponents , whose continuing essential duties fell squarely under the protection of the doctrine in question,” Jackson wrote. “However, in order to get the parties — who still seem unable to agree on anything — to this impasse, it is hereby ORDERED that the deposition of Christopher Wray be continued first, whereupon the instant motion is moot.”

Attorneys for Strzok and Page’s legal team did not immediately respond to Jackson’s order when reached by CBS News.

Earlier this year, the White House said it would not assert executive privilege over Trump’s testimony and thereby protect him from the deposition, and federal prosecutors said the former president did not request the privilege.

Strzok and Page’s text messages and involvement in the Russia investigation drew Trump’s ire from the FBI during the Mueller investigation, which alleged anti-Trump views within the Justice Department at the time. An inspector general’s report found that while the behavior was “totally antithetical to the department’s core values,” there was no evidence that any bias ultimately changed the outcome of the investigation.

In his lawsuit, Strzok said “The FBI fired [him] because of his protected political speech in violation of his rights under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.” And Page asserted that the release of the text messages was illegal and led to him being the subject of “frequent attack the President of the United States, as well as his allies and supporters.”

The Justice Department asked Judge Jackson to respond to their request to block Trump’s testimony on Tuesday.

Trending News

[ad_2]