On April 4, 2023, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced the first criminal indictment of a former U.S. president in history. The historic indictment and statement of facts foregrounded the alleged effort to suppress information from reaching voters during the 2016 presidential election. At the center of the case is a catch and kill and “hush money” arrangement that former president Donald Trump, the head of the National Enquirer David Pecker, and the two men’s associates allegedly set up in the course of the presidential campaign to bury stories about Trump’s allegedly having had extramarital affairs (Manhattan DA Indictment Press Release). The DA claims that in making these hush money payments, Trump violated New York state’s law prohibiting the falsification of business records and did so in furtherance of other crimes, including federal campaign finance law, state election law, and tax laws.

The commencement of the trial is currently set for March 25, 2024. As the case continues to unfold, we have updated our original chronology of events to reflect the new information released by the DA’s office, Trump’s attorneys, and related congressional actions. 

We rely upon court filings, contemporaneous media reports, and extracts from a Pulitzer Prize-winning team’s account of the events, The Fixers. Key individuals include Trump’s former lawyer and personal “fixer,” Michael Cohen; the former Chairman and CEO of American Media Inc., David Pecker; the two women paid to remain silent, Stephanie Clifford (aka “Stormy Daniels”) and Karen McDougal. Many of the individuals involved have reportedly appeared before Bragg’s grand jury this year, as noted in the latter portion of the chronology. 

We will continue monitoring the Manhattan investigation as it unfolds and update this chronology accordingly.

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Beginning around 2004: Former American Media Inc. (“AMI”) employees claim that the company and its publications routinely turned away stories and tips that could paint Donald Trump in a bad light. AMI CEO David Pecker had a strong friendship with Trump throughout this period, attending Trump’s wedding to Melania in 2005 (AP; The Wall Street Journal; The New Yorker; see also Michael Cohen congressional testimony, “these catch and kill scenarios existed between David Pecker and Mr. Trump long before I started  working for him in 2007”).  

2005: While in conversation with Billy Bush, an anchor at the time for Access Hollywood, Trump identified a “young woman through a bus window” and began making lewd, sexually aggressive remarks. Bush recorded Trump’s comments on a hot mic: “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women — I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything… Grab ’em by the pussy” (NBC News). 

June 2006: Karen McDougal met Trump while The Celebrity Apprentice was being filmed at the Playboy mansion. McDougal had been hired to work as an extra at a pool party scene. At the end of the night, Trump reportedly asked McDougal for her phone number. They talked “right away on the phone… for about a week before [Trump’s] next visit to [Los Angeles]” (CNN; The New Yorker).  

June 12, 2006: According to McDougal, she and Trump went on their first “date” at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. McDougal claims that Trump’s bodyguard brought her to a bungalow in the back of the hotel, where she and Trump were “intimate.” Trump reportedly tried to pay McDougal afterward. By McDougal’s account, she and Trump then began an extended affair, meeting up in Los Angeles, Lake Tahoe, and even his New York apartment in Trump Tower (NPR; POLITICO). 

July 2006: Stephanie Clifford (aka “Stormy Daniels”) met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. Clifford claims that the two had sex in Trump’s hotel room. At dinner, Trump reportedly told Clifford that he could “make [her appearing on The Apprentice] happen” (CBS; The Fixers, p. 72).  

• McDougal claims that she also attended the Lake Tahoe golf tournament and had sex with Trump (The New Yorker). 

2007: Michael Cohen entered into employment as “an attorney and employee of a Manhattan-based real estate company,” the Trump Organization, under the titles “Executive Vice President” and “Special Counsel” to Trump (Cohen Criminal Information, p. 1). 

January 2007: According to McDougal, she attended a launch party for Trump Vodka in Los Angeles and sat at a table with “Kim Kardashian, Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Trump, Jr.’s wife, Vanessa, who was pregnant.” At another point (no date specified in source), McDougal claims she worked as a costumed Playboy bunny at a party hosted by Trump and took pictures together with him and his family (The New Yorker). 

April 2007: After nine months, McDougal reportedly ended her relationship with Trump. A friend of McDougal’s later claimed that “the breakup was prompted in part by McDougal’s feelings of guilt” (The New Yorker). 

Throughout 2007: According to a lawsuit Clifford filed against Trump in March 2018, their “intimate relationship” lasted “well into the year 2007” and “‘included, among other things, at least one ‘meeting’ with Mr. Trump’ at the Beverly Hills Hotel” (The Washington Post). 

July 2007: Trump asked Clifford to meet with him “privately at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles.” Clifford later claimed that “they did not have sex, but he wanted to” (PBS). 

August 2007: Trump reportedly called Clifford to tell her that he “[was not] able to get her a spot” on The Apprentice. According to Clifford, they did not meet again (PBS). 

2009 or 2010: Clifford and Trump had their last conversation, by Clifford’s account. According to Clifford, Trump called her after she appeared on television “and was like, ‘Hey, I just saw you on CNN’ or Fox or something… ‘You looked great. I love how you give it to ‘em’” (The Washington Post). 

May 2011: Clifford “agreed to tell her story to a sister publication of In Touch magazine [Life & Style] for $15,000.” At the magazine’s request, she and other witnesses reportedly took and passed polygraph exams about her alleged affair with Trump. Two employees of the magazine at the time later claimed that “the story never ran because after the magazine called Mr. Trump seeking comment, his attorney Michael Cohen threatened to sue.” Clifford has also claimed that she was never paid (60 Minutes; The Fixers, p. 121). 

May 2011: Weeks after the In Touch story was squashed, Clifford alleges she “was threatened by a man who approached her in Las Vegas.” Clifford claims that the man came up to her and said, “Leave Trump alone. Forget the story,” before looking at her daughter and saying, “That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom” (60 Minutes; CBS).  

October 2011: TheDirty.com, a gossip site, published rumors about an extramarital affair between Clifford and Trump in July 2006 (Cohen Warrant, p. 39).

October 11, 2011: Clifford’s attorney, Keith Davidson, “sent a cease and desist letter to TheDirty.com” and demanded that the site remove the article about Trump and Clifford (Cohen Warrant, p. 39).

October 12, 2011: Cohen denied the rumors about Trump and Clifford’s affair. He stated to E! News that, “[t]he totally untrue and ridiculous story… emanated from a sleazy and disgusting website… The Trump Organization and Donald J. Trump will be bringing a lawsuit… Trump and the Trump Organization would like to thank and commend Stormy Daniels and her attorneys for their honest and swift actions” (Cohen Warrant, p. 39).

March 18, 2015: Trump announced plans to form a presidential exploratory committee in advance of the 2016 election (POLITICO). 

June 16, 2015: Trump announced his bid for the presidency at his New York tower. At this time, Cohen “continued to work at the Company [the Trump Organization] and did not have a formal title with the campaign.” However, Cohen still “had a campaign email address and, at various times, advised the campaign, including on matters of interest to the press, and made televised and media appearances on behalf of the campaign” (The Guardian; Cohen Criminal Information, pp. 11-12).

In August 2015:  In a meeting reportedly arranged by Cohen, Trump met with Pecker and Cohen at Trump Tower in Manhattan (Trump has been identified in previous federal court filings as “at least one other member of the campaign” and as “Individual-1”). Pecker offered to “help with [Trump’s] campaign, saying that he would act as the ‘eyes and ears’ for the campaign by looking out for negative stories about [Trump] and alerting [Cohen] before the stories were published.” This early warning system was designed to “[assist] the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.” During the meeting, Pecker also committed “to publish negative stories about [Trump’s] competitors for the election.” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, p. 3; AMI Non-Prosecution Agreement, p. 4; Cohen Criminal Information, p. 12; Cohen Sentencing Memo, p. 12; The Fixers, pp. ix-xi, 317; The Wall Street Journal; CNN). The Enquirer ultimately published, during the primary season alone, “more than sixty stories attacking [Trump’s] opponents, the Clintons most of all, followed by Cruz” (The Fixers, p. 161). National Enquirer executives also allegedly shared pre-publication copies of articles and cover images related to Trump and his political opponents with Cohen throughout the campaign (The Washington Post).

In or about October or November 2015: Pecker “learned that a former Trump Tower doorman [Dino Sajudin]…was trying to sell information regarding a child that [Trump] had allegedly fathered out of wedlock.” Pecker subsequently directed AMI to negotiate and sign “an agreement to pay [Sajudin] $30,000 to acquire exclusive rights to the story” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, pp. 3-4; The Fixers, pp. xi, 145). 

November 15, 2015: AMI reportedly “entered into a source agreement with Sajudin” whereby, as Pecker directed, Sajudin “would get paid $30,000 if the Enquirer published a story based on his information” (The Fixers, p. 146).

November 30, 2015: In a memo to Pecker, Dylan Howard, then the chief content officer at AMI, reportedly detailed his team’s efforts to confirm Sajudin’s story, which included having Sajudin take a polygraph examination. Two former AMI employees told The New Yorker that “they believed that Cohen was in close contact with A.M.I. executives while the company’s reporters were looking into Sajudin’s story, as Cohen had been during other investigations related to Trump. ‘Cohen was kept up to date on a regular basis,’ one source said” (The Fixers, p. 146; The New Yorker). 

Early December 2015: Sajudin reportedly completed the lie detector test that AMI had arranged for him. During the lie detector test, “Sajudin said that he’d heard Trump had fathered the child from other employees and from residents of Trump World Tower.” The private investigator who had conducted the test reported to the Enquirer that Sajudin was “being truthful.” Sajudin reportedly requested payment from the Enquirer immediately thereafter and stated that he would take his story elsewhere if they did not comply (The Fixers, pp. 146-7; The New Yorker).

Early December 2015: The Enquirer reportedly still saw credibility issues with Sajudin even after he passed the lie detector tests, so one of the paper’s reporters contacted Trump’s assistant to corroborate the story. Sometime following the call between the reporter and Trump’s assistant, Cohen found out about the story. He then contacted Howard and urged him not to move forward with publishing Sajudin’s account. Howard reportedly stated that “He is furious” to one of the other editors following his call with Cohen (The Fixers, pp. 146-7).

Early December 2015: AMI bought Sajudin’s story “without fully investigating his claims, but [Pecker] directed that the deal take place because of his agreement with[Trump and Cohen].” Specifically, an editor with the Enquirer, Barry Levine, instructed the company’s general counsel, Cameron Stracher, to draft a new source agreement whereby the Enquirer was to pay Sajudin $30,000 in full before publication. “In return for the $30,000, Sajudin agreed that he wouldn’t disclose his story or his agreement with [AMI] to any third parties. ‘In the event Source breaches this provision, Source shall be liable to AMI and shall pay to AMI…the sum of $1,000,000,’ the contract said.” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, pp. 3-4; The Fixers, p. 148). 

Sometime after AMI paid Sajudin: Pecker “ordered the A.M.I. reporters to stop investigating” the veracity of Sajudin’s story. “[T]he story died” (The New Yorker; The Fixers, pp. 148).

Sometime after AMI paid Sajudin: “AMI falsely characterized this payment in AMI’s books and records, including in its general ledger…When AMI later concluded that the story was not true, [Pecker] wanted to release the Doorman from the agreement. However,[Cohen] instructed [Pecker] not to release the Doorman until after the presidential election, and [Pecker] complied with that instruction because of his agreement with [Trump and Cohen]” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, pp. 3-4; The Fixers, p. xi).

February 1, 2016: Trump finished second in the Iowa caucuses, losing the first Republican state nominating contest to Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) (Reuters). 

March 1, 2016: Trump won seven of the eleven “Super Tuesday” states in the Republican primary (Reuters). 

April 2016: Clifford and her agent, Gina Rodriguez, attempted to sell Clifford’s story to media outlets for the second time. On April 7, after receiving rejections from other publications, Rodriguez reached out to Howard at AMI. Howard reportedly rejected the story for the same reason the others had: Clifford had previously publicly denied her involvement with Trump, calling affair rumors “bullshit” after the story surfaced in 2011 (The Fixers, pp. 123, 163).  

May 7, 2016: Carrie Stevens (a fellow former Playboy model and former friend of McDougal) tweeted, “I usually don’t get involved in politics but why Bill Clinton can’t [sic] get an extramarital BJ but @RealDonaldTrump can?” Soon after, Stevens sent another tweet with the hashtag “donaldlovesplaymates” and McDougal’s Twitter handle. At that point, McDougal reportedly realized that the story of her affair would likely become public as Trump’s presidential campaign continued and decided to meet with an attorney. She met with Keith Davidson, who was also (separately) representing Clifford at the time, in the hopes of asserting “control of the narrative.” According to their retainer agreement, Davidson was contracted to assist McDougal with selling her story about her “interactions with Donald Trump” and any “confidentiality agreements” arising out of it (The Fixers, pp. 162–163; Cohen Criminal Information, pp. 12-13). 

June 15, 2016: Davidson contacted Howard and attempted to sell McDougal’s story to The National Enquirer, an AMI publication. In accordance with their August 2015 agreement, Pecker and Howard called Cohen and alerted him to the story’s existence. Howard then “began negotiating for the purchase of the story” at “Cohen’s urging and subject to Cohen’s promise that AMI would be reimbursed” (AMI Non-Prosecution Agreement, p. 4; Cohen Criminal Information, pp. 12-13; The Fixers, p. 164). 

In or about June 2016:  After initially notifying Cohen about the story, Howard continued to regularly text and call Cohen with further updates. Trump “did not want this information to become public because he was concerned about the effect it could have on his candidacy.” Over multiple discussions, Trump and Cohen negotiated with Pecker about who would purchase McDougal’s story (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, p. 4).

June 20, 2016: Howard reportedly arranged a meeting in Los Angeles with McDougal, Davidson, and two of McDougal’s contacts, John Crawford and Jay Grdina. Howard interviewed McDougal about the alleged affair with Trump, but he “sensed her reluctance to come forward.” At one point, McDougal reportedly said, “I don’t want to be the next Monica Lewinsky.” McDougal had brought notes with dates and phone numbers related to the alleged affair, but Howard reportedly claimed that the story needed additional documentation to be worth more than $15,000. McDougal then “suggested that she might have some corroborating materials in a storage locker. She promised to look for them” (AMI Non-Prosecution Agreement, p. 4; The Fixers, p. 164).

June 20, 2016: Following the interview, Howard reportedly told Davidson he would update him on whether AMI intended to buy McDougal’s story by the end of the day. Davidson agreed to refrain from “shopping McDougal’s information to another outlet” in the meantime. After he left Davidson’s office, Howard joined “a three-way call with Pecker and Cohen.” The group reportedly agreed that AMI would not offer McDougal a deal yet (The Fixers, pp. 164–165).

Sometime between June 20 and June 27, 2016: Cohen reportedly informed Trump of McDougal’s meeting with Howard (The Fixers, p. 165). 

June 27, 2016: Trump reportedly called Pecker to ask whether he could bury McDougal’s story (The Fixers, p. 166). 

July 7, 2016: The lead investigative producer for ABC News, Rhonda Schwartz, reportedly met with McDougal, Davidson, and Grdina at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for an all-day interview (The Fixers, p. 166).

Over several weeks following July 7, 2016: McDougal and Schwartz reportedly continued to meet. During this time, “ABC News entered into a confidentiality agreement with Davidson that barred the outlet from publicizing any of the information McDougal provided, unless or until she agreed to do the interview” (The Fixers, p. 166). 

Sometime after July 7, 2016: Davidson, likely hoping to secure a better deal for McDougal than the unpaid arrangement with ABC News, reportedly alerted Howard to a (phony) ABC News plan to air an interview with McDougal on primetime television. Sources claim that Howard passed the information along to Pecker, who alerted Cohen, who informed Trump (The Fixers, pp. 167–168).  

July 19, 2016: Trump won the official GOP presidential nomination with 1,237 delegates (NBC News). 

In or around June 2016:  After discussing AMI’s purchase of McDougal’s story with Trump and Cohen, Pecker signed off on the deal. He did so on the condition that “the Trump Organization would reimburse AMI” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, p. 4).

July 29, 2016: Howard reportedly extended a loose offer to Davidson for McDougal’s story (The Fixers, p. 168). 

First week in August 2016: Davidson and AMI reportedly negotiated an agreement to purchase McDougal’s story (The Fixers, p. 168). 

On or around August 5, 2016: AMI entered into an agreement to acquire the “limited life rights” to the story of McDougal’s alleged affair with Trump for $150,000. AMI also committed to feature McDougal on “two magazine covers and publish over one hundred magazine articles authored by her. Despite the cover and article features to the agreement, its principal purpose, as understood by those involved, including [Cohen], was to suppress [McDougal’s] story so as to prevent it from influencing the election” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, p. 4; Cohen Criminal Information, p. 13; AMI Non-Prosecution Agreement, p. 4; The Fixers, pp. 168, 192). 

On or around August 10, 2016: AMI sent $150,000 to Davidson “in cooperation, consultation, and concert with, and at the request and suggestion of one or more members or agents of a candidate’s 2016 presidential campaign, to ensure that a woman did not publicize damaging allegations about that candidate before the 2016 presidential election and thereby influence that election.” As court filings later revealed, “AMI falsely characterized this payment in AMI’s books and records, including in its general ledger. The AMI CEO agreed to the deal after discussing it with both [Trump] and [Cohen], and on the understanding from [Cohen] that [Trump] or the Trump Organization would reimburse AMI.” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, p. 4; AMI Non-Prosecution Agreement, p. 4). 

August – October 2016: Clifford reportedly participated in talks with multiple outlets including Good Morning America and Slate for her account of the alleged Trump affair. Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate, claimed to have spoken with Clifford several times during this period. Clifford reportedly told Weisberg that, using lawyers as intermediaries, “Trump had negotiated to buy her silence.” Weisberg claimed that Clifford also sent him photos of  “an unfinished draft contract in which pseudonyms had been used.” However, Clifford then reportedly “cut Weisberg off,” and he did not pursue the story ​​(The Fixers, p. 238; Slate; The New York Times; Cohen Warrant, p. 40). 

August 2016 – September 2016: Pecker agreed to assign the rights to the non-disclosure portion of AMI’s agreement with McDougal to Cohen in exchange for a $125,000 payment. During this period, Cohen also “incorporated a shell entity called ‘Resolution Consultants LLC’ for use in the transaction.” (Cohen Criminal information, pp. 13-14; AMI Non-Prosecution Agreement, p. 4).

September 2016:  In a recorded conversation, Trump and Cohen discussed reimbursing AMI for its purchase of McDougal’s story and obtaining the rights to the story from AMI. Cohen told Trump that he planned to open a company to facilitate this transfer and that he had discussed the matter with the Trump Organization CFO, Allen Weisselberg. In response to Cohen’s overview of the plan, Trump asked, “So what do we got to pay for this? One fifty?” Trump initially proposed paying AMI in cash, but after Cohen disagreed with that approach he mentioned paying by check (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, p. 5).

September 30, 2016: Following his discussions with Cohen, Pecker signed an assignment agreement “in which AMI agreed to transfer its rights to [McDougal’s] account to [Cohen’s] shell company for $125,000.” Pecker delivered the agreement to Cohen “along with an invoice from a shell corporation incorporated by the consultant [separate from Cohen’s shell entity] for the payment of $125,000, which falsely stated the payment was for an ‘agreed upon ‘flat fee’ for advisory services’” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, p. 5; AMI Non-Prosecution Agreement, p. 5; Cohen Criminal information, pp. 13-14).

September 30, 2016: Resolution Consultants LLC was created in Delaware. Cohen reportedly used his own name for the corporate formation documents (The Fixers, p. 237). 

Early October 2016: Before Cohen had paid the$125,000 reimbursement, Pecker “consulted with AMI’s general counsel and then told [Cohen] that the deal to transfer the rights to [Cohen’s] shell company was off.” During the conversation with Cohen, Pecker told Cohen that he “should tear up the assignment agreement. [Cohen] did not tear up the agreement, which was later found during a judicially authorized search of his office” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, p. 5; Cohen Criminal Information, pp. 13-14; see also AMI Non-Prosecution Agreement, p. 5). 

• Additional detail from Cohen’s defense sentencing memo: “Michael himself did not make the payment to Woman-1 [McDougal] called for by the agreement reached between Corporation-1 [AMI] and Woman-1, but participated in planning discussions with Client-1 [Trump] and the Chairman and CEO of Corporation-1 relating to the payment made by Corporation-1, including obtaining the commitment of Client-1 to repay Corporation-1. As the matter unfolded, the contract was profitable for Corporation-1, and Client-1’s failure to reimburse Corporation-1 was ultimately not contested by Corporation-1” (Cohen Defense Sentencing Memo, pp. 18-19) (emphasis added)

October 7, 2016: The 2005 Access Hollywood tape of Trump saying “Grab ’em by the pussy” became public (The Washington Post).

October 8, 2016*: The very next day, Rodriguez, Davidson, and Howard reportedly began discussions about AMI purchasing Clifford’s story. They appear to have believed it was “more marketable [then] than it had been when Rodriguez first pitched Howard in April, before the Access Hollywood tape placed Trump’s treatment of women in the national spotlight” (The Fixers, p. 174).

*The timeline of events on October 8 is supplied primarily from two sources: The Fixers and Cohen’s search warrant. Each source provides information about the conversations that occurred between Trump, Cohen, Hicks, Pecker, Howard, Davidson, and Rodriguez. However, where The Fixers provides precise details about the contents of the conversations, it fails to include the precise times of those conversations. Cohen’s search warrant, conversely, provides precise details about the times of calls, but not their contents. In order not to mangle the timeline, we present the information below as it appears in the original sources. Where we were able to confirm facts in both sources, we have indicated so with an additional in-text citation.

October 8, 2016, Sourced from The Fixers (facts shown in the order they appeared)

• Afternoon: Davidson texted Howard that “‘Trump is fucked.’” Howard responded, “‘Wave the white flag. It’s over people!’” (The Fixers, p. 174).
• A few hours later in the afternoon: Davidson emailed Rodriguez, asking if she had “‘heard from [Clifford] lately?’” (The Fixers, p. 174).
• Around 30 minutes later: Howard texted Rodriguez to follow up on her client, asking her “to send him a pitch so he could elevate it to his boss, [Pecker].” He added that  Pecker would “likely pay.” Rodriguez then emailed Howard the pitch, which included “a brief description of her client’s [Clifford’s] claims” (The Fixers, p. 174).
• After 7:20 pm ET: “Cohen had a conference call with Hicks and Trump, followed by a call with Hicks alone. Hicks had heard from another campaign aide” that there was another tape, “this one of Trump cavorting with prostitutes in Moscow during a trip there for the Miss Universe pageant in 2013. Hicks had been told that TMZ might have access to the tape, and she knew that Cohen was very close to Harvey Levin, the gossip outlet’s founder. Hicks asked Cohen to let her know if he heard anything from Levin. She also impressed on him … that the campaign’s messaging was that Trump’s remarks on the Access Hollywood were merely ‘locker room talk’” (The Fixers, p. 175; see also Cohen Warrant, p. 41).
• After Cohen’s call with Hicks: “Cohen, Pecker, and Howard exchanged a series of calls after Cohen got off the phone with Hicks. Cohen lobbied Pecker to buy Daniels’s [Clifford’s] story.” During these calls, Cohen sought to convince Pecker to purchase and not publish the story, as he had done with McDougal’s account in a practice known as “catch-and-kill” (The Fixers, p. 175).
• Less than an hour after Rodriguez sent her pitch of Clifford’s story to Howard: Howard texted Rodriguez: “‘How much for [Clifford]?’” She replied “‘250k,’” and they negotiated it down to “‘120.’” Howard then told Rodriguez that “he’d be back in touch by the following morning” (The Fixers, pp. 175–176). 
• “Minutes after signing off with Rodriguez”: Howard texted Pecker: “Woman wants 120k” and Pecker replied “‘We can’t pay 120k.’” Howard then said “‘Ok. They’d need to handle. Perhaps I call Michael and advise him and he can take it from there, and handle.’” Pecker responded, “‘Yes good idea’” (The Fixers, p. 176).
• After AMI decided not to purchase Clifford’s story: Howard and Davidson communicated. Howard agreed “to contact Cohen (again) to vouch for Davidson.” This was because Davidson was anxious about negotiating with Cohen after a previously tense interaction in September. Howard and Cohen communicated again. Howard told Cohen, “‘Be nice’” to Davidson. Howard then texted Pecker “to let him know that Cohen had agreed to handle the story and leave American Media out of it.” He continued: “‘Spoke to MC. All sorted. Now removed. No fingerprints. I’ll recap with you face to face.’” Pecker replied “‘Great work Thx’” (The Fixers, p. 177).
• 9:13 pm GMT: Howard texted Cohen “‘Keith will do it. Let’s reconvene tomorrow’”  (The Fixers, p. 177; see also Cohen Warrant, p. 42).
• “Past 2 [am]” GMT: Cohen texted Howard, “Thank you.” A few minutes later he sent another text to Howard with “the name of his shell company, Resolution Consultants” (The Fixers, p. 177).

October 8, 2016, Sourced from Cohen Warrant

• 7:20 pm: “At approximately 7:20 p.m., Cohen received a call from [Hope] Hicks. Sixteen seconds into the call, Trump joined the call, and the call continued for over four minutes.” Based on toll records, “this was the first call Cohen had received or made to Hicks in at least multiple weeks” (Cohen Warrant, p. 41; see also The Fixers, p. 175).
• About 7:34 pm: “Approximately ten minutes after the [7:20 pm ET] call ended, Hicks and Cohen spoke again for about two minutes” (Cohen Warrant, p. 42; see also The Fixers, p. 175).
  • At some point during the 7:20 pm and 7:34 pm calls (no distinction is made between them in The Fixers), Hicks and Cohen communicated about a rumor that “Hicks had heard from another campaign aid” that there was another tape, “this one of Trump cavorting with prostitutes in Moscow during a trip there for the Miss Universe pageant in 2013. Hicks had been told that TMZ might have access to the tape, and she knew that Cohen was very close to Harvey Levin, the outlet’s founder. Hicks asked Cohen to let her know if he heard anything from Levin. She also impressed on him… that the campaign’s messaging was that Trump’s remarks on the Access Hollywood tape were merely ‘locker room talk’” (The Fixers, p. 175).)
• At 7:39 pm (immediately after the Hicks-Cohen call ends): Cohen called Pecker for 30 seconds (Cohen Warrant, p. 42).
• Approximately 4 minutes later (about 7:43 pm): Cohen called Pecker again, and they spoke “for more than a minute” (Cohen Warrant, p. 42).
• 3 minutes after the Cohen-Pecker call ends (about 7:47 pm): Howard called Cohen. They spoke “for approximately a minute” (Cohen Warrant, p. 42).
• 7:56 pm: Cohen called Hicks for 2 minutes (Cohen Warrant, p. 42).
• 7:58 pm: Pecker called Cohen for 2 minutes (Cohen Warrant, p. 42).
• 8:03 pm: Cohen called Trump for 8 minutes (Cohen Warrant, p. 42).
• 8:39 pm: Howard called Cohen for 4 minutes (Cohen Warrant, p. 42).
• 8:57 pm: Howard called Cohen for 6 minutes (Cohen Warrant, p. 42).
• 9:13 pm: Howard texted Cohen “‘Keith will do it. Let’s reconvene tomorrow’” (Cohen Warrant, p. 42; see also The Fixers, p. 177).

October 9, 2016: 

• At some point this day: Rodriguez reportedly told “Howard that she had another offer for [Clifford’s] story, this one for $200,000, a lie meant to prod the deal along” (The Fixers, p. 177). 
• 3:31 am: Cohen texted Howard: “‘Thank you’” (Cohen Warrant, p. 43). 
• 3:39 am: Howard texted Cohen and Davidson: “‘Resolution Consultants LLC. is the name of the entity I formed a week ago. Whenever you wake, please call my cell’” (Cohen Warrant, p. 43). 

October 10, 2016: “[Cohen] negotiated a deal with [Davidson] to secure [Clifford’s] silence and prevent disclosure of the damaging information in the final weeks before the presidential election. Under the deal that [Davidson] negotiated, [Clifford] would be paid $130,000 for the rights to her account” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, p. 6).

• 10:58 am: Howard texted Cohen and Davidson: “Keith/Michael: connecting you both in regards to that business opportunity. Spoke to the client this AM and they’re confirmed to proceed with the opportunity. Thanks. Dylan. Over to you two” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, p. 6; Cohen Warrant, p. 43). 
  • Howard also reportedly “checked in with Rodriguez” (The Fixers, p. 177).
• 12:25 pm: Davidson texted Cohen: “Michael – if we are ever going to close this deal – In my opinion, it needs to be today. Keith” (Cohen Warrant, p. 43).
• Immediately after: Cohen and Davidson spoke on the phone for 3 minutes (Cohen Warrant, p. 43).
  • During this call, Cohen and Davidson reportedly negotiated the price point for the story: “Cohen wanted to buy the story, but he balked at [Clifford’s] six-figure demand… Davidson said $130,000 was as low as Rodriguez and [Clifford] were willing to go.” Davidson cited a competing offer, which didn’t actually exist (The Fixers, pp. 177-178). 
• On or about October 10, 2016: Davidson and Clifford signed a “side letter agreement” to a “confidential settlement agreement and mutual release” signed under two pseudonyms: “Peggy Peterson” and “David Dennison.” The side letter agreement provided the “true name and identity” of the signatories, but only Peterson was identified in the document (as Clifford); the Dennison identifier and associated signature lines were left blank. A federal investigator later hypothesized that “Davidson sent Cohen this partially-signed ‘side letter’ in order to facilitate the closing of a deal between Davidson’s client and Cohen or Cohen’s client” (Cohen Warrant, pp. 43-44). 

Between October 10 and October 28, 2016: During a meeting in Trump’s office, Trump allegedly told Cohen “that he had spoken to a couple of friends, and it is 130,000, it is not a lot of money, and we should just do it, so go ahead and do it.” Trump then reportedly directed Cohen and Weisselberg (who Cohen later testified was also present in the meeting) to “go back to Mr. Weisselberg’s office and figure this all out” (Cohen Testimony, p. 38; see also Cohen Testimony, p. 26). 

At some point between October 10, 2016 and October 27, 2016: “[Trump] directed [Cohen] to delay making a payment to [Clifford] as long as possible. He instructed [Cohen] that if they could delay the payment until after the election, they could avoid paying altogether, because at that point it would not matter if the story became public. As reflected in emails and text messages between and among [Cohen], [Davidson], and [Howard], [Cohen] attempted to delay making payment as long as possible” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, p. 6).

October 13, 2016: Cohen began taking “steps to complete a transaction with Davidson, including attempting to open an account from which Cohen could transfer funds to Davidson” (Cohen Warrant, p. 44). 

• 8:54 a.m.: Cohen texted Pecker “I need to talk to you.” (Cohen Warrant, p. 44). 
• 9:06 a.m.: Pecker texted Cohen: “I called please call me back.” After this message, Pecker and Cohen appear to have moved their communications onto Signal (Cohen Warrant, p. 44). 
• 9:23 am: Cohen emailed a set of documents “from the Secretary of State of Delaware indicating that Cohen had formed a limited liability company called ‘Resolution Consultants LLC’ on September 30, 2016” to a First Republic Bank employee. The body of the email asked the employee to “call me” (Cohen Warrant, p. 45). 
• 10:44 am: Cohen called the First Republic employee and told him “that he needed an account in the name of ‘Resolution Consultants’ opened immediately.” The account was never opened, however, because Cohen failed to complete the requisite paperwork (Cohen Warrant, p. 45). 

October 17, 2016: Cohen reportedly dissolved Resolution Consultants and set up a new company, Essential Consultants L.L.C., two minutes later. It appears that Cohen used the same registered agent in Delaware for both companies (The New York Times; The Fixers, p. 237). 

• That afternoon, The Wall Street Journal editor Ashby Jones reportedly shared a tip he had received on the hush money payments. Per Jones, a “Los Angeles lawyer with the initials K.D.—the source didn’t want to volunteer more—was traversing the country, paying hush money to women who’d been romantically involved with Donald Trump” (The Fixers, p. 188). 
• At some point on this day: “Davidson emailed Cohen and threatened to cancel the… ‘settlement agreement’ by the end of the day if Cohen did not complete the transaction.” Davidson followed that up with “a second email later in the day that stated in part, ‘Please be advised that my client deems her settlement agreement canceled and void’” (Cohen Warrant, p. 45-46).
• 4:00 p.m.: Cohen called Davidson. They “spoke for over five minutes” (Cohen Warrant, p. 46).
• 4:43 p.m.: Howard texted Cohen: “‘I’m told they’re going with DailyMail. Are you aware?’ One minute later, Cohen responded: ‘Call me.’” (Cohen Warrant, p. 46).

October 18, 2016: A “thinly sourced article” posted on The Smoking Gun website reported the alleged affair between Clifford and Trump. The story received scant attention from mainstream media; Clifford did not respond publicly (The Washington Post). 

October 25, 2016: Cohen, Davidson, Howard, and Pecker had several text exchanges and calls “apparently concerning a transaction involving Clifford”  (Cohen Warrant, p. 47)  

• 6:09 p.m.: “Howard sent Cohen a text message stating: ‘Keith calling you urgently. We have to coordinate something on the matter he’s calling you about or its [sic] could look awfully bad for everyone.’ One minute later, Davidson sent Cohen a text message stating ‘Call me.’ Cohen and Davidson called each other several times over the next half hour but appear not to have connected” (Cohen Warrant, p. 47) 
• 6:42 p.m.: “Cohen and Davidson spoke for about eight minutes”  (Cohen Warrant, p. 47). 
• 7:11 p.m. Cohen and Davidson “spoke for another two minutes” (Cohen Warrant, p. 47; see also Cohen Criminal Information, pp. 14-15).

At some point before October 26, 2016: “Ultimately, with pressure mounting and the election approaching, [Trump] agreed to the payoff and directed [Cohen] to proceed. [Cohen] discussed the deal with [Trump and Weisselberg]. [Trump] did not want to make the $130,000 payment himself, and asked [Cohen] and [Weisselberg] to find a way to make the payment. After discussing various payment options with [Weisselberg], [Cohen] agreed he would make the payment. Before making the payment, [Cohen] confirmed with [Trump] that [Trump] would pay him back” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, p. 6).

October 26, 2016: “[S]hortly after speaking with [Trump] on the phone, [Cohen] opened a bank account in Manhattan in the name of Essential Consultants LLC, a new shell company he had created to effectuate the payment. He then transferred $131,000 from his personal home equity line of credit (‘HELOC’) into that account” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, p. 7).

• 8:26 a.m.: “Cohen called Trump and spoke to him for approximately three minutes” (Cohen Warrant, p. 47)
• 8:34 a.m.: “Cohen called Trump again and connected for a minute and a half” (Cohen Warrant, p. 47)
• 9:04 a.m.: Cohen “emailed an incorporating service to obtain the corporate formation documents” for Essential Consultants LLC (Cohen Warrant, p. 47-48; Cohen Criminal Information, p. 15). 
• Between 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.: Cohen opened an account for Essential Consultants LLC at the First Republic Bank in Manhattan. After opening the account, Cohen “drew down $131,000 from the fraudulently obtained HELOC [home equity line of credit, also held by Cohen at First Republic Bank],” and requested that it be deposited into the Essential Consultants account he had just opened (Cohen Warrant, p. 48; Cohen Criminal Information, p. 15). 
• 4:15 p.m.: A First Republic Bank employee confirmed that “the funds had been deposited into the Essential Consultants account” (Cohen Warrant, p. 49).

October 27, 2016: At around 10:01 a.m., Cohen “completed paperwork to wire $130,000 from the Essential Consultants account” to Davidson’s attorney-client trust account at City National Bank in Los Angeles. On the paperwork, Cohen “falsely indicated that the ‘purpose of wire being sent’ was ‘retainer.’” This payment amounted to a contribution to the Trump campaign “in excess of the limits of the Election Act, which aggregated $25,000 and more in calendar year 2016” since it was made “in cooperation, consultation, and concert with, and at the request and suggestion of one or more members of the campaign…to ensure that she [Clifford] did not publicize damaging allegations before the 2016 presidential election and thereby influence that election” (Cohen Warrant, p. 50; The New York Times; Cohen Criminal Information, p. 15, p. 19).

October 28, 2016: Cohen reportedly called Trump and updated him on the situation. The same day, Cohen and Clifford reportedly signed “a contract that effectively promise[d] Ms. Clifford money in exchange for not talking about the alleged affair with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump’s name [did] not technically appear on the document.” (The Fixers, p. 183; The New York Times). 

November 1, 2016: Davidson sent Cohen “copies of the final, signed confidential settlement agreement and side letter agreement.” After he confirmed delivery of the paperwork, Davidson reportedly “wired the money to [Clifford’s] account” (Cohen Criminal Information, p. 15; The Fixers, p. 183). 

• 7:05 p.m.: Cohen called Trump but “it appears they did not connect. Cohen then called a telephone number belonging to Kellyanne Conway, who at the time was Trump’s campaign manager. They did not connect.” (Cohen Warrant, p. 52).
• 7:44pm: Conway returned Cohen’s call. They spoke for “approximately six minutes” (Cohen Warrant, p. 52).

November 4, 2016: Four days before the general election, The Wall Street Journal published an article about the $150,000 hush money deal between McDougal and AMI. The article referenced Clifford only briefly, “reporting that she was considering sharing her story with ABC News but abruptly disappeared on the network before doing so” (The New York Times; The Wall Street Journal). 

• Between 4:30 and 8:00 p.m.: “Cohen communicated several times with Howard, Pecker, and Davidson” (Cohen Warrant, p. 53).
• 8:51 p.m.: “Cohen sent Howard a message, stating: ‘She’s [McDougal] being really difficult with giving Keith a statement. Basically went into hiding and unreachable.’ One minute later, Howard responded: ‘I’ll ask him again. We just need her to disappear.’ Cohen responded, ‘She definitely disappeared but refused to give a statement and Keith cannot push her.’ ” (Cohen Warrant, p. 53).
• 8:55 p.m.: “Howard responded to Cohen’s text: ‘Let’s let the dust settle. We don’t want to push her over the edge. She’s on side [sic] at present and we have a solid position and a plausible position that she is rightfully employed as a columnist’” (Cohen Warrant, p. 53). 

November 8, 2016: Trump and Pence were elected president and vice president of the United States (NBC News). 

December 2016: Pecker met with Trump “privately in Trump Tower in Manhattan.” During their conversation, Trump “thanked [Pecker] for handling the stories of [Sajudin] and [McDougal], and invited [Pecker] to the Inauguration.” Before the meeting, Cohen reportedly asked Pecker “to urge Trump to pay Cohen more money,” especially given that Trump “hadn’t yet repaid his fixer for the Stormy Daniels deal.” Pecker apparently so urged Trump, but “Trump was unmoved. ‘You don’t know how much money he’s got,’ Trump said” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, pp. 7; The Fixers, p. 197). 

January 20, 2017: Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, pp. 7-8).

January 2017: Cohen and Weisselberg “met to discuss how [Cohen] would be reimbursed for the money he paid to ensure [Clifford’s] silence,” which later court filings characterized as “seeking reimbursement for election-related expenses.” Weisselberg asked Cohen to come to the meeting with “a copy of a bank statement for the Essential Consultants account showing the $130,000 payment.” Accordingly, Cohen presented Weisselberg with said statement reflecting the $130,000 payment made to keep Clifford “silent in advance of the election, plus a $35 wire fee.” In handwriting, Cohen added another $50,000 onto the statement as a “claimed payment for ‘tech services,’…related to work [he] had solicited from a technology company during and in connection with the campaign.” Weisselberg “grossed up” that initial $180,035 reimbursement request to $360,000 “so that [Cohen] could characterize the payment as income on his tax returns, instead of a reimbursement.” Cohen “would be left with $180,000 after paying approximately 50% in income taxes.” On top of the now $360,000 payment, Weisselberg “added an additional $60,000 as a supplemental year-end bonus,” bringing the total payment to $420,000. Weisselberg “memorialized these calculations in handwritten notes on the copy of the bank statement that [Cohen] had provided.” After finalizing the payment amount, Trump, Weisselberg, and Cohen “then agreed that [Cohen] would be paid the $420,000 through twelve monthly payments of $35,000 over the course of 2017. Each month, [Cohen] was to send an invoice to [Trump] through Trump Organization employees, falsely requesting payment of $35,000 for legal services rendered in a given month of 2017 pursuant to a retainer agreement. At no point did [Cohen] have a retainer agreement with [Trump] or the Trump Organization” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, pp. 7-8; Cohen Criminal Information, pp. 16-17; PBS and USA Today).

• In Cohen’s book (which is not otherwise cited in this chronology), he states:

“When we sat down, [Weisselberg] he started to explain how Trump was going to make me “whole” on the Daniels payment. First, the $130,000 would be doubled, grossed up as he described it, to make up for the taxes I would have to pay on that money, meaning the starting sum would be $260,000.” (Cohen Memoir p. 298) 

“‘So that’s two-sixty, plus the hundred, and the Boss wants to do another sixty, to make the total four-twenty,’ Allen said.” (Cohen Memoir p. 299)

“’So here’s what we’ll do,’ [Trump] he said. ‘We’ll use the number Allen came up with. What’s the number again?’ 

‘Four hundred and twenty thousand,’ I said. 

‘Wow, that’s a lot,’ he said. ‘We can use this as a retainer for the work you will be doing for me privately. Allen, you can pay Michael $35,000 for each month of the year. Michael, you will send Allen an invoice each month. This is okay with you, right?’

‘Sure, Boss,’ I said. ‘I’m really honored.’” (Cohen

Memoir p. 301)

“He’d get the tax deduction for legal fees, almost certainly a criminal offense if any mortal lied on their tax returns about a business expense of nearly half a million dollars, a reality that I would come to understand in time.” (Cohen Memoir p. 302)

“As I thought about the arrangement, Trump was actually making money on the deal, by way of his tax cheat, and he had my legal services free for the year.” (Cohen Memoir p. 302)

January 2017: Cohen left the Trump Organization and “began holding himself out” as Trump’s personal attorney (Cohen Criminal Information, p. 1). 

January 2017: During another visit to Trump Tower, Trump allegedly thanked Pecker for “buying [McDougal’s] story and burying it” (The Fixers, p. 197). 

Early February 2017: Trump and Cohen “met in the Oval Office at the White House and confirmed this repayment arrangement” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, p. 8).

February 14, 2017: Cohen “emailed the Controller of the Trump Organization [Jeffrey McConney] the first monthly invoice, which stated: ‘Pursuant to the retainer agreement, kindly remit payment for services rendered for the months of January and February, 2017.’ The invoice requested payment in the amount of $35,000 for each of those two months. [Weisselberg] approved the payment, and, in turn, [McConney] sent the invoice to the Trump Organization Accounts Payable Supervisor [Deborah Tarasoff] with the following instructions: ‘Please pay from the Trust. Post to legal expenses. Put ‘retainer for the months of January and February 2017’ in the description.’ Accordingly, the Supervisor “printed out [the] invoice and marked it with an accounts payable stamp and the general ledger code ‘51505’ for legal expenses. The Trump Organization maintained [the invoice] as records of expenses paid.” The Supervisor then “recorded [the] payment in the Trump Organization’s electronic accounting system, falsely describing it as a ‘legal expense’ pursuant to a retainer agreement for a month of 2017.” Later court filings note that “[i]n truth and fact, there was no such retainer agreement” and Cohen’s invoices “were not in connection with any legal services he had provided in 2017.” The Trump Organization “maintained a digital entry for [the] expense, called a ‘voucher,’” which “like vouchers for other expenses, became part of the Trump Organization’s general ledgers.” Having taken these steps, the Supervisor then prepared a check with an attached check stub “for approval and signature.” The first check to Cohen for $70,000 was reportedly signed the same day by Weisselberg and Donald Trump Jr. “as trustees. The check stub falsely recorded the payment as ‘Retainer for 1/1-1/31/17’ and ‘Retainer for 2/1-2/28/17.’ (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, pp. 8-9; Cohen Criminal Information, p. 17; The Fixers, pp. 209–210; POLITICO; The New York Times; CNN; ABC News). 

March – December, 2017: Cohen “submitted ten similar monthly invoices by email to the Trump Organization for the remaining months in 2017. Each invoice falsely stated that it was being submitted ‘[p]ursuant to the retainer agreement,’ and falsely requested ‘payment for services rendered’ for a month of 2017.” As was the case for the January – February 2017 invoice, there “was no such retainer agreement and [Cohen] was not being paid for services rendered in any month of 2017.” Upon receipt of each invoice, McConney forwarded them to the Trump Organization Accounts Payable Supervisor, who followed the same process outlined in the entry above to record and pay the expenses (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, pp. 8-9). 

March 17, 2017: Donald Trump Jr. and Weisselberg signed a $35,000 check to Cohen that “was also paid from the Trust.” As for the prior month’s payment, “The check stub falsely recorded the payment as ‘Retainer for 3/1-3/31/17’” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, p. 9; The New York Times). 

April 2017:  “The remaining nine checks, corresponding to the months of April through December of 2017, were paid by [Trump] personally. Each of the checks was cut from [Trump’s] bank account and sent, along with the corresponding invoices from [Cohen], from the Trump Organization in New York County to [Trump] in Washington, D.C. The checks and stubs bearing the false statements were stapled to the invoices also bearing false statements. [Trump] signed each of the checks personally and had them sent back to the Trump Organization in New York County. There, the checks, the stubs, and the invoices were scanned and maintained in the Trump Organization’s data system before the checks themselves were detached and mailed to [Cohen] for payment” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, pp. 9-10).

May 23, 2017: Trump himself signed a $35,000 dollar check to Cohen from his personal account. Trump ultimately signed six of the publicly available checks to Cohen, though later court filings revealed that he signed nine checks in total (The New York Times; Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, pp. 9-10). 

Summer 2017: Trump “invited [Pecker] to White House for a dinner to thank him for his help during the campaign” (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, pp. 7).

June 2017: Trump personally paid and signed a check to Cohen (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, pp. 9-10)

July 2017: Trump personally paid and signed a check to Cohen (Manhattan DA Statement of Facts, pp. 9-10)

August 1, 2017: Trump personally paid and signed a$35,000 dollar check to Cohen, which later became public(The New York Times). 

September 12, 2017: Trump personally paid and signed a$35,000 dollar check to Cohen, which later became public(The New York Times). 

October 18, 2017: Trump personally paid and signed a$35,000 dollar check to Cohen, which later became public(The New York Times).

October 20, 2017: The DOJ granted special counsel Robert Mueller “authorization to investigate Cohen, among others, and to follow leads related to his creation and use of Essential Consultants” as Mueller deepened his investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia (The Fixers, p. 221).  

Circa Late October 2017: Davidson claims to have received “an unusual inquiry” from a client manager at his bank in Los Angeles asking about the source and purpose of the wire transfer he had made to Clifford the previous year. In response, Davidson reportedly “told the bank that the payment had originated with Essential Consultants, and that it was for a legal settlement.” He then reportedly called Cohen to report the conversation. Cohen was reportedly “concerned that someone pretending to be a bank employee had tried to get Davidson to divulge the nondisclosure agreement” but “didn’t seem to grasp the potential peril” that the Mueller investigation was behind the inquiry. Cohen allegedly “did, however, secretly record their phone call” (The Fixers, p. 221).  

November 21, 2017: Trump personally paid and signed a $35,000 dollar check to Cohen, which later became public(The New York Times). 

December 5, 2017: Trump personally paid and signed the final $35,000 dollar check to Cohen, which later became public (The New York Times). 

January 12, 2018: News broke that Cohen had allegedly arranged a deal to pay Clifford $130,000 to keep her silent during the 2016 campaign. In response, Cohen released a statement addressed to The Wall Street Journal claiming, “These rumors have circulated time and again since 2011. President Trump once again vehemently denies any such occurrence as has Ms. Daniels.” Cohen also forwarded The Journal a two-paragraph statement signed by “Stormy Daniels”  denying the affair. A White House official separately stated, “These are old, recycled reports, which were published and strongly denied before the election” (The Wall Street Journal; The New York Times; see also The New York Times). 

January 17, 2018: In Touch published the transcript of its previously-quashed 2011 interview with Clifford (The Washington Post). 

January 18, 2018: The Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen had used “a private Delaware company,” Essential Consultants LLC, to make the $130,000 payment to Clifford (The Wall Street Journal).   

January 22, 2018: Government watchdog organization Common Cause filed an FEC complaint alleging that Cohen’s payment to Clifford had violated campaign finance laws. (Cohen Warrant, p. 55). 

January 30, 2018: During an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Clifford neither confirmed nor denied her alleged affair with Trump and “strongly hint[ed] that she is subject to an NDA.”  Hours before Clifford’s interview, Davidson reportedly drafted a second denial statement at the behest of “Cohen and company.” The statement reportedly asserted that Clifford was not denying the affair “because [she] was paid ‘hush money,’” but because “it never happened.” Clifford allegedly signed the document “without complaint,” but changed her handwriting “as if in subtle protest.” When Kimmel questioned whether Clifford had actually signed the denial, she responded, “‘I don’t know, did I? That doesn’t look like my signature, does it?’” (The Washington Post; The Fixers, p. 242-243). 

February 8, 2018: In response to an inquiry from the FEC, one of Cohen’s attorneys sent a letter stating, “In a private transaction in 2016, before the U.S. presidential election, Mr. Cohen used his own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford. Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the payment directly or indirectly.” (Letter to the FEC Office of Complaints Examination).

February 13, 2018: In a statement to The New York Times, Cohen claimed that “Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford. The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or campaign expenditure by anyone” (Cohen Warrant, p. 56). 

On or about February 14, 2018: The New York Times asked Cohen “whether Trump had reimbursed him, whether he and Trump had made any arrangements at the time of the payment, or whether he had made payments to other women. Cohen stated in response, ‘I can’t get into any of that’” (Cohen Warrant, p. 56).  

February 15, 2018: Likely believing that Cohen’s comments to The New York Times had nullified her NDA, Clifford’s agent told AP News that “Everything is off now, and Stormy is going to tell her story” (AP News).

February 16, 2018: The New Yorker published a story featuring details of McDougal’s alleged affair with Trump based on “an eight-page, handwritten document” created by McDougal and provided to the magazine by Crawford. McDougal granted an interview for the piece but “expressed surprise” that the magazine had obtained her notes. During her interview, McDougal “declined to discuss her relationship with Trump for fear of violating the agreement she had reached with [AMI].” In an email to AMI’s general counsel soon after the article dropped, McDougal’s lawyer reportedly asserted that while “McDougal was not contractually required to keep quiet,” her client would “consider entering into a fresh nondisclosure agreement if [AMI] was willing to pay her more money. If not, she’d grant more interviews” (The New Yorker; The Fixers, pp. 248–250).  

February 22, 2018: Cohen reportedly initiated secret arbitration proceedings following Clifford’s media engagements (The Fixers, p. 251). 

February 27, 2018: An arbitrator reportedly “found that Ms. Clifford had violated the [NDA] agreement” and issued a restraining order against Clifford (The New York Times). 

March 6, 2018: Clifford filed a lawsuit “asserting that the nondisclosure agreement that accompanied the $130,000 was void because Mr. Trump never signed it.” The complaint revealed the arbitration proceedings Cohen had initiated in an effort to silence Clifford, as well as the terms of the contract Clifford had signed on October 28, 2016 (The New York Times).

March 7, 2018: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, asserted that “there was no knowledge of any payments from the president” and “he has denied all these allegations.” The same day, Clifford’s attorney, Michael Avenatti (who had replaced Davidson at this point), publicly and explicitly asserted “that [Clifford] had a sexual relationship with Trump” (The New York Times; The Washington Post). 

March 9, 2018: Avanetti provided ABC News with a set of emails that he claimed contained communications between Cohen and First Republic Bank surrounding the 2016 payment to Davidson, who was still Clifford’s attorney at the time. NBC News separately broke the news that Cohen had used his Trump Organization email for the exchange. Cohen responded by downplaying the emails as “corroborat[ing] all my previous statements.” He went on to describe how the payment was made, stating, “The funds were taken from my home equity line and transferred internally to my L.L.C. account in the same bank.” Cohen also brushed aside the revelation that he had used his Trump Organization email to coordinate the transaction, stating “I sent emails from the Trump Org email address to my family, friends as well as Trump business emails. I basically used it for everything. I am certain most people can relate.” (ABC News; NBC).  

March 14, 2018: The Wall Street Journal published a story highlighting the role that Jill Martin, the Trump Organization’s assistant general counsel, played in the arbitration at the request of Eric Trump. Per the Journal’s article, Avenatti supplied the outlet with documents Martin had signed, “for the first time [tying] President Donald Trump’s flagship holding company to the continuing effort to silence [Clifford]” (The Fixers, pp. 263–265; The Wall Street Journal). 

March 16, 2018: Trump sought “$20 million in damages from [Clifford] for allegedly [breaking the] nondisclosure agreement 20 times. A lawyer for Cohen’s limited liability company, Essential Consultants, made the claim in papers filed in federal court” (The Washington Post).  

Mid-March 2018: Two weeks after Clifford sued Trump and Essential Consultants, McDougal reportedly brought “a case against [AMI] in the same Los Angeles court” (The Fixers, p. 268). 

March 25, 2018: Clifford was interviewed on 60 Minutes (60 Minutes).  

March 26, 2018: Clifford amended her lawsuit against both Trump and Cohen to sue Cohen for defamation, which she claimed had occurred when Cohen put out his February 2018 statement about the $130,000 payment. The lawsuit argued that Cohen’s statement had caused Clifford “hatred, contempt, ridicule, and shame, and discouraged others from associating or dealing with her” and that she “ha[d] suffered damages in an amount to be proven at trial according to proof, including but not limited to, harm to her reputation, emotional harm, exposure to contempt, ridicule, and shame, and physical threats of violence to her person and life” (NPR).  

April 5, 2018: Trump delivered his first public remarks about the alleged Clifford affair and ensuing hush money payment. When asked by a reporter if he knew about the payment to  Clifford, Trump responded “No.” In response to another question asking why Cohen had made the payment, Trump answered “You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney.” Trump also claimed that he did not know the source of the money for the payment (The New York Times). 

April 9, 2018: As part of a probe by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, the FBI raided Cohen’s Rockefeller Center office, Park Avenue hotel room, and home. Federal investigators reportedly seized eight boxes of documents and millions of electronic files including business records, emails, and bank records related to a payment to Clifford from Cohen’s office, among other matters. Cohen called Trump that day to inform him of the raid. “In a return call, Trump told [Cohen] to ‘stay strong’” (Manhattan DA’s Statement of Facts, p. 10; The New York Times; The Fixers, p. 286).  

April 15, 2018: Reports became public that the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan was investigating possible bank fraud in connection with Cohen’s payment to Clifford, which he had made using his home-equity credit line (The Wall Street Journal). 

Mid-April 2018: Robert “Bob” Costello offered to represent Cohen after Costello’s law partner, Jeffrey Citron, connected Costello with Cohen. Citron and Cohen reportedly knew each other through their children, who attended the same school (The Fixers, p. 289; Manhattan DA’s Statement of Facts, p. 10).

April 17, 2018: Clifford and her attorney released a composite sketch of the man she claimed had threatened her in a Las Vegas parking lot. Clifford’s attorney offered a $100,000 reward for information that would lead to the man’s apprehension (The Washington Post). 

April 18, 2018: AMI reached a settlement agreement with McDougal, freeing McDougal to publicly discuss her alleged affair with Trump. McDougal’s original suit claimed that she had been misled into signing the contract that sold AMI the rights to her story about Trump; the suit also alleged that Cohen had been secretly involved in the negotiations between AMI and McDougal’s lawyer. The settlement agreement foreclosed the possibility of pretrial discovery, which could have revealed emails and other evidence beyond what was found in the FBI’s April 9 raid (The New York Times). 

April 21, 2018: Early in the morning, Costello sent the following email to Cohen summarizing a phone call Costello had with Giuliani: “I just spoke to Rudy Giuliani and told him I was on your team. Rudy was thrilled and said this could not be a better situation for the President or you. He asked me if it was ok to call the President and Jay Sekelow [sic] and I said fine. We discussed the facts, Jay Goldberg’s stupid remarks etc. he said I can’t tell you how pleased I am that I can work with someone I know and trust. He asked me to tell you that he knows how tough this is on you and your family and he will make sue [sic] to tell the President. He said thank you for opening this back channel of communication and asked me to keep in touch. I told him I would after speaking to you further.” Later that day, Costello emailed Cohen again: “I spoke with Rudy. Very Very Positive. You are ‘loved’…Rudy said this communication channel must be maintained…Sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places” (The Fixers, p. 295-6; Manhattan DA’s Statement of Facts, pp. 10-11). 

April 21, 2018: As some speculated whether Cohen would “flip“ and begin cooperating with government investigators against Trump, the president tweeted that “most people will flip if the government lets them out of trouble, even if it means lying or making up stories. Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that.” He described Cohen as a “fine person with a wonderful family” (Manhattan DA’s Statement of Facts, pp. 10; Twitter). 

April 26, 2018: Trump admitted that Cohen had represented him in dealing with Clifford in an interview on Fox & Friends, stating, “He represents me, like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal, he represented me” (The New York Times). 

April 30, 2018: Clifford filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump in Manhattan federal court. The suit focused on a tweet Trump had sent on April 18, 2018 related to the sketch of the man who allegedly threatened Clifford in 2011 (The Wall Street Journal). 

May 2, 2018: During a Fox News interview, Rudolph Giuliani (Trump’s new lawyer) acknowledged and described Trump’s repayments to Cohen for the hush money. Giuliani stated that “they funneled it [the $130,000 payment to Clifford] through a law firm, and the president repaid it” (The New York Times). 

May 3, 2018: Trump tweeted that he did pay Cohen a monthly retainer, but reiterated that the payments had “nothing to do with the campaign” (The New York Times). 

On or about June 14, 2018: “[Costello] emailed [Cohen] a news clip discussing the possibility of [Cohen] cooperating, and continued to urge him not to cooperate with law enforcement, writing, ‘The whole objective of this exercise by the [federal prosecutors] is to drain you, emotionally and financially, until you reach a point that you see them as your only means to salvation.’ In the same email, [Costello], wrote, ‘You are making a very big mistake if you believe these ‘journalists’ are writing about you. They want you to cave. They want you to fail. They do not want you to persevere and succeed’” (Manhattan DA’s Statement of Facts, p. 11). 

July 2, 2018: “My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will,” Cohen told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos. “I put family and country first” (ABC News). Stephanopoulos wrote that “Cohen strongly signaled his willingness to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York — even if that puts President Trump in jeopardy.”

July 24, 2018: CNN released an audio tape of Trump and Cohen discussing what appears to be the plan to buy the rights to McDougal’s story. In the recording, Cohen explicitly mentions what appears to be the plan to set up a shell company to execute the payment, stating “I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David” (CNN; The Washington Post). 

July 25, 2018: Trump tweeted a response to the tape and suggested it was doctored by Cohen: “What kind of a lawyer would tape a client? So sad! Is this a first, never heard of it before? Why was the tape so abruptly terminated (cut) while I was presumably saying positive things?” (POLITICO). 

July 26, 2018: Press reports continued to circulate  that Cohen might be “flipping” on Trump and could cooperate with the investigation. (CNN)  

August 21, 2018: Cohen pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to charges including campaign finance violations and criminal tax evasion. Cohen told the judge that Trump had directed him to arrange the hush money payments, which he claimed were intended to prevent Clifford and McDougal from speaking publicly about their alleged affairs with Trump (Manhattan DA’s Statement of Facts, p. 12; The New York Times; Cohen Plea Press Release).  

August 22, 2018: At 8:44 am ET, Trump tweeted: “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!” At 9:21 am ET, he tweeted again: “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. ‘Justice’ took a 12 year old tax case among other things applied tremendous pressure on him unlike Michael Cohen he refused to ‘break’ – make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’ Such respect for brave man!” (Twitter; Manhattan DA’s Statement of Facts, p. 11). 

August 22, 2018: Trump claimed that the payments to Clifford and McDougal were legal because they “came from me” rather than his campaign. “They weren’t taken out of campaign finance, that’s the big thing,” he told Fox & Friends (USA Today). 

September 20, 2018: AMI privately signed a non-prosecution agreement protecting the company from criminal charges out of the SDNY U.S. Attorney’s Office. In exchange, AMI agreed to “cooperate fully” with investigators and fully disclose all information related to the hush money payments. In the agreement, AMI admitted “‘[a]t no time during the negotiation or acquisition of [McDougal’s] story did AMI intend to publish the story or disseminate information about it publicly.’ Rather, AMI admitted that it made the payment to ensure that [McDougal] ‘did not publicize damaging allegations’ about [Trump] ‘before the 2016 presidential election and thereby influence that election’” (Manhattan DA’s Statement of Facts, p. 11; AMI Non-Prosecution Agreement). 

December 7, 2018: Federal prosecutors released Cohen’s sentencing memo. In its summary of Cohen’s crimes, the memo endorsed Cohen’s claims that Cohen had carried out both hush money payments “in coordination with and at the direction of” Trump (Cohen Sentencing Memo, pp. 2-4, 13-15).  

December 12, 2018: Prosecutors released the details of the non-prosecution agreement with AMI, revealing the extent of AMI’s involvement in the hush money payments and corroborating many aspects of Cohen’s story.  Among the key revelations was that “AMI’s principal purpose in entering into the agreement was to suppress the model’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election”–indicating that the payments were likely campaign-related. 

 (The New York Times; AMI Non-Prosecution Agreement). 

December 12, 2018: Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for a litany of financial crimes committed while he was in Trump’s employ. Cohen was also sentenced the same day in a separate case for making false statements to Congress (The Washington Post; DOJ Press Release).  

January 10, 2019: Congressional Democrats announced that Cohen had agreed to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on February 7 (The Washington Post).

January 11, 2019: Avenatti announced that he and Clifford would attend the Cohen hearing on February 7 (POLITICO). 

January 23, 2019: Cohen postponed his February 7 appearance before Congress after reportedly receiving “threats against his family” from Trump and Giuliani. (USA Today).  

February 5, 2019: Clifford dropped her defamation claim against Cohen. Avenatti stated “We asked that the minor defamation claim be dismissed and it was because the court sided with us and against Cohen” (The Washington Post). 

February 27, 2019: Cohen testified publicly against Trump before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. (Cohen’s testimony can be found here.) When asked if Trump’s organization had made other hush money payments during the campaign, Cohen claimed that Pecker had sent money to other individuals under similar circumstances—and that “not all of them had to do with women” (The New York Times; POLITICO). 

March 7, 2019: Cohen sued the Trump Organization for breach of contract and sought reimbursement for $1.9 million in legal fees incurred after Cohen began cooperating with federal prosecutors. The complaint also claimed that the Trump Organization was responsible for paying the nearly $2 million penalty imposed after Cohen pleaded guilty (The New York Times). 

July 18, 2019: Court documents were unsealed that publicly revealed the communications among Trump, Hicks, Cohen, and several AMI executives in the days following the Access Hollywood tape release in 2016. The documents also appeared to show that “Cohen learned around the same time that Clifford had been considering going public with her claim that she had sex with Trump…. at least some of these communications concerned the need to prevent Clifford from going public, particularly in the wake of the Access Hollywood story” (CNBC). 

August 1, 2019: Manhattan DA Cyrus R. Vance Jr. subpoenaed the Trump Organization for documents related to the Clifford hush money payments.(The New York Times).

May 21, 2020: Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Cohen was released from federal prison to serve the remainder of his sentence at home (AP News). 

July 9, 2020: Federal marshals took Cohen back into custody after he “refused the conditions of his home confinement.” Probation officers had reportedly asked Cohen to agree to a set of conditions including “no engagement of any kind with the media, including print, TV, film, books, or any other form of media/news” for the remainder of his home confinement. Cohen reportedly refused and was brought to a federal detention facility (The New York Times). 

July 23, 2020: A federal judge ordered Cohen’s return to home confinement after finding that his re-imprisonment amounted to a retaliatory act undertaken by the government. During the hearing, the judge stated “I cannot believe fairly that it was not in purpose … to stop his exercise of First Amendment rights.” Cohen had planned to publish a tell-all book about Trump during his confinement (USA Today).   

July 31, 2020: The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling dismissing Clifford’s 2018 libel lawsuit against Trump (POLITICO). 

April 13, 2021: The Federal Election Commission found “reason to believe that the violation of the [Federal Elections Campaign] Act by AMI and Pecker” in connection with the payments to McDougal and Clifford “was knowing and willful,” based primarily on factual admissions AMI made in its non-disclosure agreement with the Department of Justice (FEC Factual and Legal Analysis, p. 16) (see also May 17, 2021 entry).

April 26, 2021: The FEC voted to dismiss a 2018 and a 2019 complaint against Cohen for his role in the Clifford payments. The commissioners found that since “the public record is complete with respect to the conduct at issue in these complaints, and Mr. Cohen has been punished by the government of the United States for the conduct at issue in these matters…pursuing these matters further was not the best use of agency resources” (FEC Statement of Reasons).

May 6, 2021: In a split decision that fell along partisan lines, the FEC voted against investigating charges that Trump and his Committee had violated campaign finance laws in the process of making the 2016 Clifford payment and subsequent Cohen reimbursements. The dissenting commissioners noted: “We voted to support OGC’s recommendations to find reason to believe that Trump and the Committee knowingly and willfully accepted an excessive contribution from Cohen and a prohibited corporate or excessive contribution from the Trump Organization, that the Committee knowingly and willfully filed false disclosure reports, and that the Trump Organization knowingly and willfully made a corporate or excessive contribution through its reimbursements to Cohen. There is ample evidence in the record to support the finding that Trump and the Committee knew of, and nonetheless accepted, the illegal contributions at issue here”; “the Commission’s Office of the General Counsel (‘OGC’) recommended finding reason to believe that Cohen and the Trump Organization made, and Trump and Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. (the ‘Committee’) accepted and failed to report, illegal contributions.” (FEC Statement of Reasons). 

May 17, 2021: The FEC reached a settlement with AMI after the commission concluded that the company (allegedly at the direction of Trump and Cohen) had “knowingly and willfully” violated campaign finance laws through its payments to McDougal. AMI acknowledged the violations and agreed to pay a $187,500 fine, but did not admit to “knowingly and willfully” committing them (The Wall Street Journal; The New York Times) (see also April 13, 2021 entry). 

November 12, 2021: In Cohen’s civil suit against the Trump Organization, a Manhattan state court ruled that the company was not required to reimburse Cohen for the millions of dollars in legal fees that Cohen sought. In a statement to CNN, the Trump Organization called the decision an “incredible victory” (Forbes). 

November 22, 2021: Cohen’s three-year prison sentence, which had largely been served in home confinement, ended. (AP News). 

December 17, 2021: Cohen filed a civil rights lawsuit against Trump and several other DOJ officials, seeking damages for alleged First, Fourth, and Eighth Amendment violations related to his re-confinement in federal prison the prior year (Law&Crime). 

November 14, 2022: A Trump-appointed judge dismissed Cohen’s civil rights lawsuit (Law&Crime; Cohen v. U.S. et al. decision). 

November 15, 2022: In a 5-0 decision, a New York state appeals court revived Cohen’s previous lawsuit seeking legal fee reimbursements from the Trump Organization. The court found that the presiding judge had incorrectly dismissed the case, opening a path for Cohen to sue the Trump Organization again (Reuters; Cohen v. Trump Organization LLC). 

November 21, 2022: Reports emerged that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg planned to revive his office’s criminal investigation into the Clifford hush-money payment. Bragg’s predecessor had examined the payment as possible grounds for a criminal indictment years before, but his office later reportedly decided that the surrounding legal theories were too risky to pursue the matter further (The New York Times).  

January 30, 2023: Bragg convened a grand jury in Manhattan to hear evidence related to the Clifford hush money payment (The Washington Post). 

January 30, 2023: Pecker reportedly met with prosecutors from Bragg’s office (CNN; New York Times)

February 2, 2023: Jeffrey McConney, the Trump Organization’s controller, reportedly appeared before the Manhattan grand jury hearing evidence related to the hush money payment (CNN). 

Some time after the grand jury was impaneled and before March 1, 2023: Howard, Davidson, and Debrah Tarasoff, the Trump Organization’s accounts payable supervisor, testified before the grand jury (New York Times; ABC News). 

March 1, 2023: Kellyanne Conway reportedly met with prosecutors from Bragg’s office, likely to discuss the ongoing hush money investigation (MSNBC). 

March 6, 2023: Hicks reportedly met with prosecutors from Bragg’s office (MSNBC). 

March 9, 2023: Bragg invited Trump to testify before the grand jury, according to one of Trump’s lawyers (AP).

March 13, 2023: Cohen reportedly testified before the grand jury (The Washington Post).

March 15, 2023: An attorney for Clifford stated that Clifford had met with Manhattan prosecutors and agreed to “make herself available as a witness, or for further inquiry if needed” (CBS). 

March 18, 2023: In a Truth Social thread, Trump claimed that he would be arrested the following Tuesday, March 21, 2023. In a tweet, GOP House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy separately announced that “he would direct House committees to investigate” Bragg and his office. McCarthy stated that Bragg’s potential prosecution of Trump is “an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump,” and that he planned to direct “relevant committees to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions.” Following these posts, Bragg wrote in an internal email to his staff that his office would “not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York” (Truth Social; see also Truth Social; POLITICO; CNN).

March 19, 2023: Trump commented on the Manhattan investigation in another series of Truth Social posts, claiming that Bragg was funded by billionaire George Soros and that he had no evidence of criminal wrongdoing on Trump’s part (See, for example, Truth Social and Truth Social).

March 20, 2023: Costello appeared before the Manhattan grand jury as a witness on behalf of Trump. Throughout the day, Trump continued to post about the investigation on Truth Social (PBS; Truth Social; see also Truth Social)

March 20, 2023: Congressional Representatives Jim Jordan, James Comer, and Bryan Steil (chairmen of the House Judiciary, Oversight, and Administration committees, respectively) sent a letter requesting that Bragg testify before Congress, calling the Trump investigation an “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority” and a “politically motivated prosecution.” When asked about the letter, McCarthy stated that the congressmen were “just ‘asking questions.’” A spokesperson for Bragg responded to the letter the same day, stating, “We will not be intimidated by attempts to undermine the justice process, nor will we let baseless accusations deter us from fairly applying the law” (Jordan, Steil & Comer Letter #1; CNN).

March 23, 2023: Bragg’s office released a formal response to Jordan, Comer, and Steil’s request. Leslie Dubeck, general counsel for the DA’s office, told the chairmen that “they lacked a ‘legitimate basis for congressional inquiry’” but also said, “request[ed] an opportunity to meet and confer with committee staff to better understand what information the DA’s Office can provide that relates to a legitimate legislative interest and can be shared consistent with the District Attorney’s constitutional obligations.” (Manhattan DA Letter; CNN). 

• The same day, ​Trump posted an image of himself “holding a baseball bat alongside a picture of Bragg’s head” on Truth Social. The post was later deleted. In two other Truth Social posts, Trump called Bragg a “SOROS BACKED ANIMAL [sic]” and levied what appeared to be criticism of those calling for peaceful protest: “OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED, AS THEY TELL US TO BE PEACEFUL!” (The Washington Post; The New York Times; Truth Social; Truth Social).

March 24, 2023: Trump explicitly referenced the possibility of violence surrounding his possible arrest, posting on Truth Social that the “potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country” (Truth Social).

March 25, 2023: Jordan, Comer, and Steil sent a second letter to Bragg, saying that the potential criminal indictment of Trump “implicate[d] substantial federal interests.” That evening, Bragg tweeted a response to the chairmen, stating “We evaluate cases in our jurisdiction based on the facts, the law, and the evidence. It is not appropriate for Congress to interfere with pending local investigations. This unprecedented inquiry by federal elected officials into an ongoing matter serves only to hinder, disrupt and undermine the legitimate work of our dedicated prosecutors. As always, we will continue to follow the facts and be guided by the rule of law in everything we do” (Jordan, Steil & Comer Letter #2; CNN; Twitter).

March 25, 2023: Dubeck sent Pomerantz a letter instructing him, “as a former employee and attorney of the DA’s Office, to not provide any information or materials relating to your work in the DA’s Office in response to [the Committee’s] request” (Dubeck Letter to Pomerantz; Politico). 

March 27, 2023: Pecker reportedly testified before the Manhattan grand jury for the second time (The New York Times). 

March 27, 2023: In a letter to Jordan and the Judiciary Committee, Pomerantz informed them that he would not comply with their request that he testify voluntarily, explaining that he had previously received instructions from the DA’s office “to not provide any information of materials in response to [the Committee’s] request” (Pomerantz Letter to Judiciary Committee; Politico). 

March 30, 2023: The Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree under New York Penal Law §175.10 (Manhattan DA Indictment). 

March 31, 2023: Bragg’s office sent a response to the second letter (March 25th letter) to Jordan, Comer, and Steil informing them that the office filed charges against Donald Trump after the grand jury indictment and that “Congress has no warrant for interferin with individual criminal investigations-much less investigations conducted by a separate Sovereign.” Dubeck also detailed how Bragg’s office spends its limited federal funding and wrote to the Chairs that “[w]e trust you will make a good-faith effort to reac a negotiated resolution before taking the unprecedented and unconstitutional step of serving a subpoena on a district attorney for information related to an ongoing state criminal prosecution” (Bragg Second Letter to Congress).

April 4, 2023: Trump surrendered to New York law enforcement in Manhattan and was arraigned in a criminal court hearing there. During the arraignment hearing, Trump pleaded not guilty to all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records charged in the DA’s indictment. Judge Juan Merchan warned both Trump and the DA’s office during the hearing not to make any public statements that could “incite violence, create civil unrest or jeopardize the safety or well-being of any individuals” and to “not engage in words or conduct which jeopardizes the rule of law, particularly as it applies to these proceedings in this courtroom.” The indictment and accompanying statement of facts were unsealed that afternoon (Arraignment hearing transcript; CNN).

April 4, 2023: Trump returned to Florida after the arraignment. Later that evening, he hosted a gathering at Mar-a-Lago, during which he gave a speech and stated: “I never thought anything like this could happen in America, never thought it could happen. The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it…It’s an insult to our country.” In his remarks he also referred to Judge Merchan as a “Trump-hating judge” and to Bragg as a “criminal” (CNN; New York Post). 

April 6, 2023: Jordan subpoenaed Pomerantz in an effort to compel Pomerantz’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee after he “turned down a request to voluntarily cooperate with” the congressional investigation of Bragg’s office. In the subpoena, Jordan ordered Pomerantz to sit for a deposition before the Committee on April 20 at 10:00 am (CBS News).

April 11, 2023: Bragg sued Jordan seeking a temporary restraining order to block the subpoena for Pomerantz’s testimony as well as any future subpoenas issued to him or other members of the DA’s office. The lawsuit alleged that the congressional investigation of Bragg’s office was a “brazen and unconstitutional attack” and a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” Bragg. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York. That afternoon, U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vsykocil denied Bragg’s request for a temporary restraining order. She ordered that Bragg serve the complaint on Jordan by 9:00 pm that evening, and that Jordan file a response to Bragg’s complaint by April 17. Judge Vskocil also scheduled a hearing on Bragg’s complaint for 2:00 pm on April 19 (Bragg v. Jordan; Judge Vyskocil’s April 11, 2023 Order; The New York Times).

April 12, 2023: Trump sued Cohen in federal court in the Southern District of Florida requesting $500 million dollars in damages for Cohen’s alleged “breaches of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment, conversion, and breaches of contract.” Trump’s lawyer also requested a jury trial on the matter (Trump v. Cohen; Politico; NBC News). 

April 17, 2023: Representative Jim Jordan filed an opposition to Manhattan District Attorney Bragg’s lawsuit against him, the House Judiciary Committee, and Mark Pomerantz. Jordan writes in the document, “the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause gives him, the committee, and Pomerantz immunity from the lawsuit, and thus Bragg’s motion should be denied.” (Jim Jordan Files Opposition to Manhattan DA Suit). In the opposition, Jordan also claims that Trump’s investigation “could be politically motivated” and that the committee is considering legislation that “would prohibit the use of federal forfeiture funds to investigate a current or former President” as well as legislation “that would expressly allow current and former Presidents and Vice Presidents to remove any criminal actions against them from state to federal court.” (House points to Jan. 6 committee in defending GOP’s right to subpoena ex-Bragg aide – POLITICO) 

April 17, 2023: Mark Pomerantz submitted a response and a declaration supporting the Alvin Bragg complaint and joined Bragg in asking the judge to block the subpoena for his testimony, saying he was “not involved in the decision to seek an indictment” of Trump since he resigned more than a year before the indictment was returned (Mark Pomerantz: Federal judge denies request to block House GOP subpoena of ex-prosecutor | CNN Politics). 

April 17, 2023: Twenty-one individuals, including four former Republican Members of Congress filed an amicus brief supporting Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Jr. ‘s motion for “injunctive relief to quash a subpoena in the case he filed against House Judiciary Chair Rep. Jim Jordan” (Democracy 21). The brief states that “Congress has no authority to interfere with an ongoing criminal prosecution, particularly one brought by a state prosecutor. That calculus does not change just because the defendant whom a grand jury indicted happens to be a former President of the United States. Nor does it change when Members of Congress attempt to characterize their unlawful interference as ‘oversight.’” The authors also wrote that the subpoena issued by Jordan, “Threatens attorney work product privilege; Threatens the law enforcement privilege; Threatens grand jury secrecy; and Threatens the public interest and deliberative process privileges.” (Democracy 21)

April 19, 2023: Federal Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil ruled that Republican House members have a constitutional right to subpoena and question former prosecutor Mark F. Pomerantz. The Manhattan DA office responded by saying, “We respectfully disagree with the District Court’s decision,” and requested that the subpoena be paused while the ruling was appealed. The request was denied. DA Bragg’s lawyers argued that because Pomerantz has already appeared on 60 Minutes and written a book about his time working on the Trump investigation, questioning him would be about interfering with the investigation over gaining information from Pomerantz. Rep. Jordan’s lawyers asserted that the subpoena is about inspecting the use of federal funds for local investigations and the prospect of future legislation. (The New York Times)

April 19, 2023: DA Bragg and former prosecutor Mark F. Pomerantz both appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals after Judge Vyskocil’s ruling, and were granted a temporary stay of Pomerantz’s questioning. (The New York Times)

April 25, 2023: The Manhattan DA office filed a request with Judge Juan M. Merchan to restrict Trump’s access to materials from his criminal case, and his ability to post the evidence online. (The New York Times)

April 27, 2023: Trump’s attorneys filed a request for a bill of particulars. A bill of particulars is a written itemization of the claims and/or alleged facts brought against a defendant, which a defendant will usually request when the charges or claims are unclear. The idea is that the defendant needs proper notice of the charges so that they can prepare an adequate defense. Here, Trump’s request inquired into the legal basis for felony charges of falsification of business records. (The Washington Post; NBC News)

May 4, 2023: Trump requested removal to the federal Southern District of New York. His request was based on 28 U.S.C. §1442 (a)(1), which requires removal in state criminal cases against federal officers when the alleged criminal conduct occurred while the defendant was a federal officer and under the “color of his office.” Because the state crimes which Trump allegedly committed are superseded by federal election laws with some of the same elements, Trump argued that the federal preemption doctrine applied here. Under that doctrine, Trump argued, only federal prosecutors could bring charges against him for that alleged conduct. Trump also stated in the filing that criminal charges against a former President of the United States were “unprecedented in our nation’s history,” further compelling the judge to remove the case to the Southern District of New York. 

May 8, 2023: Judge Merchan ruled, as part of a protective order, that Trump may not post any discovery materials  on “any news or social media platforms, including, but not limited, to Truth Social, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat, or YouTube, without prior approval from the Court” (CNN).

May 16, 2023: Bragg rejected Trump’s request for a bill of particulars, arguing that he already has enough relevant information. “The 15-page, 34-count indictment and 13-page statement of facts fully inform defendant of the nature of the charges against him,” said assistant district attorney Becky Mangold. Nevertheless, Bragg released a list of statutes that may serve as Trump’s underlying crime to justify the felony enhancement.

May 23, 2023: In a hearing, Judge Merchan established the ground rules for the protective order (see May 8, 2023), and explained, “It’s certainly not a gag order,” as Trump is allowed to publicly discuss the case. The judge set the commencement of the trial for March 25, 2024.

IMAGE (L to R): Former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives during a rally at the Waco Regional Airport on March 25, 2023 in Waco, Texas (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images); Former Trump Attorney Michael Cohen arrives at the district attorney’s office to complete his testimony before a grand jury on March 15, 2023 in New York. (Photo by YUKI IWAMURA/AFP via Getty Images); David J. Pecker, CEO of Hachette Filipacchi Magazines, applauds during a press conference (BOB STRONG/AFP via Getty Images);  Adult film actress Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Clifford) speaks to the media as she exits the United States District Court Southern District of New York for a hearing related to Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal attorney and confidante, April 16, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) 

The post Detailed Chronology in Trump-Cohen Hush Money Investigation appeared first on Just Security.

“those who took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution and then, on January 6th, engaged in insurrection can appropriately be disqualified and barred from holding government office…pursuant to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

While the committee addressed congressional vehicles for enforcing that constitutional provision at the federal level, there are also existing provisions and processes to do so on a state-by-state basis. Those vehicles include states’ quo warranto laws. In this essay and our accompanying survey of those laws, we outline their applicability in all 50 states and four additional jurisdictions.

We come to this topic just over two years after a violent mob, alongside organized militia groups, stormed the Capitol building, the seat of American government. They disrupted the January 6 congressional certification of presidential electoral votes with the aim to overturn the 2020 presidential election. As a result, various institutions—from the Justice Department to Congress to civil society organizations—have been holding actors of all levels of culpability to account for the assault on our democracy. Over 900 individuals have been charged by the Justice Department in connection with the attack on the Capitol. Federal prosecutors have also secured historic, back-to-back seditious conspiracy convictions against leaders of the far-right Oath Keepers militia for helping foment the insurrection. And in December, the House January 6 select committee culminated their months-long investigation and series of public hearings by issuing several criminal referrals to the Justice Department against former President Donald Trump and some of his closest associates based on their involvement in different parts of the multi-prong effort to overturn the election.

But criminal prosecution is not the only means of January 6 accountability.

Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment can also serve that general purpose. Section 3 provides that no person shall hold any state or federal office “who[] having previously taken an oath…shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion…or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” In an initial detailed report published at the Project on Government Oversight, we examined the different avenues for modern-day enforcement of Section 3 with an eye toward holding accountable those who participated in the January 6 attack and in the events that precipitated it. As we discussed in that earlier analysis and an accompanying essay at Just Security, one of the main enforcement mechanisms for a Section 3 disqualification is a quo warranto lawsuit. (Quo warranto is Latin for “by what warrant.”) Through this type of lawsuit, an individual’s right to hold public office can be challenged.

Our purpose is to provide a comprehensive current survey of the nation’s quo warranto laws, and to build on the recent successful use of the doctrine. Despite that fact, the doctrine has been recently used to litigate against a public official who participated in the attack on the Capitol and resulted in his being removed from office. In that landmark ruling last fall, a New Mexico judge removed a state county commissioner from office under Section 3 for his participation in the January 6 attack. Since then, the House select committee in its final report has issued a recommendation that Section 3 disqualification actions be brought against other public officials who engaged in insurrection.

As a continuation of our previous analysis and the work of the House committee, we surveyed the quo warranto procedures in 55 different jurisdictions—the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and nationally, including some limited instances of federal common law. We did so to map the potential for future uses of quo warranto lawsuits to bar public officials from office. Our analysis of these procedures demonstrates that quo warranto lawsuits can be used by a variety of stakeholders—from private parties such as individual citizens to public entities such as state attorneys general, county district attorneys, municipal or county governments, and even U.S. attorneys. What’s more, it shows that quo warranto lawsuits are an accountability tool that is not only widely accessible but also practically meaningful. Such actions hold the potential to disqualify sitting public officials who have violated their oath by engaging in insurrectionist activity. In that way, quo warranto lawsuits can serve as a powerful means of furthering legal accountability against some of the highest-ranking individuals who participated or aided in the assault on January 6.

Our analysis interprets the wide array of state and territorial laws that establish the procedural framework for quo warranto actions by categorizing them according to how they empower different parties, both in bringing actions and in managing them. In some jurisdictions, private parties can supply the government with information to serve as the basis of the government’s quo warranto complaint against a public official. These private parties are often referred to as “relators.” In Texas, for example, prosecuting attorneys may file a motion “at the request of an individual relator.” While such an action is not technically a private action, some jurisdictions also allow relators to manage a case pursuant to the government’s oversight. For instance, Missouri law empowers relators to control a case after obtaining leave from the prosecuting attorney.

In other jurisdictions, private parties can themselves file quo warranto lawsuits against public officials without governmental permission. Some jurisdictions, such as Connecticut, allow parties to do so in their own name. In others like North Carolina, however, the government must be the named party. In the latter scenario, the private party, not the government, manages the case; and, indeed, the government possesses no management authority. For example, should the prosecuting attorney decline to bring a quo warranto case in New Mexico, the relator is afforded full control of the suit despite the government being the named party. We identify both these types of quo warranto procedures as private actions, since both enable private parties to bring the suit.

Some jurisdictions have similarly codified which public authorities may initiate a quo warranto lawsuit. Unlike the regulations that empower private relators to issue broader complaints, many regions specify which authorities can litigate against particular officeholders. For example, in Arkansas, prosecuting attorneys may bring quo warranto suits against county officials, while the state’s attorney general handles cases against all other officers. Other jurisdictions such as Massachusetts and New York place the onus entirely on the attorney general, while others task other officials such as county or U.S. attorneys with bringing quo warranto suits.

Beyond empowering specific parties, quo warranto laws also impose other and highly varied procedures in these kinds of lawsuits. In New Jersey, for example, the attorney general carries the burden of proof. But in Hawaii, the respondent—that is, the public official whose conduct is in question—bears the burden of proof in lawsuits initiated by the attorney general. Other laws establish a duty upon public officials, usually either the local or state prosecutor, to bring a quo warranto action when, as in Arizona, for example, “they have reason to believe there is a cause.” California, Idaho, and Montana, to name a few, impose such a duty upon prosecutors.

Disqualification actions can be brought against public officials who have violated their oath of office by engaging in insurrection or by giving aid or comfort to insurrectionists. The House select committee recognized that in their final recommendations. Our comprehensive survey of quo warranto procedures is intended to serve as a guide to the various private and public stakeholders empowered by state and territorial law to file quo warranto lawsuits so they can continue the House committee’s work—holding public officials whom voters have entrusted to lead their government accountable for their wrongdoing.

A note from the authors: This is the first edition of this resource. It is for informational purposes and should not be construed as legal advice. We hope to hear from experts and readers alike about how we can improve and whether any of the judgments we made in assembling this compendium can or should be adjusted in future iterations. Please send your comments to david.janovsky@pogo.org.

IMAGE: Pro-Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol following a rally with President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

The post Do State Laws Block Insurrectionists from Office? appeared first on Just Security.

The three of us — Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and former counsel in the first Trump impeachment Ambassador Norman Eisen (ret.), President of CREW Noah Bookbinder, Founder and President of Democracy 21 Fred Wertheimer — and our colleagues have been publishing a Criminal Evidence Tracker on Just Security after each Committee hearing. The Tracker summarizes the evidence that has emerged in the hearings of criminal conduct by Trump and his close collaborators.

The Tracker focuses on three criminal laws implicated by Trump’s actions: whether Trump conspired to defraud the United States (18 U.S. Code Section 371), whether Trump conspired to obstruct an official proceeding (18 U.S. Code Section 1512), and whether Trump engaged in criminal solicitation to commit election fraud under Georgia law (Georgia Code Section 21-2- 604).

Using Trump’s own speeches and statements, the Committee established that as early as April 2020, Trump had been insisting that he would lose the election only if it were rigged against him. These claims—all lacking basis—continued from the spring before the election, to Election Night, to the congressional certification of the election results on January 6, and to this day.

The following bullet points, organized by witness or participant, are drawn from the Criminal Evidence Tracker and highlight key testimony received to date by the January 6th Committee:

Cassidy Hutchinson, former White House senior aide to COS Mark Meadows

• Meadows’ aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, testified that, on January 2, 2021, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani asked her if she was excited for January 6, and told her “something to the effect of ‘we’re going to the Capitol. … It’s going to be great. The President’s going to be there. He’s going to look powerful. He’s going to be with the members. He’s going to be with the Senators.’” Hutchinson testified that she asked Meadows about what Giuliani told her, and Meadows responded, “There’s a lot going on … but … things might get real, real bad on January 6th.”
• Hutchinson testified that Trump instructed Meadows to speak with Roger Stone and former National Security Advisor, Gen. Michael Flynn, on the evening of January 5, 2021 to discuss how January 6 would play out, and that Meadows made those phone calls. That day and on January 6, Stone was photographed with members of the Oath Keepers, who were serving as Stone’s security detail.
• Hutchinson testified that Trump and his staff were told that persons attending the January 6 rally on the National Mall had weapons, including knives, guns in the form of pistols and rifles, bear spray, body armor, spears, and flagpoles. According to Hutchinson, Trump did not want rally attendees to be screened by magnetometers (mags). Hutchinson overheard Trump say in a backstage tent at the rally, “I don’t effing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the effing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here.” Thus, aware that persons at the rally had weapons, Trump in his speech to the crowd encouraged them to march to the Capitol.
• According to Hutchinson, Trump wanted to personally go to the Capitol after the rally and was angry when the Secret Service did not allow him to do so. In recorded interviews, former White House staffers Nick Luna and Max Miller, and former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany corroborated Hutchinson’s testimony that Trump wanted to go to the Capitol along with the crowd. It was also corroborated by a National Security Council (NSC) Chat Log from January 6.
• Hutchinson testified that she observed White House attorney Pat Cipollone telling Meadows that rioters had reached the Capitol building and trying to convince Meadows to talk to Trump. Hutchinson testified that Meadows told Cipollone that Trump “doesn’t wanna do anything” about it. It wasn’t until Cipollone insisted on going to Trump himself, and “said something to the effect of … something needs to be done, or people are going to die and the blood’s gonna be on your effing hands” that Meadows responded.
• Hutchinson testified that she overheard a conversation between Trump, Cipollone, and Meadows discussing the fact that the rioters were chanting “Hang Mike Pence.” Hutchinson also overheard an immediate follow-up to that conversation between Cipollone and Meadows during which Cipollone said: “They’re literally calling for the Vice President to be effing hung.” Meadows “responded something to the effect of ‘you heard him … [Trump] thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think [the individuals in the crowd are] doing anything wrong,’” according to Hutchinson’s testimony.
• White House Counsel told Meadows, Giuliani, and a few of Giuliani’s associates that the scheme to organize alternate electors was “not legally sound,” according to testimony by Hutchinson.
• Several House members, including Representatives Mo Brooks, Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert, Scott Perry, and Marjorie Taylor Green asked Chief of Staff Meadows or other White House staff for pardons in relation to their activities to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to Hutchinson. The idea was also raised of giving a blanket pardon to all involved in the circumstances surrounding the events that occurred in the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
• According to testimony from Hutchinson, both Meadows and Giuliani indicated they were interested in receiving a presidential pardon related to January 6th.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger

• Trump publicly claimed there was “massive voter fraud” in Georgia despite the fact that, according to testimony by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the vote was counted three times and the three counts were “all remarkably close.” Despite the fact that multiple senior Justice Department officials told Trump that allegations were thoroughly investigated and had no merit, Trump and Giuliani claimed, based on a video, that election workers counting ballots in Fulton County pulled out “suitcases” of 18,000 fake ballots for Biden and counted them multiple times.
• Raffensperger testified that Trump’s claims that votes were illegally cast or illegally counted in Georgia were all investigated and shown to be false. Gabe Sterling, chief operating officer of the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, said that the video about the “suitcases” cited by Trump and Giuliani showed only “workers engaging in normal ballot processing” and nothing improper occurred. Trump’s claims of voter fraud in Georgia were also investigated by the Justice Department. Attorney General William Barr said there was “no merit” to Trump’s claim. ThenActing Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue said he told Trump that his claims of fraud in Georgia were “not supported by the evidence.”
• Trump applied pressure to Georgia officials to change the election results. He told a state election investigator that she would be “praised” when “the right answer” came out and urged her to do “whatever you can do.” Raffensperger testified that in a call with Trump on January 2, 2021, Trump again pressed Raffensperger to recalculate the election result in Georgia and again brought up the claim that “suitcases of ballots” were improperly counted in Fulton County and that votes were cast by deceased voters, even though Trump had been told these claims had been investigated and were false. In the call, Trump said to Raffensperger, “All I want to do is this, I just want to find 11,780 votes … because we won the state.” (Biden had a vote margin in Georgia of 11,779 votes). Trump said that “the real truth is I won by 400,000 votes … I only need 11,000 votes.” According to a tape of the phone conversation, Trump also threatened Raffensperger with criminal prosecution unless he did what Trump wanted, telling Raffensperger that it’s “more illegal for you than it is for them” and that’s “a big risk” for Raffensperger to take.

Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue

• Trump and Jeffrey Clark, acting head of the Civil Division at the Justice Department, worked together on a scheme for Clark to be named Acting Attorney General to replace Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and to then challenge election results in a number of key states that Biden won. Clark had drafted and on December 28, 2020 presented to Rosen a proposed letter for the Department of Justice to send to Georgia and other states that claimed the Department had identified “significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election” and that the state legislature should “convene in special session” to reconsider the electors chosen. The letter said that the states involved had “failed” to choose a winner and therefore the state legislatures should choose the presidential electors to represent their states. This was an effort to use a loophole in the Presidential Election Day Act of 1845 to have state legislatures override the choice of the voters in the states involved.
• The January 6th Committee provided evidence of direct links between Clark, John Eastman, and Ken Klukowski, a lawyer who joined the Justice Department on December 15, 2020. According to Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, Klukowski worked under Clark, and they worked together to write the December 28 draft letter. An email (dated December 18, 2020) recommending that Eastman and Klukowski brief Pence “suggests that Mr. Klukowski was simultaneously working with Jeffrey Clark to draft the proposed letter to Georgia officials to overturn their certified election and working with Dr. Eastman to help pressure the Vice President to overturn the election,” Vice Chair Cheney said. She further noted that the draft contained “text … similar to what we have seen from John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, both of whom were coordinating with President Trump to overturn the 2020 election,” indicating agreement between those individuals as all were acting in concert.
• Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue refused to sign the letter because they thought it was not the Department’s role to dictate to states how to choose electors and because the claim that the Justice Department had found widespread election fraud was completely groundless. They told Clark they would not sign the letter. Trump then took steps to replace Rosen with Clark in order to ensure that the Department would send the letter. On January 3, Clark told Rosen that Trump offered him the job of Acting Attorney General and that he had accepted it. Trump abandoned the plan to replace Rosen with Clark only after being confronted by Rosen, Donoghue, Assistant Attorney General Steven Engle, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, and others in a White House meeting on January 3 and told that there would be “hundreds and hundreds” of resignations of leaders in the Justice Department if he fired Rosen.
• Donoghue testified that he was blunt with Trump and explained “piece by piece … in a serial fashion” why each theory of fraud Trump suggested was “not true.” For example, Donoghue testified that he explained that the Allied Security Operations Group’s report on Antrim County, Michigan was false and that a hand recount had confirmed there was actually only a .0063% error rate – “one error, one ballot.” Donoghue also testified that he explained that the FBI had investigated and found untrue a truck driver’s allegations of ballots being sent from New York to Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, Trump continued publicly alleging fraud.
• Rosen testified that between December 23 and January 3, Trump “either called me or met with me virtually every day” to pressure him and the Justice Department to pursue allegations of fraud in an apparent effort to get the Department to lend support for Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. Rosen testified that Trump expressed dissatisfaction with what the Justice Department had done and pushed actions that Rosen and others didn’t think were appropriate. Rosen further testified that Trump pushed for the Justice Department to send letters to state legislatures, appoint a special counsel for election fraud, file a Justice Department lawsuit in the Supreme Court, and make public statements or hold a press conference regarding claims of election fraud. Rosen also said Trump asked him to meet with Giuliani on these matters. Rosen did none of this.
• According to Donoghue’s contemporaneous handwritten notes and testimony, Trump asked him directly for the Justice Department to “just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.” Trump was asking for Donoghue to lie publicly, because Donoghue had told Trump that the theories of fraud were not true. Donoghue refused to do this.
• Rosen testified that on December 31, 2020, Trump asked the Justice Department to seize voting machines from states. According to Donoghue when Rosen refused, Trump then asked the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for DHS to do it. No one seized voting machines.
• On multiple occasions, Rosen, and Donoghue told Trump that his various claims of election fraud were incorrect or had already been debunked by the Department of Justice.
• Donoghue said Trump refused to accept alleged proof that he lost the election. According to Donoghue: “There were so many of these allegations that when you gave him a very direct answer on one of them, he wouldn’t fight us on it, but he’d move to another allegation.” He said about Trump’s claims of fraud in counting the ballots in Fulton County, Georgia: “I told the President myself that several times, in several conversations, that these allegations about ballots being smuggled in a suitcase and run through the machines several times, it was not true.”

Former Attorney General William Barr

• Trump repeated allegations of election fraud that were clearly and irrefutably false, and he was apparently told that by his Attorney General. Former Attorney General WilliamBarr said he told Trump there was “zero basis for the allegations” of widespread election fraud — and said Trump was “detached from reality if he really believes this stuff.”
• Barr called Trump’s claims “bullshit,” “idiotic,” “stupid,” “complete nonsense,” and “crazy stuff.” He said about his discussions with Trump, “There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.” Barr also said there was “zero basis” for arguing Dominion Voting Systems had rigged the voting machine in favor of Biden or had otherwise shifted any votes to Biden.
• Barr testified: “The President has repeatedly suggested that there was some kind of outpouring of unexpected votes in inner city areas like Philadelphia.” Barr also testified: “And what [Mastriano] did was he mixed apples and oranges. He took the number of applications for the Republican primary and he compared it to the number of absentee votes cast in the general election. But once you actually go and look and compare apples to apples, there’s no discrepancy at all. And, you know, that’s one of the – I – I think at some point I covered that with the President.”

Trump lawyer John Eastman  / former Vice President chief counsel Greg Jacob

• Trump lawyer John Eastman and Trump pursued a joint plan to have Pence either reject certain electoral votes cast for Biden and then declare Trump the winner of the 2020 election or suspend the counting of electoral votes for 10 days and return the electoral votes from certain states back for the state legislatures to reconsider the votes. Eastman admitted in front of Trump that his plan to overturn the election violated several provisions of the Electoral Count Act, according to Vice President Pence’s Chief Counsel, Greg Jacob. Jacob also testified that Eastman admitted to him if it came before the Supreme Court, the plan would lose unanimously.
• The January 6th Committee showed video evidence illustrating how Trump, Eastman, Giuliani, Trump legal advisor Jenna Ellis, and others acted in concert to deliver the same messages and make the same requests of different state legislators, in a coordinated effort to push them to appoint alternate electors that would vote for Trump despite the popular vote in those states going for Biden.
• According to a summary presented by Committee staff, Trump and his lawyers pressured several state legislatures to decertify slates of Biden electors that had been certified in those states consistent with the election results and instead to recertify slates of Trump electors.
• The White House Counsel’s office told Meadows, Giuliani, and Giuliani’s associates the fake electors scheme was not “legally sound” according to Cassidy Hutchinson, who witnessed the meeting.
• Eastman said in an email obtained by the Committee: “The fact that we have multiple slate[s] of electors demonstrates the uncertainty of either. That should be enough.” This email showed that the Trump team deceptively manufactured the very uncertainty it needed to obstruct the counting of certified electoral votes for Biden.
• Jacob confirmed the context of a January 6 email exchange with Eastman in which Eastman said that he advised Trump in his professional judgment the Vice President did not have the power to decide things unilaterally but that “once [President Trump] gets something in his head, it’s hard to get him to change course.”

Trump campaign lawyer Cleta Mitchell

• Trump campaign lawyer Cleta Mitchell told the January 6th Committee that Trump’s strategy to overturn the election started “right after the election — it might have been before the election” indicating that the Trump team expected to lose but nevertheless intended to find a way to obstruct the ultimate certification of the result. Mitchell wrote an email to Eastman just two days after the election asking him to write a memo to justify the strategy. This appears to be the genesis of the now-public Eastman memos articulating the Trump team’s scheme.

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers

• Despite Trump, Giuliani, and Ellis telling Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers on multiple occasions that they had names and evidence to back up their claims of voter fraud, Bowers testified Giuliani admitted to him in the presence of others: “We’ve got lots of theories. We just don’t have the evidence.”
• Giuliani and his associates never produced any evidence despite being asked to do so several times by Bowers and others, and promising that they would. Nevertheless, they still pushed Bowers to call the Arizona legislature into special session, and wrongly suggested that the legislature could dismiss Biden electors and replace them with Trump electors. Bowers rejected their efforts saying it would be contrary to his oath of office to uphold the law and the Constitution.

Former Wisconsin Republican Party chair Andrew Hitt

• Former Wisconsin Republican Party chair Andrew Hitt told the January 6th Committee that he was told the alternate electors sought by Trump’s team “would only count if a court ruled” in favor of Trump. Otherwise, “it would have been using our electors in ways that we weren’t told about and we wouldn’t have supported.” Nevertheless, fake elector certificates from Wisconsin were submitted to the National Archives and an attempt was made to submit them to Pence as President of the Senate.

IMAGES: (LEFT TO RIGHT) Cassidy Hutchinson, a top former aide to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testifies during the sixth hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol on June 28, 2022 (Brandon Bell/Getty Images); US Representative Liz Cheney (R) speaks flanked by US Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot, during a House Select Committee hearing to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol, on June 9, 2022 (Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP) (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images); Steven Engel, former Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, Jeffrey Rosen, former Acting Attorney General, and Richard Donoghue, former Acting Deputy Attorney General, talk as they take their seats to testify before the House Select Committee on June 23, 2022 (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The post Highlights from the Criminal Evidence Tracker’s Reports on Seven Hearings by the January 6th Committee appeared first on Just Security.

Over the first five hearings, the committee had been presenting a case against Trump that implicated the same two federal crimes that a federal judge found Trump likely violated: 18 U.S.C. 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and 18 U.S.C. 1512, obstruction of Congress. In those five hearings, the committee amassed a mountain of evidence that, among other things, Trump knew he lost the election and still sought to procure phony votes, phony electoral certificates, and a phony legal justification for then-Vice President Mike Pence to execute the final stage of essentially a planned coup.

The sixth hearing and last Tuesday’s seventh hearing established a new element of these possible conspiracy and obstruction crimes and other possible offenses: violent intent. Hutchinson established Trump’s violent intent on January 6, and Tuesday’s hearing went back to the origins of Trump’s desperation: his loss of all legitimate avenues to challenge the election after the Electoral College met on December 14 and confirmed Joe Biden as the nation’s next president.

The committee on Tuesday carefully worked its way forward, building a bridge from December 14 to Trump’s violent intent on January 6.

First, they showed that after the December 14 Electoral College vote, multiple close aides and family members knew: it was over. For example, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone shared that he agreed that Trump should have conceded the election at that time. The committee used Cipollone extensively and to good advantage, demonstrating why it was so important that they got his testimony before this particular hearing. Others told Trump directly of their belief that the contestation process had run its course and that he should accept the results.

Trump came to a critical fork in the road on December 18, where in an Oval Office meeting he had to choose between what Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien called “Team Normal” and what some Trump advisers called “Team Crazy.” In that “unhinged” meeting, “Team Crazy,” including Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, brought a draft executive order they had prepared wherein they proposed that the U.S. military seize state election machines. That was a plan which generated disagreement from “Team Normal” during the meeting and which Cipollone unequivocally denounced during his deposition.

The committee then showed that Trump chose “Team Crazy” when, shortly after the draft Executive Order was rejected and the hours-long meeting ended, he sent his “will be wild” tweet on December 19 at 1:42am. The evidence presented made clear that the far-right militia and other figures understood that tweet as a call to violence.

In the second half of the hearing, the committee continued to bridge forward from that tweet to the violence of January 6. Longtime Trump ally and outside adviser Roger Stone, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and others provided some of these critical links. As for Flynn and Stone, both of whom Trump had pardoned during the time between the election and January 6, we learned that they had direct relationships with violent right-wing groups—photographs of Flynn being guarded on December 12 by an indicted Oath Keeper and encrypted text messages from January 5 and 6 between Stone and the indicted leader of the Florida Oath Keepers spoke for themselves. One rally organizer explained that Trump wanted to surround himself with “the crazies” because they were “very very vicious in publicly defending him.”

White House visitor logs presented by the committee revealed that on December 21, Congressmen Brian Babin, Andy Biggs, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, Andy Harris, Jody Hice, Jim Jordan, and Scott Perry and then-Congresswoman-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene met at the White House to discuss January 6. We learned earlier that some of these members, as well as Congressman Mo Brooks, had requested pardons from Trump following the attack on the U.S. Capitol. As Brooks told Meadows, “only citizens can exert the necessary influence” needed to overturn the election. This raises questions as to whether Flynn and Stone are the only ones who provide links between Trump’s tweet and the January 6 violence.

Then as they have done before, the committee used live witnesses to good effect. Former Oath Keepers spokesman Jason Van Tatenhove noted that January 6th “could have been the spark that started a new civil war” through an “armed revolution.” Militant members of the mob expected it to be just that. His testimony drove home the violent threat that the Oath Keepers and similar militia groups pose to the fabric of American democracy—driven and enabled by insurrectionist-in-chief Trump, whose rhetoric presented them with an opportunity to “become a paramilitary force.” Capitol-rioter Stephen Ayres testified that he was taken in by Trump’s repeated lies about the election having been stolen and he, like many others, responded to Trump’s call to Washington. The reference to Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, who was seated in the audience and whose injuries sustained on January 6 have forced him to retire from law enforcement and find other work, was also poignant.

Finally, we already knew of multiple apparent incidents of witness intimidation. In this hearing we learned that Trump may have personally attempted to do so by contacting a witness directly.  The committee has referred the matter to the Department of Justice. 18 U.S.C. 1512 punishes witness intimidation with fines, up to 20 years of imprisonment, or both.

We think that this hearing like the ones before it will have an impact on the Department of Justice’s own assessment of the evidence because, as we note above, there was additional proof of Trump’s criminal intent with respect to the violence on January 6. We would only add that the impact is not only on federal prosecutors but also on state prosecutors, including in Georgia with regard to the RICO conspiracy Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis may be pursuing.

Finally, the seventh hearing amplified the historical significance of the committee’s hearings as a whole. We have mounting evidence of crimes that were allegedly committed and conspiracies that were allegedly led by an American president in office. They are attacks against democracy itself—and ones with apparent violent intent no less—that caused the first non-peaceful transfer of power in our nation. These hearings have already secured their place in the history books, and they will continue do so with the next hearing to come this week.

And as important as Cipollone was on Tuesday, he’ll surely be even more significant next week when we hear about the many failures of Donald Trump on January 6. We think that, when you put those details together with all of the evidence we have already, next week could be the week that takes us across a critical line—from that federal judge saying there were more likely than not crimes, to sufficient proof for DOJ and state prosecutors to charge Donald Trump at the federal level, at the state level, or both.

We will continue to update our charts after any future public hearings. The current editions are provided below and as a separate PDF.

Readers may also be interested in our hearing synopses that accompanied each of the earlier editions following those public hearings, including: the initial introduction as well as those for the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth updates.

The January 6th Hearings a … by Just Security

IMAGE: Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone is seen on a video display during the seventh hearing held by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol on July 12, 2022 in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC. (Photo by Sarah Silbiger-Pool/Getty Images)

The post The January 6th Hearings: Criminal Evidence Tracker Seventh Edition appeared first on Just Security.

Hutchinson was the committee’s only live witness on Tuesday, and the only live witness so far who was in the West Wing on January 6th. She served as Meadows’ principal aide during the last few months of the Trump administration and as a special assistant to the president. That is a commissioned, senior White House rank. Before joining the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, Hutchinson worked for House Republican Whip Steve Scalise and Senator Ted Cruz.

Hutchinson was personally present at several key moments before, on, and after January 6, and was involved in numerous conversations, phone calls, and texts with Meadows, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Tony Ornato, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, other senior White House staff, members of Congress, Rudy Giuliani, and others. The committee showed excerpts of Hutchison’s four videotaped interviews, video from other White House officials’ depositions and interviews, and critical texts, emails, notes, and memos.

Hutchinson began by testifying that Trump and his closest advisors knew before January 6 not only that Trump planned to go to the Capitol himself after his speech at the Ellipse, but that the White House was aware that violence was likely. Hutchinson recounted that, as Rudy Giuliani was leaving the White House on January 2, he told her that Trump was planning to go to the Capitol and that Meadows knew about it. Meadows warned Hutchinson “things might get real, real bad on January 6th,” Hutchinson said.

Trump learned on the morning of January 6 that people in the crowd gathering on the Ellipse were armed with weapons, Hutchinson testified. Ornato, who was responsible for White House security, told Meadows around 10 a.m. about people carrying weapons including “knives, guns in the form of pistols and rifles, bear spray, body armor, spears, and flagpoles.” Meadows asked if Ornato had talked to the president, “and Tony said, ‘Yes, sir. He’s aware,’” Hutchinson recounted. Vice Chair Cheney confirmed with Hutchinson that Ornato relayed to her he had told Trump about weapons at the rally on January 6. According to Cheney and audio from police and the Secret Service communications, those weapons included AR-15s and pistols.

Trump’s reaction to seeing the crowd on the Ellipse where he was to give his speech further confirmed his knowledge of the weapons present that day, and his disdain for the safety of anyone but himself. As is normal protocol, the Secret Service screened those attendees nearest to the president with magnetometers (mags), confiscating any weapons. Waiting near Trump in the tent, Hutchinson said she heard him say “something to the effect of… ‘I don’t effing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the effing mags away. Let my people in, they can march to the Capitol from here.’”

Despite knowing of the threat of violence and the armed crowd, in his speech Trump nevertheless encouraged supporters to march to the Capitol. And he said he would go with them. Hutchinson testified that in working on the draft speech, Trump’s language created legal concerns for the White House counsel’s office and White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, and that Cipollone was highly alarmed at Trump’s plan to actually go to the Capitol himself. Both before January 6 and on that morning, Hutchinson recounted, Cipollone told her to make sure that Trump didn’t go. “We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen,” Cipollone told her. In fact, during her testimony Hutchinson revealed that, the crimes of concern to Cipollone included “ potentially obstructing justice or defrauding the electoral count.” She said Cipollone “was also worried that it would look like we were inciting a riot or encouraging a riot to erupt on the Capitol” indicating that Trump’s team, and possibly Trump if he was briefed on that concern, were fully aware of the criminal implications. The evidence Trump may have committed some of the very crimes apparently discussed by people in Trump’s inner circle is detailed in the sixth edition of our criminal evidence tracker.

Trump pushed to join the march to the Capitol by foot or drive there. In video excerpts of their depositions, Trump aides Nick Luna and Max Miller confirmed Trump told them he wanted to accompany rally attendees to the Capitol. The Secret Service, however, refused to let him make the “off the record” movement because there were not enough security assets in place to protect him. Even after the motorcade returned to the White House, Trump still wanted to go to the Capitol, Kayleigh McEnany said in a videotaped deposition and as she had written in her personal notes.

Hutchinson’s testimony also demonstrated that despite knowing the mob at the Capitol had turned violent Trump still tweeted at 2:24 p.m. that Pence “didn’t have the courage” to refuse to certify the election. While bringing Meadows his phone outside the Oval Office dining room, Hutchinson heard discussion about the “hang Mike Pence” chants. Later, when Cipollone urged Meadows to have Trump do more to stop the violence, Hutchinson said Meadows said something to the effect of: “You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they [the rioters] are doing anything wrong.”

Hutchinson’s testimony concluded with her reporting that both Giuliani and Meadows indicated they wanted to receive pardons from Trump for their conduct related to January 6.

Vice Chair Cheney ended the hearing by providing evidence of potential witness tampering by Trump allies. The committee asked witnesses connected to the Trump administration or campaign if they had been contacted by any former colleagues, or if anyone had tried to influence their testimony. One unidentified witness described phone calls from people interested in their testimony telling the witness: “As long as I continue to be a team player, they know I’m on the right team. I’m doing the right thing. I’m protecting who I need to protect, you know, I’ll continue to stay in good graces in Trump World.” Another witness described receiving a call saying: “He wants me to let you know he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”

Tuesday’s hearing offered gripping evidence that Trump and some of his closest advisors had the criminal intent to obstruct the counting of the electoral votes on January 6. They knew that violence was highly likely when Trump urged his supporters to march to the Capitol and intended to go with them to pressure Pence and Congress and inflame the mob. The criminality of Trump’s plans was obvious – White House lawyers repeatedly warned about it. And Trump’s closest advisors acknowledged their own criminal exposure by seeking preemptive pardons. The hearing also provided evidence of more potential crimes, including incitement, seditious conspiracy, and witness tampering.

We will continue to update our charts after future hearings. The current editions are provided below and as a separate PDF.

Readers may also be interested in synopses that accompanied each of the earlier editions following those public hearings, including: the initial introduction as well as introductions to the second, third, fourth, and fifth updates.

The January 6th Hearings a …

IMAGE: Cassidy Hutchinson, a top former aide to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testifies during the sixth hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol on June 28, 2022 (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

The post The January 6th Hearings: Criminal Evidence Tracker Sixth Edition appeared first on Just Security.

Thursday’s fifth hearing of committee focused on former President Donald Trump’s campaign to misuse his own Department of Justice in his efforts to overturn an election he lost, and in particular the role of his main collaborator at DOJ, former DOJ assistant attorney general Jeffrey Clark. We outline what the legal significance of what we learned in the hearing about Trump’s efforts, Clark’s role and more in the fifth edition of our criminal evidence tracker.

The live witnesses were former acting attorney general Jeffrey A. Rosen, former acting deputy attorney general Richard P. Donoghue and the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel, assistant attorney general Steven Engel. They were examined in a hearing led by Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger and supplemented by the frequently explosive video testimony of other key players, making for another powerful day.

Thursday was notable because more than any of the other hearings, it occurred against the backdrop of significant outside events that were closely related to the subject matter of the hearing. In the 24 hours before the hearings, news broke of multiple subpoenas, including search warrants, relating to the federal criminal investigation of the phony elector scheme. That was capped off with breaking news of federal investigators executing a search warrant on the Virginia home of the main player (besides Trump) of the hearing that followed, Clark.

Clark infamously tried to help Trump overthrow DOJ leadership and overturn the election, resulting in his taking the Fifth Amendment over 100 times in his deposition before the committee. Both the raid on his premises and the content of Thursday’s hearing suggested he had good reason.

With the raid and the hearing, we learned two big things: Clark is at severe risk of criminal prosecution. And Trump’s exposure got worse.

Among other potential crimes, their exposure may fit within the “likely” criminal conspiracy (in the words of a federal judge in California) to defraud the United States (18 U.S.C. § 371) and to obstruct an official congressional proceeding (under 18 U.S.C. § 1512). The likely fraud involved interfering with government functions to prevent the legitimate winner of the election from taking office. That included Trump, with Clark’s help, pushing for the fraudulent slates of electors. The likely obstruction included Trump’s attempt, again with Clark’s help, to use those phony electoral slates as part of a scheme to interfere with congressional recognition of Biden’s electors. We explain the new evidence in the linked trackers of evidence of those two federal crimes.

New evidence about possible violation of Georgia criminal law regarding the solicitation of election fraud also came in on Thursday, and we update the third tracker as to that crime as well. For example, the Committee focused on Clark’s Dec. 28, 2020, draft DOJ letter containing express references to substituting a “separate slate of electors” in Georgia and several other states. We heard in the hearing from Clark’s superiors, the top leadership of DOJ under Trump, that the proposed letter — which Clark tried to get Rosen and Donoghue to sign–was totally unfounded. They, along with Engel, numerous witnesses on video, and the committee members, painted a devastating picture of Clark’s likely criminality–and certain incompetence. As but one example, White House lawyer Eric Herschmann warned Clark that sending the letter would constitute a felony.

Of course, it’s not only Clark whose situation got worse with the most recent hearing. That’s because as the committee noted at the previous hearing, “President Trump and his campaign were directly involved in advancing and coordinating the plot to have state legislatures replace legitimate Biden electors with fake electors.” A loophole in the Presidential Election Day Act of 1845 was central to this plot and a key part of the draft Clark letter that Rosen and Donoghue refused to sign. The 1845 law potentially allows state legislatures to declare that an election has “failed” and then to replace the choice of presidential electors made by the voters with electors selected by the state legislature itself. Clark’s draft letter to Georgia said that the “purpose of the special session” would be for the Georgia legislature “to determine whether the election failed to make a proper and valid choice between the candidates.” And now we have learned about how Trump pushed hard to engage DOJ in his coup attempt and tried to thrust Clark upon DOJ as acting attorney general.

The fifth hearing presented some of the most compelling evidence to date of Trump explicitly running the coup effort. His directive to acting attorney general Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Donoghue to “just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and Republican congressmen,” is well-described as “a smoking gun” in establishing Trump’s criminal intent.

Criminal intent as to the fake elector scheme would not be hard to prove, as one of us explained in the Washington Post last week. Whatever Trump and Clark may have believed about the outcome of the election, they are not allowed to engage in a scheme involving forgery, any more than someone who feels the US Treasury has ripped them off can respond by counterfeiting currency in the amount they are owed. Whatever they believed, they cannot break the law to address the “problems” they perceived (problems which of course were false). It is vigilantism, and that’s against the law. OJ Simpson spent a considerable time in jail after he used force to break into a hotel room and seize memorabilia–even though he believed it was his property.

There was much more of note in the hearing itself. That included important new revelations about Trump wanting to seize voting machines, pursue absurd conspiracy theories and insert one of his associates, Sidney Powell, as special counsel at DOJ to “investigate voter fraud.” To top all that off, the hearing ended with shocking evidence that a number of congressmen who helped Trump with the scheme were so concerned about their own criminal exposure that they sought pardons. That final bombshell sent the committee into a couple of weeks off with momentum for when the hearings resume in July.

Together with all else we learned Thursday, there is plenty to discuss in the interim. The committee has already presented formidable evidence that Trump led a criminal conspiracy in a coup attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election from the duly elected winner. The Committee has previewed that there is more important evidence to come. All the while, the country has still not seen one shred of credible evidence from Trump and his allies that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election that affected the result or justified the conduct we map in our three trackers.

We will continue to update our charts after tomorrow’s snap hearing and future hearings. The current editions are provided below and as a separate PDF.

The January 6th Hearings a …

IMAGE: (L-R) Steven Engel, former Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, Jeffrey Rosen, former Acting Attorney General, and Richard Donoghue, former Acting Deputy Attorney General, talk as they take their seats to testify before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol on June 23, 2022 in Washington, DC. 

The post In Advance of the Snap Hearing … the Jan. 6 Criminal Evidence Tracker Fifth Edition appeared first on Just Security.

The first witness was the Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, Rusty Bowers. He described the pressure campaign he faced in this closely decided swing state. At the start, Representative Adam Schiff of California read to Bowers a new statement made by Donald Trump shortly before the hearing, in which Trump claimed that Bowers himself told Trump in November 2020 that the election in Arizona had been rigged. Bowers testified that the former president’s statement was false.

Bowers then described multiple calls he received from Trump, his attorney Rudy Giuliani, and John Eastman throughout the post-election period. In all of those calls, the former president and his collaborators pushed Bowers to pursue various outrageous (and potentially illegal) schemes to override Biden’s victory in the state. Bowers rejected the entreaties, testifying that no evidence was ever produced, despite several promises to do so by Giuliani and another Trump lawyer, Jenna Ellis. “We’ve got lots of theories. We just don’t have the evidence” on election fraud, Giuliani once said, according to Bowers, who noted at least three other witnesses in his group who heard Giuliani’s statement.

Tuesday’s shift to the effort in the states was also significant because the most compelling case against Trump may end up being in the jurisdiction of a state-level prosecutor, namely Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis. As some of the authors have discussed elsewhere, Willis’s case is especially strong because of Trump’s January 2, 2021 call to Secretary of State Raffensperger in which Trump exhorted Raffensperger to “find 11,780” votes that would swing the state to Trump’s column. That call, as well as other potential malfeasance in the state of which there is significant evidence, may well have violated multiple Georgia laws, most prominently criminal solicitation to commit election fraud. (We include the evidence for that crime specifically in our tracker.)

After Bowers’ testimony  on Arizona, the committee turned to the Georgia pressure campaign.  This follows last Thursday’s focus on the massive stress applied to Vice President Mike Pence. They each follow a theme of sustained pressure on state and federal officials to violate their oaths office to participate in means to overturn the election results.

Guided by Representative Schiff, Raffensperger in his testimony systematically debunked each fraud claim Trump had made on the January 2 call, from which the committee played snippets throughout the hearing. Raffensperger confirmed that he and his office investigated each of the claims Trump floated and found them all to be lacking merit.

Raffensperger also confirmed that he could not have legally changed the vote count. By the time of the January 2 call, BJ Pak, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia (who testified in the committee’s second hearing) had confirmed that his office had looked into Trump’s fraud claims and found nothing. That was on top of the multiple recounts confirming Biden’s victory, as well as the many times Trump’s closest advisors told him that he had lost the election.

The committee then zeroed in on the portion of Trump’s call to Raffensperger in which he suggested that Raffensperger could face a “big risk” of criminal liability for not going along with Trump’s demands. That was followed by the segment in which Trump asked the secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes.” Trump also claimed that it was “very dangerous” for Raffensperger to be publicly claiming that the election was secure. “I felt then and still believe today that this was a threat,” Raffensperger wrote in his book, as Rep. Schiff noted in the hearing. In his testimony, Raffensberger then detailed the threats he and his family received in the wake of his defense of the election.

Additional details about the role played by Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, also surfaced during the Tuesday hearing. Cassidy Hutchinson, testified that Meadows was present in a meeting with the White House Counsel’s Office in which the latter told Meadows and Giuliani, also present, that the alternate-electors scheme was “not legally sound.”

Schiff also repeated that the White House and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows attempted to contact Raffensperger’s office 18 times before the January 2 call, and that Meadows visited the site of a small-scale audit in Cobb County supervised by Raffensperger’s chief investigator, Frances Watson. Meadows then set up a call between Watson and Trump, during which Trump asked Watson to do “whatever you can do” and stated that “when the right answer comes out you’ll be praised.” Meadows also discussed sending investigators in Watson’s office a “shitload of POTUS stuff” (in the words of a White House aide) MAGA merchandise and the like, while the audit was ongoing.

While the ongoing criminal investigation in Fulton Country, Georgia added weight to this part of Tuesday’s hearing, the witnesses and evidence further established the expansiveness of the Trump team’s effort at the state level. The testimony of Bowers, Sterling, and Raffensperger was complemented by that of Shaye Moss. She was an election worker who helped process ballots in Atlanta, and her words demonstrated the personal toll exacted by Trump’s unceasing attacks on officials and poll workers who professionally administered and defended the 2020 election. All those who testified on Tuesday faced vitriolic abuse and death threats for their roles in the election.

Expanding from Arizona and Georgia, the committee presented a stream of video clips and recordings of Trump’s team, most prominently Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, testifying before state legislators or making direct calls to state legislative leaders pressing them for meetings to discuss overturning the election results. In one instance, Ellis and Giuliani placed direct calls to Bryan Cutler of Pennsylvania, the Republican speaker of the state House of Representatives, every day in the last week of November even though Cutler asked his lawyers to tell Giuliani to stop calling.

The committee also devoted time in the hearing to the alternate-electors scheme undertaken in seven swing states that Biden won. One of the committee’s investigators explained that the Trump campaign instructed the false electors in several states that they “needed to cast their ballots in complete secrecy.” Speaking to Trump’s direct involvement in the plot, Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), testified that Trump called her personally to solicit the RNC’s aid in the fake-elector scheme. The Trump campaign also arranged for the transmittal of the fake elector slates to Washington, D.C. in advance of January 6.

Tuesday’s hearing elucidated provided significant new evidence of the multitiered structure of Trump and his allies’ scheme to overturn the election. The committee’s next hearing on Thursday will bring the lens back to the federal level, with a focus on Trump’s efforts to weaponize the Department of Justice to secure the election reversal he sought.

We will continue to update our charts after Thursday’s hearing and future ones. The current editions are provided below and as a separate PDF.

The January 6th Hearings a …

The post The January 6th Hearings: Criminal Evidence Tracker Fourth Edition appeared first on Just Security.

The two prior hearings showed that former President Donald Trump was well aware that there was no factual basis for his attacks on the election. On Thursday, the committee made clear Trump knew there was no legal basis as he pressured Vice President Mike Pence to illegally disrupt the counting of the electoral votes on January 6. The committee also brought the first main co-conspirator into the story line: John Eastman.

In its first two hearings, the committee presented an overview of Trump’s seven-part plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and then dissected his patently false claim that he lost the election because of voter fraud.  The committee showed that advisers in his own campaign, White House and Justice Department – including former Attorney General Bill Barr – repeatedly told Trump that there was no evidence of fraud that could change the outcome of the election and that his claims to the contrary were, in Barr’s words, “bullshit.”

In its third hearing Thursday, the committee turned to the heart of Trump’s coup attempt – his relentless effort to pressure Pence to illegally disrupt the counting of the electoral votes on January 6.

The committee continued its method of weaving together video of witness interviews with live testimony to paint an organized and clear picture of the evidence.  The live witnesses were former federal appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig and former general counsel to Vice President Pence, Greg Jacob.  They were guided through their testimony by committee chair Bennie Thompson, vice chair Liz Cheney, committee member Pete Aguilar, and the committee’s senior investigative counsel John Wood.

The hearing and the testimony focused on the role played by Trump and John Eastman, a lawyer who helped sell the then-president on a completely unprecedented legal theory that on January 6, the vice president would have unilateral authority under the 12th Amendment and under an 1887 statute, the Electoral Count Act, to reject electoral votes cast for Joe Biden. On that bizarre theory, Pence could then simply declare that Trump and he had won reelection.

Alternatively, Eastman argued, Pence could suspend the counting of electoral votes on January 6 and send the votes back to state legislatures to “re-certify” the electoral votes, which would have thrown the presidential election into chaos.

Judge Luttig, a conservative Republican jurist who advised Pence in the days leading up to January 6, said in his written testimony that Eastman’s legal theory was “the product of the most reckless, insidious, and calamitous failures in both legal and political judgment in American history.”  He said he would have “laid my body across the road before I would have let the Vice President overturn the 2020 election” on the basis of Eastman’s argument.

Pence’s counsel, Greg Jacob, explained why this was the case – because Eastman’s argument that one person can choose the President is fundamentally “un-American.”  There is “no way,” Jacob said, that the Framers would ever put one person in a position to have that kind of power.  It would, he said, violate the text of the law, the history of presidential elections and, most importantly, common sense.

Eastman knew his legal argument was wrong – and even told Trump it would require violating several provisions of federal law to enact their scheme.  According to Jacob, at a meeting on January 4 with Trump, Pence, Marc Short, and Jacob, Eastman agreed that his plan would violate the Electoral Count Act, but said either that the Act itself was unconstitutional, or that the courts would not get involved.  The next morning, however, Eastman admitted to Jacob that his legal theory would be rejected – unanimously – by the Supreme Court. What’s more, after the January 6 attack, in an email exchange, which was discussed at the hearing, Jacob asked Eastman, “Did you advise the President that in your professional judgment, the Vice President does not have the power to decide things unilaterally?” And ended the email saying, “it does not appear that the President ever got the memo.” Eastman replied, “He’s been so advised,” and ended his email saying, “But you know him – once he gets something in his head, it’s hard to get him to change course.”

White House counsel Pat Cipollone said the Eastman theory was “nutty.”  And according to another White House lawyer, even Rudy Giuliani grudgingly admitted the theory was wrong.

Jacob testified that when it was first suggested to Pence that he should use his role as presiding officer to throw the election to Trump, Pence’s immediate instinct was to reject the idea.  That started a two-week campaign by Eastman and Trump to pressure Pence into changing his mind.  The pressure campaign, which started with phone calls and meetings, escalated into public statements and tweets to apply more pressure to Pence as January 6 approached.

Ultimately, of course, Trump on the morning of January 6 spoke directly to the mob he had assembled on the Mall and urged them to go to the Capitol as Pence presided over the counting of the electoral votes. The committee showed video that made clear that the attack on the Capitol was in part a hunt for Pence after he had refused to do Trump’s bidding.  As the mob chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” Trump inflamed them by tweeting at 2:24 p.m. that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what was necessary.”

According to committee evidence, a member of the Proud Boys later testified that they would have killed Pence if they had found him.  At one point, as the Secret Service moved Pence to a more secure location in the Capitol, he was only 40 feet from the mob.

Judge Luttig provided sobering context and perspective on the events in the days leading up to January 6.  His written testimony, in particular, is a jeremiad warning of the danger to our democracy.

In near apocalyptic terms, Luttig said America is “adrift” and “at a perilous crossroads.”  Saying that “America’s democracy was almost stolen from us on January 6,” Luttig added that “if we fail to learn the lessons that are there to be learned…we will consign ourselves to another January 6 in the not-too-distant future, and another after that, and another after that.”

Hammering the point home in his oral testimony, he warned that in effect the insurrection has not ended. “Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy… The former president, his allies, and supporters pledge that in the presidential election of 2024, if the former president… were to lose that election, they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election, but succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020.”

That ongoing threat in the states is dire, with over 100 election deniers, many endorsed by Trump, having made it through the primary process.

The first three public hearings nicely set up what will happen when the committee continues its hearings next week. That includes the committee’s turning on Tuesday to examine Trump’s efforts to pressure state election officials to alter election results and Trump’s scheme to have state legislators appoint slates of fake electors to generate confusion in the counting of electoral votes. As Luttig suggested, that is also an ongoing, forward-looking effort and we hope the hearing will address it.

We will continue to update our charts after that and future hearings. The current editions are provided below and as a separate PDF.

The January 6th Hearings a …

The post The January 6th Hearings: Criminal Evidence Tracker Third Edition appeared first on Just Security.