Bondi\u2019s order came weeks after National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard accused Obama and his aides of a \u201ctreasonous conspiracy\u201d and said she had sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department.<\/p>\n
Davis applauded Bondi\u2019s actions in a recent interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the greatest conspiracy in American history,\u201d he said, referring to what he says are Democratic plots against President Donald Trump. \u201cThere must be the most severe legal, political and financial consequences for this unprecedented weaponization. This must never happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bondi\u2019s office and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Obama, Biden, Clinton and former FBI, Justice Department and CIA officials have repeatedly dismissed the allegations. Democrats say new probes are an effort to distract attention from allegations that Trump has abused his power in his second term and from his failure to release\u00a0the Jeffrey Epstein files.<\/p>\n
Former senior Justice Department and FBI officials note that a Trump-appointed special counsel and Republican senators already investigated the claims and found no crimes. They called the idea \u201cabsurd,\u201d \u201cbananas\u201d and \u201cinsane.\u201d<\/p>\n
Davis said he is unaware of Bondi\u2019s next step. But he praised the recent\u00a0party-line Senate confirmation of a new U.S. attorney in South Florida, Jason Reding Qui\u00f1ones, whom he called a personal friend and urged senators to support.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want Jason to set up his own grand jury and pursue this aggressively,\u201d Davis said. \u201cAnd I want him to put criminals in prison for a very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Road map for a Florida federal investigation<\/h2>\n
Davis called for Qui\u00f1ones to convene a special federal grand jury in Port St. Lucie, the seat of St. Lucie County, which Trump carried by 10 percentage points last year. It would investigate what he calls a Democratic conspiracy to undermine Trump stretching from the 2016 campaign to the 2022 FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate to today.<\/p>\n
Qui\u00f1ones, a Miami-Dade County judge appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a year ago, is a former federal prosecutor in Miami and a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve. He was a major crimes prosecutor but received poor performance evaluations,\u00a0The Miami Herald reported. Qui\u00f1ones filed and dropped a racial discrimination complaint and moved to the Civil Division, where he received satisfactory reviews.<\/p>\n
Qui\u00f1ones and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Viewing the Mar-a-Lago search as part of a decadelong anti-Trump conspiracy serves a legal purpose, legal experts said. It could allow prosecutors to treat alleged acts from 2016 and 2017 as part of a single conspiracy and bypass a five-year statute of limitations on denial of rights charges.<\/p>\n
Davis said a \u201cconspiracy against rights\u201d federal criminal charge could be used in the Florida investigation that he called for Qui\u00f1ones to open. A special grand jury could investigate whether actions by Clinton and Obama in 2016 and 2017 violated Trump’s rights as part of a single broad, anti-Trump conspiracy by Democrats that Davis believes includes the Mar-a-Lago search and continues today.<\/p>\n
Legal experts have noted\u00a0that the “conspiracy against rights” charge was created by the Enforcement Act of 1870, which Congress passed to prevent white people from blocking freed slaves from voting.<\/p>\n
Davis said special counsel Jack Smith used the same charge when he accused Trump of trying to illegally reverse the outcome of the 2020 election in seven states that he lost.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Democrats set the precedent that former presidents are fair game,\u201d Davis said.<\/p>\n
Three former FBI and Justice Department officials with direct knowledge of the Mar-a-Lago search told NBC News that it was conducted properly and approved by a federal judge and that it was the result of Trump\u2019s own actions.<\/p>\n
The officials said the National Archives first alerted them that Trump appeared to have classified materials. Trump then declined repeated requests to return the classified documents for a year. A former senior Justice Department official dismissed Davis\u2019 calls for a criminal investigation of the Mar-a-Lago search.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s outrageous,\u201d the former senior Justice Department official said.<\/p>\n
Multiple investigations of Democratic rivals underway<\/h2>\n
Three people familiar with the matter\u00a0confirmed to NBC News this month that the Justice Department has opened a federal criminal investigation of lawsuits the office of James, New York’s attorney general, filed against Trump. James has dismissed the Justice Department investigation, which is based in Albany, as political payback.<\/p>\n
The James probe is examining whether the state attorney general\u2019s office committed \u201cconspiracy against rights\u201d and violated Trump\u2019s civil rights when it brought a lawsuit that claimed Trump grossly inflated the values of his assets for personal profit. A Manhattan judge ruled last year that Trump did so and ordered him to pay a roughly $500 million fine, a ruling that infuriated him.<\/p>\n
Separately, the Bondi Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation in Virginia into possible mortgage fraud by James and another into Schiff in connection with an allegation of potential mortgage fraud in Maryland. James and Schiff have said the investigations are political retribution. Bondi appointed Ed Martin, a Trump loyalist who represented Jan. 6 defendants and praised Trump\u2019s mass pardons of them, to oversee both probes.<\/p>\n
Could Democrats be indicted and convicted?<\/h2>\n
Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor and Columbia Law School professor whom Republicans have accused of conspiring with former FBI Director James Comey, said filing criminal charges based on debunked claims is possible. \u201cIf you\u2019re willing to ignore the facts,\u201d Richman said, \u201cyou can come up with criminal charges.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Richman cautioned that securing a federal indictment, trial and conviction \u2014 even in areas where the majority of voters voted for Trump \u2014 would be difficult given the many actors and elements involved. Prosecutors need indictments from grand juries, judges can dismiss weak cases, witnesses must be credible, and jurors must unanimously agree on guilt.<\/p>\n
\u201cJurors take their duties seriously,\u201d Richman said. \u201cI\u2019m not ready to say the people in these jurisdictions are totally in the tank for this administration.\u201d<\/p>\n
A former senior national security official who spoke anonymously, citing the Trump administration\u2019s public attacks on former officials, suggested two potential scenarios: \u201cEither Bondi and Gabbard know that there is indeed no evidence of any criminal activity, in which case it\u2019s completely corrupt and a political stunt,\u201d the former official said, \u201cor, more darkly, they actually believe this stuff and are acting out of authoritarian instinct and this is something out of Orwell.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article was originally published on\u00a0NBCNews.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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