Benjamin Weiser

Almost immediately after the ruling, one of the president’s personal lawyers, Jay Sekulow, said Trump would appeal to the Supreme Court. The president maintains that the Constitution shields him from any criminal investigation..

“The issue raised in this case goes to the heart of our republic,” Sekulow said. “The constitutional issues are significant.”

The case will almost certainly be the first one involving Trump’s personal conduct and business dealings to reach the high court. The court is not required to hear the case, but the significance of the issues involved suggests that it will. A decision on the case may come by June, as the presidential election enters its final stages.

Other cases involving Trump are also in the pipeline. They involve matters as diverse as demands from House Democrats for tax and business records, a request for access to redacted portions of the report prepared by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, and challenges to Trump’s business arrangements under the Constitution’s emoluments clauses.

Last month, for instance, a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that Trump’s accounting firm must comply with the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s demands for eight years of his financial records. Trump has asked the full appeals court to rehear that case.

In a different case last month, a federal judge in Washington ruled that the House Judiciary Committee was entitled to see secret grand jury evidence gathered by Mueller.

Trump has fought vigorously to shield his financial records, and prosecutors in Manhattan have agreed not to seek the tax returns until the case is resolved by the Supreme Court.

In its ruling Monday, the three-judge appeals panel did not take a position on the president’s biggest argument: that he was immune from all criminal investigations. A lower court had called that argument “repugnant to the nation’s governmental structure and constitutional values.”

Instead, the appeals court said the president’s accounting firm, not Trump himself, was subpoenaed for the documents, so it did not matter whether presidents had immunity.

“We emphasize again the narrowness of the issue before us,” the decision read. “This appeal does not require us to consider whether the president is immune from indictment and prosecution while in office, nor to consider whether the president may lawfully be ordered to produce documents for use in a state criminal proceeding.”

Although the panel did not rule on the question of a president’s immunity from investigation, the judges still made it clear they disagreed with Trump and thought he was unlikely to prevail on that argument.

Judge Robert A. Katzmann noted in the unanimous ruling that Trump had conceded that his immunity would last only as long as he held office and he could therefore be prosecuted after stepping down.

“There is no obvious reason why a state could not begin to investigate a president during his term and, with the information secured during that search, ultimately determine to prosecute him after he leaves office,” Katzmann wrote for the panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

By keeping the ruling narrowly focused on the subpoena directed at Trump’s accounting firm, the effect may be to allow the Supreme Court to uphold the decision without having to issue a far broader ruling against the president.

The 2nd Circuit appeals court typically considers cases with three-judge panels. In addition to Katzmann, the court’s chief judge, the panel included Judges Denny Chin and Christopher F. Droney.

Katzmann was placed on the appeals court by former President Bill Clinton. Chin and Droney were appointed by former President Barack Obama.

The legal fight began in late August after the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat, subpoenaed Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, for his tax returns and those of his family business dating to 2011.

Prosecutors in the office are examining the role of the president and his business in hush-money payments made to two women just before the 2016 presidential election.

Vance’s office sought the records in connection with an investigation into whether any New York state laws were broken when Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, reimbursed his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, for payments he made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who claimed she had an affair with Trump.

Cohen was also involved in money paid to Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who also said she had a relationship with Trump. The president has denied the relationships.

Trump’s lawyers sued to block the subpoena, writing that the criminal investigation of the president was unconstitutional. They asserted that presidents have such unique power and responsibility that they cannot be subject to the burden of investigations, especially from local prosecutors who may use the criminal process for political gain.

They pointed to impeachment as the correct way to address any potential wrongdoing by a president. Trump’s lawyers also have called the district attorney’s action an “effort to harass the president by obtaining and exposing his confidential financial information, not a legitimate attempt to enforce New York law.”

A spokesman for Vance said the office had no comment on the appeals court decision.

The immunity argument has never been tested in court. Federal prosecutors are barred from charging a sitting president with a crime because the Justice Department has decided that presidents have temporary immunity from prosecution while they are in office.

But that policy has not precluded investigations of the president. Trump and other sitting presidents have been the subjects of federal criminal investigations, and local prosecutors like Vance have not been bound by the policy.

On Oct. 7, Judge Victor Marrero of U.S. District Court in Manhattan issued a 75-page opinion, rejecting Trump’s position.

Trump appealed to the 2nd Circuit, and in oral arguments last month, William S. Consovoy, a lawyer for Trump, told the panel, “We view the entire subpoena as an inappropriate fishing expedition not made in good faith.”

During the arguments, the president’s immunity claim seemed to crystallize when Chin cited an audacious statement Trump once made — that he could stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, without being hurt politically.

Chin asked Consovoy about the potential effect of the president’s immunity claim in such a hypothetical situation. “Local authorities couldn’t investigate?” Chin asked, adding: “Nothing could be done? That’s your position?”

“That is correct. That is correct,” Consovoy said.

The Justice Department, led by William Barr, had also weighed in, writing in court filings that Vance’s subpoena should be blocked for now but not adopting Trump’s absolutist view that a sitting president could never be subject to criminal investigation.

Although the United States is not a party to the lawsuit, it has the right to give its views.

In an appellate brief, the Justice Department wrote that Vance’s office should not be able to obtain the president’s personal records unless it could show that they were central to the investigation, not available elsewhere and were needed immediately, rather than after Trump leaves office.

“A subpoena directed at a president’s records should be permitted only as a last resort,” the department wrote.

Under a deal reached by Trump’s lawyers with Vance’s office, the subpoena will not be enforced while Trump seeks review of the appellate ruling in the Supreme Court, provided that he asks that the court hear the case in its current term, which ends in June.

This article originally appeared in

Trump Taxes: Appeals Court Rules President Must Turn Over 8 Years of Tax Returns

NEW YORK — A federal appeals panel said Monday that President Donald Trump’s accounting firm must turn over eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns to Manhattan prosecutors, a setback for the president’s attempt to keep his financial records private.

But the tax returns are not likely to be handed over soon. Trump has fought vigorously to shield his tax returns, and the case appears headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Trump had sought to block his accounting firm from releasing the tax returns to the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. Prosecutors in the office are investigating the role of the president and his business in hush-money payments made to two women just before the 2016 presidential election.

The legal fight began in late August after the office of Vance, a Democrat, subpoenaed Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, for his tax returns and those of his family business dating to 2011.

The office sought the records in connection with an investigation into whether any New York state laws were broken when Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, reimbursed his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, for payments he made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who claimed she had an affair with Trump.

Appeals Court Rules President Must Turn Over 8 Years of Tax Returns

The judge, Richard M. Berman of U.S. District Court, agreed with prosecutors that Epstein was not only a flight risk, but posed a threat to others — particularly teenage girls — if released.

The judge’s strong rebuke of Epstein’s conduct and request to be allowed house arrest stood in sharp contrast to how the authorities in Florida had treated the financier in 2007.

That year, he reached a widely criticized deal that let him avoid federal prosecution on charges he sexually abused and trafficked minors. Instead, he pleaded guilty to state charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution and ended up serving 13 months in jail. He was allowed to leave the facility six a days a week, ostensibly to work.

Here are five take-aways from Berman’s opinion.

— Epstein was willing to pay almost any price to stay out of jail

Unlike so many people charged in state and federal courts, affording bail was not a problem for Epstein. He had offered to post a gargantuan bond, secured by his $56 million mansion on East 71st Street in Manhattan and his private jet.

“I am authorized to say to the court,” one of Epstein’s lawyers told Berman, “that whatever bond you want Mr. Epstein to sign — whether it’s $100 million or an amount close to the amount of the assets that we have provided — Mr. Epstein is prepared to sign it.”

Epstein provided the court with a one-page summary of his assets that placed their value as of June 30 at $559 million.

His lawyers said he would even pay for 24-hour private security to assure that he did not flee. The government argued he was seeking special treatment, a “gilded cage,” as one prosecutor put it in court.

— The judge was concerned that if released,Epstein would again abuse teenage girls

Berman’s decision portrayed Epstein as sex offender who could not be trusted to curb his sexual fixation with teenagers. He pointed to the nature of Epstein’s alleged crimes and his propensity to commit them.

“The crimes Mr. Epstein has been charged with are among the most heinous in the law principally, in the court’s view, because they involve minor girls,” the judge wrote.

A federal indictment charged that between 2002 and 2005, Epstein and his employees paid dozens of underage girls — at least one as young as 14 years old — to give him massages while nude or topless at his residences in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida.

During the massages, he engaged in various sex acts with them, the indictment said. He also used some of the teenagers to recruit other girls to abuse, paying the “victim-recruiters” hundreds of dollars for each girl they brought to him, the indictment said.

”Mr. Epstein’s alleged excessive attraction to sexual conduct with or in the presence of minor girls — which is said to include his soliciting and receiving massages from young girls and young women perhaps as many as four times a day — appears likely to be uncontrollable,” Berman wrote.

“It seems fair to say that Mr. Epstein’s future behavior will be consistent with past behavior,” the judge added.

— His immense wealth, private planes, international travel and liquid cash madeEpstein a flight risk

Given Epstein’s wealth, the risk of flight was “exceptionally high,” the office of Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, told the judge in court papers.

Besides his New York mansion, Epstein’s asset summary listed multimillion-dollar properties in New Mexico; Palm Beach; Paris and the Caribbean. Prosecutors have said Epstein’s primary residence is a private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Epstein’s assets also included $56 million in cash and more than $300 million in securities and other financial instruments. Prosecutors also said his sex registration documentation (stemming from his 2008 guilty plea in Florida) listed no fewer than 15 motor vehicles, including seven Chevrolet Suburbans, a cargo van, a Range Rover, a Mercedes-Benz sedan, a Cadillac Escalade and a Hummer.

Then there was a safe that the authorities said they searched in Epstein’s mansion in Manhattan, in which they found more than $70,000 in cash, 48 loose diamonds ranging in size from approximately one to 2.38 carats, and a large diamond ring.

The judge concluded that Epstein was “a serious risk of flight” and “no conditions can be set that will reasonably assure his appearance at trial.”

— The contents ofEpstein’s safe gave the judge pause

Inside that safe, the authorities also found an Austrian passport bearing Epstein’s photograph but another person’s name, the judge noted. The judge’s opinion made it clear that prosecutors and Epstein’s lawyers disagreed sharply over the passport’s significance.

Prosecutors said the passport showed Epstein knew how to obtain false travel documents or assume other identities.

Defense lawyers told the judge that Epstein, whom they described as “an affluent member of the Jewish faith,” acquired the passport in the 1980s “when hijackings were prevalent,” in connection with Middle East travel. The passport expired 32 years ago, the defense wrote, and “was for personal protection in the event of travel to dangerous areas, only to be presented to potential kidnappers, hijackers or terrorists should violent episodes occur.”

In the back and forth, prosecutors noted that the passport included numerous stamps showing it was used to enter France, Spain, Britain and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s. The defense said Epstein was given the passport by a friend, the trips were not his and he had never used it.

The passport was not the only unusual item found inside Epstein’s mansion. The authorities said they found hundreds and perhaps thousands of sexually suggestive photographs of fully or partially nude females, including photos that appeared to be of underage girls. Some of the photos were discovered in the locked safe.

— The judge was concerned Epstein might try to intimidate or buy off witnesses

Berman also made it clear he thought Epstein might seek to silence witnesses against him if he were granted pretrial release. “Mr. Epstein’s dangerousness is considerable and includes sex crimes with minor girls and tampering with potential witnesses,” the judge wrote.

The judge highlighted the government’s argument that Epstein had tried to influence possible witnesses against him when he wired $350,000 late last year to two people close to him, shortly after the Miami Herald started publishing an exposé about him. The Herald’s series quoted his accusers, described how he had sexually abused teens for years, and laid out the lenient plea agreement he had negotiated with the U.S. attorney in Miami.

The judge also cited evidence from prosecutors that Epstein or his representatives had harassed or intimidated witnesses in civil suits.

For instance, he quoted a Palm Beach police report in 2006 about a threat made to one of Epstein’s accusers. The report said the accuser had claimed that one of Epstein’s associates had told her that those who helped Epstein “will be compensated” and those who hurt him “will be dealt with.” In another case, a parent of one of Epstein’s alleged victims had reported that Epstein’s private investigator had driven the parent’s car off the road.

“A court may order detention if there is a serious risk that the defendant will attempt to threaten, injure or intimidate a prospective witness or juror,” the judge noted.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-bail-decision.html" id="d7c07116-49a8-3d13-ad9d-959b8c696b92">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — A federal judge Thursday denied Jeffrey Epstein’s request for bail pending his trial on sex-trafficking charges in Manhattan. As a result, Epstein, 66, a wealthy financier who owns a private jet, luxury homes around the world and a private island in the Caribbean, will have to spend months in a Manhattan jail that typically holds accused mobsters, drug dealers and terrorists.

'Uncontrollable' Jeffrey Epstein: 5 Takeaways From Judge's Bail Decision

Cohen, 52, must now report to a facility designated by the Bureau of Prisons on May 6, a federal judge in Manhattan, William H. Pauley III, said in a brief order.

Cohen’s lawyers requested the delay, saying he recently had surgery and needed to undergo intensive physical therapy under the monitoring of his physician.

They also said Cohen anticipated being called at the end of the month to testify before three congressional committees, which have sought to question him about his work for Trump. The “substantial time” he would need to prepare for the hearings, his lawyer, Michael D. Monico, wrote in a letter to the judge seeking the postponement, “will limit the time he has to get his affairs in order and spend time with his family.”

Monico said Wednesday that Cohen recently had shoulder surgery and that he and his legal team were “very happy” the judge had granted his request and that the government did not oppose it.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment.

Monico said in a letter to the judge that the prosecutors did not object to a “one-time 60-day extension” of the proposed surrender date “in light of Mr. Cohen’s medical condition.”

Cohen pleaded guilty in November to violating campaign finance laws, financial crimes and lying to Congress in two separate prosecutions, one brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the other by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“I blame myself for the conduct which has brought me here today,” Cohen said in court in December before he was sentenced, “and it was my own weakness and a blind loyalty to this man” — referring to Trump — “that led me to choose a path of darkness over light.”

Pauley, at the request of Cohen’s lawyers, has recommended that he serve his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York, which is about 75 miles northwest of New York City.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/nyregion/michael-cohen-prison-sentence.html" id="8cac310d-15ae-3fc0-afae-12b06474bd75">The New York Times</a>.

Cohen Wins 60-Day Delay to Start of Prison Sentence

NEW YORK — Michael Cohen, the former lawyer and fixer for President Donald Trump who was to report early next month to begin serving a three-year prison sentence, was granted a two-month delay Wednesday before he must surrender to authorities.

Cohen, 52, must now report to the Bureau of Prisons on May 6, a federal judge in Manhattan, William H. Pauley III, said in a brief order.

Cohen’s lawyers had asked for the delay in their client’s surrender date, saying he recently underwent a serious surgical procedure and needed to undergo intensive post-surgical physical therapy under the monitoring of a physician.

They also said he needed to prepare to testify before three congressional committees at the end of the month.

NEW YORK — Michael Cohen, the former lawyer for President Donald Trump who was to report early next month to begin serving a three-year prison sentence, was granted a two-month delay Wednesday before he must surrender to authorities.

But a federal judge in Manhattan ruled Thursday that prosecutors could seek capital punishment despite the president’s comments.

Defense lawyers had argued the president’s tweet and other statements he made on Twitter had put political pressure on the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, to seek a death sentence. The lawyers pointed to public reports that Trump was considering firing the attorney general for not following his wishes, and said Sessions would not be able to make an impartial decision.

In his ruling, Judge Vernon S. Broderick wrote that Trump’s statements advocating for the death penalty “were perhaps ill-advised given the pendency of this case.” Still, the judge said the argument that Sessions was improperly motivated to seek execution was “pure speculation made without a scintilla of direct factual support.”

The judge said that without more evidence he could not interfere with “the attorney general’s presumptive authority to make charging decisions.”

In September, Sessions went ahead and directed prosecutors to seek the death penalty for the defendant, Sayfullo Saipov, 31, if he is convicted at trial, even though Broderick had not yet ruled on the motion concerning the president’s tweets. Six weeks later, Trump fired Sessions.

Saipov is accused of driving the truck down a crowded bike path along the Hudson River, and, after smashing into a school bus, jumping out and running down the highway, shouting “God is great” in Arabic. He was taken into custody after being shot by a police officer.

He has pleaded not guilty to eight capital counts of murder and other charges, and is scheduled for trial in October.

Broderick wrote that Saipov had “offered no evidence that the president’s remarks impacted the attorney general’s decision-making process in any way.”

To the contrary, the judge said, Sessions had “categorically renounced other provocative remarks made by the president” and had vowed that the Justice Department would “not be improperly influenced by political considerations.”

Federal prosecutors and Saipov’s federal public defenders declined to comment on the ruling.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/nyregion/trump-tweets-death-penalty-saipov.html" id="23d045bb-606f-3558-a439-aca34d10ed75">The New York Times</a>.

Trump's Tweets Do Not Bar Prosecutors From Seeking Death in Terror Case, Judge Rules

NEW YORK — When President Donald Trump said on Twitter that an Uzbek man charged with using a pickup truck to kill eight people “SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY,” the man’s lawyers asked a judge to bar prosecutors from seeking execution, saying the decision had become too politicized.

Browder, who was 16 years old when he was arrested in 2010 and accused of stealing a backpack, was detained on Rikers Island for three years — about two of which were spent in solitary confinement — without being tried or convicted of a crime. In 2015, at age 22, he hanged himself at his parents’ home in the Bronx.

The settlement, which is cited in a court document, was confirmed by the city and the family’s lawyer.

In a statement, the city’s Law Department said, “Kalief Browder’s story helped inspire numerous reforms to the justice system to prevent this tragedy from ever happening again, including an end to punitive segregation for young people on Rikers Island.

“We hope that this settlement and our continuing reforms help bring some measure of closure to the Browder family,” the statement added.

The civil rights and wrongful death action is before a judge in state Supreme Court in the Bronx.

The family’s lawyer, Sanford A. Rubenstein, said papers would soon be submitted to the judge “to finalize the resolution of this matter.”

“It’s a fair settlement, given the tragedy of what happened here,” Rubenstein said. “While no money can ever bring Kalief Browder back, we hope the settlement of this case and the changes that took place at Rikers will result in this not happening to any other victims.”

Browder’s case was first chronicled in a 2014 article in The New Yorker, which described how he was punched and beaten by correction officers, and endured repeated delays in the clogged Bronx court.

Browder also turned down offers to plead guilty, including one that would have allowed for his immediate release, as he insisted on his innocence, the article said. Bronx prosecutors ultimately dropped the case against Browder, who was released in 2013.

In December 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city had ended the use of solitary confinement for 16- and 17-year-olds. After Browder’s death the following June, de Blasio said in a statement that “Kalief’s story helped inspire our efforts” at Rikers Island.

“There is no reason he should have gone through this ordeal,” de Blasio said, “and his tragic death is a reminder that we must continue to work each day to provide the mental health services so many New Yorkers need.”

The de Blasio administration also developed a plan to move Rikers inmates under 18 to a dedicated jail for youths in the Bronx.

In 2016, President Barack Obama wrote an op-ed article in The Washington Post announcing a ban on solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons. In it, Obama cited Browder’s “constant struggle to recover from the trauma of being locked up alone for 23 hours a day” and his suicide.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/nyregion/kalief-browder-settlement-lawsuit.html" id="aea0479e-af73-360f-a21c-6703e26bf621">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — New York City has agreed to pay $3.3 million to settle a lawsuit on behalf of the estate of Kalief Browder, the young Bronx man whose detention on Rikers Island became a symbol of the breakdown in criminal justice in New York and fueled the drive to ban solitary confinement for youths in the city’s jails.

Kalief Browder's Suicide Brought Changes to Rikers. Now It Has Led to a $3 Million Settlement.

Browder, who was 16 years old when he was arrested in 2010 and accused of stealing a backpack, was detained on Rikers Island for three years — nearly two of which were spent in solitary confinement — without being tried or convicted of a crime. In 2015, at age 22, he hanged himself at his parents’ home in the Bronx.

The settlement, which is cited in a court document, was confirmed by the city. The Law Department said in a statement: “Kalief Browder’s story helped inspire numerous reforms to the justice system to prevent this tragedy from ever happening again, including an end to punitive segregation for young people on Rikers Island.”

“We hope that this settlement and our continuing reforms help bring some measure of closure to the Browder family,” the law department added.

The case is before a judge in state Supreme Court in the Bronx.

The estate’s lawyer, Sanford A. Rubenstein, would not comment on the settlement but said papers would be submitted to the judge “to finalize the resolution of this matter.”

Browder’s case was first chronicled in The New Yorker, which described how he was punched and beaten by correction officers, and endured repeated delays in the clogged Bronx court. Browder also turned down offers to plead guilty, including one that would have allowed for his immediate release, as he insisted on his innocence, the article said. Bronx prosecutors ultimately dropped the charges against him.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has said Browder’s story “helped inspire our efforts” at Rikers Island, where de Blasio announced in December 2014 that the city had ended the use of solitary confinement for 16- and 17-year-olds. The de Blasio administration also developed a plan to move Rikers inmates under 18 to a dedicated jail for youths in the Bronx.

In 2016, President Barack Obama, in announcing a ban on the use of solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons, cited Browder’s “constant struggle to recover from the trauma of being locked up alone for 23 hours a day” and his later suicide.

Veselnitskaya, a pivotal figure in the investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election, was charged by federal prosecutors in New York with seeking to thwart an earlier Justice Department investigation into money laundering that involved an influential Russian businessman and his investment firm.

The money-laundering case was not directly related to the Trump Tower meeting. But a federal indictment returned in Manhattan seemed to confirm that Veselnitskaya had deep ties to senior Russian government officials.

The charges stem from the Justice Department’s 2013 civil investigation into the role that some of Veselnitskaya’s clients — Prevezon Holdings Ltd. and its owner, Denis P. Katsyv — played in a scheme to launder ill-gotten money through New York real estate purchases.

The Justice Department asked the Russian government to assist its investigation, but the Russians refused, responding with a letter that purported to exonerate Russian officials and Prevezon, the indictment said.

The indictment says Veselnitskaya secretly cooperated with a senior Russian prosecutor in drafting the “intentionally misleading” response, then filed it in federal court in Manhattan.

“In doing so, Veselnitskaya obstructed the civil proceeding,” the indictment said. She is charged with one count of obstruction of justice.

Veselnitskaya, 43, is believed to be in Russia, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which moved to unseal the indictment on Tuesday. The office gave no indication that it expected her to be sent to Manhattan to face charges.

The new indictment again raises questions about whom Veselnitskaya was representing when she met with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, all senior Trump campaign advisers, at Trump Tower in Manhattan.

That meeting is one focus of the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the election. It was organized after an intermediary promised that Veselnitskaya would deliver documents that would incriminate Hillary Clinton.

Last April, Veselnitskaya acknowledged in an interview with NBC News that she was not merely a private lawyer, but a source of information for the Russian prosecutor general, Yuri Y. Chaika. Now in Manhattan, prosecutors say she collaborated clandestinely with that office to write an official letter that benefited Prevezon.

For years, Veselnitskaya has been regarded as a trusted insider and go-to lawyer for the Moscow regional government.

In the fraud case, filed in 2013, the prosecutors in the Southern District accused Prevezon and other defendants of using real estate purchases in New York to launder a small portion of the profits of an elaborate $230 million Russian tax fraud scheme. The lawsuit was settled last May on the eve of trial for about $6 million, with Prevezon admitting no fault.

The broader Russian scheme had been uncovered by Sergei L. Magnitsky, the Russian tax lawyer who was imprisoned after exposing the scheme and died in a Moscow jail.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/nyregion/trump-tower-natalya-veselnitskaya-indictment.html" id="afabcf2a-2ad3-3f99-aeed-64975fa83503">The New York Times</a>.

Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who in 2016 met with Trump campaign officials in Trump Tower, was charged on Tuesday in a separate case that showed her close ties to the Kremlin.

Veselnitskaya, Russian in Trump Tower Meeting, Is Charged in Case That Shows Kremlin Ties

The indictment charges that after the Justice Department asked the Russian government to assist its civil fraud investigation, the Russian government refused, responding with a letter that purported to exonerate Russian officials and the firm’s personnel.

The indictment says Veselnitskaya had secretly cooperated with a senior Russian prosecutor in drafting the “intentionally misleading” Russian response, which was filed in federal court in Manhattan. “In doing so, Veselnitskaya obstructed the civil proceeding,” the indictment said. She is charged with one count of obstruction of justice.

The new indictment again raises questions about whom Veselnitskaya was representing when she met with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and others at Trump Tower in Manhattan during the campaign.

That meeting is one focus of the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. It was organized after an intermediary promised that Veselnitskaya would deliver documents that would incriminate Hillary Clinton.

Last April, Veselnitskaya acknowledged in an interview with NBC News that she was not merely a private lawyer, but a source of information for the Russian prosecutor general, Yuri Y. Chaika.

Now prosecutors say she collaborated clandestinely with that office to write an official letter than benefited her client, the investment firm Prevezon Holdings Ltd., and its owner, Denis P. Katsyv, in the Justice Department’s civil fraud case.

Veselnitskaya was charged by federal prosecutors in New York with seeking to thwart a Justice Department civil fraud investigation into money laundering that involved an influential Russian businessman and his investment firm.

The case was not directly related to the Trump Tower meeting. But a federal indictment returned in Manhattan seemed to confirm that Veselnitskaya had deep ties to senior Russian government officials.

The indictment charges that after the Justice Department asked the Russian government to assist its investigation, the Russian government refused, responding with a letter that purported to exonerate Russian officials and the firm’s personnel.

The indictment says Veselnitskaya had secretly cooperated with a senior Russian prosecutor in drafting the Russian response, which was filed in federal court in Manhattan. “In doing so, Veselnitskaya obstructed the civil proceeding,” the indictment charged.

Veselnitskaya, 43, is believed to be in Russia, according to the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, which moved to unseal the indictment on Tuesday. The office gave no indication that it expected her to be sent to Manhattan to face charges.

Now prosecutors say she collaborated clandestinely with that office to write an official letter than benefitted her client, the investment firm Prevezon Holdings Ltd., and its owner, Denis P. Katsyv, in the Justice Department’s civil fraud case.

In the fraud case, filed in 2013, the prosecutors in the Southern District accused Prevezon and other defendants of using real estate purchases in New York to launder a small portion of the profits of an elaborate $230 million Russian tax fraud scheme.

The broader Russian scheme had been uncovered by Sergei L. Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was imprisoned after exposing the scheme and died in a Moscow jail.

Russian Lawyer in Meeting at Trump Tower Is Charged in Case That Shows Kremlin Ties

But for the nearly three years that his request has remained under consideration, Kouadio, 43, has been detained by U.S. authorities, first in Texas and later in New Jersey. In August, he petitioned a court for help.

On Thursday, a federal judge in Manhattan said the government had violated Kouadio’s rights.

“This nation prides itself on its humanity and openness with which it treats those who seek refuge at its gates,” the judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein of U.S. District Court, wrote. “By contrast, the autocracies of the world have been marked by harsh regimes of exclusion and detention. Our notions of due process nourish the former spirit and brace us against the latter.”

Detaining Kouadio for 34 months without a bail hearing violated his due process rights as an nonresident immigrant arriving at the border, “limited as those rights are,” the judge said in a ruling some legal experts also considered a rebuke of the Trump administration’s strict immigration policies.

Kouadio, who was first detained under the Obama administration, is now entitled to a bond hearing within 14 days, the judge ruled, at which the government has to show he poses a danger to the public or is a flight risk in order to continue his detention.

The judge added that Kouadio’s detention without an opportunity for bail was too long. “His right to liberty is as valuable to him as it is to any U.S. citizen, and he has a constitutional right to a bail hearing that should no longer be denied to him.”

In February, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that under the immigration laws, people held in immigration detention, even for years, were not entitled to periodic hearings on whether they may be released on bail. But the Supreme Court did not decide whether the Constitution required such hearings, and sent the case back to a lower court to consider that issue.

Hellerstein, a 1998 Clinton appointee, noted that Kouadio’s case “squarely presents the constitutional question” which the Supreme Court had not answered: “whether an indefinitely lengthy detention of a nonresident alien seeking asylum without a bond hearing violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.”

Kouadio was detained on Feb. 21, 2016, at the El Paso border crossing, the judge noted, where he expressed his desire to seek asylum. Several weeks later, an asylum officer found that Kouadio had demonstrated a credible fear of persecution in Ivory Coast based on his political opinions, the judge said.

That March, the government initiated proceedings to deport Kouadio, but the process was subjected to repeated delays, Hellerstein noted. (The case was moved to New York so Kouadio could have better access to an interpreter and to his family, the opinion says.)

The judge noted that Kouadio had never been arrested or convicted, there was little risk of flight and the case did not present national security concerns.

Kouadio’s lawyers, Craig Relles and Steven Haskos, have said that their client, who had once worked for his country’s former president, Laurent Gbagbo, had his life threatened by supporters of Gbagbo’s successor, Alassane Ouattara, the current president.

Relles said Thursday that Hellerstein was “sending a message to the Trump administration that fundamental due process is alive and well.”

Legal experts agreed that the ruling was important.

Lucas Guttentag, who teaches law at Stanford and Yale and was a former top adviser in the Department of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama, said the ruling recognized that “asylum applicants at our border are constitutionally entitled to due process and cannot be jailed for years without any hearing.”

Stephen Legomsky, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and former chief counsel for Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Obama administration, added that the decision was an “implicit criticism” of the Trump administration’s policies, “in the sense that it is a clear rejection of the administration’s preference for long-term detention of asylum-seekers.”

The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan had argued in court papers that Kouadio had been lawfully detained, and under Supreme Court precedent was not entitled to a bond hearing. “Under the circumstances of this case, Kouadio has received all of the process he is due,” the office wrote.

The office had no comment on the ruling. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it could not respond to a request for comment because of the government shutdown.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/27/nyregion/trump-asylum-immigrants-ban.html" id="2e71106e-b544-3be4-a89e-44492b7c4932">The New York Times</a>.

Judge Chides U.S. for Immigrant's Years Awaiting Hearing

NEW YORK — Adou Kouadio, a citizen of Ivory Coast, arrived at the Texas border in early 2016 and asked for asylum, claiming that he had been threatened after supporting a political opponent of his country’s president.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, who are listed in the lawsuit with names like Jane Doe and Richard Roe, said in court papers that their clients feared retaliation if their names became public. The lawyers cited Trump’s “history of wielding his wealth, stature and Twitter account to attack people whom he perceives to be his enemies,” including people who sue him.

On Thursday, Judge Lorna G. Schofield of U.S. District Court in Manhattan agreed with them, ruling that the plaintiffs could keep their names concealed for now, as their lawsuit moved forward.

“The manner in which the president has used his position and platform to affect the course of pending court cases,” Schofield said, “is really without precedent.”

“Whether instigated by him or by his supporters,” she added, “the harms at issue here are not hypothetical. They are real, significant and present an unwarranted obstacle to those who would seek to vindicate their rights in federal court.”

The four plaintiffs have been described in court papers as a hospice worker, a self-employed formerly homeless man, a food delivery driver and a mother of three who works at a national retail store. Each invested in ACN, a telecommunications marketing company, after watching promotional videos featuring Trump, the suit said. The company paid Trump millions to endorse its products.

The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, alleged ACN was one of several get-rich-quick schemes that Trump promoted as legitimate business opportunities “to enrich themselves by systematically defrauding economically marginalized people.”

The suit, filed in late October just days before the midterm elections, was underwritten by a nonprofit, the Tesseract Research Center, whose chairman has donated to Democratic candidates. The center is funding the lawsuit by paying attorneys’ fees and costs, the plaintiff’s lawyers have said. The suit also names as defendants three of Trump’s children — Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump.

Schofield said her ruling would allow the plaintiffs to proceed confidentially until she ruled on a defense motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which could be months away. She said the plaintiffs could renew their request at that time.

A plaintiff’s lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, said, “We are pleased that the court, recognizing the reasonableness of our clients’ fears of reprisal by defendants and their supporters, has permitted the plaintiffs to proceed under pseudonyms for the time being.”

A lawyer for the defendants did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. After the suit was filed, a lawyer for the Trump Organization called the allegations completely meritless and said the suit was “just another effort by opponents of the president to use the court system to advance a political agenda.”

In court papers filed recently, lawyers for the defendants denied that identifying the plaintiffs would pose a risk of retaliation to them, and said it was “inherently unfair” to allow them to proceed anonymously.

“Mr. Trump is, after all, the sitting president of the United States,” the lawyers wrote, “and when such scurrilous allegations are made against him in a publicly filed lawsuit, the public has a profound interest in knowing who is making the allegations, so that it can assess the accuracy of what is being alleged and inform itself as to the credibility of the accuser.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/nyregion/trump-lawsuit-anonymous-acn.html" id="be8d4b17-1705-31f4-a7e7-a698ce9b976f">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — When four people sued President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization, accusing them of using the Trump name to entice vulnerable investors to enter sham business schemes, the plaintiffs took the highly unusual step of asking a judge for permission to proceed under pseudonyms.

Benjamin Weiser

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