illustrates the corruption in Trump's DOJ that Baron is trying to 'Project' onto Biden...the Chapter is entitled "It's Time for You Guys to Even Things Out"...
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On August 8, 2018, our offiice charged Chris Collins, a Republican congressman from New York, with insider trading and making false statements to federal law enforcement agents. It was just two weeks later that Michael Cohen surprised us by pleading guilty rather than face felony indictment.
These two events occurred as we were looking into possible criminal conduct by Greg Craig, a prominent DC lawyer, a Democrat, and the White House counsel for the first year of the Obama administration. We were still in the midst of a careful process to determine if there was a basis for charging him when Rob Khuzami got a call from Ed O'Callaghan at Main Justice.
This is the episode that I touched on briefly in the preface. Even as I think about it now, it remains no less stunning and disturbing, and in this chapter I'll give it the fuller exploration it warrants.
O'Callaghan wanted us to charge Craig as soon as possible, before the midterm elections that November, because we had recently prosecuted a couple of Republicans. "It's time for you guys to even things out," he said.
When Khuzami walked into my office right after this call to inform me about it, I asked Audrey Strauss to join us. After the three of us got through expressing our disbelief at the impropriety and outrageousness of O'Callaghan's demand, we talked about how to respond to it. We had no trouble agreeing among ourselves: it would have no weight in the decision we reached, and no influence on its timing.
What I could not know at the time was how determined Main Justice was to see Craig face a jury and the extremes they would go to in order to make that happen.
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Fast forward to the end of the chapter....(note: the SDNY under Berman declined to prosecute, so Main Justice got the DC office to take on the case)...
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The government alleged that Craig lied about his interactions with the media. He countered that he had no reason to, because he was confident that his underlying actions broke no laws. "If anybody was going to talk to The New York Times, it was going to be me," he said. "I was not acting in the interest of Ukraine. I was defending the integrity of the the report."
The trial went on for two and a half weeks.
It took less than five hours for the jury to return with a verdict of not guilty.
Outside the courthouse, William Taylor, one of Craig's lawyers, spoke to the media. "Why, after the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York rejected this prosecution, did the Department of Justice decide it had to hound this man and his family without any evidence and without any purpose?" he said.
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That's how you politicize our DOJ...not that a flimsy case was lost...but that it was done to "Even Things Out"...and as you've read, there are named witnesses to this travesty.
Before anyone alleges similar behavior by the Biden administration, make sure you have named witnesses and evidence behind such a claim.