Manafort Sues Mueller, Rosenstein for Overstepping (Audio)

Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, was indicted by the Special Council in October on criminal charges of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering related to his lobbying on behalf of a Russian friendly political party in Ukraine. Now, Manafort has filed a civil lawsuit claiming that Mueller overstepped his authority and charging him with crimes related to business conducted long before he became Trump's campaign chairman involving events

unrelated to Russian election meddling. My guest is Jeffrey Kramer, managing director at Berkeley Research Group and a former federal prosecutor. Jeff, we might expect a motion to dismiss the charges, but have you ever seen a civil suit like this in response to criminal charges. Uh. No, this is uh throwing unique. I mean in a normal context where you have justice or a former federal prosecutor uh writing a defendant, and I've never seen a suit arguing that the prosecutor didn't

have jurisdiction. Now, this is unique because it's a special counsel, but I don't think it's I don't think it's a winning argument in any events. Explain maniforts claims briefly, you know, just briefly, and I'll give you his argument, and I'll tell you where I think it goes awry. He's basically saying that in there's a couple of counts in one county saying the w Attorney General did not have an authority to appoint Muller to pursue uh these uh financial doings.

And this is uh that Mueller himself uh needed short and didn't have the jurisdiction to pursue anything beyond the election and Russian interference. That's the argument. Um, where I think it goes awry, as that it confuses U. I'm sure purposely so. The special council law with a special

prosecutor legislation and that's where the difference is. What are the chances of a judge setting aside the Special Counsel's appointment as one of the things that Manafort asked for, or the charges against Manifort, or doing anything else with a case that's going on in another court. I think it's a slim to none is probably generous. Um. There will certainly be a response, but I can't see a

judge entertaining are certainly granting this motion. The Special Council law is clear, it gives pretty wide birth as long as the Deputy Attorney General reviews what's going on, and there's touch points, and if we look at what the Deputy Attorney General said in his recent testimony has been on top of Robert Mueller. There's a constant community and he's abiding what needs to happen under the Special Council.

There's a lot of latitude there. The argument is akin to it a defendant saying not that I didn't do it, but basically this should have been kept concealed. You shouldn't have looked here. It's an absurd argument. Well, we should mention that Mantaford is not only only suing Mueller, but he is also suing Rod rosen Stein, who is the acting Attorney General who's in charge of the Russian investigation

and the U. S Department of Justice. I'm looking at the order appointing the Special Council that Rosenstein signed, and it says that included in the authority to conduct the investigations any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation. So does that clearly cover events even if they're unrelated to the Russian election meddling. I think exactly right, And that's the what I was alluding to before. It's

a pretty broad discretion for Muller. And if he was looking for monies overseas may have been Russian and Ukrainian moneys that could have impacted influence on the Trump administration. And he started uncovering what Paul Manafort was doing overseas, he doesn't have to then turn away um and uh and go elsewhere. He can follow the evidence where it leads. And I think that's exactly what we want from any prosecutor.

So as long as he did anything illegal or improper, the defendant got caught, and he's saying you shouldn't have caught me. That's that's argument, this seems more like a political move than a legal move. But is it likely to cause any problems or distractions from Muller and his team? No, you've seen anything, And obviously we we don't even know a small percentage of what's going on behind closed doors. But we can tell h that Bob Muller and his

team have been pretty straightforward as in pursuing this. There's been no leaks, there's been no press conferences or news releases or anything that like Billy conversation we've heard from Bob Mueller has been in the form of criminal cases. So I think they're putting their heads down. This is a distraction, although they'll have to respond, as I said, in in federal court because it is is a valid complaint um. But then they'll just keep doing what they're

doing and this will be brushed aside um. And then Paul Manaford is going to have to face the fact that he's looking at a decade or more in jail, and then the question is does he want to cooperate or not. But this attempt to dismiss the charges um, I don't think it's gonna it's gonna go very were just about a minute here, Jeff, there's it's also seems to be a phishing expedition in some respects where they're asking for certain documents. Is there any possibility that a

judge might require mulitor turn anything over like that? You know, I don't think we're gonna get to that part of discovery. Um. I think this gets dismissed right after a complaint, after a response gets filed. I'd be surprised if it got to the point where it is discovery. Um, you're right, that would certainly benefit the defendants. The problem isn't somewhat ironic. Um, It's not that Paul Manafort is gonna sum off to being deposed in this civil lawsuit. He's got fish and

bigger problems. So usually when a civil suit goes on contemporaneous with a criminal case, the civil suits just stayed because there are certain protections we have in the criminal realm that we don't have in civil. Here, it's the flip of it. You have the defendant actually filing a civil case. So Paul Manaford maybe looking for documents from Mueller, but the last thing he wants to do is subject himself to Mueller's questioning a Deposition. Thanks for insights as always.

That's Jeffrey Kramer, Managing director, Berkeley Research Group. California began selling recreational marijuana on Monday, the seventh state to approve the sale of recreational marijuana. However, marijuana is still illegal under federal law, but the Obama administration announced it would not stand in the way of states that legalized Mary Juanna. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is about to rescind that policy.

According to the Associated Press, Sessions has long considered marijuana as comparable to heroin and has blamed it for spikes in violence. Joining me is Alex Crete, professor at Thompson Thomas Jefferson School of Law. Alex Session will let federal prosecutors where pot is legal decide how aggressively to enforce federal marijuana law. According to a p how does that fit in with the idea of federal law being enforced

uniformly across the country. Yeah, it is I think hard to make sense of this announcement um from that perspective. If the idea is that marijuana is illegal federally, and that Sessions believe that that federal law needs to be enforced, it would make I think a lot more sense for

UH Sessions to say we're going to just enforce this uniformly. UM. And also from a policy perspective, I think the prospect of having uneven enforced and depending district by district across the United States where marijuana is legal, I think could

be very, very disruptive. I mean, you could have a situation where in one part of the state, the federal prosecutor is cracking down and sending people operating businesses to prison, and in the other part of the state, the federal prosecutor is allowing the businesses to move forward just as they have been for the past few years. Right, because we should point out that many states like New York have a couple of federal prosecutors or more. A recent

gallipole shows of Americans believe marijuana should be legal. It's become a multibillion dollar industry. A bipartisan group of centators in March urged Sessions to uphold existing marijuana policy. Is there likely to be a backlash and even an effort in Congress if U S attorneys actually begin in forcing

federal law. Yeah, I think it is quite possible. UM. And it's telling that a core Gardener, Republican senator from Colorado has already tweet doubt today a very strong response to this, saying that this is in conflict with what Senator Sessions had told him, and that you know, he's very upset about this announcement, and so it's possible that this announcement from Sessions will sort of backfire on him and might spur Congress to finally take action to change

federal law to accommodate state marijuana laws. It also appears to break a promise made on the campaign trail by President Trump to respect state decisions on marijuana law. And for people who support states rights, isn't it also a problem? Yeah? I mean I think that this is, you know, in conflict with uh, you know, sort of Republican or traditional sort of Republican position on allowing states to have leeway

to make these kinds of policy decisions. That's certainly with the odds with what Trump said on the campaign trailer, as you noted, and it's with odds with what polling shows. Polling shows that stantial majority of Americans, even if they don't support marijuana legalization, a lot of people who oppose legalizations still believe it should be up to states to

make that decision. Last poll I saw, I think it was somewhere around seventy five percent or so, uh, somewhere in that range said that they thought this should be left to the states, even if they personally didn't support legalization. So this is I think a very unpopular political move to say that the federal government should interfere with what states are doing here. So, Alex, looking at it from the other side, is there any reason why this is

a good move? Well, I mean, I think that the you know, argument that one would make in favor of this move, and I personally, you know, I don't think it's a good move, But I'd say the argument that you would, you know, make, uh in favor of this is to say, look, federal law says marijuana is illegal until that changes the that law should be enforced, and Congress, if they want to change law, they should act and

do it. And you know, certainly, I think there's something to be said for the idea that Congress has been um, I think turning a little bit of a blind eye to this conflict. The reality is that it's been easy for them to do the past few years because the federal prosecutors have been using their discretion to allow this to go forward, but still federal law says this is illegal, and really it Congress should change that. I mean, Congress

needs to face up to this conflict. It's untenable to have so many states with legalization laws and yet federal law says this is all a crime. Alex, the d e A has marijuana listed as a Schedule one drug alongside heroin. If the d e A changes that, will that make a difference. It changes where marijuana is on the schedule of drugs. No, No, not really, So that is certainly an issue that's come up, the rescheduling of marijuana,

maybe moving marijuana to a less restrictive schedule. But even if marijuana was rescheduled to say Schedule to or even Schedule three. Uh, the fact is that substances and Rules two and three they can only be distributed for medical purposes. And so even if you were to reschedule marijuana, that would do nothing to solve the conflict between federal prohibition

and state legalization laws for recreational use. Let's so, let's say next week, do you expect to see anything happening in states that have legalized marijuana or do you think that U. S. Attorneys are going to wait or perhaps never do anything at all. Yeah, I mean that I think is the big question mark now that's been left by this announcement from Sessions is that this is going to be up to individual U S attorneys to make these decisions. Now, um, what are they going to do?

And I don't think at this point in time we have any clear answer about when we'll know that. Uh. And the reality is that in some of these UH districts, Trump hasn't even nominated anyone to fill the U. S attorney position, um. And in others somebody has been nominated but not confirmed. And then other districts there have been Trump nominees confirmed. So that's sort of another question mark

as well. UH. In California, at least last I checked, I believe is only one of the four districts had a nominee from Trump, and I don't believe that person has been confirmed yet, in the Eastern district of California, just as an example. So that's another sort of uncertainty that's out there, which is that in some parts of the country where marijuana is legal, you might not even have someone to check in as far as the U S Attorney right now. Thank you, Alex. That's Professor Alex

Kright of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Bralso this is Bloomberg