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

<h1>NEW YORK — Jeffrey Epstein, the financier facing sex-trafficking charges in New York, has been described by prosecutors as a man of enormous wealth: He owns a $77 million mansion on New York’s Upper East Side; a $12 million estate in Palm Beach, Florida; a private island in the Caribbean and a private jet.</h1>

And Thursday, Epstein, 66, asked a federal judge to allow him to use some of his wealth to stay out of jail while he awaits trial, filing a detailed bail proposal with the court.

Epstein asked the judge to release him on substantial bond and pledged to put up his palatial Manhattan mansion and his private jet as collateral. He also proposed he be allowed to remain under house arrest in the mansion and said he would agree to electronic monitoring of his location. He said he would surrender his passport and ground his jet.

In addition, his lawyers proposed that Epstein would hire private round-the-clock security guards who would “virtually guarantee” that he would not flee and would show up for court. They argued that he had lived a law-abiding life for the past 14 years.

A handful of superrich defendants have sought and occasionally obtained, over sharp objections from the government, similar bail provisions that allow them to finance a kind of personal jail rather than being held in a government lockup.

Such bail packages have prompted intense debate about their fairness. The judge in Epstein’s case, Richard M. Berman, rejected a similar proposal in 2016 from a Turkish-Iranian gold trader in a money laundering case.

At the time, Berman wrote that the proposal was “unreasonable because it helps to foster inequity and unequal treatment in favor of a very small cohort of criminal defendants who are extremely wealthy.”

Prosecutors said Monday after the charges were announced that they would seek to have Epstein held in jail until his trial. They said in court that he posed “an extraordinary risk of flight and danger” and that he had “nearly infinite means” and “tremendous incentives to use those means to flee prosecution.”

Berman of U.S. District Court in Manhattan is scheduled to take up Epstein’s bail proposal at a hearing Monday.

Later Thursday, Epstein’s lawyers asked the judge that any disclosures about Epstein’s finances be kept secret under court seal. The New York Times has reported that his image as a math whiz who used his formidable skills to build a fortune may be exaggerated.

Epstein was arrested Saturday aboard a private jet at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey after arriving from Paris. He has been detained at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a high-security facility in lower Manhattan where accused terrorists, mobsters and, most recently, the Mexican drug lord known as El Chapo, have awaited trial.

If convicted, Epstein faces up to 45 years in prison on sex-trafficking and conspiracy charges. In the indictment unsealed Monday, the office of Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said that between 2002 and 2005, Epstein recruited dozens of underage girls to engage in sex acts with him, after which he paid them hundreds of dollars in cash.

The indictment also accused Epstein of encouraging some of his victims to recruit other girls that he could then abuse and paying his “victim-recruiters” hundreds of dollars for each girl that they brought to him. “In so doing, Epstein maintained a steady supply of new victims to exploit,” the indictment said.

In the bail memorandum, Epstein’s lawyers made it clear their client would fight the charges and gave a preview of what his defense might be. They argued that even though the government may have witnesses — some younger than 18 at the time — who said Epstein had paid them for sexual massages, prosecutors could not prove he had committed the federal crime of sex trafficking. They contended that Epstein should have been prosecuted in New York state court.

“There are no allegations in the indictment that Mr. Epstein trafficked anybody for commercial profit; that he forced, coerced, defrauded, or enslaved anybody,” the lawyers, Reid Weingarten, Marc Fernich and Martin G. Weinberg, wrote. “No one seeks to minimize the gravity of the alleged conduct, but it is clear that the conduct falls within the heartland of classic state or local sex offenses.”

Epstein’s team also argued an agreement Epstein had reached with federal and state prosecutors in Florida more than a decade ago covered the crimes charged in the new indictment, even allegations that he sexually abused a minor in his Manhattan residence.

In Florida, the then-U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, agreed not to prosecute Epstein on federal sex trafficking charges if he pleaded guilty to two state prostitution charges and registered as a sex offender. Epstein served 13 months in jail but was allowed to leave six days a week, 12 hours each day, to work.

The lawyers said Epstein understood that agreement to be “a global resolution of any charges arising from the alleged conduct at issue here, including conduct in New York.”

The lawyers accused federal officials in Florida of trying to circumvent that plea agreement by encouraging Epstein’s victims to pursue prosecutions in other districts, including New York.

Berman, the U.S. attorney, said Monday that his office was not bound by the promises prosecutors in Florida had made. The indictment unveiled Monday mentions three victims without naming them — one girl who was abused at Epstein’s mansion in Manhattan and two at his house in Palm Beach. It remains unclear if those victims were among the women involved in the 2008 Florida case.

Epstein’s lawyers cited other cases in which federal judges had granted similar home detention with privately paid security guards. In one, Judge Jed S. Rakoff allowed a Manhattan lawyer charged in a fraud scheme to remain in his East Side apartment with electronic monitoring and armed security guards, paid for by his family.

Rakoff acknowledged concerns that such an agreement gave people of means “an opportunity for release that poorer people could never obtain.” But, he added, “it is not a reason to deny a constitutional right to someone who, for whatever reason, can provide reasonable assurance against flight.”

Epstein’s lawyers noted the objections Judge Berman had expressed in denying house arrest for the Turkish-Iranian gold trader, Reza Zarrab. They argued that Epstein, as a U.S. citizen whose assets were mostly in the country, was a different case.

“This court’s opinion in Zarrab stands only for the proposition that wealthy defendants should not be provided an unfair advantage,” they wrote. “It does not, of course, suggest that wealthy defendants should bear a special disadvantage.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-bail.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

Epstein Offers Mansion and Jet as Bond to Avoid Jail Before Trial

And Thursday, Epstein, 66, asked a federal judge to allow him to use some of his wealth to stay out of jail while he awaits trial, filing a detailed bail proposal with the court.

Epstein offers mansion and jet as bond to avoid jail before trial

He was one of the early inmates to benefit from a criminal justice bill signed into law by President Donald Trump.

The law, the First Step Act, offered prisoner rehabilitation programs and overhauled sentencing policies that supporters claimed had a disproportionate effect on poor defendants, especially minorities.

But one person who benefited from the law was Hassan Nemazee, the prisoner at Cumberland, who was once an investor of enormous wealth and who donated heavily to Democratic political causes. He was a national finance chairman for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and later raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Barack Obama’s first presidential contest.

Nemazee, who is serving the rest of his sentence in home confinement, acknowledged in interviews that he was not a fan of Trump, but he felt personally indebted to the president and his aides for pushing through “the most significant prison reform legislation in a generation.”

“Credit where credit is due,” Nemazee said.

Trump said recently at the White House that “unfair sentencing rules were contributing to the cycle of poverty and crime,” and since the First Step Act’s passage, more than 500 people with “unfair sentences have been released from prison and are free to begin a new life.”

But Nemazee left prison under a less publicized part of the bill that allows certain offenders who are over 60 and not considered a threat to others to be released into home confinement if they have completed two-thirds of their sentence.

In home confinement, Nemazee does not wear an ankle bracelet, but officials may call him on a landline late at night or early in the morning to verify he is at home. He may be summoned for a urine test at any time and must submit his weekly schedule for approval, he said.

Still, it feels a lot like freedom. He may leave his apartment to go to work, the gym, religious services or appointments with his doctors and lawyers. He may also go out to lunch, “which is always a treat, given where I have been the last 8 1/2 years.”

“Home confinement is a huge improvement over prison in every respect,” Nemazee said.

The Bureau of Prisons has said that since the bill’s passage, 10 prisoners — of 23 thus far deemed eligible — have been released into home confinement. The bureau would not identify the prisoners or comment on their cases.

Another is reported to be a white-collar criminal named Herman Jacobowitz, 60, who pleaded guilty in Brooklyn in 2005 in another large fraud case and was sentenced to 15 years, according to court papers and a lawyer familiar with the case. Jacobowitz could not be reached for comment.

Annette Bongiorno, 70, who was Bernard L. Madoff’s longtime secretary and was convicted of fraud, has also applied for release into home confinement but has not heard if her request was approved, her lawyer, Roland G. Riopelle, said.

Nemazee was charged in 2009 with orchestrating a scheme that defrauded banks of nearly $300 million. He pleaded guilty to four fraud counts and was ordered to forfeit his $17.75 million Park Avenue duplex; an estate in southern Italy; a blue Maserati; shares in a yacht and private airplane; and $93 million in cash and securities. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

“I feel grateful that I am out earlier than I would have been otherwise,” Nemazee said in an interview over tea at the Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue. The new law also gives prisoners more time off for good behavior, and Nemazee will complete his sentence in November.

Besides age and length of time in prison, offenders must have no record of violent crime, sex offenses or escape attempts, and officials must determine they are not a risk of committing new crimes or harming others.

That Nemazee, a Harvard-educated former multimillionaire, qualified for home confinement showed that programs that weigh a prisoner’s risk to society give white-collar offenders a distinct advantage, said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor and sentencing expert at Ohio State University.

Still, he said: “It makes so much sense to ship the elderly out. They are so low-risk and such high-cost that we should just get them home.”

Inimai Chettiar, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice who heads an initiative to end mass incarceration, said efforts to release prisoners who do not need to be imprisoned are usually a good idea. “However, we always want to make sure that it’s not being applied in a disparate way to favor white and rich prisoners over black and poor ones,” she said.

Daniel W. Levy, a former federal prosecutor who handled Nemazee’s case, said generally efforts to revamp the criminal justice system are aimed at helping “people who have not had advantages in life.”

“What makes this a harder case,” Levy said, “is that Nemazee had virtually every advantage.”

Prosecutors charged Nemazee with using fake account statements and forged signatures to show he had collateral worth hundreds of millions of dollars to fraudulently obtain $292 million in loans from Bank of America, Citibank and HSBC.

He used the funds to buy and maintain luxury properties, make financial investments and contribute some $2 million in political donations and charitable gifts, the government said.

“Pride, ego, arrogance, self-image, self-importance — all of these and more are among the reasons why I traveled down this destructive path,” he told Judge Sidney H. Stein of U.S. District Court at his sentencing in Manhattan.

Stein called Nemazee’s crime “breathtaking in its brazenness, in its scope.”

Preet Bharara, then the U.S. attorney, wrote in his new book “Doing Justice” that Nemazee was “essentially a less famous version of Bernard Madoff.”

Nemazee said his wealth was now gone. He said the friend who lent him his Upper East Side apartment was not charging rent. The friend, who is president and chief executive of a group of insurance companies, had also hired him as a senior adviser, he said. He would not identify the friend.

Nemazee said that before entering prison, he took to heart the advice of another friend, who told him: “‘Hassan, people view a prison sentence as a loss of time. I suggest you view it as a gift of time.’”

At a low-security facility in Texarkana, Texas, and prison camps at Otisville, New York, and Cumberland, he said he kept busy writing and reading, exercising, mentoring other inmates and spending “countless hours deep in thought.”

He wrote a memoir, “Persia, Politics and Prison” (he is Iranian-American), and a political thriller. At Cumberland, he also worked as a librarian.

“I hope I’ve not wasted a minute spent in prison,” Nemazee said.

He did miss his oldest daughter’s marriage and the births of his three grandchildren, he said, and “caused unimaginable harm to my ex-wife and family.”

“I am one of the fortunate who have had the love and affection of family and friends remain constant throughout my entire incarceration,” Nemazee added. “The majority of those imprisoned are not so fortunate.”

On Dec. 21, when Trump signed the bill, Nemazee applied for release “effective immediately.”

“I had my application ready. Just needed to fill in the date,” he said.

He committed a $300 million fraud, but is now free under trump's justice overhaul

NEW YORK — Three weeks ago, a 69-year-old man convicted of bank fraud quietly left a federal prison camp in Cumberland, Maryland, and moved into a friend’s one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan.

Each device, Sayoc said, consisted of a plastic pipe with a digital alarm clock and attached wires. He packed all of them with a potentially deadly mix: powder from fireworks, fertilizer, a pool chemical and glass fragments.

Sayoc, 57, paused his explanation and broke into sobs, finally collecting himself and speaking softly just before he pleaded guilty to the attack. “I know these actions were wrong, and I’m extremely sorry,” he said.

It was his first public explanation of the bombing campaign that gripped the nation just before the midterm elections in October. Sayoc mailed 16 devices to his intended victims around the country, who also included actor Robert De Niro and CNN. After a four-day manhunt, he was arrested in Florida, where he appeared to be living in a white van plastered with conservative slogans and images.

Prosecutors had called his bombing campaign a “domestic terror attack.”

Sayoc pleaded guilty to 65 counts, which included using a weapon of mass destruction and interstate transportation of an explosive. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.

“Thankfully no one was hurt by these dangerous devices, but his actions left an air of fear and divisiveness in their wake,” Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said after the plea.

Sayoc was arrested Oct. 26 outside an auto-parts store near Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The pro-Trump stickers that covered the nearby van condemned liberals and the media; one contained an image of Clinton under red cross hairs.

Sayoc was originally indicted on charges in connection with five devices sent to victims in Westchester County, a New York City suburb, and Manhattan. The 65 counts to which he pleaded covered all the devices he sent to victims around the country. He listed for the judge his intended victims.

The judge, Jed S. Rakoff of U.S. District Court, is expected to sentence Sayoc on Sept. 12.

This article originally appeared in <a id="9bed71be-b9d3-4985-a82d-df9836325b3f" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/nyregion/cesar-sayoc-trump-mail-bomber.html">The New York Times</a>.

Trump supporter who mailed pipe bombs to Democrats pleads guilty

NEW YORK — Speaking in a halting, raspy voice, Cesar Sayoc sat in a Manhattan federal courtroom Thursday and described how he assembled homemade pipe bombs that he sent to prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama and other critics of President Donald Trump last fall.

The defendant, Cesar A. Sayoc Jr., a fervent Trump supporter, sent homemade bombs created with PVC pipe and glass shards to prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama, as well as to CNN and actor Robert DeNiro, authorities said.

The court’s docket entry states only that there is a plea scheduled for Thursday, but it does not indicate what charges Sayoc will plead guilty to. He was indicted in November on 30 federal charges, including using a weapon of mass destruction and interstate transportation of an explosive.

Ten of the counts carry a maximum sentence of life in prison, and under federal law, if he were convicted of a certain combination of those counts, the judge would be required to give him a life sentence. A possible plea deal might center on whether Sayoc could plead guilty to counts that leave the judge the discretion to sentence him to less time.

Sayoc’s federal public defenders and the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment on his expected plea Friday.

Sayoc, 56, was arrested on Oct. 26 outside an auto-parts store near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he appeared to be living in a white van covered with images and slogans condemning liberals that are often found on fringe, right-wing social media accounts. One was an image of Clinton under crosshairs.

His social media feeds were an electronic version of his van. On Twitter and Facebook, he railed against Obama and Oprah Winfrey with misspelled racial epithets, and threatened former Vice President Joe Biden. He also praised Trump and conservative causes.

The arrest came after a fast-moving investigation and manhunt, as investigators tried to discover the source of 16 pipe bombs sent through the mail. Authorities said they were able to pull Sayoc’s fingerprints from two bomb packages and found his DNA on components of 10 of the improvised bombs.

The indictment against Sayoc only charges him in connection with five devices that were sent to victims in Westchester County and Manhattan, which are both part of the Southern District of New York.

In addition to Clinton and DeNiro, those packages were sent to John Brennan, a former CIA director; James Clapper, a former director of national intelligence; and George Soros, a billionaire Democratic donor.

Federal prosecutors have called Sayoc’s actions “a domestic terrorist attack.”

Sayoc’s trial had been scheduled for July. Last fall, one of his lawyers asked the judge, Jed Rakoff of U.S. District Court, for additional time to investigate the case to determine whether, among other things, there was the possibility of a plea agreement.

It is possible that Sayoc’s plea could fall through. A defendant preparing to plead can change his mind up to the last minute and opt to go to trial.

Before his arrest, Sayoc held himself out as an entrepreneur and bodybuilder who promoted exotic-dance shows in southern Florida. But he was also an angry, bankrupt loner who often lived out of his van, held far-right political views and was prone to racist and sexist tirades, according to court documents and people who knew him.

A guilty plea by Sayoc would resolve one of the major terrorism prosecutions pending in Manhattan. In another case, Judge Vernon Broderick on Tuesday granted a defense request for a six-month delay in the trial of Sayfullo Saipov, scheduling it for April 13, 2020.

Saipov was charged with using a pickup truck to kill eight people on a Manhattan bike path in 2017. He has pleaded not guilty, and if he is convicted, he could face the death penalty.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/nyregion/cesar-sayoc-guilty-mail-bomber.html" id="921be8c7-36a4-36f4-a06e-d8840a15d53f">The New York Times</a>.

Mail Bomb Suspect Accused of Targeting Clinton, Obama and Other Democrats to Plead Guilty

NEW YORK — The man accused of mailing pipe bombs to critics of President Donald Trump is expected to plead guilty next week in federal court in Manhattan, the court’s docket shows.

Sayoc, 56, was arrested on Oct. 26 outside an auto-parts store near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he appeared to be living in a white van covered with images and slogans condemning liberals that are often found on fringe, right-wing social media accounts.

The arrest came after an investigation and manhunt, as investigators tried to discover the source of 16 pipe bombs sent through the mail. Authorities said they were able to pull Sayoc’s fingerprints from two bomb packages and found his DNA on components of 10 of the improvised bombs.

The defendant, Cesar A. Sayoc Jr., a fervent Trump supporter who was arrested last fall in Plantation, Florida, sent homemade bombs created with PVC pipe and glass shards to prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama, as well as to CNN and actor Robert DeNiro, authorities said.

The court’s docket entry states only that there is a plea scheduled for Thursday, but it does not indicate what charges Sayoc will plead guilty to. He was indicted in November on federal charges including five counts of using a weapon of mass destruction, and five counts of interstate transportation of an explosive. The top charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Sayoc, 56, was arrested Oct. 26 outside an auto-parts store near Fort Lauderdale where he appeared to be living in a white van covered with images and slogans often found on fringe, right-wing social media accounts, condemning liberals and putting cross hairs over an image of Clinton.

His social media feeds were an electronic version of his van. On Twitter and Facebook, he railed against Obama and Oprah Winfrey with misspelled racial epithets, threatened former Vice President Joe Biden and praised Trump and conservative causes.

Mail Bomb Suspect Who Targeted Clinton, Obama and Other Democrats to Plead Guilty

The court’s docket entry states only that there is a plea scheduled for Thursday, but it does not indicate what charges Sayoc will plead guilty to.

Soon, the man was being subdued by several uniformed officers working for the city’s Department of Homeless Services, according to security video of the incident.

And that’s when things got out of control, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

While officers held the man down, Cordell Fitts, who was working as a supervising sergeant with the city’s Department of Homeless Services, kicked and stomped the man’s head more than 10 times, prosecutors said.

Fitts punched him two more times in the head after officers attempted to place the homeless man in handcuffs, prosecutors said. Fitts, 34, was charged with deprivation of the victim’s civil rights and filing a false report about the incident.

He was released on bond after a court appearance Thursday. His attorney, Julia L. Gatto, declined to comment.

Video of the beating, which federal prosecutors made public Thursday, raised some of the same questions — how marginalized and poor people are treated in city facilities — as did an incident in December when the police yanked a 1-year-old baby from the arms of his mother, Jazmine Headley, as she was being arrested at a public benefits office in Brooklyn. Cellphone footage of that incident went viral on social media.

The assault at the 30th Street shelter, identified by prosecutors as the Bellevue men’s shelter, occurred March 6, 2017, prosecutors said. They did not say why it took two years to charge Fitts.

According to a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday, the victim, who prosecutors did not name, was in the shelter’s lobby interacting with several officers and a security guard. At one point, the victim and Fitts exchanged words and Fitts gestured toward an exit area of the shelter, the complaint said.

Fitts then reached toward the victim, putting his hands on the man’s chest. The man responded by swinging at Fitts with what appeared to be closed fists, the complaint said.

According to the complaint, a police report of the incident stated that “necessary force” was used to “safely detain” the man and that a small pocketknife fell from the man’s jacket during the altercation as he continued to resist arrest. The report also quoted the victim as saying that he was off his medication and “going through a lot.”

Although the report “purports to have been drafted” by another officer, language in it was drafted by Fitts, who instructed another officer to sign it, prosecutors charged.

The officer who signed the report has said that he did not hear the victim make the comment about his medication and also did not see a knife fall to the ground, the complaint said.

Prosecutors said Fitts joined the homeless services agency as a police officer in 2012 and worked there until about March 2018.

“Fitts’ alleged conduct not only betrayed his duty as an officer to protect those under his charge, but also violated the law,” Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said.

Margaret Garnett, the commissioner of the city’s investigation department, which had investigated the incident with prosecutors, added that shelters “should provide a safe environment for the homeless of our city, not one where clients fear the officers employed to protect them.”

Isaac McGinn, a spokesman for the Department of Homeless Services, said, “The actions described, including the cover-up, are horrifying and will never be tolerated in our city.” He said that working with the New York Police Department, “We remain squarely focused on improving shelter security while strengthening oversight.”

Prosecutors did not describe any injuries the man may have suffered or say what has happened to him in the two years since the incident. The government said only that he was previously a resident of the homeless agency’s facilities. The video shows that the man was ultimately brought to his feet and escorted out of the lobby.

Benjamin Weiser

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