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Trump's tweets may come back to haunt him in court
Trump's tweets central to legal cases on dossier, travel ban and more
Story highlights
- The President's prolific use of Twitter continues to complicate his administration's arguments
- Federal courts are still weighing how much the statements in Trump's tweets reveal about his presidential actions
Washington (CNN)President
Donald Trump's tweet Tuesday morning calling the Russia dossier "bogus"
is already being used to argue that intelligence agencies should
release a related government summary of the contentious document. Every
time Trump on Twitter calls the dossier fake, he could be acknowledging
that the intelligence community investigated it and presented to him
their findings, according to a court filing Tuesday from lawyers who
seek official government information about the dossier.
In
this case and others, the President's prolific use of Twitter continues
to complicate his administration's arguments. The court actions that
mention Trump's tweets now stretch across a wide variety of issues,
including the official handling of the dossier, immigration policy, who
should run an independent agency and First Amendment rights. In many of
the cases, a judge's ruling on the President's tweets could carve out a
new area of law. In some cases, Trump's tweets may be official
statements from the President, government lawyers have argued.
"Legally
speaking, the tweets are quite significant. They provide a window into
his beliefs and motivations," said Neal Katyal, the former acting
solicitor general in the Obama administration who is leading a case that
opposes Trump's travel ban.
But
federal courts are still weighing how much the statements in Trump's
tweets reveal about his presidential actions. Lawyers for the James
Madison Project, a government transparency advocacy group, and Politico
told a federal court Tuesday that Trump's tweets are public statements,
and thus show that he knows the intelligence agencies vetted the
document.
So far, lawyers for the
government haven't responded to the latest argument. In previous court
filings and in an appearance in November before the judge, the
administration's lawyers said that the President's tweets signify
nothing about what Trump knows of the intelligence work. The tweet could
be evidence that Trump watched news reports about the dossier or that
he'd know first-hand the truth of the accusations about him, Trump's
legal team said.
"FBI
CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF
RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION," the President wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning.
The beginning of that tweet mentioned the show "Fox & Friends,"
leading many to conclude that his tweet was responding to a news segment
on Fox News.
The
James Madison Project and Politico have attempted since January to get
the FBI, National Security Agency, the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence and the CIA to release a two-page synopsis the
intelligence community presented about a year ago to
then-President-elect Trump about the dossier.
But
the agencies won't even officially say if they investigated the
dossier's claims or if the two-page synopsis exists. In court, the
agencies can use a response that "neither confirms nor denies" their
work.
CNN first reported on the two-page synopsis used to brief Trump in early January,
and former FBI Director James Comey said in his Senate testimony in
June that he briefed the President-elect on "salacious and unverified
material."
In Tuesday's filing in the
freedom of information case, lawyers for the James Madison Project and
Politico argued the latest tweet about the dossier should be seen as an
official confirmation from the President about the existence of the
dossier and the FBI's role in vetting it.
"Operating
upon the good faith assumption that this court has more important
things to do than monitor the president's Twitter feed, the plaintiffs
feel they have no choice but to keep this court updated on the
continuous official statements by the president in which he specifically
and substantively addresses" the issues in their lawsuit, the lawyers
wrote.
They've argued the same
thing before, after Trump tweeted about the dossier in October. Trump
called the dossier "fake" and "discredited" four times that month. The
lawyers seeking information also noted interviews Trump gave to Lou
Dobbs of Fox Business Network and Sharyl Attkisson of the syndicated
show "Full Measure," in which he commented on the dossier.
The
Trump administration disagrees. Its lawyers wrote in an earlier filing
that they're "treating the statements upon which plaintiffs rely as
official statements of the president of the United States, but nothing
in the statements states or even implies that [the agencies] made a
final determination as to the veracity of any factual allegation
allegedly contained in the two-page synopsis." Put another way, unless
Trump publicly spells out that the intelligence community told him it
was false, the rest of his government won't have to acknowledge it.
The
lawsuit about the dossier isn't the only one where Trump's tweets inch
into the dispute. Last week, in a court fight over who will run the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a lawyer who wants to prevent
Trump appointee Mick Mulvaney from staying in charge mentioned how Trump tweeted about the agency's punishment of Wells Fargo Bank.
In
that case, lawyers for Leandra English argue that Trump shouldn't be
able to influence policy and enforcement at the agency. English is the
CFPB's deputy director who believes she should be the bureau's acting
head instead of Mulvaney, who also still serves as the White House's
management and budget director.
In
another lawsuit, people who were blocked by Trump on Twitter say he's
violated the Constitution, since Twitter is a public forum the President
uses to make official statements. Filings in that lawsuit have cited
the administration's response in the dossier lawsuit that admit Trump's
tweets are official statements from the President.
And
in yet another issue before the courts, immigrants who challenged
Trump's travel ban alleged that his tweets show that he meant to
discriminate against Muslims with the policy.
In
all of the cases, a president's tweets could become a new part of legal
precedent. Courts didn't consider a president's tweets previously
"because it wasn't a matter of dispute," said Bradley Moss, an attorney
in the dossier freedom of information case. "When Barack Obama was
talking about drone strikes, he was talking about what he learned as
president, not from watching Fox News," Moss added, citing another
situation where the executive branch had to acknowledge the existence of
a government program.
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