Could a Judge or Attorney General or Similar Start a New 9/11 investigation? On May 11th, 2018 a request was made by one of the many 9/11 for truth platforms which is endorsed by nearly 3000 architects and engineers to the US congress to reopen a new 9/11 investigation. This is called the Bobby McIlvaine Act which acts in the name of many families who lost at least a relative during the 9/11 attacks. According to his platform over 100 representatives of congress have been reached in the past few weeks. They are going to attempt the same thing this week but congress keeps ignoring the requests. Would it be possible for a judge, lawyer, attorney general, etc. to start a new investigation or at least to subpoena the people who were in charge by that time, or is Congress the only way? Are there any other legal procedures to start a new investigation apart from Congress?
You don't really need any reasonable doubts about the currently available evidence to get it started. If an investigating authority thinks a crime has been committed and not yet been adjudicated, it is free to investigate, even if others disagree. There are plenty of avenues for starting an investigation: Congress can exercise its oversight power to initiate an investigation. State legislatures can do the same, so you could petition the New York Legislature, the Virginia General Assembly, or the Pennsylvania General Assembly. At both the state and federal level, attorneys general have the authority to initiate an investigation of crimes committed within their jurisdictions. At both the state and federal level, a judge's authority to appoint a special prosecutor is a power considered to be inherent in the courts, so nearly any court could appoint someone to pursue the investigation. Of course, the prosecutor's authority could be jurisdictionally limited -- if a New York state judge appointed a prosecutor, he wouldn't really have much authority to investigate federal crimes, and if a small-claims court judge in Idaho appointed a prosecutor, he'd be limited by both his lack of authority to investigate events outside his jurisdiction and the practical difficulties of enforcing a subpoena from out of state. Even at the local level, law enforcement and legislative bodies have the authority to launch investigations. If NYPD or the Somerset County Sheriff or the Arlington County Board want to investigate, they could do so. I don't know what the relevant rules are in each jurisdiction, but some states allow lawsuits for civil damages based on criminal activity. So if the gist of the sponsor's complaint is that someone used "explosives and/or incendiaries" to kill his son, it may be that he could bring a lawsuit over that, which would in turn open up the the tools of civil discovery. Of course, that's only if the claim isn't time-barred; now that we're nearly 17 years out, I'd guess that it would be too late. And there's always the possibility of continuing an independent investigation. Using the same tools that the press uses -- interviews, freedom-of-information laws, etc. -- any member of the public is free to make an inquiry into any matter of public concern. Obviously, I'd expect any of these authorities to be reluctant to take up the cause due to the investigatory consensus against the inside-job/cover-up theory, and I'd also expect -- for the same reason -- that any authority that tried to take it up would run into serious roadblocks from all the other authorities that have declined.
This would be a violation of 18 USC 1361, which prohibits destruction of federal property. See also the DoJ legal notes on this crime. The act does have to be willful, so dropping a cup accidentally is not a crime. If for example the act is mustaching Obama's portrait, the damage would probably rise to the quarter-million dollar fine and 10 years in prison level. It would of course be at the discretion of the (new) DoJ whether to press charges.
Since the treason statute is quite vague, you have to discover what the details of the law is by looking at precedent. Almost all federal treason convictions in the US have involved declared wars. There is the case of John Fries, an early tax rebellion case in 1800, who was pardoned by the president thus rendering the need for legal appeal moot, but this involved armed insurrection and is thus not analogous. All other federal cases have involved people supporting the enemy in case of a declared war. In this specific case, the allegation is that by advocating not working with Syrian Kurds in an assault on Raqqa (because it was thought to be in the best interests of the US in terms of our relationship with Turkey, given the position of the Turkish state w.r.t. Kurds), Flynn benefited ISIS. Compared to various wartime treason convictions, such as Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally, the difference between imaginary "aid" in the case of Flynn vs. actual aid in the other cases is so stark that there is no case to be made for a treason charge.
First of all, as noted in the comments, Babylon Bee is SATIRE. It's not intended to be news, just entertainment. But the real question is whether or not a President COULD do such a thing. Or perhaps better, could a President attempt to do something like this. If a President did attempt to do this, it would be totally without precedent and also without any constitutional authority. Since the US Constitution enumerates the powers between the branches and gives the President only the authority to appoint, with the advice of the Senate, a SCOTUS justice, trying to change things by giving an existing justice 2 votes would almost certainly be immediately challenged by the Senate. It also seems unlikely that such an action would be upheld as constitutional. Of course this is all speculative since nothing of this nature has happened.
You can't normally ask the court to "recuse" an attorney, because "recusal" is normally restricted to the judge leaving the case. The more common term is moving to disqualify opposing counsel.
Could DA Bragg have only charged Trump with 34 misdemeanor counts, without elevating the charges to felonies? Yes. if Trump's defense team argues that the law that elevates the misdemeanor charges to felony charges does not apply in this case, because the elevation option does not include federal laws, then since this is a matter of law and not a matter of fact, Judge Mercan (rather than the jury) will decide whether or not to dismiss the felony charges? Yes. Does Judge Mercan have the option of dismissing the felony enhancement but allowing the misdemeanor charges to proceed, or would Mercan have to dismiss all charges against Trump? Judge Mercan could probably choose either option if he found that the original charges were not supported by the law. There is law regarding how this decision is made but I personally don't know that area of law well. One of the reason that I am unfamiliar with it is that it is exceedingly rare for a judge to conclude that the prosecutor's charges are not supported by the law. I would be very surprised if that judge reached that conclusion in this case, in particular, because both federal election law violations and state and federal tax law violations are implicated by the indictment. The DA no doubt legally researched this issue exhaustively before presenting the charges to the grand jury and has made out a prima facie case for a felony under the applicable New York State law. If Trump is brought to trial, then would it be possible for a jury to return a verdict that Trump was guilty of the misdemeanor offenses of falsifying business records but innocent of doing so with an intent to commit another crime? If so, then could Trump still be found guilty of the misdemeanors, or would he be fully acquitted, since the jury ruled that he was not guilty of the exact charges that DA Bragg filed? Whether a jury is presented with a lesser included offense charge at the request of the defense, is partially a matter of the prosecution's election to make that option available or not, and partially a matter of the judge's decision on how to handle it. The body of law involved in how this decision is handled on a case by case basis is quite involved. Most of the case law involves homicide cases, assault cases, and property crime cases where there are charges with are identical except for aggravating factors for the most serious charges. But, lesser charges generally aren't presented if based upon the evidence presented at trial, either the more serious charge is established or no charge is proven. For example, if the defendant presents an alibi defense, and a witness whose credibility is disputed places the defendant at the scene intentionally committing a crime, a lesser included offense charge would not be appropriate. But, if the defendant admits hitting a pedestrian and causing the pedestrian's death, but claims that the pedestrian was at fault in the accident for jay walking, while the prosecution alleges that the pedestrian was intentionally struck as part of a mafia hit, multiple lesser included offenses would probably be charged involving different levels of intent of premeditated intent/aggravated circumstances killing (first degree murder), to a knowing killing (second degree murder), to a reckless killing (manslaughter), to a criminally negligent homicide or vehicular homicide charge. Typically, the decision on this point would not be made until all evidence was received and the judge in a hearing away from the jury but in the presence of the prosecutors and defense counsel crafted jury instructions based upon the evidence presented at trial and the arguments raised by counsel at trial.
The problem was that the arresting officer and the investigating officer were two different people. After American airlines misidentified Mr Lowe as the suspect a warrant was issued for an arrest, and it wasn't until about a year later when officers in New Mexico ran his name and found that he had a warrant that they detained him. So their actions were perfectly proper. The length of his detention was primarily because the USA functions as separate legal jurisdictions, so you can be held for some time on a warrant for another state. Possibly the investigating officer should not have relied on American Airlines identification of the suspect. However, Mr. Lowe would have to overcome the qualified immunity bar to sue the PD. The case against the airline is that of negligence: they had no duty to single out Mr. Lowe; they could just have turned over all the data, as requested. Having chosen effectively to carry out their own investigation, the claim is that they owed a common law duty of care to Mr. Lowe to do it competently. It's clear that misidentifying Mr. Lowe as the suspect was likely to do him harm, so it's a reasonable foundation for a claim. More than that, we will have to see.
Unequivocally yes. An Australian judgement asserted this by (happily) adopting the reasoning of the US courts: The matter also came up for discussion in the Communist Party case where Justice Dixon adopted the U.S. view that: ... it is within the necessary power of the Federal government to protect its own existence and the unhindered play of its legitimate activities. And to this end, it may provide for the punishment of treason, the suppression of insurrection or rebellion and for the putting-down of all individual or concerted attempts to obstruct or interfere with the discharge of the proper business of government ... A plane (or ship, or train etc.) that is not responding to hails and acting to put citizens at risk is a legitimate target of military force. It doesn't matter if it is acting that way because of a deliberate decision of its controllers (e.g. terrorists), because it's not under control or because it's controllers are idiots.