The Federal prosecutor was identified as Karen Gilbert, who was the U.S. attorney in the 2009 case. Identified as Attorney’s Office Lawyer.
A Justice Department prosecutor who helped secure last week’s indictment of former President Donald Trump was publicly reprimanded by a judge for “gross negligence” in secretly tapping a defense lawyer and investigator in 2009, an agency source confirmed to Just The News.
The prosecutor, Karen Gilbert, now serving as a deputy to special counsel Jack Smith, issued the 37-count indictment against Trump on Thursday.
In a 2009 case, Gilbert filed a lawsuit against the U.S. District Court in Miami. Headed the attorney’s office’s narcotics division and tried to prosecute Dr. Ali Shaigan for allegedly illegally prescribing drugs, court records show.
Gilbert and co-worker Sean Cronin launched a witness tampering investigation in the case and got two witnesses to record conversations between Shaygan’s defense lawyer and the investigator, records show.
However, the U.S. According to a ruling by District Judge Alan Gold, the pair failed to obtain authorization to tape the conversations and did not inform the defense team that the witnesses were “cooperating with the government”, thereby breaching discovery obligations.
Furthermore, Gilbert did not inform his superiors that the two had initiated an investigation in violation of policy. When asked later about the matter at a sanctions hearing, she said under oath that “she thought she had.”
The judge concluded that Gilbert was “grossly negligent in her treatment” of a “significant and unique witness tampering trial against defense counsel” and said there was no basis to even begin a trial.
It found that Gilbert failed to solicit “required information” about the witness tampering investigation and failed to obtain proper approval for it. According to the records, she failed to “independently verify the basis for Cronin’s belief” that a witness hearing was ever necessary.
In “Findings of Fact” in the Gold document, he said the trial was due to “personal aggression against the defense” on behalf of Cronin, who answered Gilbert.
The judge also concluded that Gilbert went ahead with the witness tampering trial “despite no evidence of wrongdoing.”
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Shaygan was eventually acquitted of all charges.
As a result of what the judge called “bad faith” in prosecuting Shaygan, he granted the doctor’s request for sanctions and the U.S. He filed a “public reprimand” against the attorney’s office, which specifically applied to Karen Gilbert, Cronin, and another prosecutor.
The Justice Department admitted to “misconduct” at the time and made “serious mistakes” throughout the investigation, but denied “bad faith” over numerous policy and ethics violations.
The Justice Department did not respond to Just The News’ request for comment.
Former senior Trump adviser and federal prosecutor Kash Patel last week called Gilbert “one of the most corrupt people to ever come out of the Southern District of Miami.”
“Karen Gilbert, a potential trial attorney in the Southern District of Florida, was so reprimanded in a 2009 drug trafficking case that she had to step down from her position,” Patel told Fox News on Friday. “She’s taking the reins on this investigation” into Trump, he said.
Gilbert “resigned” from the narcotics unit, the court document said, but she never left her government employer.