In the News: William C. Banks

"I think the fact that [George] Papadopoulos had a meeting early on or had connections early on with Russian government officials while he was employed by the Trump campaign is pretty damaging," says William C. Banks, director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism.

Removing the likelihood of a trial in the United States leaves the government with few options, says William C. Banks, professor of practice of public administration and international affairs. "It’s time now to wonder whether the Trump administration is thinking of doing something different." 

“I think Mr. Gorsuch is going to prove himself to be one of the most, if not the most conservative justice on the court. Probably more conservative than Justice Scalia, or at least as conservative,” says Professor Emeritus William C. Banks.

"This is obviously a really dynamic area of the law," says William C. Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs. "It’s a rapidly changing area of policy and law in states. It’s challenging for legislatures to keep up with the changes in technology — what you can do with your telephone or your gadget that’s hardly visible."

"It was clear from the circumstances that the framework we had been using in the West and in Israel was ineffective because the fighting was of a new kind," says Professor Emeritus William C. Banks.

"The Mueller investigation from the beginning has been about potential collusion, and this would be additional evidence of potential collusion involving the campaign, in particular of General Flynn," says Professor Emeritus William C. Banks.

"I think it's a very disturbing trend for the President to turn the relationship between the presidency and the justice department into an adversarial relationship based on political points of view. The justice department is charged with enforcing the law, it's that simple, and they shouldn't be influenced to do so in a certain way by the president or anyone else," says William C. Banks, director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism.

"The Justice Department could certainly apply pressure on Mueller's team to hasten the investigation, make it difficult to obtain the funds beyond certain periods to continue to investigate; more likely that those kinds of informal pressures would be applied rather than removal itself," said William Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs and director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism.

“The Russian ambassador has probably been under surveillance since before you and I were born,” says William C. Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs.

William C. Banks, professor of practice of public administration an international affairs, says it is up to individual states to reveal the extent to which their systems have been intruded upon. He adds that a federalized system with wide stratification of election officials bound to the county level makes the system resilient and harder to damage.

William Banks discusses the legality of a congressman serving in Congress if convicted of assault. Banks tells that the U.S constitution does not stop " a convicted member of Congress from continuing to serve, even for felony convictions, short of treason." 

"You can't get in the way or do anything to impede an investigation that has already been launched and if you do you may suffer criminal penalties,” says William C. Banks, professor of practice of public administration and international affairs.

"We got confirmation that the White House counsel was told in no certain terms by Yates that indeed there was a serious problem with the veracity of Michael Flynn's statements, and those statements were being repeated by other White House officials, including the Vice President," said William Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs and director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism.

In the current charged political environment, a national commission might be the only path to a new approach acceptable to both parties. “Trump couldn’t stand in the way of that” if Congress moves in that direction, says William C. Banks, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs.

"A failure to register, or making a false statement, or an omission of a material fact in connection with registration is also unlawful, if it was willfully done. If it was willfully done, he could face either civil or criminal penalties," assesses William C. Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs.

“One of the things that this revelation about Page reinforces is that it wasn’t politicized at all. That it was done following the FISA process,” says William C. Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs. “There was plenty of evidence that the Russians were up to something concerning the election last year, so there was a lot of reason to want to surveil those who might have been involved.”

Professor Emeritus William Banks was interviewed on Bloomberg Radio's program "Bloomberg Law" about the Senate investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.