Tag Archives: DOJ

national news

Dare I read Barr’s book?

William Barr is about to have a book published that tells the world what the world already knew: that Donald Trump is a dangerous psychopath who flew “off the rails” after losing the 2020 presidential election.

There. Having established that bit of knowledge, I am likely to pass on purchasing the former U.S. attorney general’s book. Why? Because he isn’t likely to tell me anything I don’t already know or already strongly believed about The Donald.

When Barr got the call to become AG after The Donald fired Jeff Sessions, I held out hope that Barr would become an enforcer of the law and the Constitution. I never imagined he would become a Trump toadie capable of perverting the law to suit The Donald’s machinations. Barr had served honorably as AG in the final phase of President George H.W. Bush’s administration. I was terribly wrong.

Now he’s telling the world what we all knew. I am glad he is coming clean. I only wish he had done so earlier, had resigned earlier than he did and revealed to us that the one-time head of state/commander in chief is off his ever-lovin’ rocker.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, national news, political news

National Archives: Trump broke the law

Whenever I think of organizations prone to be subjected to partisan political pressure, among the last of them I think of is the National Archives, the keeper of all things official that emanate from the federal government.

So … when the National Archives issues a statement that Donald J. Trump broke the law when he hustled classified documents out of the White House and stashed them at his glitzy resort in south Florida, well, that’s a big bit of news.

Furthermore, think of the irony of this revelation. Didn’t the GOP presidential nominee, Trump, accuse Hillary Clinton of similar if not identical crimes while campaigning against her in 2016?

The National Archives has sent the matter to the Department of Justice for review and possible criminal referral.

Hmm. Looks to me like the walls are closing in on the ex-president.

According to The Associated Press:

Federal law bars the removal of classified documents to unauthorized locations, though it is possible that Trump could try to argue that, as president, he was the ultimate declassification authority.

No matter the legal risk, it exposes him to charges of hypocrisy given his relentless attacks during the 2016 presidential campaign on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server as secretary of state. The FBI investigated but ultimately did not recommend charges.

National Archives: Trump took classified items to Mar-a-Lago (msn.com)

Trump’s carelessness about national security matters have become almost legendary during his time as president and as a candidate for the highest office in the land. Recall, for instance, how he revealed some national secrets to Russians government officials visiting him in the Oval Office.

The former Moron in Chief, though, apparently has invited “Lock him up!” chants if what the National Archives alleges proves true. As for the DOJ probe, my gut tells me that the FBI has plenty of grist on which it can chew.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Nothing ‘legit’ about violent protest

As one American patriot who believes in civil disobedience, I feel the need to set the record straight on why the 1/6 riot and all those incidents of violence aboard commercial aircraft are so damn disturbing.

There is not a single, solitary aspect of either event that one can describe as “civil disobedience.” The Republican National Committee recently issued a statement calling the 1/6 insurrection an expression of “legitimate political discourse.” I have participated in many such actual events that featured “legitimate political discourse.” None of them bore a shred of resemblance to the violence that erupted on Capitol Hill that day.

And yet, that nonsense came from RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, who sought to tamp down the description of the event. She and other Republicans are uncomfortable with calling it an insurrection. However, to my eyes that is precisely what it was; the rioters sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. If that isn’t an insurrection, then the term has no meaning whatsoever.

Indeed, the Justice Department has indicted the ring leaders of the riot on a charge of “conspiracy to commit sedition,” which bears no significant difference to the insurrection term that others are throwing around.

The Justice Department has received a request from aviation regulators to allow a permanent ban on air passengers who attack flight crews or fellow passengers while their aircraft is in flight. DOJ should follow the recommendation and allow the permanent ban on those who are accused of such hideous mayhem at 30,000 feet above the Earth’s surface.

A group of eight GOP U.S. senators doesn’t want those miscreants banned. They contend the idiots are expressing legitimate concerns about mask mandates on commercial aircraft. Bullsh**! They are putting others in potentially mortal danger by engaging in fistfights with flight attendants or, in at least one case, by trying to open one of the fuselage doors as the aircraft is at cruising altitude.

Civil disobedience? My ass!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Ban ’em from airlines!

Count me as one American who believes the Federal Aviation Administration should push hard for federal legislation that would ban unruly passengers from all domestic commercial air travel.

The FAA has referred 80 cases to the FBI and has asked Congress for legislative remedies to deter future passengers from disrupting flights and putting all their fellow passengers in potential dire peril while on board commercial aircraft.

The 80 cases represent all incidents that have occurred in 2022, which just arrived about six weeks ago. The rate of these incidents is alarming in the extreme.

What has caused the surge in these cases? Hmm. Let’s think about this. Oh, mask mandates have been the cause for more than two-thirds of the incidents. Airlines order passengers to mask up; some passengers are resisting; fights break out on aircraft in mid-air. One flight attendant suffered severe facial injuries after being punched by a passenger.

Here, though, is where this story gets bizarre. Eight Republican U.S. senators have objected to any federal legislation. They have signed a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking him to forgo the criminal referral. They contend foolishly that any federal ban would infringe on Americans’ right to protest mask mandates. How absurd and stupid can these senators get?

I happen to believe in civil disobedience. However, there can be no way in this world you can consider a physical attack on another human being to be “civil.” These attacks, which have spiraled since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, put hundreds of innocent bystanders in potentially mortal danger. If someone, then, is accused and convicted of attacking a flight attendant or of trying to open an airplane door in mid-flight — which did occur in one incident — then by all means they should be banned from traveling via commercial airlines 
 for the rest of their life!

This form of mayhem has to stop. Thus, the FAA is correct to seek ways to deter future incidents from erupting at 30,000 feet.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, national news

Will we actually ‘lock him up’?

A gentleman I have known for more than two decades — a retired journalist who lives in South Australia — has mentioned a particular scenario he would like to see play out regarding the 45th president of the United States.

My friend wants to see Donald Trump arrested, dressed in an orange jump suit and tried for treason against the United States of America. Indeed, my far-away friend believes it’s still possible even as Trump wiggles and writhes in the face of growing pressure from federal and state authorities looking into his myriad business dealings.

Oh, and then we have the 1/6 riot, the insurrection that Trump incited that horrendous day in the final two weeks of the presidency he was about to vacate.

My friend and I exchange messages from time to time and he regales me with his view that Trump presents an existential threat to this great nation. He and I are on the same page as it regards the former Insurrectionist in Chief.

I am still clinging to the notion that an indictment might be coming — perhaps soon — from the Department of Justice. It might involve a charge of sedition against the individual who once swore to protect the Constitution. Sedition, of course, is the act of undermining the government, which Trump — to my mind, at least — did on 1/6 when he exhorted the rioters to “take back” the government.

I am going to wish the best for the investigation into Trump’s knowledge of the 1/6 riot. The “best,” in this instance, would be for congressional and DOJ investigators to cross enough t’s and dot enough i’s to bring a criminal indictment against a man I consider to be a rotten criminal.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot

Do your job, DOJ

(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

When the U.S. House select committee assigned to investigate the riot/insurrection of 1/6 gets near the end of its mission, it likely will face a key decision: Does it refer criminal charges against the former president of the United States to the Department of Justice?

Then we will have another key decision — perhaps — from DOJ: Will it indict the former POTUS on criminal charges related to whatever he did to incite the insurrection?

Let’s be clear-headed about something that Attorney General Merrick Garland has said about what might lie ahead. He said he would “follow the law wherever it leads.” Garland said he would not be pushed toward any action or away from it on the basis of politics. I take him at his word. He served on the federal bench before getting the call to lead the Justice Department and by all accounts he did his job interpreting the Constitution with distinction, fairness and with integrity. Thus, I have no reason to believe he wouldn’t make any DOJ-related decisions using the same benchmarks that guided his decisions as a judge.

Garland does not strike me as a man who shies away from making history. He surely would do so if a federal grand jury under his watch were to indict a former president of the U.S.A. on criminal charges. It was President Nixon who once suggested that presidents were “above the law,” that whatever decision they made while serving as president were “legal” only because it was the president who was making them.

Garland has let it be known clearly and with ambiguity that no one — not even a president — is above the law.

The timing of all this remains anyone’s guess. Donald Trump is trying to run out the clock. He seeks to delay it all until after the midterm election. If Republicans, as expected, take control of Congress, then succeed in delaying any action further, then they will have given life to two dubious assertions.

One is that Richard Nixon’s misguided declaration of presidential power is correct, and that Donald Trump will be able to slip away — once again — from those who are demanding he be held accountable for the insurrection that sought to derail our cherished democracy.

If the U.S. Justice Department is going to indict Donald Trump, my fervent hope is that it acts with immediate dispatch.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

AG Garland rises to occasion

As I look at and listen to Attorney General Merrick Garland I am filled with an odd sense of fulfillment … and I wonder if he feels something akin to it, too.

In early 2016, President Barack H. Obama nominated Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court to succeed the iconic conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died suddenly while vacationing in Texas. Garland had served with distinction on the D.C. Appeals Court, so Obama thought he’d be a good fit for the highest court in the land.

The Republican majority leader in the Senate said “not so fast.” He blocked Garland’s appointment by declaring we were “too close” to a presidential election. Mitch McConnell wanted to wait until the 2016 election concluded. He was hoping the GOP nominee would win. His dream came true with the election of Donald J. Trump, who then selected the first of three justices to the high court.

Garland by then had gone back to work on the D.C. bench. Then came another nomination from another president, Joe Biden, who wanted Garland to become attorney general. The Senate, now in Democratic hands, approved his nomination and Garland is now standing his post at DOJ.

He is doing, in my view, the kind of stellar job of enforcing the law one would expect of him, given his credentials as a fair-minded jurist.

Yes, I saw the GOP stiffing of his nomination to the SCOTUS as a tragic event. McConnell demonstrated the kind of arrogance I frankly didn’t think was possible.

What’s more, I shudder to think what could happen after the 2022 midterm election and the GOP resumes control of the Senate. What might occur if another vacancy occurs on the SCOTUS, say, in early 2023. Would the Senate stiff the current president as it did the earlier one, citing the same specious reasoning for disallowing a nomination to go forward as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution?

I fear that would be the case.

Meanwhile, AG Merrick Garland is doing his job at Justice with supreme skill. It is just as many of us knew he would do.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

DOJ weighs in with indictment of Bannon

If we were waiting for U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to announce his intention on how he would handle a contempt of Congress citation for a key adviser to Donald J. Trump, well … we need not keep waiting.

A federal grand jury answered it for us when it indicted Steve Bannon on a charge of contempt of Congress.

That means without question that the DOJ takes Congress’s subpoena of Trump administration advisers and aides seriously enough to indict them on federal felony charges.

We have just witnessed a serious warning shot to others who will follow Bannon’s lead in refusing to appear before a House select committee that is looking into the 1/6 events and the riot incited by Trump.

Garland said the Justice Department remains committed to following the law, which he said has occurred with the grand jury indictment of Steve Bannon.

Will the former POTUS adviser plead guilty to avoid a trial? Or will he go all the way? I don’t know how he intends to defend himself. He cannot possibly claim to operate under presidential executive privilege authority; courts have ruled already that Trump no longer possesses that authority. President Biden won’t grant it, either.

We now will get to watch whether the Department of Justice has the muscle to go the distance with this matter. Let’s hope it flexes its muscle accordingly.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

AG Garland, you need to look into POTUS 45’s plot

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Merrick Garland has long been considered a fair-minded, reasonable, rational man who isn’t an overly partisan public official.

Thus, the U.S. attorney general can be counted on to do the right thing even in the face of intense political pressure.

I cannot possibly know this to be true, but I am willing to bet that AG Garland is getting a snootful of pressure to investigate the shenanigans orchestrated by the former president of the United States. They deal with POTUS 45’s relentless efforts to overturn what has been called “the most secure election in U.S. history.”

Is there an effort here to undermine the government? To subvert the democratic process? To actually mount what has been called a coup by the former POTUS to snatch the presidency back from the guy who defeated him in the 2020 election?

If there was a coup in the works, my understanding of the word “treason” tells me that POTUS 45 is guilty as the dickens of seeking to plot against the government he took an oath to defend and protect.

I don’t know what Merrick Garland will do. Nor do I know even if he is talking behind closed doors at the Justice Department about whether he should investigate the former POTUS. My hunch is that he has had that conversation with his top deputies.

Presidents are supposed to temporary occupants of the office they take. That is the case with President Biden’s immediate predecessor. His insistence on fomenting the Big Lie about phony vote fraud allegations tells me he does not believe that to be the case.

Merrick Garland has some studying — and perhaps some serious soul-searching — ahead of him.

business news

Let’s see ex-POTUS’s tax returns

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Well now, the Department of Justice has spoken, telling the Treasury Department that it must release the long-sought tax returns of the former Cheater in Chief to Congress.

Is that the end of it? Does that mean the former POTUS is going to comply?

Oh-h-h no. Not even close. He’ll find a way to fight it.

The DOJ memo issued today is a reversal of what it declared when POTUS 45 was in office. There’s a new sheriff in town, so now the posture is different.

The memo said the following, according The Hill: In a memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), acting Assistant Attorney General Dawn Johnsen said the Treasury Department was required to defer to the congressional committee.

“The statute at issue here is unambiguous: ‘Upon written request’ of the chairman of one of the three congressional tax committees, the Secretary ‘shall furnish’ the requested tax information to the Committee,” Johnsen wrote in the 39-page memo.

Unambiguous? That means it’s crystal clear.

Justice Department says Trump’s tax returns should be released | TheHill

Many of us have argued all along that presidential political custom should prevail in this matter. Candidates going back to 1976 have revealed to the public their net worth and opened their books to public scrutiny. That held true until POTUS 45 entered the presidential field in 2016. He said he would release them, then he backed out, then he agreed again, then he balked once more.

He said tax gurus are auditing his returns. However, he’s never provided a shred of proof that the Internal Revenue Service in fact is auditing his returns; the IRS, meanwhile, has said that an audit does not preclude a politician from releasing them to the public.

The ex-Liar in Chief insists there is nothing untoward in his returns. Well, alrighty then. If that’s the case, then there should be nothing to hide. Right?

At issue now is whether Congress can review the returns in private and decide whether to make them public.

Speaking only for myself, I want to see it all. We deserve — at the very least — to know whether the ex-Con Man in Chief is as rich as he has bragged of being.