Tag Archives: DOJ

national news

Former AG faces intriguing political fight

Take away the upcoming presidential contest between Donald Trump and Joseph Biden and you are left with a boatload of intriguing down-ballot contests all across the nation.

The most interesting, intriguing, maddening and bizarre? It’s likely occurring in Alabama.

Two Republicans are running in a July 14 primary runoff to see who faces Democratic U.S. Sen. Doug Jones in the fall. One of the GOP candidates is former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville; the other is a former U.S. senator and attorney general, Jeff Sessions.

Donald Trump has endorsed Tuberville. He detests Sessions, the guy he picked for AG, who he then fired because — as Sessions has noted — the AG “followed the law.”

Sessions finally has begun firing back at Trump’s idiocy, declaring that Alabamans will determine who should represent them, not a president’s “personal feelings” about one of the candidates.

This is weird, man.

Sessions wants his former Senate seat back. He is running as a supporter of Trump’s agenda. Trump’s campaign has declared it doesn’t want Sessions to stand with Trump. POTUS stands with Tuberville, declaring that Sessions “let our country down.” Oh, how did he do that?

By recusing himself from the FBI investigation into whether the Trump campaign collude with Russian operatives who attacked our electoral system in 2016. How could Sessions have led a Justice Department probe into a campaign in which he was an active participant? He couldn’t! Which is why he recused himself and allowed the appointment of Robert Mueller III as the special counsel.

That recusal and Mueller’s appointment enraged Trump. As did the investigation that Mueller conducted. He ended it by saying he didn’t have enough evidence to prosecute Trump, but stated pointedly that his findings did not “exonerate” Trump from wrongdoing.

All of this seems to put Sessions in a tough spot as he campaigns in a state full of voters who still seems to adore the carnival barker/con man/liar/philanderer in chief.

Go figure.

legal news

Barr joins the cabal of disagrace

I had harbored some hope that William Barr would bring some integrity to the Donald Trump administration when he accepted the president’s nomination to lead the Department of Justice.

After all, he had served as attorney general in the early 1990s near the end of President George H.W. Bush’s term in office. He served then with honor and dignity.

I was terribly and tragically wrong. The attorney general’s latest recommendation that former national security adviser Michael Flynn avoid prosecution for lying to the FBI and to Vice President Mike Pence about the Russia attack on our electoral system in 2016.

Flynn has pleaded guilty twice to committing perjury. Now we hear Barr suggest that his lying wasn’t “material” to the investigation into whether Russia interfered in our election.

Here, though, comes a stunner: Nearly 2,000 former DOJ staffers have demanded Barr’s resignation. It reminds me of something a former editor of mine used to say: If someone calls you an ass, blow it off; if others call you an ass, then you need to shop for a saddle.

So now the AG has a couple thousand former DOJ lawyers and others calling him an ass.

As NBC News reports: The letter urges the judge who is in charge of the Flynn case, Emmet Sullivan, to “take a long, hard look at the government’s explanation and the evidence.” Barr is using the Justice Department to further President Donald Trump’s personal and political interests, it says, and “has undermined any claim to the deference that courts usually apply to the department’s decisions about whether or not to prosecute a case.”

The good news is that the judge to whom Flynn entered the guilty pleas must sign off on Barr’s request. Judge Sullivan is known to be an independent thinker, which of course gets to the beauty of the federal judicial system; these judges are appointed for life and, thus, are ostensibly removed from partisan considerations.

As for Barr, the letter signed by those thousands of DOJ staffers asks Congress to censure the AG. Just think, too, that many of those who signed the letter worked in Justice Departments under Democratic and Republican administrations.

Lastly, take a good look at the picture attached to this blog post. Barr is standing in front of a bust of the man after whom the Justice Department building is named: Robert F. Kennedy, the AG from 1961 to 1964. I can say with absolute certainty that RFK would be aghast and appalled at where William Barr has taken the Department of Justice.

legal news

RINO in chief is angering real Republicans … finally?

Donald John Trump is the quintessential Republican In Name Only.

Of that there ought to be little discussion. He is the RINO in chief of the party under whose banner he ran for president in 2016.

Now some of the actual Republicans within the GOP are urging the current president to leave his mitts off of William Barr’s Department of Justice apparatus.

Is the RINO in chief going to listen? Will he cease denigrating the Justice Department professional prosecutors? Will he let the AG do his job, which is to serve as the nation’s top law enforcement official — contrary to what Trump has said, declaring himself to be the nation’s top cop. No. He won’t do any of it. Not ever.

One of those actual Republicans, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, said this: “The president does have a tendency to lash out and I think in this case he would be well advised to try to temper that.”

No kidding, senator? Cornyn has just “advised” him to do what he suggests.

As for Barr, he has disappointed me terribly. I had high hope that he’d take his post as AG and restore its integrity, which had been sullied by the incessant berating of former AG Jeff Sessions by the RINO in chief. After all, he had served as attorney general near the end of President Bush 41’s term in office. He brought experience running the DOJ the right way.

It hasn’t happened. The RINO in chief is worsening the Barr era at Justice by tweeting constantly about pending criminal cases. Barr reportedly is threatening to quit; other media reports say he isn’t going anywhere.

Meanwhile, the DOJ career prosecutors and their legal staffs are being whipsawed and buggy-whipped by the turmoil.

I am wondering at this moment: How in the world does the attorney general actually stomach all this tempest if he is serious about the expression of angst over Trump’s Twitter tirades?

national news

Just go ahead and quit, Mr. AG

The word is out via the Washington Post that Attorney General William Barr is so fed up with Donald Trump that he is considering taking a hike from his post.

He is tired of POTUS’s tweets about current cases and is tired of Trump’s attempts to undermine the legal pros who work for Barr at the Department of Justice. Or so it is being reported.

The quit-now chorus is growing in Washington, for those reasons and for others relating to the work he has done as attorney general, namely his seeming loyalty first to the president and his apparent rejection of the oath he took to defend and protect the Constitution.

I am generally in the latter camp. I am greatly disappointed in the job Barr has done. He has acted far more like Donald Trump’s personal lawyer than a man who took a sacred oath to protect the nation’s governing document.

However, if he wants to quit and cite the president’s interference, well, that’s fine with me, too.

William Barr would be entitled to use whatever reason he chooses to use. Indeed, the apparent burgeoning tension between the president and the AG would seem to be reason enough for Barr to call it quits on the guy Trump reportedly wanted to be his “Roy Cohn.”

And, just who was Cohn? He was the infamous attorney who stood up for the equally infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy who launched the anti-commie tirade in the early 1950s. Cohn ended up getting disgraced and disbarred over the manner in which he conducted himself while McCarthy sought to ferret out communist infiltrators in our federal government.

In any event, William Barr likely needs to go. Count me as one American who’s all-in on the attorney general hitting the road.

legal news, national news

Trump is correct: It is ‘legal’ for him to interfere with DOJ … but it’s not right!

Here’s a flash for you: Donald John Trump happens to be correct in saying that his meddling in U.S. Department of Justice criminal matters is “legal.”

It doesn’t make it right. However, what Trump is doing with his meddlesome tweets about DOJ cases and his undermining of the attorney general’s authority on certain matters doesn’t break any laws.

So, this president now freed of the threat of impeachment — at least for now — has embarked on a new campaign of heightened abuses of the office he still occupies.

Trump fired off a Twitter message that disparaged a sentence recommendation for his old pal Roger Stone, whom a jury convicted of multiple felonies. Attorney General William Barr then responded by reducing the recommendations. The line prosecutors who authored the initial request quit in protest.

Barr then told ABC News that Trump should stop tweeting about these matters, saying it makes it “impossible” for him to do his job.

Trump has kept tweeting messages. Barr is thought to be angry about it. Trump then said what he’s doing is “legal.” Yes. It is legal.

It is wrong, nonetheless. It is wrong for Trump to throw his weight around in this blatant manner. It is wrong to interfere with the attorney general’s duties. It is wrong to meddle in the nuts and bolts of sentencing, which is handled in this case by a federal judge … who also has drawn brickbats hurled at her by the president. Whatever happened to the “independent” federal judiciary? Trump is undermining that independence, too!

Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing in real time a president who is seeking to reconfigure the relationship between his office and the rule of law.

I am frightened at what we are seeing.

national news

Hey, Mr. AG: POTUS isn’t going to stop tweeting; so just resign

U.S. Attorney General William Barr has laid down an important marker.

He said in an ABC News interview that Donald John Trump’s tweets make it “impossible for me to do my job.” He added that “I think it’s time to stop tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases.”

Yep, the AG said that. He told ABC correspondent Pierre Thomas that very thing.

Trump has been tweeting about Justice Department recommendations that his pal Roger Stone should get a seven- to nine-year prison term for lying to Congress and for witness intimidation.

He also has been chiding the federal judge presiding over the case. The president has been interfering directly in the criminal justice process.

So, Barr says the president’s interference makes it “impossible” for him to continue as attorney general?

Here’s a thought, Mr. AG: You should grant yourself and the rest of us a profound public service … by resigning. 

national news

What? AG is showing spunk, actual integrity?

What in the name of judicial integrity has gotten into U.S. Attorney General William Barr?

The AG consented to an interview with ABC News and criticized Donald John Trump for commenting on pending judicial cases, for criticizing federal judges, for using his Twitter account to set policy.

When pressed by ABC News correspondent Pierre Thomas about how the president will react to being criticized by a member of the Cabinet, Barr said he will resist being “bullied” by anyone, and that includes the president of the United States.

Trump has been on a Twitter tirade of late, criticizing former White House chief of staff John Kelly over the ex-chief’s criticism of Trump over his handling of firing Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and other matters relating to the Ukraine matter that led to the House impeachment of Trump.

Now comes the attorney general, who’s been a disappointment to many of us who had hoped he would be the grownup among Trump sycophants. He has proved to be little more than a Trump toadie … at least until right about now!

Barr is saying what he should have been saying all along, that Trump is behaving badly and is putting the country in dire jeopardy with his irresponsible assertions via Twitter about pending legal matters. The president’s interference in the Roger Stone sentencing recommendation from DOJ prosecutors is just the latest example.

Stone faces a prison sentence after a jury convicted him of lying under oath and intimidating witnesses related to the Russia election attack probe. DOJ attorneys recommended seven to nine years in the slammer. Trump called the recommendation a “miscarriage of justice”; Barr responded by reducing the recommendation.

My sense, though, after hearing his ABC interview, is that he doesn’t like Trump meddling in these matters.

legal news

Read my lips, Mr. POTUS; here is what your pal Roger Stone did

What are you talking about, Mr. President?

You went off on that White House rant about Roger Stone being humiliated, ruined, framed by “corrupt” Justice Department prosecutors. I’ll get right to the point, Mr. President.

You, sir, are full of sh**.

Your railing against the sentencing recommendation of seven to nine years is based on clear-cut charges that the jury convicted Stone of committing. Yet you said “no one knows” what the charges are. Really?

The jury convicted your pal of lying to Congress — under oath; of witness tampering; of witness intimidation. It’s on the record, Mr. President. If you took the time to read anything, you would know it.

Aw, but what the heck. That wouldn’t stop you, as near as I can tell, from blathering idiocy, which is what you did in the presence of the Ecuadoran president.

Stone is a convicted felon. He deserves to spend time in prison. The sentencing recommendation was appropriate. And yet you interfered with sentencing policies. It looks to me as if you cowed the attorney general into reducing the sentencing recommendation.

As for the prosecutors who quit in protest, they showed considerable courage and commitment to the rule of law.

Unlike you and so many of your Republican allies in Congress.

Shameful.

crime news

Prosecutors exhibit courage in quitting this probe

Four prosecutors who recommended a seven- to nine-year prison term for a convicted felon who’s also a friend of Donald John Trump have quit.

Why? Because the attorney general of the United States, William Barr, has said he wants to reduce their recommendation to send Trump pal Roger Stone to the slammer for as long as nine years.

Does this seem like political meddling in the criminal justice process? It does to me.

And who, pre-tell, ordered this recommendation? It might have come from, oh let’s see, the White House.

Stone is awaiting sentencing for lying under oath and for hindering the investigation into the Russian collusion matter that ended up on special counsel Robert Mueller III’s desk.

Trump called the career prosecutors’ sentence recommendation a “miscarriage of justice.” My question now is whether Barr acted on the president’s Twitter rant. If so, then it looks for all the world to me as though we have yet another case of presidential meddling where it does not belong.

The prosecutors who quit have shown considerable backbone and grit in walking away from their responsibilities in this matter. They remind me of when AG Elliot Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than follow President Nixon’s order in 1973 to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox as the Watergate scandal began to spin out of control.

These four prosecutors today can stand tall for the principle they have endorsed.

national news

What has happened to ‘America’s Mayor’?

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Of all the amazing characters who have been caught up in the sausage grinder that passes for a network of friends and associates of Donald John Trump, the transformation of one of them interests me greatly.

What has become of the man known as America’s Mayor?

Rudolph Giuliani has sidled up next to Trump as his personal lawyer and in the process has become the butt of jokes from damn near every late-night comedian in the country; he has morphed into a cartoon character depicting an out-of-control, unhinged fanatic.

Oh, my. It’s astonishing.

I remember how this man emerged as a champion of New York City in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy. He stood strong and resolute. He comforted his constituents who were shocked and stunned by the horror of that event. Time magazine named him its Person of the Year for 2001, a richly earned designation for the mayor.

However, over time he seemed to become full of himself. He ran unsuccessfully for president. He’s been divorced a couple of times.

Then along came Donald Trump and there was Rudy, backing the Republican candidate for president.

He reportedly argued on his own behalf for an appointment as attorney general.

Then he joined himself at the hip to Trump when the president got into trouble over the Ukraine matter.

All the while, he has made a spectacle of himself, spouting buffoonery whenever possible. He talks blithely about investigations into Trump foes’ matters. His TV behavior becomes grist for jokes.

I don’t get it. None of it makes sense.

All I am left to do is shake my head.