Tag Archives: DOJ

national news, political news

POTUS disgraces himself — yet again! –with CPAC tirade

Mr. President, you keep outdoing yourself.

You stand before crowds of fervent supporters and fly off the rails. There you were again today in front of the Conservative Political Action Conference firing off an expletive-laden tirade against your foes.

You’re not sounding very “presidential,” Mr. President — and your performance today makes me wonder if I should even refer to you with that courtesy title. You haven’t earned it.

But I’ll do so out of respect for the office, even though I still cannot connect the words “President” and “Trump” consecutively.

How dare you mock the accent of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions! How dare you also refer to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff as “sh***y” Schiff.”

Get a grip, Mr. President

Mr. President, you don’t deserve the title you hold. I get that you were elected to it as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution. I so want to call you “my president.” Displays such as the one you put on today make it increasingly more difficult for me to bestow the respect to which your high office should entitle you.

You, sir, are a disgrace.

national news

How does deputy AG define ‘right thing’?

Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has developed a finely tuned flair for cryptic comments.

Such as what he said about his new boss, Attorney General William Barr.

Rosenstein said Barr will “do the right thing” regarding the possible release of the Robert Mueller report, which the special counsel looking into the alleged “collusion” with Russian government operatives is going to send soon to the AG.

Hmm. The “right thing,” yes? How does the deputy DOJ official — the man who appointed Mueller to the job of special counsel — define the “right thing”? I hope it means that Barr will release as much of the report to the public as he can.

I believe strongly the Muller report needs to be placed before the public for our perusal and determination. He has spent a lot of taxpayers’ money examining whether the Donald Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russians who attacked our electoral system in 2016.

Rosenstein is leaving the Justice Department next month. Barr has just taken over a department wracked by controversy and chaos. The president has exacerbated it by his hectoring of former AG Jeff Sessions, who did the right thing by recusing himself from the Russia probe. Rosenstein then selected Mueller to lead the probe into alleged collusion. Meanwhile, the president — who proclaims his total innocence of any collusion — has called the investigation a witch hunt.

What is the “right thing” for Barr to do? Let the public see what is in it, what it lays out, what Mueller has learned.

national news

By all means, do what it takes, Chairman Schiff

U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has laid it on the line for Attorney General William Barr.

Release the findings put together by special counsel Robert Mueller . . . or else.

The “or else” involves forcing Mueller to testify before the House panel — presumably in public — about what he learned after investigating whether Donald Trump’s campaign for president in 2016 colluded with Russians who interfered in our election.

Schiff said he will subpoena Mueller, make him take an oath and then grill him in search of answers.

Make it public.

Of course, Barr has sent no obvious signal that he intends to keep the Mueller report secret when the special counsel presents it to him, presumably in short order. However, Schiff is taking no chances.

Nor should he. I’ve said all along that the Mueller report needs to be made public. He needs to release all that he can without revealing national secrets to the public that has paid good money — several million dollars, in fact — for him to look for the truth behind the alleged “collusion” with Russian operatives.

It’ s our money that paid for this probe. Thus, the results of the investigation are ours as well.

I am totally on board with Chairman Schiff tossing the “or else” threat to AG Barr.

Make the Mueller report public, Mr. Attorney General.

Or else.

FBI, national news

Mueller report delayed? Fine, I can wait

Robert Mueller was supposed to have handed his final report on The Russia Thing to Attorney General William Barr sometime next week.

Now it appears the special counsel won’t be doing so just yet.

Am I worried? Not in the least. I trust the former FBI director to do right by whatever it is he was asked to do when he took the job as the lead investigator into alleged collusion between the Donald Trump presidential campaign and Russian government operatives.

Mueller has been at this for some time. More than a year in fact. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein selected him to lead the probe after then AG Jeff Sessions recused himself from anything to do with the Russia matter.

You’ll recall the bipartisan praise that accompanied Mueller’s appointment. Democrats hailed it. So did Republicans. They all thought Rosenstein made an inspired choice. He couldn’t find a more qualified, more honorable, more integrity-filled individual that Robert Mueller to get to the bottom of The Russia Thing.

The president, sadly, has changed his tune. He calls the Mueller probe a witch hunt. He fired Sessions as AG. He selected a toadie as acting AG. He then found a solid veteran of the Justice Department, Barr, to lead the agency.

You can count me as one who wants the Mueller investigation to reach its conclusion. I had hoped he would release his findings to Barr sooner rather than later.

However, I am not dismayed. I still trust that Mueller is going to wrap it up, hand it over and I hope insist to the attorney general that the findings are made public.

Americans have a lot invested in this probe. Its findings are ours to peruse, to digest and to make judgments on what they reveal.

legal news, national news, political news

Mueller probe coming to an end? Let the public see its results

U.S. Attorney General William Barr reportedly is set to announce the end of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged “collusion” between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian operatives who attacked our 2016 electoral system.

He might do so next week, according to CNN.

Well now. I hope the reports from CNN are correct. I want this probe to end. I am weary of it. And I haven’t lifted a finger to aid in it, although I’ve lifted plenty of fingers commenting on it.

Transparency matters a lot

The future of Donald Trump’s tenure as president hangs in the balance. If Robert Mueller has come up empty, we’ve got Trump for at least until January 2021. If, however, he has something else — such as the goods on the president — then all bets are off.

Barr reportedly has said he intends to be a transparent as the law allows. He supposedly is getting set to prepare a final report for Congress.

Here’s my fondest wish: Let the public see as much as possible. I understand the need to protect national security secrets. That is all we should protect.

I want to reiterate that this is a publicly funded exercise. Mueller has spent a lot of public money poring through mountains of evidence into Trump’s conduct as a candidate for president and as president of the United States. That’s our money. Yours and mine.

Thus, the contents of this report belong to us.

I am prepared fully to accept whatever Mueller concludes. Yes, even if it exonerates the president of any wrongdoing. I trust Mueller — a former FBI director, a former Marine, a Vietnam War combat veteran — to do a thorough job.

However, I do not want the results hidden in a vault somewhere. It’s ours to review and to determine what — if anything — we need to do about the president of the United States.

legal news

AG Barr now must make good on pledge

U.S. Attorney General William Barr has the potential to emerge as one of the few grownups to serve in the presidential administration of Donald J. Trump.

The Senate confirmed him this week with a 54-45 vote, which I thought was much closer and more partisan than I expected. However, he’s now the head guy at the Justice Department.

AG Barr’s task now is to make good on the pledges he made to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing.

Barr said he wouldn’t be bullied by the president of the United States; he said special counsel Robert Mueller will be allowed to finish his exhaustive probe into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian election attacks; he has expressed faith in Mueller’s integrity and professionalism.

I have faith that Barr will make good on his pledge. This isn’t his first DOJ rodeo. Barr served as attorney general from 1991 to 1992 during the George H.W. Bush administration. He is a top-notch lawyer. Yes, he’s a partisan, but we should expect that from any AG regardless of his or her party affiliation.

So, Mr. Attorney General, I implore you to be faithful to your sworn statements in front of the entire nation, if not the world.

national news

‘Checks and balances’ principle gets new life

I do not believe it is an overstatement to presume that those of us who watched acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker’s skewering on Capitol Hill has provides us with a harbinger of what Donald Trump can expect for the next two years.

Whitaker spent most of the day today in front of the House Judiciary Committee, which was conducting an “oversight hearing” on the Department of Justice. He got pounded. He stonewalled the committee in return. It was an angry day of recrimination.

Whitaker is leaving the Justice Department soon. William Barr will be confirmed soon as the next attorney general. Whitaker was hardly an inspired choice to fill in for Jeff Sessions, who Trump fired a few weeks ago because the former AG recused himself from anything to do with “The Russia Thing.”

Now that Democrats control the House of Representatives, their caucus has assumed committee chairmanships. I believe that Democrats, who became fed up with Republican resistance to asking difficult questions of the Trump administration, are seeking to release some of that pent-up anger. We saw it on full display today as Whitaker appeared before the Judiciary Committee.

I also want to propose that this is not a bad thing. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress a measure of power that is equal to the presidency; throw in the federal courts and you have three equally powerful government branches.

Democrats challenged Whitaker; Republicans on the Judiciary panel challenged Democrats, who pushed back hard on the “points of order” that their GOP “friends” were asserting.

It wasn’t a pretty thing to watch today as Whitaker and Judiciary panel Democrats clashed openly. We might as well get used to it, though, ladies and gentlemen. Indeed, once the special counsel finishes his probe of alleged collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russian government, there likely is going to be even more rhetorical grenades being tossed.

It won’t be pretty. Then again, representative democracy is a damn ugly form of government. However, as the great Winston Churchill noted, it’s far better than any other governmental system devised.

legal news

Whitaker is going out with a bang

I am wondering if this thought has occurred to those critics of the nation’s acting attorney general’s performance in front of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

Matthew Whitaker is a lame-duck acting AG. The president has nominated William Barr as the next permanent attorney general.

What, then, does Whitaker have to lose by stonewalling the questions from Judiciary Committee Democrats who pressed him on whether he spoke with Donald Trump about the Russia probe?

Whitaker is going to leave DOJ soon once Barr gets confirmed, which I expect the Senate to do in short order. I am wondering now if he decided to stick it in the Judiciary panel’s ear by refusing to answer simple, declarative questions.

I also am wondering if Donald Trump suggested — or perhaps ordered — Whitaker to dummy up.

legal news, national news

Extra glad Whitaker is on his way out as AG

After watching a good bit of acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, I came away with this major conclusion: I am doubly glad he is on his way out as head of the Department of Justice.

Committee members asked him — and pressed him — to answer a simple question: Do you believe special counsel Robert Mueller is engaged in a “witch hunt” of Donald Trump?

FBI Director Christopher Wray has said “no.” So has the AG-designate, William Barr. Both of those men stand firmly behind Mueller’s integrity and professionalism.

Whitaker’s answer? He didn’t want to comment on “an ongoing investigation.” He said it was “inappropriate.”

Hah! It wasn’t “inappropriate” for Wray to comment. Or for Barr. Whitaker, though, is hiding behind some kind of phony, bogus and dubious pretext that he cannot comment on an ongoing probe into whether Donald Trump’s campaign “colluded” with Russian operatives who attacked our electoral system in the 2016 presidential election.

None of the committee members asked him to comment on specifics of the probe. No one wanted him to give away any secrets. They asked a simple, declarative question that required a simple, declarative “yes” or “no” answer.

I happen to believe William Barr is a fine choice as attorney general. I trust him to be professional who will be beholden to the Constitution and not the president of the United States. This ain’t his first DOJ rodeo, given that he served as AG during Bush 41’s administration.

As for Matthew Whitaker, please go far away — as soon as possible.

national news

Mueller probe causing some heartburn

Robert S. Mueller III is giving me a case of heartburn.

The length of this probe is giving me the willies about its future.

Mueller’s probe into The Russia Thing needs to conclude. I hope it happens soon. My fear is that the longer it goes the greater the chance that Donald J. Trump will do something so profoundly stupid that he will hurl the nation into the mother of constitutional crises.

What would the president do? He might order the Department of Justice to fire Mueller. Sure, he keeps pledging — sort of — to let Mueller finish his job. However, I trust the president only as far as I can throw a 239-pound individual.

My heartburn worsens when I consider that I also want Mueller to be as thorough as humanly possible before he wraps it up. He has obtained 37 indictments and guilty pleas already. Some of those indictments include the president’s closest campaign aides and key White House staffers. The latest indictment of Trump confidant Roger Stone is providing an sideshow that would make P.T. Barnum proud.

Yes, I want Mueller to pick through the evidence he has collected already into alleged “collusion” with Russians who attacked our electoral system. I want him to pore over every single bit of it.

Time, though, is not Mueller’s ally. A new attorney general, William Barr, is likely to be approved by the U.S. Senate. I hope that confirmation comes soon so that Barr — a former AG during the Bush 41 administration — can take command; he then can push the Trump sycophant, acting AG Matthew Whitaker, out of the way.

But on another level, I want this probe to end so we can move on to the next thing, which is to digest its findings, or at least those findings that Mueller deigns to release to the public. My strongest hope is that Mueller releases virtually all of it, keeping only that information that contains national security information away from public view.

I want it concluded. But not in a hurry-up fashion. I also want the president to keep his hands off of Mueller’s work and I also want Mueller to finish every little detail of this exhaustive work.

Pass the Pepto . . .