Tag Archives: DOJ

national news

Bannon offers spot-on comment on Sessions’s recusal

As a general rule I am not inclined to offer praise for a former Donald Trump policy adviser who has been portrayed as the Grim Reaper on “Saturday Night Live.”

However, Stephen Bannon has offered a spot-on analysis of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from anything relating to the Russia meddling matter in the 2016 presidential election.

Bannon said Sessions made precisely the correct call in backing out. He added that former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani also would have made the same decision had they been put in that position.

Why? They all had direct involvement in the president’s campaign and, thus, could not possibly be trusted to conduct a thorough, fair and unbiased investigation into Russian meddling in the campaign. The question of the moment is whether the president obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey and whether his campaign “colluded” with Russian operatives who had dug up dirt on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Yet, Trump has been trashing Sessions for making that decision. He has said repeatedly he regrets selecting him as attorney general. Trump has disparaged the leadership at the Justice Department and the FBI.

The president doesn’t understand the complexities of conflict of interest. Sessions got it when he backed out of the Russia matter. Accordingly, Bannon — someone who hasn’t generally served the nation well — happens to be totally correct in his assessment that Trump is wrong to condemn the AG for acting properly.

I do have to chuckle when Bannon keeps insisting that he still admires and respects the president, saying he cherishes his relationship with him. He offers that caveat while reminding him publicly that he doesn’t understand why he is so damn wrong when he ridicules the attorney general.

legal news, national news, political news

AG might seek a new job

If I were U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions — and I am so glad I am not — I would be looking for a new job.

As in right now. Immediately if not sooner. But I am not altogether certain a new attorney general would serve the public interest as it regards an ongoing investigation into the president’s 2016 campaign.

The president of the United States, Donald John Trump, has tweeted once again that he regrets picking the former Republican senator from Alabama to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

Why is that? Oh, it’s just Sessions decided to do the right thing by recusing himself from any Justice Department investigation into the Russia matter and the Russians’ meddling in our 2016 presidential election.

I am no fan of the AG, but on this matter he made precisely the correct decision. He had served on Trump’s political team; he was central to the president-elect’s transition to the presidency. Had he remained involved in the Russia matter, he would have been in charge of investigating himself. How does the attorney general do such a thing without compromising  a sensitive and complex investigation? He cannot. That’s why he bailed on the Russia probe and turned it over to his deputy AG, Rod Rosenstein.

Donald Trump, though, keeps yapping that he should have picked someone else to lead the DOJ, had he known Sessions was going to recuse himself.

Sessions might be inclined to want out. But there’s this thing involving the integrity of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Would a new AG be as faithful to the appearance of conflict of interest that Sessions was when he recused himself?

Hey, maybe Jeff Sessions ought to wait for Trump to fire him.

Then he can watch along with the rest of us as the crap hits the fan.

national news

Where’s the outrage from the right?

Let’s flash back for just a moment.

In 2016, former President Bill Clinton encountered Attorney General Loretta Lynch on an airport tarmac. Clinton boarded Lynch’s airplane and supposedly talked about this and that, grandkids and assorted family matters. Clinton said they didn’t discuss anything pertaining to the e-mail matter; Lynch confirmed Clinton’s account of the encounter.

The Justice Department at the time was investigating the ex-president’s wife and her use of a personal e-mail server while she was secretary of state. Oh, yes! Hillary Rodham Clinton also was running for president.

The right wing became unglued. Clinton sought to influence an on-going investigation, Republican operatives howled.

Should the ex-president have boarded the AG’s plane? No. The optics of it looked bad and President Clinton should have known better.

But then …

Just this week, a Republican politician, Donald J. Trump, “demanded” that DOJ investigate and investigation into Russian meddling in our 2016 election. He has leveled an accusation that the FBI spied on his campaign for “political purposes.”

So, the question is this: Where is the outrage over a sitting president interfering in an active Department of Justice investigation?

Trump’s demand seeks to undermine the DOJ, the FBI and the probe being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian meddling in our electoral process.

No outrage? No calls for yet another probe?

Weird.

legal news

Trump makes an audacious ‘demand’

Presidents of the United States have plenty of power. The man who holds the office at the moment, Donald Trump, has wielded it yet again.

He “demanded” that the Department of Justice launch an investigation into whether the FBI planted a snitch inside the 2016 presidential campaign for “political purposes.”

What has gotten tongues wagging is that presidents don’t normally make such demands of DOJ officials who are in the midst of ongoing investigations. They might request it. They don’t demand anything.

I don’t think we should be all that surprised that the president has tossed yet another office tradition into the crapper. He told us he would be an unconventional president. Yep, he’s fulfilled that campaign “promise” … in spades.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing the Russia investigation being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller, responded the right way. He has assigned the inspector general to conduct the probe into whether the FBI did what Trump has alleged.

Again, to no one’s surprise, Trump has suggested that someone within the Obama administration told the FBI to infiltrate the GOP candidate’s presidential campaign.

This “demand” matter, though, continues to cause angst among those who worry about the integrity and the independence of the DOJ and the FBI from presidential politics.

The investigation that Trump has ordered will seek to ascertain the motive behind any directive that was issued by the FBI. Indeed, the law enforcement agency is empowered to solicit information from confidential sources. When the FBI gets word, therefore, of Russian interference in our presidential election, isn’t it proper for the agency to get to the bottom of it all?

The president has ordered an investigation into an investigation.

That isn’t normal by any stretch. Donald Trump has exercised the power he possesses legally. What’s legal, though, isn’t always right.

national news

Why the lengthy delay on leveling this charge?

Maybe it’s just me, but a question has popped into my noggin that I want to ask out loud.

If Donald J. Trump suspected in real time that the Barack Obama administration was spying on his 2016 presidential campaign, why didn’t he blow the whistle while he was campaigning for the presidency?

He didn’t. He waited until just the other day to allege that the FBI launched a surveillance on his campaign for “political purposes.”

Do I believe what the president has alleged? Umm. No. I don’t.

He has done this before. He has leveled accusations with zero evidence to back up what he has alleged.

He has said: President Obama ordered wiretaps on the Trump offices in New York; millions of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016; he had proof that Barack Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii, as he has said.

Fake news, anyone? Anyone?

Trump had better be able to produce the goods on this surveillance accusation. If not, well, then we have yet another serious problem pertaining to the president’s credibility that, to my estimation, is mortally wounded as it is.

national news

DOJ starts journey down a slippery slope

Donald J. Trump has leveled an extraordinarily serious allegation against the FBI: that the law enforcement agency spied on his presidential campaign for “political purposes.”

An investigation into that charge has commenced. The Department of Justice’s inspector general is taking the lead.

I am heartened to some degree that the IG is conducting this probe. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from anything related to the Russia matter, given his own bias as a campaign operative and the role he played in helping formulate the future president’s foreign policy.

The decision to bring in the IG fell to Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, who appointed special counsel Robert Mueller to lead the probe into the Russia matter.

This battle between the president and the FBI has been unprecedented at many levels already. That the president of the United States would condemn the FBI in such harsh terms, let alone doing the same thing to the Justice Department, is unheard of. Some observers have suggested the president’s strategy to discredit the FBI, DOJ and Mueller may be paying dividends for him in the eyes of the public.

I, as one American voter, find Trump’s strategy to be offensive in the extreme. That’s just me, though. You already know how I feel about Trump and his unfitness for the job to which he was elected.

He’s called Mueller’s probe the “worst witch hunt” in U.S. history, apparently ignoring the fact that in the 17th century, women were actually killed because some colonists thought they were, um, witches.

With all the leaks that have permeated this investigation, it’s fascinating in the extreme that Mueller’s team of legal eagles has been hermetically sealed against such leakage. He has remained silent, preferring to go about the task to which he was assigned: to find the truth about Trump’s election-year relationship — if any existed — with Russian goons who meddled in our election.

I want the inspector general to conclude his own probe in fairly short order. My hope is that he he can root out all the facts and make a reasoned, dispassionate finding on what Trump has proclaimed so hysterically.

However, the slope is mighty slippery. Watch your step, Mr. Inspector General.

national news

POTUS ratchets up war with Mueller

Here we go.

Donald Trump has accused the FBI of improper surveillance of his 2016 presidential campaign and has “demanded” that the Justice Department launch a probe into it.

DOJ has responded by asking its inspector general to conduct a thorough investigation into whether anything improper occurred with regard to the Russian meddling in our 2016 election.

“If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in a statement.

OK, where do we stand?

It looks to me as though the president has pulled out all the stops in his strategy to discredit, disparage and disqualify the serious probe being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Mueller has been given the authority to determine to what extent if any the president’s campaign cooperated with Russians who meddled in our electoral process. What’s more, Mueller’s team is examining a whole range of related issues, such as potential obstruction of justice and possible Trump Organization business ties with Russians involved in the meddling.

Trump’s allegation, as he has done with other such accusations, comes with no evidence up front. The president just, um, said it.

Rosenstein’s decision is the right call. If what the president alleges proves true, then we have a serious problem on our hands. I am going to rely on the IG’s ability to conduct the kind of thorough investigation that doesn’t presume guilt, but instead examines what — if any — evidence exists to lend credence to what the president has alleged.

If the IG finds nothing, well, then we have a problem of an entirely different nature.

And it is just as serious as the first one.

national news

Presidents don’t ‘demand’ things

I am not inclined usually to endorse thoughts expressed by William Kristol, publisher of the conservative publication The Weekly Standard.

I’ll make an exception by backing a tweet he put out regarding Donald J. Trump Sr.: In America, a president can order that a thing be done if he’s executing a law or acting within his discretion. And a president can urge or request something be done. But an American president doesn’t “demand” a thing be done. Demands are the way of autocrats, thugs and children.

Now I shall stipulate that Kristol is an ardent anti-Trump fellow. He opposed his election as president in 2016 and hasn’t let up since Trump took the oath of office.

The president has “demanded” that the Department of Justice launch a probe into whether the FBI spied on Trump’s 2016 campaign. Trump is looking for some affirmation of the allegation he has leveled against the FBI — again with no evidence — that it launched surveillance on his campaign in an effort to do harm to it.

Kristol, I shall remind you, once served as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle from 1989 to 1993. Thus, he has government experience. He served quite close to the center of federal executive power.

His view of Trump’s demand, that it is the “way of autocrats, thugs and children” points out one of the many fundamental flaws in the manner that Trump seeks to govern.

He continues to misconstrue a truth about the president and the presidency, which is that the office isn’t his to act as he pleases. It carries two-plus centuries of tradition and custom. President John F. Kennedy once lamented shortly after taking office in 1961 how difficult it was to get anything done simply by presidential edict.

Donald Trump hasn’t yet made that discovery. I doubt he will. He has no knowledge of how government works, only some internal notion of how he wants it to work.

William Kristol, to borrow a phrase, has told it like it is.

national news

Chaos is Trump’s guiding light

Every single attempt to predict what Donald Trump will do seems to result in head-scratching, hair-pulling, forehead-slapping frustration.

With that, I have to suggest that reporting today that the president might be back away from threats to fire the special counsel and the deputy U.S. attorney general who appointed him is an exercise in futility.

The Hill is reporting that special counsel Robert Mueller and Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein are safe … for the time being.

How does The Hill know this? Beats me, man.

The Hill noted that Trump said during a presser with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that Mueller and Rosenstein “are still here” despite months of conjecture that the president might fire one or both of them.

According to The Hill: That said, predicting Trump’s next move has long been a fool’s errand. Some people in his orbit insist that his underlying anger about the investigation is as strong as ever. 

There you have it. Trump cannot be pigeonholed. He operates in a sort of parallel political universe. The norms that guide conventional political behavior do not apply to this guy.

He seemingly has no one in what passes for his “orbit” who can tell him the truth. There’s no Bobby Kennedy figure, or James Baker consigliere who can tell the president that he’s acting foolishly.

This carnival barker listens only to one voice. His own. I keep circling back to the notion that his prior pre-presidential life was dedicated only to personal enrichment.

The president of the United States does not understand the intricacies of the profession to which he was elected.

None of it!

What will he do with regard to Mueller? Or Rosenstein? Any effort to try to stay ahead of this guy only produces extreme madness.

But … he likes it that way. Right?

national news

Being ‘not aware of plan’ is no reason for comfort

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says she is “not aware” of any plans for Donald Trump to fire special counsel Robert Mueller and/or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

I have to ask: Are we supposed to take that to the bank?

The president operates on a sort of chaotic system of strategy and tactics. He doesn’t tell those ostensibly closest to him anything in advance, or so it appears.

For Sanders to say she is “not aware” of the president’s plans gives me zero assurance that the man for whom she works is going to avoid doing something profoundly stupid.

Firing the special counsel would send Congress into pure apoplexy. Republicans and Democrats alike are urging Trump to let Mueller do his job, which is to get to the bottom of the Russia collusion issue that has dogged Trump since Day One of his presidency.

Trump reportedly has let it be known that he believes he has the authority to fire Mueller, even though he was appointed by Rosenstein.

Which brings me to the other point, which is that firing Rosenstein would be equally apoplectic for members of Congress.

I guess it’s good to remind y’all that Mueller is a Republican; Rosenstein is, too. And, oh yes, Donald Trump was elected as a Republican.

Yet the president keeps yapping “all those Democrats” who insist on the Mueller investigation continuing.

So, will the president let the special counsel and the deputy AG do their jobs? Will wisdom overcome this impetuous individual who seems incapable of listening to wise men and women who know more about government than he ever thought of knowing?

As for the press secretary telling the nation that she is “not aware” of any foolish actions coming up … well, stay tuned, Sarah. You’ll likely find out right along with the rest of us.