Tag: Barr as corrupt as Trump

DOJ partially discloses memo on why Trump wasn’t charged with obstruction

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Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the memo was actually meant to guide then-Attorney General William Barr on “getting a jump on public relations” in explaining why he was not pursuing obstruction charges.

A portion of a memo cited by former Attorney General William Barr as a reason not to pursue obstruction of justice charges against former President Donald Trump was released Monday night, but the Justice Department said it is appealing a judge’s order to disclose the rest of it.

Barr cited the 2019 memo by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel as a reason for not pursuing the charges after he received special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and any links to the Trump campaign.

Mueller’s report said his team was unable to reach a judgment on whether the president committed obstruction of justice, but the Office of Legal Counsel’s memo said the department should reach a conclusion anyway, and recommended that the evidence would not support prosecution. Continue reading.

‘Unmasking’ probe commissioned by Barr concludes without charges or any public report

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The federal prosecutor appointed by Attorney General William P. Barr to review whether Obama-era officials improperly requested the identities of individuals whose names were redacted in intelligence documents has completed his work without finding any substantive wrongdoing, according to people familiar with the matter.

The revelation that U.S. Attorney John Bash, who left the department last week, had concluded his review without criminal charges or any public report will rankle President Trump at a moment when he is particularly upset at the Justice Department. The department has so far declined to release the results of Bash’s work, though people familiar with his findings say they would likely disappoint conservatives who have tried to paint the “unmasking” of names — a common practice in government to help understand classified documents — as a political conspiracy.

The president in recent days has pressed federal law enforcement to move against his political adversaries and complained that a different prosecutor tapped by Barr to investigate the FBI’s 2016 investigation of his campaign will not be issuing any public findings before the election. Continue reading.

Barr’s Approach Closes Gap Between Justice Dept. and White House

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The attorney general has brought the department closer to the White House than it has been in a half-century, historians said.

WASHINGTON — When the top federal prosecutor in Washington recently accused the local police of arresting protesters without probable cause, Attorney General William P. Barr stepped in.

Mr. Barr, who has frequently voiced his support for police officers, brought in the U.S. attorney, Michael Sherwin, to meet with the chief of the Washington police and other top law enforcement officials, escalating the local dispute to the top of the Justice Department.

The meeting grew heated, but ultimately, Mr. Sherwin backed down, according to three people familiar with the encounter. Mr. Barr told Mr. Sherwin to write a letter that said he had not meant to imply that the police had acted unlawfully. In a nod to Mr. Sherwin’s original objection, the Washington police are working with prosecutors to identify video and other evidence to back up the arrests. Continue reading.

Top Democrats call for DOJ watchdog to probe Barr over possible 2020 election influence

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Four House committee chairs are calling on the Justice Department watchdog to open an emergency investigation into whether Attorney General William Barr and other political appointees have improperly influenced the upcoming 2020 presidential election. 

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and House Administration Committee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) on Friday called on Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz to probe whether Barr’s public comments on ongoing investigations and other actions are a violation of the agency’s longstanding policy and federal law.

“Attorney General Barr has signaled repeatedly that he is likely to allow DOJ to take prosecutorial actions, make public disclosures, and even issue reports before the presidential election in November. Such actions clearly appear intended to benefit President Trump politically,” the top Democrats wrote to Horowitz. Continue reading.

Watchdog Reportedly Probing Justice Officials’ Interference In Roger Stone Sentencing

Prosecutors quit when Attorney General Barr forced a lighter sentence for Trump confidant Roger Stone, who dodged prison entirely after Trump commuted it.

The Inspector General’s Office of the Justice Department has launched an investigation into officials’ interference in the sentencing of long-time Donald Trump confidant and convicted felon Roger Stone, sources have told NBC News.

The probe is reportedly examining the details of what happened in February when prosecutors said DOJ bosses applied “heavy pressure” to ensure a far lighter sentence for Stone than what was initially planned.

Attorney General William Barr ultimately intervened to override prosecutors’ recommendation of seven to nine years for Stone to ask for a lighter sentence. All four prosecutors then quit the case in dissent. Continue reading.

Barr slammed for acting as ‘personal henchman’ of Trump as DOJ moves to take over his defense in suit filed by rape accuser

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Democratic lawmakers and legal experts accused Attorney General William Barr of unethically acting as President Donald Trump’s “personal henchman” after the Justice Department on Tuesday moved to take over the president’s defense team in a defamation case brought by journalist and author E. Jean Carroll, who has accused Trump of raping her in the 1990s.

In a claim that baffled and alarmed observers, Justice Department lawyers said in new court filings that the federal government’s intervention in the case is justified because Trump was acting in “within the scope” of his official capacity as president when he accused Carroll of lying about the rape.

Robbie Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, called the Justice Department’s argument “shocking” in a statement late Tuesday, saying it “offends me as a lawyer, and offends me even more as a citizen.” Continue reading.

Appeals court rejects Flynn’s effort to dismiss charges

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A federal appeals court rejected Michael Flynn‘s effort to force a judge to immediately dismiss the charges against him, overturning an earlier decision that would have allowed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to drop its case against the former national security adviser.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 8-2 against Flynn’s petition for it to step in and force a district judge to grant the Justice Department’s motion to drop charges without holding a hearing on the issue.

The appeals court had agreed to rehear the case after a three-judge panel ordered the district court in June to dismiss the charges. Continue reading.

Bill Barr’s Mueller probe has inadvertently exposed the hypocrisy of Flynn’s defenders: legal experts

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FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith will soon plead guilty to a felony in federal district court after he allegedly made false statements in connection with an FBI application to surveil Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.

The case was brought by U.S. Attorney John Durham as part of his investigation into the origins of the Russia probe – an investigation that was initiated by Attorney General Bill Barr.

Writing for Lawfare, Barbara McQuade and Chuck Rosenberg note that the statute Clinesmith will plead guilty to is the same statute Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to twice in federal court. “One element of the statute to which Clinesmith will plead guilty requires that his false statement be ‘material.’… that means that his false statement had a ‘natural tendency’ to influence a pending matter (here, the surveillance application to the court) or was ‘capable’ of influencing that matter. This is typically an easy element to meet,” McQuade and Rosenberg write. Continue reading.

Trump’s re-election plan is straight out of the dictator’s playbook

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The single most consistent defining characteristic of an emerging dictatorship in a country that started as a democracy is that the dictator regularly holds elections and always wins, because he uses the instruments of government to make sure he wins.

Trump has now done this with the Justice Department, the Post Office, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Reserve, and our intelligence agencies.

Over at Justice, Attorney General Bill Barr has already said that he intends to investigate Joe Biden and his son’s activities in Ukraine and may report on that just before the election. Continue reading.

Bill Barr and Donald Trump are trying to torch the ‘Ancient Constitution’ that governed kings

AlterNet logoWith each passing day, it seems, the Trump administration seems intent on replaying the leadup to the English Revolution.

Like King James I of England (aka James VI of Scotland), Trump believes that he, to quote James’ tract of 1598, “The True Law of Free Monarchies,” “is above the law,” accountable only to God. He asserted in a July, 2019 speech that Article II of the Constitution means “I have to the right to do whatever I want as president.” Like James’ son, Charles I, who ruled England for 11 years without a parliament, Trump is increasingly governing through executive orders rather than making laws with the House and Senate.

Attorney General William Barr, Trump’s legal theorist, has put forward the notion that the president’s powers are “undivided and absolute.” Even more astonishing, Barr wrote in his June 2018 unsolicited memo to the Trump administration that “The Constitution itself places no limit on the president’s authority to act on matters which concern him or his own conduct  . . .” Both Barr and Trump believe that the chief executive’s prerogatives are not to be questioned. It is “presumption and high contempt, “James told Parliament in 1616, “to dispute what the king may do.” Barr said pretty much the same thing in his speech to the Federalist Society in November 2019, arguing that the “presidential power has become smothered by the encroachments of the other branches.” Continue reading.