Tag: Bill Barr

Justice Department probes Trump DOJ targeting of media and Congress

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Friday announced the opening of an internal probe into the department’s Trump-era secret subpoenas against Apple for data belonging to House Democrats and its seizure of phone records of journalists working for major media companies.

The state of play: The move comes after Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco requested that Horowitz open a review and calls from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for an investigation into the matter.

Of note: Following demands from Democratic congressional leaders for former Attorney General William Barr to testify about the leak probes, Barr on Friday said he did not recall getting briefed on the subpoenas, per Politico. Continue reading.

Democrats demand Barr, Sessions testify on Apple data subpoenas

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The top two Senate Democrats on Friday called for multiple investigations into the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) decisions in 2017 and 2018 to issue subpoenas seeking metadata records of House Intelligence Committee members as the Trump administration pursued leak investigations.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (Ill.) also called for two of former President Trump’s attorneys general, William Barr and Jeff Sessions, to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“The revelation that the Trump Justice Department secretly subpoenaed metadata of House Intelligence Committee Members and staff and their families, including a minor, is shocking. This is a gross abuse of power and an assault on the separation of powers,” Schumer and Durbin said in a joint statement Friday. “This appalling politicization of the Department of Justice by Donald Trump and his sycophants must be investigated immediately by both the DOJ Inspector General and Congress.” Continue reading.

Government watchdog finds failings, but no Trump influence, in clearing of Lafayette Square

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A government watchdog has determined the law enforcement agencies responsible for clearing protesters gathered outside the White House last summer failed to fully warn the crowd to disperse while fractured radio communications led officers to use chemical irritants that had not been authorized.

The report from the Department of the Interior’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is the first to evaluate the June 1 clearing of protesters shortly before former President Trump crossed Lafayette Square for a photo-op at a nearby church with a Bible in hand.

While the event spurred accusations from lawmakers and others that the protesters were cleared to enable Trump’s passage to the church, the report ultimately determined that Trump’s plans to visit the park did not influence the officers’ decision to clear it. Continue reading.

Justice Dept. secretly obtained New York Times reporters’ phone records during Trump administration

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The Justice Department revealed Wednesday that it had, during President Donald Trump’s administration, secretly obtained the phone records of four New York Times reporters, marking the third time in recent weeks that federal law enforcement has disclosed using the aggressive and controversial tactic to sift through journalists’ data.

The New York Times reported Wednesday night that the Justice Department had informed the newspaper it had seized the phone records of four of its reporters: Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eric Lichtblau and Michael S. Schmidt. The Times reported that the department also disclosed it had secured a court order to take logs, but not contents, of the reporters’ emails but that “no records were obtained.” The records dated from Jan. 14, 2017, to April 30 of that year.

Anthony Coley, a Justice Department spokesman, confirmed the seizures in a statement, saying the department “notified four journalists that it obtained their phone toll records and sought to obtain non-content email records from 2017 as part of a criminal investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.” Continue reading.

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.

Bill Barr is desperately trying to rehab his image as the dirty truth comes out

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Former Attorney General Bill Barr’s record leading the U.S. Justice Department is coming into clearer light as Merrick Garland takes the reins of the agency, and new revelations are bringing the much-maligned Trump acolyte under new scrutiny. It’s now clear that under his watch, DOJ obtained the communication records of multiple journalists, a disturbing use of government power that is supposed to face stringent restrictions. Some argue it should never happen at all. The news was revealed when the new administration contacted the journalists to inform them of what happened.

And the public has also learned that Barr’s DOJ sought to force Twitter to unmask an anonymous account critical of California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, a close Trump ally. Shortly after Garland was sworn in as attorney general, DOJ dropped the subpoena against Twitter.

So how is the former attorney general reacting to the new administration airing his dirty laundry? From all appearances, it looks like he’s trying to launder his reputation by anonymously giving Trump administration scoops to reporters. Continue reading.

Trump administration secretly obtained CNN reporter’s phone and email records

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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration secretly sought and obtained the 2017 phone and email records of a CNN correspondent, the latest instance where federal prosecutors have taken aggressive steps targeting journalists in leak investigations.

The Justice Department informed CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr, in a May 13 letter, that prosecutors had obtained her phone and email records covering two months, between June 1, 2017 to July 31, 2017. The letter listed phone numbers for Starr’s Pentagon extension, the CNN Pentagon booth phone number and her home and cell phones, as well as Starr’s work and personal email accounts.

It is unclear when the investigation was opened, whether it happened under Attorney General Jeff Sessions or Attorney General William Barr, and what the Trump administration was looking for in Starr’s records. The Justice Department confirmed the records were sought through the courts last year but provided no further explanation or context. Continue reading.

Inside Trump’s push to oust his own FBI chief

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The former president repeatedly asked his aides to fire Christopher Wray, including in an explosive encounter in April of last year.

Then-President Donald Trump sought to oust FBI Director Christopher Wray last spring and replace him with counterintelligence head William Evanina, according to three former Trump officials familiar with the episode.

Under the plan, the former officials said, Kash Patel — a former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and a fierce critic of the Russia probe — would have become the bureau’s deputy director.

Previously unreported details of the proposal reveal just how seriously the former president took his grievances against the intelligence and law enforcement establishment. It shows Trump at his mercurial peak, ordering up the removal of his own appointee in a fit of rage, only to back down when then-Attorney General William Barr threatened to resign if he followed through with the maneuver. (Aspects of this story were first reported by Business Insider.) Continue reading.

Trump DOJ tried to unmask a Twitter account behind ‘mean tweets and bad memes’ that teased Rep. Devin Nunes

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After Rep. Devin Nunes failed last summer to force Twitter to unmask several accounts dedicated to ruthlessly mocking the California Republican, the Justice Department took aim at one of the congressman’s anonymous critics.

Court filings unsealed this week revealed that in the last months of the Trump presidency, the Justice Department used a grand jury subpoena to demand the identity of whoever was behind @NunesAlt, a Twitter account that criticized Nunes, a close ally of former president Donald Trump.

Twitter strongly objected to the November request and filed a motion to quash it, noting Nunes’s own failed legal efforts to reveal the identities of his Twitter detractors. Continue reading.

Rachel Maddow explains how Bill Barr’s corruption in document scandal could end in a Trump indictment

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One of the biggest revelations this month was in the court decision by federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who ruled that former Attorney General Bill Barr lied to Congress, the court and the country when he claimed that the Justice Department had done an investigation into whether it could charge Donald Trump. Not only was there no investigation or collaboration with deputies and prosecutors, it was Barr’s decision, followed by the falsification of documents to justify it after the fact.

Those documents are slated to become public by Monday if the new Justice Department doesn’t fight the case. That comes as Democrats got former White House Counsel Don McGahn to agree to testify about what he told special counsel Robert Mueller in the Russia investigation that resulted in so many examples of obstruction of justice in part two of Mueller’s report. 

Judge Jackson “has already told us what her review of that document and of the Justice Department’s actions around that time indicate about the process that was followed in terms of deciding whether or not Trump would be criminally charged,” said Maddow. “What she’s told us already in her ruling is that the Justice Department didn’t substantively consider potential criminal charges against former President Trump, despite the evidence that was laid out against him.” Continue reading.