Tag: Trump corrupts all around him

Barr Makes It Official—He’s Trump’s New “Fixer”

If and when the attorney general leaves, the Department of Justice faces a reckoning.

Of President Donald Trump’s many career skills, perhaps the least appreciated is his lifelong and uncanny ability to sniff out lawyers who will serve his will.

In slightly more than 500 days in office, Attorney General William Barr has pivoted from establishment D.C. attorney—sworn to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States—into Trump’s family lawyer. The office of the attorney general is one of the oldest in our constitutional system, and the department is pledged “to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.” But Barr, instead, displays a tendency to use all the department’s levers—and with a $32 billion budget there are a lot of them—not to protect “all Americans” but to protect the president, personally and politically.

Is Election Day set by law? “I’ve never looked into it,” Barr demurred in his testimony this week. Is it appropriate for the president to solicit or accept foreign assistance in an election? Barr’s first answer: “It depends what kind of assistance.” These are the answers of a man who has turned the once-proud Department of Justice into the president’s personal law firm. That is contrary to every tradition of the Justice Department, but consistent with how Trump has operated for his entire professional life. Continue reading. Continue reading.

GOP under fire for slipping $30 billion Pentagon gift into coronavirus relief bill

AlterNet logoIn a floor speech late Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell described the GOP’s newly released coronavirus stimulus package as a “carefully tailored” plan to provide financial relief to desperate Americans.

But a look at the legislative text (pdf) released by Senate Republicans shows the HEALS Act is replete with massive gifts to the Pentagon and defense contractors that would do nothing to aid the unemployed, provide nutrition assistance to hungry children, prevent an avalanche of evictions, or stop the spread of coronavirus.

“Last time I checked F-35s don’t help families pay their bills,” Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.) tweeted in response to the GOP’s proposal of $686 million in spending on new fighter jets. Continue reading.

Education Dept.’s Civil Rights Chief Steps Down Amid Controversy

New York Times logoKenneth L. Marcus was nominated as the head of the Office of Civil Rights in the face of a chorus of opposition. He leaves after a tenure marked by dissension and disputes.

WASHINGTON — The Education Department’s civil rights chief has for 40 years labored to enforce civil rights protections in the nation’s schools and universities, but few have attracted as much attention as Kenneth L. Marcus, who will leave the post this week after two years marked by dissension, disputes — and significant accomplishments.

Mr. Marcus, who came to the job as a fierce champion for Israel and a critic of anti-Zionist movements on college campuses, is credited with overseeing the completion of sexual misconduct rules and expanding civil rights for Jewish students amid rising anti-Semitism. In announcing his departure, he said he had restored the office’s status “as a neutral, impartial civil rights law enforcement agency that faithfully executes the laws as written and in full, no more and no less.”

But in recent months, two separate complaints that have been filed accuse Mr. Marcus of abusing his authority by forcing through cases that furthered his personal and political agenda. In January, a former lawyer in the Office for Civil Rights said Mr. Marcus forced employees to investigate a policy that allowed transgender athletes in Connecticut to compete on female sports teams, even though the lawyers questioned the merits of the case. Continue reading.

Michael Cohen’s book to allege Trump made racist comments about Obama and Nelson Mandela, lawsuit says

Washington Post logoNEW YORK — The book manuscript being drafted by President Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen alleges that Trump has made racist comments about his predecessor Barack Obama and the late South African leader Nelson Mandela, according to court filings made public Monday night that contend Cohen was sent back to prison this month as retaliation for seeking to publish his memoir before November’s election.

The lawsuit seeks Cohen’s immediate release from federal custody. He was rearrested July 9, less than two months after he was approved to serve the remainder of his sentence on home confinement because of the coronavirus pandemic. His attorneys allege that Cohen’s First Amendment rights were violated when he was detained at the federal courthouse in Manhattan during a meeting with probation officers, who had asked him to sign a gag order prohibiting him from speaking to the media or publishing a book while serving the rest of his sentence.

Cohen’s suit names Attorney General William P. Barr and Federal Bureau of Prisons officials, in their official capacities. The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in the Southern District of New York, and an initial hearing was scheduled for Thursday. Continue reading.

Inspector general: Medicare chief broke rules on her publicity contracts

HHS watchdog finds Seema Verma mishandled millions of dollars in federal contracts that ultimately benefited friends, former Trump officials.

A top Trump administration health official violated federal contracting rules by steering millions of taxpayer dollars in contracts that ultimately benefited GOP-aligned communications consultants, according to an inspector general report released Thursday.

The contracts, which were directed by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services chief Seema Verma, were only halted after a POLITICO investigationraised questions about their legality and the agency had paid out more than $5 million to the contractors.

The 70-page HHS inspector general report — the result of a 15-month audit — calls on HHS and CMS to take nine separate actions to address the “significant deficiencies” that it identified. Those actions include conducting a review of all the department’s contracts, and making a closer examination of whether CMS overpaid several of its contractors. Continue reading.

Ousted State Department watchdog says top officials lobbied him not to probe Saudi arms deal

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo renewed his defense of the firing of the inspector general, saying he wished he had asked the president to act earlier.

WASHINGTON — The former State Department inspector general fired by President Donald Trump told lawmakers that two top officials tried to discourage his investigation into a U.S. arms sale to Saudi Arabia, according to congressional testimony released Wednesday.

The ousted inspector general, Steve Linick, said Under Secretary of State for Management Brian Bulatao told him “that we shouldn’t be doing the work because it was a policy matter not within the IG’s jurisdiction,” according to a transcript of his June 3 testimony.

The State Department’s acting legal advisor, Marik String, also questioned the probe, arguing it was outside the scope of the inspector general and purely a policy matter, Linick said.

Interior watchdog: Senior official misused post to aid family

IG’s report comes after Trump’s firing or demotion of five other agencies’ watchdogs in recent weeks

A senior Interior Department official used his position to get a family member a job at the EPA, a violation of federal ethics rules and an abuse of office, the department’s inspector general said in a report released Friday.

The investigation found Assistant Secretary for Insular and International Affairs Douglas Domenech contacted an EPA official in person and via email in 2017 on behalf of a family member pursuing a job at the agency. Domenech also promoted a different family member’s wedding business to the same EPA official, according to investigators.

Interior spokesman Nicholas Goodwin said in an email the contacts occurred before the department stepped up its ethical compliance training. He did not dispute the IG’s findings. Continue reading.

As Trump removes federal watchdogs, some loyalists replacing them have ‘preposterous’ conflicts

Washington Post logoThe political appointee President Trump installed last week to investigate waste, fraud and abuse at the Transportation Department is the same official in charge of one of the agency’s key divisions.

That means Howard “Skip” Elliott is now running an office charged with investigating his own actions.

Elliott serves simultaneously as the Transportation Department’s inspector general and head of the department’s pipeline and hazardous materials agency, whose mission includes enforcement of safety regulations on nearly 1 million daily shipments of gas, oil and other dangerous compounds. Continue reading.

State Department scrutiny threatens Pompeo’s political ambitions

The Hill logoSecretary of State Mike Pompeo is facing a critical test with brewing scandals at the State Department that threaten to derail any future political ambitions.

Pompeo has proved to be one of President Trump’s most loyal lieutenants, surviving Democratic probes into the impeachment investigation, military confrontation with Iran and the coronavirus pandemic.

He was once considered a shoo-in to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Pat Roberts(R-Kans.), an offer he officially passed on, and has been floated as a potential presidential candidate for 2024. Continue reading.

Pompeo’s elite taxpayer-funded dinners raise new concerns

The secretary of state’s exclusive “Madison Dinners” have featured guest lists heavy on influencers but light on diplomatic invitees.

WASHINGTON — As federal workers file out of the State Department at the end of a Washington workday, an elite group is often just arriving in the marbled, flag-lined lobby: Billionaire CEOs, Supreme Court justices, political heavyweights and ambassadors arrive in evening attire as they’re escorted by private elevator to dinner with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Until the coronavirus shut them down in March, the gatherings were known as “Madison Dinners” — elaborate, unpublicized affairs that Pompeo and his wife, Susan Pompeo, began in 2018 and held regularly in the historic Diplomatic Reception Rooms on the government’s dime.

State Department officials involved in the dinners said they had raised concerns internally that the events were essentially using federal resources to cultivate a donor and supporter base for Pompeo’s political ambitions — complete with extensive contact information that gets sent back to Susan Pompeo’s personal email address. The officials and others who attended discussed the dinners on condition of anonymity. Continue reading.