Tag: Bill Barr abetting Trump’s abuses of power

‘This is disturbing’: DOJ claims armed feds are allowed to inspect state vote-counting locations

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As ongoing vote tabulation in several key battleground states continues to slowly narrow President Donald Trump’s path to reelection, the New York Times reported late Wednesday that the Justice Department has told federal prosecutors that U.S. law permits armed federal agents to enter ballot-counting locations to investigate alleged “fraud,” heightening fears of possible intimidation efforts by the Trump administration.

News of the Justice Department’s early Wednesday email came after Trump spent much of that day lying about vote-counting procedures and peddling baseless claims of suspicious activity as he watched his slim leads in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania vanish.

The Times noted that the Justice Department’s email, authored by Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, “created the specter of the federal government intimidating local election officials or otherwise intervening in vote tallying amid calls by President Trump to end the tabulating in states where he was trailing in the presidential race.” Continue reading.

Barr Threatens Suit To Stop Bolton’s Book Because The First Amendment Is, Like, More Of A Suggestion Really

I’ll take PRIOR RESTRAINT for $600, Alex!

“Any conversation with me is classified,” President Trump insisted at a press conference yesterday. Because once we had a scholar of constitutional law as president, and now we have … the opposite of that.

The president’s voluminous knickers are in a twist this week over the upcoming release of Ambassador John Bolton’s book “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” which is scheduled to hit the shelves on June 23.

As a former federal employee, Bolton had to submit his manuscript to the National Security Council to ensure it contained no classified material. Since December 30, when he dropped the 592-page tell all about his time as Trump’s National Security Advisor on the NSC’s doorstep, Bolton undertook multiple rounds of revision in coordination with Ellen Knight, the agency’s senior director for prepublication review. Continue reading.

House Democrats subpoena two whistleblowers over allegations of DOJ politicization

Axios logoHouse Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) announced on Tuesday he has issued subpoenas for two Department of Justice whistleblowers as part of the committee’s probe into alleged politicization of the agency under President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr.

Why it matters: One of the officials, Aaron Zelinsky, resigned from the team that was prosecuting Trump associate Roger Stone after Barr intervened to soften Stone’s sentencing recommendation.

  • The other, John Elias, was reportedly looking into a fuel efficiency deal between large automakers and the state of California. Democrats have called the probe politically motivated.
  • The two will testify before the committee, along with former Deputy Attorney General Donald Ayer, on June 24. Continue reading.