Tag: Bill Barr

Park Police did not record their radio transmissions during Lafayette Square operation on June 1

Washington Post logoCritical record of how police launched sweep against protesters is lost

Audio of the forceful push led by U.S. Park Police to sweep protesters out of Lafayette Square on June 1, moments before President Trump’s visit to St. John’s Episcopal Church, was not recorded by the Park Police radio communications system, the agency said Tuesday.

The sudden march into the group of protesters, featuring members of the Park Police, Secret Service, D.C. National Guard and Arlington County police, is now under investigation by Congress and the inspectors general of the Interior Department and Justice Department and the subject of civil lawsuits. The sweep along H Street caused an uproar because police used smoke and chemical irritants, along with officers on horseback, to clear out protesters well before a 7 p.m. curfew, with advance announcements that many said they did not hear.

Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, which is investigating the June 1 incident, said Tuesday that “Trump administration officials ordered the attack on clergy, nonviolent protesters, and working members of the press. For the official audio record of that day to now turn up missing has every appearance of a coverup.” Continue reading.

Letter sent in ‘utmost confidentiality’ to Bill Barr set in motion intervention for Michael Flynn: report

AlterNet logoAccording to a report from the New York Times, a letter sent in secret to Attorney General Bill Barr asking him to intercede in the case of former Donald Trump aide Michael Flynn, set in motion a move by the Justice Department to force a judge to set aside Flynn’s guilty pleas.

The report notes that Flynn attorney Sidney Powell, who used her appearances on Fox News to get Donald Trump’s attention, sent off a letter over a year ago asking for Barr to appoint an outsider to look at the case that was already in the sentencing stage.

The Times reports, “Asking for ‘utmost confidentiality,’ Ms. Powell told Mr. Barr that the case against Mr. Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser who had pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I., smacked of ‘corruption of our beloved government institutions for what appears to be political purposes.’” Continue reading.

Barr forms task force to counter ‘anti-government extremists’

Washington Post logoAttorney General William P. Barr on Friday directed the formation of a task force that will be dedicated to countering “anti-government extremists,” escalating federal law enforcement’s response to the violence that has sometimes marked nationwide protests against police brutality and racism, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post.

In the memo, Barr wrote that amid peaceful demonstrations, anti-government extremists had “engaged in indefensible acts of violence designed to undermine public order.”

“Among other lawless conduct, these extremists have violently attacked police officers and other government officials, destroyed public and private property, and threatened innocent people,” Barr wrote in a directive to all the Justice Department’s law enforcement components and U.S. attorneys. “Although these extremists profess a variety of ideologies, they are united in their opposition to the core constitutional values of a democratic society governed by law. . . . Some pretend to profess a message of freedom and progress, but they are in fact forces of anarchy, destruction, and coercion.” Continue reading.

Four ways William Barr is already subverting the 2020 elections

Washington Post logoSafeguarding the vote would be the top priority of a normal attorney general. It’s the opposite now.

A normal attorney general of the United States right now would be focused on protecting the integrity of the fast-approaching November elections. Instead, the attorney general we have — William P. Barr — is intent on doing the opposite: unraveling the government’s efforts to hold accountable those who infected our last presidential election, in 2016, and undermining the integrity of the vote in 2020. It’s so bad that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, who last weekend said it would be a “waste of time” to try to impeach Barr, is now reconsidering. (For the moment, Speaker Nancy Pelosi says impeachment is not happening.)

There are four ways that Barr’s approach to running the Justice Department imperils the vote: He’s letting off the hook those who contributed to interference in the last election; he’s undermining confidence in the government’s ability to protect the coming election; he’s signaling to bad actors that helping President Trump win will garner them special treatment under the law; and he’s spreading disinformation about the potential for voter fraud.

First, Barr is actively undoing work by the very department he oversees to address the counterintelligence threat exposed during the 2016 elections. At the core of Russia’s effort to distort American democracy was its move to obtain influence over a presidential candidate and his team. That’s what the FBI was investigating when it interviewed Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, in January 2017. The criminal charges brought against Flynn for lying during that interview — to which he pleaded guilty twice — affirmed federal law enforcement’s commitment to investigate counterintelligence threats and disrupt them.

Attorney General Barr Says DOJ Acts Independent Of Trump’s Interests

Attorney General William Barr said Thursday that he doesn’t believe President Trump has overstepped the boundaries between the White House and the Justice Department in a number of big recent cases.

Barr told NPR in a wide-ranging interview that he believes Trump has “supervisory authority” to oversee the effective course of justice — but Barr said that ultimately, the choices were made and carried through independently by the Justice Department.

“It’s very important that the attorney general make sure that there’s no political influence at stake involved in that — and there wasn’t,” Barr said. Continue reading.

Trump urges Barr to prosecute those who damage monuments

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Friday directed Attorney General William Barr to prioritize prosecution for those who damage federal monuments as the administration pushes to protect statues and monuments from vandalism amid ongoing protests against racial inequality and police brutality.

Trump signed an executive order stating that it is U.S. policy “to prosecute to the fullest extent permitted under Federal law, and as appropriate” any person who destroys, damages, vandalizes or desecrates a monument, memorial or statue or who damages, defaces or destroys religious property.

The order also states that it is U.S. policy to withhold federal support from state and local governments who fail to protect public monuments, memorials and statues, and from public spaces tied to state and local governments who do not meet those conditions. Continue reading.

 

The DOJ is hiding a key memo explaining why Trump wasn’t prosecuted for obstructing justice

AlterNet logoWhen former Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivered his final report for the Russia investigation, he declined to deliver a judgment on whether President Donald Trump should be prosecuted for obstructing justice. Attorney General Bill Barr decided to usurp this responsibility, declaring that the facts didn’t warrant bringing such a charge — but he never explained why.

And according to Conor Shaw and Anne Weismann of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the Justice Department has now “confirmed the existence of a memo laying out its rationale for not bringing charges against President Trump” but “refuses to make its reasoning public.”

“The Mueller Report catalogued numerous instances in which President Trump may have obstructed the Russia investigation, including by asking associates to curtail it or to fire the special counsel,” Shaw and Weismann explain. “The memo obtained by CREW explains the legal reasoning behind Attorney General Barr’s suspect claim that ‘the evidence developed during the special counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense.’ The memorandum is also presumably the supposed vindication of President Trump’s claim, after Barr’s announcement, that there was ‘No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION.’” Continue reading.

Why Bill Barr may have ‘gone too far’ this time in trying to protect Trump

AlterNet logoWhen President Donald Trump was expressing his frustration over former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in 2018, he famously remarked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” — a reference to his infamous far-right attorney who was an ally of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Trump later found an attorney general who, unlike Jeff Sessions, turned out to be the loyalist he was hoping for: Bill Barr.

Journalist Joan Walsh,  in an article this week for The Nation, argues that Trump found his Roy Cohn in Barr. But she said that now Barr is becoming “sloppier” as he becomes “more brazen.”

“Barr’s decline into blatant but ineffectual lawlessness is proof that Trumpism is a degenerative disease,” she said. Continue reading.

Analysts say Barr is eroding Justice Department independence — without facing any real personal consequence

Washington Post logoA federal prosecutor’s testimony Wednesday that he was pressed by supervisors to offer a more lenient sentencing recommendation for a friend of President Trump’s capped a remarkable four-month stretch in which Attorney General William P. Barr has seemed to repeatedly bend the Justice Department to Trump’s political interests — generating significant controversy but no personal consequence, legal analysts said.

Since February, Barr has intervened in two criminal cases to the benefit of those who once advised Trump; ousted a U.S. attorney who is investigating Trump’s personal lawyer; and dutifully implemented Trump’s vision for a forceful crack down on demonstrators in the District protesting police violence.

Democrats and legal observers have decried the moves — calling on Barr to resign or be investigated by his agency’s internal watchdog — and morale inside the Justice Department has plummeted, according to several Justice Department employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter frankly. But lawmakers, who already held Barr in contempt last year for defying congressional subpoenas, seem to have little in the way of practical recourse. Continue reading.

U.S. court orders dismissal of case against former Trump aide Michael Flynn

WASHINGTON, DC – A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday directed a federal judge to drop a criminal case against President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI, handing the Justice Department a victory in the politically charged case.

Wednesday’s ruling by a three-judge panel is likely to anger Democrats, who have accused Attorney General William Barr of improperly meddling in criminal cases to help benefit the Republican Trump’s friends and political allies.

A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that Wednesday’s ruling will likely be appealed to a larger panel of the federal appeals court. Continue reading.