DOJ using coronavirus crisis to push for expansive emergency powers

AlterNet logoThe Department of Justice is using the coronavirus outbreak to ask Congress for sweeping emergency powers including suspending habeas corpus during an emergency, a power grab that was denounced by civil liberties advocates.

“Oh hell no,” tweeted Fletcher School professor Daniel Drezner.

The DOJ plans were reported on by Politico‘s Betsy Woodruff Swan, who reviewed the request documents. Continue reading.

U.S. judge freezes House lawsuit seeking President Trump’s IRS tax records

Washington Post logoA federal judge froze a House lawsuit on Friday that seeks to enforce a subpoena for six years of President Trump’s federal tax records.

The judge said he will wait at least until an appeals court rules on whether Congress, in a separate case related to former Trump White House counsel Donald McGahn, can sue to compel executive branch officials to testify. U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden of Washington indicated that the hold in the tax records case could go on longer if the McGahn case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The House sued the administration in July after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin refused to comply with a subpoena for Trump’s business and tax records issued in May. Continue reading.

Justice Dept. abandons prosecution of Russian firm indicted in Mueller election interference probe

Washington Post logoThe Justice Department on Monday dropped its two-year-long prosecution of a Russian company charged with conspiring to defraud the U.S. government by orchestrating a social media campaign to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

The stunning reversal came a few weeks before the case — a spinoff of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe — was set to go to trial.

Assistants to U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea of Washington and Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers cited an unspecified “change in the balance of the government’s proof due to a classification determination,” according to a nine-page filing accompanied by facts under seal. Continue reading.

Trump Says He Is Considering Pardoning Ex-Adviser Michael Flynn

Trump accused the FBI of losing Flynn’s “records.” Attorney General William Barr recently ordered a review Flynn’s criminal case.

President Donald Trump on Sunday said he is “strongly considering” pardoning his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, suggesting that Flynn was unfairly targeted and prosecuted.

“So now it is reported that, after destroying his life & the life of his wonderful family (and many others also), the FBI, working in conjunction with the Justice Department, has ‘lost’ the records of General Michael Flynn,” Trump tweeted. “How convenient. I am strongly considering a Full Pardon!”

Trump, whose complaint was fired off within minutes of several other unrelated complaints and concerns, didn’t expand on what he meant by Flynn’s missing records. Continue reading.

Bill Barr Is Wrong: Police Abuses Breed Disrespect

The day before Attorney General William Barr complained about disrespect for the police, Harris County, Texas, District Attorney Kim Ogg announced that her office had identified 69 more convicted drug offenders who may have been framed by a veteran Houston narcotics officer. The skepticism that Barr decries cannot be understood without taking into account the sort of corruption that Ogg is investigating.

Speaking to police officers in Miami last Friday, Barr condemned “a deeply troubling attitude” toward police. “Far from respecting the men and women who put their lives on the line to protect us,” he said, overzealous critics “scapegoat and disrespect police officers and disparage the vital role you play in society.”

While Barr may prefer to believe that attitude has no basis in fact, every day brings news of police officers who foster such disrespect by lying, using excessive force and abusing their power for personal gain. Although it is unfair to portray those cases as an indictment of the entire profession, the way police officials respond to such revelations often invites that conclusion. Continue reading.

Barr Increasingly Appears Focused on Undermining Mueller Inquiry

New York Times logoA judge’s criticism cast light on the first in a series of steps by the attorney general to take aim at the Russia investigation.

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William P. Barr testified before Congress last spring that “it’s time for everybody to move on” from the special counsel investigation into whether Trump associates conspired with Russia’s 2016 election interference.

Nearly a year later, however, it is clear that Mr. Barr has not moved on from the investigation at all. Rather, he increasingly appears to be chiseling away at it.

The attorney general’s handling of the results of the Russia inquiry came under fire when a federal judge questioned this week whether Mr. Barr had sought to create a “one-sided narrative”clearing Mr. Trump of misconduct. The judge said Mr. Barr displayed a “lack of candor” in remarks that helped shape the public view of the special counsel’s report before it was released in April.

On immigration, Attorney General Barr is his own Supreme Court. Judges and lawyers say that’s a problem.

Washington Post logoAttorney General William P. Barr quietly intervened in an immigration asylum case last week when he issued a decision that narrowed the definition of torture for asylum seekers who invoke it as a grounds for staying in the United States.

Barr used a process known as “certification,” a historically little-used power of the attorney general that allows him to overrule decisions made by the Board of Immigration Appeals and set binding precedent. Immigration lawyers and judges say the Trump administration is using the power with greater frequency — to the point of abuse — as it seeks to severely limit the number of immigrants who can remain in the United States. The administration is also using it as a check on immigration judges whose decisions don’t align with the administration’s immigration agenda, experts say.

The decision to intervene in a Mexican national’s otherwise unremarkable asylum case is a warning to immigration board members that even their unpublished decisions are being scrutinized, former immigration judge Jeffrey Chase told The Washington Post via email.

Judge demands unredacted Mueller report, questions Barr’s ‘credibility’

The Hill logoA federal judge on Thursday ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to hand over to him a copy of the unredacted Mueller report and accused Attorney General William Barr of misrepresenting its findings in the days before it was submitted to Congress last year.

Judge Reggie B. Walton, a federal district court judge in Washington, said that he could not reconcile Barr’s public comments in April 2019 about the report with the actual findings that former special counsel Robert Muelleroutlined.

“The inconsistencies between Attorney General Barr’s statements, made at a time when the public did not have access to the redacted version of the Mueller Report to assess the veracity of his statements, and portions of the redacted version of the Mueller Report that conflict with those statements cause the Court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary,” Walton wrote in his decision. Continue reading.

DOJ inspector general finds weaknesses in how the FBI identifies homegrown terrorists

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s inspector general found “lapses” in the FBI’s assessment of potential domestic terrorist threats, and the bureau “has not taken sufficient action” to fix these weaknesses, according to a report released Wednesday.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, homegrown violent extremists have carried out more than 20 attacks in the United States, many of whom were suspects the FBI had previously investigated for possible terrorist links, according to the 47-page report. After these attacks, the FBI reviewed practices in assessing terrorist threats and found instances in which investigators did not sufficiently follow up or closed investigations into people who later carried out deadly attacks.

Even after reviewing its practices, “nearly 40 percent of counterterrorism assessments went unaddressed for 18 months after deficiencies were known to the FBI,” the report said.  Continue reading.

Trump picks loyalist who helped Nunes hype bogus Obama wiretap claim for top NSC intel position

AlterNet logoIn contrast to all the U.S. presidents who were very reliant on their advisers, President Donald Trump has shown a strong preference for unquestioning loyalists — and he has been surrounding himself with them in recent months, from Attorney General William Barr to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. A recent loyalist addition to Team Trump, according to Politico reporters Natasha Bertrand and Daniel Lippman, is Michael Ellis, now senior director of intelligence on the National Security Council (NSC).

Ellis is known for his work as a deputy to White House attorney John Eisenberg and as a counsel to the House Intelligence Committee when it was still being chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes (a far-right California Republican and strident Trump ally). He and Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who now serves as national security adviser to United States Attorney General, were the two White House officials who gave Nunes intelligence reports purporting to show that former officials in President Barack Obama’s administration improperly “unmasked” members of the Trump transition team. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), later said the unsmasking narrative was “all created by Devin Nunes.”

Ellis’ name, Bertrand and Lippman note, has also been heard in connection with the Ukraine scandal: according to Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman — who Trump fired from the NSC after being acquitted by the U.S. Senate on two articles of impeachment — it was Ellis and Eisenberg who decided to move the record of Trump’s now-infamous July 25 phone conservation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into a top-secret NSC server. House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, argued that Trump committed an impeachable offense when, that day, he tried to pressure Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Continue reading.