Tag: Bill Barr

Supreme Court won’t let Justice Dept. immediately resume federal executions after hiatus

Washington Post logoThe Supreme Court on Friday refused to let the Justice Department immediately resume federal executions, denying the government’s request to bypass a lower-court ruling that the department likely exceeded its powers by adopting a new lethal injection protocol.

The order denying the stay will allow a federal appeals court to review the ruling blocking the executions.

No dissents were recorded, but three justices — Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh — included a statement saying they respected the decision while urging the appeals court to move quickly in deciding the case.

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The Lack of Oversight in Trump’s Justice Department

Center for American Progress logo

In the upcoming days, the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG), led by Michael Horowitz, will be releasing a report related to President Donald Trump’s frequent claims that the FBI spied on his 2016 campaign. And while early reports indicate the investigation will refute claims that the FBI did so, the report’s focus reflects a troubling trend of the OIG prioritizing investigations into conservative conspiracy theories rather than responding to substantive allegations of serious misconduct in the DOJ. To ensure the integrity of the DOJ, it is essential that this pattern is put to an end through robust, comprehensive oversight efforts.

Investigations by the DOJ’s OIG under Trump

Each federal agency has an oversight division, led by an inspector general, that is charged with investigating possible corruption within its respective agencies. Horowitz, the DOJ’s current inspector general, was confirmed to his position by President Barack Obama in 2012. In addition to his current position with the DOJ, Horowitz has served as the chair of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency since 2015. Prior to the Trump administration, he enjoyed a strong, bipartisan reputation in Washington.

At least during the Obama administration, Horowitz did not shy away from investigating allegations of misconduct attracting major public attention. In fact, he issued two reports—the first in 2012 and a follow-up in 2016—on Operation Fast and Furious, overseen by the DOJ. This topic was the ongoing focus of House Republicans, who also launched an investigation into it, with at least one prominent member of Congress claiming the DOJ’s actions could be compared to Watergate.

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William Barr’s full-throated defense of the Unitary theory of executive power is built on a fictional reading of constitutional design

AlterNet logoAttorney General William Barr’s November 15 speech before the Federalist Society, delivered at its annual National Lawyers Convention, received considerable attention.Barr attacked what he views as progressives’ unscrupulous and relentless attacks on President Trump and Senate Democrats’ “abuse of the advice-and-consent process.” Ironies notwithstanding, the core analysis of his speech is a full-throated defense of the Unitary theory of executive power, which purports to be an Originalist view of the Founders’ intent.

This defense, however, reveals the two fundamental flaws of the Unitary view: first, that it is built on a fictional reading of constitutional design; and second, that its precepts attack the fundamental tenets of the checks and balances system that the Founders did create.

Barr’s speech begins with his complaint that presidential power has been weakened in recent decades by the “steady encroachment” of executive powers by the other branches. Even allowing for congressional resurgence in the post-Watergate era of the 1970s, no sane analysis of the Reagan era forward could buttress Barr’s ahistorical claim. Ironically, the presidents in this time period who suffered political reversals—Bill Clinton’s impeachment and the thwarting of Barack Obama’s agenda by congressional Republicans in his final six years of office—nevertheless emerged from their terms with the office intact in powers and prestige.

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Barr’s handpicked prosecutor tells inspector general he can’t back right-wing theory that Russia case was U.S. intelligence setup

Washington Post logoThe prosecutor handpicked by Attorney General William P. Barr to scrutinize how U.S. agencies investigated President Trump’s 2016 campaign said he could not offer evidence to the Justice Department’s inspector general to support the suspicions of some conservatives that the case was a setup by American intelligence, people familiar with the matter said.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s office contacted U.S. Attorney John Durham, the prosecutor Barr personally tapped to lead a separate review of the 2016 probe into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, the people said. The inspector general also contacted several U.S. intelligence agencies.

Among Horowitz’s questions: whether a Maltese professor who interacted with a Trump campaign adviser was actually a U.S. intelligence asset deployed to ensnare the campaign, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the inspector general’s findings have not been made public.

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William Barr says ‘communities’ that protest cops could lose ‘the police protection they need’

Washington Post logoSpeaking to a roomful of police officers and prosecutors on Tuesday, Attorney General William P. Barr drew a parallel between protests against soldiers during the Vietnam War and demonstrations against law enforcement today.

But this time, he suggested, those who don’t show “respect” to authority could lose access to police services.

“Today, the American people have to focus on something else, which is the sacrifice and the service that is given by our law enforcement officers. And they have to start showing, more than they do, the respect and support that law enforcement deserves,” Barr said in pointed remarks delivered at a Justice Department ceremony to honor police officers.

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DOJ: Judge Was Wrong To Rule That House Has Right To See Secret Mueller Docs

The Justice Department says releasing secret grand jury documents from then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe to House lawmakers engaged in the impeachment inquiry could discourage future witnesses to presidential abuse from cooperating with grand juries.

“It is not difficult to imagine that a witness in a future investigation of alleged presidential misconduct might be deterred from testifying fully or frankly if she believed that her testimony would be readily disclosed to the House for use in impeachment proceedings,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in a brief filed on Monday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Attorneys for the Justice Department are asking the appeals court to reverse a lower court’s decision ordering the transfer of Mueller grand jury material to House investigators on a two-pronged argument: that an impeachment inquiry is not a “judicial proceeding” and that the House does not really need the documents to complete the impeachment investigation.

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Former CIA officer: Trump and his allies have a long history of bullying intelligence experts who probe Russian election interference

AlterNet logoWhen Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council (NSC) senior director specializing in Russian and European affairs, testified before the House Intelligence Committee on November 21, she stressed that there was zero evidence to support the claim that Ukraine rather than Russia interfered in the United States’ 2016 presidential election. Nonetheless, the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory persists on the far right. And journalist Alex Finley, in a report for Just Security, discusses the extremes that President Donald Trump’s allies have been willing to go to in the hope of discrediting intelligence on Russian election interference in 2016.

The CrowdStrike conspiracy theory claims that in 2016, the cyber-security firm CrowdStrike conspired with Democrats and the Ukrainian government to frame the Russian government for interfering in the presidential election. According to the false claim that the Ukrainian government — not Russian President Vladimir Putin — was the real villain in 2016, Finley notes, “Trump never could have colluded with Russia, because Russia never did anything wrong.” And Finley notes that Attorney General William Barr has been investigating people in the U.S. intelligence community who have been part of the Russia investigation — and appointed federal prosecutor John Dunham to head that investigation.

Finley explains, “Last month, media outlets reported that Barr’s investigation had become a criminal one. Whether true or not, the claim — much like the public attacks from Trump, Republicans and the conservative media ecosystem —  seemed like a clear signal to civil servants — whether in the FBI, the CIA or the NSA — to tread very carefully if they planned to take any actions that came anywhere near the Russia-Trump nexus again.”

View the complete November 26 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

House Oversight Committee sues Barr and Ross to enforce Census subpoenas

Axios logoThe House Oversight Committee filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Attorney General Bill Barr and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross for refusing to comply with subpoenas for documents related to the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

Why it matters: The White House had previously claimed its aides were “absolutely immune” from congressional subpoenas. On Monday, a federal judge ruled former White House counsel Don McGahn must testify under subpoena in the ongoing House impeachment inquiry, giving House Democrats a stronger hand to enforce its other oversight requests.

The backdrop: The House voted 230-198 in July to hold Barr and Ross in criminal contempt for withholding subpoenaed materials. Democrats believe the administration’s reason for attempting to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census was a cover for a politically motivated effort to diminish the electoral power of Democrats by eliminating non-citizens from population statistics.

View the complete November 26 article on the Axios website here.

Conservative attorneys blast Bill Barr’s ‘incorrect’ interpretation of Trump’s constitutional powers

AlterNet logoOn CNN Monday, Paul Rosenzweig and Stuart Green, a pair of conservative attorneys who are part of the Trump-critical legal group Checks and Balances, sharply criticized Attorney General William Barr, who recently argued President Donald Trump has virtually unlimited executive power at a speech to the right-wing Federalist Society.

“I want to begin with that letter, and quoting from that,” said anchor Bianna Golodryga. “You write, ‘In recent months, we have become concerned by the conduct of Attorney General William Barr. Barr rewrote history with the unsupported claim his view of presidential power was shared by the founders. Barr’s view of history, including his claim that founders shared in any respect his vision of an unchecked president and his assertion that this view was dominant until it came under attack from courts and Congress a few decades ago, has no factual basis.’ Paul, let me begin with you. Why do you believe that it has no factual basis?”

“Well, because it doesn’t,” said Rosenzweig, who previously worked for independent prosecutor Ken Starr. “The very first Congress conducted oversight investigations of President George Washington, one of the very first courts ruled that it had authority as a judicial branch to oversee the executive and direct it not to follow unconstitutional laws. To say that the assault on presidential authority is a novel thing is wrong. Plus, I mean, just to finish it all off, that’s why we fought a revolution against the unchecked authority of an executive branch.”

View the complete November 25 article by Matthew Chapman from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Lev Parnas Said He Assisted Barr’s ‘Investigation’ Of Russia Probe

In a July interview with the Ukrainian publication New-Times, Lev Parnas, a close associate of the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, disclosed that his efforts to help Giuliani launch a disinformation campaign targeting former Vice President Joe Biden were also intended to help Attorney General Bill Barr with his investigation into the origins of the U.S. intelligence community’s investigation into Russian electoral interference in the 2016 election.

Over the years, conservative media figures — led by Fox host Sean Hannity — as well as Trump and his Republican allies, have alleged a vast, nonsensical conspiracy theory that the federal investigation into Russian electoral interference was actually an elaborate, criminal scheme to prevent Trump’s election. In May, shortly after assuming his position, Barr appointed U.S. Attorney in Connecticut John Durham to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation. Since then, Barr has reportedly taken an active role in traveling with Durham around the globe to investigate claims that are central elements of the right-wing’s conspiracy theory. Trump, too, has been pressuring foreign governments to cooperate with the probe. The probe is now reported to have evolved into a criminal inquiry, though it is unclear what potential crimes are being investigated.

In the July New-Times interview, Parnas spoke of his and Igor Fruman’s activities to support Giuliani’s investigation, such as connecting Giuliani with several corrupt, disgraced Ukrainian prosecutors. In addition to detailing their efforts to dig up dirt on Biden, Parnas also discussed his hope that their work would be instrumental in Barr’s investigation into how the Russia probe originated.

View the complete November 24 article by Julie Millican from Media Matters on the National Memo website here.