Tag: Bill Barr

‘This is your house!’ Former federal prosecutor lays into Bill Barr over unanswered questions from Epstein’s death

AlterNet logoElie Honig, who served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, on Monday demanded Attorney General William Barr answer for Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged suicide. The financier, who was awaiting trial for a host of federal charges including sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, died in his jail cell on Saturday. Details of his autopsy have yet to be released.

Speaking with CNN’s Brooke Baldwin, Honig explained that the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), where Epstein was held, is run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of Barr’s Department of Justice.

“Everything that goes into that prison comes out of that prison, moves within the prison is documented somehow … So there really should be a lot of clear answers that DOJ and the Office of Inspector General can and should get,” the former federal prosecutor said. “And if we don’t have answers, we should ask why not.”

View the complete August 12 article by Elizabeth Preza on the AlterNet website here.

Bill Barr doesn’t know the difference between justice and revenge

AlterNet logoApparently Attorney General Bill Barr is a big fan of movies like Death Wish and Dirty Harry. That’s what we learn from an interview he did with Kary Antholis on the Crime Story podcast. He talked about the idea that a sense of justice is hardwired into human beings, who find it satisfying.

Barr elaborated on his theory of justice, recalling the Charles Bronson movie Death Wish and Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, icons of vigilantism in ’70s filmmaking that spawned movie franchises.
Barr elaborated on his theory of justice, recalling the Charles Bronson movie Death Wish and Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, icons of vigilantism in ’70s filmmaking that spawned movie franchises.

View the complete August 9 article by Nancy LeTourneau from The Washington Monthly on the AlterNet website here.

Justice Department sides with Trump in subpoena fight

Lawmakers have not done enough to say why they need president’s financial records, administration argues

The Justice Department sided with President Donald Trump on Tuesday in his fight to stop a congressional subpoena for eight years of his financial records, telling a federal appeals court that lawmakers had not done enough to say why they need the information.

“The House’s lack of responsibility is sufficient reason for this Court to declare this subpoena invalid,” the DOJ wrote in a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The Justice Department said that “at an absolute minimum,” the appeals court should require the House Oversight and Reform Committee to provide more clarity about the legislative purpose for seeking Trump’s records from his accounting firm, Mazars USA.

View the complete August 7 article by Todd Ruger on The Roll Call website here.

Trump Justice Department to resume federal executions

The Hill logoThe Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday that it will resume capital punishment for the first time in nearly two decades.

Only three federal executions have taken place since 1988, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. All five of the death-row inmates named in Thursday’s release were convicted for the murders of children.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has adopted a regulation that will require federal authorities to use a single drug, pentobarbital, in federal executions, according to the DOJ release. That drug is used by several states for lethal injections.

View the complete July 25 article by Jacqueline Thomsen on The Hill website here.

Here’s why AG Barr ‘crossed the line established by federal criminal law’ — and should be prosecuted: legal experts

AlterNet logoThis Wednesday, July 24, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller is set to testify before two separate Democrat-led committees in the House of Representatives — and some of the questions will no doubt involve Attorney General William Barr’s response to Mueller’s final report for the Russia investigation. That response has drawn widespread criticism from Democrats as well as from some of President Donald Trump’s conservative detractors. And two days ahead of Mueller’s testimony, former Homeland Security advisor Elizabeth Holtzman, a Democrat, and New York University law professor Ryan Goodman recommend on the Just Security website that the House of Representatives refer Barr for criminal prosecution for lying to Congress.

Prior to joining the NYU faculty in 2009, Goodman (a Just Security co-founder) was a law professor at Harvard University. The 77-year-old Holtzman, also an attorney, served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and went on to serve as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council before resigning in 2018.

“Based on the available public record about the Russia investigation,” Holtzman and Goodman declare in their Just Security article, “it’s clear that the Attorney General has repeatedly deceived Congress in a manner that appears to have crossed the line established by federal criminal law. It’s a federal offence if anyone intentionally ‘falsifies, conceals or covers up by any trick, scheme or device a material fact’ or makes a ‘materially false’ statement before Congress.”

View the complete July 22 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Justice Dept. asks Supreme Court to lift border wall ruling

The Justice Department is asking the Supreme Court to step in to lift court orders blocking President Donald Trump from proceeding with his plan to spend billions of dollars on border wall construction despite Congress’ efforts to limit that spending.

Administration lawyers filed a stay application Friday afternoon seeking to lift an Oakland-based federal judge’s order blocking border wall projects in California, Arizona and New Mexico.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the high court that the injunction is impairing federal officials’ ability to cut drug trafficking across the border with Mexico.

View the complete July 12 article by Josh Gerstein on the Politico website here.

Judge rejects Justice Dept request to pull lawyers from census case

The Hill logoA federal judge in New York on Tuesday blocked the Department of Justice (DOJ) from changing its entire legal team handling a case on the census citizenship question in federal court in the state.

U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman found that DOJ’s motion did not address a procedural rule requiring them to provide a reason for the attorneys’ withdrawal from the case.

He wrote that the department’s filing offers “no reasons, let alone ‘satisfactory reasons,’ for the substitution of counsel.”

View the complete July 9 article by Jacqueline Thomsen on The Hill website here.

In Sudden Shift, Barr Urges Mueller To Defy Congressional Subpoena

When asked in April whether he was opposed to the special counsel testifying before Congress — an event now scheduled for July 17 — Attorney General Bill Barr clearly told lawmakers, “I have no objection to Bob Mueller personally testifying.”

But now he has changed his tune.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Barr said Democrats were trying to make a “public spectacle” by subpoenaing Mueller to testify about the Russia investigation.

View the complete July 8 article by Cody Fenwick with AlterNet on the National Memo website here.

Barr Says Legal Path to Census Citizenship Question Exists, but He Gives No Details

New York Times logoEDGEFIELD, S.C. — President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr began working to find a way to place a citizenship question on the 2020 census just after the Supreme Court blocked its inclusion last month, Mr. Barr said on Monday, adding that he believes that the administration can find a legal path to incorporating the question.

“The president is right on the legal grounds. I felt the Supreme Court decision was wrong, but it also made clear that the question was a perfectly legal question to ask, but the record had to be clarified,” Mr. Barr said in an interview. He was referring to the ruling that left open the possibility that the citizenship question could be added to the census if the administration came up with a better rationale for it.

“It makes a lot of sense for the president to see if it’s possible that we could clarify the record in time to add the question,” Mr. Barr added.

View the complete July 8 article by Katie Benner on The New York Times website here.

Barr defends Trump on obstruction, says he faced ‘unprecedented’ situation

Attorney General William Barr offered a robust defense of President Trump on Thursday at a press conference previewing the release of special counsel Robert Mueller‘s report, explaining why he did not find Trump obstructed justice based on Mueller’s findings.

Barr said the report, which is to be released later Thursday, offered a vindication of Trump and that on obstruction it was important to consider the “context” of Trump’s actions analyzed in Mueller’s final report.

Barr said that Trump faced an “unprecedented situation” in the course of Mueller’s investigation as well as “relentless speculation” in the media surrounding Trump’s own possible culpability in Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Barr also said that Mueller’s report acknowledges the existence of “substantial evidence” showing Trump was frustrated by a “sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents and fueled by illegal leaks.”

View the complete April 18 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.