Tag: Bill Barr

Barr slammed for acting as ‘personal henchman’ of Trump as DOJ moves to take over his defense in suit filed by rape accuser

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Democratic lawmakers and legal experts accused Attorney General William Barr of unethically acting as President Donald Trump’s “personal henchman” after the Justice Department on Tuesday moved to take over the president’s defense team in a defamation case brought by journalist and author E. Jean Carroll, who has accused Trump of raping her in the 1990s.

In a claim that baffled and alarmed observers, Justice Department lawyers said in new court filings that the federal government’s intervention in the case is justified because Trump was acting in “within the scope” of his official capacity as president when he accused Carroll of lying about the rape.

Robbie Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, called the Justice Department’s argument “shocking” in a statement late Tuesday, saying it “offends me as a lawyer, and offends me even more as a citizen.” Continue reading.

Barr Wields Federal Power To Protect Trump In Rape Defamation Case

Attorney General Bill Barr’s tenure at the Justice Department was further stained on Tuesday when officials announced in a court filing that the U.S. government will be defending President Donald Trump in a defamation case.

Trump is being sued by columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused the president of raping her in the ’90s. In his denial of the charge, Trump cast aspersions on Carroll and essentially branded her a liar, despite the fact that confidants of the columnist have come forward to say they were told of the assault contemporaneously. Carroll has taken legal action against Trump to hold him to account for his alleged defamation, and she seeks to have him deposed — a risky proposition for the president known for lying constantly.

But on Tuesday, Americans learned that their government’s Justice Department is intervening in the case, claiming that the allegations implicate Trump in his official capacity as president. According to the filing, Barr delegated the authority to determine whether a federal employee’s actions fall with the scope of their official duties to James G. Touhey, Jr., director of the torts branch. (Though it’s hard to believe this kind of action doesn’t happen in Barr’s Justice Department without his at least implicit approval and support.) Continue reading.

Barr Invented Story Of Massive Mail-In Ballot Fraud

As Attorney General William Barr faced renewed calls for his impeachment after claiming not to know whether it’s illegal for a U.S. voter to cast two ballots in a federal election, prosecutors and journalists have caught the nation’s top law enforcement officer in a “massive falsehood” about a mail-in ballot fraud case in Texas.

In his interview with CNN earlier this week, Barr told Wolf Blitzer that prosecutors had indicted a man who collected 1,700 blank ballots and used them to cast a specific vote.

“Elections that have been held with mail have found substantial fraud and coercion,” Barr said. “For example, we indicted someone in Texas, 1,700 ballots collected…from people who could vote, he made them out and voted for the person he wanted to. Okay?”

Aside from vastly overstating the prevalence of fraud in vote-by-mail systems which have been used by millions of Americans for decades, Barr appeared to fabricate the facts about the case in Texas, prosecutors who worked on the case told the Washington Post. Continue reading.

Exact definition of racism’: Bill Barr blasted for inane remarks on police shootings of Black men

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Attorney General Bill Barr is under fire for what many are calling his racist remarks related to police shootings of Black men. Barr appeared on CNN Wednesday evening and made highly controversial and often false comments about race.

Among the most controversial, Barr said there are cases where Black people are treated differently in the justice system, but, “I don’t think that’s necessarily racism.”

Barr also insisted that it’s “very rare for an unarmed African American to be shot by a white police officer.” Continue reading.

Trump Brazenly Pushes Barr To Prosecute Obama And Other ‘Enemies’

President Donald Trump is telling Bill Barr he must prosecute the president’s critics, like former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in order for him to become “the greatest Attorney General” in history.

As usual, Trump telegraphed his wishes to Barr right out in the open, in a Fox News interview that aired Tuesday night.

“I say this openly: Bill Barr can go down as the greatest Attorney General in the history of our country, or he can go down as just another guy,” Trump told Fox host Laura Ingraham. “They have all the stuff, you don’t need anything else. You know they want everything. You don’t need anything else. They all lied to Congress, they were liars, they were cheaters. They were treasonous it was treason.” Continue reading.

Barr justifies Trump’s suggestion about sending feds to polling places

The attorney general straddled multiple lines in discussing things that could have an impact on the election.

Attorney General William Barr justified President Donald Trump’s suggestion of deploying federal agents to polling places, arguing the Justice Department has historically sent agents to enforce civil rights.

Speaking with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday, Barr said he hadn’t heard any requests from the White House to deploy federal agents to voting sites, but he wouldn’t rule out the possibility “if there was a specific investigative danger.” He added that federal agents had been sent in the past to “enforce civil rights” and “to make sure that people were not being harassed and there was no suppression of vote against African Americans” in the past.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 allowed the attorney general to send federal observers to ensure there was no voter suppression and also that eligible Black voters were being registered without hindrance. But those observers have a mission drastically different from the federal law enforcement Trump proposed sending to polling places. Continue reading.

William Barr Says Police Being Racist Toward Black People Isn’t Racism

The attorney general dismissed the idea of systemic racism in the justice system and claimed Jacob Blake was armed when police shot him.

Attorney General William Barr stunned viewers Wednesday when he said that it’s not necessarily racism when police repeatedly treat Black people differently than white people.

Barr made the remarks in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who pressed him to back up his stated belief that Black people aren’t disproportionately targeted by law enforcement.

“I think there are some situations where statistics would suggest that they are treated differently, but I don’t think that that’s necessarily racism,” Barr said. Continue reading.

Appeals court rejects Flynn’s effort to dismiss charges

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A federal appeals court rejected Michael Flynn‘s effort to force a judge to immediately dismiss the charges against him, overturning an earlier decision that would have allowed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to drop its case against the former national security adviser.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 8-2 against Flynn’s petition for it to step in and force a district judge to grant the Justice Department’s motion to drop charges without holding a hearing on the issue.

The appeals court had agreed to rehear the case after a three-judge panel ordered the district court in June to dismiss the charges. Continue reading.

Trump DOJ Targets Democratic Governors For COVID-19 Outbreaks In Veterans Homes

“This really does smell,” said one former Civil Rights Division official who worries the Justice Department is weaponizing its power for political purposes.

President Donald Trump’s top civil rights official at the Department of Justice announced this week that he was considering launching investigations into how state-owned nursing homes responded to the coronavirus. The four states he targeted all have Democratic governors. This highly unusual public announcement of potential investigations raised alarm bells among Civil Rights Division alumni and Democrats that DOJ’s move was motivated by partisan politics. 

Eric Dreiband, the assistant attorney general running the Civil Rights Division, sent letters to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday, requesting documents and information under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA) about how public nursing homes in their states responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cuomo and Whitmer said in a joint statement that the inquiries were “nothing more than a transparent politicization of the Department of Justice in the middle of the Republican National Convention.” They called DOJ’s move a “nakedly partisan deflection” and questioned why Republican-run states that, based on federal guidelines, had similar rules about nursing home admissions were not being targeted. Continue reading.

Barr asked Rupert Murdoch to ‘muzzle’ Fox News commentator Napolitano, book claims

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Attorney General William Barr allegedly told Rupert Murdoch to “muzzle” Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano during a meeting last year, according to a forthcoming book written by CNN media reporter Brian Stelter. 

The book, titled, “Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth,” is set to be released Tuesday. It claims that Barr made the request to Murdoch during a meeting at the media mogul’s New York home in October 2019, the Guardian reported.

Stelter, citing an unnamed source in his forthcoming book, claims that the president was “was so incensed by the judge’s TV broadcasts that he had implored Barr to send Rupert a message in person … about ‘muzzling the judge’. [Trump] wanted the nation’s top law enforcement official to convey just how atrocious Napolitano’s legal analysis had been.” Continue reading.