Tag: Jeff Sessions

Sessions joins Barr in pleading ignorance about Trump DOJ spying – is Rosenstein the guy or are they setting him up?

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Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions late Friday afternoon announced that he too, just like former Attorney General Bill Barr, had no idea the Dept. of Justice was spying on at least two top House Democrats on the Intelligence Committee. The scandal has shaken both the DOJ and the general public so broadly the Inspector General – less than 24 hours after The New York Times bombshell dropped – announced a wide-ranging internal investigation.

The track records of both Barr and Sessions when it comes to telling the truth – even under oath – are questionable at best and subject to interpretation.

Are they setting former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein up to take the fall? Or was it Rosenstein all along? Or both – were they all in on spying on Democrats? Continue reading.

Justice Department probes Trump DOJ targeting of media and Congress

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Friday announced the opening of an internal probe into the department’s Trump-era secret subpoenas against Apple for data belonging to House Democrats and its seizure of phone records of journalists working for major media companies.

The state of play: The move comes after Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco requested that Horowitz open a review and calls from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for an investigation into the matter.

Of note: Following demands from Democratic congressional leaders for former Attorney General William Barr to testify about the leak probes, Barr on Friday said he did not recall getting briefed on the subpoenas, per Politico. Continue reading.

Democrats demand Barr, Sessions testify on Apple data subpoenas

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The top two Senate Democrats on Friday called for multiple investigations into the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) decisions in 2017 and 2018 to issue subpoenas seeking metadata records of House Intelligence Committee members as the Trump administration pursued leak investigations.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (Ill.) also called for two of former President Trump’s attorneys general, William Barr and Jeff Sessions, to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“The revelation that the Trump Justice Department secretly subpoenaed metadata of House Intelligence Committee Members and staff and their families, including a minor, is shocking. This is a gross abuse of power and an assault on the separation of powers,” Schumer and Durbin said in a joint statement Friday. “This appalling politicization of the Department of Justice by Donald Trump and his sycophants must be investigated immediately by both the DOJ Inspector General and Congress.” Continue reading.

Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ border policy was pushed aggressively by Jeff Sessions, despite warnings, Justice Dept. review finds

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The Trump administration and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions barreled forward with their “zero tolerance” border crackdown in 2018 knowing that the policy would separate migrant children from their parents and despite warnings that the government was ill-prepared to deal with the consequences, according to a long-awaited report issued Thursday by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General.

The report called the Justice Department and the attorney general’s office a “driving force” in making sure the Department of Homeland Security aggressively prosecuted adults arriving with children, findings that cast doubt on statements made by Sessions that the government “never really intended” to separate families.

The bureaucratic chaos and trauma for families that resulted from the policy were not unanticipated consequences, the inspector general found. “DOJ officials were aware of many of these challenges prior to issuing the zero tolerance policy, but they did not attempt to address them until after the policy was issued,” the report states. Continue reading.

‘We Need to Take Away Children,’ No Matter How Young, Justice Dept. Officials Said

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Top department officials were “a driving force” behind President Trump’s child separation policy, a draft investigation report said.

WASHINGTON — The five U.S. attorneys along the border with Mexico, including three appointed by President Trump, recoiled in May 2018 against an order to prosecute all undocumented immigrants even if it meant separating children from their parents. They told top Justice Department officials they were “deeply concerned” about the children’s welfare.

But the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, made it clear what Mr. Trump wanted on a conference call later that afternoon, according to a two-year inquiry by the Justice Department’s inspector general into Mr. Trump’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy.

“We need to take away children,” Mr. Sessions told the prosecutors, according to participants’ notes. One added in shorthand: “If care about kids, don’t bring them in. Won’t give amnesty to people with kids.” Continue reading.

The Man Who Made Stephen Miller

Almost 20 years ago, anti-immigration activist David Horowitz cultivated an angry high-school student. Now his ideas are coming to life in the Trump administration.

In December 2012, with the Republican Party reeling from a brutal election that left Democrats in control of the White House and the Senate, the conservative activist David Horowitz emailed a strategy paper to the office of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions.

Horowitz, now 81, was a longtime opponent of immigration and the founder of a think tank and a campus freedom-of-speech advocacy group. He saw in Sessions a kindred spirit—a senator who could reawaken a more nationalist fire in the Republican party. The person he emailed it to was a Sessions aide: Stephen Miller. Horowitz, who recalled the episode in an interview and shared the emails with me, had known Miller since the aide was in high school.

Horowitz encouraged Miller to not only give the paper to Sessions but to circulate it in the Senate. Miller expressed eagerness to share it and asked for instructions. “Leave the Confidential note on it. It gives it an aura that will make people pay more attention to it,” Horowitz wrote. The paper, “Playing to the Head Instead of the Heart: Why Republicans Lost and How They Can Win,” included a section on the political utility of hostile feelings. Horowitz wrote that Democrats know how to “hate their opponents,” how to “incite envy and resentment, distrust and fear, and to direct those volatile emotions.” He urged Republicans to “return their fire.” Continue reading.

Leading Homeland Security Under a President Who Embraces ‘Hate-Filled’ Talk

New York Times logoElaine Duke, a lifelong Republican, was acting secretary of homeland security for four months in 2017.

WASHINGTON — Elaine C. Duke, then President Trump’s acting secretary of homeland security, arrived at the Roosevelt Room, down the hall from the Oval Office, on a steamy August afternoon in 2017 expecting a discussion about President Trump’s pledge to terminate DACA, the Obama-era protections for young immigrants. Instead, she said, it was “an ambush.”

“The room was stacked,” she recalled. Stephen Miller, the architect of the president’s assault on immigration, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other White House officials demanded that she sign a memo ending the program, which they had already concluded was illegal. She did not disagree, but she chafed at being cut out of the real decision-making.

“President Trump believes that he can’t trust,” Ms. Duke, now a consultant, said in a wide-ranging interview about the 14 months she spent working for him and the consequences of the president’s suspicion of what he calls the “deep state” in government. “That has affected his ability to get counsel from diverse groups of people.” Continue reading.

An emboldened Trump says the quiet part out loud about why he fired Jeff Sessions

Washington Post logoWe all know why President Trump fired his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions: Trump blames him for allowing the Russia investigation to begin and thought Sessions should have intervened to end it.

But we haven’t heard Trump connect the dots so explicitly. Until Wednesday:

Trump is now publicly acknowledging something he spent years not quite saying: that he fired Sessions specifically because Sessions didn’t stop the inquiry by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. The implication is that Sessions wasn’t loyal to Trump and what Trump wanted to happen in the Justice Department. Continue reading.

Historian explains why Jeff Sessions ‘was arguably the most abusive and disgraceful attorney general in history’

AlterNet logoDonald Trump’s former Attorney General Jeff Sessions may have gained some sympathy from the constant attacks he suffered from the president after he recused himself from Robert Mueller’s special investigation. But that should not excuse Sessions from the judgment of historians as they evaluate his leadership of the Justice Department from January 2017 to November 2018. Sessions was  arguably the most abusive and disgraceful Attorney General in history.

Sessions previously served as an Alabama Republican Senator since 1997 and he had an extremely conservative voting record. Even before he was a senator, a Republican-controlled Senate refused to appoint Sessions to a  Federal District Court judgeship in 1986.  This was only the second time in a half century that a federal appointee to the federal judiciary had been rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee for elevation to the federal bench.

He was accused at that time of racially insensitive behavior toward people of color.  He limited voting rights, prosecuted people of color for petty and insignificant reasons, and used inappropriate language against African Americans.  As a result, Sessions was opposed by his own state’s Democratic Senator, Howell Heflin, whom he succeeded in the Senate, and two Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Charles Mathias of Maryland, insured that his nomination would not be approved.

View the complete August 21 article by Ronald L. Feinman from the History News Network on the AlterNet website here.

Sarah Sanders told investigators she lies to the press: Here’s how 6 key players in Trump’s orbit made out in the Mueller report

Attorney General William Barr has publicly released a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report for the Russia investigation. Despite the redactions, a wealth of information is in the report—and many of President Donald Trump’s past and present associates are discussed extensively.

Here’s what the Mueller report says about the roles of some key players and Trump associates.

1. Hope Hicks

On Page 101 of Mueller’s report, former Trump White House staffer Hope Hicks  is quoted as saying that e-mails in which Donald Trump, Jr. said, in 2016, that he would “love it” if Russia would leak some dirt on Hillary Clinton looked “really bad” for the president’s son. Mueller’s report states, “the President was insistent that he did not want to talk about it and said he did not want details.”

View the complete April 18 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.