Tag: Senate Judiciary Committee

‘Outrageous’: Lindsey Graham breaks rules of his own Senate committee to advance sweeping anti-asylum bill

AlterNet logoSenate Democrats and progressive advocacy groups accused Sen. Lindsey Graham of breaking Judiciary Committee rules Thursday after the South Carolina Republican forced a vote to advance his “dangerous and immoral” anti-asylum legislation.

The bill, titled the Secure and Protect Act of 2019 (S.1494), is condemned by human rights organizations as a sweeping attack on asylum seekers and an effort to expand President Donald Trump’s xenophobic deportation force.

Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, waived the panel’s rules to force a vote on S.1494 before Democrats were permitted to speak on the legislation.

View the complete August 1 article by Jake Johnson from Common Dreams on the AlterNet website here.

Graham moves controversial asylum bill through panel; Democrats charge he’s broken the rules

The Hill logoThe Senate Judiciary Committee advanced a bill to overhaul U.S. asylum laws on Thursday, waiving committee rules to force the legislation through over objections from Democrats.
The Judiciary Committee voted 12-10 to send the bill, spearheaded by committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), to the full Senate, where it’s not expected to get the 60 votes needed to ultimately pass. 
The decision by Graham to force his bill through the committee sparked outrage from Democrats on the panel, who accused him of busting up the rules on how legislation gets taken up in order to push through a partisan bill.

View the complete August 1 article by Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.

Graham threat to bust panel rules roils Senate tensions

The Hill logoTensions are boiling over in the Senate over Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) threat to ram through legislation to overhaul U.S. asylum laws, including changing the number of days minors crossing the border can be held in custody. 

The fight is the latest high-profile battle on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Graham says he’s ready to waive panel rules to force a committee vote Thursday on his legislation.

Graham’s bill touches on the detentions of families who cross the border, as well as their possible separations, one of the most sensitive issues in politics right now.

View the complete August 1 article by Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.

Fox News hosts expose the dishonesty of AG Barr and the network’s own ‘opinion people’

The highly anticipated Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing with Attorney General William Barr provided all the sparks and melodrama that was advertised. While the Republican members of the committee wasted their time flattering Barr and calling for ridiculously unwarranted investigations of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the Democrats effectively revealed just how devoutly wedded to Donald Trump the Attorney General is.

Barr was unashamedly protecting Trump from any potentially negative perceptions he might have earned due to his flagrantly unlawful activity and obstruction of justice. Barr refused to concede some obvious failures on his part to be an objective servant of the American people, rather than a personal criminal lawyer for Trump.

Even so, Barr couldn’t remember whether or not Trump ever asked him to open an investigation into Trump’s political opponents or critics. He admitted that he didn’t review the evidence in the Mueller report before deciding that Trump was innocent. He denied that directing someone to change their testimony (as Trump did to White House Counsel Don McGahn) was witness tampering and obstruction of justice. He defended his use of the loaded, Trumpian term of “spying” during his previous congressional testimony. He couldn’t even say whether the President’s actions were consistent with his oath of office. So Barr is not just another Trump lawyer, he’s as bad at it as the rest of Trump’s legal team.

View the complete May 2 article by News Corpse from the Daily Kos website on the AlterNet website here.

Graham: Senate Will Investigate FBI ‘Bias Against Trump’

Credit: Brian C. Frank, Reuters

Lindsey Graham is back at it again, using his position as chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee to try and run defense for his buddy Donald Trump.

One day after a judge ruled that former Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort violated his plea agreement when he lied to federal agents, Graham announced he’s going to conduct an investigation into a conspiracy theory surrounding former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Trump and his defenders on Fox News have tried to claim that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant used to wiretap Page — an energy consultant who has documented Russian ties and has given bizarre interviews on cable news — is evidence of some kind of bias against the Trump campaign by the FBI.

View the complete February 14 article by Emily Singer on the National Memo website here.

Senators trash Lindsey Graham for wanting to investigate Hillary emails more

Credit: Alex Wong, Getty Images

Instead of investigating Trump crime and corruption, Lindsey Graham will attack Hillary Clinton.

Trump ally and golf buddy Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is being mocked for his plans to use the Senate Judiciary Committee to settle old scores and abuse his power by investigating Hillary Clinton.

Graham only recently became the chairman of the committee. And rather than investigate the wide array of scandals that have surfaced involving Trump, Trump’s henchman, the Trump family, and other Republicans, Graham said he wants to investigate Clinton’s email server and the decisions that led the FBI to investigate Trump campaign aides like Carter Page.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) laughed about Graham’s plot, saying Graham was trying to relive the “thrilling days of yesteryear.”

View the complete January 22 article by Oliver Willis on the ShareBlue website here.

Ex-Trump fixer Michael Cohen subpoenaed by Senate committee, lawyer says

The Senate Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena for President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen to testify. (Reuters)

The Senate Intelligence Committee has issued a subpoena for President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, his attorney confirmed Thursday, a day after Cohen sought to cancel a scheduled public appearance on Capitol Hill by citing alleged “threats” from the president against his family.

Several congressional committees have been angling to speak with Cohen since he pleaded guilty last month to lying to Congress about how long into 2016 Trump and his advisers pursued a project to build a Trump Tower in Russia.

Cohen had been scheduled to speak with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in public on Feb. 7, until he postponed it indefinitely “due to ongoing threats against his family from President Trump and Mr. [Rudolph W.] Giuliani,” Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis said in a statement Wednesday.

View the complete January 24 article by Robert Costa and Karoun Demirjian on The Washington Post website here.

Graham angers Dems by digging into Clinton, Obama controversies

New tensions are flaring on the Senate Judiciary Committee over plans by newly minted Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to dig into Obama-era scandals.

Graham, a close ally of President Trump’s, has outlined several areas he wants to probe now that he has the Judiciary Committee gavel.

They include the FBI’s handling of its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications targeting former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

View the complete January 21 article by Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.

Senators demand testimony on Don Jr.’s crumbling Russia cover-up story

The following article by Oliver Willis was posted on the ShareBlue.com website July 28, 2018:

Senators are demanding that Donald Trump Jr. return to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee after Michael Cohen exposed that his father knew in advance about the meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.

Donald Trump, Jr., Credit: Alec Tabak, The Daily News via AP, Pool

Senators are demanding that Donald Trump Jr. come back and testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee — this time under oath — after new revelations that his father knew about the clandestine campaign meeting with Russian operatives.

According to Trump’s former personal lawyer and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, the elder Trump knew in advance about the meeting at Trump Tower. At that infamous gathering, Don Jr. was among the senior campaign advisers who met with Russian operatives offering up dirt on Hillary Clinton.

But when he testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of the ongoing probe into Russian election interference, Don Jr. reportedly said his father did not know about the event.

View the complete article here.

Christopher Wylie warns Congress of “resegregation of society that’s catalyzed by algorithms”

The following by Melissa Ryan was posted on the Media Matters website May 17, 2018:

Mr. Wylie goes to Washington to help America better understand what we’re facing from social media

Christopher Wylie testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 16, warning of “resegregation of society that’s catalyzed by algorithms” and speaking at length about how Cambridge Analytica exploited Americans on Facebook.

Wylie, the whistleblower who helped expose Cambridge Analytica’s exploitation of 87 million Facebook users’ data, had met privately with House Democrats last month but the Republican majority refused to allow an open hearing. He has testified before Parliament in the U.K., but yesterday’s hearing was Wylie’s first public appearance in the U.S. He spoke about Cambridge Analytica’s U.S. election work, the systemic failures of tech companies that led to the data breach, and what the future holds if said failures remain unaddressed. Wylie emphasized that Americans are simply unable to opt out of using the internet and that regulation is the only protection available. Senators on the committee asked Wylie about some of Cambridge Analytica’s practices that will likely be adopted by other entities, such as voter suppression ads and predictive algorithms. Continue reading “Christopher Wylie warns Congress of “resegregation of society that’s catalyzed by algorithms””