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.

Justice Dept. Declined to Prosecute Comey Over Memos About Trump

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — The Justice Department declined to prosecute the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey after determining that two memos he wrote about his interactions with President Trump contained classified information and examining whether he mishandled the documents, according to people familiar with the matter.

The F.B.I. upgraded the memos to confidential — the lowest level in the government’s system of classifying information — shortly after the president fired Mr. Comey in May 2017, the people said. Mr. Comey had kept several memos at his home and shared one with a friend when he thought they contained only routine information, but the determination that some memos included classified material prompted the investigation into whether he mishandled them.

Prosecutors quickly determined the case did not warrant charges, the people said. It is not clear which memos spurred the inquiry, but the upgrade to confidential dealt with foreign relations, a person familiar with the classification review said.

View the complete August 1 article by Adam Goldman and Katie Benner on The New York Times website here.

DOJ will not prosecute Comey for leaking memos after IG referral as Lindsey Graham says failing to do so would be ‘stunning’

AlterNet logoThe U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has decided that former FBI Director James Comey will not be prosecuted for allegedly leaking classified information, Fox News has reported. This comes after South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s assertion that it would be “stunning” if Attorney General William Barr did not proceed with a prosecution of Comey.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz had referred Comey for a potential prosecution, but an official described by Fox News as “familiar with the deliberations” told the right-wing cable news outlet that “everyone at the DOJ involved in the decision said it wasn’t a close call.” That source, according to Fox News, said “they all thought this could not be prosecuted.”

During an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Graham said, “If Bill Barr decided not to prosecute on disclosing the memos, I accept his judgment. I’ve known him for 20 years.” Graham also asserted that if Barr “does bring a charge against Comey,” he would “hate to be Comey.”

View the complete August 1 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet 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.

Dems ask whether DOJ memo prevented prosecuting Trump for hush payments

House Democrats want to know whether a decades-old Justice Department prohibition on indicting a sitting president played a role in federal prosecutors’ decision not to criminally charge President Donald Trump over hush money payments that he directed his fixer to pay to women.

The prohibition, laid out in a 2000 memo by the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, was also a key factor in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s decision to refrain from considering whether to charge Trump with obstruction of justice for his repeated attempts to thwart the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Now Democrats on the House Oversight Committee say the federal prosecutors based in the Southern District of New York should disclose whether they made a similar analysis. The president’s longtime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen was jailed earlier this year, in part for his role in hush payments to women accusing Trump of extramarital affairs, and he implicated the president in the scheme. Documents made public Thursday showed contacts between Cohen and Trump surrounding the hush money payments and were part of prosecutors’ evidence that Trump directed Cohen to make the payoffs.

View the complete July 19 article by Kyle Cheney on the Politico website here.

Barr Sent Big Donations To GOP Senators Before His Confirmation

Attorney General William Barr donated $51,000 to the committee tasked with electing Republican senators just as the Republican-led Senate began considering his nomination in late 2018.

Quartz released the details of the conveniently timed donations in a report on Thursday.

Barr occasionally made political donations to the Republican Party between 1993 and 2018.

“In the lead up to his Senate confirmation hearings for attorney general earlier this year, his giving habits suddenly changed,” Quartz reported. “Barr’s donations became far more frequent, notable for their size, recipients, and possible utility to him.”

View the complete July 18 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

House votes to hold Trump Cabinet members Barr, Ross in contempt

The Hill logoThe House voted to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt on Wednesday, escalating a battle between the Trump administration and congressional Democrats.

The measure holds the Trump Cabinet members in contempt for defying subpoenas for documents on their since-abandoned efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The chamber approved the measure in a party-line vote of 230-198, with four Democrats joining all Republicans in voting against the resolution.

Democrats argued the measure was necessary to hold officials accountable for “obstruction & oppose efforts to undermine the census.” It passed the House Oversight and Reform Committee along party lines ahead of the July Fourth recess.

View the complete July 17 article by Juliegrace Burfke on The Hill 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.

Justice Dept. Tells Mueller Deputies Not to Testify, Scrambling an Agreement

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — The Justice Department is seeking to discourage Robert S. Mueller III’s deputies from testifying before Congress, potentially jeopardizing an agreement for two of the former prosecutors to answer lawmakers’ questions in private next week, according to two government officials familiar with the matter.

The department told the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees last week that it was opposed to the testimony and had communicated its view to the two former members of Mr. Mueller’s team, Aaron Zebley and James L. Quarles III, according to a senior congressional official familiar with the discussions. A Justice Department official confirmed that account and said that the department had instructed both men not to appear.

It is unclear what effect the Justice Department’s intervention will have on the men’s eventual appearances, but it raises the prospect that a deal lawmakers thought they had struck last month for testimony from Mr. Mueller, the former special counsel, and the two prosecutors could still unravel.

View the complete July 9 article by Nicholas Fandos and Katie Benner on The New York Times website here.