The following article by Elizabeth Preza was posted on the AlterNet.org website August 19, 2018:
Tag: Trump Justice Department
Former CIA Director John Brennan on Sunday said he’s mulling legal action against Donald Trump over the president’s decision to revoke his security clearance.Trump caught weaponizing security clearances to kill bad news stories
The following article by Caroline Orr was posted on the ShareBlue.com website August 18, 2018:
Trump doesn’t control the media from the inside — so he’s taking a page from the modern authoritarian’s playbook and trying to control it from the outside, instead.
After revoking the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan on Wednesday, the White House reportedly started plotting to do the same to other intelligence leaders and national security officials — and then to strategically announce the decisions in an effort to control the news cycle.
According to The Washington Post, the White House has already drafted documents to strip security clearances from a laundry list of current and former officials associated with the Russia investigation.
A senior White House official told the Post on Friday that press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and deputy chief of staff Bill Shine have discussed when would be the best times to drop the news of the additional revoked security clearances. The plan, according to the Post, is to use the revocations as a distraction from negative news stories.
President Trump Says He Will Revoke Justice Department Official’s Security Clearance
President Donald Trump says he expects to “quickly” revoke the security clearance for the Justice Department official whose wife worked for the firm involved in producing the dossier on Trump’s ties to Russia.
Source: Time.com
FBI fires Strzok after anti-Trump texts
The following article by Olivia Beavers was posted on the Hill website August 13, 2018:
The FBI has fired Peter Strzok, the counterintelligence agent who came under fire for sending disparaging text messages about President Trump and other political figures during the 2016 election.
Strzok’s lawyer, Aitan Goelman, confirmed the firing, which took place on Friday. He blasted the decision in a statement, saying the “Deputy Director of the FBI overruled the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) and departed from established precedent by firing 21-year FBI veteran Peter Strzok.”
“The decision to fire Special Agent Strzok is not only a departure from typical Bureau practice, but also contradicts Director [Christopher] Wray’s testimony to Congress and his assurances that the FBI intended to follow its regular process in this and all personnel matters,” Goelman continued in the statement.
Trump slams Sessions as “scared stiff”
The following article was posted on the Axios.com website August 11, 2018:
President Trump on Saturday blasted Attorney General Jeff Sessions for being “scared stiff and Missing in Action” in a tweet series questioning if there will be an Inspector General report about the Steele dossier, Steele’s meetings with former Deputy Attorney General, Bruce Ohr and Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr.
Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump
….Do you believe Nelly worked for Fusion and her husband STILL WORKS FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF “JUSTICE.” I have never seen anything so Rigged in my life. Our A.G. is scared stiff and Missing in Action. It is all starting to be revealed – not pretty. IG Report soon? Witch Hunt!
Behind the scenes: Sessions doesn’t use Twitter and has no TV in his office. Sources who work for him tell Axios’ Jonathan Swan he tries as best he can to tune out Trump’s attacks. They seemed to genuinely bother him at first but over time aides said it appeared he’d grown desensitized to them. If Sessions has thought again about resigning — early on he wrote a resignation letter for Trump and it was rejected — he’s kept very close-lipped about it.
Judge halts mother-daughter deportation, threatens to hold Sessions in contempt
The following article by Arelis R. Hernándz was posted on the Washington Post website August 9, 2018:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions restated his zero tolerance policy for illegal entry from the border with Mexico on June 11. Credit: Reuters
A federal judge in Washington halted a deportation in progress Thursday and threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt after learning that the Trump administration started to remove a woman and her daughter while a court hearing appealing their deportations was underway.
“This is pretty outrageous,” U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said after being told about the removal. “That someone seeking justice in U.S. court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her?”
“I’m not happy about this at all,” the judge continued. “This is not acceptable.”
The ACLU is suing Jeff Sessions over the Trump administration’s asylum policies
The following article by Brianna Provenzano was posted on the Mic.com website August 8, 2018:
The American Civil Liberties Union and Center for Gender and Refugee Studies filed suit Tuesday in federal court in Washington, D.C., contesting the Trump administration’s evisceration of protections for asylum seekers.
The lawsuit, Grace v. Sessions, specifically calls into question policies enacted by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in June that seek to ramp up deportations and expedite removal proceedings for immigrants.
Under the new rules, asylum officers are encouraged to categorize petitions citing credible “fears of domestic abuse or gang violence” as “personal circumstances,” which do not automatically constitute eligibility for asylum.
Justice Dept releases surveillance applications for former Trump aide
The following article by Olivia Beavers was posted on the Hill website July 21, 2018:
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Saturday released documents related to the surveillance warrants on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page as part of the federal investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia.
The documents have been at the heart of a controversy over alleged bias at the FBI.
The heavily redacted application materials — 412 pages, including an initial application and several applications to renew the surveillance — indicate that the FBI “believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government … to undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election in violation of U.S. criminal law.”
Trump trashed Mueller probe even though he knew indictments were imminent
The following article by Erick Boehlert was posted on the ShareBlue.com website July 13, 2018:
Not even a new round indictments of Russian intelligence officials will move Trump off his anti-DOJ rhetoric.
Despite being fully briefed that 12 members of Russia’s military intelligence agency would soon be indicted for hacking Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign, Trump still denounced U.S. law enforcement’s pursuit of the case as a “witch hunt” while he was overseas this week.
“I think I would have a very good relationship with Putin if we spend time together. After watching the rigged witch-hunt yesterday, I think it really hurts our country and our relationship with Russia,” he said Friday during his joint press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May.
He was referring to Thursday’s circus-like hearing of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, where Republicans once against tried — and failed — to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Gap Between Trump and Justice Dept. Officials Grows Starker
The following article by Sharon LaFraniere and Katie Benner was posted on the New York Times website July 13, 2018:
WASHINGTON — Strolling past red-uniformed guardsmen at Windsor Castle on a gloriously sunny Friday, the queen of England at his side, President Trump was savoring the moment, broadcast live to his supporters back home.
Then television screens across the nations switched to reveal a second display of authority: Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general and the president’s legal Cassandra, with the latest news from the investigation that Mr. Trump calls “a witch hunt.” In terse terms, Mr. Rosenstein laid out the most detailed account yet of how the Russian government tried to influence the election that brought Mr. Trump to power.
After months of attacks by Mr. Trump and his allies on the investigation he leads, Mr. Rosenstein described a Russian influence operation that had to be blessed by the Kremlin, and named the perpetrators who carried it out. He did it just three days before Mr. Trump is due to meet in Helsinki, Finland, with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. And he added what some saw as pointed messages to Mr. Trump, who he said has “got to make some very important decisions for our country.”
View the complete article on the New York Times website here.