The Department of Justice is using the coronavirus outbreak to ask Congress for sweeping emergency powers including suspending habeas corpus during an emergency, a power grab that was denounced by civil liberties advocates.
“Oh hell no,” tweeted Fletcher School professor Daniel Drezner.
The DOJ plans were reported on by Politico‘s Betsy Woodruff Swan, who reviewed the request documents. Continue reading.
The House sued the administration in July after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin refused to comply with a subpoena for Trump’s business and tax records issued in May. Continue reading.
The Justice Department on Monday dropped its two-year-long prosecution of a Russian company charged with conspiring to defraud the U.S. government by orchestrating a social media campaign to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
The stunning reversal came a few weeks before the case — a spinoff of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe — was set to go to trial.
Assistants to U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea of Washington and Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers cited an unspecified “change in the balance of the government’s proof due to a classification determination,” according to a nine-page filing accompanied by facts under seal. Continue reading.
Trump accused the FBI of losing Flynn’s “records.” Attorney General William Barr recently ordered a review Flynn’s criminal case.President Donald Trump on Sunday said he is “strongly considering” pardoning his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, suggesting that Flynn was unfairly targeted and prosecuted.
“So now it is reported that, after destroying his life & the life of his wonderful family (and many others also), the FBI, working in conjunction with the Justice Department, has ‘lost’ the records of General Michael Flynn,” Trump tweeted. “How convenient. I am strongly considering a Full Pardon!”
Trump, whose complaint was fired off within minutes of several other unrelated complaints and concerns, didn’t expand on what he meant by Flynn’s missing records. Continue reading.
Prosecutions of white-collar criminals by the U.S. Justice Department plunged to an all-time low in January, according to a study published just days after President Donald Trump proclaimed his commitment to “safeguarding the American consumer” and “strengthening our efforts to prevent and prosecute fraud.”
The analysis released Tuesday by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) found that the Justice Department prosecuted just 359 white-collar criminals in January, a decline of 25% from five years ago. TRAC has been recording data on white-collar prosecutions since 1986.
Federal white-collar prosecutions have fallen from their peak of over 1,000 in June 2010 and February 2011,” the study found. “During the Obama administration in [fiscal year] 2011, they reached over 10,000. If prosecutions continue at the same pace for the remainder of FY 2020, they are projected to fall to 5,175—almost half the level of their Obama-era peak.” Continue reading.
Three authorities expire on March 15With less than three weeks left before three key surveillance authorities expire, Congress is barreling toward another standoff over an extension.
March 15 will bring the expiration of the three provisions, headlined by Section 215 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorizes national security agencies to collect business records.
Attorney General William Barr met with the Senate GOP at their weekly caucus lunch on Tuesday, and senators indicated he argued that Congress should reauthorize with few to no changes and the administration could just make changes it wants by using executive action. Continue reading.
During Attorney General William Barr’s Senate confirmation hearing in February 2019, Neil Kinkopf (a professor of constitutional law at Georgia State University) urged senators to reject President Donald Trump’s nominee. And a year later, in an article for Just Security, Kinkopf asserts that Barr’s “tenure” as U.S. attorney general has turned out to be “far worse than I expected.”
Barr was confirmed, 54-45, along largely partisan lines. Only one Republican in the Senate, Kentucky’s Rand Paul, voted against Barr’s confirmation — and only three Senate Democrats voted in his favor: West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema and Alabama’s Doug Jones.
During his testimony, Kinkopf stressed that he was troubled by Barr’s expansive approach to the U.S. government’s executive branch. Kinkopf testified, “Public confidence in the rule of law depends on there being an attorney general who will not allow the president to do whatever he wants with the Justice Department. William Barr’s views of presidential power are so radically mistaken that he is simply the wrong man at the wrong time to be attorney general of the United States.”
Months of strain date back to the investigation into the former F.B.I. official Andrew McCabe and growing fears of political interference.WASHINGTON — In the days before they filed the sentencing recommendation for President Trump’s friend Roger J. Stone Jr. that helped plunge the Justice Department into turmoil, the prosecutors on the case felt under siege.
A new boss, Timothy Shea, had just arrived and had told them on his first day that he wanted a more lenient recommendation for Mr. Stone, and he pushed back hard when they objected, according to two people briefed on the dispute. They grew suspicious that Mr. Shea was helping his longtime friend and boss, Attorney General William P. Barr, soften the sentencing request to please the president.
In an attempt to ease the strain, David Metcalf, Mr. Shea’s chief of staff, clasped his hand on the shoulder of one of the prosecutors, Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, as they passed in a hallway. But the gesture prompted a terse and sharp verbal exchange, according to three people briefed on the encounter. As word of the spat spread through the office, unfounded rumors swirled that the altercation had been physical. Continue reading.
President Trump continued to test his relationship with Attorney General William P. Barr on Wednesday by amplifying conservative allies demanding he “clean house” at the Justice Department and target those involved in the Russia investigation that once threatened his presidency.
The grievances shared by Trump in a flurry of morning tweets included claims of a “seditious conspiracy” against him, and attacks on a “criminal gang” at the FBI and the Justice Department.
A day after it was revealed that Barr told people close to Trump that he had considered quitting, the president and his attorney general seemed to reach a detente of sorts. Officials inside the Justice Department said they were watching the situation closely, mindful that a new string of tweets or comments could quickly upend the situation, but there were no indications that Barr would leave imminently. The attorney general did not mention the controversy when he spoke during an event Wednesday at FBI headquarters. Continue reading.
