Vanita Gupta

target but She was confirmed by the Senate on April 21, 2021, by a vote of 51 to 49

~ damien schiff judge nom 86'd pow wetlands

target?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-right-wing-dark-money-is-trying-to-kneecap-the-biden-doj

NO LNX

OPINION

How Right-Wing Dark Money Is Trying to Kneecap the Biden DOJ

TIME TO FIGHT

A shadowy group is fighting DOJ appointees Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke. Their crime? Their desire to use their skills to defend Americans’ right to vote.

Sheldon Whitehouse

Published Mar. 22, 2021

OPINION

Someone is targeting Biden Justice Department nominees Vanita Guptaand Kristen Clarke with attacks. Why? Both nominees hold exceptional records as litigators and civils rights activists. The respect they’ve earned extends beyond the civil rights movement and progressives to law enforcement and leading conservatives. They ought to be consensus picks.

But pull back the curtain, and strategy and motive take shape. Gupta and Clarke are poised to use their skills to defend Americans’ right to vote, just as the Republican Party is going all in on voter suppression as its path to political victory in 2022.

Unraveling the strategy starts with the dark-money group running the ads: the so-calledJudicial Crisis Network (JCN).This group’s ordinary work has been to translate big donors’ money into political attack ads in the “Court capture” mission that set out to remake the Supreme Court to the donors’ advantage. JCN has placed more than 10,000 ads since 2012 in pursuit of that mission, and they’ve kept secret the identity of those big donors.

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In Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell’s court-packing machine, this Judicial Crisis Network spent $7 million to oppose President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, and then spent another $10 million to boost Trump’s nominee Neil Gorsuch. JCN pledged $10 million or more for Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination. It spent $10 million in under two months to support Amy Coney Barrett’s bid. These campaigns were funded with tens of millions of anonymous dollars, primarily through four separate donations of at least $15 million. Those donations may well have been the same donor.

Eye-popping as that is, those millions are a tiny slice of the funding behind the overall dark-money operation. A 2019 Washington Post investigation revealed JCN is one of a web of front groups coordinated by Leonard Leo, the long-time executive vice president of the Federalist Society. The Post tracked more than $250 million in dark money flowing through Leo’s groups.

The groups see to the grooming and selection of reliable nominees, the lobbyists needed to shepherd nominees through confirmation, and the attack ads to motivate the confirmation votes. Then, more groups lobby the selected judges through amicus curiae briefs, signaling how their donors want the judges to rule.

The dark-money network has won an avalanche of victories for its donors. There are 80 partisan, 5-4 Supreme Court decisions that limit workers’ rights and access to reproductive health care, erode environmental protections, block commonsense gun safety laws, undermine civil rights, and protect corporations from courtrooms. It is an astounding 80-0 rout for big right-wing donors.

After The Washington Post exposed the $250 million operation, Leo stepped back from his Federalist Society role and turned up at a new organization improbably named the Honest Elections Project. This project began voter suppression work in political swing states like Florida, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan that included: negative ads against Democrats; threatening letters to election officials challenging voter rolls; and a barrage of lawsuits seeking voting restrictions for November’s election.

“Trump’s cronies at the Justice Department showed dark-money donors the value of a captive Department that would look away from voter suppression schemes. ”

The media soon uncovered that the Honest Elections Project was a rebrand of the Judicial Education Project—which shared connections, donors, and aims with its sister group —yes, the Judicial Crisis Network. As a reporter for The Guardian observed, the Honest Elections Project melds two goals of the right-wing dark-money operation: first, pack the federal judiciary; and second, bring voting rights cases before the packed courts. Rigging elections through the courts is now a Republican judicial priority.

This brings us back to Gupta and Clarke. Gupta once ran the Civil Rights Division. She prosecuted hate crimes and human trafficking, promoted disability and LGBTQ rights, and fought discrimination in education, housing, employment, lending, and religious exercise. But most important, she challenged voter suppression. Gupta, if confirmed as assistant attorney general, will supervise the Civil Rights Division she once ran.

Accomplished civil rights attorney Clarke will fill Gupta’s former role running the Division and enforcing voting rights. The Honest Elections Project, kin to the Judicial Crisis Network, wants no part of these two women, because they will be strong, motivated leaders against unlawful voter suppression. They preferred Trump’s Civil Rights Division, which didn’t bring one single Voting Rights Act case until late May of 2020.

That’s the motive. The donor-approved Republican appointees to the Supreme Court may handcuff the Civil Rights Division with further judicial assaults on voting rights. But Trump’s cronies at the Justice Department showed dark-money donors the value of a captive Department that would look away from voter suppression schemes. As Republicans hinge their election strategy on keeping Americans from voting, an active Civil Rights Division is a deadly threat.

I get it. If I were a right-wing special interest group, the last thing I would want is these two experienced lawyers wielding the power of the Justice Department to defend voting rights. But for everybody else, these women are two appointments to applaud.

[TONY ORTEGA

Even Trump Can’t Make Sense of His Own Dark-Money Maze

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanita_Gupta

Vanita Gupta (born November 15, 1974)^[1] is an American civil rights attorney serving as United States Associate Attorney General since April 22, 2021. Gupta served as the president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and as the head of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she was the chief civil rights prosecutor for the United States from 2014 to 2017.^[2]

Formerly, she was a civil rights lawyer and the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, where she oversaw its national criminal justice reform efforts.^[3] She has also served as Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Throughout her career, she has drawn support from a wide range of liberal and conservative activists, as well as law enforcement groups, for building support for policing and criminal justice reform.^[4][5]

On January 7, 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Gupta to serve as Associate Attorney General.^[6] She was confirmed by the Senate on April 21, 2021, by a vote of 51 to 49.^[7]

Early life and education

Gupta was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Indian immigrant parents.^[8] She is the daughter of Rajiv L. Gupta and Kamla Varshney.^[9] She received her Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from Yale University.^[10] She received her Juris Doctor from New York University School of Law in 2001.^[11]

Career

NAACP Legal Defense Fund

Gupta's first case, while working for the LDF directly after law school, involved 40 African Americans and six white or Latino people who were romantic partners of African Americans in Tulia, Texas, who had been convicted by all-white juries of dealing drugs.^[12] In almost every case, the only evidence was the testimony of an undercover agent, Tom Coleman. Coleman did not use wiretaps or marked money and records showed that he had "filed shoddy reports".^[13] He had previous misdemeanor charges for stealing gasoline from a county pump and abuse of official capacity.^[13] Gupta won the release of her clients in 2003, four years after they were jailed, then negotiated a $6 million settlement for them.^[14] Paramount is making a film, Tulia, about the case.^[15]

ACLU

In 2007, after becoming a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, Gupta filed a lawsuit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) about detention conditions for children whose parents were asylum seekers.^[16] In August 2007, a landmark agreement was reached between ACLU and ICE, under which the conditions in the T. Don Hutto Residential Center improved and a number of children were released from the center.^[16]

On August 6, 2009, the Department of Homeland Security announced intentions to improve the nation's immigration detention system, including ending family detention at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center.^[17]

After her time as a staff attorney at the ACLU, Gupta served as its deputy legal director and director of its Center for Justice.^[18] She has been credited with pioneering the ACLU's National Campaign to End Mass Incarceration.^[19] She built bipartisan coalitions to advance pre-trial and sentencing reforms around the country.

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights

Gupta speaks at a naturalization ceremony in 2016

In October 2014, President Barack Obama appointed Gupta as the United States Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and head of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division.^[2]

Under Gupta's leadership, the Civil Rights Division worked to advance criminal justice reform and constitutional policing, including by investigating and working to reform police departments in Ferguson, Missouri;^[20][21] Cleveland; Baltimore, and Chicago, among other cities. Gupta also oversaw a wide range of other enforcement efforts for the Division, including prosecuting hate crimes and human trafficking, promoting disability rights, protecting LGBT rights, and combating discrimination in education, employment, housing, lending and voting.^[22][23]

Gupta's tenure was marked by several high-profile matters, including the investigations of the Ferguson, Baltimore, and Chicago police departments; the appeals of the Texas and North Carolina voter ID cases; the challenge to North Carolina’s HB2 law and other LGBTQ rights litigation; enforcement of education, land use, hate crimes, and other statutes to combat religious discrimination; the issuance of statements of interest on bail and indigent defense reform, and letters to state and local court judges and administrators on the unlawful imposition of fines and fees in criminal justice system; and the administration’s report on solitary confinement.

In 2016, under Gupta's leadership, the division sued North Carolina, alleging that the state's implementation of House Bill 2 discriminated against transgender individuals in violation of federal civil rights laws.^[24]

In August 2016, an investigation by Gupta's division concluded that the Baltimore Police Department engaged in a pattern or practice of conduct that violated the Constitution and federal statutory law, including unconstitutional stops, searches, arrests, excessive force and enforcement strategies that produced an unjustified disparate impact on African-American residents.^[25]

Associate Attorney General

On January 7, 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Gupta to serve as the United States Associate Attorney General.^[26][27] On March 9, a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee was held on her nomination.^[28] Her nomination was supported by a broad range of civil rights and law enforcement groups,^[29] as well as by prominent conservatives^[30] who had worked with her on criminal justice reform and voting rights. She faced strong opposition from Republicans who criticized her civil rights advocacy, particularly during the Trump administration. The Senate confirmed Gupta to the position by a 51-49 vote on April 21 after Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski agreed to vote to confirm her,^[31] and she was sworn in on April 22.^[32]

Personal life

Gupta is married to Chinh Q. Le, the legal director of the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia.^[33] They have two sons.^[34]

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/vanita-gupta

There's a right-wing smear campaign underway against one of Biden's top DOJ nominees

Vanita Gupta gives opening remarks at the Naturalization Ceremony in Nov. 2016, Lonnie Tague

Alex Henderson March 02, 2021

Vanita Gupta, President Joe Biden's nominee for associate attorney general, is among the Obama-era officials he has picked for his administration — and she has come under attack from the far-right Judicial Crisis Network.Washington Post opinion writer Jonathan Capehart defends Gupta in a column published this week, arguing that she should be confirmed regardless of what the JCN thinks.

"For a couple of weeks now, my morning newspaper-reading over coffee and yogurt has been interrupted by the aural pollution that is the attack ad against Gupta from the Judicial Crisis Network," Capehart explains. "As the Post's editorial board pointed out over the weekend, the Network's television ad 'is a doozy, mainly notable for the magnitude of the lies and distortions it crams into 30 seconds.'"

Under President Barack Obama, Gupta headed the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. Gupta, according to Capehart, is "more than qualified to return as the agency's third-highest-ranking official." But that hasn't stopped JCN from smearing her.

"The lies and distortions are your garden-variety right-wing hysteria seeking to paint an unabashed liberal woman of color as a danger to the rule of law and to police," Capehart writes. "The lies don't stand up to the facts. More than 50 current and retired chiefs of police and sheriffs who worked with Gupta during her last tour at the Justice Department sent a letter of support to the Senate Judiciary Committee. So did the National Fraternal Order of Police, whose president noted the organization's working relationship with Gupta goes back to 2014."

Capehart continues, "And before that, as a lawyer with the ACLU, Gupta worked on cash bail reform, fair sentencing and other criminal justice reform issues with Koch Industries. Mark Holden, the firm's former general counsel and senior vice president, sent in a letter of support for her nomination."

Koch Industries is headed by 85-year-old billionaire CEO Charles Koch, who has been a major supporter of right-wing causes and has been a registered Libertarian. The fact that Gupta was willing to work with Koch Industries, Capehart writes, underscores her ability to "reach across the ideological divide."

If confirmed, Gupta will be working closely with Judge Merrick Garland, Biden's pick for U.S. attorney general — and Capehart is hoping that despite the JCN smear, she will be confirmed.

"Gupta and Lisa Monaco, nominated to be deputy attorney general, will both appear for their confirmation hearings on March 9," Capehart explains. "Both deserve to be confirmed. But Gupta ought to sail through the Judiciary Committee with the same ease that Garland did."

When Garland was challenged during his confirmation hearing by GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah for his support of Gupta and another nominee Republicans have criticized, the attorney general nominee was unequivocal: "I have complete faith in them."

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