BARR WM 3 ATTY GENL

5/20

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target 10 23

bak 920 html unmask names

node expansion rate // djt? rivals AN 1 day total?

remember auditioned for gig (document? on fox?) that prez = exec. "l'exec c'est-moi"

doj defends against rape charge

(tried to) let stone and flynn (kraken) off hook

undermined mueller thus boosted russiagate

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PENSION PLAN

===

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an 2 26

Ryan Goodman, editor-in-chief of"Just Security," uncovered a document in which the New York Police Department was told by the federal government to "stand down" on its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.

In a video posted Monday, Goodman said that he found documents in which the FBI sent the instructions the NYPD just five days after Epstein's arrest. Goodman said he found it surprising that the order also applied to the SVU (Special Victims Unit). Goodman explained that it's the key part of law enforcement "that is specially trained and equipped to investigate crimes against minors and crimes of such abuse."

The documents show that the existing district attorney of New York was in an ongoing investigation into Epstein and was communicating with the victims. Some of those victims then began to speak out, including a 2019 interview with Savannah Guthrie on NBC.

Goodman said that they considered the DA reaching out to victims a "fire" that needed to be put out. All of this was during President Donald Trump's first administration.

"It's quite stunning because a large part of the allegations against Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and alleged co-conspirators happened in New York. That would be the epicenter of a lot of the crimes, of the trafficking of the young girls and women, the sexual abuse of the young girls and women happened in the townhouse of the Upper East Side in Manhattan," Goodman explained.

So, to close off such an investigation from those on the ground, he said, is "astonishing" as it would be the most productive avenue of getting at the other men involved in the crimes.

While the federal government may have assumed that the NYPD and DA stopped, they actually continued the probe through a "robust investigation," including speaking to the survivors through their attorneys. One part of that investigation focuses specifically on Leon Black, a private equity investor, whom Business Insider reported on last week. Black has never been charged.

The Office of the New Mexico Attorney General, Raúl Torrez, said last week that in 2019, it was also told to stand down.

The "investigation was closed in 2019 at the request of the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York," Torrez said. He wants them to be reopened. The U.S. attorney in 2019 was Geoffrey Berman, who was also actively investigating potential financial abuses related to Donald Trump's 2017 Presidential Inaugural Committee and pursuing investigations involving Michael Cohen from 2018 to 2019.

The documents show that on Dec. 6, 2018, the NYPD, SDNY and the FBIChild Exploitation Human Trafficking Task Force opened a case on Epstein.

On July 10, 2019 an Epstein survivor, Jennifer Araoz, was interviewed by Guthrie for the TODAY Show. She said the recruiter knew she was 14. After the interview aired, Araoz submitted a New York State court filing seeking information from Epstein about a recruiter who allegedly worked with him to "recruit" her. Her lawsuit against Maxwell and an assistant was filed on Aug 14, 2019, just four days after Epstein was found dead. So, she filed the suit against his estate.

The "stand down" directive came in 2019 on July 10 and 11. One month later, Epstein was dead.

By Jan. 2020, emails showed that the FBI was discussing the NYPD's probe of Epstein.

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bunch on list to be invest 8 25 // ~ epstein?

an 8 25

Bulwark writer Will Sommer says President Donald Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr caught flack at a recent Fox News appearance, but the reason for his condemnation couldn’t be less flimsy.

“Why did Fox just bring on traitor Bill Barr? He should be in prison,” posted MAGAinfluencer Gunther Eagleman, while another Trump enthusiast wrote “Bill Barr is on Fox News instead of a prison cell."

Sommer said X accounts and YouTube commenters are demanding Fox ban Barr from its airwaves, and wish him a prison term for treason.

“Why the insistence that Barr has committed a criminal betrayal of the country? Naturally, it’s a conspiracy theory,” said Sommer.

IFrame Content

“Huge swaths of the right-wing media audience have latched on to allegations that Barr schemed with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and conservative pundit Armstrong Williams to hatch the Georgia criminal case against Donald Trump and 18 other people,” Sommer writes.

The controversy stems from right-wing video producer Project Veritas publishing reports from sole source Patrícia Lélis, who Sommer describes as a ”Brazilian national fugitive wanted by the FBI and last known to be hiding out in Mexico.”

Lélis claims she learned of Barr’s scheme to orchestrate Trump’s prosecutions while working as Armstrong Williams’ employee. Sommer said it does not appear to matter that Merrick Garland — not Bill Barr — was attorney general at the time. Lélis alleges Barr secretly met with Jack Smith and Fani Willis to “hatch plans to bring a RICO case against Trump and more than a dozen other defendants.”

Project Veritas published three videos focused on Lélis’s allegations, and Sommer said much of the American right have taken her claims “at face value.”

“They’ve been promoted by InfoWars chief Alex Jones, pundit Dinesh D’Souza, and Mario Nawfal, the ubiquitous X personality with more than 2 million followers,” writes Sommer. “Lélis has appeared on online politics streamer Real America’s Voice News, the home of prominent right-wing figures like Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk.”

“White nationalist figure” Nick Fuentes cited his own appearance on Bill Barr’s alleged “enemies list” to boost his credibility against allegations that he’s a federal informant, said Sommer.

Lélis’ believers ignore that she accused a Brazilian politician of rape in 2015, only to have police drop the case and request her own arrest, said Sommer, or that police determined her “texts” accusing the son of Brazil’s then-president Jair Bolsonaro of threatening her were forgeries. Sommer also points out that Lélis likely stole the photo of a baby from a social media account and photoshopped her own face onto the mother’s to make Lélis look like a mom.

Still, Sommer reports Project Veritas telling him they stand behind her claims, and they plan more releases from her in the future, despite Brazilians familiar with Lélis being “aghast” at the company treating her like a credible source.

“She is a diagnosed mythomaniac!” one wrote to Project Veritas on X. “For God’s sake.”

Read the full Bulwark report at this link.

===

an 10 24

Undercover audio shared to social media by liberal filmmaker Lauren Windsor on Thursday shows Donald Trump ally Roger Stone revealing his plans to disrupt the electoral process next month if the ex-president doesn't defeat Kamala Harris.

Stone's plans involve sending "armed guards to dispute the election in Detroit," and imprisoning "former Attorney General Bill Barr if Trump returns to power," according to Windsor.

In the footage, an undercover reporter can be heard questioning Stone on August 4, 2024, during an event called "A Night with Roger Stone" in Jacksonville, Florida, while posing as the founder of a program, working to recruit "people to work in the election, in the polls, in the swing states, in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Michigan" — to get "people on the inside."

He submitted to Stone, "The fact of the matter is in 2020, we had control, and they were able to take it from us."

Stone replied, "We were never really in control."

The journalist then asked, "What do you mean?"

The Trump ally replied, "Well, I was indicted by Donald Trump's Justice Department. Donald Trump never controlled the Justice Department. [Former Attorney General] Bill Barr traitorous piece of human garbage!" Stone went on to call the former Trump AG "a piece of s—t."

"He's a CIA general counsel. He's a piece of s—t. Trump read a law review article, never checked his background, and made him attorney general. Once we get back in, he has to go to prison! He has to go to prison. He's a criminal."

The journalist then asked, "How are we going to get back in if they're in control right now, and we're on the outside?"

"First of all it's a state question, not a federal question. So it's not who controls the federal government, it's who controls the state government. They use the election system to harass you when you're in office, but this is about an election. We gotta fight it out on a state-to-state basis."

After the journalist asked what they can do to ensure Democrats don't steal the election, Stone repeated, "We have to fight it out on a state to state basis," adding, "When they throw us out of Detroit, you go get a court order, you come in with your armed guards, and you dispute it."

Watch the full video below or at this link.

===

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tom cat fox bs

*Former AG William Barr's free market group sues California over EV truck mandate

CALIFORNIA April 5

Former AG William Barr's free market group sues California over EV truck mandate

FIRST ON FOX: A free market business group advised by two-time former Attorney General William Barr is suing California over it aggressive mandate for electric trucks.

no lnx

CALIFORNIA

Former AG William Barr's free market group sues California over EV truck mandate

Barr: California's mandate 'is not only illegal but a threat to our American free enterprise'

Thomas Catenacci By Thomas Catenacci Fox News

Published April 5, 2024

How would EV rules hurt truckers?Video

"The Big Weekend Show" panelists break down the Biden administration's electric vehicle policies set to impact heavy-duty trucks beginning with 2027 models.

FIRST ON FOX: A free market business group whose legal arm is led by two-time former U.S. Attorney General William Barr has filed a federal lawsuit against California over its climate regulations for phasing out diesel-powered heavy-duty vehicles.

The American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce – which was launched in 2022 to fight government regulations – filed the lawsuit this week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, naming California Attorney General Rob Bonta and California Air Resources Board (CARB) Executive Officer Steven Cliff as defendants.

AmFree Chamber and co-plaintiff Associated Equipment Distributors allege that California's Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) regulations violate the federal Clean Air Act since the state never obtained a waiver from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to pursue the plan. Under the ACF rules, which kicked in this year, trucking companies must rapidly transition their fleets from diesel-powered to zero-emissions vehicles.

"California’s attempt to effectively abolish the internal combustion engine by forcing Americans to buy EVs is not only illegal but a threat to our American free enterprise," Barr, who chairs the advisory board at AmFree Chamber's Center for Legal Action, told Fox News Digital. "This mandate is unlikely to produce any net reduction in carbon emissions, and even if it does, any benefit will be negligible in comparison to the massive costs these mandates impose on our economy and individual American families."

VULNERABLE HOUSE DEM BUCKS PARTY ORTHODOXY, BLASTING HIS STATE'S PROPOSED EV MANDATE

Bill Barr speaks at Federalist Society conference

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr speaks at a meeting of the Federalist Society on Sept. 20, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

"We filed this suit to protect Californians from government overreach and to ensure they have continued access to affordable, reliable and accessible fleets," Barr added. "AmFree’s Center for Legal Action will continue to file state and federal suits that take on climate mandates that are only being implemented to move the liberal agenda forward but as a result have put a choke hold on our American economy."

In addition to arguing that California violated the Clean Air Act, the lawsuit further alleges the ACF regulations are preempted by the Energy Independence and Security Act and the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act. The former authorizes the federal government to set fuel economy standards and the latter seeks to preempt state trucking regulations with federal standards.

TRUCKERS CHALLENGE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION OVER CLIMATE CRACKDOWN ON ELECTRIC BIG RIGS

CARB adopted the ACF, the most aggressive truck electrification plan of its kind anywhere in the nation, in April 2023.

The regulations require operators who manage short-haul tractor trailers, government fleets and "high priority" fleets to begin transitioning to zero-emissions vehicles this year. "High priority" fleets are those with more than 50 trucks or are managed by private companies with at least $50 million in revenue.

California AG speaks to reporters wearing a suit

State Attorney General Rob Bonta speaks at a news conference in Sacramento, California, on Feb. 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

The new rules require fleets using drayage trucks – which are short-haul trucks that transport goods from ports and rail yards – to only buy zero-emissions alternatives starting this year and to fully be zero-emissions by 2035.

Fleets classified as "high priority" must either begin purchasing only zero-emissions vehicles this year or adhere to state targets, such as having a quarter of box trucks and vans to be zero-emissions by 2028.

And for fleets managed by state and local governments, 50% of heavy-duty vehicle purchases must be zero-emissions this year. That requirement increases to 100% by 2027.

Overall, the ACF requires all commercial truck sales for all fleets must be zero-emissions beginning in 2036.

FEDERAL COURT STRIKES DOWN BIDEN'S CLIMATE RULE FOR STATES

"If people want to buy electric vehicles, then they ought to be free to do so," AmFree Chamber CEO Gentry Collins told Fox News Digital. "The substance of our complaint here is not about being opposed to EVs. The substance of our complaint is about being opposed to the mandates."

Truck

Less than 1% of new truck sales in the U.S. are zero-emissions, according to the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association. (Graham Hughes/Bloomberg via Getty Images/File)

He noted the higher costs and lower range of electric trucks, which currently represent a tiny share of new truck purchases nationwide.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, CARB spokesperson Kate Lamb said the agency doesn't comment on pending litigation. However, she pointed to various figures showing the projected health and climate benefits of the ACF regulations.

"While trucks represent only 6% of the vehicles on California’s roads, they account for over 35% of the state’s transportation-generated nitrogen oxide emissions and a quarter of the state’s on-road greenhouse gas emissions," she said.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Bonta's office didn't respond to a request for comment.

Thomas Catenacci is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.

===

thom 8 24

alternet-no lnx

It's time for Bill Barr to be brought to justice

U.S. Attorney General William Barr meets with states attorneys general on protecting consumers from social media abuse Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in the Cabinet Room of the White House.

Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour

Thom Hartmann August 06, 2024

The Washington Post reported last week that there’s very good reason to believe that Egypt’s dictator, Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, organized a $10 million cash bribe to Donald Trump when he was most desperate for the same amount of money during the 2016 election.

American intelligence reported that el-Sisi ordered $10 million in $100 bills be taken from a bank in Egypt — representing a large chunk of that country’s entire US dollar foreign reserves — and have them transported, possibly, to Donald Trump.

As The Washington Post reported:

“Five days before Donald Trump became president in January 2017, a manager at a bank branch in Cairo received an unusual letter from an organization linked to the Egyptian intelligence service. It asked the bank to “kindly withdraw” nearly $10 million from the organization’s account — all in cash. …

“Federal investigators learned of the withdrawal, which has not been previously reported, early in 2019. The discovery intensified a secret criminal investigation that had begun two years earlier with classified U.S. intelligence indicating that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi sought to give Trump $10 million to boost his 2016 presidential campaign, a Washington Post investigation has found.”

If proven, it’d be the worst presidential corruption scandal in American history. And it might have been proven (or disproven) years ago, were it not for the intervention of Trump’s then-Attorney General Bill Barr.

The Washington Post reports that Barr fired two US attorneys in a row — Timothy Shea and Michael Sherwin — in an apparent attempt to make the investigation into the possible Trump bribe go away. His final choice made the investigation go away.

READ ALSO: Trump just entered his 'Fat Elvis' phase

This sort of Republican criminal coverup by Bill Barr shouldn’t surprise us.

There was also a time when George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan were facing the possibility of treason charges, much like Trump is facing with regard to January 6th — both even worse than accepting a bribe like Agnew did.

Who did they call? Bill Barr.

That was in the ’80s and early ’90s, but now we discover that Bill Barr really, truly, definitely also lied to America about presidential treason this decade. And, based on The Washington Post’s reporting, appears to have covered up the possibility that Trump took a $10 million bribe.

In March of 2019, Robert Mueller and the FBI laid out 10 prosecutable incidents of Donald Trump committing felony obstruction of justice, all to cover up the assistance he was seeking and receiving from Russian oligarchs and the Russian government that ultimately helped him win the 2016 election.

Looking back five years ago, seeing the actual documents from the time, Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson noted that Barr’s lies to the American people, to Congress, and to federal judges were “so inconsistent with evidence in the record, they are not worthy of credence.”

In other words, Barr lied or covered up repeatedly to protect Trump.

And he did it to avoid prosecuting Trump, who we can now see had clearly committed crimes — particularly reaching out to a foreign power for a bribe — that would’ve landed any other American in prison for decades.

Geoffrey Berman’s 2022 book details Barr’s attempts to stop prosecutions of Trump’s friends and co-conspirators, to fire prosecutors with integrity and replace them with toadies who corrupted the Justice Department, and even to focus the police power of government against people Trump considered enemies.

For example, when Trump got pissed at John Kerry, he tweeted that he should be investigated and prosecuted. Immediately Barr jumped into action, as former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman told Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe:

“[T]he statute they wanted us to use was enacted in 1799 and had never been successfully prosecuted. So for about 220 years, this criminal statute had been on the books, and not a single conviction, so we investigated it and John Kerry was entirely innocent, and yet the Justice Department pushed us and pushed us and pushed us and when I declined, Bill Barr did not take no for an answer."

Meanwhile, Barr succeeded in getting Trump’s role in a variety of the felony crimes ignored, including the crime of campaign fraud for paying off Stormy Daniels to keep her mouth shut about Trump having sex with her. The list in Berman’s book is mind-boggling.

And now, as of this week, we can add the possibility of accepting a $10 million bribe from a foreign dictator.

The corruption of law enforcement and the courts is a cardinal characteristic of fascism, which is what Trump and — it turns out, Barr — apparently did to America.

But this shouldn’t surprise us: it’s not Bill Barr‘s first time playing cover-up for a Republican president who had committed crimes that could rise to treason against The United States.

Back in 1992, the first time Bill Barr was U.S. Attorney General, iconic New York Times writer William Safire referred to him as “Coverup-General Barr” because of his role in burying evidence of then-President George H.W. Bush’s involvement in “Iraqgate” and the “Iran-Contra” scheme with Iran to steal the election from Jimmy Carter.

Christmas day of 1992, the New York Times featured a screaming all-caps headline across the top of its front page: Attorney General Bill Barr had covered up evidence of crimes by Reagan and Bush in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Earlier that week of Christmas, 1992, George H.W. Bush was on his way out of office. Bill Clinton had won the White House the month before, and in a few weeks would be sworn in as president.

But Bush’s biggest concern wasn’t that he’d have to leave the White House to retire back to Connecticut, Maine, or Texas (where he had mansions) but, rather, that he may end up embroiled even deeper in the Iran-Contra treason.

In other words, George HW Bush’s concern was that he and his colleagues may face time in a federal prison after he left office.

Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh was closing in fast on him and Reagan, and Bush’s private records, subpoenaed by the independent counsel’s office, were the key to it all.

Walsh had been appointed independent counsel in 1986 to investigate the Iran-Contra activities of the Reagan administration and determine if crimes had been committed.

Was the Iran-Contra criminal conspiracy limited, as Reagan and Bush insisted (and Reagan said on TV), to later years in the Reagan presidency, in response to a hostage-taking in Lebanon?

Or had it started in the 1980 presidential campaign against Jimmy Carter with treasonous collusion with the Iranians, as the then-president of Iran asserted? Who knew what, and when? And what was George H.W. Bush’s role in it all?

In the years since then, the President of Iran in 1980, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, has gone on the record saying that the Reagan campaign reached out to Iran to hold the hostages in exchange for weapons.

“Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan,” President Bani-Sadr told the Christian Science Monitor, “had organized a clandestine negotiation, later known as the ‘October Surprise,’ which prevented the attempts by myself and then-US President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 US presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped the results of the election in favor of Reagan.”

That wouldn’t have been just an impeachable crime: it was treason.

Walsh had zeroed in on documents that were in the possession of Reagan’s former defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, who all the evidence showed was definitely in on the deal, and President Bush’s diary that could corroborate it.

Elliott Abrams had already been convicted of withholding evidence about it from Congress, and he may have even more information, too, if it could be pried out of him before he went to prison. But Abrams was keeping mum, apparently anticipating a corrupt pardon from Bush.

Weinberger, trying to avoid jail himself, was preparing to testify that Bush knew about it and even participated in the 1980 election theft, and Walsh had already, based on information he’d obtained from the investigation into Weinberger, demanded that Bush turn over his diary from the campaign. He was also again hot on the trail of Abrams.

So Bush called in his attorney general, Bill Barr, and asked his advice.

Barr, along with Bush, was already up to his eyeballs in cover-ups of shady behavior by the Reagan administration.

Safire ultimately came refer to Barr as “Coverup-General” in the midst of another scandal — one having to do with Bush illegally selling weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein — because the Attorney General was already covering up for Bush, Weinberger, and others from the Reagan administration in “Iraqgate.”

On October 19, 1992, Safire wrote in The New York Times of Barr’s unwillingness to appoint an independent counsel to look into Iraqgate:

“Why does the Coverup-General resist independent investigation? Because he knows where it may lead: to Dick Thornburgh, James Baker, Clayton Yeutter, Brent Scowcroft and himself [the people who organized the sale of WMD to Saddam]. He vainly hopes to be able to head it off, or at least be able to use the threat of firing to negotiate a deal.”

Now, just short of two months later, Bush was asking Barr for advice on how to avoid criminal charges in the Iran-Contra crimes. How, he wanted to know, could they shut down Walsh’s investigation before Walsh’s lawyers got their hands on Bush’s diary?

In April of 2001, safely distant from the swirl of D.C. politics, the University of Virginia’s Miller Center was compiling oral presidential histories, and interviewed Barr about his time as AG in the Bush White House. They brought up the issue of the Weinberger pardon, which put an end to the Iran-Contra investigation, and Barr’s involvement in it.

Turns out, Barr was right in the middle of it.

“There were some people arguing just for [a pardon for] Weinberger, and I said, ‘No, in for a penny, in for a pound,’” Barr told the interviewer. “I went over and told the President I thought he should not only pardon Caspar Weinberger, but while he was at it, he should pardon about five others.”

Which is exactly what Bush did, on Christmas Eve when most Americans were with family instead of watching the news. The holiday notwithstanding, the result was explosive.

America knew that both Reagan and Bush were up to their necks in Iran-Contra, and Democrats had been talking about treason, impeachment, or worse. The independent counsel had already obtained one conviction, three guilty pleas, and two other individuals were lined up for prosecution. And Walsh was closing in fast on Bush himself.

photo5_13.png

The second paragraph of the Times story by David Johnston laid it out:

“Mr. Weinberger was scheduled to stand trial on Jan. 5 on charges that he lied to Congress about his knowledge of the arms sales to Iran and efforts by other countries to help underwrite the Nicaraguan rebels, a case that was expected to focus on Mr. Weinberger’s private notes that contain references to Mr. Bush’s endorsement of the secret shipments to Iran.” (emphasis added)

History shows that when a Republican president is in serious legal trouble, Bill Barr is the go-to guy.

For William Safire, it was déjà vu all over again. Four months earlier, referring to Iraqgate (Bush’s selling WMDs to Iraq), Safire opened his article, titled “Justice [Department] Corrupts Justice,” by writing:

“U.S. Attorney General William Barr, in rejecting the House Judiciary Committee’s call for a prosecutor not beholden to the Bush Administration to investigate the crimes of Iraqgate, has taken personal charge of the cover-up.”

Safire accused Barr of not only rigging the cover-up, but of being one of the criminals who could be prosecuted.

Barr, in other words, was apparently trying to keep himself out of jail every bit as much as he was trying to keep Bush out of jail.

“Mr. Barr,” wrote Safire in The New York Times in August of 1992, “...could face prosecution if it turns out that high Bush officials knew about Saddam Hussein’s perversion of our Agriculture export guarantees to finance his war machine.”

He added:

“They [Barr and colleagues] have a keen personal and political interest in seeing to it that the Department of Justice stays in safe, controllable Republican hands.”

Earlier in Bush’s administration, Barr had succeeded in blocking the appointment of an investigator or independent counsel to look into Iraqgate, as Safire repeatedly documented in the Times.

In December, Barr helped Bush block indictments from another independent counsel, Lawrence Walsh, and eliminated any risk that Reagan or George H.W. Bush would be held to account for Iran-Contra.

Walsh, wrote Johnston for the Times on Christmas Eve, “plans to review a 1986 campaign diary kept by Mr. Bush.” The diary would be the smoking gun that would nail Bush to the scandal.

“But,” noted the Times, “in a single stroke, Mr. Bush [at Barr’s suggestion] swept away one conviction, three guilty pleas and two pending cases, virtually decapitating what was left of Mr. Walsh’s effort, which began in 1986.”

And Walsh didn’t take it lying down.

The Times report noted that:

“Mr. Walsh bitterly condemned the President’s action, charging that ‘the Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed.’”

Independent Counsel Walsh added that the diary and notes he wanted to enter into a public trial of Weinberger represented:

“{E]vidence of a conspiracy among the highest ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public.”

The phrase “highest ranking” officials was apparently meant to included Reagan, Bush, and Barr himself.

Walsh had been fighting to get those documents ever since 1986, when he was first appointed and Reagan still had two years left in office. Bush’s and Weinberger’s refusal to turn them over, Johnston noted in the Times, could have, in Walsh’s words:

“[F]orestalled impeachment proceedings against President Reagan” through a pattern of “deception and obstruction.”

Barr successfully covered up the involvement of two Republican presidents—Reagan and Bush—in two separate and impeachable “high crimes,” one of them almost certainly treason involving the government of Iran. And now here was Trump taking bribes from Egypt.

Months after January, 1993, newly sworn-in President Clinton and the new Congress decided to put it all behind them and not pursue the matters any further.

Will Biden do the same, for both Trump and Barr? He’s publicly said that he’s going to let his new attorney general, Merrick Garland, make those kinds of decisions.

Or will the Biden administration direct the FBI to declassify and release the information they’ve gathered so far about Trump receiving a bribe from Turkey?

In the Senate, it’s up to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois to institute an investigation of Barr.

Will Bill Barr — and Donald Trump — ever be brought to justice?

That might depend on how often we raise the issue with our elected officials…

NOW READ: This Project 2025 architect is urging Republicans to be 'fearless' with far-right agenda

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thom

an 3 24 no lnx

Bill Barr laid the foundation for today’s MAGA movement

How Bill Barr laid the foundation for today’s MAGA movement

Thom Hartmann

March 11, 2024

With nepo-daughter-in-law Lara Trump taking over the GOP, Donald Trump has essentially declared the “old Republican Party” — the party of Reagan and Bill Barr — dead, arguing that it no longer exists in the form it’s taken since the 1970s.

At a Virginia rally a week ago Saturday, Trump said his neofascist MAGA movement has taken over the Republican Party, that it “represents 96%, and maybe 100%” of Republicans, and that, “We’re getting rid of the Romneys of the world. We want to get Romneys and those out.”

While many in the GOP love the nativist, authoritarian turn the party’s taken, others — like former Attorney General Bill Barr — are mourning the loss of the old guard, calling Trump’s actions “despicable” and “nauseating.”

But what is — or was — the old GOP that Bill Barr so loved?

While not as openly fascist as the MAGA movement, the Republican Party of the past five decades or so was frighteningly corrupt and based, itself, on lies and corruption.

Just this week, The New York Times revealed how Bill Barr apparently inserted himself into a Justice Department criminal investigation of a billion-dollar corporation for allegedly corruptly hiding their income offshore to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

As the Times notes:

“In the months leading up to the canceled interview in the Netherlands, Caterpillar had enlisted a small group of well-connected lawyers to plead the company’s case. Chief among those was William P. Barr, who had served as attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration.”

And, the Times reported, one of the lead investigators into Caterpillar’s tax avoidance scheme came right out and complained that because of Barr’s involvement:

“It appears that Caterpillar was given special political treatment that the average U.S. citizen cannot obtain.”

But helping out alleged tax cheats is just the tip of the iceberg of “old GOP” corruption and lies since the days of Nixon and Reagan.

— They lied that if we cut taxes on the morbidly rich, the benefits would “trickle down” to everybody else.

— They lied that if labor unions were destroyed, “job creators” would create “prosperity” and pay workers better.

— They lied that if “originalist” judges were put on the Supreme Court, the rights to vote, abortion, and birth control would be protected.

— They lied that Reagan’s 1983 decision to stop enforcing our anti-trust laws would make business “more efficient” and create opportunities for entrepreneurs and locally-owned businesses.

— They lied that if we forbade the federal government from negotiating drug prices, consumers and taxpayers would save money.

— They lied that if we privatized Medicare, like George W. Bush did in 2003 with his Medicare Advantage scam, the system would save money.

— They lied that racism was “over” in America with the election of Barack Obama, so if the Supreme Court simply let former Confederate states do whatever they wanted, there would be no more suppression and purging of Black voters.

Every one of those lies was intended to increase the wealth and power of the morbidly rich at the expense of average working-class Americans.

But most important, the Bill Barr old-school Republicans lied that they’d protect our democracy and bring honesty and integrity to American politics. Barr’s own history is probably the best example of how dangerous and destructive that lie has been.

The depth and breadth of Barr’s possible crimes against democracy while Attorney General for Trump are just now coming into clearer focus. We shouldn’t be surprised: like Ghostbusters, Bill Barr has been the “Who ya gonna call?” guy for Republican presidents committing treason for over 30 years.

Most people know that when the Mueller investigation was completed — documenting ten prosecutable cases of Donald Trump personally engaging in criminal obstruction of justice and witness tampering to prevent the Mueller Report investigators from getting to the bottom of his 2016 connections to Russia — Barr buried the report for weeks while lying to the American people about its content.

(Merrick Garland, Barr’s heir to the AG job, is still hiding large parts of the report from the American people, another reason President Biden should replace him.)

While shocking, this was not Bill Barr‘s first time playing cover-up for a Republican president who’d committed crimes that could rise to the level of treason against America.

He’s the exemplar of the “old GOP” that helped Nixon cut a deal to prolong the Vietnam War in 1968, worked with Reagan in 1980 to sell weapons to Iran in exchange for holding the hostages to screw Jimmy Carter, and stole the 2000 election from Al Gore in Jeb Bush’s Florida.

Instead of today’s GOP, exemplified by Nazi marches, white trash like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and racist rhetoric against immigrants, Barr’s “old GOP” committed their crimes wearing $2000 tailored suits and manipulating the law to their advantage.

For example, back in 1992, the first time Bill Barr was U.S. Attorney General, iconic New York Times writer William Safire referred to him as “Coverup-General Barr” because of his role in burying evidence of then-President George H.W. Bush’s involvement in Reagan’s scheme to steal the 1980 election through what the media euphemistically called “Iron-Contra.”

On Christmas day of 1992, the New York Times featured a screaming all-caps headline across the top of its front page: Attorney General Bill Barr had covered up evidence of crimes by Reagan and Bush in the Iran-Contra “scandal.” (see the bottom of this article)

Earlier that week of Christmas, 1992, George H.W. Bush was on his way out of office. Bill Clinton had won the White House the month before, and in a few weeks would be sworn in as president.

But Bush Senior’s biggest concern wasn’t that he’d have to leave the White House to retire back to one of his million-dollar mansions in Connecticut, Maine, or Texas: instead, he was worried that he may face time in a federal prison after he left office, a concern nearly identical to what Richard Nixon faced when he decided to resign to avoid prosecution.

Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh was closing in fast on Bush and Reagan, and Bush’s private records, subpoenaed by the independent counsel’s office, were the key to it all.

Walsh had been appointed independent counsel in 1986 to investigate the Iran-Contra activities of the Reagan administration and determine if crimes had been committed.

Was the criminal Iran-Contra conspiracy limited, as Reagan and Bush insisted (and Reagan said on TV), to later years in the Reagan presidency, in response to an obscure hostage-taking in Lebanon?

In the years since then, the President of Iran in 1980, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, has gone on the record saying that the Reagan campaign reached out to Iran to hold the hostages in exchange for weapons.

“Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan,” President Bani-Sadr told the Christian Science Monitor in 2013, “had organized a clandestine negotiation, later known as the ‘October Surprise,’ which prevented the attempts by myself and then-US President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 US presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped the results of the election in favor of Reagan.”

That wouldn’t have been just an impeachable and imprisionable crime: it was every bit as much treason as when Richard Nixon blew up LBJ’s 1968 peace talks with North and South Vietnam to win that November’s election against Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

Elliott Abrams had already been convicted of withholding evidence about it from Congress, and he may have even more information, too, if it could be pried out of him before he went to prison. But Abrams was keeping mum, apparently anticipating a pardon.

This was the moment the “old GOP” was at the height of its power and prestige, and Bush and Barr weren’t about to let it be exposed for the criminal enterprise that the “party of Lincoln” had become.

Weinberger, trying to avoid jail himself, was preparing to testify that Bush knew about the deal to hold the hostages and even participated in it, and Walsh had already, based on information he’d obtained from the investigation into Weinberger, demanded that Bush turn over his diary from the campaign. He was also again hot on the trail of Abrams.

So Bush called in his attorney general, Bill Barr — the respectable scion of the “old GOP” — and asked his advice.

At that point Barr, along with Bush, was already up to his eyeballs in cover-ups of other shady behavior by the Reagan administration.

Safire had started referring to Barr as “Coverup-General” in the midst of another scandal — Bush illegally selling weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein — because the Attorney General was already covering up for Bush, Weinberger, and others in the Reagan administration with a scandal the newspapers called “Iraqgate.”

Ironically, that illegal sale of weapons to Saddam Hussein in the late 1980s and early 1990s was cited by George W. Bush, Bush’s son, as part of his justification for illegally invading Iraq in 2003.

On October 19, 1992, Safire wrote in The New York Times of Barr’s unwillingness to appoint an independent counsel to look into Iraqgate:

Now, just short of two months later, Bush was asking Barr for advice on how to avoid another very serious charge in the Iran-Contra crimes they committed to defeat Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election. How, he wanted to know, could they shut down Walsh’s investigation before Walsh’s lawyers got their hands on Bush’s diary?

Turns out, Barr was right in the middle of it.

Which is exactly what Bush did, on Christmas Eve when most Americans were with family instead of watching the news. The holiday notwithstanding, the result was explosive.

America knew that both Reagan and Bush were up to their necks in the Iran-Contra hostages-for-weapons scandal, and Democrats had been talking about treason, impeachment, or worse.

The independent counsel had already obtained one conviction, three guilty pleas, and two other individuals were lined up for prosecution in the case that lost Jimmy Carter the White House. And Walsh was closing in fast on Bush himself.

The second paragraph of the Times story by David Johnston laid it out:

History shows that when a Republican president is in serious legal trouble, the “old GOP’s” go-to guy was Bill Barr.

For William Safire, Iran-Contra was déjà vu all over again. Four months earlier, referring to Iraqgate (Bush’s criminally selling WMDs to Iraq), Safire opened his article, titled “Justice [Department] Corrupts Justice,” by writing:

Safire accused Barr of not only rigging the cover-up, but of being one of the criminals who could be prosecuted.

He added:

“They [Barr and colleagues] have a keen personal and political interest in seeing to it that the Department of Justice stays in safe, controllable Republican hands.”

Earlier in Bush’s administration, Barr had succeeded in blocking the appointment of an investigator or independent counsel to look into Iraqgate, as Safire repeatedly documented in the Times.

In December, Barr helped Bush block indictments from another independent counsel, Lawrence Walsh, and eliminated any risk that Reagan or George H.W. Bush would be held to account for Iran-Contra.

Walsh, wrote Johnston for the Times on Christmas Eve, “plans to review a campaign diary kept by Mr. Bush.” The diary would be the smoking gun that would nail Bush to the scandal.

And Walsh didn’t take it lying down. The Times report noted that:

“Mr. Walsh bitterly condemned the President’s action, charging that ‘the Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed.’”

Independent Counsel Walsh added that the diary and notes he wanted to enter into a public trial of Weinberger represented:

“{E]vidence of a conspiracy among the highest ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public.”

The phrase “highest ranking” officials almost certainly included Reagan, Bush, and Barr himself.

Walsh had been fighting to get those documents ever since 1986, when he was appointed and Reagan still had two years left in office. Bush’s and Weinberger’s refusal to turn them over, Johnston noted in the Times, could have, in Walsh’s words:

“[F]orestalled impeachment proceedings against President Reagan” through a pattern of “deception and obstruction.”

Back in the 1990s, Barr successfully covered up the involvement of two Republican presidents — Reagan and Bush — in two separate and impeachable “high crimes,” one of them almost certainly treason committed just to win a presidential election.

And now we learn he apparently went so far as to cover up Trump’s involvement with Putin, leading to multiple opportunities for Trump to extort Ukraine and pass sensitive intelligence along to Russia.

Trump is proudly proclaiming that Barr’s old GOP is dead, replaced by the hateful, nativist MAGA movement. Old-school Republicans are wringing their hands, and some are even leaving the party.

But is the difference really that big?

The corrupt “old GOP” merely laid the foundation for today’s MAGA movement: in many ways Trump was the inevitable next step, after 50-plus years of catering to the morbidly rich while taking a meat-axe to voting rights and the rule of law.

Don’t be fooled: the crocodile tears of those like Bill Barr and the “ex-Republicans” who fill the cable airwaves daily longing for a return of their “Grand Old Party” are every bit the con of Iran-Contra, Bush v Gore, and Citizens United.

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1 24 ymail

Trump henchman and former Attorney General Bill Barr has just published a propaganda piece in the right-wing opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, accusing MoveOn of engaging in an unlawful, Russian-style criminal conspiracy against American democracy and supporting efforts to investigate No Labels' "most serious allegations" against us.²

Barr is attacking MoveOn for organizing to expose a plot by No Labels, a billionaire-backed dark-money political slush fund, and their effort that would reinstall Trump in the White House.

We won't be silenced. But MoveOn's 2024 budget did not account for a potential legal fight with a billionaire-backed organization, and now it's escalating with Trump's former attorney general calling on the Justice Department—which he used to lead—to investigate the baseless allegations.

Although the allegations have no merit, now that Barr has raised them in The Wall Street Journal, we frankly cannot fully anticipate what may happen next, as the attack on MoveOn gets even more of a foothold among MAGA leaders and the MAGA movement. As we enter a critical election year, we cannot afford to pull a cent away from our campaign to defeat Trump and stop his fascist plans. Which is where you come in.

Barr will make any argument—no matter how absurd—to distract from the fact that No Labels is a dark-money group, funded by Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch; Harlan Crow, a Nazi memorabilia collector and benefactor of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's lavish lifestyle; billionaire investor Nelson Peltz, a major Trump backer; and other donors whose identities remain secret.^3,4,5

In Maine, there were numerous complaints of No Labels misleading voters, tricking them into changing their party registration.6 And, in Rhode Island, No Labels' petition papers were referred to the local police department because their organizers may have forged the signatures of dead people.⁷ Dead people!

Barr is silent on all of that. Instead, the same man who misled the nation about the Mueller report, dropped federal charges against Trump ally Michael Flynn, and personally ordered police and federal agents to clear out innocent protesters outside the White House, accuses MoveOn and our allies of pushing America to be more like Russia.^8,9,10

Of course, this is no surprise. The constant drumbeat of attacks is part of a billionaire-backed effort to exhaust, intimidate, and harass us into silence—and to force critics like us, those who are speaking truth to power, to drain their financial resources.

Expect far, far more of this if Trump gets a second term. We can't let it happen. And with your help, we won't.

Billionaires already buy our elections—in secret and with few limits since the Citizens United ruling.

The Wall Street Journal piece is just another example of how Trump and his henchmen want to have it both ways: They want to illegally funnel unlimited sums from secret fat-cat donors into our electoral system but then cry out for "democracy," "fairness," and rights for "rival political parties" when it suits their interests.

Expect far more hypocrisy and yes, investigations of MoveOn and others on the left if Trump gets a second term. It's terrifying but true. We will never back down, but the best defense is a good offense.

MoveOn's 2024 budget did not account for the potential legal costs to come. These costs could be astronomical, and the legal proceedings could take years, but we cannot allow this billionaire-backed effort, which is just a small preview of what a second Trump term would look like, to distract us in an election year where MoveOn must go all-in to defeat Trump and stop his fascist plans in their tracks...

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Bannon’s “War Room” is the media home of Project 2025 and Trump’s retribution plans

Bannon’s show is a staging ground for Trump’s plans to gut the civil service and normalize deploying the military against civilians

WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM JACINA HOLLINS-BORGES

PUBLISHED 11/09/23

The podcast hosted by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is the media home of a sprawling right-wing effort, known as Project 2025, that’s designed to prepare policy papers and staffing assignments should a Republican win the presidency in next year’s election.

Bannon’s show, War Room, is a hub of election denialism, anti-immigrant bigotry, and promises to carry out retribution against insufficiently loyal Republicans — all hallmarks of former President Donald Trump’s first term in office and his campaign to retake the White House. Although Bannon has at times found himself isolated from Trump, he is once again “one of Trump’s most important advisers,” according to ABC News’ Jonathan Karl.

As a leading advocate for the MAGA wing of the conservative movement, Bannon has been a champion of Project 2025, organized by the increasingly far-right think tank The Heritage Foundation. The initiative has brought together more than 80 groups to provide hard-right personnel and white paper proposals for Trump — or another Republican administration — should he win next November.

According to The Washington Post, Trump and his allies at Project 2025 “have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.”

From his perch at War Room, Bannon has sought to normalize all of those ideas: deploying the military against protesters, weaponizing the Department of Justice against critics, and replacing the federal civil service with loyalist reactionaries.

Jeffrey Clark, who Trump attempted to install as acting attorney general in January 2021, has been on War Room several times this year and is also reportedly “leading the work on the Insurrection Act under Project 2025,” according to the Post. A Heritage spokesperson told the Post that “there are no plans within Project 2025 related to the Insurrection Act or targeting political enemies.”

Heritage’s denial notwithstanding, Clark — who is widely believed to be an unindicted co-conspirator in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment against Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 election — has a record of supporting the use of the military to quash dissent. In July, Clark appeared on War Room to explain how he had advocated for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act in response to the racial justice protests in the summer of 2020.

:{:{Video}:

CitationFrom the July 3, 2023, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

“I was actually summoned up to a meeting, you know, to discuss how to proceed in terms of that — what I would call an insurrection, because it was happening night after night,” Clark recalled to Bannon.

“Remember that [former Attorney General William] Barr is the one who had participated, when he was attorney general, in using the Insurrection Act against the L.A. riots, after the Rodney King case,” Clark said. “Why wasn’t that same aggressiveness used against the riots that were all across the country in the summer of 2020?”

Referring to a memo he’d written to Barr that included “some very creative ideas about how to enforce the law against those rioters,” Clark added, “If you want to see the legal advice I gave, it’s all blacked out,” strongly suggesting he’d supported deploying the military against civilian protesters.

The next month, Smith indicted Trump for his actions to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Clark was reportedly referred to in the indictment as “unindicted co-conspirator 4,” and is alleged to have suggested Trump use the military against civilians. On January 3, 2021, White House Council Patrick Philbin told Clark — who had just accepted the job of acting attorney general — that if the Trump-Clark coup plans went forward, “there would be riots in every major city in the United States."

“Well … that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act,” Clark responded.

In the Bannon interview from July, Clark also rejected the conventional wisdom that the Department of Justice is — or should be — independent from political pressure from the White House. In Clark’s telling, the DOJ shouldn’t be walled off, as it has been by most presidents following Richard Nixon’s targeting of his enemies during the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s.

:{:{Video}:

CitationFrom the July 3, 2023, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Past administrations put in “post-Watergate ‘norms’ that say the president actually can’t make decisions about law enforcement,” Clark said. “It’s ridiculous, it’s unconstitutional, and the reason why they’re having a meltdown, Steve, is that the queen position in the administrative state is the Justice Department.”

“To say that the Justice Department is not independent is sort of the ultimate heresy,” Clark added. “This is all just post-Watergate ‘norms.’ Who cares about post-Watergate norms?”

Clark is a fellow at the Center for Renewing America, a MAGA-aligned think tank run by Christian nationalist Russ Vought — another major player in Project 2025 and frequent War Room guest. Vought wrote the second chapter of Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership,” a combination manifesto and outline detailing how the coalition would approach the next Republican administration. In his chapter, Vought levies a broad critique of career staffers at executive branch departments and agencies, writing that “many agencies are not only too big and powerful, but also increasingly weaponized against the public and a President who is elected by the people and empowered by the Constitution to govern.”

Vought’s argument flows directly from Bannon’s long-running goal of a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” In an interview on War Room, Vought advocated for a change to budgeting rules that would allow Congress to target individual government workers, potentially canceling their funding, slashing their salary, or even firing them. He’s also a proponent of using so-called “Schedule F” to reclassify federal employees as at-will workers, an open attack on public unions and career staffers.”

Vought is especially interested in remaking the DOJ into a more explicitly reactionary institution, and his think tank has been clear that its goal is to unleash the FBI against its political enemies. As he told the Post: “You need an attorney general and a White House Counsel’s Office that don’t view themselves as trying to protect the department from the president.”

On November 6, Bannon floated a name for attorney general who would fit the bill: “Jeff Clark, you're on the short list of being attorney general for Trump, and I mean the very short list.” Bannon pitched Clark for the role at least once earlier this year and has suggested disgraced former national security advisor and QAnon adherent Michael Flynn serve as secretary of defense.

Bannon isn’t just engaging in a fantasy football-style draft though — he has interviewed Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025, several times this year. Although that’s a long way from installing Flynn as secretary of defense, it’s a sign that Bannon’s personnel preferences shouldn’t be dismissed simply as the rantings of a crank.

:{:{Video}:

CitationFrom the June 16, 2023, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

“Let me just say to the [War Room] posse: The posse has landed at Heritage, and, you know, I really respect what your program does,” Dans gushed during an appearance in June. “I’ve been a devotee since 2020.”

Dans added, with a hat tip to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts: “He brought me in in April. I started playing the War Room in May. We learned the word ‘based,’ and it's been spreading around the building. But we’re really taking over and infusing America First throughout the whole movement.”

Dans was back on the show in September with a promise to decimate the federal civil service by firing thousands of workers. “With 2025, we’re going to flood the zone,” Dans said, “It’s going to be more than 3,000 people.”

“Schedule F is one of our tools, but really the proposition of Schedule F is just saying: Look, when you come into the office, federal worker, each morning, and you’re in charge of policy, you’re not guaranteed your job when you walk out that afternoon,” Dans continued, “You have to perform. You’re going to become an at-will employee like the rest of us in real life, you know? Let’s make it look a lot more like America."

“Amen,” Bannon repeated as Dans spoke.

According to the Post, one of the top goals of another Trump administration and Project 2025 is investigating “onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former Attorney General William P. Barr.” War Room frequently indulges in these impulses.

On June 12, Bannon baselessly argued that FBI director Christopher Wray and former Attorney General Bill Barr had suppressed evidence that proved Joe Biden and his family had committed financial crimes, thereby installing him in the presidency as the result of an illegitimate election.

“You are freaking guilty of treason,” Bannon said, addressing an imaginary Barr.

Back in January, former Trump advisor and right-wing pundit Sebastian Gorka went after Kelly on War Room. “You are an insult to Quantico,” Gorka said, referring to the Marine base. “You were never a Marine.”

“Go to hell, John Kelly,” he concluded.

“Wow,” Bannon responded.

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an 223

One of the most mysterious chapters of former Attorney General Bill Barr's tenure at the Department of Justice got a little sunlight last week when the New York Times published a deeply reported piece on the Durham Investigation, Donald Trump's "investigation of the Mueller investigation." We knew that Special Counsel John Durham, a man whose reputation was one of seriousness and rectitude, had only brought two prosecutions but failed to win convictions in both. And we knew that there had been turmoil in his office with several people resigning at what seemed to be pivotal moments in the case. But, until now, we didn't know the details — and they are explosive.

The Times story, reportedby Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman and Katie Benner,essentially reveals that the investigation which was supposed to blow the lid off of the Russia investigation by proving that it was a "partisan witch hunt," was itself a witch hunt — only on behalf of Trump. Barr was enabling and covering for Trump throughout his tenure as we saw with his preemptive press conference to diminish the Mueller Report and mislead the public as to its conclusions and his willingness to back Trump's strategy to discredit Vote-By Mail during the 2020 campaign. Even when he finally deserted the sinking ship in December of 2020, his letter of resignation showered Trump with praise even as he knew he was plotting to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power. But the Durham investigation was his personal project and it turns out that it was a monstrous abuse of power.

The whole point of naming a Special Counsel is to remove the taint of political interference by keeping a distance between the politically appointed Attorney General and the investigation. Barr did not do that. In fact, he directly participated in the probe by traveling overseas to the United Kingdom and Italy with Durham to interrogate their intelligence officials about whether they helped American investigators frame Trump which apparently offended them to no end since they did nothing of the sort. Durham and Barr became bosom buddies, throwing back scotch together at the end of the work day and having dinner on a regular basis. And Barr, who was convinced that the CIA had created the whole "Russia hoax," eagerly ran interference with the Intelligence agencies for him as needed. Evidently, Durham was very taken with Barr and agreed from the get-go that Trump had been set up.

We had previously heard that Barr and Durham went to Italy on some sort of Hardy Boys expedition, but now we learn that they had been told by Italian authorities about some very credible information that Trump had committed serious financial crimes. Barr and Durham realized that it wasn't something they could completely ignore (as much as they probably wanted to) so Barr assigned that case to Durham instead of another prosecutor and opened a criminal investigation. This was then leaked to the public in a way that implied they had found evidence of criminal behavior on the part of the FBI, the intelligence agencies or possibly even Hillary Clinton. They certainly didn't let on that they were investigating Trump.

From what we know, Durham quietly closed that "investigation" without much fuss. Considering the rest of their behavior one can't help but suspect that he and Barr either didn't look too closely or decided that revealing Trump's crimes wasn't worth jeopardizing their crusade to expose the "deep state."

This is stunningly unethical behavior by an Attorney General. But we shouldn't be too surprised. After all, Barr got the job in the first place by sending an unsolicited letter to Trump in which he criticized the Mueller investigation by claiming that a president can't obstruct justice. In fact, Barr pretty clearly believes former president Richard Nixon's famous line "when a president does it it's not illegal" since his view, accordingto legal expert Marty Lederman, was that "the president has absolute constitutional authority over actions by executive branch officers in carrying out law enforcement powers given to them by Congress." If you ever wondered where Trump got the idea that the Constitution gave him the power to "do whatever I want," look no further than Bill Barr.

He and Durham colluded together for months and came up with zilch. There simply was no evidence that the FBI, DOJ, CIA or the Mueller team had done anything untoward. But that didn't stop Durham. He decided to focus on Trump's bête noire Hillary Clinton and he brought a couple of cases designed to show that she set Trump up with bogus claims of Russian collusion. That blew up in his face too. He's still in business today doing what we don't know, yet Attorney General Merrick Garland doesn't seem to be willing to pull the plug.

As a New York Times op-ed by David Firestone points out, this exposè pretty much destroys Barr's attempt to rehabilitate himself with the public. He famously dissed Trump repeatedly in his January 6 Committee testimony andwrote a book in which he turns on his former boss, calling him "detached from reality" and urging Republicans not to nominate him for the presidency in 2024. But he narrows his criticism to the post-election period conveniently forgetting the previous four years of incompetence, corruption and mental instability which Barr encouraged. It's a little too little and way too late.

Unfortunately, while Barr's lame attempt at rehabilitation may have finally been put on ice by these latest revelations, the conspiracy theories that fueled it have not. As Firestone notes:

Republicans in the House are launching a new snipe hunt for proof that these same government offices were "weaponized" against conservatives, an expedition that is likely to be no more effective than Mr. Durham's and Mr. Barr's.

In fact, now that I think about it, this might be the one thing that will make Bill Barr and John Durham look good by comparison. These House extremists will air every half baked, fever dream of twitter randos and QAnon weirdos in public hearings and present them as facts. At least Barr and Durham mostly kept their conspiracy theories to themselves over scotch and prime rib. That's about the best you can say for them

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his name came up in something i think jan 6 related but i did not trans here 4 22

will testify?

did:

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/trump-bill-barr-he-sucked/

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an 1 23

For months, Fox News and other right-wing media outlets relentlessly hyped former special counselJohn Durham’s probe of the Russia investigation. Durham, appointed by former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, conducted what was essentially an investigation of an investigation. And Fox News pundits, along with former President Donald Trump, predicted that the probe would be seriously damaging to prominent Democrats.

But when Durham finally delivered his final report for the probe, it was hardly the total annihilation of Democrats that Fox News hosts were expecting. Liberal pundits on MSNBC were quick to describe Durham’s findings as mostly a “nothingburger.” And according to reporting in the**New York Times, Durham’s investigation included some questionable Russian sources.

Rolling Stone’s Nikki McCann Ramirez describes those Russian sources as “sketchy,” and she argues that House Republicans will probably “ignore” Durham’s probe when they conduct their new select committee on the “weaponization of the federal government.”

Ramirez explains, “Earlier this month, Kevin McCarthy announced the creation of a new ‘weaponization of the federal government’ select committee aimed at investigating overreach by the Justice Department. One case that House Republicans are likely to ignore is special counsel John Durham’s probe into the Russia investigation, despite the New York Times reporting on Thursday, (January 26) that Durham and former Attorney General Bill Barr, who appointed him, may have abused their investigative powers in a litany of ways, including by using sketchy Russian intelligence to gain access to the e-mails of an aide to Hungarian billionaire George Soros, a frequent target of right-wing conspiracies.”

The Rolling Stone journalist points out that according to the New York Times’ reporting, Durham “seized on dubious Russian intelligence memos in order to target Leonard Benardo, the executive vice president of Soros’ Open Society Foundations.”

“According to interviews conducted by the Times,” Ramirez observes, "despite significant factual inconsistencies in the memos being raised by investigators, the special counsel reportedly went to great lengths to obtain information on the contents of Benardo’s e-mails. When a judge struck down a request from his office to access the information, citing a lack of evidence compelling enough to overwrite privacy laws, Durham reportedly attempted to circumvent her decision through a grand jury. While the Times was unable to ascertain if Benardo was subpoenaed by Durham, he did voluntarily provide the special counsel with the requested information.”

Ramirez describes Durham’s investigation as “primarily a giant waste of time and resources.”

“It’s the exact type of partisan witch hunt one might think a House committee on the ‘weaponization of the federal government’ might want to investigate, but Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who will run the subcommittee, is unlikely to bring it to the table,” Ramirez writes. “Jordan, a devout Trump loyalist, repeatedly lauded the Durham investigation, and publicly affirmed his belief that the probe would result in criminal penalties for those under Barr and Durham’s scrutiny.”

Read Rolling Stone’s full article at this link.

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1 23 badash

Legal experts are now weighing in on Thursday’s bombshell, massive and months-long reporting from The New York Times that reveals, among several previously unknown allegations, that then-Attorney General Bill Barr and his special counsel, John Durham were handed apparent evidence of suspicious financial acts by Donald Trump, and proceeded to create a false public narrative that Durham’s investigation found evidence of “suspicious financial dealings” related to Trump, suggesting it was on the part of the FBI, not the president, in order to protect the president.

“On one of Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham’s trips to Europe,” The Times reveals, “according to people familiar with the matter, Italian officials — while denying any role in setting off the Russia investigation — unexpectedly offered a potentially explosive tip linking Mr. Trump to certain suspected financial crimes.”

The Times adds that “Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump.”

“Mr. Durham never filed charges, and it remains unclear what level of an investigation it was, what steps he took, what he learned and whether anyone at the White House ever found out. The extraordinary fact that Mr. Durham opened a criminal investigation that included scrutinizing Mr. Trump has remained secret.”

Until now.

Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law expert who literally wrote the book on the U.S. Constitution, calls the Times’ report “jaw-dropping.”

“When Durham unexpectedly found evidence of crimes committed BY rather than AGAINST Trump, he and Barr deliberately deceived the nation into thinking the opposite! This deep dive by the NYT is as jaw-dropping as anything I’ve read in the past decade,” Tribe says.

Law professor and former President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) Sherrilyn Ifill, one of TIME’s 2021 most influential people in the world, accused Barr of “gaslighting” the public.

“Every line of this article must be read,” Ifill implored. “Horrifying breaches of professional ethics, misuse of DOJ investigative resources, and deliberate lies to, and gaslighting of the public. A grotesque perversion of the appropriate role of Attorney General.”

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, the well-known MSNBC legal contributor and professor of law, also calls it “jaw dropping.”

“Jaw dropping reporting. Lots here including an explanation of why Durham’s colleague resigned: under pressure from Barr to release an ‘interim’ report damaging Clinton & the FBI as the election drew near, Durham had a draft prepared that wasn’t factual,” she says.

Andrew Weissman, the former General Counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who spent 20 years at DOJ, including working under Special Counsel Robert Mueller, calls Barr “corrupt.”

“Can anyone really be surprised by this?” he asks. “Barr was just so corrupt and so corrupted the DOJ.”

MSNBC legal analyst Jill Wine-Banks, a former Watergate prosecutor and the first woman to serve as US General Counsel of the Army was troubled by the picture The Times painted of how close Barr and Durham were, when special counsels are supposed to have great autonomy and not be shaded by any Attorney General interference.

“Even more troubling than Barr and Durham frequently having drinks and discussing the investigation is the fact that the only crime they discovered on their foreign trip was Italian intel about crimes by Trump,” she says via Twitter. “I want to know the status of that investigation!”

Some legal experts lament that despite the bombshells in The Times’ report, it appears nothing will come of it – certainly nothing from the House Republicans.

Former Associate White House Counsel Ian Bassin sardonically asks, “Surely McCarthy and Jim Jordan’s new Select Committee on ‘the Weaponization of the Federal Government’ will focus on this story and the actions of Bill Barr, John Durham and Donald Trump. Surely, right? Right?”

Wine-Banks also points to House Republicans’ new committee investigating what they claim is “weaponization” of the federal government.

“Barr’s relationship with Durham, his pressure on him to reach a certain result and their failure to follow up on Trump’s crime revealed during the investigation is what weaponization of the DOJ looks like — not what Republicans want to investigate now.”

Pete Strzok, who spent 26 years at the FBI including as Deputy Assistant Director of the Bureau’s Counterintelligence Division, and led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States election, speaks from experience.

“I can see Barr allowing the stunning amount of craziness (a gentle choice of word) described in this article,” he writes. “But does anyone in the current OAG or ODAG care about this? Durham has reported to AG Garland for twenty two (22) months now.”

“This,” Weissman adds separately, pointing to The Times article, “is all about the Trump weaponization of the DOJ – but we know that the House Rs won’t give a damn about it.”

---

an badash 1 23

Special counsel Robert Durham, appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr, uncovered possible financial crimes by Donald Trump but made no attempt to prosecute them, The New York Times reveals in massive, bombshell report published Thursday after a months-long investigation.

“Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it,” The Times’ Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman, and Katie Benner report.

The “potentially explosive tip linking Mr. Trump to certain suspected financial crimes” came during a trip Barr and Durham, his special counsel, took together. They “decided that the tip was too serious and credible to ignore.”

But, “Mr. Durham never filed charges, and it remains unclear what level of an investigation it was, what steps he took, what he learned and whether anyone at the White House ever found out. The extraordinary fact that Mr. Durham opened a criminal investigation that included scrutinizing Mr. Trump has remained secret.”

That’s just one aspect of The Times’ extensive and disturbing report.

It also reveals that there was little justification for Barr to install Durham as a special counsel to investigate what Trump wrongly maintained was an unjustifiable investigation into his ties to Russia.

In fact, The Times “found that the main thrust of the Durham inquiry was marked by some of the very same flaws — including a strained justification for opening it and its role in fueling partisan conspiracy theories that would never be charged in court — that Trump allies claim characterized the Russia investigation.”

In another shocking revelation, The Times reports Durham “used Russian intelligence memos — suspected by other U.S. officials of containing disinformation — to gain access to emails of an aide toGeorge Soros, the financier and philanthropist who is a favorite target of the American right and Russian state media.”

The Times does not explain how Durham obtained the Russian disinformation.

“Mr. Durham used grand jury powers to keep pursuing the emails even after a judge twice rejected his request for access to them. The emails yielded no evidence that Mr. Durham has cited in any case he pursued.”

Attorneys on Durham’s team apparently had significant qualms with his actions, leading at least two to resign.

“There were deeper internal fractures on the Durham team than previously known,” The Times reports. “The publicly unexplained resignation in 2020 of his No. 2 and longtime aide, Nora R. Dannehy, was the culmination of a series of disputes between them over prosecutorial ethics. A year later, two more prosecutors strongly objected to plans to indict a lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign based on evidence they warned was too flimsy, and one left the team in protest of Mr. Durham’s decision to proceed anyway. (A jury swiftly acquitted the lawyer.)”

BARR THREATENED NSA

The Times also reports that Attorney General Barr bought into Trump’s false claims that there had been “no collusion” between the Trump camp and Russia.

Importantly,The Times states point-blank that the Mueller Report “detailed ‘numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign,’ and it established both how Moscow had worked to help Mr. Trump win and how his campaign had expected to benefit from the foreign interference.”

According to The Times’ account, “soon after giving Mr. Durham his assignment,” in May of 2019, “Mr. Barr summoned the head of the National Security Agency, Paul M. Nakasone, to his office. In front of several aides, Mr. Barr demanded that the N.S.A. cooperate with the Durham inquiry.”

The NSA is a wholly separate entity from the Dept. of Justice. It is an agency under the Dept. of Defense and reports to the powerful Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

Barr apparently did not care, and, “repeating a sexual vulgarity, he warned that if the N.S.A. wronged him by not doing all it could to help Mr. Durham, Mr. Barr would do the same to the agency.”

DURHAM TRIED TO SCUTTLE A REPORT’S FINDING THAT TRUMP-RUSSIA INVESTIGATION WAS WARRANTED

“Mr. Durham’s team spent long hours combing the C.I.A.’s files but found no way to support the allegation” that the investigation into Trump and Russia was the result of some anti-Trump deep state operation.

Barr and Durham actually “traveled abroad together to press British and Italian officials to reveal everything their agencies had gleaned about the Trump campaign and relayed to the United States, but both allied governments denied they had done any such thing. Top British intelligence officials expressed indignation to their U.S. counterparts about the accusation, three former U.S. officials said.”

The Dept. of Justice’s Inspector General’s investigation found there was, in fact, sufficient cause for the DOJ to have opened up the Trump-Russia investigation, contrary to Barr’s personal beliefs.

So he tried to have that finding removed from the final report.

The Times reports that “the broader findings contradicted Mr. Trump’s accusations and the rationale for Mr. Durham’s inquiry,” which should have shut down what ultimately became Durham’s four-year long investigation that netted almost nothing.

The DOJ Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, “found no evidence that F.B.I. actions were politically motivated. And he concluded that the investigation’s basis — an Australian diplomat’s tip that a Trump campaign adviser had seemed to disclose advance knowledge that Russia would release hacked Democratic emails — had been sufficient to lawfully open it.”

So Barr tried to discredit Horowitz’s report.

“Minutes before the inspector general’s report went online, Mr. Barr issued a statement contradicting Mr. Horowitz’s major finding, declaring that the F.B.I. opened the investigation “on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient.” He would later tell Fox News that the investigation began “without any basis,” as if the diplomat’s tip never happened.”

Read the entire Times report here.

---

an 8 22 ah

Since leaving the White House, former President Donald Trump hasn’t been shy about lambasting former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr— who he now despises for refusing to go along with the Big Lie and Trump’s false, totally debunked claim that widespread voter fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election. Trump now views Barr as a Republican who, like former Vice President Mike Pence, didn’t have the courage to stick by him.

But before the election, Barr’s critics often slammed him for being a Trump loyalist who defended Trump vigorously after former Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivered his final report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Attorney Neal Katyal, in an op-ed published by the New York Times on August 30, offers some reasons why a recently released March 24, 2019 memo paints such a troubling picture of Barr and his relationship with then-President Trump.

The memo, released by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on August 21, details Barr’s justifications for the DOJ clearing Trump of obstruction charges. These days, Trump views Barr as a traitor to the MAGA cause. But in 2019, he praised Barr as someone who had the backbone to come through for him in a way that former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions didn’t.

“The memo released last week by the Justice Department closing the book on the report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election is a frightening document,” explains Katyal, a former solicitor genreal who is often featured as a legal expert on MSNBC. “Critics have rightly focused on its substance, slipshod legal analysis and omission of damning facts. But the process by which that memo, sent in March 2019, came to be is just as worrisome.”

The attorney continues, “Delivered to the attorney general at the time, Bill Barr, the memo was written by two political appointees in the Justice Department. Mr. Barr used the memo to go around the special counsel regulations and to clear President Donald Trump of obstruction of justice. If left to fester, this decision will have pernicious consequences for investigations of future high-level wrongdoing.”

Katyal goes on to offer some more reasons why he finds the March 24, 2019 memo so troubling.As Katyal sees it, the memo is an example of the United States’ system of checks and balances being undermined during the Trump years.

“The 2019 memo tendentiously argued that Mr. Trump committed no crimes — leaving the final decision on the matter to Republican-aligned appointees instead of to the independent special counsel,” Katyal notes. “The challenge in devising the regulations was to develop a framework for the prosecution of high-level executive branch officials — which is harder than it sounds, because the Constitution requires the executive branch to control prosecutions. So, we are left with one of the oldest philosophical problems: Who will guard the guardians?”

During Mueller’s investigation, many MAGA Republicans tried to paint him as a Democratic partisan — even though the former FBI director was a conservative and a lifelong Republican who had been on very friendly terms with the George W. Bush Administration. But during the Russian investigation, Mueller’s admirers often praised him for valuing country over party. When Democrats and Never Trump conservatives used the word “institutionalist” to describe Mueller in 2017 or 2018, it was meant as high praise.

A special counsel in a federal investigation, Katyal stresses, needs to be someone who is independent rather than partisan — which Special Counsel Mueller was. But Barr, Katyal laments, undermined Special Counsel Mueller’s work in the end.

“We created the role of special counsel to fill a void — to concentrate in one person responsibility and ultimate blame so that investigations would not be covered up from the get-go and to give that person independence from political pressure,” Katyal writes. “It is outrageous that Mr. Barr acted so brazenly in the face of this framework. The point of requiring a special counsel was to provide for an independent determination of any potential criminal wrongdoing by Mr. Trump. But the political appointees in his Justice Department took what was the most important part of that inquiry — the decision of whether he committed crimes — and grabbed it for themselves. This was a fundamental betrayal of the special counsel guidelines not for some principle, but because it protected their boss, Mr. Trump.”

---

ref

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/08/bill-barr-donald-trumpjustice-department-mueller-obstruction-memo

bill Barr played a starring role in the January 6 committee’s public hearings this summer when he declared in videotaped testimony that Donald Trump’s election fraud claims were “bullshit,” “completely bullshit,” “stupid,” “crazy,” “complete nonsense,” and “a great, great disservice to the country.” But it’s important to remember that for the majority of the time he was serving as attorney general, Barr operated the Justice Department like it was the 45th president’s personal law firm and his title was “chief footstool to Donald Trump.” Yes, whether he was claiming, with a straight face, that the FBI had violated Trump’s “civil liberties,” using the DOJ to try to kill a rape defamation suit against the president, or attempting to bury the “urgent“ whistle-blower report that became the basis of the House’s first impeachment proceedings against Trump, Barr made his loyalties very, very clear. But in case you needed further evidence that the former AG was a total hack, today’s your lucky day!

On Wednesday, the government released the 2019 DOJ memo Barr used as justification for not charging Trump with obstructing the Mueller investigation, despite the fact that the special counsel found numerous instances of obstruction by Trump that could have resulted in him being charged with a crime, from firing FBI director James Comey and telling a White House lawyer to fire Robert Mueller to warning witnesses not to flip. Yet the memo, which was written, at Barr’s request, by Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, and Ed O’Callaghan, the principal associate deputy attorney general, insist none of that was worth taking legal action, a conclusion they came to based on what some say was a twisting of facts and legal falsehoods.

For starters, the memo argues that obstruction charges are usually brought when an individual blocks the investigation and prosecution of an underlying crime, and since the Mueller probe did not establish one, they shouldn‘t charge Trump. That, of course, is not how the law works, which is why if you hide evidence from the cops about an attempted murder that didn’t actually result in someone being killed, you’d very likely still be in trouble. Then, there’s the memo writers’ claim that because other people didn’t go along with Trump‘s attempts to obstruct justice, he shouldn’t be charged. This is, once again, not how the law works!

As former Veterans Affairs employee and Mueller, She Wrote podcast host Allison Gill tweeted Wednesday, “That would be like if I told the getaway driver to blow up the bank and [if] they didn’t, I’m off the hook.” The memo also wildly asserts, without evidence, that Trump did the things he did, like asking White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller, “not for an illegal purpose, but rather because he believed the investigation was politically motivated and undermined his administration’s efforts to govern.” It also cites the fact that Trump never literally used the word fire to McGahn when he was talking about Mueller, probably because he operates like a mafia boss who speaks in code. (In sworn testimony, McGahn said Trump called him at home and told him “Mueller has to go” and “call me back when you do it.”) As for Trump then instructing McGahn to lie about trying to get Mueller fired, we already know the Barr DOJ’s thoughts there, given that while testifying, Barr told lawmakers it was “not a crime” for the president to demand staffers lie to investigators.

Responding to the memo on Twitter, Norm Eisen, an attorney and former U.S. ambassador, wrote: “No wonder a series of judges have slammed Barr for dishonesty in connection with all this. It’s garbage. Anyone else woulda been prosecuted. Barr should be disciplined.” Samuel Buell, a Duke University law professor and former prosecutor, told The New York Times: “It reads more like a defense lawyer’s brief than a full and balanced analysis citing the legal authorities.” Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor, described the memo as a “get out of jail free” card, telling The Times: “It’s hard to stomach a memo that amounts to saying someone is not guilty of obstruction for deliberately trying to induce witnesses not to cooperate with law enforcement in a major criminal investigation.”

Last year, two federal courts concluded that Barr had already decided not to charge Trump before commissioning the memo, and signed it after informing Congress of his decision. When it was released in redacted form in May 2021, Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote, “The agency’s redactions and incomplete explanations obfuscate the true purpose of the memorandum, and the excised portions belie the notion that it fell to the Attorney General to make a prosecution decision or that any such decision was on the table at any time. The fact that [Trump] would not be prosecuted was a given.”

---

steven Andrew Engel (born June 29, 1974)^[1][2] is an American lawyer. He served as the United States Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Donald Trump administration.^[3] Engel, who previously worked in the George W. Bush administration as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, was nominated by President Donald Trump on January 31, 2017, and confirmed on November 7, 2017.^[4] On January 20, 2021, he was succeeded by Christopher H. Schroeder, serving under the Biden Administration.^[5]

Early life and education

Engel was born on June 29, 1974, in New Hyde Park, New York, a Long Island suburb of New York City.^[1] He was raised in Port Washington, New York and graduated as valedictorian from Paul D. Schreiber Senior High School in 1992, earning a bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1996.^[1][6] From 1996–1997, Engel was a Knox Fellow at University of Cambridge.^[1][7][8] He was awarded a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 2000,^[1] and then clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, followed by a clerkship for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States.^[1][9][3]

Early career

Engel practiced law at Kirkland & Ellis from 2002 through 2006^[1] before serving as Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Office of Legal Counsel during the George W. Bush administration from 2006 through 2009.^[1] In June 2009, Engel became a partner at Dechert, an international law firm.^[7][6][3]

Office of Legal Counsel

On January 31, 2017, the White House announced that President Donald Trump intended to nominate Engel to serve as the Assistant Attorney General heading the Office of Legal Counsel.^[4][2] Engel's nomination was opposed by U.S. Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war who was tortured while in captivity. McCain cited Engel's involvement in commenting on and reviewing one of the so-called "Torture memos" that signed off on six different "enhanced interrogation techniques."^[10] Various human rights groups expressed concerns about Engel's nomination, also citing his involvement with the July 20, 2007, memo authored bySteven G. Bradbury, then-head of the OLC.^[11] The Senate Judiciary Committee received support for the nomination from former Attorneys General Mukasay and Gonzales, other former senior executive branch officials, and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association of the City of New York.^[12] Engel was confirmed by a 51–47 vote, largely along party lines with one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin (West Virginia), voting in favor of confirmation.^[13]

In November 2017, Engel issued an opinion supporting the President’s appointment of Mick Mulvaney as the Acting Director of the Consumer Finance Protection Board under the Vacancies Reform Act.^[14]

In April 2018, Engel approved airstrikes launched by President Trump against facilities associated with Syria’s chemical-weapons program without congressional authorization.^[15] In March 2019, Engel issued a memorandum to Attorney General William Barr making the determination that the evidence laid out in the Mueller report did not support the conclusion that then-President Trump committed obstruction of justice.^[16] (This memo was ordered released in May 2021, and was finally released in August 2022.^[17])

In May 2019, Engel issued an opinion concluding that the former White House Counsel, Don McGahn, was immune from compelled congressional testimony.^[18] The House Judiciary Committee challenged that decision, and Engel’s opinion was rejected by U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was later nominated by Joe Biden to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Jackson’s opinion was twice reversed by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit.^[19]

In June 2019, Engel issued an OLC opinion supporting the Justice Department's decision not to release Donald Trump's tax returns.^[20]

In September 2019, Engel authored the OLC opinion^[21] of the Justice Department to not forward the Trump–Ukraine scandal whistleblower complaint^[22] to Congress. The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency concluded that Engel's opinion had a "chilling effect on effective oversight" and was "wrong as a matter of law and policy"; urging him to withdraw or modify it.^[23][24][25] Engel responded that the opinion had simply applied the law as it was written and that it did not construe the statutory provisions protecting whistleblowers.^[26]

Engel's November 3, 2019 letter

In a letter dated November 3, 2019, Engel argued that White House advisors have "absolute immunity" from being subpoenaed to testify in theimpeachment inquiry against Donald Trump.^[27][28][29]

On September 9, 2020, President Donald Trump identified Engel among a list of potential future nominees to the Supreme Court.^[30]

In January 2021, after then-President Donald Trump's re-election bid failed, Trump undertook a number of unprecedented acts to overturn the 2020 election, including a pressure campaign to request the Justice Department to falsely claim fraud and invalidate the results of the election in key battleground states. Engel, along with Richard Donoghue and others, refused to carry out the scheme and reportedly threatened to resign if he replaced Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey B. Clark in an effort to overturn the election.^{[31][32][33][34][35][36]} On June 23, 2022, Engel testified in the fifth public hearing of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

Private practice

In May 2021, Dechert LLP announced that Engel had rejoined their law firm as a partner.^[37][38][39]

Constellation of Anti-Voting Groups Threaten Democracy

By Marc Elias

:{:{}:

August 18, 2022

https://www.democracydocket.com/news/a-constellation-of-anti-voting-groups-threaten-democracy/

republican leaders of the anti-voting movement recently held a “gourmet dinner” at an “undisclosed location” to discuss my voting rights litigation. The event was billed as the inaugural leadership dinner for a group called the Honest Elections Project. I was not invited to attend.

There is a constellation of well-funded, right-wing groups that use the legal and political system to make voting more difficult and free and fair elections less likely. They range from mere vote suppressors to full-on election deniers. Most oppose expanding voting rights and support strict voting laws. Many seek to gut the Voting Rights Act entirely; others want it interpreted so narrowly as to be ineffective. None of these organizations supported Congress’ efforts to enact new pro-voter legislation.

These right-wing groups work closely with the RNC and with state legislatures to advance anti-voting legislation.

:{:{}:

The American Constitutional Rights Union, Foundation for Government Accountability, Judicial Watch, Lawyers Democracy Fund, Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) and Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections are just a few of the groups fighting against voting rights in court. America First Legal Foundation, Election Integrity Network, Heritage Foundation and True the Vote also support anti-democracy legal efforts. The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council advances model anti-voting legislation for state legislatures.

We recently got a preview of how these groups will operationalize their legal efforts in court in the future. Earlier this year, a Florida federal judge struck down most of the state’s “Big Lie” voter suppression law. In doing so, the court found that Florida Republicans had intentionally discriminated against Black voters and had violated the constitutional rights of Floridians seeking to participate in the democratic process. On appeal, six national anti-voting groups filed separate “friend of the court” briefs opposing the lower court’s decision — in addition to the briefs by the state defendants and the Republican Party.

For many years, the Republican National Committee (RNC) was legally barred from participating in election monitoring or voter suppression efforts as a consequence of the GOP’s ugly history of targeting minority voters in the 1980s. When that bar was lifted in 2017, the RNC picked up where it had left off and ran so-called “election integrity” programs with state parties.

These anti-voting legal groups offer a path for Republicans to wield majority political power without majority support.

Now, in the post-Trump era, the RNC directly partners with voter suppression groups and efforts that two years ago would have been unthinkable. The party’s dismal court results following the 2020 election coupled with MAGA supporters’ distrust of the party establishment has left the GOP operating in the penumbra of the current stars of the election denier and voter suppression movement.

It’s not just what these groups do, but who runs them.

:{:{}:

On PILF’s board of directors, for example, are Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman,both of whom served as lawyers for former President Donald Trump. Mitchell participated in the infamous telephone call during which Trump demanded that the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) find 11,000 votes and declare Trump the winner. Eastman, who has been in the news recently for having a search warrant executed against him, helped craft the January 2021 insurrection plan.

The Honest Elections Project — the host of the secret dinner — was formed in February 2020 and is connected to Federalist Society founder Leonard Leo.

The newest of these groups, Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, was co-founded by former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr (R) and Karl Rove, who served as former senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.Casino billionaire Steve Wynn provides the organization’s financial backing as its finance chair.

This group is notably more competent and well-resourced than the legal buffoonery who led Trump’s post-election antics. Though I am no fan of Barr, he is unlikely to hire lawyers who claim Hugo Chávez rigged elections from the grave or threaten to release the mythological Kraken. With Rove on its board as well, Barr is almost certainly not going to hold press conferences in a landscaping parking lot.

Notably, the infrastructure on the right is eclipsing the organizations on the left.

:{:{}:

Historically, most organizations and resources dedicated to protecting the right to vote were connected to the left. Today there are still many important civil rights and voting rights organizations that bring litigation to protect the right to vote. Their work is invaluable. But most of those groups have broader portfolios that extend beyond voting rights and have insufficient resources to meet their growing needs.

What is notable about the right wing’s approach is the scope and interconnected nature of their legal efforts to undermine voting rights and free and fair elections.

Right-wing legal groups work in tandem with Republican legislatures dominated by election deniers. These organizations can help generate the most effective voter suppression policies that Republicans turn into laws. When those laws are challenged in court, the conservative legal groups then help defend them.

This brings me back to the “gourmet dinner” at an “undisclosed location” that I was not invited to attend. The right wing holds these events and funds these groups because they know that they cannot win fair elections. These anti-voting legal groups offer a path for Republicans to wield majority political power without majority support. They know that they lost in 2020. They are embarrassed that Trump was routed in post-election litigation. Some are upset that his coup failed on Jan. 6.

They set up new groups, hold secret dinners and create new voter suppression laws hoping that we will give up. I’m not sure what gave them that impression. After Trump was defeated in 2020, his team fought dozens of times in court — and lost. We didn’t give up then, and we certainly aren’t giving up now.

NEXT UP

Conservatives Have Been Packing the Courts for Years

We deserve a forward-thinking judiciary filled with movement lawyers who want to see progress for our nation.

---

ref

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/ex-trump-ag-barr-others-launch-republican-backed-election-law-group-2022-07-21/

no lnx

Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections was co-founded by Karl Rove, hotelier Steve Wynn and lawyer Bobby Burchfield

The group opposes courts intervening in state election laws

and has already filed briefs in court cases over new voting restrictions

(Reuters) - Prominent Republicans including former U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Thursday launched a new legal group they say is aimed at defending state legislatures’ right to set election laws.

The nonprofit group, Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, is also co-founded by longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove, hotel magnate and GOP donor Steve Wynn and attorney Bobby Burchfield, who last year resigned from the law firm King & Spalding.

Burchfield told Reuters Thursday that the group was created in response to expanding court fights over election laws. It has already filed two briefs in election law cases backing state legislatures' ability to change voting rules.

“We do not think the courts should be setting the rules for elections. We believe that’s the province of state legislatures,” Burchfield said.

He said the nonprofit is not a “foil” to Democratic lawyers like Marc Elias, who left law firm Perkins Coie last year to start his own practice regularly litigating over election laws.

The group is not affiliated with former President Donald Trump and does not support particular candidates, Burchfield said. He said the groups' members reject claims made by some other conservatives that the 2020 election is illegitimate due to mass voter fraud.

Elias on Thursday told Reuters he believes the new organization is "fundamentally about making voting harder and opposing voting rights." He said that the state laws the group defends are falsely premised on the idea that fraud is rampant in U.S. elections.

One of the group's briefs, filed in June before the Montana Supreme Court, supports reinstating several new voting laws blocked by a judge in March, including ones eliminating same-day voter registration and heightening voter identification requirements in the state. The court in May suspended that ruling but has not issued a final decision.

Represented by lawyers from Jones Day, the group also filed a brief Tuesday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit supporting a Republican-backed Florida law that restricts the use of drop boxes and third-party organizations' ability to collect voter registration forms. The court in May temporarily reinstated those measures after a lower court judge said they were racially discriminatory.

Wynn is the group's finance chair. It will also help others with a similar agenda through financial aid or "intellectual capital," by connecting them to lawyers, Burchfield said.

Burchfield last year represented the Republican National Committee and Trump’s reelection campaign in a pre-election legal challenge to North Carolina extending the deadline for receiving mail-in ballots in the 2020 race. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the case.

He was previously an outside ethics adviser to the Trump Organization but said Thursday he no longer holds that role.

Thomson Reuters

Jacqueline Thomsen, based in Washington, D.C., covers legal news related to policy, the courts and the legal profession. Follow her on Twitter at @jacq_thomsen and email her at jacqueline.thomsen@thomsonreuters.com.

---

see MM timeline:

...Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2020: In White House meetings, Meadows and President Trump express displeasure with Barr for telling news media the Justice Department had found no election fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election.

In the early afternoon, the Associated Press publishes an interview with Barr, in which the Attorney General said, “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

Barr attends a previously scheduled meeting with Meadows at 3:00 PM. Pat Cipollone joins the meeting. “Surprisingly to Barr, Meadows hated” the news story, but the chief of staff also seemed to acknowledge the election outcome, Leonnig and Rucker report.

President Trump hears Barr is in the White House and asks to see him. According to Leonnig and Rucker, President Trump yells at Barr about the AP report while Meadows is present. Present in the meeting as well are Will Levi, Barr’s chief of staff; Eric Herschmann, senior White House adviser (who earlier served as a personal attorney on Trump’s first impeachment team); and Pat Cipollone, White House Counsel. Bender described President Trump’s reaction in the meeting as a “volcanic eruption.”

Barr responds in the meeting by stating that Trump’s allegations of election fraud are completely false. Barr calls the allegations, “bullshit,” and that Trump’s legal team is a “clown show” (reporting by Leonnig and Rucker; Bender, Jonathan Karl. “No self-respecting lawyer is going anywhere near it. It’s just a joke. That’s why you are where you are,” Barr says in the meeting.}:

Leonnig and Rucker also report the following part of the exchange:

“Bill, did you say this?” Trump said, his voice sharp and quick. “Yeah,” Barr said. “I said it.”

“How could you say that?” Trump asked.

Barr replied that his statement was true, and that he was merely answering the reporter’s question.

“Why didn’t you just not answer the question?” Trump said.

Then the president, his voice getting higher, switched oddly to speak of himself in the third person.

“There’s no reason for you to have said this!” he said. “You must hate Trump!”

“We’ve looked into these things, and they’re nonsense,” Barr says in the meeting.

On the specifics, “It’s complete nonsense,” Barr says about an allegation that Pennsylvania ballots had been backdated, and that there was no evidence of ballot stuffing in Georgia. Barr also explains in detail why Trump’s allegations of fraud in Wayne County, Michigan were false. “There’s no evidence of substantial fraud that would change the election,” Barr reiterates.

“Meadows sat silently on the opposite side of the dining room, with his arms crossed, a posture that seemed to say, This is DOJ’s problem,” Leonnig and Rucker report (see also Karl). Cipollone, in contrast, “at one point interjected to tell the president that Barr’s department had been dutifully investigating the fraud claims.”

After Barr leaves the room, the president tells Meadows he had every reason to and should fire Barr (Leonnig and Rucker).

As indicated, the meeting is reported in three different books. “The details of this meeting were described to me by several people present,” Karl writes.

Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2020: Meadows asks Attorney General Barr to stay until the end of the term.

Meadows calls Barr early in the morning to ask him to stay until the end of the term. According to Bender, “Barr agreed, and immediately regretted it.” Barr resigned on Dec. 14 and was replaced by Jeffrey Rosen.

Karl reports the following exchange:

“I think there’s a way through this,” Meadows told him. He could prevent Trump from firing him, but he wanted an assurance from Barr that he wouldn’t resign. “Are you willing to stay?” Meadows asked.

“I’m not going to sandbag you,” Barr said. “I will give you a warning if I’m going to leave, and No. 2, I’ll stay as long as I’m needed.”

Friday, Dec. 11, 2020: Trump decides not to fire Gina Haspel, despite Meadows’ attempts to have her removed....

---

redemption tour? on back of Jan 8 hearings? hypocrite, throws Liu under the bus?

https://www.emptywheel.net/tag/jessie-liu/?print=print

jul 25

“THE BUCK STOPS AT THE TOP:” IN JANUARY, BILL BARR’S DOJ DECIDED THE CORRECT DECISION WAS TO SEND MIKE FLYNN TO PRISON

I’d like to make one more point about Billy Barr’s rant last night. Over and over again, Barr suggested that line prosecutors have been making hyper-aggressive decisions that the Department of Justice cannot answer for and that his involvement simply amounts to ensuring that the decisions DOJ makes are ones he’s willing to take responsibility for.

Indeed, aside from the importance of not fully decoupling law enforcement from the constraining and moderating forces of politics, devolving all authority down to the most junior officials does not even make sense as a matter of basic management. Name one successful organization where the lowest level employees’ decisions are deemed sacrosanct. There aren’t any. Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but it’s no way to run a federal agency. Good leaders at the Justice Department—as at any organization—need to trust and support their subordinates. But that does not mean blindly deferring to whatever those subordinates want to do.

This is what Presidents, the Congress, and the public expect. When something goes wrong at the Department of Justice, the buck stops at the top. 28 U.S.C. § 509 could not be plainer: “All functions of other officers of the Department of Justice and all functions of agencies and employees of the Department of Justice are vested in the Attorney General.”

And because I am ultimately accountable for every decision the Department makes, I have an obligation to ensure we make the correct ones. The Attorney General, the Assistant Attorneys General, and the U.S. Attorneys are not figureheads selected for their good looks and profound eloquence.

They are supervisors. Their job is to supervise. Anything less is an abdication.

To the extent Barr is talking about the Mueller investigation, every single prosecutorial decision was reviewed by Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. For those decisions, then, Barr’s not actually talking about decisions made by line prosecutors. He’s talking about decisions overseen by someone vested, like him, with all the authority of DOJ.

For precisely the reason Barr lays out — that DOJ must be able to answer for things DOJ does — it’s highly unusual for DOJ to flip-flop on prosecutorial decisions that past Attorneys General have approved.

But with one action in the Mike Flynn prosecution — possibly one he thought of when he invoked probation sentences in one of his last paragraphs — Barr’s interventions into the cases of Donald Trump’s flunkies is far worse than that.

In short, it is important for prosecutors at the Department of Justice to understand that their mission — above all others — is to do justice. That means following the letter of the law, and the spirit of fairness. Sometimes that will mean investing months or years in an investigation and then concluding it without criminal charges. Other times it will mean aggressively prosecuting a person through trial and then recommending a lenient sentence, perhaps even one with no incarceration.

In moving to dismiss Flynn’s prosecution, Barr was overriding a decision he himself had approved of. In January, DOJ called for prison time for Flynn, citing the materiality of his lies and his abuse of trust.

The defendant’s offense is serious, his characteristics and history present aggravating circumstances, and a sentence reflecting those factors is necessary to deter future criminal conduct. Similarly situated defendants have received terms of imprisonment.

Public office is a public trust. The defendant made multiple, material and false statements and omissions, to several DOJ entities, while serving as the President’s National Security Advisor and a senior member of the Presidential Transition Team. As the government represented to the Court at the initial sentencing hearing, the defendant’s offense was serious. See Gov’t Sent’g Mem. at 2; 12/18/2018 Hearing Tr. at 32 (the Court explaining that “[t]his crime is very serious”).

The integrity of our criminal justice depends on witnesses telling the truth. That is precisely why providing false statements to the government is a crime. As the Supreme Court has noted:

In this constitutional process of securing a witness’ testimony, perjury simply has no place whatsoever. Perjured testimony is an obvious and flagrant affront to the basic concepts of judicial proceedings. Effective restraints against this type of egregious offense are therefore imperative. The power of subpoena, broad as it is, and the power of contempt for refusing to answer, drastic as that is — and even the solemnity of the oath — cannot insure truthful answers. Hence, Congress has made the giving of false answers a criminal act punishable by severe penalties; in no other way can criminal conduct be flushed into the open where the law can deal with it.

United States v. Mandujano, 425 U.S. 564, 576 (1975); see also Nix v. Whiteside, 457 U.S. 157, 185 (1986) (“[t]his Court long ago noted: ‘All perjured relevant testimony is at war with justice, since it may produce a judgment not resting on truth.’”) (quoting In re Michael, 326 U.S. 224, 227 (1945)). All persons carry that solemn obligation to tell the truth, especially to the FBI.

The defendant’s repeated failure to fulfill his obligation to tell the truth merits a sentence within the applicable Guidelines range. As the Court has already found, his false statements to the FBI were material, regardless of the FBI’s knowledge of the substance of any of his conversations with the Russian Ambassador. See Mem. Opinion at 51-52. The topic of sanctions went to the heart of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation. Any effort to undermine those sanctions could have been evidence of links or coordination between the Trump Campaign and Russia. For similar reasons, the defendant’s false statements in his FARA filings were serious. His false statements and omissions deprived the public and the Trump Administration of the opportunity to learn about the Government of Turkey’s covert efforts to influence policy and opinion, including its efforts to remove a person legally residing in the United States.

The defendant’s conduct was more than just a series of lies; it was an abuse of trust.During the defendant’s pattern of criminal conduct, he was the National Security Advisor to the President of the United States, the former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General. He held a security clearance with access to the government’s most sensitive information. The only reason the Russian Ambassador contacted the defendant about the sanctions is because the defendant was the incoming National Security Advisor, and thus would soon wield influence and control over the United States’ foreign policy. That is the same reason the defendant’s fledgling company was paid over $500,000 to work on issues for Turkey. The defendant monetized his power and influence over our government, and lied to mask it.When the FBI and DOJ needed information that only the defendant could provide, because of that power and influence, he denied them that information. And so an official tasked with protecting our national security, instead compromised it.

This was no decision made by rogue line prosecutors, Brandon Van Grack and Jocelyn Ballantine. In December, Jessie Liu signed a request for an extension so that the “multiple individuals and entities” that had to approve the new sentencing recommendation could do so.

There are multiple individuals and entities who must review and approve the government’s submission, including any changes from the government’s prior sentencing memorandum and its specific sentencing recommendations.

And then again in January, Jessie Liu got an extension so the “multiple individuals and entities” who had to review the sentencing memo could do so.

As the government represented in its initial motion, there are multiple individuals and entities who must review and approve the government’s submission, including any changes from the government’s prior sentencing memorandum and its specific sentencing recommendations. The government has worked assiduously over the holidays to complete this task, but we find that we require an additional 24 hours to do so.

Bill Barr says he is responsible for making the correct decision, and his DOJ reviewed the decision to imprison Mike Flynn at length. Taking him at his word, that means Bill Barr believed, in January, knowing all the details that were “new” to Timothy Shea when he wrote his motion to dismiss, but not new to Michael Horowitz and John Durham, who had already reviewed them, that the correct decision was to send Mike Flynn to prison.

It’s bad enough that Barr has repeatedly refused to stand by decisions made by others imbued with the authority of the entire DOJ under 28 U.S.C. § 509.

But Bill Barr won’t even stand by his past decisions.

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unmask, flynn BS

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/bill-barr/

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sussman acquitted; 3 yrs vs 2 yrs mueller russiagate legit invest that ended in guilty pleas/convict.

https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/legal-experts-clown-show-prosecution/

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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michael-sussmann-trial-durham-verdict/?intcid=CNI-00-10aaa3b

5 22 stumbled on acquitted

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see spygate sussman

https://www.mediamatters.org/joe-rogan-experience/spotifys-joe-rogan-lies-durham-filing-shows-clinton-campaign-planted-evidence

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see flynn stone sentence fuckery:

https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/05/13/the-legal-posture-of-the-flynn-case-emmet-sullivan-has-up-to-six-pending-decisions-not-one/

tHE LEGAL POSTURE OF THE FLYNN CASE: EMMET SULLIVAN HAS UP TO SIX PENDING DECISIONS, NOT ONE

May 13, 2020/in 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

Partly as a public service (the vast majority of people who are commenting on DOJ’s actions seem to be unfamiliar with the docket) and partly to set up a post I will do attempting to explain why Billy Barr did something as aggressive as he did last week, I wanted to lay out where all the moving pieces in Mike Flynn’s case stand.

FLYNN BLOWS UP A PROBATION SENTENCING WITH MIXED CLAIMS ABOUT HIS PROSECUTION

Prosecutors first started moving towards sentencing Flynn in June 2018; it’s clear the investigation was still ongoing but they asked to have Flynn’s presentencing report filed so they could move quickly after that. We now know that this was days after Flynn testified to the grand jury in the Turkish influence peddling case. There were reports Flynn was anxious to be sentenced so he could start earning a living again and in this time period, he registered to start influence peddling again, before his lawyers got him to claim that was just a mistake. On September 17, 2018, prosecutors said they were ready to move towards sentencing and asked for a date starting in November, after the midterms. The hearing ultimately got scheduled for December 18, 2018, after Jeff Sessions had been fired and Trump had announced he would nominate Bill Barr to be Attorney General (he didn’t actually send the nomination to the Senate until January 3, 2019, for reasons that likely have to do with Matt Whitaker’s Vacancy Reform Act status).

At that point, prosecutors recommended a sentence within guidelines and a downward departure, which is consistent with probation. Had Flynn left well enough alone, he would have gotten a year of probation and he’d be free and clear of the justice system by now.

He didn’t leave well enough alone. He got cute, claiming to accept guilt but at the same time floating the first of his complaints about being perjury trapped by mean old FBI agents. In response, not only did Judge Emmet Sullivan release the documents that revealed Flynn lies were worse than known, but he put Flynn under oath, both to reallocute his guilty plea, but also to swear that he didn’t think the circumstances of his interview made him any less guilty. After Sullivan made it clear that if he sentenced Flynn that day, he’d give him prison time, Flynn decided to wait until he was done cooperating after testifying at his partner Bijan Kian’s trial.

On February 14, 2019, the day Billy Barr was confirmed, Flynn sent a tweet suggesting “the eagle had landed” to Matt Gaetz, whose assaults on the Mueller investigation he had previously cheered in 2018.

After Barr was confirmed, Mueller quickly moved to write up his report, which was completed on March 22 and released on April 19, 2019. Mueller did not close his office, however, until May 29, when he gave a hasty press conference even as the final outstanding piece of evidence — Roger Stone aide, Andrew Miller’s testimony — came in.

When Mueller testified before Congress two months later on July 24, the most newsworthy thing he said was that FBI was still investigating the counterintelligence impact of Mike Flynn’s lies.

[Congressman Raja] KRISHNAMOORTHI: For example, you successfully charged former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn of lying to federal agents about this conversations with Russian officials, correct?

MUELLER: Correct.

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Since it was outside the purview of your investigation your report did not address how Flynn’s false statements could pose a national security risk because the Russians knew the falsity of those statements, right?

MUELLER: I cannot get in to that, mainly because there are many elements of the FBI that are looking at different aspects of that issue.

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Currently?

MUELLER: Currently.

FLYNN REPLACES COVINGTON FOR POWELL AND BLOWS UP THE BIJAN KIAN TRIAL

Exactly a week later, Flynn replaced his competent attorney, Rob Kelner, with Fox News firebreather, Sidney Powell, who moved immediately to collaborate with Bill Barr to undermine his prosecution.

In late June, Flynn started reneging on the testimony he provided in the Kian trial. As a result, the government tried to change their plan for the prosecution, attempting to admit Flynn’s prior testimony as a co-conspriator of unregistered foreign agents (who were charged under 18 USC 951, not just as lobbyists). Flynn intervened to fight that (not least, because it would completely doom any effort to avoid prison), blaming Kelner for making him submit a false FARA declaration even while submitting evidence actually showing that Flynn misled Kelner during the filing process. The move predictably helped Kian, as those events were key in Judge Anthony Trenga’s decision to throw out his conviction (which is currently being appealed, but which I expect DOJ to try to blow up in a further attempt to protect Flynn), but it also started a series of claims from Flynn that directly conflicted with his past sworn statements.

Sullivan, noting what was happening over in EDVA, asked the sides to weigh in, which is how Flynn’s team first started making claims in Sullivan’s court that the government, not Flynn, had reneged, all while submitting evidence showing the contrary.

Which is to say, even before Powell took a single action in the Flynn case, Flynn had created further exposure for himself.

AS PART OF A BRADY MOTION, FLYNN MOVES TO DISMISS THE PROSECUTION

The first legal step Sidney Powell took was to submit a motion to compel Brady material. The first filing, on August 30, made no specific request (though did demand more classified information on behalf of Flynn, who of course had confessed to secretly working for a foreign government during the campaign). Powell also asked for more time. Days after submitting that, however, Powell and her colleagues demanded security clearances. On September 11, a more detailed motion was unsealed. That motion included a long list of demands, many based on wild conspiracy theories; the list largely tracked the one Powell had sent to Barr three months earlier, though she generally moderated her language and added a number of requests pertaining to the Turkish investigation that weren’t included in her Barr letter.

Many of these items are among those the government relied on in its motion to dismiss last week, proving the documents were in no way “new.”

Almost two weeks later, Flynn cleaned up some problems in the original request.

On October 1, prosecutors provided a timeline showing they had already produced everything they believed Flynn was entitled to. The same day, they responded to the Brady motion with a detailed response to each of Flynn’s demands, as well as two exhibits showing that this was part of a larger effort to undermine the Mueller investigation (which I addressed here).

On October 15, Flynn demanded evidence from Joseph Mifsud’s phone — which further established Sidney Powell didn’t care about whether her demands related to her client, but also that she had an open channel of communication with Bill Barr about his Durham investigation.

In Powell’s reply to the government, she included a new demand: that Judge Sullivan dismiss the case for misconduct based on precisely the claims made by DOJ last week.

As new counsel has made clear from her first appearance, Mr. Flynn will ask this Court to dismiss the entire prosecution based on the outrageous and un-American conduct of law enforcement officials and the subsequent failure of the prosecution to disclose this evidence— which it had in its possession all along—either in a timely fashion or at all.

[snip]

The FBI had no factual or legal basis for a criminal investigation, nor did they have a valid basis for a counter-intelligence investigation against an American citizen, and they all knew it. 11 Exs. 5, 6. The evidence the defense requests will eviscerate any factual basis for the plea and reveal conduct so outrageous—if there is not enough already—to mandate dismissal of this prosecution for egregious government misconduct.

[snip]

In its relentless pursuit of Mr. Flynn, the government became the architect of an injustice so egregious it is “repugnant to the American criminal system.” Russell, 411 U.S. at 428 (citations omitted). For these reasons and those in our original Motion and Brief in Support, this Court should compel the government to produce the evidence the defense requests in its full, unredacted form. Given the clear and convincing evidence herein, this Court should issue an order to show cause why the prosecutors should not be held in contempt; and should dismiss the entire prosecution for outrageous government misconduct.

The government noted Powell’s new arguments and got permission to submit a surreply, in which they pointed out that Flynn was already in possession of the information he was using to argue for dismissal when he pled guilty the second time.

Although the defendant now complains about the pace of that discovery, before December 18, 2018, the defendant was in possession of all of the information on which he now bases his argument that the case should be dismissed due to government misconduct. See Reply at 1-2, 16, 26; Notice of Discovery Correspondence, United States v. Flynn, 17-cr-232 (D.D.C. Oct. 1, 2019) (Doc. 123). Thereafter, on December 18, 2018, the defendant and his counsel affirmed for this Court that they had no concerns that potential Brady material or other relevant material had not been provided to the defendant. See Hearing Transcript at 8-10, United States v. Flynn, No. 17-cr-232 (D.D.C. Dec. 18, 2018) (“12/18/2018 Hearing Tr.”). The defendant further affirmed, under oath, that he wished to proceed to sentencing because he was guilty of making false statements to the FBI. See id. at 16.

[snip]

Nor did law enforcement officials engage in “outrageous” conduct during the criminal investigation and prosecution of the defendant. On January 24, 2017, when the defendant lied in his interview, the FBI was engaged in a legitimate and significant investigation into whether individuals associated with the campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump were coordinating with the Russian government in its activities to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. The defendant was not “ambushed” at the interview, and the interviewing agents certainly did not engage in “outrageous” conduct that undermines the fact that he lied. Reply at 1, 7. The documents produced by the government in discovery show that the FBI asked the defendant for permission to conduct the interview, informed the defendant that the questions would concern his “contacts with the Russian Ambassador to the United States,” interviewed the defendant in his own office, and afforded him multiple opportunities to correct his false statements by revisiting key questions. See, e.g., Memorandum of Andrew McCabe dated January 24, 2017 (Doc. 56-1) (“McCabe Memo”); Strzok 302.

[snip]

For all of the above reasons, it is no surprise that with the same set of facts, the defendant and his prior counsel previously represented to this Court that the circumstances of the interview had no impact on his guilt, or guilty plea. On December 18, 2018, when the Court asked the defendant if he wished to “challenge the circumstances on which you were interviewed by the FBI,” he responded, under oath, “No, Your Honor.” 12/18/2018 Hearing Tr. at 8.10 The Court then asked the defendant if he understood that “by maintaining your guilty plea and continuing with sentencing, you will give up your right forever to challenge the circumstances under which you were interviewed,” to which the defendant answered, “Yes, Your Honor.” Id. And when the Court queried whether the defendant wanted an opportunity to withdraw his plea because one of the interviewing agents had been investigated for misconduct, the defendant stated “I do not, Your Honor.” Id. at 9. His counsel likewise represented to the Court that their client was not “entrapped by the FBI,” and that they did not contend “any misconduct by a member of the FBI raises any degree of doubt that Mr. Flynn intentionally lied to the FBI.” Id. at 11-12.

In a sur-surreply, Powell tried to back off having demanded that Sullivan dismiss the case, saying that her past arguments and the government’s response aren’t her real motion to dismiss.

In conclusion, yes, the government engaged in conduct so shocking to the conscience and so inimical to our system of justice that it requires the dismissal of the charges for outrageous government conduct. See United States v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423, 428 (1973). However, as fully briefed in our Motion to Compel and Reply, at this time, Mr. Flynn only requests an order compelling the government to produce the additional Brady evidence he has requested—in full and unredacted form—and an order to show cause why the government should not be held in contempt. At the appropriate time, Mr. Flynn will file a separate motion asking that the Court dismiss the prosecution for egregious government misconduct and in the interest of justice. Mr. Flynn is entitled to discovery of the materials he has requested in these motions and briefs that will help him support such a motion.

In Emmet Sullivan’s meticulous 92-page order issued in December denying Flynn’s Brady request, however, he addressed the request for dismissal, specifically distinguishing this case from that of Ted Stevens.

Mr. Flynn’s requested relief is dismissal of this case. See Def.’s Reply, ECF No. 133 at 36; see also Def.’s Sur-Surreply, ECF No. 135 at 17. He seeks dismissal of the charges against him and the entire prosecution for government misconduct. E.g., Def.’s Reply, ECF No. 133 at 7, 23 n.15, 36; Def.’s SurSurreply, ECF No. 135 at 17. The government disagrees. See Gov’t’s Surreply, ECF No. 132 at 12-15. This case is not United States v. Theodore F. Stevens, Criminal Action No. 08–231(EGS), the case that Mr. Flynn relies on throughout his briefing. In that case, the Court granted the government’s motion to dismiss, and the government admitted that it had committed Brady violations and made misrepresentations to the Court. In re Special Proceedings, 825 F. Supp. 2d 203, 204 (D.D.C. 2011) (Sullivan, J.). Even if Mr. Flynn established a Brady violation in this case, dismissal would be unwarranted because “[t]he remedy for a Brady violation is retrial, not dismissal.” United States v. Borda, 941 F. Supp. 2d 16, 19 n.1 (D.D.C. 2013) (citing Pettiford, 627 F.3d at 1228). “[D]ismissal is appropriate only as a last resort, where no other remedy would cure prejudice against a defendant.” Pasha, 797 F.3d at 1139. [my emphasis]

As the government noted when they responded to Flynn’s request for dismissal, he already had all the evidence on which he premised that demand when he pled guilty a second time in December 2018.

IN A SENTENCING MEMO, THE GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTS FOR FLYNN’S FAILED COOPERATION AND REFUSAL TO ADMIT GUILT

In the wake of Sullivan’s order, the parties moved towards sentencing in January. The government got two continuances before submitting their revised motion, one in December and another in January, to get all required approvals for their sentencing memo. That means prosecutors on the case went to great lengths to approve their recommendation for prison time.

The factors enunciated in Section 3553(a) all favor the imposition of a sentence within the Guidelines range. The defendant’s offense is serious, his characteristics and history present aggravating circumstances, and a sentence reflecting those factors is necessary to deter future criminal conduct. Similarly situated defendants have received terms of imprisonment.

I’ll return to that memo, but the key point is that Judge Sullivan specifically gave Bill Barr’s DOJ time to ensure that the chain of command approved their supplemental sentencing memo.

Before Flynn responded to that revised recommendation, they asked for a continuance to allow them to withdraw Flynn’s guilty plea, specifically citing prosecutors’ recommendation for prison time.

Because Flynn submitted his supplemental sentencing memo after beginning the process to withdraw his guilty plea,they were stuck arguing in it boththat Flynn should get credit for admitting guilty but also arguing that he was not guilty.

The government reply, submitted as Barr started the process to replace Jessie Liu, is the one that alerted everyone to the shenanigans that Barr was up to. Whereas the initial supplemental motion — which had been delayed twice to get approval — recommended prison time, this one reverted back to supporting probation, the position the government had adopted before Flynn had reneged on both his cooperation and his guilty.

FLYNN BLAMES HIS GUILTY PLEAS ON HIS COVINGTON LAWYERS

As noted, Flynn cited the recommendation for prison time in asking to withdraw his guilty plea(s). Flynn based his request to withdraw his guilty plea on a claim that his very competent Covington lawyers were both conflicted and incompetent. He then submitted what was originally called a supplement — which made no new arguments — which they subsequently corrected to note,

1 This is not Mr. Flynn’s “Supplemental Motion to Withdraw for Alternative Additional Reasons” currently due to be filed on January 22, 2020, for which we have requested two additional days to complete and file.

In response to a second request for more time on its filings, Judge Sullivan issued an order that reflects where he’ll likely go now: he raised the prospect of an evidentiary hearing to determine whether there is good cause to set aside his guilty plea.

Mr. Flynn’s supplemental motion and the government’s response shall address the following: (1) the standard in this Circuit for a defendant seeking to withdraw a guilty plea before sentencing; and (2) the need for an evidentiary hearing where the parties would present all testimony and evidence concerning the issue of whether Mr. Flynn can show that there is good cause to set aside his guilty pleas, see United States v. Cray, 47 F.3d 1203, 1206 (D.C. Cir. 1995), including testimony from Mr. Flynn and other witnesses under oath, subject to cross-examination, to show any “fair and just reason” for this Court to grant his motion to withdraw, Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(d).

From that moment forward, it became clear that Sullivan would put Flynn back under oath.

On February 9, prosecutors made things still worse, by asking Sullivan to waive Covington’s attorney-client privilege with respect to Flynn so they could assist prosecutors in rebutting his claims that they were incompetent. From that point forward, it became clear that not only Flynn, but his very credible former lawyers, would be testifying about the prosecution.

On January 29, just two days before Bill Barr would replace Jessie Liu with his flunkyand around the same time he ordered Jeffrey Jensen to review the Flynn prosecution, Flynn submitted what he billed as his real supplemental motion to withdraw, doubling down on the claim that his former lawyers were responsible for his guilty pleas, he wasn’t.

As I noted at the time, the motions in conjunction created new risks for Flynn: in particular, his motion to withdraw included a sworn declaration that conflicted with three past sworn statements from him:

December 1, 2017: Mike Flynn pled guilty before Judge Rudolph Contreras to lying in a January 24, 2017 FBI interview. In his plea allocution, Flynn admitted:
- He lied about several conversations with Sergey Kislyak about sanctions
- He lied about several conversations with Kislyak about an attempt to undermine an Obama effort at the UN
- He lied about whether his company knew that it was working for the government of Turkey and about whether senior officials from Turkey were overseeing that contract
- He was satisfied with the services his attorneys had provided
- No other threats or promises were made to him except what was in the plea agreement
December 18, 2018: Mike Flynn reallocuted his guilty plea before Judge Emmet Sullivan to lying in a January 24, 2017 FBI interview. In his plea allocution, Flynn admitted:
- He lied about several conversations with Sergey Kislyak about sanctions
- He lied about several conversations with Kislyak about an attempt to undermine an Obama effort at the UN
- He lied about whether his company knew that it was working for the government of Turkey and about whether senior officials from Turkey were overseeing that contract
- He was satisfied with the services his attorneys had provided
- He did not want a Curcio counsel appointed to give him a second opinion on pleading guilty
- He did not want to challenge the circumstances of his January 24, 2017 interview and understood by pleading guilty he was giving up his right to do so permanently
- He did not want to withdraw his plea having learned that Peter Strzok and others were investigated for misconduct
- During his interview with the FBI, he was aware that lying to the FBI was a federal crime
June 26, 2018: Mike Flynn testified to an EDVA grand jury, among other things, that “from the beginning,” his 2016 consulting project “was always on behalf of elements within the Turkish government,” he and Bijan Kian would “always talk about Gulen as sort of a sharp point” in relations between Turkey and the US as part of the project (though there was some discussion about business climate), and he and his partner “didn’t have any conversations about” a November 8, 2016 op-ed published under his name until “Bijan [] sent me a draft of it a couple of days prior, maybe about a week prior.” The statements conflict with a FARA filing submitted under Flynn’s name.
January 29, 2020: Mike Flynn declared, under oath that, “in truth, I never lied.” Flynn claims he forgot about the substance of his conversations with the Russian Ambassador, rather than lied about them.

To make things worse, as often happens with exhibits Sidney Powell introduces, the actual record undermined claims Flynn made. For example, Flynn included a document that showed Covington gave him more warnings about conflict than he admitted to in his declaration, thereby making it clear his sworn declaration didn’t match the record accompanying it.

FLYNN REPEATS HIS CLAIM HE WAS RAILROADED

That same day Flynn submitted his most substantive motion to withdraw his guilty plea, January 29, he also submitted a motion to dismiss his prosecution. It was basically a repeat of the request made months earlier as part of the Brady request, pointing to irregularities in the Carter Page FISA application as the primary justification to make the motion anew.

On February 12, prosecutors responded to that motion pointing out there was nothing new here. Flynn’s response was repetitive and included a misleading timeline full of claims that contradict claims they’ve made elsewhere. The motion ignored that Flynn waived these complaints when he pled guilty the second time.

The government repeatedly claims that Mr. Flynn waived his right to constitutional protections when he pled guilty. ECF No. 169 at n.3. But, Mr. Flynn’s plea cannot stand, and the government cannot use it as both a shield for its misconduct and a sword to sentence Mr. Flynn. His plea was infected with constitutional error which rendered it neither knowing nor voluntary and in violation of Mr. Flynn’s Sixth Amendment rights. See ECF No. 162-2. As Mr. Flynn argued in his Motion to Withdraw Plea, ECF No. 151, even if it were a validly contracted plea, the government breached the contract the moment Mr. Van Grack filed the government’s supplemental sentencing memo which withdrew its motion for downward departure and its recommendation of probation. See ECF No. 150 at 3 (“In addition to asking the Court to credit the defendant with providing substantial assistance, the government recommended that the defendant receive credit for accepting responsibility. . . . [T]he government now withdraws both requests.”).

AS PROSECUTORS PREPARE THEIR COVINGTON ARGUMENT, BILL BARR PREPARED HIS “NEW” INFORMATION

As noted, on February 9, prosecutors took steps to be able to prove that Covington, in fact, gave Flynn exceptionally good advice. They asked for a series of delays while they did that. According to the schedule set by Judge Sullivan, prosecutors would have proposed a briefing schedule to lay all that out last Friday, possibly in a motion including some of the details from the 600 pages of evidence obtained from Covington that (the record already shows) would substantiate that Flynn gave them incorrect information for his FARA filing and repeatedly brushed off warnings about conflict.

During the delay, Covington did find 6,000 new records on top of the 600,000 documents they had already provided. Given the Bates numbers of documents filed last week, there’s no reason to believe those exhibits were included in these newly discovered documents.

As that was happening, prosecutor Jocelyn Ballantine handed over, drip-by-drip, the documents that Jeffrey Jensen “analyzed.”

Beginning in January 2020, at the direction of Attorney General William P. Barr, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri (“USA EDMO”) has been conducting a review of the Michael T. Flynn investigation. The review by USA EDMO has involved the analysis of reports related to the investigation along with communications and notes by Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) personnel associated with the investigation.

The enclosed documents were obtained and analyzed by USA EDMO in March and April 2020 and are provided to you as a result of this ongoing review; additional documents may be forthcoming. These materials are covered by the Protective Order entered by the Court on February 21, 2018.

None of this discovery correspondence said the documents were new to prosecutors, only that Jensen had reviewed them. They were, nevertheless, the documents thatTimothy Shea claimed were “new”as his basis for flip-flopping on DOJ’s position on the case.

EMMET SULLIVAN HAS SIX DECISIONS TO MAKE, NOT JUST ONE

Many, perhaps most, people who’ve commented in the last week have noted that Emmet Sullivan has the prerogative whether to accept DOJ’s motion or not. It’s true he has that authority. But he actually has up to six different decisions pending, as follows:

Whether to accept or reject DOJ’s motion to dismiss
If Sullivan accepts DOJ’s motion to dismiss, whether he does so with or without prejudice
Whether to accept or reject Flynn’s motion to withdraw his pending withdraw of guilty plea, motion to dismiss, and waiver of privilege for Covington (to which DOJ has consented)
Whether to hold an evidentiary hearing or ask for briefing on Flynn’s motion to withdraw
Whether to accept or reject Flynn’s motion to dismiss his prosecution
Whether and if so how to sentence Flynn based on fully briefed sentencing memoranda

Sullivan would not get to most of these without, first, deciding what to do about DOJ’s motion to dismiss. And if he rejected DOJ’s motion to dismiss, he would obviously reject Flynn’s motion to dismiss, just like he already rejected that argument. Though if Sullivan does reject DOJ’s motion to dismiss, sentencing is fully briefed and he could move immediately to sentencing.

Moreover, Flynn’s multiple conflicting sworn statements are before this court whether or not Sullivan rejects DOJ’s motion to dismiss. And he could reach that decision — or at least order briefing on the Covington evidence Flynn clearly wants to keep hidden — without (or before) weighing in on DOJ’s motion to dismiss.

Which is likely one of the reasons Sullivan is taking his time before he issues the next scheduling order.

Update: I should have put this quote on behalf of Chris Wray in several posts before this one. But basically, the FBI has already put it into the public record that the stuff DOJ claimed was “new” last week had already been reviewed by DOJ IG and John Durham’s inquiry.

With regard to certain documents in the Michael Flynn matter from the 2016-2017 time period that are now the subject of reporting by the press, the FBI previously produced those materials to the Inspector General and U.S. Attorney Durham,” the FBI said.

Tags: Bill Barr, Emmet Sullivan, Jeffrey Jensen, Jocelyn Ballantine, Mike Flynn, Rob Kelner, Sidney Powell, Timothy Shea

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Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he pressured then-Attorney General Bill Barr to pursue bogus voter fraud claims after his election loss even if it meant being impeached.

Trump claimed in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity that Barr did not want to investigate his baseless voter fraud claims because he was worried about being impeached even though Barr has repeatedly said the Justice Department did not pursue the claims because there was no evidence of any widespread fraud that could have affected the election outcome.

"Look, we also had a chance, but Bill Barr, the attorney general, didn't want to be impeached," Trump said. "How do you not get impeached? You sit back and relax and wait out for your term to end. That's what he did. And it was a sad thing and a sad day for our country."

Trump also lashed out at Barr for writing what he called a "crummy book" that was "so false." Barr in his book rejected Trump's debunked fraud claims and blamed him for the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot, arguing that Trump was not fit for office.

"Had Bill Barr had the courage, a lot of this could've been taken care of," Trump said. "The U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia said Bill Barr told him not to investigate the fraud in the elections, and he said 'Don't do it.' And he wrote a letter to that effect and you know, had Bill Barr had the courage to do what he should've done instead of being worried about being impeached.

"I said, 'Look, get impeached. I went up a lot in the polls when I got impeached. You have to get impeached, maybe,'" Trump added. "But he was so afraid of being impeached that he refused to do his job."

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jan 6 testify?

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start of redemption tour book pension plan?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/bill-barr-book/

factchecked

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/bill-barr-john-bolton-trump/

bit late

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condemn insurrection? what role in coup? quit when/why?

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jeff b clark

Stone writes, "The Senate report provided new details about the secretive pressure tactics deployed by Trump and Clark to persuade Rosen to accede to their schemes to help nullify Biden's win, even after Trump staunch ally, attorney general William Barr, publicly stated on 1 December that the election results were not marred by fraud that 'could have effected a different outcome in the election'."

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trump tells 1st 4 to ~ subpoenas

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/internet-explodes-with-reactions-to-bombshell-senate-judiciary-report-on-trumps-efforts-to-pressure-doj-into-helping-him-overturn-the-election/

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has released a sweeping report detailing how former President Donald Trump and a former high-ranking lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The Democratic-led committee's 394-page document contains intricate details about the former president's actions in the days after the presidential election was called for President Joe Biden. A number of bombshell claims were revealed in the report and ⁠— here aresix key takeaways from it.

1. "President Trump repeatedly asked DOJ leadership to endorse his false claims that the election was stolen and to assist his efforts to overturn the election results."

The report reveals Trump asked the Justice Department for assistance in overturning the election a total of nine times. The call history includes details about who Trump spoke with along with dates those calls took place.

December 15, 2020 – Oval Office meeting including incoming Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue (both men assumed office when William Barr left on Dec. 23)
December 23, 2020 – Trump-Rosen Call
December 24, 2020 – Trump-Rosen Call
December 27, 2020 – Trump-Rosen-Donoghue Call
December 28, 2020 – Trump-Donoghue Call
December 30, 2020 – Trump-Rosen Call
December 31, 2020 – Oval Office meeting including Rosen and Donoghue
January 3, 2021 – Oval Office meeting including Rosen and Donoghue
January 3, 2021 – Trump-Donoghue Call

2. "White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows asked Acting Attorney General Rosen to initiate election fraud investigations on multiple occasions, violating longstanding restrictions on White House-DOJ communications about specific law enforcement matters."

Between December 29 and January 1, Meadows pushed for Rosen to open an investigation into "at least four categories of false election fraud claims" being circulated by Trump, his campaign team, legal team and other allies. At the time, no substantial evidence of election fraud had been produced to support any of the claims. The report also breaks down the four key categories Meadows pressed Rosen about:

"Investigate various discredited claims of election fraud in Georgia that the Trump campaign was simultaneously advancing in a lawsuit that the Georgia Supreme Court had refused to hear on an expedited basis;

Investigate false claims of 'signature match anomalies' in Fulton County, Georgia, even though Republican state elections officials had made clear "there has been no evidence presented of any issues with the signature matching process."

Investigate a theory known as 'Italygate,' which was promoted by an ally of the President's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and which held that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and an Italian IT contractor used military satellites to manipulate voting machines and change Trump votes to Biden votes. Meadows also asked DOJ to meet with Giuliani on Italygate and other election fraud claims.

Investigate a series of claims of election fraud in New Mexico that had been widely refuted and in some cases rejected by the courts, including a claim that Dominion Voting Systems machines caused late-night 'vote dumps' for Democratic candidates."

The report also notes that Meadows' actions are in violation of policies that place limitations on communication between White House and DOJ officials in regards to certain law enforcement matters. This policy was put in place after the Watergate scandal.

3. "After personally meeting with Trump, Jeffrey Bossert Clark[former Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division] pushed Rosen and Donoghue to assist Trump's election subversion scheme — and told Rosen he would decline Trump's potential offer to install him as Acting Attorney General if Rosen agreed to aid that scheme."

After having private conversations with Trump, Clark pressed Rosen and Donoghue to announce an investigation into election fraud and have legislatures in key swing states appoint alternate election officials. The report highlights a draft letter Clark sent to Rosen and Donoghue on December 28. The letter, which was addressed to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), the General Assembly Speaker, and Senate President Pro Tempore, included a number of recommended directives, many of which violated election laws.

In fact, Clark's proposed action, which would have had the DOJ override an already-certified popular vote, was described as "a stunning distortion of DOJ's authority," according to the report:

"The letter was titled "Georgia Proof of Concept" and Clark suggested replicating it in "each relevant state." The letter would have informed state officials that DOJ had "taken notice" of election irregularities in their state and recommended calling a special legislative session to evaluate these irregularities, determine who "won the most legal votes," and consider appointing a new slate of Electors. Clark's proposal to wield DOJ's power to override the already-certified popular vote reflected a stunning distortion of DOJ's authority: DOJ protects ballot access and ballot integrity, but has no role in determining which candidate won a particular election."

4. "Trump allies with links to the 'Stop the Steal' movement and the January 6 insurrection participated in the pressure campaign against DOJ."

The report included a brief list of the Trump allies who have been accused of pressuring DOJ officials to do the former president's bidding. Those individuals also had ties to the former president's "Stop the Steal" movement and the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol that followed Trump's rally on January 6.

They are:

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.): The report indicates that the Republican lawmaker spoke directly to Donoghue about baseless claims of election fraud in his state.
Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano (R): As an avid Trump ally, Mastriano reportedly "spent thousands of dollars from his campaign account to provide transportation for Trump supporters to attend the 'Save America Rally' on January 6." The report also indicates that he "was present on the Capitol grounds as the insurrection unfolded." Like Perry, Mastriano also spoke with Donoghue in reference to unfounded claims of election fraud in Pennsylvania.
Trump campaign legal advisor Cleta Mitchell: Described as one of the earliest advocates for Trump's baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, the Senate report also notes Mitchell was a "participant in the January 2, 2021 call where Trump 5 pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to 'find 11,780 votes.'"

5. "Trump forced the resignation of U.S. Attorney Byung Jin ('BJay') Pak, whom he believed was not doing enough to address false claims of election fraud in Georgia. Trump then went outside the line of succession when naming an Acting U.S. Attorney, bypassing First Assistant U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine and instead, appointing Bobby Christine because he believed Christine would 'do something' about his election fraud claims."

When former U.S. Attorney General Pak's investigative results did not align with the outcome Trump was hoping for, the outraged former president publicly berated him and described him as "a "Never Trumper." The former president also bulldozed over protocol and the proper line of succession to appoint someone he believed would produce favorable results to help him overturn the presidential election.

6. "By pursuing false claims of election fraud before votes were certified, DOJ deviated from longstanding practice meant to avoid inserting DOJ itself as an issue in the election."

On November 9, 2020 the former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr released a memo that "directed prosecutors not to wait until after certification to investigate allegations of voting irregularities that 'could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State.'"

In doing this, the report emphasizes Barr "weakened" the DOJ's policy to "avoid taking overt steps in election fraud investigations until after votes were certified, in order to avoid inserting DOJ itself as an issue in the election." His actions before and after the election disregarded the DOJ's longstanding practice.

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-gop-doesnt-care-that-trump-planned-a-coup-do-democrats

no lnx

mich AG scheuette #2 got promoted? GA AG? quit b/c he got headsup he was about to tweet trumped?]

CAPITOL RIOTS

The GOP Doesn’t Care That Trump Planned a Coup. Do Democrats?

‘PURE INSANITY’

OPINION

Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast

New emails show Jan. 6 was just a preview. The GOP and its allies in Congress, law enforcement, and conservative media will attempt another coup when they lose another election.

Wajahat Ali

Updated Jun. 16, 2021 9:26AM ET / Published Jun. 15, 2021 10:58PM ET

Thanks to the bombshell documents the House Oversight and Reform Committee released just ahead of Tuesday’s hearing on the Jan. 6 insurrection, Americans have a clear and unmistakable view of just how far former President Donald Trump went in trying to corrupt our democratic institutions, engage in a violent coup, and overturn our free and fair election.

“These documents show that President Trump tried to corrupt our nation’s chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost,” said Democratic committee chairwoman Carolyn Maloney. She’s absolutely correct. I would add one simple edit: It’s Trump and the GOP. He attempted a coup—and, yes, we should all use the word—and he’s still trying, with ample help from Republicans.

If you consider that hyperbole, I direct you to those bombshell documents revealing how the Trump administration, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, attempted to pressure the Department of Justice to advance dangerous conspiracy theories of election fraud and influence courts to nullify the election results so Trump could stay in power.

Trump Pushed Barr’s Successor to Probe Big Lie: New Emails

‘BRAZEN CORRUPTION’

Justin Rohrlich

An hour before announcing his Attorney General Bill Barr would be stepping down, no doubt because he refused to promote “the Big Lie,” Trump’s assistant sent an email to Jeffrey Rosen, his incoming attorney general, showing evidence of alleged “election fraud” innorthern Michiganand “talking points” to advance the obvious lie. Two weeks later, Trump’s White House sent a draft brief to Rosen for the DOJ to submit to the Supreme Court intended to effectively nullify the 2020 election and help Trump usurp power.Transcribed interviews with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reveal he directly pressured DOJ officials at least five times to investigate batshit conspiracy theories, including one suggesting that satellite technology from Europe was used to tamper with US voting equipment.

It appears Rosen, and other senior members of the DOJ, were not willing to pledge allegiance to Trump over the United States. “Pure insanity” is how Rosen and Richard Donoghue, who was the acting deputy attorney general, described Meadows’ emails. Trump then considered replacing Rosen with a sympathetic sycophant, Jeffrey Clark, who was then acting head of the civil division, to continue influencing the DOJ to help him succeed in his criminal, authoritarian coup.

These revelations, which are shocking and should be thoroughly investigated, come on the heels of the equally jaw-dropping but totally unsurprising news that the Justice Department, acting as Trump’s Luca Brasi, decided to retaliate against Democrats and the media.Specifically, prosecutors subpoenaed Apple for phone records of Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, their aides and family members, including a minor. The Justice Department also sought to retaliate against reporters and media outlets for “leaks” and attempted to seize thousands of emails and phone records of news outlets’ reporters.

If this sounds like the thuggish tactics used by strongmen and corrupt rulers in authoritarian regimes, well, it is. Let’s not forget Trump continues to praise Putin, and was friendly with Hungary’s Orban, who was “Trump before Trump,” Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Turkey’s Erdogan, Saudi Arabia’s Muhammad bin Salman, Israel’s Netanyahu, who is desperately copying Trump’s tactics to remain relevant, Egypt’s Sisi, and the Philippines’ Dutarte. None of them is particularly celebrated as champions of human rights, the free press, an independent judiciary or the small inconvenience known as a democracy by and for the people.

Thankfully, Trump lost and his efforts to erase his loss fell short, but his corrupting presence has contaminated not only the GOP but also the Department of Justice and law enforcement. We still don’t know the extent of how Trump and his allies pressured, corrupted and manipulated our democratic institutions from within to advance their perverse schemes for power and profit. What I do know after watching this hearing is that Jan. 6 was simply a sneak preview. The GOP and its right-wing allies in Congress, law enforcement, and conservative media are going to attempt another coup when they lose another election.

At Tuesday’s hearing, the committee wanted to investigate why it took the National Guard nearly four hours to respond to the U.S. Capitol breach even though top officials at the Defense Department received 12 urgent requests for help[said flynn bro gen'l not involved, then 180]

from the Capitol police chief and mayor. Meanwhile, Army leaders told the National Guard to “stand by” five times even as violence escalated, which eventually claimed five lives. Pipe bombs were also found near the U.S. Capitol and some of the protesters came with weapons, intending to assassinate Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. We also know that officers are being investigated for their alleged role in the insurrection and that white supremacist groups, sympathetic to Trump and the GOP, have tried to infiltrate law enforcement agencies across the country.

The committee had the opportunity to question FBI director Christopher Wray, Gen. Charles Flynn—the brother of Michael Flynn, who was Trump’s disgraced national security adviser and is a prominent promoter of both the QAnon conspiracy and “the Big Lie”—and Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt, director of the Army Staff. It was revealed that Gen. Charles Flynn and Gen. Piatt were both involved in a phone call in which Army leaders were worried about the “optics” of sending in the National Guard. That’s the same National Guard that quickly responded with massive force to peaceful BLM protesters and cleared others out of Lafayette Square with tear gas and violence last summer. No such concerns for “optics” were present then.

One would assume Republicans, who are allegedly so committed to law and order and national security that they held hearings on Benghazi and Clinton’s emails for years and have focused on antifa as a fake terrorist threat, would take the opportunity to dig deep into this massive failure of intelligence and law enforcement that allowed hundreds of armed, violent insurrections to take over the U.S. Capitol for the first time in 200 years. Or, they could ask FBI director Wray to do more to investigate and prosecute members of armed militias and white supremacist groups, some of whom participated in the violent insurrection, and are also the number one domestic terror threat in America.

Nope.

Instead, they used their time to whine, deflect and obstruct. They performed for their base and said the House should be spending its time and powers to investigate Dr. Fauci’s emails, the Wuhan lab theory, the border crisis, the threat of inflation and Biden’s economic policies. They also found time to whine about masking policies at the U.S. Capitol and to urge Americans to move on from the insurrection that Republican Rep. Clyde recently referred to as a “normal tourist visit.”

It’s time for them to behave like Republicans and finally bring a bazooka to this knife fight.

If you were the party that was actively aiding and abetting a violent insurrection, you’d want to “move on” as well. It was a grotesque spectacle seeing Rep. Paul Gosar grill Wray on who “executed Ashli Babbitt,” and suggesting, without evidence, that the officer who shot her was hiding and waiting to kill her. Gosar didn’t spend time worrying about Officer Sicknick, who died trying to protect his colleagues from Babbitt and the violent mob. Neither did 21 Republicans in the House who just opposed a bill to award congressional gold medals for Capitol Police officers who defended them against a violent mob during the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Like some other House Republicans, Gosar actively supports white supremacist conspiracy theories, has ties to armed militia movements, and cheered on many of the events of Jan. 6. Wray said the FBI has arrested 500 people so far and is currently overseeing hundreds of investigations. They could start by talking to some Republicans like Gosar as members of his party have blocked a bipartisan commission to investigate the insurrection and acquitted Trump twice, with a majority of them even voting to cancel the election. Their conservative media ecosystem is actively gaslighting America and their base with dangerous conspiracy theories, as a majority of Republicans believe “the Big Lie” that Biden lost the 2020 election.

Thankfully, Democrats are in power. However, they retain a slim majority before the 2022 midterms that are stacked against them due to GOP gerrymandering and voter suppression. The question is whether this latest revelation of Trump and the GOP’s attempt to subvert democracy will force enough Democrats to finally abandon the dangerous illusion of “bipartisanship” and flex their power to fight for accountability and justice. One piece of good news is that Pelosi said Tuesday that the House committees will continue their investigations after Republicans blocked the Senate commission. Also, the House Oversight Committee said it will request Rosen, Meadows, and top Trump officials to appear for interviews in light of the latest revelations. Judging from what we’ve seen, Republicans won’t be forthcoming.

If they don’t comply, will Democrats finally flex their subpoena power, do a media blitz, and unite on messaging that Republicans are actively aiding and abetting the destruction of our democracy? One can only hope. It’s time for Democrats to unleash hell, as I’ve discussed before both here and here.

Our democracy is worth it. It’s time for them to behave like Republicans and finally bring a bazooka to this knife fight. If they forfeit their power and principle for “bipartisanship” then they might as well acknowledge they are actively complicit with a counter-majoritarian, extremist GOP that is actively trying to subvert democracy in front of our eyes.

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1st amend??

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/trump-doj-secretly-seized-nyt-reporters-phone-records-report/

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an 521

cody f

Former Attorney General Bill Barr's record leading the U.S. Justice Department is coming into clearer light as Merrick Garland takes the reins of the agency, and new revelations are bringing the much-maligned Trump acolyte under new scrutiny. It's now clear that under his watch, DOJ obtained the communication records of multiple journalists, a disturbing use of government power that is supposed to face stringent restrictions. Some argue it should never happen at all. The news was revealed when the new administration contacted the journalists to inform them of what happened.

And the public has also learned that Barr's DOJ sought to force Twitter to unmask an anonymous account critical of California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, a close Trump ally. Shortly after Garland was sworn in as attorney general, DOJ dropped the subpoena against Twitter.

So how is the former attorney general reacting to the new administration airing his dirty laundry? From all appearances, it looks like he's trying to launder his reputation by anonymously giving Trump administration scoops to reporters.

There've previously been signs that Barr has a tendency to plant stories in the press when it serves his interest, but a recent piece in Politico may be one of the most blatant and transparent efforts from the former AG to manage and rehabilitate his reputation.

The piece is titled "Inside Trump's push to oust his own FBI chief," and it's sold as delivering an "explosive" story about scandal in the White House, a genre that's become quite common in the past four years. But read just a little bit between the lines, and what's happening is clear: Barr is personally pushing this story to sell a narrative about himself as principled and independent from Trump. It's not clear if it's coming in direct response to the other revelations about Barr mentioned above, or if he's just more broadly concerned about differentiating himself from Trump; perhaps both motivations are playing a role.

The story, like so many tales of White House intrigue, is sourced anonymously, so how am I able to confidently say it came from Bill Barr? Because without saying so directly, the story as written makes it unambiguously clear.

Consider this passage:

It all came to a head in late April, when Barr went over to the White House for a routine meeting in then-chief of staff Mark Meadows' office.

Instead, a staffer from his office intercepted Barr and told him he was actually going to meet in the Roosevelt Room, where such meetings were not usually held.

Barr found it strange to be put in that room, especially given that no one else was there when they entered it. Soon afterward, John McEntee, the powerful head of the presidential personnel office and a hard-core Trump loyalist, entered. Then Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, also came into the room.

Barr asked McEntee, "What's this all about?" recounted one of the former Trump officials.

McEntee demurred and checked his phone. They were waiting on others, he told Barr.

Fuming, Barr walked out of the room and barged into Meadows' office. "What the f--- is going on?" he asked.

The story is clearly told from Bill Barr's point of view. We're told Bill Barr "found it strange" to be in a room — who would know his feelings but Barr himself? Then when others enter the room, it's Barr who is active. His remarks come in direct quotes, and we're told they were recounted by "one of the former Trump officials." That leaves only three possibilities for the source of the information, and Barr is the only plausible candidate.

McEntee is described having "demurred and checked his phone." That's not how someone tends to talk about their own actions. And then when McEntee speaks, the words are not in quotation marks. This makes sense if Barr is telling the reporter the story — Barr can be directly quoted for his own past remarks that he recounts, but his recounting of any responses from others is more likely to be paraphrased, so these words don't merit quotation marks.

And here's the clincher: As the setting of the story changes, the narrative follows Bill Barr leaving the room and going to another room, where he talks to Mark Meadows. This is Barr's story, he's the protagonist, and it's being told from his point of view. He's the primary source for the narrative.

The story continued:

Then, in a meeting later that day with both Meadows and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Barr demanded to know what was happening. When told that Trump wanted to replace Wray with Evanina and make Patel the deputy director of the FBI, Barr calmly told them he couldn't stay in his job if Trump's preferred picks were installed at the FBI over his objection, two of the former officials familiar with the encounter said.

Cipollone, who also said he was completely unaware of what was going on until that day, sided with Barr: He told his two colleagues that the attorney general should be involved in the decision process about who should be FBI director, and that Wray should stay.

And that was it: The White House ultimately backed off on the plan once they realized Barr would quit, according to two of the former Trump officials.

Now we have two sources for the story. We know Barr is one of them. The other is Cipollone, Barr's ally in the story. He, like Barr, comes off looking like one of the "heroes" of the narrative after they take a stand together.

Further corroboration of these inferences comes near the end of the story, which noted:

A spokesperson for Trump didn't respond to a request for comment. Patel and Meadows also didn't respond to requests for comment. Evanina and McEntee declined to comment.

Politico doesn't say Barr or Cippolone declined to comment, because they did comment, anonymously. If they hadn't, the outlet would've felt compelled to reach out to them for comment on the story and note if they had declined to comment.

The opening of the story says it had three sources "familiar with the episode" in total — though the key passages only indicate two sources present for the events. This suggests there is a third source, perhaps a Barr aide, who was told contemporaneously about the events but didn't witness them directly.

In the end, it's not that revelatory a story. We know that Trump and many of his allies would've liked to see Wray gone, but many obstacles stood in his way. It's not clear this episode is really as dramatic as it was framed — it might have been more of a casual discussion than it seems in this recollection.

What we know public about Barr and Trump's relationship is frankly more interesting. Barr did indeed stand up to Trump in the end, of his term in office, declaring that the DOJ hadn't found evidence of substantial fraud in the 2020 election. And Barr was sharply critical of Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection, pinning blame for the mob's actions on the then-president. Those public events don't erase Barr's complicity in many of Trump's worst actions in the prior two years — perhaps most notably, his eagerness to sow doubt in the 2020 election before it was carried out — but they're more significant than the episode recounted by Politico.

But the fact that Barr is trying to spread the story now does tell us something interesting about Bill Barr. He's tried to give the impression that he doesn't care what people think of him. When asked about the damage working for Trump had done to his reputation, Barr gave a memorable answer.

"I am at the end of my career," he told CBS in 2019 ."Everyone dies, and I am not, you know, I don't believe in the Homeric idea that, you know, immortality comes by, you know, having odes sung about you over the centuries, you know?"

As I've long argued, though, that isn't true. He cares deeply about his reputation. Barr was clearly obsessed with the media coverage of the Trump administration He saw it as his job to, in part, protect Trump from his critics in the press and sometimes bent or broke Justice Department rules to do it.

Now he's out of office, and perhaps he's abandoned the project of helping Trump. But he's still obsessed with what the media is saying.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Barr's parting gift: A new rule stripping civil rights enforcement in Justice Department

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/bill-barr/

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executions

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/barr-2649650412

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/bill-barr-2649627878/

an 1220

Lev Parnas, a former business associate of Rudy Giuliani, made explosive allegations against outgoing Attorney General Bill Barr in a federal court filing on Tuesday. Parnas, who is under indictment for campaign finance violations and fraud charges, has accused Barr of timing his arrest last fall in order to prevent him from testifying at House impeachment hearings last fall....

In the new filing, Parnas lays out a series of events that he believes Barr helped engineer to secure his silence.

In late September, Parnas received a letter from House investigators asking him to preserve documents and prepare for a deposition. When Parnas told Giuliani about this, he was directed to attorney John Dowd, who had previously represented President Trump in connection with Robert Mueller's investigation of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chair now serving time in prison. After securing the president's personal approval, Dowd took Parnas as a client.

On Oct. 8, a Tuesday, Dowd sent an email to a number of attorneys affiliated with Trump's defense team, calling the president "Boss" and promising that Dowd would "eliminate any doubt" that Parnas and Fruman would answer questions before Congress. Dowd then sent a letter to House investigators informing them that Parnas and Fruman would not appear for their scheduled deposition on Thursday, Oct. 10.

The next day, Parnas and Fruman were arrested. Two of the attorneys copied on Dowd's email were the same people who had been scheduled to fly with them to Europe. That night, Barr, who had been informed about the indictment in advance, met Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch for dinner in New York. The attorney general visited the Southern District offices the following morning on what aides described as a "routine" visit.

At the time of the arrest, however, the federal investigation into Parnas was not over, and did not in fact conclude for 11 more months, until a grand jury returned the fraud charges. It is not entirely clear why an immediate arrest was deemed necessary, although Parnas was described as a flight risk — on a trip the president's personal attorney was supposed to make with him.

Days after the arrest, Giuliani parted ways with his own attorney, Jon Sale, a prominent Miami lawyer Giuliani said he had retained for impeachment defense. Giuliani previously told Salon that Sale had been the person who first connected him with Parnas in 2018.He and Sale also shared a significant client: Venezuelan financier Alejandro Betancourt, who was under investigation in a multibillion-dollar money laundering probe and also knew Parnas.

Within a few weeks of these events, Parnas fired Dowd, after what he later described in a TV interview as a jailhouse loyalty shakedown....

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brn nose resig ltr

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/bill-barr-2649484227/

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might resign? talk of fire after 9=0 scotus big one loss?

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hang gas electrocute

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damning report exposes Trump DOJ's efforts to line up a secret supply chain for federal executions

Jon Queally Common Dreams

July 12, 2020

An explosiveReuters investigationrevealed Friday that a series of executions the Trump administration has planned for next week "will mark the culmination of a three-year campaign to line up a secret supply chain to make and test lethal injection drugs."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/hunter-biden-2649459491/

irs bs on hold before election protocol, rudy bogus?

Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani reportedly met with the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agents in Delaware who were investigating Hunter Biden's finances while President-elect Joe Biden was on the campaign trail.

Now, more questions are looming about the FBI. An editorial published by The New York Times lays out how the latest Pittsburgh inquiry raises questions about politicization among FBI agents.

While Hunter Biden did admit that there is a current tax investigation underway, there is speculation that the entire basis of the latest investigation stems from Giuliani's farfetched attempts to throw a curveball at the Democratic presidential candidate prior to Election Day.

It has been reported that U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr personally requested for top Pittsburgh federal prosecutor Scott Brady to review the investigative material Giuliani had gathered on the Biden family. Back in January, Brady met with Giuliani for nearly four hours to discuss the findings.

Due to the election and Giuliani's affiliation with Trump, the meeting is said to have "raised alarms within the F.B.I. and the Justice Department." There were also concerns about the politicization of the bureau in the middle of an election year.

Mr. Giuliani had served as Mr. Trump's attack dog during the Russia investigation before becoming the face of an effort to tarnish Hunter Biden during President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s campaign. If Mr. Brady's investigation became public, the agents feared that the F.B.I. could be drawn into a politically toxic battle in the midst of the presidential election, just as it was in 2016.

Giuliani's track record before and after the election has also been a factor taken into consideration which raises questions about the credibility of the latest investigation.

Mr. Giuliani had tried to promote scrutiny of Hunter Biden's work for Burisma, which had been mired in a corruption scandal. He accused Joseph R. Biden Jr. of corruptly pushing for the ouster of Ukraine's top prosecutor, who had been investigating Burisma, as a favor to his son while he was vice president. No evidence of wrongdoing by the president-elect has emerged.

As of Saturday, Dec. 12, Hunter Biden has not been charged with any financial crimes.

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why Bill Barr will go down as the second-biggest loser of the Trump era

Bill Blum Independent Media Institute

December 08, 2020

Of all the bombastic statements ever uttered by Attorney General William "Bill" Barr, a remark made toward the end of a lengthy interview with CBS News in May will be remembered above the rest. Asked how "history" will look upon his controversial motion to

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1220 an trump po'd also //

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/lou-dobbs/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/bill-barr-2649102493/

Bill Barr revealed on Tuesday that he has appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham as a special counsel in his ongoing probe into the origins of the Russia investigation. But he may have made a critical error that could undermine the appointment order in the future.

Speaking to the Associated Press, Barr said that he has actually made Durham a special counsel in October but kept the news under wraps until now. He made clear that his intention was to protect the investigation from a potential Joe Biden administration.

"I decided the best thing to do would be to appoint them under the same regulation that covered Bob Mueller, to provide Durham and his team some assurance that they'd be able to complete their work regardless of the outcome of the election," he said.

Robert Mueller became the special counsel after Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey in 2017, who has been overseeing the investigation. Many feared Trump would corruptly block the investigation from moving forward, so Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein picked Mueller to run it. There is no such justification now for setting up a new special counsel to continue under President Joe Biden, and there's a particularly rich irony in the tactic: Barr's obsession with the Russia investigation, and his decision to task Durham with reviewing it, stemmed from his misguided belief that it was a duplicitous effort by the Obama administration to undermine Trump. But Barr's action looks much more like the accusations he has baselessly lobbed at his predecessors than anything carried out under Obama.

Special counsels have added protection that normal U.S. attorneys lack. Under the DOJ regulations, a special counsel can only be fired for cause, while U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. The regulations also require the special counsel to report to the attorney general, who will soon be a Biden appointee. But Congress is to be notified if the attorney general ever overrules any step the special counsel would like to take in the probe.

As many pointed out, there seems to be a big problem with Barr's decision to set Durham up as a special counsel: The regulations don't seem to allow it:

An individual named as Special Counsel shall be a lawyer with a reputation for integrity and impartial decisionmaking, and with appropriate experience to ensure both that the investigation will be conducted ably, expeditiously and thoroughly, and that investigative and prosecutorial decisions will be supported by an informed understanding of the criminal law and Department of Justice policies. The Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government.[emphasis added]

Durham was already working within the government when he was appointed, apparently making him ineligible for the position Barr wants him to hold. It's not clear how or if this mistake could be used against Durham, though it's possible any target of his investigation could claim he's unauthorized to act in the role. And this mistake could potentially be exploited by a future attorney general if they sought to remove Durham from the position.

The order naming Durham as a special counsel assigns him to

investigate whether any federal official, employee, or any other person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns, individuals associated with those campaigns, and individuals associated with the administration of President Donald J. Trump, including but not limited to Crossfire Hurricane and the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III.

What's not clear about this is whether there's actually any factual predicate to justify this investigation. No serious justification has ever been put forward, though the president and his allies have hyped various bogus conspiracy fictions surrounding the probe that have been repeatedly debunked; Barr has been clearly sympathetic to these false narratives. One FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, was caught having created a minor alteration to a document used in an application to surveil Carter Page, a one-time associate of the Trump campaign. Clinesmith has pleaded guilty for this crime, though it likely would have only resulted in termination were Barr not on a mission of vengeance.

The Clinesmith revelation is noteworthy, though, because it was actually discovered in a review of the Russia investigation conducted by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who referred the case to prosecutors. But precisely because Horowitz had so closely reviewed the origins of the Russia investigation — finding that it was launched with sufficient predication, and finding no other crimes apart from Clinesmith's case — the natural question was: Why is Durham investigating at all? Horowitz has reviewed the conduct surrounding the probe, so isn't any further investigation unnecessary and duplicative? Doesn't Barr's move, after all that, reek of a witch hunt?

One justification Barr gave for Durham's appointment was that he had a wider scope than Horowitz, who was limited to reviewing DOJ conduct. Barr has indicated that Durham's probe encompassed the activity of the intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, suggesting to many that he was pursuing wild conspiracy theories floated by Trump supporters who believed there was an international plot against the incoming president in 2016. Barr was even reported to have flown to foreign countries such as Italy to probe their own officials about potential involvement in the plot.

But according to Barr's interview with the AP, these avenues have dried up. The attorney general "said Durham's investigation has been narrowing to focus more on the conduct of FBI agents who worked on the Russia investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane," according to the report.

It added: "The focus on the FBI, rather than the CIA and the intelligence community, suggests that Durham may have moved past some of the more incendiary claims that Trump supporters had hoped would yield allegations of misconduct, or even crimes — namely, the question of how intelligence agencies reached their conclusion that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election."

This raises the question, once again: If Durham is just focused on the FBI, why was the Horowitz probe insufficient?

Barr's announcement of the probe also seemed to have come at a convenient time. He also told the AP on Tuesday that he has seen no evidence of the kind of wide-ranging election fraud conspiracies that Trump and his allies have been alleging. Trump has, in fact, been claiming he won the election in a landslide, despite having lost decisively to Joe Biden. Barr's admission that there's no evidence for this is a devastating blow for the president who has relied on the attorney general as a faithful defender.

To soften the blow, then, Barr might have thought it was prudent to release the news of a new special counsel that is looking into Trump's grievances. Trump may appreciate the move as an apparent effort to undermine Biden and further his own conspiratorial claims. Perhaps Barr thought bringing the good news with the bad to the president was the best way of keeping his job through Jan. 20 and avoid a humiliating termination.

Barr was also seen visiting the White House for several hours on Tuesday, for undisclosed reasons.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/barr/

dismiss cahrges?

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barr death penalty

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/penalty/

an 1120

This is disturbing': DOJ claims armed feds are allowed to inspect state vote-counting locations

Jake Johnson Common Dreams

November 05, 2020

As ongoing vote tabulation in several key battleground states continues to slowly narrow President Donald Trump's path to reelection, the New York Times reported late Wednesday that the Justice Department has told federal prosecutors that U.S. law permits...

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1120

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/less-redacted-mueller-report-released-on-eve-of-election-day-reveals-more-about-the-dnc-hacks-investigation/

no lnx twt

'Mind-blowing' passages released from unsealed Mueller report on eve of Election Day

Meaghan Ellis November 03, 2020

A newly-released and less-redacted version of Robert Mueller's investigation into the Democratic National Convention (DNC) server hack revealed details about prosecutors' investigation into Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, President Donald Trump's close advisor, Roger Stone, and the decision not to charge them for their involvement.

Based on the report, although it was confirmed that WikiLeaks leaked the stolen DNC emails back in July and October 2016, and that Stone appeared to have sufficient knowledge of the impending leak prior to the emails going public, "investigators 'did not have sufficient evidence' to prove active participation in the hacks or knowledge that the electronic thefts were continuing," according to Buzzfeed News.

The report also suggested there was no way to indicate that the hack was beneficial for Trump's first presidential campaign.

"In addition, federal prosecutors could not establish that the hacked emails amounted to campaign contributions benefitting Trump's election chances and furthermore felt their publication might have been protected by the First Amendment, making a successful prosecution tenuous."

Many have taken to Twitter with their reactions to the new release while criticizing U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr for suppressing politically damaging information that could have impacted Trump's presidential campaign.

The president's previous written testimony also appears to clash with the unsealed evidence in the Mueller report. In his written responses, Trump claimed he "could not recall discussing WikiLeaks with Mr. Stone."

Buzzfeed also offered a side-by-side comparison of both reports to show the distinct differences between the two. In many cases, full passages were suppressed from the previously released version of the report.

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turkey pres pressed joe;

some of the mystery around why Barr was so anxious to fire US Attorney Berman has been solved

Mark Sumner Daily Kos

October 29, 2020

In June, Attorney General William Barr suddenly announced the resignation of U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman. There was only one problem—Berman had not resigned, and he wasn't going to resign. So Barr fired him. Berman disputed Barr's ability to remove him from office, but finally left after securing an agreement that his primary assistant would take over the office, rather than handing it off to a political appointee with no criminal law experience who was favored by Donald Trump.

In congressional testimony, Berman made it clear that Barr had been trying to force him out of his office for months. The class between Berman and Barr made clear that the new attorney general was attempting tocompletely politicize the DOJ. And for weeks following Berman's departure, there was speculation over exactly why Barr was so anxious to see the New York attorney gone. Was Berman looking into the fake "We Build the Wall" organization that was feeding money to Steve Bannon? Was he taking a closer look at Rudy Giuliani after bringing the grand jury case thatindicted Giuliani's pals? Or was Berman fired because he was taking a look directly into the finances of the Trump Organization?

At least part of the answer became clear on Thursday, and that answer is: none of the above. Instead, Berman was trying to prevent a Turkish state-owned bank from illegally funneling billions to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. And Donald Trump was defending them.

As The New York Times reports, Berman had the evidence he needed to make a case against Turkey. But even before Barr came to town, the Department of Justice would not allow him to move forward on charges that Halkbank, under the control of Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had violated U.S. law and international sanctions to the tune of billions.

In 2019, a frustrated Berman came to press his case to the a newly installed Barr, and Barr had an immediate answer for him—settle the case. What Barr wanted was for Berman to tell Turkish officials that, in exchange for a small fine, he would end the investigation. Halkbank would be able to carry on business in the U.S. Erdogan and other figures connected to the sanctions violations would not be charged.

Berman refused. He pointed out that though they had enough evidence to lay charges against the bank, there were key investigations underway. Not only did some of those investigations involve people close to Erdogan, there also appeared to be direct connections to the Iranian nuclear program—a program that was restarted after Trump broke the multinational Iran nuclear treaty.

"This is completely wrong," said Berman. "You don't grant immunity to individuals unless you are getting something from them, and we wouldn't be here."

Why was Barr pushing Berman to let it go? Because Erdogan was pushing Trump.

From the very beginning of his time in office, Trump has refused to confront the Turkish strongman over anything. Meetings concerning Turkey inevitably include Trump bragging about hisproperties in Istanbul, and Trump frequently defends Erdogan's harsh treatments of his political opponents. Trump isn't alone. Among the charges that the DOJ dropped when Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, wereillegal lobbying for Erdogan, and even a plot to kidnap a U.S. resident and bring him to Turkey so Erdogan can kill him.

One year ago, Trump tweeted out his support for Turkey's "ultimate solution" of the Kurdish situation as he betrayed America's long-time allies, turned his back on treaties, and handed over much of what they considered their homeland to Erdogan. For Trump, it's not just a relationship in question, it's an exchange of cash. Trump has made at least $2.6 million from his operations in Turkey since he made that ride down a golden escalator. The two men also share an attorney in Rudy Giuliani, who Erdogan hired to lobby in the United States.

So why wasn't Berman able to make progress in charging Halkbank? Because at the same time Erdogan was on the phone with Trump, pressing him to drop the case. According to theNYTreport, Erdogan is concerned because "the case had become a major embarrassment for him in Turkey." Berman was canned, at least in part, because he had become an obstacle in one of those "personal relationships" that Trump regards as more important than treaties or alliances.

But there is one point where the Timesarticle doesn't speculate—which came first: Erdogan's making billions from Iran's nuclear program while sending millions to Trump, or Trump's desire to end the Iran nuclear deal, making Erdogan's multi-billion dollar play possible?

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an 10/21/20

Progressives unite for last-ditch effort to delay Amy Coney Barrett vote — by impeaching Bill Barr

Bob Brigham Raw Story

October 21, 2020

Progressive activists are urging House Democrats to essentially kill two birds with one stone by impeaching Attorney General Bill Barr — which would delay the confirmation vote for Judge Amy Coney Barrett

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3 in one day

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/barr-claims-trump-cannot-be-sued-for-denying-writers-rape-accusation-using-doj-to-crush-a-victim/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trump-publicly-demands-bill-barr-appoint-special-counsel-to-probe-biden-in-off-the-rails-fox-news-interview/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/is-the-republican-party-over/

...[rats from ship egs]

And yet another story from the day: a third career prosecutor from the Department of Justice resigned after publicly attacking Attorney General William Barr for abusing his power to get Trump reelected."After 36 years, I'm fleeing what was the U.S. Department of Justice," Phillip Halpern wrote. "[T]he department's past leaders were dedicated to the rule of law and the guiding principle that justice is blind. That is a bygone era, but it should not be forgotten." Noting that "Barr has never actually investigated, charged or tried a case," Halpern expressed deep concern over Barr's "slavish obedience to Donald Trump's will." "This career bureaucrat seems determined to turn our democracy into an autocracy," he warned.

Georgetown Law Professor Paul Butler, who worked as a federal prosecutor under Barr when he was George H. W. Bush's Attorney General, told Katie Benner of the New York Times that such criticism is "unprecedented," and reflects Trump's pressure on the AG. "I have never seen sitting prosecutors go on the record with concerns about the attorney general," he said.

And yet, Barr's willingness to bend the Justice Department to Trump's personal will may, in the end, not be enough to keep Trump's favor. Angry that Barr did not produce a report attacking the Russia investigation before the election, Trump just yesterday said he wasn't happy with Barr's performance, and might not keep him on as AG if he wins a second term.

There are signs people in the administration are preparing for Trump to lose the election. His cabinet is rushing to change regulations to lock in Trump's goal of giving more scope to businessmen to act as they see fit. Normally, changes in regulations require setting aside time for public comment on the changes, but the administration is shortening or eliminating those periods over changes in, for example, rules allowing railroads to move highly flammable liquefied natural gas on freight trains, what constitutes "contract" work, how much pollution factories can emit, and who can immigrate to America.

Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said in a statement: "President Trump has worked quickly from the beginning of his term to grow the economy by removing the mountain of Obama-Biden job-killing regulations," and that the current push simply continues that effort. But no one is missing the quiet distancing going on in Washington as Republican lawmakers are shifting away from public support for the president.

Meanwhile, at his rally tonight in Georgia, Trump told the crowd "You should… lock up the Bidens, lock up Hillary." The crowd then began to chant "Lock them up." But one thing about a bully: when people finally start to turn on him, there is a stampede for the exits.

Tonight, at his Georgia rally, Trump outlined all the ways in which he was being unfairly treated, then mused: "Could you imagine if I lose?… I'm not going to feel so good. Maybe I'll have to leave the country, I don't know."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/in-trumps-america-there-is-before-due-process/

IMI

The federal government's killing of Michael Reinoehl exactly two months before the November 3 presidential race ought to have been one of the most high-profile election issues being discussed in America. Instead, it has been almost forgotten save for some media outlets starting to question the official narrative of his death. The little-known self-proclaimed "antifa" activist was killed by federal agents on September 3. Officers claimed that he had fired shots at them before being gunned down. But a week after his killing, the Washington Post found that "the wanted man wasn't obviously armed."

The Thurston County sheriff in Lacey, Washington, where the suspect was killed, released a public statement saying his investigation team "can confirm… that Mr. Reinoehl pointed the handgun that he had in his possession at the officers at the time of the shooting." The U.S. Marshals Service whose forces were the ones that shot Reinoehl released a similar statement claiming that the fugitive task force that had been sent to his location "attempted to peacefully arrest him," but, after being shot at, "Task force members responded to the threat and struck the suspect who was pronounced dead at the scene."

News outlets took the official statements at their word and dutifully reported the incident as one where a suspected killer opened fire on officers and was fatally shot in the course of his arrest. In other words, there was "nothing to see here." But according to a New York Times investigation six weeks after his death, it remains unclear "whether law enforcement officers made any serious attempt to arrest Mr. Reinoehl before killing him."

According to nearly two dozen witnesses that the New York Times spoke to, "all but one said they did not hear officers identify themselves or give any commands before opening fire." Even though Reinoehl was armed at the time of his death, his handgun was found in his pocket and an AR-style rifle in a bag in his car, suggesting he did not threaten the officers trying to arrest him as official accounts had initially claimed.

Reinoehl was wanted in connection to the fatal shooting of a Trump-supporting right-wing activist named Aaron J. Danielson during Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon. President Donald Trump ranted on Twitter on the day he was killed, "Why aren't the Portland Police ARRESTING the cold blooded killer" and adding,"Everybody knows who this thug is." Later he hailed the fatal shooting triumphantly, saying in a Fox News interview:

"We sent in the U.S. Marshals for the killer, the man who killed the young man on the street.… Two and a half days went by, and I put out [on Twitter], 'When are you going to go get him?' And the U.S. Marshals went in to get him, and theyended in a gunfight. This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him. And I'll tell you something—that's the way it has to be. There has to beretribution when you have crime like this."

In referring to Reinoehl as a "cold blooded killer" and "violent criminal" even though at the time of his death he was a suspect, Trump made clear that in his America, "law and order" means you are guilty before being proven so and can be targeted for extrajudicial assassination if those in power decide you deserve it. Such shocking words coming from any other head of state in the world would trigger instant condemnations from the U.S. State Department. Speaking to his supporters, Trumpboasted of the "great job" that U.S. Marshals did in Portland, adding meaningfully, "you know what I mean."

Attorney General William Barr, who appears to have no understanding of how the nation's system of criminal justice is supposed to work, released a statement praising the federal troops' actions and echoing Trump's words in more official-sounding language. Barr called Reinoehl, "a dangerous fugitive, admitted Antifa member, and suspected murderer," and said before any investigation into the killing was complete that "[w]hen Reinoehl attempted to escape arrest and produced a firearm, he was shot and killed by law enforcement officers." In doing so, Barr too justified this extrajudicial assassination as Trump did and went as far as calling the whole incident, "a significant accomplishment in the ongoing effort to restore law and order to Portlandand other cities." He applauded "the fugitive task force team that located Reinoehl and prevented him from escaping justice."

To Barr, the top law enforcement official in the nation, "justice" meant death, rather than arrest followed by charges and a fair trial. To Barr and Trump, the constant drumbeat of "law and order" is essentially a promise to fatally punish those perceived as enemies of the government.

In addition to the Washington Post and the New York Times, several other media outlets have corroborated that Reinoehl's killing appeared unjustified. Rolling Stone characterizes one eyewitness's account of the scene as "a violent ambush" that "resembled an execution." Oregon Public Broadcasting in collaboration with ProPublica spoke to witnesses who said that the officers shot him without warning and "looked less like law enforcement officers than members of a right-wing militia."

In a VICE News interview released just after his death, Reinoehl can be seen claiming that he acted in self-defense in Portland—just as an attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse, the Trump-supporting armed suspect in the Kenosha, Wisconsin, killing of two Black Lives Matter activists, said. With Reinoehl dead at the hands of U.S. Marshals, we will never know the truth.

Instead, Reinoehl now serves as the perfect symbol of the shadowy enemy that Trump rails against. A participant in Black Lives Matter protests, Reinoehl claimed he was "100% ANTIFA all the way." The president's promise to designate "ANTIFA" (which is an ideology, not an organization) as "a Terrorist Organization" has fed into dangerous notions designed to create panic among his base. It has raised the specter of "violent mobs" terrorizing communities that only swift government action of the sort aimed at Reinoehl can quell.

But who are the "violent mobs" really? In Trump's world, armed self-defense is acceptable only for white supremacists who support him, not for the left-wing activists they routinely threaten and hurt. Since protests began earlier this year, according to NPR, "Right-wing extremists are turning cars into weapons, with reports of at least 50 vehicle-ramming incidents" at protests against police brutality. Conservative news outlets including Fox News and the Daily Caller have encouraged such attacks. Even the Department of Homeland Security's latest threat assessment identifies, "racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists—specifically white supremacist extremists," as "the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland" among what the agency designates as "Domestic Violent Extremists" or DVEs.

As if to underscore the threat, more than a dozen white men were just arrested (without being harmed) in connection with a kidnapping plot aimed at Michigan's Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The governor, who is among several women who have faced Trump's online ire, said, "I do believe that there are still serious threats that groups like this group, these domestic terrorists, are finding comfort and support in the rhetoric coming out of Republican leadership in the White House to our state house."

In Trump's America, white nationalist armed vigilante men reign supreme while those of us speaking out against fascism are symbolized by Reinoehl—and like him will be not be considered innocent until proven guilty. We will never know whether or not Reinoehl was guilty of murdering Danielson, as he was not given a chance to stand trial. In Trump's America, there will be no law, only order. To Trump, "[t]here has to be retribution," rather than due process. Among the many issues at stake in the November 3 election, this ought to be a central concern.

Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of "Rising Up With Sonali," a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations.

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an 1020

trump's latest harebrained election scheme goes up in smoke

Amanda Marcotte Salon

October 14, 2020

Despite days of a seemingly steroid-addled Donald Trump raving about alleged conspiracies against him on Twitter and to any right wing pundit who would listen, it appears Attorney General Bill Barr — usually so indulgent of Trump's various crimes and corrupt

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odd timing before election? 3 wks trump kid lib priv claims biden unmasked him

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/bill-barr-buries-doj-report-that-destroys-trumps-obamagate-pseudo-scandal

us . Attorney General Bill Barr and Republicans' pseudo "unmasking" investigation into Former President Barack Obama has not only come up short—it has come up completely empty.

Barr-appointed U.S. Attorney John Bash concluded his investigative report into Obama-era officials to determine if President Donald Trump was really spied on as he claimed he was.

Unfortunately, for Trump, Bash concluded the investigative review without any criminal charges or the release of a public report detailing his findings, according to The Washington Post. As a result of Bash's findings, Barr is reportedly working to keep the document away from the public because it could likely exonerate Obama and refute Trump's claims.

"Bash's team was focused not just on unmasking, but also on whether Obama-era officials provided information to reporters,according to people familiar with the probe, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive investigation. But the findings ultimately turned over to Barr fell short of what Trump and others might have hoped, and the attorney general's office elected not to release them publicly, the people familiar with the matter said. The Washington Post was unable to review the full results of what Bash found. - The Washington Post

On multiple occasions, President Donald Trump has spoken publicly about the "Obamagate scandal" despite having no evidence that such a scandal actually exists.

During a previous press conference in the Rose Garden, Trump was asked about his Mother's Day tweet storm. While the rest of the country celebrated the day, Trump was focused on Obamagate.

When asked what Obamagate is, Trump simply said, "You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious." Then, the president pivoted to criticizing the media for not releasing reports on the alleged "crimes."[no detail from bash]

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trump-takes-one-more-step-toward-becoming-an-autocrat-and-it-hardly-makes-a-ripple

hunter kos ref NYT

no lnx

NEWS ANALYSIS

Taking Page From Authoritarians, Trump Turns Power of State Against Political Rivals

President Trump took a step even Richard M. Nixon avoided in his most desperate days: openly ordering direct, immediate government action against specific opponents, timed to serve his re-election campaign.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was ordered by President Trump to declassify thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

By David E. Sanger

Oct. 10, 2020

President Trump’s order to his secretary of state to declassify thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails, along with his insistence that his attorney general issue indictments against Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., takes his presidency into new territory — until now, occupied by leaders with names like Putin, Xi and Erdogan.

:{:{}:

Mr. Trump has long demanded — quite publicly, often on Twitter — that his most senior cabinet members use the power of their office to pursue political enemies. But his appeals this week, as he trailed badly in the polls and was desperate to turn the national conversation away from the coronavirus, were so blatant that one had to look to authoritarian nations to make comparisons.

He took a step even Richard M. Nixon avoided in his most desperate days: openly ordering direct, immediate government action against specific opponents, timed to serve his re-election campaign.

“There is essentially no precedent,” said Jack Goldsmith, who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush and has written extensively on presidential powers. “We have a norm that developed after Watergate that presidents don’t talk about ongoing investigations, much less interfere with them.”

“It is crazy and it is unprecedented,” said Mr. Goldsmith, now a professor at Harvard Law School, “but it’s no different from what he has been saying since the beginning of his presidency. The only thing new is that he has moved from talking about it to seeming to order it.”

Mr. Trump’s vision of the presidency has always leaned to exercising the absolute powers of the chief executive, a writ-large version of the family business he presided over. “I have an Article II,” he told young adults last year at a Turning Point USA summit, referring to the section of the Constitution that deals with the president’s powers, “where I have the right to do whatever I want as president, but I don’t even talk about that.”

Now he is talking about it, almost daily. He is making it clear that prosecutions, like vaccines for the coronavirus, are useless to him if they come after Nov. 3. He has declared, without evidence, that there is already plenty of proof that Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden and Mrs. Clinton, among others, were fueling the charges that his campaign had links to Russia — what he calls “the Russia hoax.” And he has pressured his secretary of state to agree to release more of Mrs. Clinton’s emails before the election, reprising a yearslong fixation despite having defeated her four years ago.

Presidential historians say there is no case in modern times where the president has so plainly used his powers to take political opponents off the field — or has been so eager to replicate the behavior of strongmen. “In America, our presidents have generally avoided strongman balcony scenes — that’s for other countries with authoritarian systems,” Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian,wrote on Twitter after Mr. Trump returned from the hospital where he received Covid-19 treatment and removed his mask, while still considered contagious, as he saluted from the White House balcony.

Long ago, White House officials learned how to avoid questions about whether the president views his powers as fundamentally more constrained than those of the authoritarians he so often casts in admiring terms, including Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. They have something in common: Mr. Trump’s State Department has criticized all three for corrupting the justice systems in their countries to pursue political enemies.

(Russia, the State Department complained in its 2019 Human Rights report, engaged in a “crackdown on political opposition and other critics before and after presidential elections that Vladimir Putin won.” Turkey, it said the same year, has conducted the “arbitrary arrest and detention of tens of thousands of persons, including former opposition members of parliament.” In recent weeks. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been particularly outspoken about the state’s use of a new national security law to arrest activists and political opponents of the Chinese Communist Party.)

Mr. Pompeo has always bristled when reporters have asked him to explain what the world should believe when it reads Mr. Trump’s most authoritarian-sounding tweets. He answers that what distinguishes the United States is that it is a “rule of law” nation, and then often turns the tables on his questioners, charging that even raising the issue reveals that the reporters are partisans, not journalists, intent on embarrassing Mr. Trump and the United States.

But his anger is often wielded as a shield, one that keeps him from publicly grappling with the underlying question: How can Washington take on other authoritarians around the world — especially China, Mr. Pompeo’s nemesis — for abusing state power when the president of the United States calls for political prosecutions and politically motivated declassifications?

“We’ve never seen anything like this in an American election campaign,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a former under secretary of state who is now an informal adviser to Mr. Biden. “It reduces our credibility — we look like the countries we condemn for nondemocratic practices before an election.”

“I have worked for nine secretaries of state,” Mr. Burns said. “I cannot imagine any of them intervening in an election as blatantly as what we are seeing now. Our tradition is that secretaries of state stay out of elections. If they wanted to release Hillary Clinton’s emails, they could have done it in 2017, 2018 or 2019. It is an abuse of power by Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo.”

Another career diplomat who served as both ambassador to Russia and deputy secretary of state, William J. Burns, said that what Mr. Trump had ordered is “exactly the kind of behavior I saw so often in authoritarian regimes in many years as an American diplomat.”

“In dealing with Putin’s Russia or Erdogan’s Turkey, we would have protested and condemned such actions,” he said. “Now it’s our own government that’s engaging in them.”

“The result,” said Mr. Burns, now the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “is the hollowing out of our institutions at home, and deep corrosion of our image and influence abroad.”

In the current cases, it is unclear whether Mr. Trump will get his wish — or whether his loyal appointees will slow-walk his requests. There is some evidence they are already looking for escape hatches.

Mr. Pompeo, the administration’s most conspicuous ideologue, Mr. Trump’s most vocal loyalist and a lawyer, was clearly taken aback when the president expressed displeasure, saying he was “not happy” that the State Department had not released emails sent through Mrs. Clinton’s home server.

“You’re running the State Department, you get them out,” the president told Fox Business in an interview this week. “Forget about the fact that they were classified. Let’s go. Maybe Mike Pompeo finally finds them.”

Mr. Pompeo, one of his aides said Saturday, was in a box: The complaint about Mrs. Clinton’s home server was that she was risking exposing classified emails by not using the State Department email system — a system Russia had already infiltrated — yet Mr. Trump was demanding that they be released in full. Just days before, he had announced, over Twitter, that he was using his executive power to declassify all of them, without redactions.

“We’ve got the emails,” Mr. Pompeo responded on Fox News. “We’re getting them out. We’re going to get all this information out so the American people can see it.”

But he also hinted that many of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, mostly those that were stored on the State Department’s own system, have already been posted on the agency’s website, after an unusually diligent effort by the department to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests from Mr. Trump’s supporters. (They are often heavily redacted — to the point of containing no content — despite the president’s order to the contrary.)

“We’re doing it as fast as we can,” Mr. Pompeo told Dana Perino, a Fox News anchor who once served as President Bush’s press secretary. “I certainly think there’ll be more to see before the election.”

Mr. Pompeo clearly understands the problem: Even if he makes all of them public, they are unlikely to satisfy the president. Last year, the State Department’s own inspector general found that while Mrs. Clinton had risked compromising classified information, she did not systematically or deliberately mishandle her emails.

:{:{}:

William P. Barr may face an even greater challenge in satisfying the president. No attorney general since John N. Mitchell, who served Mr. Nixon and brought conspiracy charges against critics of the Vietnam War, bent the Justice Department more in a president’s direction. And Mr. Nixon himself, while urging the I.R.S. to audit political opponents, stopped short of publicly calling for individual prosecutions. Yet in February, Mr. Barr told ABC News that Mr. Trump “has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.” At the same time, he complained that the president’s tweets about the Justice Department “make it impossible for me to do my job.”

Now, clearly, the president has asked Mr. Barr to act in a criminal case — and not in a quiet phone call. Instead, he did it on Twitter and Fox News, expressing his deep disappointment with his second attorney general, for essentially the same reason he fired his first one, Jeff Sessions: insufficient blind loyalty.

His complaint appears to have been driven by Mr. Barr’s warning to the White House and other officials that there are likely to be no indictments before the election from the investigation being run by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut. Mr. Durham is searching for evidence that the inquiry into Russia was a politically motivated effort to undercut his presidency.

:{:{}:

Mr. Trump says the case is clear-cut. He told Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host to whom he gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the last State of the Union address, that Mr. Durham has had “plenty of time to do it.”

:{:{}:

“Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes — the greatest political crime in the history of our country — then we’ll get little satisfaction, unless I win,” Mr. Trump said on Fox Business.

:{:{}:

“If we don’t win,” he said, “that whole thing is going to be dismissed.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/william-barrs-bogus-voter-fraud-claims-are-part-of-a-long-history-of-republican-voter-suppression-reporter

alex h

With one national poll after another showing President Donald Trump losing to former Vice President Joe Biden in November, the president and Attorney General William Barr continue to obsess over "voter fraud." They baselessly claim the crime is promoted by mail-in voting, despite its history as a reliable practice. Journalist Pema Levy pointed out that Barr's actions are part of a long a seedy history in an article published in Mother Jones this week, describing them as thinly veiled attempts at voter suppression.

"A pattern has emerged in recent years that's easy to spot," Levy explains. "Right before an election, Republican officials in battleground states announce voter fraud investigations. The goal is obvious: suppressing turnout. But what's new this year is that this underhanded tactic is being employed by the president and the Justice Department."

Levy cites Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp as an example of a Republican who has used bogus voter fraud claims to suppress turnout, recalling that only two days before the 2018 midterms, Kemp — who was Georgia's secretary of state before becoming governor — "came out with an explosive announcement: he was investigating the state Democratic Party for attempting to hack into the state's voter registration system."

"At the time, Kemp was both the state's top election official and the Republican nominee for governor in a dead-heat race against Democrat Stacey Abrams," Levy notes. "Kemp had a history of bogus voter fraud allegations against his political opponents, and many recognized the brazen tactic this time. Election law expert Rick Hasen called it 'perhaps the most outrageous example of election administration partisanship in the modern era' and 'banana republic stuff.'"

But in May 2020, Levy adds, Georgia's Republican attorney general "confirmed what was suspected all along: there was no evidence of any crime." Republicans, Levy stresses, "have a long history of making false allegations of voter fraud, only to see their accusations fall apart once scrutinized. But airing such charges right before an election threatens to destabilize and delegitimize it."

This year, according to Levy, one is seeing "an increase in fraud allegations from the Justice Department itself — and it appears to be part of Barr's ongoing effort to transform the (DOJ) into an arm of the Trump campaign, ready to engage in a longstanding GOP voter suppression tactic."

Barr, Levy warns, is showing that he is ready to "possibly aid the Trump campaign's legal efforts to get ballots tossed during the vote-counting process."

When the U.S. Senate confirmed Barr as U.S. attorney general in 2019, Levy recalls, he was hailed as "by-the-book institutionalist" — only to show how much of a Trump loyalist he was when he "misrepresented" the findings of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation and "interfered" in the DOJ's investigation of long-time Trump ally Roger Stone. And during this year's presidential election, Levy predicts, Barr will to do whatever he can to help Trump win reelection.

"Since Barr has torched his credibility," Levy writes, "any allegations of fraud emanating from the Justice Department in the coming weeks should be viewed skeptically. Barr is using an old playbook. You've been warned."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/bill-barr-battles-the-rule-of-law-in-this-war-there-are-no-bystanders/

no lnx [long, see bak for full]

Bill Barr battles the rule of law: In this war, there are no bystanders

Trump's biggest vulnerability isn't his crimes — it's his humiliating failure

Steven Harper and Moyers & Company October 10, 2020

"With your law degrees, you will have immense power to do great harm," Harvard Law Professor Duncan Kennedy admonished our one-L torts class in 1976.

A few months later, former President Richard M. Nixon (JD, Duke, '37) — who thought Watergate had been a political "witch hunt" — uttered his infamous line, "Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal." And his former attorney general, John N. Mitchell (JD, Fordham, '38), was headed to prison.

More than 40 years after that class, United States Attorney General William P. Barr (JD, George Washington, '77) has driven home the gravity of Prof. Kennedy's admonition. When the story of the Trump era is written, history will pose a single defining question to every American lawyer: In the fight to preserve the rule of law, which side were you on?America has seen which side William Barr is on. As the nation's top law enforcement officer, the attorney general represents the "People of the United States." Early in his tenure, Barr jettisoned that role.

Operating as Trump's personal advocate, Barr has abused the power of his office to undermine the Trump-Russia investigation. Although troublesome, Barr's actions are best viewed as a case study in his modus operandi. What Barr has done to that investigation and its key players, he can do to anything and anyone. That makes Barr's methods ominous for the rule of law itself.

Hiring Barr was no accident. Early in 2017, before special counsel Robert Mueller's appointment, Trump feared that he was losing control of the Trump-Russia investigation. He was furious at then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions' (JD, Alabama, 73) for recusing himself from the ongoing probe. Referring to his former personal attorney, notorious fixer, and top aide to Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-WI) during the investigations of communist activity in the 1950s, Trump lamented, "Where's my Roy Cohn?"

A year later, he got his answer. Barr sent Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (JD, Harvard, '89) an unsolicited 19-page memo challenging the premise of Mueller's obstruction of justice investigation and urging that the special counsel should not even be permitted to question Trump. In William Barr, Trump had finally found his Roy Cohn.

First came the lies and deceptions. According to The Washington Post, as of July 9, 2020, Trump had made more than 20,000 "false or misleading claims" since assuming office. Like Trump, Barr understands the rhetorical and psychological concepts of primacy and repetition. Whoever speaks first and most frequently on an important topic has the upper hand in controlling the resulting narrative, regardless of its veracity.

From his first days in office, Barr has reinforced Trump's false assertions that the Trump-Russia investigation never should have happened. In the maelstrom that followed, truth became a casualty. So it's important to start with a brief reprise of the Mueller report's key conclusions:"[T]he Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome." (Vol. I, p. 5)

The Trump campaign "expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts." (Vol. I, p. 5)

Trump tried repeatedly to obstruct the investigation into his campaign ties to Russia.

And Mueller concluded, "[I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment… Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him." (Vol. II, p. 2)

Barr's dissembling prevented the truth from gaining traction. Two days after Mueller gave Barr his final report confidentially — including summaries suitable for public dissemination — Barr sent a letter to Congress with his own misleading "summary" of Mueller's findings. It was so deceptive that Mueller himself complained to Barr immediately, saying that Barr's letter "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office's work and conclusions." The result, Mueller wrote, "is public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation."But public confusion was the objective because it led to public indifference. For another three weeks, Barr did not release even a redacted version of Mueller's report, and Mueller's dissenting letter to Barr did not surface until two weeks after that. During the intervening month-and-a-half, Barr's mischaracterizations became the only story of Mueller's findings, and they stuck. Primacy gave Barr the edge and repetition then took over.

Immediately, Trump used Barr's spin to reinforce his big lie. "No collusion, No obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION," Trump tweeted — three lies in a single post.

Then Barr made things worse — or from Trump's perspective, better. Two hours before releasing a redacted version of Mueller's report, Barr held a press conference to spin its conclusions again. He repeated Trump's false "no collusion" meme four times.

On obstruction, Barr also made this disingenuous claim: "The White House fully cooperated with the special counsel's investigation, providing unfettered access to campaign and White House documents, directing senior aides to testify freely, and asserting no privilege claims. And at the same time, the president took no act that in fact deprived the special counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation."

Here's the truth:

:{:{}:

From its inception, Trump attacked Mueller's investigation and repeatedly pressured then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House counsel Don McGahn (JD, Widener, '94) to curtail or terminate it. (Vol. II, pp. 77-120)

Trump refused Mueller's requests for an interview. (Vol. II, pp. C-1-2)

:{:{}:

Mueller said Trump's written answers to his questions were "inadequate." (Vol. II, C-2)

Trump dangled pardons aimed at influencing key witnesses, including his former national security adviser Mike Flynn, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort (JD, Georgetown, '74), and a person whose name was initially redacted from Mueller's report but who we now know is Trump's longtime confidant, Roger Stone. Trump also tried to influence and intimidate his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen (JD, Thomas M. Cooley, '91). (Vol. II, pp. 120-156)

The Rule of Law

...

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/barr-confirms-gops-russian-report-will-not-be-complete-by-election-day/

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1020

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo on Thursday blasted Attorney General Bill Barr. Cuomo played a video of Rep. Pramila Jayapal questioning the attorney general, which has new importance after the plot to kidnap or murder Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI). In the clip, Rep. Jayapal grilled Barr about widely reported press accounts of the armed takeover of the Michigan state capitol. At least two of the men arrested appeared at the rally. https://twitter.com/ChadLivengood/status/1314332374759542784 "He's damned by his own words," Cuomo declared. "These people were investigating it at the same time. A sitting governor, over a dozen bad guys, months of planning, murderous intent, derivative of the main domestic terror threat we face," he explained. "And he's clueless? How? How is that okay?" Watch:

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amy b another paleo-cath?

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an 1020 pro pub

Justice Department may have violated Attorney General Barr’s own policy memo

Justin Elliott Robert Faturechi

October 07, 2020

When the Justice Department recently publicized an ongoing investigation into potentially improperly discarded Trump ballots, critics accused it of violating long-standing agency policy against interfering in an election.

But the unusual decision to publicly detail the Pennsylvania case may also have run afoul of guidelines that Attorney General William Barr himself issued to federal prosecutors this year, according to a memo obtained by ProPublica.

In May, Barr wrote a directive to all Justice Department employees imploring them to be “particularly sensitive to safeguarding the Department's reputation for fairness, neutrality, and non-partisanship" when it comes to election-related crimes.

“Partisan politics," he wrote, “must play no role in the decisions of federal investigators or prosecutors regarding any investigations or criminal charges. Law enforcement officers and prosecutors may never select the timing of public statements (attributed or not), investigative steps, criminal charges, or any other action in any matter or case for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party."

Nevertheless, last month Barr's Justice Department issued a press release announcing an investigation into whether local elections officials illegally discarded nine mail-in military ballots in Pennsylvania. The announcement of an open investigation was highly unusual. Even more abnormal was that the press release specified that at least seven of those ballots were for President Donald Trump.

While the motivation of the Pennsylvania press release is unclear, Barr had personally briefed Trump on the matter before the announcement, The Washington Post subsequently reported, citing an anonymous source. The president raised it in a media interview and then DOJ's Pennsylvania office announced the investigation.

Then, the Trump campaign quickly jumped on the Pennsylvania case to bolster those claims.

“BREAKING: FBI finds military mail-in ballots discarded in Pennsylvania. 100% of them were cast for President Trump. Democrats are trying to steal the election," a campaign official tweeted.

Justin Levitt, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ's civil rights division, said the Pennsylvania press release was “flatly inconsistent" with Barr's memo “and shamefully so."

“There's absolutely no legitimate law enforcement reason I know of to mention who the ballots were cast for: They were either dealt with properly or not properly," he said. “And if there's no good reason, it leaves only the most likely bad reason: that the identity of the candidate was revealed for partisan political purposes."

Some experts did not agree . Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor at Duke Law School, said Barr could argue that “any public announcement about a ballot investigation complies with [the memo] because the language is so broad."

Barr, he said, could say the “purpose" of the Pennsylvania announcement was not to affect the outcome of the election or support a particular candidate, but some other non-prohibited motivation like “protecting the vote."

The Barr memo closelymirrored election-year guidance that previous attorneys general sent out under both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. Barr himself said at his Senate confirmation hearings last year that the election policies were in place because the incumbent party has “their hands on the levers of the law enforcement apparatus of the country, and you do not want it used against the opposing political party."

Asked whether the Pennsylvania announcement ran afoul of the agency's election policies, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec responded: “No." She declined to elaborate.

The U.S. attorney overseeing the case is David Freed, a former Republican nominee for Pennsylvania state attorney general who was nominated for his current role by Trump in 2017. In a publicly released letter, Freed said he was detailing initial findings despite an ongoing investigation “based on the limited amount of time before the general election and the vital public importance of these issues."

A second memo obtained by ProPublica, issued in August by Corey Amundson, chief of the DOJ's Public Integrity Section, was even more explicit.

In it, Amundson reiterated the Justice Department's long-standing policy in election fraud cases: “Overt criminal investigative measures should not ordinarily be taken in matters involving alleged fraud in the manner in which votes were cast or counted until the election in question has been concluded."

The memo was addressed to the Attorney General Advisory Committee, a group of U.S. attorneys that advise the attorney general.

The policy Amundson cites appears to make an exception for extraordinary cases. But it seems unlikely that would apply to the case in Pennsylvania. That involved only nine ballots, which appear to have been discarded by a sole contract employee. The motivation may have been an innocuous attempt to follow Pennsylvania rules barring ballots sent back without the proper envelope.

Current and former Justice Department officials told ProPublica that, even without the memos from top agency officials including Barr, the Pennsylvania press release violated long-standing department policy. They explained that prosecutors not only should not announce that they are investigating, but that they should be slow even to start an election-sensitive investigation during the campaign. Such an investigation is so sensitive, an opposing candidate could use it to smear his or her opponent.

“That's what they drill into us: the policy of non-interference and never, ever, ever announcing an investigation," one official said. “That's why the thing in Pennsylvania is bonkers, completely bonkers."

A spokeswoman for Freed declined to comment.

Barr has amplified Trump's attempt to discredit mail-in voting before, claiming falsely that there is widespread fraud.

Filed under:

Trump Administration
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/barr-doj-offer-talking-points-for-trump-amid-speculation-of-political-motives/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/bill-barrs-tip-off-revealed-trumps-desperation-and-his-own-pitiful-effort-to-boost-the-president

steve salon

on Thursday, President Trump, White House staff, federal prosecutors and Trump campaign spokespeople issued dire warnings about voting this fall with mailed-out ballots after a temporary election worker in a Pennsylvania County apparently mishandled nine ballots cast by military service members.

The incident occurred in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, a swing county in a swing state, where nearly 6 million votes for president were cast in 2016's fall election. (Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 44,292 votes.)

The White House and Trump campaign statements raced to the top of national news and social media. They also drew intelligent rejoinders from experts who know how elections are run, from warnings not to fall for claims of massive malfeasance when poll workers routinely make small scale errors, to tweets that the mistake involving discarded ballots should have been easily fixed by routine procedures.

"Luzerne County has the ability to contact these military voters and enfranchise them, despite the mistake, but now, the DOJ [Department of Justice] has already pierced the secrecy of their ballots, before the county could act to help these voters, with no legitimate law enforcement reason," tweeted David Becker, a former Justice Department Voting Section attorney who is now executive director of the non-profit, non-partisan Center for Election Innovation and Research.

"After investigating for only 3 days, apparently finding no crime, and before the military voters were notified, the DOJ violates ballot secrecy, and the AG [Attorney General William Barr] personally briefs the president on this fixable mistake, and shortly after, the president uses it in his campaign," Becker said in an earlier tweet recounting the events.

Becker's comments raise disturbing questions. How far will the Justice Department go to smear routine election administration on behalf of the president's re-election? The mistakes made in Luzerne County, which twice voted for Barrack Obama but backed Trump in 2016, were noted by local election officials. A temporary poll worker was fired, but the incident was quickly seized by the Justice Department, White House and Trump campaign which announced investigations and issued statements.

The U.S. attorney general's fealty to Trump above protecting the Justice Department's reputation as being above politics, as many scholars have noted, is unlike anything seen in decades and extends beyond voting. Barr has assailed federal prosecutors for not arresting protesters in racial justice protests. Even the nation's military chiefs have worried that Trump will order them to intervene if there's election unrest.

It may be hard not to react viscerally as Trump continues to lie about purported fraud involving mailed-out ballots and keeps escalating his attacks on election officials—who largely have let those inaccurate smears go unanswered because they are civil servants who do not speak about elected officials due to their professional ethics.

But there may be a counterpoint worth keeping in mind. While the Justice Department is abusing its immense power by issuing statements about investigations before any evidence has been presented in court, there is something pitiful about the FBI, state and local police resorting to dumpster diving in rural Pennsylvania to boost Trump.

The Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, episode underscores that small-scale errors are a fact of life in managing elections, but they are not indices of a flawed overall system.

"There will be reports of ballots sent to voters that end up in the trash or in a ditch. We may hear about a box of ballots never delivered to voters or election officials by the post office. There may be isolated instances of fraud, or of things that initially look like fraud but turn out to be election administrator error," Rick Hasen, a University of California Irvine law professor and nationally known expert on elections, wrote in the Los Angeles Times. "This doesn't mean we won't have a fair election overall, and we should not allow cynical political operatives to parlay small-bore errors into a full-scale attack on the integrity of the November vote."

As other analyses have noted, it is Barr and DOJ officials following his orders (and not all are) that have broken with institutional protocols to insulate the Department from political tides. Beyond the abuses of power, abandonment of professional ethics and politicizing the agency that is supposed to defend voting rights, not subvert them, is a measure of desperation by a president whose rhetoric suggests that he would not be re-elected in a normal election.

As the New York Times noted on September 26, Barr's briefing Trump on finding nine mishandled mail-in ballots in a state "was akin to telling him about the most mundane law enforcement developments across the country," which was anything but briefing a president "on a criminal D.O.J. investigation only if it was of some major importance to national security."

It remains to be seen how far the DOJ can go to interfere in America's locally run elections.Last Thursday's statement by David Freed, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, in a letter to Luzerne officials, was a slap on the wrist filled with more innuendo than facts.

"The preliminary findings of this inquiry are troubling and the Luzerne County Bureau of Elections must comply with all applicable state and federal election laws and guidance to ensure that all votes—regardless of party—are counted to ensure an accurate election count," Freed said. "Even though your staff has made some attempts to reconstitute certain of the improperly opened ballots, there is no guarantee that any of these votes will be counted in the general election."

As Becker's tweet noted, it was the DOJ that breached the secret ballots—by revealing their presidential votes—and blocked officials from resolving an easily fixed problem.

Election officials in swing counties know the stakes in 2020's election. They do not need reminders from the Justice Department about doing their job. While the prospect of the DOJ looking over their shoulder is unnerving, the Luzerne County incident also reveals how worried Trump is about losing. And it is a nationwide tipoff of how far the attorney general and president will go to create mirages that undermine public confidence in the voting process and results.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/heres-the-truth-about-the-white-house-and-dojs-9-discarded-ballots-in-pennsylvania/

no lnx twt

here's the truth about the White House and DOJ's 9 discarded ballots in Pennsylvania

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement September 27, 2020

Major news is coming in over the "case" of the nine "discarded" ballots from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania that President Donald Trump revealed to Fox News Radio on Thursday.

Here's what appears to have happened, and we're going to bullet point this so it's easy to follow.

The ballots were discarded by a temporary, or "contract" worker assigned to sort the mail who appears to have been following direction.

The ballots were military ballots, not absentee or other by-mail ballots.

The county immediately reported what happened to federal officials, who appear to have immediately politicized the issue.

"Because these ballots were returned in envelopes similar to absentee ballot requests, elections officials opened them," The Washington Post reports. "If the ballots weren't then enclosed in another envelope which shielded the actual vote being cast, they may have been considered 'naked ballots,' a term used to describe mail ballots returned without the voter's intent being protected.

The Trump campaign and the Pennsylvania GOP in a lawsuit argued that "naked ballots" should not be counted. They won that lawsuit. These nine ballots appear to be "naked ballots," and that appears to be the reason they were thrown out.

Here's how MSNBC's Chris Hayes sums it up: It's the GOP's fault.

The contract worker has been told to not return.

Buzzfeed adds it appears the DOJ violated its own policy by issuing a press release about the "discarded" ballots, and even worse, suggesting this is a case of election fraud, and even worse than that, suggesting one candidate over another was favored.

MSNBC adds that county officials were not aware of who the ballots were for until the DOJ's press release was issued.

Attorney General Bill Barr personally briefed President Trump about the discarded ballots. Trump and his White House press secretary then politicized the event.

The county elections supervisor was exceedingly thorough. "Garbage from the Elections Bureau from September 14 through September 16, the time the independent contractor was on County property, was put in a dumpster and secured by County staff," a local Pennsylvania news report states. "The trash was then searched by the FBI, the Luzerne County District Attorney's Office, the Pennsylvania State Police and county staff. All contents relating to the matter were taken by the FBI."

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federal judge delivers blow to AG Barr in battle against former FBI deputy director

Alex Henderson September 25, 2020

U.S. Attorney General William Barr has insisted that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, now a CNN contributor, was not fired for political reasons, but McCabe has maintained that the…

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fair # of these, not all capt eg

trump already ‘laid out the roadmap’ to cheat in the upcoming election: analyst

AlterNet Staff September 23, 2020

John Heilemann, the national affairs analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, explained how President Donald Trump has already laid out his “roadmap” to cheat in plain sight for the upcoming…

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OMG

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/former-federal-prosecutor-explains-how-ag-barr-could-help-trump-steal-the-election-and-take-the-us-to-a-very-dark-place/

between the coronavirus pandemic, civil unrest in major U.S. cities, huge anti-racism protests, bitter political divisions, a heated Supreme Court battle and President Donald Trump’s ruthless voter suppression efforts, the United States’ 2020 presidential election is turning out to be even more chaotic than the elections of 2000 and 1968. Trump has a devoted loyalist in U.S. Attorney General William Barr, and former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade discusses the effect he could have on the 2020 electionin a disturbing op-ed published in the Washington Post on September 22.

“William P. Barr sounds more like a far-right-wing news pundit lately than the nation’s attorney general when he’s discussing politics and the coming election,” McQuade warns. “The difference is that unlike talk show panelists, Barr has the power to do something about it.”

McQuade gets into specific comments from Barr, noting, “He said, ‘These so-called Black Lives Matter people’ are ‘not interested in black lives. They’re interested in props: a small number of blacks who were killed by police during conflict with police, usually less than a dozen a year, who they can use as props to achieve a much broader political agenda.’ He told a journalist that if President Trump is not reelected, then the nation would be ‘irrevocably committed to the socialist path.’ He called coronavirus lockdowns ‘the greatest intrusion on civil liberties other than slavery.’ Later, he lauded the role of politics in prosecution, saying, ‘The most basic check on prosecution is politics.’”

The former U.S. attorney adds that Barr has joined Trump in making the baseless claim that mail-in ballots encourage voter fraud on a grand scale, and she fears that if the presidential election is close, Barr won’t hesitate to intervene or to give Trump an unfair advantage over his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

"Barr has demonstrated a determination to use his position — and the legal powers of the federal government — to advance the president’s political interests,”McQuade explains. “So, what damage could Barr do in the days and weeks after the election to help Trump stay in office no matter what voters might prefer? First, Barr has the power to file criminal charges of voter fraud. The presidential election is really state elections, but that doesn’t mean the federal government can’t step in.”

A “determined Barr,” McQuade goes on to say, “could use the fraud statute to charge voters, the Democratic Party or even state election officials with a crime” and “could also involve the Justice Department in civil suits challenging election results.”

McQuade notes, “If a candidate or party filed a lawsuit challenging the election results in one or more states, a statement of interest would allow the Justice Department to make arguments that favor Trump’s campaign. Think Bush v. Gore, but with the U.S. government taking sides. That tactic could bring the powerful voice of the Justice Department to the case, potentially influencing the court of law as well as the court of public opinion.”

“The Justice Department has long taken pride in being independent of politics,” McQuade writes. “Barr’s erosion of this tradition could take our country to a very dark place — sooner than we think.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/barr-to-be-honored-for-christlike-behavior-with-award-from-right-wing-catholic-group-with-strong-ties-to-trump/

ano lnx twt

ttorney General Bill Barr will be honored for his “Christlike behavior” at Wednesday’s National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, according to Roman Catholic Sister, author, and anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean.

"sister Helen Prejean

@helenprejean

The National Catholic Prayer Breakfast will present an award to Attorney General Barr for “Christlike behavior” tomorrow morning. A.G. Barr has ordered the executions of six men with at least one more on the calendar. What is “Christlike” about using discretionary power to kill?"

The National Catholic Prayer Breakfast says Barr will be presented with its Christifideles Laici Award during today’s 16th annual prayer event.

“In Honor and Gratitude for Fidelity to the Church, Exemplary Selfless and Steadfast Service in the Lord’s Vineyard,” are the words inscribed on the award.

The event is being sponsored by several groups, including Alliance Defending Freedom, which appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups.

President Donald Trump is expected to address the group today during its virtual ceremony.

Among the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast’s founders arePat Cipollone, President Trump’s White House Counsel; former RepublicanSenator Rick Santorum; and Joseph Cella, President Trump’s Ambassador to Fiji, and a former Trump transition team member who co-founded the right wing activist group Catholic Vote.

Another founder of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast is Austin Ruse, the president of the anti-LGBTQ hate group Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM).

Perhaps the most notable founder of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast is the group’s president, conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo.

Leo also serves as co-chairman of the Federalist Society, the far right group responsible for promoting the illegitimate belief that the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted by judges according to how the nation’s founders thought.

President Trump, for the first time in history, has effectively farmed out the approval process for federal court judges and even Supreme Court justices he nominates, to the Federalist Society.

The award to Barr is being condemned by notable Catholics, including Sister Prejean, and Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor-at-large at America magazine.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/ag-barrs-doj-threatens-to-cut-off-federal-funding-to-3-major-american-cities-with-bogus-anarchist-jurisdiction-designation/

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Kerry Eleveld / Daily Kos September 21, 2020

Earlier this month, Donald Trump directed federal officials to find a rationale for cutting government funding to certain cities controlled by Democrats. It’s a plainly politically motivated move that seems unlikely to hold up in court, but Attorney General Bill Barr, more than happy to oblige, delivered a verdict Monday on which cities were on the chopping block: New York, Seattle, and Portland—all liberal-leaning cities run by Democrats in Democrat-controlled states. Surprise, surprise.

“The U.S. Department of Justice today identified the following three jurisdictions that have permitted violence and destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract criminal activities: New York City; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle, Washington,” claimed a Justice Department press release.

In a statement, Barr accused state and local leaders of endangering “innocent citizens” by impeding their own law enforcement officials and agencies from doing their jobs. Clearly, too little tear gas, violence, and military “heat ray” technology has been unleashed on citizen protesters exercising their First Amendment rights for Barr’s tastes. “It is my hope that the cities identified by the Department of Justice today will reverse course and become serious about performing the basic function of government and start protecting their own citizens,” Barr said.

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But this is all too tame for Barr’s twisted version of justice. Barr originally wanted to prosecute Portland officials for their handling of nightly protests outside a federal courthouse in the city. And Barr, of course, has already presided over deploying unmarked federal militia to cities led by Democrats to kidnap people off the streets, whisk them away in unmarked vehicles, and detain them for questioning without cause—which is illegal.

The protests stemming from the killing of George Floyd have been, and continue to be, overwhelmingly peaceful, with any violence usually limited to exceedingly small areas and clusters of people. In fact, the biggest threat of violence to Americans comes not from liberal protesters but right-wing extremists—a fact that Trump and his top administration officials have worked diligently to cover up even as the threat to law-abiding Americans mushroomed during Trump’s tenure.

Though conservative and even mainstream news outlets have played isolated incidences of violence on a loop, these cities are not engulfed in flames (other than in Portland, where devastating wildfires due to climate change have been knocking on city’s door). In fact, below is a picture of New York’s violence-ravaged streets taken on Monday.

On top of the Trump administration’s disinformation campaign, the notion that the federal government is going to withhold federal funds from three of its top contributing cities is ludicrous.

All three cities rank in the top 10 per capita income for the 25 most populated cities in the U.S.: Seattle was second, Portland eighth, and New York 10th. Because states and cities with a larger share of higher income residents contribute more to the federal government, these three cities alone likely contribute more tax dollars to federal coffers than most red states, which have been feeding at the federal trough for decadeswhile contributing far less money to its bottom line. New York and the northeastern states, in particular, are “giver” states, while most red states, especially in the southeast, are “getter” states, according to a Rockefeller Institute of Government study.

But now that Barr has homed in on the cities he wants to target and delivered supposed criteria for determining which cities fall into that category, the next step, according to Trump’s presidential memo, is for thedirector of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, to issue guidance to the heads of certain agencies on “restricting eligibility of or otherwise disfavoring, to the maximum extent permitted by law, anarchist jurisdictions in the receipt of federal grants.”

Again, such a direction will undoubtedly be challenged in court and tied up until long after the election. So at this point, it’s nothing more than another lawless effort by Trump to target cities run by Democrats in order to gin up and delight his “getter” constituency in the red states.

If Joe Biden wins, this ridiculous presidential directive will obviously fall onto a scrap heap of other lawless Trump directives targeting Democrats, liberals, and certain demographic groups purely for Trump’s political benefit and pandering to his supporters.

But if Trump manages to somehow steal this election, the directive is simply one more reason why we could see a serious effort by Democratic states to leave the union. There’s absolutely no reason for those states and their densely populated liberal cities to stick around for Trump’s presidential harassment while the federal government bleeds them dry.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/bill-barr-goes-full-on-right-wing-nutjob/

Are you kidding me? Sedition? From 1798?

Just in case someone is not persuaded that this Trump Administration is falling off its rocker, the advice from Atty. Gen. William P. Barr to federal prosecutors to use a two-century-old law to stop people – no, specifically “violent” leftist protests outside federal courthouses – from seeking to overthrow the government should make us stop and scratch our collective heads.

For openers, protesting disproportionate police brutality against Black citizens is not calling for the overthrow of the government.

Secondly, there is actual evidence that groups other than Black Lives Matter or the oft-cited, if unorganized “antifa” are not the only ones in street. You heard nothing from Barr about using sedition laws against actual, organized, gun-toting, right-wing, white supremacist nationals who seem actually to want to overthrow the government – as well as to mix it up with lefties in the streets. Thirdly, sedition laws have not been used over two centuries for good reason: Their Constitutionality runs very close to the edge of First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly that have protected leftists, neo-Nazis, right-wingers, flag-burners and vocal bayers-at-the-moon.

Looking for a definitive reason to deny the Trump team four more years? How about using the law to declare a virtual shutdown of civil liberties and free speech. Barr’s remarks this week were so outrageous that comparing state orders mandating masks and shutdowns for public health to slavery were not even the top line head-slap.

Aggressive Tactics

This has nothing to do with people who break rules about trespass or fire-setting or bottle-throwing,

No, this is the baring of raw power to shut down dissent. And it is a blatant attempt to use the Justice Department to underscore a Donald Trump campaign promise for Law & Order prompted by several localized protests that turn violent only in the middle of the night – a continuation of absolute reinterpretations of law and procedure to promote Trump’s politics.

The wording of the federal sedition statute says it is a crime for two or more people to conspire to use force to oppose federal authority, hinder the government’s ability to enforce any federal law or unlawfully seize any federal property — elements that might conceivably be made to fit a plot to, say, break into and set fire to a federal courthouse, despite evidence that more than 93% of nearly 8,000 Black Lives Matter protests between May and August this year have been peaceful.

Maybe Barr should be looking at those organized Western ranchers, right-wingers all, when they held off enforcement of federal water law enforcement at gunpoint. Or at organized, armed Trump supporters who entered statehouses to threaten the lives of legislators considering laws to require coronavirus masks.

Or he could be looking at Trump administration officials and Republican supporters calling on people to arm themselves for insurrection in the event that Joe Biden wins the election. Or maybe even at the continued use of federal law enforcement and the Justice Department itself as political instruments to advance the partisan cause of a single sitting president seeking reelection, clearly throwing out any separations of power as constitutionally required to get his way in a wide variety of cases ranging from the misuse of U.S. intelligence to the matters of impeachment.

Just who here is seeking the overthrow of government as we have known it for 200 years? FBI Director Christopher Wray told a House committee it is right-wing white militias. Where’s Barr?

I get that Barr wants prosecutors to be aggressive in the case of Portland’s protests, which have involved the setting of small fires at the federal courthouse. Pursue shooters who have emerged aggressively, please. But moving to sedition and its 20-year sentences in the name of liberty and Law & Order?Are we Belarus or Hong Kong?

Overkill

Actually, coincidental to the disclosures about using sedition laws, came news that federal officials had been stockpiling ammunition and devices that could emit deafening sounds or singe anyone within range feel like their skin is on fire to clear Lafayette Squarein Washington for that Donald Trump Bible photo op. The disclosures came in The Washington Post from D.C. National Guard Maj. Adam D. DeMarco, who led the brigade there, and filed them as a whistleblower.

Are we nuts all of a sudden as a nation or can we see this as the excess of a bad political campaign? Does Barr think we are idiots? He actually compared his own prosecutors to pre-schoolers and asserted that he and Trump are in charge, not those career prosecutors who make daily decisions in individual cases.

Barr was wrong in citing “a dozen cases” each year in which Black citizens are mistreated; there are 250 deaths at the hands of police this last year. He and Trump are wrong to deny that there are systemic elements to racism in this country and to our policing practices.

The federal sedition law is rarely invoked, and something that does not seem to fit the circumstances of the unrest in places like Portland in response to police killings of Black men. So, too, would be ordering the arrest of the Seattle mayor for allowing a protest to cool itself in that city.

Promoting sedition laws to stop protests is an extremist Justice Department policy. Barr has no business being attorney general.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/top-democrats-demand-a-probe-into-possible-election-meddling-by-bill-barr/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-right-wing-plan-to-steal-the-election-is-right-in-front-of-our-noses/

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The right-wing plan to steal the election is right in front of our noses

Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon September 17, 2020

There has been a ton of news about Bill Barr — official title, “Attorney General of the United States;” actual job, Donald Trump’s capo— crawling across cable news chyrons in recent days, so much so that it’s hard to keep track of it all. There’s that thing he said about quarantine restrictions being nearly as bad as slavery. And the thing where he whined about the Justice Department staffers that’s more interested in enforcing the law than protecting Trump’s political power. And where he compared such people to preschool children, for having the temerity to question his decisions.

All that is bad, but probably the worst news this week is a report from the New York Times that “Barr told federal prosecutors in a call last week that they should consider charging rioters and others who had committed violent crimes at protests in recent months with sedition.”

He also asked federal prosecutors “to explore whether they could bring criminal charges against Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle for allowing some residents to establish a police-free protest zone near the city’s downtown for weeks this summer.”

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This is especially alarming in light of Barr’s assertion, in the same speech where he made offensive comments about his own staff and about slavery, that he believes he has “virtually unchecked discretion” in determining what cases to prosecute.

Barr was talking about cases stemming from the protests in various cities over the summer. Although the vast majority of those protests were peaceful, there were a few incidents of violence and looting, though absolutely no evidence of plots to overthrow the U.S. government (which is what “sedition” means). Barr’s eagerness to overreact, however, is another alarming sign that he is exploring ways to assist Trump’s public and obvious plans to do whatever he can to steal the presidential election.

Thursday morning, in the midst of one of his lengthy morning Twitter tantrums, Trump hinted yet again at his plans to use phony claims about “fraud” as cover to keep election officials from counting all the ballots after Election Day:

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It’s a muddled mess of a tweet, but basically, he’s using scare quotes to suggest that votes by mail, at least by Democrats, are illegitimate. He’s also, in his usual manner, accusing his opponents of doing what he’s clearly planning to do, which in this case is to keep the ballots from being accurately tallied.

This is where Barr’s dark talk of “sedition” comes in.Should the votes in swing states be close — and every indication from polling is they will be — Trump will likely try to declare victory on the night of the election. After that, there will be a massive battle, as happened under similar circumstances in 2000, over how and whether to count all those mail-in ballots. Much of that will be in the courts, but there will be a street component, as well, as pro-democracy protesters will hit the streets to demand a full vote count, and election officials could face efforts to physically stop them from counting votes.

It’s increasingly clear that putting down those anticipated protesters and stopping the vote count is a priority for Trump and his allies. So there’s increasing talk from prominent Trump allies of a possible “insurrection” by the left after Election Day, and the need to use maximum force to put it down.

Michael Caputo, a 2016 Trump campaign aide and bug-eyed right-wing conspiracy theorist who was given the job of assistant secretary for public affairs at Health and Human Services, recently made news for a truly wacky set of utterances during a recent Facebook Live event. Among other things, Caputo accused government scientists of, yep, “sedition” and accused the left of plotting an insurrection, recommending that right-wingers “buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”

A wave of bad press compelled Caputo to take a leave of absence from his government job, citing vague medical concerns, but what he said directly echoes the rhetoric of Roger Stone, his longtime friend and fellow Trump confidant. Stone recently saw his sentence for felonies related to his role in the Russian conspiracy to undermine the 2016 election commuted by Trump, and has been at the forefront of trying to characterize efforts to count all the votes as an “insurrection” to be suppressed with violence.

During a segment on Infowars last week, Stone suggested that Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act or declare martial law and that early voting and mail-in ballots in Nevada “should be seized by federal marshals and taken from the state” to keep them from being counted. Stone claimed such ballots were fraudulent, but of course the real concern is that they’re legitimate — and that far too many of them will be cast for Joe Biden.

On Tuesday, Mark Levin — who is currently a radio TV host, but formerly worked with Barr at the Justice Department during the Reagan/Bush years — warned that the protests from the summer will “multiply by five or 10” and that Trump should declare them insurrections because they “need to be put down.”

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Levin was being vague about what he thinks might provoke such enormous protests, but it’s not hard to see what upcoming event might do such a thing: A close election that Trump will try to steal by suppressing vote-counting.

And let’s be clear that Barr himself is on board with this idea that mail-in ballots are inherently illegitimate and that fighting to keep them from being counted is therefore justified. Barr has repeatedly floated baseless claims that mail-in ballots are fraudulent or that foreign countries “could easily make counterfeit ballots.”

None of this, it cannot be stated strongly enough, is true. It’s a shameless pretext for what is likely an upcoming fight to get those ballots thrown out.

It’s tempting to see all this talk of “insurrection” and “sedition” from the right — including Trump’s own government officials — as nothing more than hyperbole from Republicans who are emotionally overwrought in the face of what looks to be a lost election. Unfortunately, as the scandal around slowdowns at the U.S. Postal Service and lawsuits over mail-in voting make clear, the Trump administration is doing more than talk. It’s actively pulling whatever levers it can to keep Democratic votes from being counted this November.

Once those ballots have been cast, the fight to make sure they’re counted is going to get rough — not just in the courts, but in the streets. Much could depend on the ability of the left to hit the streets, not just in protests to put pressure on election officials to finish the vote count, but possibly to physically protect officials who are counting votes from armed right-wingers whom Trump has whipped into a frenzy. All this chatter about “insurrection,” “riots” and “sedition” is an effort to preemptively characterize pro-democracy protesters as a threat, and to justify using violence to suppress them.

Remember, Trump was willing to use tear gas and baton assaults against peaceful protesters just to keep them from heckling him. There’s no telling how far he’ll go to keep those same peaceful protesters from messing with his efforts to steal an election.

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Tyrannical and un-American’: ACLU slams Barr for urging sedition charges against protesters

Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams September 17, 2020

Attorney General William Barr drew stinging rebuke from legal experts and civil liberties advocates including the ACLU Wednesday after he told federal prosecutors to more aggressively charge some protesters with…

William Barr compares coronavirus restrictions to slavery

Laura Clawson / Daily Kos September 17, 2020

Attorney General William Barr showed just how like Donald Trump he is on Wednesday night by lying while comparing coronavirus lockdowns to slavery. That is not an exaggeration of what…

fox News analyst destroys Barr’s ‘absurd’ desire to charge rioters with sedition: ‘A bridge too far’

David Edwards / Raw StorySeptember 17, 2020

Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano, a former judge, on Thursday pushed back against Attorney General William Barr’s call to charge violent protesters with sedition. According to The Wall Street Journal,…

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imperial AG?

AG Barr undermines his own DOJ prosecutors: ‘All prosecutorial power is vested in the attorney general’

Alex Henderson September 17, 2020

U.S. Attorney General William Barr had a lot to say when he spoke at Hillsdale College in Michigan on Wednesday, September 16, and he was highly critical of some of…

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/critics-warn-of-transparent-effort-to-retaliate-after-doj-issues-subpoenas-in-criminal-probe-of-john-boltons-memoir/

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no lnx

Department of Justice (DOJ) has opened a criminal investigation into whether President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton disclosed classified information in his recent book.

The DOJ convened a grand jury, which issued subpoenas to Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Bolton’s memoir “The Room Where It Happened,” according to The New York Times. The grand jury also issued a subpoena to Bolton’s literary agency Javelin, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Trump administration previously tried to block the release of the book — which was highly critical of the president — over claims that it contained classified information. The move was ultimately unsuccessful. Nevertheless, Trump’s handpicked director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe referred the matter to the DOJ’s national security division last month, which opened a criminal investigation, according to The Times.

Bolton has denied that his memoir contained any classified information. Though he agreed to let the administration review its contents in order to make sure it did not contain classified intelligence, the DOJ accused Bolton of allowing Simon & Schuster to release the book ahead of final approval. The agency unsuccessfully attempted to block the book’s release.

“With hundreds of thousands of copies around the globe — many in newsrooms — the damage is done,” D.C. Circuit Judge Royce Lamberth ruled in June.

But the opinion left open the possibility that Bolton could be criminally charged if he allowed the memoir to be released before final approval.

“Bolton has gambled with the national security of the United States,” Lamberth wrote. “He has exposed his country to harm and himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability. But these facts do not control the motion before the court.”

Lamberth also said he was “persuaded that defendant Bolton likely jeopardized national security by disclosing classified information in violation of his nondisclosure agreement obligations.”

An attorney disputed the conclusion that Bolton “did not fully comply” with his obligations and accused the administration of slow-walking the approval process in an attempt to prevent the release of the highly-critical book. According to The Times, the National Security Council’s (NSC) top official for prepublication review also said in an email at the time that she was “satisfied with the edits that Mr. Bolton made to address her concerns about classified information.”

But the White House launched another review without notifying Bolton, and the official involved cited multiple instances of classified information, according to the report. Though Bolton did not receive final approval from the White House, he approved the memoir for publication.

The grand jury subpoenas came after Trump repeatedly called for Bolton to be prosecuted over the book’s release. The president has claimed that Bolton “broke the law” and “should be in jail” for “disseminating, for profit, highly Classified information.” At the same time, he simultaneously argued that the book was a “compilation of lies and made up stories, all intended to make me look bad.”

The memoir detailed Trump’s alleged attempts to pressure Ukraine and China to investigate Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, as well as his behind-the-scenes dealings with Turkey and North Korea.

Attorneys at both the DOJ and the NSC expressed concerns about launching a criminal investigation, because Trump’s statements “made it seem like an overtly political act,” The Times reported.

National security attorney Bradley Moss described the criminal probe as “absolutely an overtly political act,” but said it was unclear whether that would be enough to beat back potential criminal charges for Bolton.

Bolton also faces separate civil litigation, which could require him to forfeit the proceeds of the book for violating the prepublication review agreement.

Lamberth, who is overseeing the case, said in June that Bolton should have sued the government rather than prematurely approve the memoir for release before the process was complete.

“This was Bolton’s bet: If he is right and the book does not contain classified information, he keeps the upside mentioned above; but if he is wrong, he stands to lose his profits from the book deal, exposes himself to criminal liability, and imperils national security,” Lamberth said at the time. “Bolton was wrong.”

Some legal experts, however, expressed concerns about the DOJ pursuing a former official who has criticized the president.

“Bolton deserves nothing but scorn for how he’s behaved,” wrote Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, “but this is a transparent effort to retaliate against a former senior official for exercising his First Amendment rights and to chill those thinking about similarly coming forward.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/bill-barr-had-deep-links-to-the-origins-of-central-american-migration-crisis-long-before-trump/

...

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Roberto, you begin the book talking about a tour you were giving in 1992 in Los Angeles at the time you were working with the immigrant rights group CARECEN in Los Angeles. And you’re touring around a foundation program officer, one of these people who decides whether to give money to worthy organizations. And you had very mixed feelings taking him around the Pico-Union area of Los Angeles. There’s a sudden shootout at one point. Could you talk about that whole part of your work with CARECEN? Also, what lessons might be drawn for a lot of activists today, Black Lives Matter activists and prison reform activists, who are suddenly being courted by foundations who suddenly have discovered that they haven’t been properly funding antiracism programs around the country?

ROBERTO LOVATO: That’s a great question, Juan. Yeah, the opening, the introduction of the book, is 1992, right after the L.A. riots had hit. We had foundations and corporations come in, along with scholars, and it was just people interested in post-riot L.A. And we were in MacArthur Park touring, like we did. I felt like — and I say at one point I felt like, you know, I was getting tired of being like Virgil to these Dantes, you know, these aspiring Dantes wanting to see the underworld. And so, I’m showing this guy, Leland, MacArthur Park,when I’m approached by the first MS-13 member I ever met, this kid named José. And, you know, we were — and I could tell that Leland was scared out of his wits, like he was in a lion’s den or something, and he was looking to me for security.

And so, I open it that way because it shows kind of the way that the whole issue of youth and urban youth and gangs, even foundations and corporations will kind of shy away from, as do legislators, including legislators of color here in California, where the gangs were born, in fact, where MS-13 and 18th Street were born. And then, after they were born, they kind of adopted the structures of like the Mexican Mafia. And so, I’m there when this is starting to escalate and get more violent.

And then, Attorney General William Barr, again, and at the avatar, from the Bush administration, who’s now in the Trump administration, deployed all these FBI resources to L.A. and other cities to start the gang war, which, you know, we see the products as we speak, right? And so, then he also introduced the INS to then join the LAPD and law enforcement to deport the “problem,” the gang structures, to El Salvador.

...

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, William Barr, the current attorney general, the attorney general under George H.W. Bush — we just have a minute, but as you wrap up, Roberto, what is his connection to this story?

ROBERTO LOVATO: William Barr, as attorney general under the first Bush, redeployed FBI resources, in the greatest deployment of FBI resources up to that point, taking FBI agents who were fighting foreign — you know, looking at foreign “threats,” and started focusing them on gangs. And then he starts looking at MS-13 and other gangs right after the L.A. riots. You can see he was there in L.A., and he started us on the path to eventually, like, militarizing the police, that we have right now. And then, he then also had the INS deport the gang “problem” to El Salvador, and then he exported, after the war, U.S.-style policing. And then, I found out that military trainers from El Salvador actually came to train LAPDin counterinsurgency, and other police forces. It’s just when you start seeing the Robocopization of cop uniforms— right? — and that we have now. And William Barr had everything to do with — had not everything, but he had a lot to do with this. I had to sing his song, because he deserves all the credit he deserves for what he did to El Salvador and to L.A. and to our national situation long before Trump....

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-strange-case-of-carroll-v-trump-an-adventure-in-wonderland/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/why-is-bill-barr-shielding-foreign-terrorists-from-the-penalty/

...Barr also decided this summer to skip the death penalty for a pair of foreign ISIS terrorists who clearly qualified for the ultimate punishment. Shockingly, Barr wrote a three-page letter dated Aug. 18 to British Home Secretary Priti Patel to say he won’t seek the death penalty for two terrorists in U.S. military custody in Iraq. The despicable duo, nicknamed “The Beatles” because of their British accents, are accused of kidnapping and beheading several hostages in Syria in 2014, including James Foley, an American journalist.

And Barr’s assurances to Patel went further, saying that even if a death penalty were imposed, “It would not be carried out.” That’s right, he’s both killing Americans and guaranteeing not to kill terrorists. This disparity is offensive and needs to change.

Society is currently debating whether there are two systems of American justice as the 2020 presidential election forces the question: Is there one harshly punitive system for Black America and another less-severe system for the rest of America? That answer may come as early as Nov. 3.

What’s clear now is that there is a two-tier system of American justice. One says the death penalty is OK for criminals inside U.S. territory. The other essentially gives criminals residing outside the United States a get-out-of-jail-free card.

The reason? Countries can’t — and won’t — extradite to America criminals eligible for the death penalty. Sen. Dianne Feinstein recognized this crazy reality in 2003 when she said, “If you steal a car in the U.S., Mexico will return you to face prosecution and punishment. If you kill the driver, Mexico will protect you.” That’s right. The more heinous the crime, the less likely the chance of being extradited to the United States.

As a result, America can’t get its man. In the case of the “Beatles,” the United Kingdom won’t even give evidence unless Barr cries “Uncle.”...

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/barr-slammed-for-acting-as-personal-henchman-of-trump-as-doj-moves-to-take-over-his-defense-in-suit-filed-by-rape-accuser

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one of Deutsche Bank’s most famous customers has been President Donald Trump, and Deutsche’s activities —including its dealings with Trump — have been the subject of investigations by prosecutors as well as members of Congress. The German bank, Bloomberg News is reporting, has hired attorney Robert Kimmitt — whose relationship with Attorney General William Barr goes back to the late 1980s — to represent it in Washington, D.C.

The 72-year-old Kimmitt is a former U.S. ambassador to Germany. According to Bloomberg, Kimmitt’s “precise role” in Deutsche “isn’t clear even to many executives within the bank.”

Bloomberg journalists Greg Farrell, Steven Arons, Christian Berthelsen and Tom Schoenberg explain, “When Kimmitt was hired, many top executives in the U.S. weren’t immediately informed of his role, according to other people familiar with the matter. Lawyers representing the bank in U.S. Justice Department investigations have been dealing directly with line prosecutors in several long-running investigations. In at least one of those investigations, the Department has relayed almost no information in years, these people said.”

The reporters note that according to Bloomberg’s sources, some of Deutsche’s senior executives in Frankfurt, Germany are hoping that Kimmitt’s relationship with Barr “could help clear up a logjam of Justice Department investigations.” Kimmit, Bloomberg notes, “has close connections to both Deutsche Bank and the Justice Department."

kimmitt’s relationship with Barr goes back to the presidential election of 1988, when Vice President George H.W. Bush received the Republican nomination and went up against the Democratic presidential nominee, former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. That year, Bloomberg explains, Kimmitt and Barr “were responsible for vetting potential running mates for the vice president.”

After evaluating various possibilities, the GOP chose Dan Quayle as Bush’s running mate.Bush defeated Dukakis in the general election, and Barr served as Bush’s attorney general in the early 1990s before becoming attorney general for the Trump Administration in 2019.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/thats-not-what-happened-at-all-prosecutors-fact-check-barrs-false-claim-that-man-cast-1700-fake-ballots-in-texas/

no lnx twt

as Attorney General William Barr faced renewed calls for his impeachment after claiming not to know whether it’s illegal for a U.S. voter to cast two ballots in a federal election, prosecutors and journalists have caught the nation’s top law enforcement officer in a “massive falsehood” about a mail-in ballot fraud case in Texas.

In his interview with CNN earlier this week, Barr told Wolf Blitzer that prosecutors had indicted a man who collected 1,700 blank ballots and used them to cast a specific vote.

“Elections that have been held with mail have found substantial fraud and coercion,” Barr said. “For example, we indicted someone in Texas, 1,700 ballots collected…from people who could vote, he made them out and voted for the person he wanted to. Okay?”

Aside from vastly overstating the prevalence of fraud in vote-by-mail systems which have been used by millions of Americans for decades, Barr appeared to fabricate the facts about the case in Texas, prosecutors who worked on the case told the Washington Post.

“That’s not what happened at all,” Andy Chatham, who served as assistant district attorney in Dallas County when prosecutors investigated the collection of a small number of blank ballots in 2017, told the newspaper.

Barr suggested the Department of Justice prosecuted a federal case of voter fraud, but he appeared to be referring to a local prosecution involving a City Council election.

Authorities uncovered 700 ballots on which voters stated that someone named Jose Rodriguez had helped them to prepare them, but the ballots did not favor a particular candidate and the voters confirmed that the votes were accurate. Chatham said investigators were eventually led to a man named Miguel Hernandez, likely a “low-level player in a possibly larger scheme that never came to fruition,” who pleaded guilty to improperly returning a marked ballot.

Hernandez collected a blank ballot from a woman, filled it out, and forged her signature, according to court records.

Prosecutors in the case told the Post that while they initially suspected as many as 1,700 fraudulent ballots, “we did not uncover that, at all… We couldn’t find it except that little tiny case.”

“Unfortunately, it speaks volumes to the credibility of Attorney General Barr when he submits half-truths and alternative facts as clear evidence of voter fraud without having so much as even contacted me or the district attorney’s office for an understanding of the events that actually occurred,” Chatham told the Post.

A Justice Department spokesperson said Friday, as news of the prosecutors’ objections to Barr’s story spread across social media, that the attorney general had received inaccurate information from a staffer.

“Was that staffer a Trump appointee?” asked journalist and activist Isaiah Poole. “Was he disciplined or fired?”

New York Times journalist Charlie Savage pointed out that the incident is far from the first time that Barr has been caught making up details of legal and criminal cases.

..L.ike that time in July when he said a surge of federal agents sent to Kansas City had made 200 arrests in two weeks, which was false. /2 [referred to an earlier Dec op relentless ]

“Barr is a shameless liar and most importantly has been one for his entire career,” Times columnist Jamelle Bouie tweeted.

Prosecutors also called into question, as a number of academic studies of election fraud have, Barr’s claim that elections in which mail-in ballots are primarily used lead to “substantial fraud and coercion.”

Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington all use mail-in ballots as their primary method of voting, and President Donald Trump cast a mail-in ballot last month in the Florida primary despite his ongoing claims that voting by mail invites fraud. In 2018, a quarter of all American voters cast ballots via mail.

A study by the Post of five elections held over two years in Colorado, Washington, and Oregon showed that out of 14.6 million votes, officials identified 372 possibly fraudulent votes—a rate of 0.0025%.

Local prosecutors in states that use mail-in voting do not classify fraudulent voters as much of a concern; as Chatham told the Post, fraudulent ballots are “incredibly simple to ferret out” before they have an impact on an election’s outcome.

“Not only are there barcodes on the ballot, but the ballot won’t be accepted unless it is from a registered voter, whose name and signature are verified by elections officials,” Columbia University elections expert Richard Briffault told the Post.

Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), tweeted that Barr’s credibility was “compromised” well before his latest claim about fraudulent voting.

“Misrepresenting investigations for political purposes further erodes trust in him and the DOJ,” Bookbinder wrote.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/bill-barr-has-proved-himself-to-be-trumps-most-dangerous-ally/

digby

many of us have long warned that this fall would see a dirty campaign without precedent, that Donald Trump would stop at nothing to foment chaos, and so forth. But up till now there has been a certain abstractness about it. Who knew exactly what form it would take and whether it would have any real effect?

It’s here, and it’s not abstract any longer. What was assumed to be just more of the usual Trump lunacy is starting to feel terrifying. He and his campaign really are pulling out all the stops and they are doing it in the middle of a deadly pandemic that has ravaged the people and destroyed the economy. Creating even more disorder and turmoil in the middle of this crisis, in an effort to concoct or create an electoral victory he will not have earned legitimately, is over-the-top even for him.

This week the president gave a number of interviews and rallies in which he sounded more unhinged than usual. In fact, they were so bad that if his plans only depended upon him, we could probably feel a bit reassured. Unfortunately, his henchmen all seem to be on board and none more so than Attorney General Bill Barr, who appeared on CNN Wednesday and signaled that he’s prepared to enlist the Department of Justice and federal law enforcement in Trump’s election chaos strategy.

Barr always has an arrogant, supercilious attitude, whether he’s facing Congress or members of the media. But he was downright angry with anchor Wolf Blitzer and it took him off his usual game.More than any other interview I can remember, this one revealed that Barr’s insolence is actually cover for the fact that he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The man who once told the New York Times that investigating the silly, manufactured Clinton-related Uranium One “scandal” was more justified than any probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election still sees the world from the perspective of a Fox News viewer, rather than as the leader of the federal government’s most powerful law enforcement agency. And like his boss, Barr is much too egotistical to have a clue how ignorant that makes him.

he showed how little he knows or cares about the ethics of his position by saying that he wouldn’t talk about the case of Jacob Blake case (the Black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, who was shot seven times in the back by a police officer) and then proceeded to share his conclusion that Blake was armed and in the process of committing a felony. When Blitzer pointed out that this was not established fact, Barr came back with “I’ve stated what I believe …” In other words, he was prejudging the facts of the case on television, which totally taints the Justice Department’s investigation.

He couldn’t simply say, “I won’t comment on the case because the department is investigating,” as any other attorney general would have done. That was because Barr clearly has a political agenda, which became more explicit as he went on to deny the existence of systemic racism. He said that “the narrative that the police are on some, you know, epidemic of shooting unarmed Black men is simply a false narrative and also the narrative that that’s based on race.” He elaborated on this by saying that Black men are stopped more often by police is not the result of racism but rather of “stereotypes” about Black people being criminals. In other words, he doesn’t even know what racism is, nor does he have the self-awareness to know that his own antediluvian attitudes are racist — another thing he has in common with President Trump. (I really shouldn’t have to say this, but Barr is wrong about all of this.)

Barr blatantly lied when he said that Russia hasn’t been interfering in the election up until now and that China is a greater threat to the integrity of the process,despite the fact that the U.S. intelligence community and the FBI have said the opposite. Indeed, the very next day the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin saying it has high confidence that “Russian malign influence actors” have targeted the absentee voting process “by spreading disinformation” since at least March:

Russian state media and proxy websites in mid-August 2020 criticized the integrity of expanded and universal vote-by-mail, claiming ineligible voters could receive ballots due to out-of-date voter rolls, leaving a vast amount of ballots unaccounted for and vulnerable to tampering. These websites also alleged that vote-by-mail processes would overburden the U.S. Postal Service and local boards of election delaying vote tabulation and creating more opportunities for fraud and error.

The attorney general must be on their mailing list because these were exactly the arguments he set forth in the CNN interview, at one point getting very testy with Blitzer on the subject. He insisted that the nation is “playing with fire” by changing the method of voting in this election, fatuously insisting that it will cause people to lose faith in the process — which of course is exactly what he is doing in spreading this hysterical propaganda.

When Blitzer asked him about Trump’s recent exhortation to his voters to vote by mail and then go to the polls to try to vote again, the attorney general said he couldn’t comment because he didn’t know the laws in individual states, as if any of them allowed voting twice in the same election. When quizzed about how many cases of voter fraud the Justice Department is pursuing, he said he didn’t know, althoughhe did mention one case that purportedly had 1,700 cases of mail-in voter fraud.That story was totally wrong and the DOJ had to issue a correction saying Barr had been given incorrect information.

Barr’s most ludicrous contention was that foreign countries are going to counterfeit ballots and mail them in. He has no evidence other than what he calls “logic” to back up this ridiculous claim, which proves how divorced from reality the attorney general of the United States actually is. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump explains:

For one thing, any number of those ballots would conflict with existing submitted ballots and be rejected. For another, ballots meet particular design and production standards that would need to be matched. But most important, ballots submitted by mail are validated upon receipt, usually by matching the ballot’s signature to the recorded signature for the voter. As a forgery expert with whom we spoke in June made clear, this would be nearly impossible to fake.

Barr is essentially spreading a ludicrous conspiracy theory about foreign interference with mail-in ballots, while also helping a foreign adversary interfere in the election by spreading several different conspiracy theories. It’s insane.

We’ve long known that Barr was happily performing the role of Trump’s “Roy Cohn,” seeing his primary role as leader of the Justice Department as leading a war against Trump’s political enemies. But Barr is also a true believer, not just a cynical fraud. His willingness to distort the rule of law to benefit his patron, while at the same time falling down the rabbit hole of one right-wing conspiracy theory after another, is the very definition of Trumpism in action. And he’s not even trying to hide it.

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an 920

no lnx

Amanda Carpenter is not a liberal. She not even a moderate. She’s worked for two of the most right wing Republican Senators and at several far right wing publications. Now a CNN conservative contributor, Carpenter is also anti-Trump. And she’s warning about how she thinks President Donald Trump is already rigging the election.

Wednesday evening she posted a Twitter thread in response to Attorney General Bill Barr’s disastrous and disturbing CNN interview. One part of his comments, she says, that “set off alarm bells” for her was Barr’s odd insistence that a foreign government could send thousands of fake ballots to rig the election – and that he refused to offer and evidence, other than what he says is “logic.”

More than anything in the interview, this set off alarm bells in my mind. Loud ones. https://t.co/BhCHfmbNb9

— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) September 2, 2020

Here’s Barr making the strange claim to Wolf Blitzer. Notice how Blitzer seems stunned and for a moment speechless when Barr says “logic.”

Attorney General Barr says he doesn’t have evidence that foreign countries could successfully interfere in the election with fake ballots. He says he’s “basing it on logic.”

Wolf: Pardon?

Barr: “Logic.” pic.twitter.com/FzzIRL2PrK

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) September 2, 2020

Carpenter, who by the way was a senior staffer for Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Jim DeMint, goes on to explain her reasoning.

Basically, she’s saying Trump is going full-force against mail-in ballots, while the Trump administration lays the groundwork to blame China for rigging the election against him. Carpenter explains how:

“Let me tell you why. Trump has said the election will be rigged. He has cast aspersions over mail-in ballots. And now the AG is suggesting foreign interference w mail in ballots. While the Admin refuses to provide oral briefings about election interference to Congress.”

Yes, the Trump administration has notified Congress it will no longer provide them with in-person intelligence briefings. Only written information.

“That means whatever written story about election interference that goes to Congress is the story,” she continues. “No pushback. And print material leaks. They will set the narrative. Barr and others are saying don’t worry about Russia. It’s China that’s the problem.”

China allegedly is in favor of a Biden presidency over as Trump presidency.

“You don’t need a crystal ball to see it. Blame China for rigging mail-in ballots,” she warns.

So whattya think Trump and friends are angling to do here. You don’t need a crystal ball to see it. Blame China for rigging mail-in ballots somehow against Trump. Keep your eyes open people.

— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) September 2, 2020

“This isn’t a cover-up. It’s what’s ahead.”

I saw this coming over the weekend when we got the news oral intel briefings were donezo. Here was my reaction. This isn’t a cover-up. It’s what’s ahead https://t.co/JKbUt5VlTp

— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) September 2, 2020

By the way, CNN Anchor and Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto seems to agree with Carpenter:

...

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/its-about-intimidation-trump-allies-suggest-using-federal-racketeering-laws-to-bully-anti-racism-activists/

no lnx

President Donald Trump and his supporters have been consistently disingenuous and misleading in their attacks on protesters, describing antifa as “terrorists” and glossing over the fact that thousands of Black Lives Matter activists all over the United States have been totally peaceful.Amplifying Trump’s message, Chad Wolf — acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — has suggested possibly using anti-racketeering laws to go after left-wing protesters. And reporter Kelly Weill examines that suggestion from a legal/civil rights standpoint in a Daily Beast article published on September 3.

“Can the United States government really use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, mostly known as a weapon the feds use to target mob bosses, to successfully prosecute protesters, as Wolf implied?,” Weill writes. “It wouldn’t be easy, legal experts say. But the chatter signals a potent new effort — bolstered by extra-deranged conspiracy theories — to crack down on protesters, and may already be having its desired effect: freaking people out.”

When Wolf was interviewed by Fox News’Tucker Carlson on Monday night, August 31, the far-right Carlson asked him, “Why haven’t we seen the leaders of antifa and BLM arrested and charged with conspiracy under, say, RICO, like the heads of mafia families were?” — to which the acting DHS secretary responded, “Well, this is something that I have talked to (Attorney General William Barr) personally about. I know that they are working on it.” And Wolf told Carlson that the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating “the heads of those organizations.”

Weill notes that in July, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas wrote a letter to Barr and the FBI calling for an investigation of antifa “under the RICO Act.” But attorney Ken White, a former federal prosecutor, is dismissive of politicians who throw the word “RICO” around casually.

White told the Daily Beast that the RICO Act “was useful, and still is sometimes, at taking down genuine organized crime. The problem is that (RICO) sounds badass so people want to use it on everything. People basically use it like an angry emoji…. I think 98% of the time it’s invoked, it’s more emotional or performative than it is substantive.”

Chip Gibbons, policy director of Defending Rights And Dissent, stressed that antifa is not an actual organization. Gibbons told the Beast, “When (Wolf) says they’re looking at the leaders of Black Lives Matter for RICO charges, who do they mean? Do they mean the board of trustees on the actual 501(c)(3) (nonprofit) organization? Do they mean the three individuals who are credited with coming up with the hashtag? These are pretty decentralized movements…. How are we going to subpoena the hotel records of antifa? It’s a nonsensical proposition, like if I said I’m going to subpoena the hotel records of feminism.”

However, Faiza Patel, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, argued that even if RICO charges didn’t hold up in the courts, they could still have a chilling effect on protesters. Patel told the Beast, “One of the things this administration has tried to do is label protesters as part of some criminal organization, because once you have the idea of an organization, then that makes it a lot easier to go after people who are related. You might not necessarily have to get the individual person who might have committed a crime; you can actually treat the entire group as being dangerous or criminal. And that gives you a lot more leverage in going after its members.”

Gibbons said of threats to use the RICO Act against demonstrators, “It’s about intimidation. If you’re a normal person and you’re disgusted by police racism but you think, ‘If I go out and protest, is the FBI going to open a file on me?,’ you might think twice about doing so.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/ag-barr-repeatedly-claims-he-doesnt-know-if-its-illegal-to-vote-twice-when-confronted-with-trump-comments/

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an 920

trump slammed for suggesting Barr must prosecute critics like Obama to become ‘greatest’

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement September 2, 2020

President Donald Trump is telling Bill Barr he must prosecute the president’s critics, like former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in order for him to…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-warning-lights-are-flashing-red-how-trumps-toadies-are-helping-him-collude-with-russia/

After reviewing classified intelligence reports about Vladimir Putin’s attempts to interfere in the 2020 election over three weeks ago, Senator Richard Blumenthal tried to sound the alarm.

The warning lights are flashing red. America’s elections are under attack.

This week, I reviewed classified materials in the Senate’s Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility and received a similarly classified briefing on malign foreign threats to U.S. elections. I was shocked by what I learned — and appalled that, by swearing Congress to secrecy, the Trump administration is keeping the truth about a grave, looming threat to democracy hidden from the American people. On Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued astatement that only hints at the threats.

The facts are chilling. I believe the American public needs and deserves to know them. The information should be declassified immediately.

Blumenthal went on to say that what he learned makes “Moscow’s past interference and nefarious actions look like child’s play.” We still, however, have no idea of what shocked him enough to write that op-ed in the Washington Post.

What we do know is how the Trump administration reacted. Last Friday, the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, told Congress that his office would no longer brief them in person about foreign election interference, but would submit written reports. Clearly they don’t want to face probing questions from Congress. In defending his actions, however, Ratcliffe admitted that it goes beyond that.

[no twt]

ratcliffe’s initial argument doesn’t make any sense. He said that he is going to stop in-person briefings because members of Congress leaked classified information to the press. What he didn’t explain is how that would stop leaks. Classified information provided in writing is even easier to share with reporters.

In a scathing rebuke of Ratcliffe’s announcement, the Washington Post editorial board pointed out that the only so-called “leaks” came from the kind issued by Senator Blumenthal.

After the intelligence community briefed members of Congress in late July about threats to the upcoming election, Democrats expressed alarm about what they had learned — and about the fact that the information had not been shared with the American public. “The warning lights are flashing red. America’s elections are under attack,” wrote Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) in a Post op-ed, without disclosing any specifics…

[T]he only “leak” was the simple fact that the administration was withholding critical information about Russia’s interference — which, of course, is intended to help President Trump win reelection.

In that clip of Ratcliffe’s Fox News appearance, he eventually got to the point by saying that Democrats leaked information that “simply wasn’t true, that somehow Russia is a greater security threat than China.” In a case of obvious projection, Ratcliffe is telling us that the Trump administration doesn’t want Congress or the public to know what Moscow is doing to interfere in the election, but instead wants to change the narrative to focus on the distraction they’re offering about the threat posed by China. In other words, Ratcliffe is suggesting that he will now cherry-pick what intelligence is shared with Congress to provide cover for what Moscow is up to.

Added to that is a troubling story about yet another purge in the Justice Department by Attorney General Barr.

Current and former national security officials are raising concerns over Attorney General William Barr’s recent decision to remove the head of a Justice Department office that helps ensure federal counterterrorism and counterintelligence activities are legal – and replace him with a political appointee with relatively limited experience.

Barr has reassigned 23-year career professional Brad Wiegmann, who had been serving as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Law and Policy. As ABC News reports, “The office shapes government efforts by ensuring that new policies and executive actions don’t violate federal law.”

We’ve heard stories from former Trump administration officials who have said that they often found themselves having to tell the president that the actions he wanted to take were not legal. As former DHS Chief of Staff Miles Taylor said, Trump would claim to have “magical authorities” to break the law.

Now Barr has removed the person whose job it is to tell the administration when they are breaking the law and replaced him with a partisan loyalist. While it might not be unprecedented to do that, the fact that it comes a couple of months before an election makes this one troubling. Here is the most telling part about Wiegmann’s replacement, Kellen Dwyer:

From 2018 to 2019, he served as a fellow at the conservative-leaning Leonine Forum, a non-profit organization that says its alumni are “committed to the cause of reintroducing the tenets of [the Catholic church] into the political, policy, legal, business, and cultural activities of society.”

The Leonine Forum was created by the Catholic Information Center (CIC), an extremist group founded by Father John McCloskey, who eventually left the organization over allegations of sexual assault. Several members of the Trump administration have close ties to the CIC, including Attorney General Barr, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and economic adviser Larry Kudlow.

What appears to be happening is that both Ratcliffe and Barr are paving the way for Putin and Trump, who speak regularly by phone, to illegally collude in their efforts to influence the election—this time from the Oval Office with the entire federal bureaucracy at their disposal.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/bill-barrs-new-order-blocking-fbi-surveillance-of-political-candidates-has-huge-loophole/

context: no one has done ctr-intel on russia cf rod rosenstein

an 920

just keeps going. Yet again, Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, has without warning removed a high-level Justice Department official and replaced that person with a new political hire. ABC News reports that Barr has removed Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brad Wiegmann, a career employee in the National Security Division.

Wiegmann’s office “helps ensure federal counterterrorism and counterintelligence activities are legal,” in ABC’s phrasing—an oversight office reining in other government departments that attempt to overstep their legal bounds. Now he’s been booted, replaced by new political appointee Kellen Dwyer.

While there’s a lot of hemming and hawing about Barr having the legal ability to do such things if and when he wants to, replacing yet another Justice Department official just before the November elections—and one tasked with counterintelligence investigations, no less—is another bizarre move that just happens to be the thing you’d do if you were trying to 1) protect Donald Trump from government investigations or 2) force government investigations against Trump’s opponents.

The Trump-Barr purge of government officials has focused heavily on oversight officials, many of whom were investigating whether individual actions by Trump or one of his allies broke federal laws. The removal of a career oversight official who acted as legal roadblock to what national security and counterintelligence officials could do is therefore extra alarming given Barr’s amply reported personal interest in probes of Joe Biden and of U.S. law enforcement officials who investigated the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia....

https://theintercept.com/2020/08/20/facebook-bans-antifascist-pages/

oN WEDNESDAY, Facebook announced an expansion of its “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy,” removing or restricting hundreds of pages associated with groups that it claims promote violence. Nearly 800 QAnon groups, committed to pernicious disinformation and potentially deadly conspiracy theories, have been removed. Facebook also shut down the pages of far-right militias, like the New Mexico Civil Guard, an armed vigilante organization, whose leaders sport swastika tattoos.

:{:{}:

Alongside groups openly committed to genocidal white supremacy, which constitute a very real threat to Black and Indigenous communities, as well as other people of color, Facebook also shut down the pages of numerous antifascist, anti-capitalist news, organizing, and information sites. The move follows a pattern now well-established by the Trump administration — and unchallenged by most every mainstream media outlet — that draws indefensible false equivalences between organized, racist fascists, and the antifascists who vigorously oppose them.

Among the pages removed were those of antifascist news and research site, It’s Going Down, a media platform that publishes news, analysis, and reports on social struggles, as well as investigative work to expose white supremacist and neo-Nazi networks. Crimethinc, a bastion of left-wing, anarchist publishing and thought since the 1990s, saw its Facebook page removed too. The pages of groups organizing around the ongoing and potent antiracist uprisings were also shut down, including the PNW Youth Liberation Front, a network of youth collectives in the Northwest committed to direct action protest.

"Lumping anarchists and anti-fascists together with far-right militias who explicitly support the current administration is a strategic move to muddy the issue,” said a statement from Crimethinc in response to the bans. “This is the same operation that William Barr” — the attorney general — “performed in creating a Department of Justice task force focused on ‘anti-government extremists’ that targets self-proclaimed fascists and anti-fascists alike. In the case of the Department of Justice, this enables them to point to far-right and militia attacks in order to demand resources with which to crack down on those who are on the front lines of defending communities against such attacks.”

Both rhetorically and through specific policies, the government has obfuscated and downplayed the threat of white supremacist extremism, while sensationalizing the risks posed by the far left.

With its latest bans, Facebook is following this same playbook.

The demonization of antifascists has become a centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s reelection propaganda, which functions both to criminalize dissent and delegitimize Black liberation struggle.Following the intolerable events of the Charlottesville, Virginia, “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, Trump famously praised “very fine” members of the white supremacist coalition and blamed “both sides” for the murderous far-right violence that occurred — a stance that’s since been crystallized in his policies.

Facebook’s decision to treat leftist social justice platforms as equivalent to racist militia groups is merely an extension of the government’s position. “For months, Donald Trump has demanded this crackdown in a series of social media posts explicitly blaming anarchists and anti-fascists for the countrywide wave of protests precipitated by persistent police violence in the United States,” said the Crimethinc statement.

EARLIER THIS MONTH, as I wrote,Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, chaired a farcical Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on “stopping anarchist violence.” The senator repeatedly chastised Democrats for failing to condemn “antifa” for a murder that was in fact carried out by the far right — and refused to be corrected. Both It’s Going Down and Crimethinc were mentioned during the hearing, within baseless overtures on the threat of the far left.

In the three decades since Crimethinc’s founding, the Facebook ban is “the first thing like this that has occurred,” said a participant in the collective, who asked for anonymity out of concern for far-right retaliation and state scrutiny. Of course, none of the antifascist groups removed by Facebook expected any better from the social media leviathan. “We ultimately aren’t surprised by this move and personally all hate Facebook,” the It’s Going Down Twitter account said, noting that it was nonetheless a “vehicle to connect with people.”

At stake is not the moral standing of Mark Zuckerburg’s turpitudinous monopoly, but rather the further entrenching of a false equivalence, which stifles antifascist dissent at a time of emboldened state and movement fascism.

Leaked Documents Show Police Knew Far-Right Extremists Were the Real Threat at Protests, Not “Antifa”

It bears repeating, ad nauseam, that the far right has carried out 329 murders in the last three decades; none have been attributed to antifa.Between 2009 and 2018, white supremacist and far-right extremists were responsible for 73 percent of extremist murders in the U.S. And that’s not even to mention the state-sanctioned, racist killings carried out by the police.

There’s no doubt that a number of the leftist platforms removed in the Facebook sweep advocate for disruptive dissent and protest. Antifa practice certainly involves a willingness to physically confront organized white supremacists in the streets. But Facebook’s bans, echoing Trump’s myths, equate the “violence” of disruptive antiracist protest with the violence of neo-Nazis murdering immigrants and people of color.

“This line of thinking continues to equate protest disruption and property destruction with far-right movements who fundamentally want to harm and kill large segments of the public,” It’s Going Down tweeted.

For Facebook to treat even militant, antiracist, antifascist organizing as a violence comparable to that of white supremacist militias is a statement, in no uncertain terms, about which lives it deems to matter.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/the-downfall-of-steve-bannon-looks-really-bad-for-bill-barr-and-donald-trump-jr

no lnx twt

The downfall of Steve Bannon looks really bad for Bill Barr and Donald Trump Jr.

Written by Cody Fenwick August 21, 2020

With the arrest of Steve Bannon — the president’s former campaign chair and White House strategist — and a group of his allies on Thursday, the world received confirmation of what many have long said about the conservative movement: The right-wing, ethnonationalist, populist rhetoric is often little more than a scam to win support from the massive to fund the desires of elites.

At least, that’s the narrative told in the indictment of Bannon and others leading “We Build the Wall, Inc.” — an organization that raised money from private donors, supposedly to build parts of President Donald Trump’s border wall. (Don’t ask about the fact that Mexico was supposed to pay for the wall.) According to federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, despite, Bannon’s claim that the organization was run entirely by volunteers, he and his allies was cashing in.

“While repeatedly assuring donors that Brian Kolfage, the founder and public face of We Build the Wall, would not be paid a cent, the defendants secretly schemed to pass hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kolfage, which he used to fund his lavish lifestyle,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss.

Bannon, on the other hand, “through a non-profit organization under his control (‘Non-Profit-1’), received over $1 million from We Build the Wall, at least some of which [Bannon] used to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in [Bannon’s] personal expenses,” SDNY said. Bannon is fighting the charges, pleading not guilty in court on Thursday.

Bannon and Kolfage, along with Timothy Shea and Andrew Badolato, were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.

But it’s not just the people named in the indictment who come off looking worse.

Attorney General Bill Barr’s already tarnished reputation took another substantial hit with the announcement because it reframed actions he took two months ago. In June, Barr sought to remove Geoffrey Berman, who has been the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. But he did so in a clumsy and corrupt fashion. He met with Berman privately and tried to pressure him out of a job. When Berman refused, Barr simply announced that Berman would be stepping down, to be replaced immediately by another prosecutor from outside the office while a permanent successor could be confirmed.

Berman quickly refuted Barr’s claim, publicly stating that he did not intend to leave. This started a brief struggle until Barr caved somewhat on his demands. He still had Berman removed, but he permitted Strauss, Berman’s deputy, to take his role. She is now serving in an acting capacity, and she oversaw the indictment filed against Bannon and the others.

The episode created a sharp backlash, because there seemed to be no above-board explanation for Barr’s actions. Barr might have had legitimate reasons to replace Berman with another appointee, but there was no clear reason why Berman should leave before that person was appointed. And Barr might have had reason to fire Berman, but there’s no clear reason why Strauss wouldn’t take over in his stead — which is how succession in these offices typically functions. And there was no good reason at all why Barr should lie about Berman voluntarily stepping down — it was just an aggressive power play.

These facts all pointed to a clear conclusion: Barr had a corrupt reason for wanting to oust Berman and replace him with a hand-picked successor. In a public statement and in testimony to Congress, Berman made clear what a plausible motive would be: Replacing him with anybody but Strauss would likely impede the office’s ongoing investigations.

We now know that the case again Bannon and “We Build the Wall, Inc.” was among the cases that likely would have been slowed down. Barr has admitted he knew about the case months ago. And it’s quite clear why Barr, an unabashed partisan, would want to slow it down. Indicting yet another of the president’s allies — and his second campaign manager — surely reflects badly on Trump. It’s especially bad because the allegations involve fleecing Trump’s supporters for venal reasons, which may hit close to home for those feeling let down by his presidency heading into the November election.

It’s possible there were other investigations Barr was looking to stop as well. And it’s possible, of course, that he wasn’t trying to delay this investigation at all. But that’s precisely why Barr’s hamfisted control of the Justice Department, and his complete lack of interest in even acting like a straight shooter, is so destructive for him and the country as a whole. It makes it impossible for Americans to be confident that he’s performing his job in good faith, rather than trying to protect the president’s friends and go after his enemies.

Donald Trump Jr., too, comes off looking a lot worse out of Bannon’s scandal, because he openly endorsed the project. In a quote featured on the organization’s website, he said:

This is private enterprise at its finest. Doing it better, faster, cheaper than anything else and what you guys are doing is pretty amazing. It started from a grassroots effort and it’s doing some wonderful things for an important issue.

After the indictment became public on Thursday, the Trump Organization put out a statement to the New York Times trying to distance himself from the project:

Don gave one speech at a single We Build the Wall event over a year ago with a group of angel moms and, besides that, has no involvement with their organization. He never gave them permission to use him as a testimonial on their website and was unaware they included him as one until today’s media reports about it. His previous praise of the group was based on what he was led to believe about their supposed intention to help build the wall on our southern border and if he and others were deceived, the group deserves to be held accountable for their actions.

The statement appears to admit that when Trump Jr. said the group was “private enterprise at its finest” that does work “better, faster, cheaper” than others and is “amazing,” he had no idea what he was talking about.

But the HuffPost reported that the ties between Trump Jr. and We Build the Wall, Inc. may be more significant than the statement suggested:

As part of a fundraising promotion, We Build the Wall offered free, autographed copies of Trump Jr.’s book, “Triggered,” to people donating at least $75. And Instagram posts from Kolfage and We Build the Wall suggest Trump Jr. directly interacted with the group again in November.

“[We Build the Wall representative] FOREMAN MIKE will be in Florida TOMORROW with Donald Trump Jr. at Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort!” the organization announced in a post on Nov. 7. The next day, Kolfage posted a photo of himself with a small group of people including Trump Jr. and “Foreman Mike.”

There’s some evidence, too, that the president was backing the project before its downfall, but its thinner.

In a Jan. 25, 2019 New York Times article on Kris Kobach that discussed the project, reporter Stephanie Saul wrote:

President Trump gave the undertaking his “blessing” in a telephone conversation Wednesday night, according to Mr. Kobach.

The White House press office did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump avoided going on the record, which now looks wise.

After the indictment came out, Trump’s defenders pointed to a recent tweet of his distancing himself from the project:

[twt: " i disagreed with doing this very small (tiny) section of wall, in a tricky area, by a private group which raised money by ads. It was only done to make me look bad, and perhsps it now doesn’t even work. Should have been built like rest of Wall, 500 plus miles.

Jeremy Schwartz

@JinATX

UPDATE: Experts to inspect a controversial privately built border wall following a federal court hearing this am. Govt attorney identified 4 areas of problematic erosion along the base of 4080]

However, this tweet emerged after Barr was aware of the investigation into the Bannon, so Trump was likely aware of it, too. And the president’s fans had already donated millions to the project, some of whom were likely encouraged by the fact that the Trump’s own son had endorsed it.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/feds-charge-ex-trump-official-steve-bannon-with-criminal-fraud-in-crowd-funded-border-wall-campaign/

former Trump White House political strategist Steve Bannon has been charged with criminal fraud for his role in a crowd-funded campaign to build President Donald Trump’s wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced on Thursday that Bannon and several other leaders of the ‘We Build The Wall’ online fundraising campaign have been indicted for defrauding “hundreds of thousands” of donors.

“As alleged, the defendants defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction,” said acting SDNY U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss. “While repeatedly assuring donors that Brian Kolfage, the founder and public face of We Build the Wall, would not be paid a cent, the defendants secretly schemed to pass hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kolfage, which he used to fund his lavish lifestyle.”

As for Bannon’s role in the scheme, SDNY alleges that funneled “over $1 million from We Build the Wall” into a nonprofit organization that he personally controlled. According to SDNY, Bannon then used at least some of that money “to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars” in his own personal expenses.

in total, Bannon has been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

https://www.alternet.org/:{2020/08/:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:senate-panel-referred-trump-family-members-to-doj-over-suspicions-of-misleading-russia-testimony-report/

wapo

Bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee last year notified the Department of Justice that members of President Donald Trump’s family and close circle “might have presented misleading testimony” to the panel during its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Washington Post reports.

According to the Post, then-Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-VA) referred a list of individuals,including Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner to federal prosecutors after their accounts of a pre-election meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya “were contradicted by the president’s former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates” during former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

In a separate section, the congressional panel said it had reason to believe Steve Bannon, Erik Prince and former campaign co-chair Sam Clovis “had lied to congressional investigators — a potential felony,” the Post reports.

According to the Los Angeles Times, which first reported on the referrals and viewed a copy of the panel’s letter, the committee believes Bannon may have lied about his knowledge of a meeting Prince held in the Seychelles with a Russian official tied to the Kremlin. Per the Post, “Prince had told Mueller’s team that he briefed Bannon on the meeting, which occurred before Trump’s inauguration in early 2017; Bannon denied the conversation took place.”

oct surprise?

820 an

Former Justice Department lawyer Matt Miller said that Attorney General Bill Barr has a “tell” that Miller thinks reveals what Barr will do about his new attempt at a GOP-run Russia investigation.

The MSNBC panel discussion looked back at Barr’s testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, where he admitted that the White House government appointees have discussions about the 2020 campaign during Cabinet Meetings. Conducting politics under the government is strictly prohibited.

“He has a tell, and the one that you just showed is an example, where there’s an answer where you expect the attorney general to give,” Miller began. “In the confirmation hearing, the answer you expected him to give was that he would recuse himself from the Russia investigation because of his previous writings on the topic, a memo he had written that was seen as the audition for the job. And he didn’t give that answer, and I think we found out why shortly after, it was because he wanted to interfere in the Mueller probe. He’s wanted to go back and then discredit it afterward.”

Miller said that Barr’s refusal to rule out releasing the new GOP-led Russia probe at the last minute before the election as a way to somehow tie Mueller’s probe to Joe Biden. Trump has tweeted as much, claiming that he was personally wiretapped at Trump Tower and that his campaign was being monitored as ordered by the Obama administration. Nothing in Mueller’s years-long investigation found any such thing. However, Barr previously twisted Mueller’s findings into his own summary that absolved Trump from any wrongdoing.

miller expects Barr to do the same thing in this case, but right before an election. That’s the reason Miller explained, Barr refused to answer any questions about his intent on releasing the GOP-led investigation, which has already completed.

“He has two goals here, one is fairly obvious,” said Miller. “One is he intends to try to smear Joe Biden. Not because Joe Biden did anything but to just try and tar the entire Obama administration by claiming there was this plot to get Donald Trump. By the way, it was a point that Sally Yates debunked pretty effectively today. But then I also worry that there’s a second goal and that’s if Russia or any other country interferes in the election again or if Trump is caught soliciting help from a foreign government again, which he has with Russia, Ukraine and China that Barr is able to release this report that attacks what happened in 2016. And put out this fog that says, ‘all of these deep-staters that have made claims about foreign interference in the past you can’t believe. You can’t believe what they said about 2016 and you can’t believe what’s going on right now.”

See the video below:

house judic? testimony 7/28/20 did not go great but no clear fail? perjury?

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/bill-barr-has-done-this-before/

no lnx

Barr has done this before

Written by ProPublica July 31, 2020

As violent crime continued to climb in Chicago and other cities across the country, Attorney General William P. Barr announced that the U.S. Department of Justice was mobilizing to help: Dozens of federal agents would be sent to work with local police to combat gangs and illegal guns.

“Our message to gangs, gang leaders and gang members is this: When we throw the federal book at you, it will be a knockout blow,” Barr said.

That was in 1992, during Barr’s first stint leading the Justice Department, under former President George H.W. Bush.

If it sounds too recent or familiar to have happened nearly three decades ago, that’s because Barr, now attorney general under President Donald Trump, made a strikingly similar announcement on July 22.

Some of the details were different, of course. In 1992, Barr said the FBI was shifting about 300 agents from monitoring spies from the recently collapsed Soviet Union to taking on gangs and violent crime in American cities. Eighteen of the agents would be redeployed to Chicago.

This month, Barr stood next to Trump as he announced a Chicago “surge” of more than 100 agents from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and other agencies, along with staffing increases in other cities where gun casualties were making headlines.

Residents of Chicago could be forgiven for concluding that they’ve heard this before, since, of course, they essentially have. Barr even acknowledged that federal law enforcement agencies have carried out such operations “for decades.” Every presidential administration in the last 30 years has announced it was sending more federal agents to Chicago to try to stem violent crime.

But this time the circumstances are different — the politics are shifting. After 3 ½ years of Trump’s inflammatory comments and tweets, some thinly coded and others overtly racist, his administration’s announcement is widely seen in Chicago as a political move to use the troubles of a majority-nonwhite city to fire up his supporters.

And it’s happening as a growing number of people are demanding that their governments send something into their communities other than more guys with guns.

Chicago has a long, ugly history of violence. As in other cities, violent crime surged in Chicago in the 1960s and ’70s, dropped and leveled off, then spiked again during the 1990s. But since then, as murder and shooting totals plummeted in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere, Chicago’s numbers didn’t fall as far or as fast, and they’ve climbed again during several devastating stretches in the last 10 years.

The reasons have long been debated and are probably more complex than most would acknowledge. But politicians, law enforcement leaders and many residents have repeatedly blamed Chicago’s gang culture and open-air drug markets, then called for policing strategies to attack them.

The fact that most of the hardest-hit neighborhoods have also been shelled out by segregation, business closures and job losses — including thousands of layoffs from government agencies and shuttered schools — is well known. Yet the need for immediate responses to the bloodshed, rather than those that tackle the deeper problems, always seems to consume political and financial capital in Chicago.

In 1992, the city banned loitering by people deemed to be gang members until the measure was ruled unconstitutional. Former Mayor Richard M. Daley led an effort to sue gun manufacturers for creating a public nuisance in Chicago and other cities; the case was tossed out of court. Speed bumps and cul-de-sacs were built on dozens of side streets to thwart drive-by shootings, though as police and paramedics discovered, such obstacles also made it harder for them to respond to emergencies.

Far more common have been announcements that more police will be deployed in high-crime areas, often under the banner of a new task force, program or initiative. That’s where the feds often come in — literally.

Soon after Trump took office in 2017, he called Chicago a “war zone” and blamed local leaders for being “politically correct.” He also threatened, via Twitter, “I will send in the Feds!”

Rahm Emanuel, then Chicago’s mayor and a frequent Trump sparring partner, rejected the idea of troops in the city. “I’m against it, straight up,” he told reporters. But Emanuel added that he welcomed additional resources to fight gun crimes. Within two weeks, CNN reported that 20 more ATF agents were being sent to Chicago.

Since Lori Lightfoot was elected mayor last year, she has repeatedly blasted Trump for racism and disrespect for civil rights — even as she’s been attacked in Chicago for not yet delivering on promises to reform the Police Department and drive up investment in underserved neighborhoods.

On July 20, after another weekend of appalling violence in Chicago — dozens of people were reportedly wounded in shootings and at least 12 people killed — Trump suggested at a press conference that he was again ready to send in federal agents. Lightfoot responded with a letter that criticized his administration’s “incendiary rhetoric” as well as the tactics of Department of Homeland Security agents who had seized people off the street in Portland, Oregon.

Yet Lightfoot also said the city could use other kinds of federal help, including “more federal prosecution or investigatory resources” to pursue violent crime and gun cases. She added that the government could help Chicago invest in underserved neighborhoods. “The violence our city is confronting is symptomatic of a larger public health and economic crisis.”

Trump and Barr announced the latest “surge” of federal agents to Chicago that week, describing it as part of a national crime-reduction initiative called Operation Legend. The FBI, ATF, DEA, U.S. Marshals Service and Homeland Security would together send dozens of investigators and agents to the city, with the U.S. attorney in Chicago, John Lausch Jr., overseeing the operation.

Underneath the politics and symbolism, the announcement signaled that federal and local officials were returning to their old strategy: send in more cops.

Shifting federal agents to cities under fire is “commonly done, and as a matter of fact, when I was the special agent-in-charge there, I asked for it,” said Jack Riley, who formerly served as the top agent in the DEA’s Chicago office. “It’s been called 20 different things in the past. [Operation Legend] is just the newest version of it.”

This federal surge may involve more agents than previous efforts, and Riley believes it could help tamp down violence in Chicago if it is carefully coordinated and sustained. Operations on the street should be carried out by agents who know the city, with those from out of town used in support roles. And as agents are conducting investigations and making arrests, the U.S. attorney’s office needs enough staff to prosecute the increased caseload, said Riley, who went on to serve as the No. 2 official in the DEA, overseeing global operations, before retiring.

“Are there going to be additional prosecutors?” he said. “That’s been an issue before.”

The U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago received a staffing boost in 2018, but no additional prosecutors are included in the latest operation. A spokesman for the office declined to comment.

Plus, the agent surge is only likely to last until fall, when the city’s usual spike in violence typically recedes along with the warm weather. So, like previous efforts, the surge is temporary.

If those earlier short-term operations worked to reduce gun violence, it’s hard for city residents to see as shootings spike again.

Over the last three years, the U.S. attorney’s office here has prosecuted more than 500 defendants on weapons charges, records show. Some of the defendants are traffickers or leaders of other criminal enterprises. But many tend to be lower-level players caught with illegal guns that have traded hands multiple times. Law enforcement officials argue that prosecutions for illegal possession help deter others. Still, the approach hasn’t shut down the gun marketplace, as firearms continue to flow into the city from suburbs and neighboring states.

So far Operation Legend appears to be following the playbook of those earlier initiatives. The first three arrests made as part of the Chicago surge were all for illegal gun possession, according to court filings.

On July 23, the day after the latest federal deployments were announced, Black Lives Matter Chicago and 10 other organizations sued Barr and other administration officials. The groups, seeing no reason to trust the Trump administration, asked for a federal court order to protect their right to protest in the event of any Portland-style tactics. In addition, they made what amounted to a defund-the-federal-police argument, claiming federal resources would be better spent on investing in their communities than flooding them with more law enforcement officers.

“We should take their money and use it to help people facing eviction, use those resources for people who need access to food,” Amika Tendaji, an organizer with Black Lives Matter, said in an interview. “The police haven’t been able to do anything [about the violence]. We need to actually address the root causes.”

More and more leaders are signing on to this approach. Over the last week, advocacy groups, churches and more than 30 state and local elected officials added their names to a letter urging Lightfoot and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart not to cooperate with the federal operation.

“Donald Trump has repeatedly demonstrated both his callous disregard for Black, indigenous, and immigrant lives, and his increasing inclination towards fascism and authoritarianism,” the letter said. “We grieve deeply the lives lost to gun violence in Chicago. … At the same time, we are clear that we cannot police ourselves out of this terrible situation.”

Chicago is now on a pace to record one of its highest annual murder totals in two decades. It’s hard to argue that the old strategies have worked.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/one-moment-in-bill-barrs-testimony-clearly-exposed-his-compete-fealty-to-trumps-delusion-and-lies

Digby Parton / Salon July 29, 2020

Attorney General Bill Barr finally showed up for his long-scheduled hearing before the House Judiciary Committee and once again proved himself to be Trump’s eager henchman. He didn’t read aloud some of the more incendiary parts of his opening statement (which as Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., observed, “reads like it was written by Alex Jones or Roger Stone”) but for all his braying about “the law” his arrogant attitude and slippery answers left no doubt about where his allegiance lies. Let’s just say Trump doesn’t have to worry about Barr’s loyalty.

The list of Barr’s odious comments is a mile long, starting with his fatuous answers regarding the question of systemic racism in policing. He evidently thinks it’s cute, just as his boss does, to insist that “more white people are shot by police than Black people” when responding to the question of why Black people, who make up only 13 percent of the U.S. population, account for 25 percent of those shot and killed by police since 2015 while “non-Hispanic” whites, who are more than 60 percent of the population, only account for 45 percent. This answer is insulting to the intelligence of the American people.

Barr also obfuscated, dissembled, misled and evaded questions about his interference in cases on behalf of Trump’s cronies, the firing and reassigning of U.S. attorneys working on cases involving the president, the shocking events at Lafayette Square in June and his inconsistency in applying federal laws to benefit the president, while ignoring them when they don’t. As hard as it is to believe, he even took it upon himself to strenuously defend the president’s botched COVID-19 response in great detail, something he could have easily avoided by saying it isn’t his purview.

But no, Barr had the temerity to use some of Trump’s most spectacularly absurd excuses by blaming the Obama administration, which hasn’t been in office for three and a half years, for allegedly destroying the CDC and failing to replenish the national stockpile of PPE. If there was one moment that captured Barr’s total immersion in Trump’s ocean of self-deception and lies, it was that series of inane talking points.

There is a whole lot to worry about with what Barr is doing right now, not the least of which is covering up Trump’s corruption and pushing paramilitary responses against peaceful protests. But after listening to his testimony, I think it’s the potential for direct interference in the presidential election by Barr and the Justice Department that should have every American on high alert.

Consider that Barr’s opening statement referred to the Russia investigation as “bogus,” ignoring the fact that, among other things, Robert Mueller and multiple House and Senate committees have established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Donald Trump. This would also indicate that Barr is completely unconcerned about another propaganda or hacking campaign happening as we speak, despite repeated warnings from the FBI the U.S. intelligence agencies and Congress.

That just isn’t something the attorney general of the United States cares about. When asked if it was OK to solicit or accept foreign assistance in an election campaign, he even responded, Indeed, he even went so far as to answer, “It depends what kind of assistance.” He caught himself, so when he was asked the same question again he said, “No.” It’s a felony, after all. But I think it’s pretty clear that he believes when Trump asks for assistance from Russia, Ukraine and China — all of which we’ve seen him do publicly — it is just fine.

On the other hand, Barr has invented out of whole cloth a new concern that hostile governments will alter the election results by “manufacturing mail-in ballots,” citing zero actual evidence but rather his “common sense” as proof. That’s because there is no evidence. Many states provide no-excuse absentee ballots and five states have total vote by mail. Oregon, for instance, has done it since 1998, without any hint of such a problem.

Earlier in the hearing, Barr had made it clear that he sent federal troops into Portland because protesters were harming a federal building. When asked why he had backed the right ofarmed protesters who stormed the Michigan state capitol, some of whom threatened the governor with lynching and beheading, he claimed not to have been aware of that and mumbled something about defending religious freedom. He indicated that he’s only concerned with federal offenses.

Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., pointed out that Trump has suggested that no ballots should be counted after Election Day and asked Barr, “If the president asks you to intervene and try to stop states from counting legal ballots after Election Day, will you do the right thing and refuse?”

Barr responded, “I will follow the law.” He separately said he would “enforce” the law. So that means if a state has issued a ruling saying that votes cannot be counted if they were postmarked before Election Day but didn’t arrive until after that, he would be willing to intervene on behalf of the president to ensure those votes weren’t counted.

Anyone who lived through the Florida 2000 election debacle should know that this is not a matter for federal law enforcement. Elections are run by the states. If there’s a dispute it goes to the courts and in a worst-case scenario to the Congress. Barr has no authority to intervene at all in how states count and tabulate their votes, but judging from his recent behavior, I doubt that would stop him. With Barr, “follow the law,” seems to mean “do whatever benefits Donald Trump and hurts his enemies.”

When Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., asked Barr whether he had discussed the presidential campaign with Trump, the attorney general said he couldn’t talk about his private conversations but blithely admitted that they talk about the campaign in Cabinet meetings and said nobody should be surprised that the election comes up. Actually, they should be both surprised and alarmed. The AG is supposed to be the most removed from politics of all high-level administration officials and neither the president nor anyone else should not be talking to him about the campaign or the election. (You may recall the furious rending of garments on the right when Attorney General Loretta Lynch met with Bill Clinton for 15 minutes in 2016.)

Perhaps most chilling was Barr’s answer to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who asked whether Barr himself would leave office on Jan. 20, 2021, if Trump loses the election but tries to remain in the White House. “Well, if the results are clear, I would leave office,” the attorney general said. He did not elaborate further, but considering that the president is already saying that mail-in voting will somehow “rig” the election, something Barr claims to believe is thoroughly possible, his unwillingness to simply say that he would leave office if Trump loses is more than a little bit disturbing.

When Nadler asked Barr whether he had ever discussed the presidential campaign with Trump he also asked whether they had discussed the “current or future deployment of federal law enforcement” within the context of Trump’s re-election campaign. Barr answered, “I’m not going to get into my discussions with the president.”

It would have been completely acceptable for him to simply say no to such an explosive suggestion. You have to wonder why he didn’t.

no lnx

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/white-supremacists-are-using-the-protests-to-stoke-racial-tensions-while-trump-and-bill-barr-help/

no lnx twt vid

white supremacists are using the protests to stoke racial tensions — while Trump and Bill Barr help

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly July 29, 2020

The day after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police officers, peaceful protesters took to the streets. But the first serious incidence of violence came two days later on May 27th when a masked man started breaking windows at an auto parts store.

That set off a chain reaction of looting, fires, and rioting. Three days later, Attorney General Bill Barr made a statement, saying that “In many places it appears the violence is planned, organized and driven by anarchic and far left extremist groups using Antifa-like tactics, many of whom travel from outside the state to promote the violence.” The president echoed those remarks.

:{:{}:

On Tuesday, we learned something about the so-called “umbrella man” in the video above.

A masked man who was seen in a viral video smashing the windows of a south Minneapolis auto parts store during the George Floyd protests, earning him the moniker “Umbrella Man,” is suspected to be a member of the Hell’s Angels biker gang seeking to incite racial tension in a demonstration that until then had been peaceful, police said…

A subsequent investigation revealed that the man was also an associate of the Aryan Cowboy Brotherhood, a small white supremacist prison and street gang based primarily in Minnesota and Kentucky.

Police have also connected the Aryan Cowboy Brotherhood to an incident in which a Muslim woman and her daughter were harassed in Stillwater, Minnesota by a group of men wearing white supremacist insignia.

Last weekend, something similar happened in Richmond, Virginia.

Riots in downtown Richmond over the weekend were instigated by white supremacists under the guise of Black Lives Matter, according to law enforcement officials.

Protesters tore down police tape and pushed forward toward Richmond police headquarters, where they set a city dump truck on fire.

If we add all of that to the involvement of the far-right anti-government group Boogaloo Boys, it becomes clear that much of the violence we’re seeing on the streets is coming from two groups: (1) law enforcement, and (2) far-right/white supremacist groups. But as the president and attorney general defend the use of force by law enforcement to “dominate” the streets, it is significant that neither one of them has called out the actual extremists who are involved.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/gop-rep-matt-gaetz-files-a-criminal-referral-against-facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-with-william-barr

no lnx

gOP Rep. Matt Gaetz files a criminal referral against Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg with William Barr

Written by Roger Sollenberger / Salon July 29, 2020

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., on Monday asked Attorney General William Barr to open a criminal investigation into Mark Zuckerberg over allegations that the Facebook CEOlied to Congress. MIRROR FLYNN STONE?

In a letter to Barr, Gaetz accused the social media executive of making false statements to Congress on two occasions in 2018. He alleged that Zuckerberg “repeatedly and categorically denied any bias against conservative speech, persons, policies or politics” on his platform.

“On both occasions, members of Congress asked Mr. Zuckerberg about allegations that Facebook censored and suppressed content supportive of President Donald Trump and other conservatives,” Gaetz wrote.

“Mr. Zuckerberg also dismissed the suggestion that Facebook exercises any form of editorial manipulation,” he added.

:{:{}:

Zuckerberg made the remarks in 2018 under questioning from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., who accused Facebook of “bias and censorship.” Cruz cited a 2016 Gizmodo revealing allegations that the social media platform had knowingly suppressing conservative news. Zuckerberg responded:

I understand where that concern is coming from, because Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place. And this is actually a concern that I have, and that I try to root out in the company, is making sure that we don’t have any bias in the work that we do. And I think it is a fair concern that people would at least wonder about."

As evidence to support his claims, Gaetz directed Barr to a recent sting by Project Veritas, a right-wing organization known for its efforts to take down liberal organizations, mainstream media outlets and public figures through misinformation and deceptively edited “insider” videos.

Project Veritas published hidden-camera footage of purported Facebook content moderators apparently admitting that they delete conservative posts. Gaetz says the “whistleblowers” in the video offer “ample evidence” of the company’s “bias and manipulation.”

“According to the Veritas report and undercover footage, the adjudicators were outspoken about their political bias against Republicans and actively chose to eliminate otherwise-allowable content from the platform and from public view simply due to its political orientation,” Gaetz wrote.

“At the same time,” Gaetz added, “speech promoting violence against the president and his supporters was labeled as merely ‘political,’ and was thus allowed to stay on the platform.”

The Republican representative also claims, without citing evidence, that Facebook’s artificial intelligence content screening program is itself not politically neutral, which he alleges is a violation of the “good faith” provision of the Communications Decency Act.

Republicans — from internet trolls, up to lawmakers and President Donald Trump himself — regularly accuse Facebook and other social media platforms of anti-conservative bias.

However, Facebook launched its own project in the weeks after the 2016 election — “Project P,” for propaganda — which found dozens of pages peddling fake news ahead of Trump’s victory. Nearly all the pages were based overseas, had financial motives and “displayed a clear rightward bent,” according to the Washington Post.

Another reason why moderators may encounter a higher volume of flagged conservative content is because Facebook’s most popular content has become overwhelmingly conservative over time. “Facebook has become the home of right-wing America, while Twitter and Snap have become the home of the left,” Vanity Fair’s Nick Bilton reported earlier this year.

And while liberals have criticized Facebook for refusing to fact-check political ads — and even threatened to break up the social media platform — a number of leading conservatives have reportedly met in secret with Zuckerberg, including Tucker Carlson, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and on at least one occasion, Trump himself. Zuckerberg has not disclosed the content of those meetings.

Matt Gaetz did not respond to Salon’s request for comment. Facebook declined to comment.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/barr-continues-his-retaliation-against-trump-critics-outs-a-russia-linked-fbi-source

kos

trump-loyal Attorney General William Barr continues to use his granted federal powers to retaliate against Trump’s enemies—namely, those that would dare investigate Trump and his uncountably-many crooked allies. He has taken it upon itself to sabotage federal investigations, remove investigators and watchdogs who have taken on Trump-related cases, withhold evidence from Congress, order that testimony be withheld from Congress, and rigorously done whatever other actions would best cement conservative, fascist-premised power.

The Washington Post reports on a new instance, in which Barr ordered the declassification of a document last week that, upon delivery to senator and fellow corruption-enabler Lindsey Graham, within days resulted in the public outing of a secret FBI source. The reason? That source was one who compiled information for the now-infamous “dossier” collecting rumors and leads on Donald Trump’s dealings inside Russia, and we can presume the outing of this confidential source is in keeping with Barr’s brazenly public campaign of retaliation against those who investigated the connections between Russian election interference, in 2016, and Trump’s campaign.

Also in keeping with this administration’s fascist tendencies, whether this campaign of Trump-friendly declassifications results in people getting killed seems immaterial to Barr.

Igor Danchenko was, until last week, a source who used his Russian and Ukrainian contacts to pass information back to former British spy Christopher Steele, information that would be included in what is now known as the “Steele dossier” on Trump-Russia rumors. He spoke to the FBI, says the Post, on condition of secrecy to protect his foreign sources and his family from harm—a reasonable demand given the Putin government’s ongoing assassinations of Putin critics, journalists, and suspected spies.

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While the FBI did redact Danchenko’s name from the material given to Graham, the surrounding text gave enough information to swiftly expose both Danchenko and at least one of his own alleged sources.

This seemingly intentional Barr “screw-up”, compromising promised anonymity to informants for the sake of discrediting the Robert Mueller investigation into Russian election hacking in particular, is part of a continued string of actions by an attorney general seemingly far more vested in punishing enemies than protecting national interests. It’s not hard to guess how the public identification of once-secret FBI sources will impact the willingness of future sources to come forward, especially if those sources have information about Donald Trump in particular.

Then again, that is almost certainly the intent.

While similar campaigns to publicly discredit and demonize individual federal agents, sources, and investigators have ended numerous careers—some on Trump’s orders, and some not—the exposure of Russian sources in particular adds a significant additional risk, however. Barr and Graham’s efforts to “investigate” and retaliate against those they believe have wronged Dear Leader may put foreign sources in real danger.

One gets the feeling that William Barr himself is indifferent about that. At best.

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720 an portland

...Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Wednesday led 116 of his colleagues in a letter (pdf) demanding Barr and Wolf answer their questions on the ongoing Portland deployment and any planned expansion of federal law enforcement programs in U.S. cities.

“This is not legitimate law enforcement under our Constitution but a shocking slide into authoritarianism and police state tactics,” the letter reads, adding that “these new tactics are an outrageous assault on the liberties of the people and the police powers and political sovereignty of the states.”...

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/aclu-demands-special-counsel-probe-into-barr-over-police-assault-on-protesters-the-suspect-cant-be-the-investigator/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/here-are-7-suspicious-revelations-from-the-us-attorney-forced-out-by-bill-barr/

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Letter sent in ‘utmost confidentiality’ to Bill Barr set in motion intervention for Michael Flynn: reportan 720

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sdny

https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/22/william_barr_geoffrey_berman_firing

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/bill-barr-is-running-law-enforcement-like-a-middle-school-bully-because-he-used-to-be-one-op-ed/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/gross-abuse-of-prosecutorial-power-court-appointed-lawyer-rebukes-barrs-handling-of-flynn-case/

an 620

federal judge who accused Barr of ‘distorting’ the Mueller report has read an unredacted version — and now he’s demanding some answers

Alex HendersonJune 9, 2020

The Mueller report hasn’t been in the headlines much in 2020, a year that has found reporters heavily focused on the Ukraine scandal, President Donald Trump’s acquittal on two articles…

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Barr’s Potemkin efforts to deal with police violence

Nancy LeTourneau / Washington MonthlyJune 9, 2020

Three days after the killing of George Floyd, the building that housed the Minneapolis Police Department 3rd precinct was basically burned to the ground. BREAKING: The third precinct police statio

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/william-barr-lies-repeatedly-and-brazenly-about-st-johns-church-attack-on-face-the-nation/

barr trump need bogeyman/threat to justify cop violence

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/bill-barr-and-trump-desperately-want-to-blame-antifa-for-violence-but-theyre-coming-up-dry-so-far/

no lnx alex h

President Donald Trump has turned his wrath on Antifa during the George Floyd protests, demanding Antifa be labeled a terrorist organization and accusing the movement of committing acts of violence at demonstrations. But journalists William Bredderman and Spencer Ackerman, in the Daily Beast, threw cold this week on efforts to blame the leftist group.

They found that “none of the 22 criminal complaints representing the first wave of protest charges mention Antifa in any way.”

Calling Antifa a “terrorist organization” is problematic in more than one respect. First, Antifa doesn’t begin to fit the traditional definition of terrorism and doesn’t target innocent bystanders the way that actual terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda or the Ku Klux Klan have done. Second, Antifa isn’t an organization, but a decentralized movement and collection of tactics.

Bredderman and Ackerman discuss the ideologies of defendants in the protest cases, noting that they range from “anarchism” to the far-right Boogaloo movement — and that none of the charges mention anti-fascism (which is what Antifa stands for). According to retired FBI special agent Mike German, “What it definitely demonstrates is that anti-fascism is not a driving force in the current protest violence.”

Nonetheless, Attorney General William Barr has joined Trump in blaming Antifa for violence at demonstrations. At a press conference on Thursday, Barr told reporters, “We have evidence that Antifa and other similar extremist groups, as well as actors of a variety of different political persuasions, have been involved in instigating and participating in the violent activity.”

Bredderman and Ackerman note some reasons why Trump and Barr’s claims about Antifa are so misleading.

“Despite Trump’s rhetoric about designating Antifa a terrorist organization, Antifa is an ethic rather than an actual group — and even if it were a group, there is no domestic terrorism statute for designating a non-foreign entity as a banned terrorist organization,” Bredderman and Ackerman note. “That’s not stopped a chorus of right-wing voices from fantasizing about state violence against ant-fascist Americans.”

For example, the Beast journalists point out, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas tweeted, “Let’s see how tough these Antifa terrorists are when they’re facing off with the 101st Airborne Division.”

Tom Cotton

@TomCottonAR

US Senate candidate, AR

Anarchy, rioting, and looting needs to end tonight.

If local law enforcement is overwhelmed and needs backup, let's see how tough these Antifa terrorists are when they're facing off with the 101st Airborne Division.

We need to have zero tolerance for this destruction.

137K

6:29 AM - Jun 1, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

69.9K people are talking about this

Far-right fear-mongering around Antifa is nothing new. In November 2017, FBI Director Christopher Wray was asked if the FBI was doing anything to counteract Antifa; Wray responded, “We’re not investigating Antifa as Antifa – that’s an ideology, and we don’t investigate ideologies.”

According to German, Trump and Barr are badly misinformed where Antifa is concerned.

“Typically, when we’re talking about Antifa — which doesn’t exist as a group in the way the president imagines — it would make it difficult to associate somebody with a group that doesn’t exist as an organization,” German explained. “They’re imagining something that isn’t real.”

no lnx

vanka Trump ‘urged’ president’s church photo-op — which could become a ‘defining moment’ of his time in office: NYT

President Donald J. Trump and Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump arrive to attend event supporting our nation’s small businesses through the pay check protection program Tuesday, April 28, 2020, in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Written by Bob Brigham / Raw Story June 3, 2020

First daughter and senior White House advisor Ivanka Trump “urged” her father to take part in a controversial photo-op with a Bible according to a new report from The New York Times.

“After a weekend of protests that led all the way to his own front yard and forced him to briefly retreat to a bunker beneath the White House, President Trump arrived in the Oval Office on Monday agitated over the television images, annoyed that anyone would think he was hiding and eager for action,” the newspaper reported.

:{:{}:

“He wanted to send the military into American cities, an idea that provoked a heated, voices-raised fight among his advisers. But by the end of the day, urged on by his daughter Ivanka Trump, he came up with a more personal way of demonstrating toughness — he would march across Lafayette Square to achurch damaged by fire the night before,” the newspaper reported.[9/11 rubble b43 redux?]

Hope Hicks was reportedly the brains behind the photo-op.

Paula Chertok??

@PaulaChertok

Ivanka Trump carried the Bible prop Trump posed with in her $1,540 Max Mara designer handbag in infamous photo-op 'masterminded by Hope Hicks'https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8381977/Ivanka-Trump-carried-Bible-Donald-Trump-posed-1-540-Max-Mara-handbag.html … #Maddow

Ivanka carried Bible Donald Trump posed with $1,540 Max Mara handbag

Ivanka Trump carried the bible President Donald Trump brandished in his controversial photo-op in her designer purse as she joined administration officials in the walk to St. John's Church.

dailymail.co.uk

“The only problem: A plan developed earlier in the day to expand the security perimeter around the White House had not been carried out. When Attorney General William P. Barr strode out of the White House gates for a personal inspection early Monday evening, he discovered that protesters were still on the northern edge of the square. For the president to make it to St. John’s Church, they would have to be cleared out. Mr. Barr gave the order to disperse them,” the newspaper reported.

“The scene of mayhem that preceded the walk — barely 1,000 feet from the symbol of American democracy — evoked images more commonly associated with authoritarian countries, but that did not bother the president, who has long flirted with overseas strongmen and has expressed envy of their ability to dominate,” The Times reported. “But critics, including some fellow Republicans, were aghast at the use of force against Americans who posed no visible threat at the time, all to facilitate what they deemed a ham-handed photo opportunity featuring all white faces. Some Democratic senators used words like ‘fascist’ and ‘dictator’ to describe the president’s words and actions.”

“And when the history of the Trump presidency is written, the clash at Lafayette Square may be remembered as one of its defining moments,” the newspaper noted.

Read the full report.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/01/george-floyd-protests-trump-puts-top-us-military-officer-in-charge.html

no lnx

waASHINGTON — In a contentious call with the nation’s governors Monday, President Donald Trump said he was putting America’s highest-ranking military officer “in charge” as protests over the death of George Floyd rock the United States for a seventh day.

“General Milley is here who’s head of Joint Chiefs of Staff, a fighter, a warrior, and a lot of victories and no losses. And he hates to see the way it’s being handled in the various states. And I’ve just put him in charge,” Trump told governors, according to audio obtained by NBC.

It was not immediately clear what Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley would be tasked with as it relates to the domestic unrest across the nation. The Pentagon added few details. “The chairman will continue to advise the secretary of Defense,” Pentagon spokesperson U.S. Army Lt. Col. Chris Mitchell said.

“As of this morning, 23 states and the District of Columbia had mobilized personnel in support of state and local authorities. Combined, they provided over 17,000 National Guard troops in support,” Mitchell added.

When asked to elaborate, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said she would not “get ahead of any actions that will be announced” on the matter.

“There will be additional federal assets deployed across the nation and there will be a central command center in conjunction with the state and local governments that will include general Milley, [Defense Secretary Mark] Esper and [Attorney General William] Barr, but I won’t go any further in announcing any actions,” McEnany said during a White House press briefing.

NBC News reported that Trump has considered using the Insurrection Act, which was adopted in 1807. Under the move, he would deploy troops to respond to the demonstrations. The law was last invoked during the 1992 Rodney King riots in California, at the request of then-Gov. Pete Wilson, according to NBC.[afte 63 kia? up to 1 bill$ damage?]

The latest revelation comes as Trump called for governors on Monday to use force when confronting protesters, who have taken to the streets across the U.S. to protest Floyd’s death as well as police brutality. Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. The officer was charged with third-degree murder. An independent autopsy found that asphyxiation was the cause of Floyd’s death.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/ex-fbi-official-slams-bill-barr-for-ignoring-the-right-wing-boogaloo-bois-infiltrating-protests/

Ex-FBI official slams Bill Barr for ignoring the right-wing ‘Boogaloo Bois’ infiltrating protests

Written by Bob Brigham / Raw Story May 31, 2020

Attorney General Bill Barr was slammed by the former assistant director for counterintelligence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Saturday for misleading Americans about the source of violence at the protests over the killing of George Floyd while in police custody.

“There’s evidence developing, Brian, that the organization we’re seeing of the most violent protesters is coming from a couple of disturbing places,” both, by the way, there’s disparate in terms in being from the right or the left. here’s what those who monitor these groups and sites are seeing.

“We’re seeing a far-right group, one group for example known as the Boogaloo Bois, who on their private Facebook page and social media outlets are calling for violence, calling for people to show up,” Frank Figliuzzi told MSNBC’s Brian Williams.

“We’re seeing evidence in the protests that right-wing dangerous militia groups are there. We’ve seen flags and symbols that come from both Boogaloo Bois and dangerous militia groups,” he warned. “On the far-left, we’re seeing some evidence developing of global anarchists showing up.”

“So we’re seeing a strange alignment occurring by some groups who are anti-government on the right and therefore anti-police because they think the police are too oppressive to them, aligning themselves with people like Black Lives Matter and saying, ‘hey, we’re one because we both don’t like the police,’ but I’m here to tell you they are not one, their intention is to destroy government and the system of justice, as opposed to calling for justice within the system.”

“What do we do about it?” Williams asked.

“Well, ordinarily we’d rely on our system and mechanisms and rule of law, but here’s two things significant that happened today that caused me to be deeply troubled about the summer ahead. The attorney general, William Barr held a press conference where he chose selectively just the intelligence that indicates there’s far-left agitators within the protest groups,” Figliuzzi noted.

Acyn Torabi

@Acyn

AG Barr: it appears the violence is planned, organized, and driven by anarchic and left extremist groups, far left extremist groups using Antifa like tactics... it is a federal crime to cross state lines or to use interstate facilities to incite or participate in violent rioting

Embedded video

5,003 people are talking about this

“He politicized intelligence. We shouldn’t be surprised by it, but we should be disturbed that the whole truth is not getting out about all the groups that pose a threat because that goes toward whether or not law enforcement will take effective action against all groups that are violent and be allowed to take such action,” he explained.

“And then the second thing that should disturb us today is within the last hour, the president of the United States has tweeted he wants to use the unlimited power of the military with regard to these protests. Well, let me remind our viewers that we have laws in the United States that prevent the military from turning into law enforcement on the streets of America,” he reminded.

“Yet we see a direction of where this is headed: politicizing the intelligence so that only the far-left becomes the bad folks here, and then a president who seems inclined to use the military on our streets,” Figliuzzi warned.

“It’s scary stuff,” Williams said.

Watch:

no lnx twet pix

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/is-bill-barr-concealing-trumps-grand-jury-testimony/

an 520

Barr just sharply undercut ‘Obamagate’ — but still proved he can’t be trusted

Cody Fenwick

Attorney General Bill Barr suggested Monday that there are still lines he won’t cross for President Donald Trump — while nevertheless proving that he absolutely cannot be trusted with the…

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https://www.mediamatters.org/trumprussia/richard-grenells-flynn-unmasking-noninformation-campaign

Right-wing media froth over “Obamagate” and bully press to play along

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 05/15/20 2:15 PM EDT

Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, a former Fox News contributor and Republican Party stalwart who was appointed to lead the U.S. intelligence community because of his loyalty to President Donald Trump, provided a document of his own devising to Congress on Wednesday. It promptly leaked to the press. Republicans, including Trump himself, immediately seized on the content in the document as evidence of vast Obama administration malfeasance. Fox hosts spent the next two days incessantly declaring that it vindicated their conspiracy theories, turning their attention away from the coronavirus pandemic. And more credible media outlets, buffeted by the partisan claims, responded with a flurry of stories, at times failing to properly contextualize the story.

Trumpists have declared Grenell’s document a smoking gun showing that disgraced former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty for lying to the FBI about his calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, was a victim of an Obama administration conspiracy, and Fox is hyping that narrative with wall-to-wall coverage. In reality, the document provides almost no information whatsoever. It is simply a list of senior Obama administration officials who received Flynn’s name after they followed the National Security Agency’s standard process and asked the agency to unmask the identity of an individual generically referenced in an NSA report they were authorized to read. It does nothing to establish that any of the individuals named acted improperly in any way -- or even how many unmaskings were related to the Kislyak calls.

We’ve seen misinformation campaigns, where false or deceptive information is distributed, and disinformation campaigns, when that distribution is done with the full knowledge of its inaccuracy. Grenell is engaged in a noninformation campaign. He deliberately crafted and propagated a data point so vague that it is virtually meaningless on its own. But pro-Trump partisans -- particularly at Fox -- have easily picked up, misread (deliberately or not), and promoted the point, aligining it with their wild assumptions. Those furious misinterpretations have in turn spurred attention from the mainstream press, driving the conspiratorial thinking into the broader public.

This is an intentional plan that corresponds with what the president wants from his director of national intelligence. “Trump hopes enough information will be released by his intelligence appointees to muddy the waters and lend a patina of confusion about what Mr. Obama may have done, according to people familiar with his thinking,” The New York Times reported Thursday. As the president struggles in reelection polling, Trump and his Fox propagandists are using the Flynn story to try to damage the credibility of former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s 2020 opponent.

Grenell’s noninformation campaign is the latest salvo in a years-long campaign by Trump and his Fox propagandists to turn the Russia investigation inside out, presenting the Trump associates who pleaded or were found guilty under its auspices as victims and those involved in carrying out the probe as criminals.

With vast swathes of the federal bureaucracy in the hands of partisans selected for their loyalty to the president, including the DNI and Justice Department, we should expect more of these releases -- and perhaps more dangerous actions -- in the coming months, as Trump’s supporters try to push the political debate away from the ongoing pandemic that has killed more than 80,000 Americans so far in order to secure his reelection.

The Trumpist defense of Michael Flynn

Michael Flynn is a retired general who served as Trump’s national security adviser during the 2016 presidential campaign, the transition, and the early days of his White House tenure. At various points during that timeline, Flynn was also assigned by Trump to find the Hillary Clinton emails he had publicly asked Russia to procure; was under investigation by the FBI, which was concerned with whether he was serving as a witting or unwitting agent of the Russian government; was illegally acting as an unregistered agent of the Turkish government, for which he was reportedly involved in discussions of a kidnapping plot; and was seeking Trump’s approval for a plan to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia after working as a paid adviser for the group behind the proposal.

On December 29, 2016, the day the Obama administration placed sanctions on Russia in response to its interference in the presidential election, Flynn called Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and urged him that Russia not retaliate for those sanctions. Flynn was fired as Trump’s national security adviser after reports surfaced that he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about those conversations, which opened Flynn up to blackmail from the Russian government. He would later repeatedly plead guilty as part of Mueller’s probe to lying to the FBI about those calls before renouncing that plea last year.

The position on Flynn among Trumpists like Fox host Sean Hannity is that he is an American hero, that there was no good-faith reason to probe any of his actions during that period, and that anyone involved in such an effort was a participant in the broad-ranging Obama administration conspiracy to take down Trump, which the president terms “OBAMAGATE.”

Their argument features Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak in two ways: They argue that the FBI’s interview with Flynn was a nefarious “setup” and suggest that the leak about the conversation from a “senior government official” to The Washington Post’s David Ignatius for his 2017 column, which brought the call into public light, was an illegal attempt to take down Flynn and Trump by someone who had improperly “unmasked” his identity from intelligence intercepts.

William Barr’s Justice Department showed last week that the Trump administration is putting the force of the federal government behind Fox’s conspiracy theories when it filed a dubious and virtually unprecedented motion seeking to drop the government’s case against Flynn, citing the FBI’s interview tactics. And on Wednesday, Grenell tried to use his own power as the director of national intelligence to provide grist in support of the other fork of the Flynn defense.

“Unmasking” and what Grenell’s document shows

On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Grenell had declassified and provided to the Justice Department what the paper described as “an Obama-era document related to President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn” and “a list of Obama administration officials who sought to learn the identities of Trump associates swept up in surveillance of foreign officials.” Later that day, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson sent a letter to Grenell and Barr asking for the document. Grenell provided it to the senators on Wednesday, and it was immediately leaked to CBS News’ Catherine Herridge, a former Fox reporter whose work often promotes Republican talking points. Herridge then published the letter on Twitter. (The document did not turn out to be precisely what the Times had reported. It had been generated on May 4, not during the “Obama era,” and dealt solely with cases involving Flynn, not “Trump associates” more generally.)

In NSA reports derived from the legal surveillance of foreign targets, analysts anonymize (“mask”) the names of U.S. persons to protect their privacy. It is routine for senior officials to ask the NSA to reveal (“unmask”) those identities in cases where they believe that information is necessary to understand the intelligence. The NSA has a standard procedure for doing this, including a review of the justification of the person seeking the unmasking. For context, Trump administration officials sought and received the unmasking of U.S. persons from the NSA more than 10,000 times in 2019 and nearly 17,000 times in 2018.

The document is a list created at Grenell’s request of several dozen “officials who submitted requests” to the NSA between Trump’s election and the end of January 2017 to unmask an identity which turned out to be Flynn, as detailed in an attached memorandum to Grenell from NSA Director Paul Nakasone. It provides the names of the officials, which include then-Vice President Biden, Cabinet secretaries, and intelligence agency leaders, and the date on which their requests were processed. It is the second version of the document -- as Nakasone detailed, the list was originally provided in alphabetical order but revised to be chronological.

That’s it.

Contrary to the insinuations from the right-wing figures, the document provides no evidence that any single unmasking was related to Flynn’s calls with Kislyak. In fact, the record suggests none of them were the original unmasking that first discovered Flynn had made the call, as that one was done by the FBI from its own intercept, not the NSA’s. Nor does it show that Flynn was in some way targeted -- by definition, unmasking occurs when senior administration officials don’t know the name of an American referenced in an intelligence report.

Indeed, there is no indication in the document that anyone listed behaved inappropriately -- in fact, it makes clear that the Obama-era unmaskings happened by the book. “Each individual was an authorized recipient of the original report and the unmasking was approved through NSA’s standard process, which includes a review of the justification for the request,” it states. It also points out that the NSA cannot confirm that any of the persons who requested the unmaskings eventually saw the information.

Grenell’s noninformation plot

Grenell is totally unqualified for his post. While previous occupants of his position ran intelligence agencies, he at most was a consumer of their products during a brief stint as U.S. ambassador to Germany. What he brings to the table instead, along with unswerving loyalty to the president, is broad experience in public relations and shaping news cycles, which he honed as a spokesperson for Republican politicians and for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, a strategic communications consultant for domestic and foreign clients, a Fox contributor, and a notably unhinged Twitter troll.

Grenell personally requested, sought revisions to, declassified, and provided the document to Congress in precisely this form, showing precisely what he wanted to become public.

If he wanted the document to include more information -- by for example, including the actual documents for which Flynn’s name was unmasked, or summaries thereof -- it would. Without that, despite the right-wing chorus linking Grenell’s document to Flynn’s Kislyak calls, it doesn’t provide evidence that any single unmasking had anything to do with them.In fact the majority of the unmaskings predate the calls and thus could not be related. Indeed, it doesn’t even indicate that Flynn was a participant in the intercepts used in the intelligence reports in which his name was unmasked, as the New York Times’ Charlie Savage points out:

If Grenell had wanted the document to include less information -- by, for example, limiting the date range to after Flynn’s December 29 calls with Kislyak, which would reduce the list from 39 names to only eight -- it would.

What he produced is a very long list of names that maximized its impact, with no information whatsoever that any of them were involved in something the least bit inappropriate. That is, presumably, exactly what he wanted to do.

Perhaps Grenell has no evidence of wrongdoing, and few or none of the unmaskings reference the Kislyak calls (which is not implausible, as the FBI derived and distributed its own intercepts of the call with no masking as part of their already in-progress counterintelligence probe of Flynn). In that case, he’s declassified and released this information for a political purpose.

Perhaps he does have that evidence, but isn’t releasing it for now so he can continue to dribble documents out and generate more news stories as the presidential election approaches. In that case, he’s withholding that information for a political purpose.

Fox’s propagandists understand that their role in this noninformation campaign is to fill in the gaps left by the document with feverish, often fact-free speculation. Fox’s Tucker Carlson described Flynn’s unmasking as a “domestic spying operation” that was “hidden under the pretext of national security,” and that the Obama administration officials involved are “amoral creeps” who committed “felonies” and should be “punished.” His prime-time colleague Hannity by asking, “What did Barack Hussein Obama know and when did he know it? Tonight, we will unravel the biggest abuse of power scandal in American history.” He also attacked Biden for “lying” about the story and claimed on Wednesday that if the officials involved in Flynn’s unmasking don’t face “justice,” “the great American republic will disintegrate before your eyes.” Despite how little information the Grenell document provides, they are convinced that it vindicates their conspiracy theories.

Meanwhile, Fox personalities are attacking the mainstream press for not obsessing over the story, with Hannity arguing that this proves they are “Democratic shills.” On Friday, Trump himself picked up that angle, praising the Fox morning show for “covering, supremely, the greatest political scandal in the history of the United States, OBAMAGATE,” while pillorying CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times as “Fake News” for failing to do so.

It’s no coincidence that Trump and Fox are trying to bully the mainstream press into giving the story more attention. They are counting on journalists to repeat the failures of the 2016 electionand flood the zone with context-free scandal coverage that dirties up the president’s opponent. That’s the play Trump is calling, and the leaders of the Justice Department and intelligence community are eagerly supporting the effort, and will likely continue dropping noninformation and disinformation until Election Day.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/heres-how-barr-is-advancing-trumps-quest-to-become-president-for-life-biographer-david-cay-johnston/

5/20 djt going after mueller/collusion, flynn, OBAMAGATE?! (unmask names, no one cd know one was flynn]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/the-media-is-taking-the-bait-on-trumps-fake-scandal/

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BARR WM 3 ATTY GENL

Bannon’s “War Room” is the media home of Project 2025 and Trump’s retribution plans

Early life and education

Early career

Office of Legal Counsel

Private practice

See also

Constellation of Anti-Voting Groups Threaten Democracy

These right-wing groups work closely with the RNC and with state legislatures to advance anti-voting legislation.

It’s not just what these groups do, but who runs them.

Notably, the infrastructure on the right is eclipsing the organizations on the left.

NEXT UP

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EMMET SULLIVAN HAS SIX DECISIONS TO MAKE, NOT JUST ONE

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some of the mystery around why Barr was so anxious to fire US Attorney Berman has been solved

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Aggressive Tactics

Overkill

fox News analyst destroys Barr’s ‘absurd’ desire to charge rioters with sedition: ‘A bridge too far’

Related

Leaked Documents Show Police Knew Far-Right Extremists Were the Real Threat at Protests, Not “Antifa”

The Trumpist defense of Michael Flynn

“Unmasking” and what Grenell’s document shows

Grenell’s noninformation plot