“’DUH’ ARTICLE OF DA DAY” – Former FBI Acting Director McCabe Says “then–Attorney General Sessions [was] a Trump-like idiot and racist” – Gee, Seems Like That Was What Liz, Corey, & The Black Caucus Told Us – But McConnell Silenced The Truth & He & His GOP Cronies Subjected America To Perhaps The Worst & Least Qualified Attorney General In U.S. History!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/andrew-mccabe-book-jeff-sessions-irishmen.html

Molly Olmstead reports for Slate:

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s new book, which details his frustrations with President’s Trump administration, has made it clear that his “disdain for Trump is rivaled only by his contempt for [Jeff] Sessions,” according to an assessment from Washington Post reporter Greg Miller.

According to Miller’s review of the book, McCabe saw then–Attorney General Sessions as a Trump-like idiot and racist who had “trouble focusing, particularly when topics of conversation strayed from a small number of issues,” failed to read intelligence reports, and jumbled classified material with publicly reported news.

The strangest detail from the book, though, had to do with Sessions’ thoughts on the FBI’s hiring practices. According to the Post:

The FBI was better off when “you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureau’s workforce. “They were drunks but they could be trusted. Not like all those new people with nose rings and tattoos — who knows what they’re doing?”

According to a Wall Street Journal review of the book, McCabe wrote in his book that Sessions was only interested in immigration issues. He obsessed over the connection between crime and immigration, and he believed that Islam was an inherently violent religion, according to the Post. When presented with a counterterrorism case, he would first ask where the suspect was born or where the suspect’s parents were from. “He blamed immigrants for nearly every societal problem and uttered racist sentiments with shocking callousness,” Miller concluded from McCabe’s book.

McCabe’s assessment is surprising in only that it comes so bluntly from a man who once was acting head of the FBI but now seems intent on speaking out against the men who made his professional and personal life so difficult for 10 months (before he was fired just hours before his planned retirement, blocking him from receiving his full pension benefits). Sessions has a long, long history of making racist and anti-immigrant comments, while also implementing racist and anti-immigrant policies. A non-exhaustive list includes: allegedly warning a black lawyer to “be careful how you talk to white folks”; calling the NAACP “un-American”; reportedly joking that he used to think the KKK was “OK” until he discovered some smoked marijuana; praising an 1924 immigration act promoted by Nazi-style eugenics; denigrating a judge in Hawaii as “sitting on an island in the Pacific”; fondly remembered George Wallace, America’s most famous segregationist politician, as “one of the most formidable third-party candidates in this century; and lauding “the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement.”

As for actions, in Alabama, Sessions punished black activists, defended voter suppression tactics, and kept black judges off the federal bench. He opposed sentencing reform over the crack-cocaine disparity. He has opposed hate crime protections and defended the official display of the Confederate flag. He has regularly attended events hosted by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups, which he maintains a close relationship with. He touted falsehoods about DACA and immigrants in general. And of course, he pushed, relentlessly, for deportations and prosecutions of undocumented immigrants and even refugees fleeing domestic and gang violence.

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Sessions is a living example of how someone can spend a lifetime “on the dole” as a so-called “public servant” without providing any meaningful positive service or contributions to the public good.

Compare this “life not so well lived” with the “real world” contributions of the many decent, hard-working, honest, and dedicated civil servants who were screwed over by Trump’s shutdown. Or, compare Sessions’s squandered, anti-social life with the significant “real life” contributions of many of the immigrants, both documented and undocumented, who came before me in Immigration Court over 13 years.

I’m not sure even the worst of the aggravated felons that I ordered deported did as much lasting damage to our nation and its future as did Sessions! He was a child abuser on a grand scale, and someone who used knowingly false narratives to send deserving refugees, particularly abused women, back to torture or even death in the countries from which they had fled. He was the architect of both family separation and the unbridled expansion of the “New American Gulag.”

He promoted hate, intellectual dishonesty, ignorance, bias, and intolerance of all kinds, and was an avowed enemy of kindness and human compassion. He even had the absolute audacity to cite the Christian Bible, the compassionate, merciful, inclusive, and forgiving teachings of one of the world’s greatest “outcasts,” in support of his own perverted, bias-driven, and totally un-Christian world view.

Oh yeah, and he had no management qualifications going into the job and proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he couldn’t manage his way out of a paper bag. Seldom in modern times has there been a more demoralized, mission-less, and dysfunctional mess than today’s Department of Justice. Even Watergate didn’t do as much institutional damage.

Sessions’s only real contribution to justice, due process, and the public good was the day he walked out of the U.S. Department of Justice for the last time. But, it will take years, if not generations, to repair the damage he has inflicted on the rule of law, our Constitution, honest government, and humane values.

Truly, Liz was right! This was one supremely unqualified dude!

PWS

02-16-19

Once Upon A Time, The DOJ Intervened On Behalf Of Disadvantaged Minorities For Whom Civil Rights Protections Were Enacted — Now, Not So Much, As Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions Finds Ways To Use Civil Rights Protections Against Minorities & To Help White Establishment Cling To Power! — Switches Sides To Favor Voter Suppression Before Supremes!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-reverses-position-to-allow-ohio-to-purge-inactive-voters-from-rolls/2017/08/08/e93c5116-7c35-11e7-9d08-b79f191668ed_story.html?utm_term=.7ea94a97bc00&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1

Sari Horwitz reports in the Washington Post:

“The Justice Department has reversed its position in a high-profile voting case in Ohio, siding with the state in its effort to purge thousands of people from its rolls for not voting in recent elections.

The move is part of a broader campaign by the Trump administration to support restrictions on who is eligible to vote, a radical change in philosophy from the previous Justice Department, which sued a number of states over voting laws that it deemed discriminatory against minorities.

In a court filing late Monday, Justice Department attorneys took the opposite position from the Obama administration in a case that involves Ohio’s removal last year of tens of thousands of inactive voters from its voting rolls.

In their brief, government lawyers say they reconsidered the Ohio vote-purging issue after the “change in Administrations,” and they argue that the state’s actions are legal under federal law. The case is headed next to the Supreme Court.

Ohio’s procedure allows the state to purge voters who meet certain criteria for being inactive. If a voter has not cast a ballot in two years, the person is sent a notice asking them to confirm their registration. If the voter does not respond and does not cast a ballot over the next four years, the person is removed from the rolls.

The Trump administration has signaled in other ways that it intends to back added requirements for voters as part of a crackdown on alleged fraud.

President Trump in May created an advisory commission on election integrity that has been tasked with determining the extent of illegal voting. The president earlier made the baseless allegation that illegal voting cost him the popular vote against Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

The commission’s only notable act so far has been to request massive amounts of voter data from the states, a move that has provoked lawsuits accusing the panel of breaching Americans’ privacy.

The case in Ohio is not the first time the Justice Department has reversed course in a major legal battle over voting rights. In February, shortly after Jeff Sessions became attorney general, the department dropped its position in a long-running case that argued Texas intended to discriminate against minorities when it passed a strict voter-ID law.

The Texas law, passed in 2011, required that voters present certain forms of identification, such as a driver’s license or a weapons permit, but the state did not allow other forms, including IDs issued by colleges. Critics said these restrictions targeted voters, such as young people and minorities, who are more likely to vote Democratic. A number of courts found the Texas law to be unconstitutional, and a federal court in April found that the Texas legislature intentionally discriminated against black and Hispanic voters.

Voting rights advocates said the Justice Department’s action on Ohio represented a major change in direction for the U.S. government’s stance on access to the polls.

The move “signals the broader agenda of the administration to roll back voter rights in this country,” said Vanita Gupta, former head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division under President Barack Obama and now president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.”

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Read the complete article at the above link.

During Sessions’s Senate Confirmation, Senator Liz Warren, Senator Corey Booker, Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and my friend and former DOJ Civil Rights Attorney Jerry Hebert, among others, tried to tell the Committee and the Senators that Sessions was the same White Nationalist/racially challenged individual he had been back when he was properly rejected for a U.S. District Judge position. They were “tuned out.”

Sessions took umbrage, and then lied under oath to the Committee when he claimed to be a staunch defender of civil rights and someone who would separate his political positions as a Republican Senator from Alabama (a state with a disgraceful history of racial bias) from his new responsibilities as Attorney General for all Americans. That would include people of color, LGBT Individuals, immigrants, both legal and undocumented, women, and even Democrats. But, he’s the “same ol’ Jeff” just like his critics said he would be. And the carnage to the American justice system that he is creating probably won’t be repaired any time soon.

Gonzo’s reported next target and scheme to waste of taxpayer money: legalized marijuana. Return to “Reefer Madness!”

PWS

08-09-17

 

MARJORIE COHN IN HUFFPOST: Destroying American Justice From The Inside — The “Gonzo-Apocalypto Era” Takes Hold At The USDOJ!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-department-of-injustice_us_590dd80ee4b0f711807244f1

Cohn writes:

“Motivated by his deep-seated biases and those of President Donald Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is pursuing a draconian agenda on voting rights, immigration, crime, policing, the drug war, federal sentencing and the privatization of prisons.

Sessions, now head of the Department of Justice, which is charged with enforcing the Voting Rights Act, once called the act “intrusive.” In 2013, after the Supreme Court issued a decision in “Shelby County v. Holder” that struck down the section of the act that established a formula for preclearance of jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination, Sessions called it “a good day for the South.”

Sessions and Trump tout the existence of what the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School calls a “phantom crime wave.” While this administration scaremongers about high crime rates, in reality, national crime and murder rates are at a near-historic low: 50 percent less than they were at their peak in 1991.

Trump’s campaign mantra was “law and order,” a euphemism for tolerating excessive force by police officers, often against people of color. Trump speaks of “American carnage” in the cities and a “war” on the police. His bogus rhetoric is aimed at Black Lives Matter, which arose in response to increasing numbers of police shootings, particularly of nonwhites.

The president depicts police reform measures as “anti-law enforcement” and Sessions is fully on board with this framing. In 2015, when he was a senator, Sessions said that police reform movements endanger public safety and hinder police work.

Sessions opposes consent decrees, which are court-enforced agreements aimed at eliminating racial profiling and excessive force by police in agencies that demonstrate “a pattern or practice” of violating civil rights. Sessions says the federal government should not be “dictating to local police how to do their jobs” (except when it comes to immigration enforcement, that is).

Amnesty International warns that Trump and Sessions’ “law and order” rhetoric could lead to higher levels of mass incarceration, long sentences and prolonged solitary confinement.

. . . .

Trump and Sessions are not disappointing the white nationalists who favor using immigration policy as a wedge to further their “alt-right” program.

Kevin de León, President pro Tempore of the California State Senate, noted, “It has become abundantly clear” that Sessions and Trump “are basing their law enforcement policies on principles of white supremacy ― not American values.”

From January to mid-March of this year, immigration arrests have increased by 33 percent. Since Trump’s inauguration, the number of arrests of immigrants with no criminal records has doubled. Roughly half of the 675 arrested in early February raids had either driving convictions or no criminal record at all, according to data obtained by The Washington Post.

Sessions drastically increased penalties for illegal reentry into the United States and ordered immigration officials to charge undocumented immigrants with higher-penalty crimes.

Although Sessions’ heavy-handed actions are based on Trump’s spurious claim that immigrants disproportionately murder and rape US citizens, studies have shown that immigrants actually commit fewer crimes than citizens.

Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are arresting immigrants who come to the courthouse. This egregious practice motivated California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye to complain in a letter to the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security that ICE agents “appear to be stalking undocumented immigrants in our courthouses to make arrests.”

Terrorizing immigrants with frightful measures discourages immigrant witnesses from reporting crimes, and discourages victims from seeking legal measures and services that are meant to protect their own safety and well-being.

By March, the Los Angeles Police Department had seen a 25 percent drop in the number of Latinos reporting sexual assault and a 10 percent decrease in Latinos’ reports of domestic violence. By early April, there was a 42.8 percent drop in the number of Latinos who reported rapes to the Houston Police Department. And a health care center in Los Angeles reported a 20 percent decrease in food stamp enrollments and a 54 percent drop in enrollments for Medicaid.

The Trump administration has been arresting ― even deporting ― “Dreamers” who relied on Barack Obama’s assurances they would be protected if they came out of the shadows and provided their personal information to ICE. Dreamer Juan Manuel Montes Bojorquez is a registrant in Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and was the first DACA recipient to be deported. Bojorquez, who is now in Mexico, is suing the US federal government.

On January 25, 2017, Trump signed an executive order to halt federal funding to municipal governments that don’t facilitate federal immigration enforcement. Trump’s order is aimed at “sanctuary cities” that protect immigrants from deportation.

In March, Sessions threatened officials in nine jurisdictions with losing their 2016 grants if they failed to certify by June 30 that they were in compliance with a law that forbids local authorities from forcing officials to withhold information about immigration status from federal authorities.

But the majority of sanctuary policies do not cover information sharing. Most address how to handle “detainers,” where federal immigration officials request that state or local authorities continue to detain people who are eligible for release. Courts have said jurisdictions cannot be forced to honor those detainers.

Trump’s January 25 order is blocked, for now. US District Judge William H. Orrick III issued a nationwide preliminary injunction that forbids the federal government from withholding funds from municipal governments that don’t fully cooperate with immigration agents.

Orrick also ruled the federal government can’t legally force counties to hold undocumented people beyond their release dates. The judge concluded Trump’s order likely violates due process, the separation of powers doctrine, and the 10th Amendment, which prevents federal interference with state and local self-government. Only Congress can limit spending, Orrick wrote.

This is Trump’s third executive order halted by federal courts. His first and second Muslim bans are now pending in the 9th and 4th Circuit Courts of Appeals.

. . . .

After Trump nominated Sessions for attorney general, Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Illinois) stated, “No senator has fought harder against the hopes and aspirations of Latinos, immigrants and people of color than Sen. Sessions.”

Indeed, no one is worse equipped to lead the Department of Justice. Sessions’ racism is prominently on display in every action he has taken during his short tenure in Trump’s cabinet.

It is critical that “we the people” continue to resist, in every way we can, the Trump-Sessions pattern and practice of injustice.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her books include The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse; Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law; and Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. Follow her on Twitter. Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.”

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Read the entire article over on HuffPost.

So much damage in so little time. And, I’m sure the worst is yet to come. Most impressive in a depressingly negative way! Senators Liz Warren, Cory Booker, and others were right!

PWS

05-07-17

HUFFPOST: How White Nationalist “Know Nothing” Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions Tanked Needed Police Reform In Chicago Without Even BOTHERING TO READ The DOJ’s 160 Page Report!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/doj-police-reform-jeff-sessions-chicago_us_58f50a77e4b0da2ff86254cf?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000 report on HuffPost:

Ryan J. Reilly & Kim Bellware report in HuffPost:

“CHICAGO ― In the final months of the Obama administration, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division scrambled to complete its biggest-ever investigation of a city police department: a 13-month probe of Chicago’s 12,000-strong police force that wrapped up just a week before President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

For more than a year, the division’s lawyers reviewed thousands of Chicago Police Department documents, visited all 22 police districts, went on 60 ride-alongs, reviewed 170 police shooting files, examined over 425 incidents of less-lethal force, interviewed 340 department members and talked to about 1,000 Chicago residents.

Their final report, issued Jan. 13, recognized the tough job officers had in Chicago as they dealt with spiking gun violence, and praised the “diligent efforts and brave actions of countless” officers. But a “breach in trust” eroded Chicago’s ability to prevent crime, because officers were able to escape accountability when they broke the law, the report found. Because “trust and effectiveness in combating violent crime are inextricably intertwined,” the report found “broad, fundamental reform” was needed in Chicago.

Without a formal legal agreement to reform — known as a consent decree — and independent monitoring, the report concluded, reform efforts in Chicago were “not likely to be successful.”

JI SUB JEONG/HUFFPOST

Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general, disagrees. In recent weeks, Sessions has expressed deep skepticism about the role of the federal government in fixing broken police departments, leaving serious doubts about the ultimate outcome of the Justice Department’s work in Chicago.

Sessions wants the Justice Department to serve as the “leading advocate for law enforcement in America.” While admitting he hadn’t read the full Chicago report, he called it “anecdotal” and “not so scientifically based.” Earlier this month in Baltimore, a Justice Department lawyer said Sessions had “grave concerns” about an agreement previously reached between that city and the Obama administration. A federal judge signed off on the deal over Sessions’ objections.

In an interview with a conservative radio host this month, Sessions seemed to suggest that Justice Department investigations and consent decrees were resulting in “big crime increases.” In an op-ed for USA Today last week, Sessions wrote that consent decrees could amount to “harmful federal intrusion” that could “cost more lives by handcuffing the police instead of the criminals.” There’s too much focus on “a small number of police who are bad actors,” Sessions wrote, and “too many people believe the solution is to impose consent decrees that discourage the proactive policing that keeps our cities safe.”

Chicago has a serious violent crime problem. Last year was the deadliest in the city in two decades, with 762 homicides. But supporters of police reform like Jonathan Smith, a former official in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said that Sessions was “simply wrong” to suggest that crime goes up as a result of reform (or, in Chicago’s case, an investigation). DOJ investigations can increase community confidence in police departments and make people safer, Smith argued.

JIM YOUNG / REUTERS
A protester takes part in a weekly nighttime peace march through the streets of a South Side Chicago neighborhood on September 16, 2016.

Lorie Fridell, a criminologist and police bias expert from whom the Chicago’s Police Accountability Task Force solicited information for its report released last year, said DOJ investigations not only help to usher in badly need reforms to the specific departments probed, but other departments also rely on the reports to determine if their own departments are meeting constitutional standards.

“I think it’s very unfortunate the DOJ is no longer going to prioritize police reform,” Fridell said. ”The future of police reform is therefore going to have to come from the ground up. It’s going to be important for concerned individuals to demand high-quality policing.”

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Read the complete HuffPost article at the above link. And, for those of you who would like to be better informed than AG “Gonzo Apocalypto” about the need for serious police reform in Chicago, you can read the complete DOJ Civil Rights Division report here: https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/925846/download.

Sen. Liz Warren, Sen. Cory Booker, and others who opposed Sessions’s nomination to be AG, and told the truth about his white nationalist views (which he tried to conceal/downplay during his confirmation hearing, in addition to lying under oath about his Russian contacts) were right!

PWS

04-29-17

Senator Cory Booker Is Skeptical That Jeff Sessions Will “Seek Justice For All” As AG!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/jeff-sessions-has-made-his-case-to-be-the-attorney-general-now-the-senate-will-hear-from-supporters-and-detractors/2017/01/10/5683ce24-d796-11e6-9a36-1d296534b31e_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_sessions-1225p%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.60a27c7babe2

In an unprecedented move, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) became the first U.S. Senator ever to testify against a colleague during a confirmation hearing.  In the above account from the Washington Post, Senator Booker charged that:

“If confirmed, Sen. Sessions will be required to pursue justice for women, but his record indicates that he won’t,” Booker said. “He will be expected to defend the equal rights of gay and lesbian and transgender Americans, but his record indicates that he won’t. He will be expected to defend voting rights, but his record indicates that he won’t. He will be expected to defend the rights of immigrants and affirm their human dignity, but the record indicates that he won’t.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee also heard testimony from a number of Sessions’s supporters, including former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who said, according to the Post:

“Sessions is “thoroughly dedicated to the rule of law and the mission of the [Justice] department.”

The Post also reported that the Committee heard testimony from Oscar Vasquez, a former undocumented individual, who expressed the fear of many so-called “Dreamers” that as Attorney General Sessions will support the revocation of their protected status and use the information that they voluntarily furnished to the USCIS to institute removal proceedings.

During yesterday’s hearing, Senator Sessions took a somewhat ambiguous position on Dreamers.  He indicated he would have no problem if President Trump decided to revoke the Executive Order establishing the DACA program, while at the same time acknowledging that there was no plan in the offing to actually place Dreamers into removal proceedings.

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Notwithstanding Senator Booker’s reservations, and those of many others in the civil rights, human rights, women’s rights, and immigrants’ rights communities, Senator Sessions will be the next Attorney General. At best, therefore, Senator Booker’s testimony was a “marker” in the event that once confirmed, Senator Sessions abandons his promise to seek justice for all Americans (which includes lawfully resident immigrants and undocumented individuals residing in the United States) and returns to the much narrower view of civil rights, human rights, women’s rights, and immigrants’ rights that he has often expressed and defended during his long Senate career.

It’s a tall order for Senator Sessions to rise above the limitations of his past and take a broader, more inclusive, more humane view of the U.S. legal system.  But, for the sake of all Americans, I sincerely hope he can pull it off.

PWS

01/11/17