“TORTURE” UNDER U.N. DEFINITION! ☠️— “GOVERNMENT-SANCTIONED CHILD ABUSE!” — WHAT HAVE WE BECOME AS A PEOPLE & A NATION? — AMERICA HAS PUT NOTORIOUS CHILD ABUSERS AND SHAMELESS “PERPS” OF “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” IN CHARGE — We Now Have A Chance To Throw Them Out & Start The Return To Human Decency As An Overriding National Value! 🗽

 

Here’s an array of reports on how America under the Trump regime has joined the ranks of dictatorships, torturers, child abusers, persecutors, and human rights criminals!

Eugene Robinson
Eugene Robinson
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post
Source: WashPost Website

Eugene Robinson @ WashPost:

What kind of people are we? As a society, are we so decadent and insecure that we show “toughness” by deliberately being cruel to innocent children? Is this what our nation has come to? Or are we better than that?

This election demands we answer those questions. The choice between President Trump and Joe Biden is not just political. It is also moral. And perhaps nothing more starkly illustrates the moral dimension of that decision than the Trump administration’s policy of kidnapping children at the southern U.S. border, ripping them away from their families — and doing so for no reason other than to demonstrate Trump’s warped vision of American strength.

We learned this week that some of those separations will probably be permanent. As NBC News first reported, 545 boys and girls taken as many as three years ago — the children of would-be immigrants and asylum seekers, mostly from Central America — have not been reunited with their parents and may never see their families again.

These are not among the nearly 3,000 families separated at the border in 2018, when children were kept in cages like animals or shipped away to facilities across the country, hundreds or thousands of miles from the border. We now know, thanks to the American Civil Liberties Union and other pro bono lawyers, that an additional 1,500 children were torn away from their families beginning in 2017, when the Trump administration conducted a trial run of the separation policy.

Please think about that. The shocking scenes we saw two years ago did not result from a sudden spasm of presidential anger. They didn’t stem from a Fox News segment Trump might have seen one evening. Rather, the administration rehearsed this form of cruelty.

What the administration did not plan for was how to reunite the children taken in 2017 with their families. Many of the parents were deported, and their children were placed in shelters around the country, then ostensibly released to parents or guardians, placements that the ACLU is still trying to confirm.

[Our Democracy in Peril: A series on the damage Trump has caused — and the danger he would pose in a second term]

The ACLU and other organizations have sent investigators to towns and villages in Central America in an attempt to find the kidnapped children’s families — an effort complicated not just by time and distance, but also by the covid-19 pandemic. Parents of 545 children have not been found, the ACLU reported this week.

Disturbingly, the Department of Homeland Security suggested that some of the parents declined to get their children back so they could remain in the United States. Keep in mind that most of these families were seeking asylum from deadly violence in their home countries. The Trump administration changed immigration guidelines to make it unlikely that the families would ultimately be allowed to stay in the United States, but federal law gives them the right to apply for asylum and to have their cases heard. They did nothing wrong. They should never have been asked to choose between parenting their children and getting them to safety — not by their home countries, and not by the United States.

Trump’s racism and xenophobia have been hallmarks of his presidency from the beginning, so perhaps it should be no surprise that he would preside over such an outrage. But he didn’t do this by himself. He had plenty of help.

Former attorney general Jeff Sessions seized an opportunity to make his rabid antipathy toward Hispanic immigration into policy. White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, a former Sessions aide in the Senate, was the architect of Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy. Then-White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly said in 2018 that the children taken would be “taken care of — put into foster care or whatever.” Former homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said last year that she regretted that “information flow and coordination to quickly reunite the families was clearly not in place” — but not the separations themselves.

. . . .

Read the rest of Eugene’s article here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/do-we-tolerate-the-kidnapping-of-children-this-election-is-our-chance-to-answer/2020/10/22/0f60d17c-1496-11eb-ad6f-36c93e6e94fb

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Elise Foley
Elise Foley
Deputy Enterprise Editor
HuffPost
Photo Source: HuffPost.com

Elise Foley @ HuffPost:

President Donald Trump’s administration started and carried out a policy that took more than 4,000 children from their parents, at least 545 of whom are still split apart years later. But at Thursday’s debate, the president insisted that he did nothing wrong at all ― blaming his Democratic predecessors and even insisting the kids are doing fine.

“They are so well taken care of,” Trump said of the children taken from their parents by his administration. “They’re in facilities that were so clean.”

Trump’s first term was marked by a full-out assault on immigration, both legal and unauthorized. The most dramatic was his “zero tolerance” policy on unauthorized border-crossing, used in a 2017 pilot program and expanded more broadly in 2018, that led to criminal prosecution of parents and locking up their kids separately. Splitting up families was intentional and calculated, according to multiple reports.

Thanks to mass public outrage and a court order, Trump was forced to stop his family separation policy. Most families were reunited, but the American Civil Liberties Union, which was part of the lawsuit against the government that stopped the policy, said this week that at least 545 kids are still away from their parents.

“Their kids were ripped from their arms and separated,” Democratic nominee Joe Biden said during the debate. “And now they cannot find over 500 sets of those parents and those kids are alone. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to go. It’s criminal.”

. . . .

Read the rest of Elise’s article here:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-debate-family-separation_n_5f924368c5b62333b2439d2b

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Ruth Marcus
Washington Post Columnist Ruth Marcus, moderates a panel discussion about chronic poverty with Education Secretary John B. King and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, during the National Association of Counties at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park, in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016. U.S. Department of Agriculture photo by Lance Cheung.

Ruth Marcus @ WashPost:

545.

That is the number of children still separated from their families by the Trump administration — separated deliberately, cruelly and recklessly. They might never be reunited with their parents again. Even if they are, the damage is unimaginable and irreparable.

545.

Even one would be too many. Each one represents a unique tragedy. Imagine being ripped from your parents, or having your child taken from you. Imagine the desperation that the parents feel, the trauma inflicted on their children.

545.

That number represents an indelible stain on President Trump and every individual in his administration who implemented this policy, flawed at the conception and typically, gruesomely incompetent in the execution. It is, perhaps in the technical sense but surely in the broader one, a crime against humanity. It is torture.

545.

That number — I will stop repeating it, yet it cannot be repeated enough — represents a moral challenge and responsibility for the next administration. If Joe Biden is elected president, he must devote the maximum resources of the federal government to fixing this disaster. The United States broke these families; it must do whatever it takes to help them heal.

Nothing like that would happen in a second Trump term, because Trump himself doesn’t care. He doesn’t grasp the horror that he oversaw. He doesn’t comprehend the policy, and he is incapable of feeling the pain it inflicted.

Those truths could not have been clearer cut than during Thursday night’s debate.

Moderator Kristen Welker of NBC News asked the president a simple question: “How will these families ever be reunited?”

First, Trump misstated the situation: “Their children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they’re brought here, and they used to use them to get into our country.”

No. These are children separated from their families, not separated from smugglers. They are children brought by their parents in desperate search of a better life, desperate enough that they would take the risk of the dangerous journey.

Then Trump pivoted to the irrelevant: “We now have as strong a border as we’ve ever had. We’re over 400 miles of brand new wall. You see the numbers. And we let people in, but they have to come in legally.”

Welker persisted: “But how will you reunite these kids with their families, Mr. President?”

Trump responded by pointing his finger at his predecessor: “Let me just tell you, they built cages. You know, they used to say I built the cages, and then they had a picture in a certain newspaper and it was a picture of these horrible cages and they said look at these cages, President Trump built them, and then it was determined they were built in 2014. That was him.”

This is typical Trumpian deflection, bluster undergirded by ignorance. The “cages” are ugly but irrelevant to the topic at hand: the deliberately cruel plan to deter border-crossing by separating children from parents. That was a Trump administration special, implemented with callous sloppiness and so extreme that even the Trump administration abandoned it.

Welker, for the third time: “Do you have a plan to reunite the kids with their families?”

At which point Trump made clear that he did not: “We’re trying very hard, but a lot of these kids come out without the parents, they come over through cartels and through coyotes and through gangs.” The children, he added later, “are so well taken care of, they’re in facilities that were so clean.”

. . . .

Read the rest of Ruth’s op-ed here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/545-children-are-still-separated-from-their-families-what-if-one-of-them-were-yours/2020/10/23/63d3be04-154f-11eb-ba42-ec6a580836ed_story.html

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Bess Levin
Bess Levin
Politics & Finance Writer
Vanity Fair


Bess Levin
@ Vanity Fair:

The third and final presidential debate gave Donald Trump and Joe Biden the opportunity to make their final pitch to the American people before the 2020 election. For the Democratic nominee, that meant driving home the point that he believes in science, that he’ll take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously, that climate change is real, and that systemic racism must be dealt with. For Trump, it meant making it clear that in addition to being a science-denying, QAnon-promoting dimwit, he’s also an actual monster who thinks separating small children from their parents, in some cases permanently, is absolutely fine.

Asked by moderated Kristen Welker about the news that parents of 545 children separated at the border—60 of whom are under the age of five—cannot be located, Trump defended the policy and gave no explanation for how the government plans to find these people and reunite their families. “Children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they’re brought here and they used to use them to get into our country,” Trump said, which is objectively false, as they are brought here by their parents, which is why it’s called the family separation policy. “We now have as strong a border as we’ve ever had. We’re over 400 miles of brand new wall. You see the numbers and we let people in but they have to come in legally.”

pastedGraphic.png

Noting that Trump hadn’t answered the question, Welker pressed: “But how will you unite these kids with their families?”

“They built cages, they used to say I built cages…that was him,” Trump said, pointing to Biden and referring to the fact that the Obama administration did build temporary enclosures but failing, naturally, to mention that his predecessor did not separate families.

“Do you have a plan to reunite the kids with their parents?” Welker asked a third time. Again, Trump responded by claiming that the children “come without the parents, they come over through cartels and through coyotes and through gangs.”

At this point, Joe Biden was given a chance to weigh in and used his time to describe the policy implemented by Trump as the horror show all non-sociopaths know it to be. “Parents, their kids were ripped from their arms and they were separated and now they cannot find over 500 sets of those parents and those kids are alone, nowhere to go. It’s criminal.”

Then Trump interjected with what he apparently believed was an important point that would cast his administration in a much more favorable light and perhaps might even win it some awards or sainthood by the Catholic church. “Kristen, I will say this,” he told the moderator, of the children stolen from their parents. “They’re so well taken care of. They’re in facilities that are so clean.

pastedGraphic_1.png

With regard to that claim, NBC News reporter Jacob Soboroff weighed in on that after the debate, telling Rachel Maddow: “I was one of the reporters I guess the president mentioned, they invited me to go to the epicenter of this policy…what I saw was little children sitting on concrete floors, covered by mylar blankets, supervised by security contractors in a watchtower, it makes me sick every time I recall it. And Physicians for Human Rights…called this torture…the American Academy of Pediatrics called this state-sanctioned child abuse, and the president of the United States I guess interprets that as children being well taken care of.”

pastedGraphic_2.png

Read the rest of The Levin Report here:

https://mailchi.mp/c4319dce073e/levin-report-trumps-heart-bursting-with-sympathy-for-his-buddy-bob-kraft-2882762?e=adce5e3390

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Jacob Soboroff
Jacob Soboroff
NBC Correspondent
Jacob Soboroff at the ABC News Democratic Debate
National Constitution Center. Philadelphia, PA.
Creative Commons License

Here’s a video from NBC New’s  Jacob Soboroff, who has actually been inside “Trump’s Kiddie Gulag.” Surprise spoiler: It’s not “nice.” More like “torture” and “child abuse.”

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/soboroff-the-conditions-of-migrant-children-trump-described-as-well-taken-care-of-made-me-sick-94450757764

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Julia Edwards Ainsley

And, here’s another video from NBC News’s always incisive and articulate Julia Edwards Ainsley:

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/10/21/lawyers-cant-find-parents-of-545-migrant-children-separated-by-the-trump-administration.html

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There is neither moral nor legal justification for what the Trump regime has done to asylum seekers and other migrants over the past four years as part of their racist, White Nationalist, nativist agenda. But, we can show that we’re a better country than his horrible vision by voting him and all of his enablers out of office! Vote ‘Em out, vote ‘Em out!

PWS

10-25-20

RICHARD A. CLARKE @ WASHPOST: High Time To End The DHS Farce  🤡🤹‍♀️🎪☠️🤮: “Trump has done far more damage to the DHS, however, than leaving it leaderless. He has branded it as the department that cages children, swoops innocent citizens off U.S. streets, sends warriors dressed for the apocalypse to deal with protests, hunts down hard-working people doing “essential jobs” to forcibly deport them, and harasses foreign students at leading universities.”

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dismantle-the-department-of-homeland-security/2020/07/30/24ef8ba0-d279-11ea-8c55-61e7fa5e82ab_story.html

Richard A. Clarke served on the National Security Council for Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. 

President Trump has, often intentionally, damaged essential federal departments and agencies, driving from their ranks thousands of career civil servants who are global experts and national treasures. The country is seeing the results play out at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but such damage has happened across the federal bureaucracy.

No national institution has been more damaged than the Department of Homeland Security. The youngest of the federal departments, the DHS is among the largest by employee count, ranking just below the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs. It was created in 2003 by smashing together 17 agencies from five departments in an ill-conceived response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Its divisions and agencies are now largely leaderless, because the White House refuses to nominate senior managers to replace those who have left. Quick, who is the secretary of homeland security?

You get my point.

Trump has done far more damage to the DHS, however, than leaving it leaderless. He has branded it as the department that cages children, swoops innocent citizens off U.S. streets, sends warriors dressed for the apocalypse to deal with protests, hunts down hard-working people doing “essential jobs” to forcibly deport them, and harasses foreign students at leading universities. The DHS has become synonymous with unsympathetic government overreach, malevolence and dysfunction.

For the patriotic, underpaid Americans working hard in the agencies of the DHS, what Trump has done to their reputations is a tragedy. The department, however, was doomed from the start. When such an agency was proposed before the Sept. 11 attacks, I was working in the White House, where I coordinated many “homeland” issues for almost a decade under President Bill Clinton and, later, President George W. Bush. Blocking the creation of the DHS was one of the few things on which Vice President Dick Cheney and I agreed. We thought that such a department would be too large, too diverse in function and too difficult to integrate into a well-functioning institution.

Congressional leaders, however, wanted to “do something” after 9/11, and it became impossible for the Bush administration to maintain its opposition to the idea of a homeland security agency. Instead, the Bush administration embraced it and quickly merged a raft of agencies ripped from their home departments. The new department never really came together.

For more than a decade, reports from the Government Accountability Office, think tanks and congressional committees have documented the failures of the DHS to coalesce into an effective entity. Its image steadily declined and was not helped by the popular television series “Homeland,” which despite its name depicted a dark world of CIA intrigue, portraying missions and functions that the DHS never actually had.. Contrary to popular belief, Homeland Security has never been the government’s lead counterterrorism entity. The FBI, part of the Justice Department, leads counterterrorism efforts within the United States.

The next administration would be well advised not to try to make the existing DHS structure work, for it will end up as another presidential administration that has failed in that task. Instead, the department should be reimagined — perhaps as part of a Reinventing Government effort, the first of which was led by then-Vice President Al Gore — with more manageable and mission-consistent entities. It should also shed its Orwellian name.

Federal departments and agencies develop personalities and images from their mission, and they attract people who identify with those personas. These identities are almost immutable, but new organizational designs and branding can reinvigorate and redirect agencies. Breaking up the DHS could have positive results.

. . . .

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Read the rest of the article at the link.

You read it Courtside long ago: No mission, no leadership, no values, no discipline, no decency.  DHS as currently constituted is a dysfunctional mess that America won’t miss. 

Break it up, reassign the truly necessary functions, reduce the funding, and use the money saved by eliminating detention, grotesque mismanagement and maladministration, stupid walls, undisciplined and counterproductive, “civil” enforcement, and other demonstrably destructive functions for something more constructive. Yes, if you strip out the neo-Nazi wannabes, racists, and incompetents, there is some real talent there. Some of that talent passed through my courtroom in Arlington. Some of it is in the Asylum Office and at USCIS. There is some in the anti-smuggling and fraud detection programs. But, it’s totally wasted in the current corrupt dysfunctional configuration. Indeed, the totally toxic reputation of DHS under Trump actually hinders the useful functions.

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

07-31-20

TANVI MISRA @ ROLL CALL: The BIA’s Biased Hiring Program Is As Bogus As A Three Dollar Bill — Designed To Empower White Nationalist Nation, Deny Due Process! ☠️👎🏻 — “Everyone knows that [EOIR Director James McHenry] 👺 was changing the process along the way to ensure he got the candidates he pre-selected.” 

EYORE
“Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

https://www.rollcall.com/2020/05/04/doj-hiring-changes-may-help-trumps-plan-to-curb-immigration/

Tanvi writes for Roll Call:

. . . .

The hiring plan documents show shortened hiring timelines and suggest preference given to judges with records of rulings against immigrants. The documents also demonstrate the influence held over the board by the political leadership of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that oversees the nation’s immigration court system, particularly its director, James McHenry.

“The [hiring] processes previously in place were cumbersome and not efficient but what we’re seeing with this hiring plan is that they’ve really eviscerated any protections that were put in place  … to create a flexible process to fit their political priorities,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel at AILA. “It’s very unclear and opaque and provides the leeway to manipulate the process.”

An EOIR official, who would only comment if identified as an agency spokeswoman, said its current process is “open, competitive, merit-based.”

“During the most recent hiring cycle, every interview panelist was a career (i.e. not political) employee, which would not have been possible under the previous procedures,” said the spokeswoman after CQ Roll Call reached out to EOIR for comment. “Individuals who assert that such changes make the hiring process less neutral are either ignorant or mendacious.”

New roles

Under the current administration, the Justice Department has rapidly expanded the board. In 2018, it went from 17 members to 21. On March 31, the department announced a new rule, effective the next day, expanding the board to 23 members.

McHenry first advertised for new positions in fall 2018. But instead of referring to them as “board members,” as they had been historically described, he called them “appellate judges,” a reflection of other changes to come. Instead of working out of the board’s office in Falls Church, Va., appellate judges could work from any immigration court in the country.

They also could review cases at both the trial and the appellate level — creating potential conflicts of interest.

EOIR said its office first proposed that designation in 2000.

“Elevating trial-level judges to appellate-level courts is common in every judicial system in the United States,” the agency spokeswoman said.

True, said Ashley Tabaddor, who heads the union, the National Association of Immigration Judges. But she noted judges in an independent judiciary don’t hear cases at the trial and appellate level at the same time.

“They are taking these concepts and they’re mashing them up together to essentially walk away from the traditional court model,” she said, adding that she believes conflating the roles could be a way to dilute union membership.

Tabaddor and others are currently fighting the Justice Department over its move in January to decertify the judges’ union.

Faster hiring process

In 2008, a DOJ Inspector General investigation found widespread political hiring at the board. As a result, to curb future practices, the department implemented a multi-layered process that entailed vetting by both political appointees and career professionals.

The current hiring process appears to chip away at the role career employees play in that process, and instead amplifies that of the EOIR director and other political appointees, according to Lynch and some other experts who reviewed the changes.

McHenry refers several times in one memo that he seeks to streamline the hiring process and make it more efficient. For instance, new openings on the board are now public for only 14 days, as opposed to the previous 30 days, to “begin the application review process more quickly,” McHenry writes in the memo.

In another step, current board members have to submit their evaluations of job candidates within three days, as opposed to a week. McHenry notes other tighter deadlines for other parts of the applicant screening process.

The changes raise concerns by immigration judges, lawyers and court observers about political appointees rushing preferred candidates, including those with unresolved complaints in their records, onto the board.

“Looks like another coverup for ‘expedited,’ predetermined, ideologically-based, ‘insider’ hiring,” Paul Schmidt, a retired immigration judge who headed the Board of Immigration Appeals under President Bill Clinton, told CQ Roll Call via email.

Schmidt, who tracks every board hire and firing on a well-known immigration blog, described the current hiring process as “a fraud and a joke — but not so funny when we consider the human lives at stake.”

According to a former longtime member of the appeals board who served under McHenry, EOIR’s director has manipulated even the newly laid out hiring process. “Everyone knows that he was changing the process along the way to ensure he got the candidates he pre-selected,” said the former board member, who spoke to CQ Roll Call on the condition of anonymity because of fear of agency retribution.

EOIR leaders did not respond to questions posed to agency leaders specifically regarding this allegation.

. . . .

**********************

Read Tanvi’s full article at the link.  

Actually, I’m neither neither “ignorant [nor] mendacious.” I probably know more about EOIR than anyone alive. I”ll certainly put my knowledge of immigration law and due process up against anyone at the DOJ today!

The proof of any merit based hiring system is in the results. Nobody, and I mean nobody, outside the world of DOJ politicos and the restrictionist right would claim that the last half-dozen selections for the BIA are the “best and the brightest.” None of them actually have any recent relevant experience representing migrants or asylum seekers. 

There must be hundreds if not thousands of immigration practitioners out there who would be better qualified and more deserving of these jobs. Under current conditions, what would a civil servant not actually involved in Immigration Court practice know about what makes a good BIA Appellate Immigration Judge? What would they know about legal issues facing the immigrant community? Next to nothing, to put it generously. So, what’s the benefit of involving them except to “rubber stamp” and “launder” Director McHenry’s anti-immigrant preselections. That’s exactly what the “inside” source in Tanvi’s article confirms!

What is badly needed and sorely lacking is input from the immigration bar and the NGOs who actually practice before the Immigration Courts and the BIA and have seen the unmitigated due process and fundamental fairness disaster that unfolds every day under this Administration. That’s the way other judicial “merit selection” systems are run — with input from outside Government, indeed some even get input from influential non-lawyers within the community being served by the courts.

Such a system was actually used on a number of occasions during the Clinton Administration. And, hiring then didn’t take anywhere near as long as it has under the bloated, biased, and opaque systems employed by the Bush, Obama, and Trump Administrations. Not surprisingly, every appointment to the BIA since 2000 has been some type of “government insider.”

Today’s BIA is largely White, Male, Anglo, and restrictionist. That bears no resemblance whatsoever to the community that the Immigration Courts are supposed to be serving. Indeed, it bears little resemblance to the composition of today’s America or the attitudes of the majority of Americans toward migrants.

Even with tons of “undue deference” given to the BIA  by the Article IIIs, scarcely a week goes by without the Article IIIs highlighting some grossly defective performance in the BIA’s interpretation and application of the basics of immigration law and due process. Yet, the BIA selection process makes no effort to encourage or promote private sector applicants renowned and respected in the larger legal community for their scholarship, professionalism, and problem-solving skills. Indeed, some Immigration Judges with just those skills have prematurely been driven from the bench by this Administration’s racially biased and fundamentally unfair manipulation of the Immigration Court process.

The BIA’s bogus hiring process is a prime example of fraud, waste, and abuse. And the failure of Congress and the Article III Courts to put an end to this ridiculous perversion of justice is a disgraceful act of complicity in the disgusting “Dred Scottification” of  “the other.”

INTERESTING HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE: The current 23 Board Members is where the BIA was in 2001 before the “Ashcroft Purge” artificially reduced the BIA to 12 Members to eliminate dialogue, suppress dissent, and skew results to favor DHS without any meaningful deliberation or internal opposition. In other words, creating a false impression of consensus by shutting out dissent. The immediate cratering of the quality of the BIA’s decision making caused an uproar of resistance and criticism in the Circuit Courts of Appeals. Since then, the Immigration Courts have been in a two-decade-long “death spiral” with due process, fundamental fairness, judicial integrity, efficiency, and human lives among the victims.

Here’s more from Laura Lynch over at AILA about the ongoing farce at EOIR and the BIA 🤡☠️:

 

 

Laura Lynch
Laura Lynch
Senior Policy Counsel
AILA

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

Due Process Forever! Fraudulent “Clown Courts” 🤡 Never!

PWS

05-05-20

THE DOJ’S NEW TITLE UNDER BILLY BARR: “HOOKERS FOR TRUMP” – “Why Bill Barr’s DOJ replaced Catholic Charities with Hookers for Jesus” – Why “There has never been a better time to be a Hooker for Jesus.”

Dana Milbank
Dana Milbank
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/11/why-bill-barrs-doj-replaced-catholic-charities-with-hookers-jesus/

 

Dana Milbank writes in WashPost:

There has never been a better time to be a Hooker for Jesus.

Under Attorney General Bill Barr’s management, it appears no corner of the Justice Department can escape perversion — even the annual grants the Justice Department gives to nonprofits and local governments to help victims of human trafficking.

In a new grant award, senior Justice officials rejected the recommendations of career officials and decided to deny grants to highly rated Catholic Charities in Palm Beach, Fla., and Chicanos Por La Causa in Phoenix. Instead, Reuters reported, they gave more than $1 million combined to lower-rated groups called the Lincoln Tubman Foundation and Hookers for Jesus.

Why? Well, it turns out the head of the Catholic Charities affiliate had been active with Democrats and the Phoenix group had opposed President Trump’s immigration policies. By contrast, Hookers for Jesus is run by a Christian conservative and the Lincoln Tubman group was launched by a relative of a Trump delegate to the 2016 convention.

That Catholic Charities has been replaced by Hookers for Jesus says much about Barr’s Justice Department. Friends of Trump are rewarded. Opponents of Trump are punished. And the nation’s law enforcement apparatus becomes Trump’s personal plaything.

Federal prosecutors Monday recommended that Trump associate Roger Stone serve seven to nine years in prison for obstruction of justice, lying to Congress, witness tampering and other crimes.

Then Trump tweeted that the proposed sentence was “horrible and very unfair” and “the real crimes were on the other side.” And by midday Tuesday, Barr’s Justice Department announced that it would reduce Stone’s sentence recommendation. All four prosecutors, protesting the politicization, asked to withdraw from the case.

But politicization is now the norm. Last week, Barr assigned himself the sole authority to decide which presidential candidates — Democrats and Republicans — should be investigated by the FBI.

Also last week, the Department of Homeland Security, working with the Justice Department, announced that New York state residents can no longer enroll in certain Trusted Traveler programs such as Global Entry — apparent punishment for the strongly Democratic state’s policies on illegal immigrants.

On Monday, Barr declared that the Justice Department had created an “intake process” to receive Rudy Giuliani’s dirt from Ukraine on Joe Biden and Hunter Biden — dirt dug in a boondoggle that left two Giuliani associates under indictment and Trump impeached.

The same day, Barr’s agency announced lawsuits against California, New Jersey and King County (Seattle), Washington — politically “blue” jurisdictions all — as part of what he called a “significant escalation” against sanctuary cities.

On Tuesday, to get a better sense of the man who has turned the Justice Department into Trump’s toy, I watched Barr speak to the Major County Sheriffs of America, a friendly audience, at the Willard Hotel in Washington.

Even by Trumpian standards, the jowly Barr, in his large round glasses, pinstripe suit and Trump-red tie, was strikingly sycophantic. “In his State of the Union, President Trump delivered a message of genuine optimism filled with an unapologetic faith in God and in American greatness and in the common virtues of the American people: altruism, industriousness, self-reliance and generosity,” he read, deadpan.

Trump, he went on, “loves this country,” and “he especially loves you.” The boot-licking performance continued, about Trump’s wise leadership, his unbroken promises and even the just-impeached president’s passionate belief in the “rule of law.”

Then Barr turned to the enemy. He attacked “rogue DA’s” and “so-called social-justice reformers,” who are responsible for “historic levels of homicide and other violent crime” in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Chicago and Baltimore. Politicians in sanctuary jurisdictions, he said, prefer “to help criminal aliens evade the law.” Barr vowed to fight these foes with “all lawful means” — federal subpoenas to force them to turn over “information about criminal aliens,” dozens of lawsuits to invalidate statutes and attempts to deny them both competitive and automatic grants.

In response to a question, Barr railed against tech companies’ use of encryption: “They’re designing these devices so you can be impervious to any government scrutiny,” he protested.

Maybe people wouldn’t be so sensitive about government scrutiny if the top law enforcement official weren’t using his position to punish political opponents and reward political allies.

Instead, with Barr’s acquiescence, we live in a moment in which: Trump’s Treasury Department immediately releases sensitive financial information about Hunter Biden, while refusing to release similar information about Trump; Trump ousts officials who testified in the impeachment inquiry and even ousts the blameless twin brother of one of the witnesses; and Trump’s FBI decides to monitor violent “people on either side” of the abortion debate — although the FBI couldn’t point to a single instance of violence by abortion-rights supporters.

This week, the Pentagon released a new color scheme for Air Force One, replacing the 60-year-old design with one that looks suspiciously like the old Trump Shuttle.Surprised? Don’t be. Soon the entire administration will be able to apply for a Justice Department grant as a newly formed nonprofit: Hookers for Trump.

 

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Barr’s inspirational lesson for new lawyers: Once you achieve fame, fortune, and protection from corrupt politicos and complicit judges, it’s virtually impossible to get your law license revoked for unethical performance. As long as you thumb your nose at the law and ethical rules right in public, right in front of judges, you’re essentially immune. The “rules” only apply to those poor suckers at the bottom of the “legal totem pole.”

 

This is actually a fairly new development under the Trump regime. In the past, even high-profile lawyers who violated their ethical obligations got zapped: John Mitchell, Dick Kleindienst, Bill Clinton(technically, he might have “surrendered his law license” in lieu of disbarment), Webb Hubbell, etc.

 

But, during the Trump regime, Federal Judges seem content to just “roll their eyes” at lies, false narratives, thinly veiled racist or religiously bigoted rationales for policy, and simply astounding conflicts of interest (how about running a biased and unconstitutional Immigration “Court” right in plain view?) streaming out of an ethics-free zone at the “Department of Hookers for Trump.”

 

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson was actually a “target” of Roger Stone’s contemptuous and openly threatening behavior. It will be interesting to see how she deals with the sudden reversal and baseless plea for mercy from Barr for this unrepentant and totally unapologetic criminal.

 

As if to resolve any doubts as to his contempt for America and democratic institutions, the cowardly “Bully-in-Chief” unleashed an unprovoked twitter tirade against Judge Jackson and the career prosecutors in the case.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/02/12/trump-stone-judge/

 

Perhaps predictability, this was followed by an impotent call by Senate Democrats for the uber corrupt Billy Barr to resign and for the equally corrupt and spineless Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to stop slithering around the Capitol and schedule an “investigative hearing” into improper political influence at the “Department of Hookers for Trump.” https://apple.news/Az2hAo6yqT8uKJSuAX26F1Q  Don’t hold your breath,  folks!

 

At the same time, former DOJ Inspector General Michael R. Bromwich was telling WashPost’s Greg Sargent that the conduct of Trump and Billy the Toady was an “existential threat to the institutions that most of us value, prize and have served.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/12/trump-openly-corrupts-doj-former-insider-sounds-alarm/.  Right on with that!

This is not “normal.” This is not “right.” It’s time for those of us who still believe in American democracy to take a stand in November to remove Trump and the sociopathic element that he represents in our society from power. Otherwise, the “race to the bottom” will continue, unabated. And more innocent people will be hurt by or die because of this unprincipled, totally immoral lunatic.

PWS

02-12-20

 

 

POLITICS: DANIEL DENVIR @ LITERARY HUB: The Case Against Immigration Centrism – Liberals Inevitably Get Co-Opted Into “Nativism Lite” & The Result Is Donald Trump & His Overtly White Nationalist GOP!

Daniel Denvir
Daniel Denvir
American Journalist

https://apple.news/ASCSwefgISM2mLjzRVdJeWQ

 

When It Comes to Immigration, Political Centrism is Useless

With Trump in office, things can seem absurdly bleak. But after Republicans lost the House, it became clear that Trump’s first two years were for nativists a critical opportunity to reshape the contours of the American demos. And they blew it: Republicans had total control of government yet legislative cuts to legal immigration went nowhere. Meanwhile, Democratic voters are moving sharply left in the face of accelerating Republican extremism. The percentage of Americans calling for a decrease in legal immigration has plummeted since the early 2000s—particularly but not exclusively among Democrats. Indeed, since 2006 Democratic voters have swung from a strong plurality supporting legal immigration cuts to a stronger plurality backing increased legal immigration.

In promoting attacks on “illegal immigration” and militarizing the border, establishment politicians from both major parties inflamed popular anti-immigrant sentiment. But they helped move the Overton window so far right that it snapped loose of its bipartisan frame, prompting vociferous resistance on the left. The war on “illegal immigrants” was based on a bipartisan consensus. It is becoming very partisan. That’s good.

As nativists well know, immigration means that we the people is increasingly made up of people who don’t look like Trump and his base. And they correctly worry that immigration is driving a large-scale demographic transformation that could ultimately doom the conservative movement—a prospect that the most honestly racist figures on the far-right call “white genocide.” Non-white people disproportionately vote Democrat—a trend gravely exacerbated by unconstrained Republican racism that has alienated even wealthy and economically conservative non-white people. Demographics aren’t destiny. But thanks to the foundational role that racism plays in American capitalism, they do mean quite a bit.

In August 2019, Trump finally implemented an aggressive attack on legal immigration, expanding the definition of what makes an immigrant “likely to become a public charge” and thus excludable from the country.28 The rule further empowers immigration officers to deny entry to poor and working-class immigrants, particularly from Latin America, or to deny immigrants already in the country a green card. The rule radically expands a provision of US immigration law dating back to the Immigration Act of 1882 and, before that, to New York and Massachusetts’s enforcement targeting Irish paupers. The Migration Policy Institute predicts that the rule “could cause a significant share of the nearly 23 million noncitizens and U.S. citizens in immigrant families using public benefits to disenroll.” And visa denials under Trump had already skyrocketed before the new rule was in place.

It is unclear how profoundly the rule will reshape either the size or the class, national, and racial makeup of legal immigration. But regardless, the new rule is a reflection of Trump’s inability to secure cuts or changes to legal immigration in Congress. The rule will very likely be rolled back under even a milquetoast Democratic president. The same holds true with Trump’s deep cuts to refugee admissions, and the draconian proposal pushed by some in his orbit to cut admissions to zero. Trump is effectively terrorizing migrants in the present but failing to secure the enduring legislative change that would outlast his presidency.

There is no majority constituency today for enacting such legislation—nor any viable institutional vehicle for it. Whatever opportunity existed to leverage a white-grievance-fueled presidency toward a full nativist program has faded even as the right clings to power thanks to the system’s profoundly anti-democratic features. The left is nowhere near winning. But it is at long last emerging as a real force in clear conflict with both the Trumpist right and the center that facilitated its rise.

For Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Obama, Biden, Feinstein, Schumer, and a host of other Democrats, a measure of nativism was useful. Quite a bit more than that has proven necessary for Republicans. But too much nativism is a problem: no rational capitalist favors shutting out exploitable migrant labor. As Karl Marx wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire, political stances that seem rooted in principle are in reality founded—if often in indirect, unconscious, and obscure ways—in “material conditions of existence.” This is no doubt the case here.

The United States has undergone decades of enforcement escalation, fashioning a useful scapegoat for neoliberalism and empire while maintaining a segmented labor market. But business frequently lost too, most spectacularly with the repeated defeat of comprehensive immigration reform. Business wants the undocumented to be legalized and guest workers who provide the benefits of undocumented labor without the risk. But what perhaps best reflects—but by no means exclusively reflects—the power of business is what hasn’t happened: deep legislative cuts to authorized immigration have been consistently off the table for more than two decades. This has been the case since the 1996 legislation to slash legal immigration was defeated in favor of a law to persecute undocumented immigrants and “criminal aliens.” The immigration debate has taken on a bizarre and contradictory life of its own. The unspeakability of cuts to authorized immigration, and the failure to impose effective employer sanctions and employment verification systems reveal that immigration policy was still tethered, narrowly but firmly, to the interests of capital. With Trump, full nativism is spoken. But substantial immigration reductions still cannot pass Congress.

A full examination of the complex role of business, the rich, and their various factions during the past two decades of immigration politics is yet to be written. Some of its basic contours, however, are clear. For one, the capitalist class has become recklessly polyphonic. Lumpen-billionaires like the Mercer family and the Koch brothers have spent vast amounts to promote their ideologically distinct priorities rather than those of the collective. The Tanton network is a case in point: it received more than $150 million since 2005 from the Colcom Foundation, founded by the late Mellon heir Cordelia Scaife May. Ironically, independent right-wing oligarchs who pursue idiosyncratic agendas now rival the Chamber of Commerce for influence thanks to the policy achievements of groups like the Chamber of Commerce, which helped those oligarchs make and keep their billions. But does establishment big business even care about immigration anymore?

Political scientist Margaret Peters argues that productivity gains and globalization’s facilitation of an overseas supply of low-wage labor has led to a lessening of business’s need for immigrant workers, resulting in more restriction. The evidence for this, however, is mixed. On the one hand, business has not won a major legislative expansion of immigration since 1990. But it has also not suffered a major defeat. What’s clear is that business can tolerate border security theatrics and the demonization of “criminal aliens,” and is content to exploit undocumented workers. As anthropologist Nicholas De Genova writes, “It is deportability, and not deportation per se, that has historically rendered undocumented migrant labor a distinctly disposable commodity.”34 Business opposes dramatic cuts to authorized immigration, effective employer sanctions, and mandatory employee verification. Business prefers legalization, but that doesn’t rival priorities like tax cuts and deregulation; if it did, business would abandon the Republican Party. The roles played in immigration politics by business interests with various and often bipartisan attachments require further research, which will in turn help to clarify the woefully under-studied sociology of ruling class power more generally.

Meanwhile, business’s hold on the Democratic Party has come under intense assault. The war on “illegal immigrants” that accelerated in the 1990s is facilitating a realignment of left-of-center politics in favor of a diverse, immigrant-inclusive working class in opposition to war, neoliberal oligarchy, and hard borders. The post–Cold War dominance of carceral neoliberalism had made such a popular coalition impossible; the exhaustion of that model signaled by the 2008 crisis has made it astonishingly credible. Record deportations and a radicalizing racist right triggered a revolt among the Democratic Party’s young and increasingly diverse base. That base has along with much of American public opinion moved to perhaps the most staunchly pro-immigrant position in American history—and, in doing so, toward a radically inclusive vision of the American working class. Amid a post-Recession boom in labor militancy, that portends trouble for the entire political establishment and the racist and oligarchic order it protects.

Trump’s election set that trajectory into overdrive, rendering opinions on immigration a basic proxy for one’s partisan allegiance. Border militarization that once garnered bipartisan support is now the polarizing Wall. Obama’s brutal migrant detention centers have under Trump been labeled “concentration camps.” The number of Republicans who believe that the United States risks losing its national identity if the country welcomes immigrants from the world over has increased since Trump’s election.35 At the same time, Democrats have become more hostile to enforcement. In 2010, 47 percent of Democrats said that they equally prioritized a pathway to legalizing undocumented immigrants and “better border security and stronger enforcement of immigration laws,” while just 29 percent prioritized a pathway to legalization alone. By 2018, the number prioritizing legalization alone skyrocketed to 51 percent. As the war on immigrants kicked into high gear in 1994, just 32 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of Republicans agreed that immigrants strengthened the country. By 2016, the share of Democrats who said so had surged to 78 percent.

Extreme polarization, the establishment’s bête noire, is in fact the only solution to the long-standing bipartisan agreement that immigration is a problem for enforcement to solve. Demanded and rejected, oppressed and expelled, this country’s many others have long insisted that the promise of American freedom, designed for if never truly delivered to white settlers, belongs to them too because they too are the people. And contrary to what Trump’s presidency might suggest, a growing number of Americans agree and are turning against nativism and war. Racism is, as the remarkable number of Americans embracing socialism understand, an obstacle to freeing everyone.

The issue of borders is, in turn, a simple one in principle for socialists: borders are a nationalist enterprise and thus incompatible with an internationalist workers’ creed. Migration is a symptom of social violence when it is compelled by poverty, war, or climate change. But moving to faraway and strange places is often a beautiful journey too, one nurtured by love, adventure, and the drive for self-determination and realization. Migration should be free and the choice to migrate should be freely made. The border does not protect Americans against cultural change, economic insecurity, and terrorism. It bolsters a system of global inequality that harms people everywhere by dividing them.

Even with public opinion moving rapidly to our side, border controls will not fall anytime soon. To chip away at them, we must understand their historical particularity. The legal right to travel was, for most white people, a basic one for much of American history. It remains so for wealthy people, particularly those with passports from rich countries. Border controls arose in the United States not out of any neutral law enforcement principle but to exclude Asians, Jews, Italians, Latinos, blacks, Muslims, and other Others in the service of an exploitative and expansionist empire. Our land borders began to harden only alongside the rise of industrial capitalism, and were only militarized in recent decades.

If Democrats stick to the center on immigration, they will find themselves fighting on two fronts. A fight against Republicans, with the left at their back, will be far easier to win—and a more noble victory. Simple realism dictates that no legislation to grant citizenship to millions will be passed until Republicans are defeated. There’s no use trying to appease them. The bipartisan consensus supporting harsh immigration and border enforcement has fractured. Democratic elected officials need to catch up or be defeated too. It’s the task of the left to accelerate the nascent split, demanding radical reforms that correspond to our dream of a world where no human being is illegal. We must transform nation-states so that they no longer divide workers but instead are conduits for the democratic control of our social, economic, political, and ecological futures.

We must urgently develop demands for policies that will not create an open border overnight but a radically more open border soon. The border must be demilitarized, which would include demolishing the hundreds of miles of already existing wall and dramatically downsizing the Border Patrol. Criminal sanctions on illegal entry and reentry and the public charge rule must be repealed. Links between ICE and local law enforcement created by Secure Communities and 287(g) must be broken. Opportunities for legal immigration, particularly from Mexico and Central America, must be expanded. The right to asylum must be honored. And citizenship for those who reside here must be a stand-alone cause, unencumbered by compromises that are not only distasteful but also politically ineffectual—and that today would provoke opposition from both the nativist right and the grassroots left.

 

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The nativists start with lies, myths, and distortions. The liberals start with truth and humane values. They used to meet in the “center right” which is “nativism lite” and bad news for migrants and for humane values.

 

With some logic, Denvir argues that the nativist right has now come “out of their shell” and just advocates against all foreigners and for maximum human cruelty.  In other words, complete dehumanization and abandonment of the common good: A trashing of the “Statute of Liberty” (see, e.g., Stephen Miller & “Cooch Cooch”) and an obliteration of the real, diverse America, a nation of immigrants, in favor of a mythical “Whitbread” version that never really existed (as American has always been heavily reliant on the labor of non-white immigrants — but they often were intentionally kept without social standing or political power).

 

In many ways, the right’s abandonment of the “pro-immigration, anti-illegal immigration” false narrative frees liberals to explore more robust, realistic immigration policies that would serve the national interest, recognize the truth of American as a rich and diverse nation of immigrants, and, perhaps most helpfully, sharply reduce the amount of time, effort, and goodwill squandered on ultimately unrealistic and impractical immigration enforcement schemes and gimmicks (see e.g., “The Wall” & “The New American Gulag”). In that context, immigration enforcement could be rationalized and made more efficient to serve the actual national interests rather than the political (and sometimes financial) interests of the far-right nativist minority.

 

Interesting thoughts to ponder.

 

PWS

 

01-17-20

ERIC HOLDER, JR. @ WASHPOST: Former AG Blasts Chief Toady Billy Barr As Unfit For Office!

Eric Holder, Jr.
Eric Holder, Jr.
Former U.S. Attorney General

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eric-holder-william-barr-is-unfit-to-be-attorney-general/2019/12/11/99882092-1c55-11ea-87f7-f2e91143c60d_story.html

Opinions

Eric Holder: William Barr is unfit to be attorney general

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Attorney General William P. Barr in Washington on Tuesday. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

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By Eric H. Holder Jr.

Dec. 11, 2019 at 9:13 p.m. EST

Eric H. Holder Jr., a Democrat, was U.S. attorney general from 2009 to 2015.

As a former U.S. attorney general, I am reluctant to publicly criticize my successors. I respect the office and understand just how tough the job can be.

But recently, Attorney General William P. Barr has made a series of public statements and taken actions that are so plainly ideological, so nakedly partisan and so deeply inappropriate for America’s chief law enforcement official that they demand a response from someone who held the same office.

Last month, at a Federalist Society event, the attorney general delivered an ode to essentially unbridled executive power, dismissing the authority of the legislative and judicial branches — and the checks and balances at the heart of America’s constitutional order. As others have pointed out, Barr’s argument rests on a flawed view of U.S. history. To me, his attempts to vilify the president’s critics sounded more like the tactics of an unscrupulous criminal defense lawyer than a U.S. attorney general.

When, in the same speech, Barr accused “the other side” of “the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law,” he exposed himself as a partisan actor, not an impartial law enforcement official. Even more troubling — and telling — was a later (and little-noticed) section of his remarks, in which Barr made the outlandish suggestion that Congress cannot entrust anyone but the president himself to execute the law.

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In Barr’s view, sharing executive power with anyone “beyond the control of the president” (emphasis mine), presumably including a semi-independent Cabinet member, “contravenes the Framers’ clear intent to vest that power in a single person.” This is a stunning declaration not merely of ideology but of loyalty: to the president and his interests. It is also revealing of Barr’s own intent: to serve not at a careful remove from politics, as his office demands, but as an instrument of politics — under the direct “control” of President Trump.

Not long after Barr made that speech, he issued what seemed to be a bizarre threat to anyone who expresses insufficient respect for law enforcement, suggesting that “if communities don’t give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need.” No one who understands — let alone truly respects — the impartial administration of justice or the role of law enforcement could ever say such a thing. It is antithetical to the most basic tenets of equality and justice, and it undermines the need for understanding between law enforcement and certain communities and flies in the face of everything the Justice Department stands for.

It’s also particularly ironic in light of the attorney general’s comments this week, in which he attacked the FBI and the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General — two vital components of his own department. Having spent the majority of my career in public service, I found it extraordinary to watch the nation’s chief law enforcement official claim — without offering any evidence — that the FBI acted in “bad faith” when it opened an inquiry into then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign. As a former line prosecutor, U.S. attorney and judge, I found it alarming to hear Barr comment on an ongoing investigation, led by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, into the origins of the Russia probe. And as someone who spent six years in the office Barr now occupies, it was infuriating to watch him publicly undermine an independent inspector general report — based on an exhaustive review of the FBI’s conduct — using partisan talking points bearing no resemblance to the facts his own department has uncovered.

When appropriate and justified, it is the attorney general’s duty to support Justice Department components, ensure their integrity and insulate them from political pressures. His or her ultimate loyalty is not to the president personally, nor even to the executive branch, but to the people — and the Constitution — of the United States.

Career public servants at every level of the Justice Department understand this — as do leaders such as FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Their fidelity to the law and their conduct under pressure are a credit to them and the institutions they serve.

Others, like Durham, are being tested by this moment. I’ve been proud to know John for at least a decade, but I was troubled by his unusual statement disputing the inspector general’s findings. Good reputations are hard-won in the legal profession, but they are fragile; anyone in Durham’s shoes would do well to remember that, in dealing with this administration, many reputations have been irrevocably lost.

This is certainly true of Barr, who was until recently a widely respected lawyer. I and many other Justice veterans were hopeful that he would serve as a responsible steward of the department and a protector of the rule of law.

Virtually since the moment he took office, though, Barr’s words and actions have been fundamentally inconsistent with his duty to the Constitution. Which is why I now fear that his conduct — running political interference for an increasingly lawless president — will wreak lasting damage.

The American people deserve an attorney general who serves their interests, leads the Justice Department with integrity and can be entrusted to pursue the facts and the law, even — and especially — when they are politically inconvenient and inconsistent with the personal interests of the president who appointed him. William Barr has proved he is incapable of serving as such an attorney general. He is unfit to lead the Justice Department.

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Predictably, there were were a few right wing apologias for Billy. That included a remarkable fictional piece by reliable rightest toady and stout defender of autocracy Hugh Hewitt, also in the Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/11/barrs-focus-abuses-by-fbi-is-entirely-warranted/

Since there is neither legal nor intellectual defense for the vicious attack on our institutions by Trump & Barr, in a misguided effort to “present both sides” of an “argument” where the facts all point one way, the Post has been reduced to giving space to disingenuous right wing hacks like Hewitt.

One the flip side, keeping track of all of the cogent criticisms of Toady Billy’s attacks on America and his own Department would be a full time job. One of the best of this huge field was by a group of former GOP DOJ leadership “alums” who ripped into Barr’s total lack of integrity. https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2019/12/10/former-justice-dept-leaders-slam-barrs-commentary-on-inspector-generals-report/

Here’s an excerpt from that article:

Jonathan Rose, who served under the Reagan administration as the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, said the inspector general’s report “rebuts in detail the AG’s charge that the FBI’s investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign was unjustified, overly intrusive, or systematically suppressed exculpatory evidence.”

“This is the first attorney general in the history of presidential impeachment proceedings to enlist as a partisan warrior on behalf of a President. It is a sad day for those of us who revere the historic commitment of the FBI and the Department of Justice to even-handed law enforcement based on truth and verifiable facts,” said Rose, who had previously served under the Nixon administration as the deputy associate attorney general.

Donald Ayer, who served as deputy attorney general under the George H.W. Bush administration, said Barr’s reaction to the inspector general’s report was reminiscent of his handling of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation. Ahead of the Mueller report’s release, Barr came under criticism for mischaracterizing the report’s findings.

Ayer, a former Jones Day partner who now teaches at Georgetown Law, said the inspector general’s exhaustive investigation showed that the Russia investigation was “properly initiated based on a sound factual basis, and that the allegations of ‘witch hunt’ and bias on the part of those overseeing it are without foundation.”

“Rather than focus on those critical findings which should reassure all Americans, Barr dwells entirely on the report’s further findings that some agents (who he describes as a ‘small group of now-former’ FBI employees) were guilty of misconduct in the manner in which they put forward evidence in some submissions to the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court,” Ayer said, referring to the secretive court tasked with weighing warrant applications filed under the surveillance law.

I personally knew and worked with both Jon Rose and Don Ayer. We were all partners at Jones Day’s D.C. Office in the 1990’s. 

We also all served in Senior Executive positions in the DOJ during the Reagan Administration. I knew Don better than Jon. I believe he adjudicated a grievance case that I was handling for the “Legacy INS” during my tenure as Deputy General Counsel. My recollection is that case was one of those stemming from the massive “Attorney Reorganization” that Mike Inman and I implemented to unite all INS Attorneys under the General Counsel’s supervision as part of the “Litigation and Legal Advice Offices,” the actual forerunners of today’s Offices of Chief Counsel at DHS!

Another of those cases actually reached a U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh where I was the Government’s “star witness.”  I was found “credible” by the District Judge in his ruling in favor of INS Management. 

However, admittedly, about 20 minutes into my answer to the Assistant U.S. Attorney’s first question, the Judge interrupted and said something like: “Counsel, could you instruct your witness to stop the history lesson and just answer the question asked?” Ah, the hazards of witnesses who “know too much.”

Of course, I also served at the DOJ under Eric Holder twice: once when he was the Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton Administration and again during his tenure as Attorney General under Obama.

PWS

12-12-19

NEW BLOCKBUSTER VIDEO: THE MARSHALL PROJECT RELEASES “WE ARE WITNESSES, BECOMING AN AMERICAN” – Includes Video Of Me On “Being An Immigration Judge!” – View It Here!

we are witnesses

BECOMING AN AMERICAN

Despite controversies over border walls, separated families and the Muslim travel ban, immigrants are still striving for American citizenship. WE ARE WITNESSES: BECOMING AN AMERICAN tells their stories and the stories of those trying to help and hinder them.

Presented with

Judge Paul Schmidt

Former immigration judge
Alina Diaz

Domestic abuse survivor from Colombia
Zaid Nagi

Yemeni-American immigrant and organizer
Villacis-Guerrero Family

A family separated by deportation
Jose Molina

Legal permanent resident from Panama
Nisrin Elamin & Tahanie Aboushi

An immigrant and lawyer on the travel ban
David Ward

Former Border Patrol/ICE agent
Youngmin Lo

Undocumented immigrant from South Korea
Lee Wang

An immigration lawyer explains how we got here
Teofilo Chavez

Undocumented minor from Honduras
John Sandweg

Former acting director of ICE
Alena Sandimirova

LGBT asylum grantee from Russia
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I’m proud to have been a part of this project. Many thanks to Isabel Castro, Ruth Baldwin, and all of the other great folks over at The Marshall Project for making this happen!
PWS
01-16-19

“TEXAS TED” HITS NEW LOW IN IDIOTIC DEFENSE OF TRUMP’S PUTIN TIES: “When you get outside the Beltway, I don’t see anyone concerned about this at all,” he said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/sen-ted-cruz-defends-trump-s-record-russia-tougher-obama-n958131

Ben Kamisar reports for NBC News:

WASHINGTON — Sen. Ted Cruz defended President Donald Trump Sunday amid reports that are raising new questions about the president’s relationship with Russia, insisting that Trump’s record shows he has been “tougher” on the U.S. adversary than past presidents.

When asked about The New York Times report that broke Friday — which says Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey triggered a counterintelligence investigation into whether the president was wittingly or unwittingly working to benefit Russia — the Texas Republican said the focus on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is a Washington-centric fascination.

“When you get outside the Beltway, I don’t see anyone concerned about this at all,” he said.

“If you compare objectively, President Trump’s policies to Russia compared to President Obama’s policies to Russia — by any measure, President Obama was much easier, was much more gentler on Russia,” Cruz said.

News outlets reported in 2017 that Mueller was interested in the Comey firing as a possible example of obstruction of justice by the president. And Trump himself connected the firing of Comey to his frustration with the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian election interference during a 2017 interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt.

But the new Times report connects that event to the larger investigation into Russian interference in American politics and elections, asking if the president was acting effectively as a Russian agent, regardless of his intentions.

“Our collective understanding was much narrower — it was just on obstruction: Did the president break the law there?” New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt, who broke the story, said on “Meet the Press” to explain the significance of the revelation.

“Now we know it was much broader, it has national security concerns. The FBI was afraid that the firing of Comey was a way to help the Russians stop the FBI from figuring out what they did in the election.”

Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who spent much of the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign criticizing Trump’s posture toward Russia, called the report proof that Congress must protect Mueller’s investigation from any meddling from the administration.

“They had to have a very deep level of concern about this president to take this step,” Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee, said of the FBI’s decision to open the investigation.

“And that’s again why we need to protect the Mueller investigation,” he added.

Trump criticized the New York Times story in a Saturday morning tweet, and called the accusation he might be working to advance Russian interests “insulting” during a Saturday night interview on the Fox News show hosted by ally Jeanine Pirro.

The president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, also dismissed the report in a phone call with NBC News, where he argued “they obviously found nothing or else they would have reported it.”

The Times story wasn’t the only potential bombshell report to come out over the weekend about Trump and Russia.

On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that Trump personally intervened to hide readouts of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The White House also panned that report, pointing to new sanctions on Russia as proof the administration is being tough on the adversary.

Now that Democrats control the House, it’s possible that committees may look into the details of either story. Cruz, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he’d “consider any allegations” as part of his roles on the committee.

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Yeah, Teddy, who cares if our President is a dupe of Vladimir Putin! And, the lies about the Obama Administration just keep flowing. Clearly, Putin was so worried about Hillary Clinton becoming President that he went to great lengths to divide America and hand the Presidency to Trump. The only real debate is whether his efforts actually had a determinative effect on the elections. And, there were never any allegations of connections between Obama and Putin. Trump is sleazy, incompetent, and carrying out a program that has to delight Vladimir Putin. Obama was none of these things. And, it’s certainly worth getting to the bottom of the relationship among Trump, his organization, his family, his associates, and Vladimir Putin.

PWS

 

WE EX-DOJ FOLKS AREN’T THE ONLY ONES CHALLENGING WHITAKER’S QUALIFICATIONS: WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL SAYS “Mr. Whitaker should not have been acting attorney general for a day.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-still-unanswered-questions-surrounding-matthew-whitaker/2018/12/05/88f3f32e-f8c4-11e8-863c-9e2f864d47e7_story.html?utm_term=.6cb55b7e9ff5

December 5 at 6:54 PM

DID ACTING attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker examine the memo that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III released Tuesday? Has he seen the material that Mr. Mueller redacted from the document? Has he sought the advice of Justice Department ethics experts on how much he should be involved in the Russia investigation? If so, what did those experts say?

A month into Mr. Whitaker’s reign as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, these and other questions remain unanswered. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to answer when we put them to her on Wednesday. Also mysterious is when President Trump intends to nominate a permanent attorney general. The White House did not respond when we asked. And then there’s the still-contested question of whether Mr. Whitaker’s appointment violated the Constitution.

All of these questions matter, because Mr. Mueller’s investigation continues, and Mr. Whitaker had previously attacked the probe. His past statements alone would raise questions about his judgment and the reasoning behind Mr. Trump’s desire for him to lead the Justice Department. Though Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein remains in charge of the Mueller investigation, it is unclear whether the acting attorney general has butted in or intends to. Senators have pushed to pass a bill that would protect Mr. Mueller from improper firing, the approval of which would send a message to Mr. Trump and Mr. Whitaker to keep their hands off. But Senate Republicans have blocked it, and Mr. Whitaker might find subtle ways of undermining the probe.

Mr. Whitaker does not belong at the top of the Justice Department, regardless of his stance on Mr. Mueller. His résumé would be thin even for an inferior post at the department. His past involvement with a company the Federal Trade Commission accused of being a scam raises further red flags. He holds crackpot views on judicial power. His primary qualification seems to be that he gets along with Mr. Trump and other White House staff, while Mr. Rosenstein, whom the Senate has vetted and who should be running the department right now, does not. There is a reason the Constitution bars the president from appointing anyone he wants at any time to top executive-branch positions: to prevent the Mr. Whitakers of the world from suddenly controlling one of the most powerful governmental organizations on the planet.

Yet, if the Trump administration’s view of the law holds, Mr. Whitaker could wield the powers of the attorney general’s office for most of the rest of Mr. Trump’s term. Senate Democrats are upset at the lack of vetting, sending a letter to the department on Tuesday noting that ethics officials only just got through certifying Mr. Whitaker’s financial disclosures, and that “the Department has not produced prior versions of Mr. Whitaker’s financial disclosures, any ethics agreements he entered into with the Department, or any other ethics-related counseling he has received.” Senate Republicans, on the other hand, have mostly insisted that the president will appoint a permanent replacement soon.

It has already been a month. Mr. Whitaker should not have been acting attorney general for a day. It is time the Senate demands a reasonable replacement.

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Here’s my post yesterday about the letter by members of “Our Gang” of retired Immigration Judges and other DOJ employees: https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3mr

Like this editorial, I think Whitaker’s qualifications and resume wouldn’t have gotten him into the “Attorney General’s Honors Program” nor would it have gotten him to the “Interview Round” for selection as a U.S. Immigration Judge. It’s worth remembering that among the many other “trivializations of justice at Justice” during his tenure, Sessions made this supremely unqualified and unethical guy his “Chief of Staff.” It’s the “Ethically and Professionally Challenged” advising the “Morally and Legally Challenged.”

It does seem to me that former AG Bill Barr would be capable of bringing ethics and professionalism back to the DOJ. My only questions are 1) why would he want the job; and 2) why would Trump want a “real” Attorney General who knows that he works for “We the People,” not Donald Trump, the Trump family,  or their corrupt cronies and who, while staunchly conservative, is not known as a racist, misogynist, or xenophobe? Unlike Sessions, Barr also has a reputation as a capable and experienced manager who can see that justice is dispensed in a fair and unbiased manner, both of which are an anathema to guys like Sessions and Trump.

One thing I remember learning abut Bill Barr “after the fact” was that following the 1992 election (when I was in private practice), he reportedly specifically refused pressure to make some key high level career “midnight appointments” at EOIR, saying that it properly should be left for his successor in the Clinton Administration. That turned out to be Attorney General Janet Reno (who eventually appointed me to the position of BIA Chair, although that was not one of the then-existing vacancies involved).

PWS

12-06-18

GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH 1924 – 2018, 41ST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A Throwback To A Time When Our President Was A Decent & Honorable Human Being, Regardless Of Whether One Agreed With His Policies!

https://abcn.ws/2FOfIMV

Cokie Roberts for ABC News:

Decency — that’s the first word that comes to mind when thinking of George H.W. Bush. He was a decent, self-effacing, funny, nice man. And he brought those traits to the presidency.

In a long interview I conducted with him as part of a series on former presidents reflecting on the Constitution, he said something like “I don’t want to namedrop” at several points, when telling a story about visiting his own son in the White House. When recounting an anecdote about the fall of the Soviet Union, which he helped engineer, he would say, “I don’t want to brag.”

He took very much to heart his mother’s dictum to “be a good sport,” and not blame others for your own shortcomings. He said he thanked God for that motherly advice when he suffered defeat in 1992 because “it hurts to lose, it feels wonderful to win.”

.&lid=view[Slideshow]” target=”_blank”>

PHOTO:
SLIDESHOW: Photos:George H. W. Bush through the years

It was tough for Bush to score many wins in his presidency as he faced a Congress run by a large and increasingly partisan Democratic majority. He did squeak out votes of approval to use the U.S. military to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and felt strongly that it would have been wrong to pursue the invader back to Baghdad.

Taking issue with the “Monday morning quarterbacks” who questioned that decision, he stated firmly, “I don’t believe in mission creep and I don’t believe in going back on your word to Congress and I don’t believe in going back on your word to the United Nations.”

PHOTO: George H.W. Bush in 1985.Greg Mathieson/REX/Shutterstock

Decency.

Bush disagreed often with members of Congress, but he never demonized them. Many were his friends. One of his best buddies was Bob Strauss, a fellow Texan, who served as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, while Bush held the same role at the Republican National Committee.

It was during the Watergate scandal and Bush thought he deserved combat pay, “it was the worst job in the world.”

Strauss called him and told him that his position was like “making love to a gorilla,” the former president told me in the cleaned-up version.

“You can’t stop until the gorilla wants to.” The party chairman soon found himself faced with the dicey task of advising the Republican president to resign. It was the decent thing to do.

PHOTO: Former President George H. W. Bush poses with his sons, former President George W. Bush and Jeb Bush after completing a parachute jump in Kennebunkport, June 12, 2009 for his 85th birthday.Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images, file
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When the Soviet Union disintegrated, Bush appointed Strauss as the first ambassador to the new Russia though, as the Democrat told the president, he had never voted for him for anything.

In those difficult years in the White House Bush knew there was one person who always had his back — his wife Barbara. When I said to him that first ladies are often unsung heroes he laughed, “She’s sung. And you know what the boys call her? The Enforcer, even the president calls her that.”

Reveling in the fact that his wife was “100 percent behind anything I did,” Bush did admit that he was reamed out for loudly declaring that he hated broccoli, though his stance “liberated every 4 year old.”

The affection that the Bushes felt for each other in their 73 year marriage heartened the nation when Mrs. Bush died but it was not just her affection that her husband appreciated, it was also her wisdom. Presidential wives “play a very influential role…they can make an enormous difference,” according to the husband of one First Lady and the father-in-law of another.

PHOTO: Former President George H.W. Bush arrives for the coin toss prior to Super Bowl 51 between the Atlanta Falcons and the New England Patriots at NRG Stadium on Feb. 5, 2017 in Houston, Texas.Patrick Smith/Getty Images, FILE
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In his long career serving the country, President Bush came to know many of the people who chose his path. His view: “I believe public service is a noble calling and most members of Congress are honorable people.” He added, “I’ve found that most people serve for the right reasons.”

He certainly did, whether you agree or disagree with his policies, he served because he thought it was the right thing, the decent thing, for a dedicated American citizen to do.

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Amen.

PWS

12-01-18

 

THE HILL: Nolan Reminds Us That Bad Border Policies Didn’t Originate With The Trump Administration!

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/417994-bill-clintons-attempts-to-secure-the-border-caused-a-humanitarian-crisis

Family Pictures

Nolan writes:

In 1994, President Bill Clinton established a prevention through deterrence border security strategy for the Border Patrol that concentrated enforcement resources on major entry corridors.

This made it more difficult for migrants to make illegal entries at those locations. Consequently, many of them went around those areas to make their entries at remote locations that were not patrolled so heavily, such as the Arizona desert.

This resulted in a humanitarian crisis.

According to U.S. Border Patrol data, 7,216 people died while illegally crossing the southwest border at remote locations in the 20-year period from FY 1998 to FY 2017. Most of them perished in the desert from dehydration, hypothermia or heatstroke.

The actual number of deaths is much higher. According to CNN, the Border Patrol usually just counts dead bodies they discover while patrolling the border. In FY 2017, for instance, the Border Patrol reported 294 deaths, but CNN identified at least 102 more, not including scores of other likely crossing deaths in which officials were not able determine whether the remains were migrants.

Clinton’s plan was to make some of the resources available for other locations when the Border Patrol had control over the major corridors. The Border Patrol would then monitor the flow of illegal entries and shift resources to areas that had a lot of activity.

The instructions on implementing the strategy acknowledged, however, that although the Border Patrol knew where apprehensions were made, it did not have a reliable way to determine where aliens who eluded them were crossing. This made it difficult to know where to place additional resources.

. . . .

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Go on over to The Hill to read the rest of Nolan’s article. It’s a timely historical reminder that failed border policies have a long and unhappy history in the U.S.

I was in private practice in 1994. However, I will admit to being involved in a number of such failed efforts over the past 45 years. That’s why I’m convinced that the issues driving migration to and across our Southern Border won’t be solved unilaterally by draconian enforcement strategies on this end. They have all been tried to some degree or another and ultimately failed.

An effective answer must involve a cooperative international effort to address the “sending” or “push” factors so that the vast majority of folks in Latin America will be able to live safely, peacefully, and relatively prosperously in their native countries.

Of course there will always be those who want to emigrate. More power to them and to us for finding ways to accept, integrate, and benefit from their skills. But, an orderly, predictable, legal migration system would be in everyone’s best interests. Sadly, we’re heading in the opposite direction at present.

PWS

11-25-18

POLITICS: THE SAD SAGA OF “BUBBA TRUMP” — Two+ Decades Later Bill Clinton Had A Chance To Accept Responsibility & Sincerely Apologize To Monica Lewinsky — He Blew It, Showing Why The Dems Must Move Beyond The Clintons, Now!

In his interview with NBC’s Craig Melvin, Bill Clinton had a chance to acknowledge the impropriety of his relationship with then intern Monica Lewinsky and to sincerely apologize to her. It would have cost him absolutely nothing.

Instead, he chose to react defensively, attack Melvin, misrepresent the facts, and spout non sequiturs about JFK, LBJ, and how much in debt he was when he left the White House. No genuine acceptance of responsibility; no real remorse; no graciousness; no humility; no class. In other words, just what we’d expect from Donald Trump.

In retrospect, the Dems shot themselves in the foot by nominating a 2016 candidate who carried too much baggage and was too tied to the past and its problems. It’s time for the Dems to move forward and leave the Clintons to a past era that they were never really capable of understanding, acknowledging, and facing up to in a fully responsible manner.

🤥🤥🤥🤥

PWS

06-05-18

TAL @ CNN: TRUMP’S “GONZO” IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT POLICIES LIKELY TO FAIL AND ACTUALLY AGGRAVATE FORCES DRIVING UNDOCUMENTED MIGRATION!

How Trump’s policies could worsen the migration issue he says he wants to solve

By Tal Kopan, CNN

President Donald Trump in recent days has decried “weak” US border laws that he says leave the US vulnerable to unfettered immigration — but some of his policies could have the effect of worsening a Central American migrant crisis.

Even as the Department of Homeland Security says the southern border “is more difficult to illegally cross today than ever before,” Trump has stepped up his hardline immigration rhetoric, calling on the US military to guard the US-Mexico border until his long-promised wall is complete. He’s hammered Mexico and other countries for policies that he says are disadvantageous to the US and that send unsavory individuals into the country.

But experts say the President has been pursuing other policies that could substantially harm Central America — and in doing so, he risks creating conditions that generate the exact kind of mass exodus north that he talks about wanting to solve.

Immigration is driven by what are called push and pull factors. The US has been seeking aggressive immigration powers to cut down on what they say are pull factors — the perception that immigrants can live illegally with impunity in the US. But those very policies could affect push factors — the conditions of poverty and violence that drive immigrants elsewhere out of desperation.

“The US sort of talks out of both sides of its mouth,” said Eric Olson, a Latin America expert at the nonpartisan Wilson Center.

“If you’re investing in the region to address the drivers of migration and at the same time pursuing a policy of large-scale deportation, or at least potentially large-scale deportation, and you’re creating more obstacles for people leaving the region for reasons like violence and so on, you’re really creating more instability, not less instability.”

(Much) more: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/04/politics/trump-migration-central-america/index.html

 

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As Tal says, there’s much, much more to her report on the total stupidity and counter-productivity (not to mention inhumanity) of the Trump Administration’s “Gonzo” enforcement policy.  Go on over to CNN at the link to get the full picture.

I’ve been saying for some time now that Trump is pursuing facially “hard-line” policies that are proven failures. Indeed, that forced migration from Central America is a phenomenon that spans four decades and six different Administrations with varying degrees of  “same old, same old” would suggest to rational leadership that a different approach is required.

Contrary to Trump’s oft-made bogus claim, his is not the first Administration to try a “close the border, detain and deter” policy.  Beginning with Reagan, every Administration has tried largely the same thing (although perhaps without some of the inflammatory and outright racist rhetoric favored by the Trumpsters) and all have failed. I know because I’ve been involved in some aspect of trying to implement those failed policies in at least four of those Administrations, two GOP and two Democrat.

That’s why the trend of migration from the Northern Triangle continues and will continue and fester until we get some enlightened leadership that 1) correctly applies our refugee and protection laws in the generous humanitarian spirit they were intended; and 2) recognizes and starts to deal effectively with the “push” issues in the sending countries.

Contrary to the false narrative spread by current Administration, most Central American refugees that I encountered personally during my career would have preferred to remain in their home countries, if political and country conditions had permitted it. Indeed, many were forced by targeted violence to give up promising careers, studies, or businesses to flee for their lives to the U.S. Here, they often had to perform “entry-level” work to support themselves unless and until they achieved some type of legal status (often TPS , asylum, withholding of removal, CAT relief, Special Immigrant Juvenile (“SIJ”) status, or a green card under NACARA).

Of course, many were denied protection despite having very credible, well-documented fears of harm because they didn’t fit the intentionally restrictive asylum criteria engineered by the BIA over several Administrations largely as a result of political pressure on the system to be “unwelcoming” to Central American migrants.  Some of those who returned were killed or disappeared;  others were tortured or attacked again and forced to flee second or third times, now bearing the scars or injuries to prove their cases — only as “prior deportees” they were no longer eligible for asylum but had to accept withholding of removal or CAT deferral.

Nobody in this Administration, and sadly relatively few in Congress and among the public, are willing to deal honestly with the phenomenon of Central American migration and the “push factors” that will never, ever be controlled by more restrictive laws, more violations of statutory, Constitutional, and international rights, inhumane and life-threatening detention , and racist rhetoric. Nor will it be stopped by any bogus “Wall.”

As I’ve said before, “We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but that won’t stop human migration!” If only someone would listen!

PWS

04-04-18

 

 

GONZO’S WORLD: McCABE’S ATTORNEYS WONDER WHY HE WASN’T TREATED WITH THE SAME LENIENCY AS GONZO

Click on this picture for the NYT link:

Adam Goldman, Katie Benner, Matt Apuzzo report for the NYT:

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. investigated Attorney General Jeff Sessions for possible perjury last year over congressional testimony in which he said he had no contacts with Russians, according to three people familiar with the case.
In fact, Mr. Sessions later acknowledged, he had personally met the Russian ambassador to the United States during the campaign and was aware that George Papadopoulos, a campaign adviser, had developed Russian ties, too. F.B.I. agents were aware of both inaccuracies in real time. And last March, when Congress asked the F.B.I. to investigate the attorney general, agents began doing so, two of the people said.
Andrew G. McCabe, the F.B.I.’s deputy director at the time, authorized the investigation, the two people said. Mr. McCabe himself was recently fired for showing “lack of candor” in an internal investigation. Mr. Sessions rejected Mr. McCabe’s appeal and fired him hours before his retirement was to take effect, jeopardizing his pension.
The investigation into Mr. Sessions began before Robert S. Mueller III was appointed special counsel to investigate Russia-related matters. Mr. Sessions’s lawyer, Chuck Cooper, said no investigation is being conducted now.
“The special counsel’s office has informed me that after interviewing the attorney general and conducting additional investigation, the attorney general is not under investigation for false statements or perjury in his confirmation hearing testimony and related written submissions to Congress,” Mr. Cooper said in a statement.
The investigation was first reported by ABC News.
Perjury investigations based on congressional referrals are common, and the F.B.I. frequently investigates but seldom charges. But the fact that the attorney general himself was a focus of the Russia investigation, even if only peripherally and temporarily, shows how entangled the Trump administration has become in the case. Mr. Sessions is recused from any aspect of the investigation.
The investigation also adds a new layer to Mr. McCabe’s firing. Mr. McCabe’s lawyers have said that he did not lie and acted quickly to fix any inaccuracies or misunderstandings. Mr. Sessions has offered a similar defense, saying he never intended to mislead Congress.

. . . .

Mr. McCabe’s allies have pointed in recent days to these clarifications and asked why Mr. McCabe did not receive the same benefit of the doubt as the attorney general. But it is impossible to compare the cases because the Justice Department’s inspector general has not released his report explaining his concerns about Mr. McCabe’s candor.

. . . .

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Go to the above link to read the complete article in the NYT.

Double standards are the norm in the Trump Administration and the DOJ. Ethics laws, civil rights laws, environmental laws, asylum laws, conflict of interest laws, civil service protections all are applied selectively to favor “friends of the Administration” and punish “enemies.” Just like in any good Banana Republic like the “B.A.R.!”

PWS

03-23-18

 

 

FOUNDERING IN THE STORM: Trump & His Lawyers Deserve Each Other — That’s Why Stormy & Friends Have Been Outmaneuvering “Team Trump!”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/opinion/donald-trump-lawyers.html

Gail Collins in the NYT:

“Gee, we’ve been hearing a ton about the turmoil in the president’s legal team. You probably have questions.

Is this something else I have to think about in the middle of the night when I’m staring at the ceiling? Because really, I’ve got enough.

We’re talking about chaos and turnover among the people defending Donald Trump in his multitudinous legal battles. If that’s the kind of thing that keeps you awake at night, it’s time to prioritize. Have a drink and relax.

I need to know immediately if I am paying to protect the president from Stormy Daniels.

No, the people getting taxpayer salaries work in the White House counsel’s office, and their job is to advise the president about what’s legal. Like, whether or not he could sign a bill banning imported scallops. Or, say, sabotage the Russia probe. The current counsel, Don McGahn, reportedly threatened to resign when Trump wanted to can Robert Mueller.

I’ve been looking for somebody to admire in the White House. Should it be Don McGahn?

Up to you. He was formerly a member of the Federal Election Commission who hated campaign-finance reform so much he once tore up the F.E.C. rule book at a meeting and threw the shredded chunks at a Democrat. He lobbied Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. He was an enabler on that immigrant travel ban.

On the other hand, he used to be a guitarist in a rock band.

Everybody used to be a guitarist in a rock band. But about the president’s team: I know a lot of recent law school graduates who are desperate for jobs. They’re cleaning tables at Arby’s. Should I tell them there’s a lot of turnover and they ought to send in a résumé?

Have they ever been on Fox News? It definitely helps if you were a guest on Fox a lot.

I don’t understand how these busy lawyers have so much time to appear on TV.

Totally part of the job. Trump just hired Joe diGenova, who’s currently famous for having argued on Fox that a secret cabal of F.B.I. agents created the whole Russia investigation to “frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime.”

O.K., I’ll ask the people who want to get lawyer gigs if they’d mind going on right-wing radio and saying something about how Trump is a victim of the deep state. Is the pay good?

On the government side, $179,700 is the top.

I think my friends could handle that.

There’s a guy named Ty Cobb who sort of coordinates between the president’s personal lawyers and the government on all the Russia stuff. It’s on the public tab, and to take it, he left a job that paid at least a million dollars a year.

Just tell me if he’s related to the baseball player.

I think vaguely. Anyhow, he’s gotten in trouble for talking about office politics — loudly — in a public restaurant. So I guess value depends on your perspective.

Meanwhile, the president’s lawyer John Dowd just made a fuss when he called for an end to the special counsel investigation. Which he said was Trump’s idea. Then he denied it. But it probably was.

Trump must be a difficult client, right?

Well, Michael Cohen, the Trump lawyer handling the Stormy Daniels case, said he used his very own home equity line of credit to raise the $130,000 he gave her in hush money.

On his own house? What kind of lawyer does that?

I guess a super-dedicated one. Unless somehow the president or his friends managed to funnel the cash back in a manner so subtle it will never be revealed. Until the next leak.

I can see why there’s so much turnover.

Yet sometimes it feels as if nobody ever really goes away. One of the early Trump lawyers, Marc Kasowitz, seemed to be getting crazier and crazier last summer. When a man wrote an email that he should resign, Kasowitz came back with a message that said, in part: “I’m Jewish. I presume you are, too. … I already know where you live. I’m on to you. You might as well call me. You will see me. I promise. Bro.”

For a while it looked as if Kasowitz was fading away. But now he’s back! In court arguing that as a sitting president, Trump cannot be sued by a woman who says he molested her during his “Apprentice” days.

That would be Stormy Daniels?

Oh gosh no. This is Summer Zervos, who says Trump came on with an unnerving series of gropes, and then when she resisted claimed “that he did not believe that she had ever known love or been in love.”

The interesting thing about this one is that Zervos is only suing Trump for $2,914 for defaming her when he denied the story. Kasowitz has so far been unsuccessful in arguing that the president’s denial is “political speech” protected by the First Amendment.

So the worse the team gets, the better for the country?

Right now, Stormy’s lawyer is making mincemeat of Trump’s legal representation. For the sake of argument, let’s say the special prosecutor has assembled at least as strong a team as the stripper did.

Could be an, um, stormy summer.”

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Sure enough, John Dowd, one of Trump’s personal lawyers on the “Russia Team” resigned on Thursday!

PWS

03-23-18