"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Watch this video clip from CCN:
https://apple.news/A5fldUh3pTnWBhjhXUz6QOg
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Thanks for speaking out Andrea! Andrea is a former Arlington Immigration Court intern and one of the “charter members” of the NDPA. As captured on this video, she was assaulted by ICE while trying to assist her child client in reuniting with his mother! A civil suit against the agent involved is pending.
PWS
02-27-21
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/andrew-mccabe-book-jeff-sessions-irishmen.html
Molly Olmstead reports for Slate:
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s new book, which details his frustrations with President’s Trump administration, has made it clear that his “disdain for Trump is rivaled only by his contempt for [Jeff] Sessions,” according to an assessment from Washington Post reporter Greg Miller.
According to Miller’s review of the book, McCabe saw then–Attorney General Sessions as a Trump-like idiot and racist who had “trouble focusing, particularly when topics of conversation strayed from a small number of issues,” failed to read intelligence reports, and jumbled classified material with publicly reported news.
The strangest detail from the book, though, had to do with Sessions’ thoughts on the FBI’s hiring practices. According to the Post:
The FBI was better off when “you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureau’s workforce. “They were drunks but they could be trusted. Not like all those new people with nose rings and tattoos — who knows what they’re doing?”
According to a Wall Street Journal review of the book, McCabe wrote in his book that Sessions was only interested in immigration issues. He obsessed over the connection between crime and immigration, and he believed that Islam was an inherently violent religion, according to the Post. When presented with a counterterrorism case, he would first ask where the suspect was born or where the suspect’s parents were from. “He blamed immigrants for nearly every societal problem and uttered racist sentiments with shocking callousness,” Miller concluded from McCabe’s book.
McCabe’s assessment is surprising in only that it comes so bluntly from a man who once was acting head of the FBI but now seems intent on speaking out against the men who made his professional and personal life so difficult for 10 months (before he was fired just hours before his planned retirement, blocking him from receiving his full pension benefits). Sessions has a long, long history of making racist and anti-immigrant comments, while also implementing racist and anti-immigrant policies. A non-exhaustive list includes: allegedly warning a black lawyer to “be careful how you talk to white folks”; calling the NAACP “un-American”; reportedly joking that he used to think the KKK was “OK” until he discovered some smoked marijuana; praising an 1924 immigration act promoted by Nazi-style eugenics; denigrating a judge in Hawaii as “sitting on an island in the Pacific”; fondly remembered George Wallace, America’s most famous segregationist politician, as “one of the most formidable third-party candidates in this century; and lauding “the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement.”
As for actions, in Alabama, Sessions punished black activists, defended voter suppression tactics, and kept black judges off the federal bench. He opposed sentencing reform over the crack-cocaine disparity. He has opposed hate crime protections and defended the official display of the Confederate flag. He has regularly attended events hosted by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups, which he maintains a close relationship with. He touted falsehoods about DACA and immigrants in general. And of course, he pushed, relentlessly, for deportations and prosecutions of undocumented immigrants and even refugees fleeing domestic and gang violence.
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Sessions is a living example of how someone can spend a lifetime “on the dole” as a so-called “public servant” without providing any meaningful positive service or contributions to the public good.
Compare this “life not so well lived” with the “real world” contributions of the many decent, hard-working, honest, and dedicated civil servants who were screwed over by Trump’s shutdown. Or, compare Sessions’s squandered, anti-social life with the significant “real life” contributions of many of the immigrants, both documented and undocumented, who came before me in Immigration Court over 13 years.
I’m not sure even the worst of the aggravated felons that I ordered deported did as much lasting damage to our nation and its future as did Sessions! He was a child abuser on a grand scale, and someone who used knowingly false narratives to send deserving refugees, particularly abused women, back to torture or even death in the countries from which they had fled. He was the architect of both family separation and the unbridled expansion of the “New American Gulag.”
He promoted hate, intellectual dishonesty, ignorance, bias, and intolerance of all kinds, and was an avowed enemy of kindness and human compassion. He even had the absolute audacity to cite the Christian Bible, the compassionate, merciful, inclusive, and forgiving teachings of one of the world’s greatest “outcasts,” in support of his own perverted, bias-driven, and totally un-Christian world view.
Oh yeah, and he had no management qualifications going into the job and proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he couldn’t manage his way out of a paper bag. Seldom in modern times has there been a more demoralized, mission-less, and dysfunctional mess than today’s Department of Justice. Even Watergate didn’t do as much institutional damage.
Sessions’s only real contribution to justice, due process, and the public good was the day he walked out of the U.S. Department of Justice for the last time. But, it will take years, if not generations, to repair the damage he has inflicted on the rule of law, our Constitution, honest government, and humane values.
Truly, Liz was right! This was one supremely unqualified dude!
PWS
02-16-19
Click on this picture for the NYT link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/us/politics/sessions-fbi-investigation-perjury.html
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
Ryan Goodman reports for Slate:
“Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to fire former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe appears to directly violate the promise Sessions made, under oath, to recuse himself from such matters.
Some might contend that Sessions’ recusal covered only the Clinton and Trump campaigns, and that McCabe’s firing involved the Clinton Foundation investigation as a separate matter. But Sessions unequivocally assured senators of his intentions during his January 2017 confirmation hearings in response to a clear and specific question from the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley. Sen. Grassley asked a follow-up question that went right to the point. In response, Sessions very clearly said his recusal would cover any matters involving the Clinton Foundation.
Here is the full exchange:
Grassley: During the course of the presidential campaign, you made a number of statements about the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, relating to her handling of sensitive emails and regarding certain actions of the Clinton Foundation. You weren’t alone in that criticism. I was certainly critical in the same way as were millions of Americans on those matters, but now, you’ve been nominated to serve as attorney general. In light of those comments that you made, some have expressed concerns about whether you can approach the Clinton matter impartially in both fact and appearance. How do you plan to address those concerns?
Sessions: Mr. Chairman, it was a highly contentious campaign. I, like a lot of people, made comments about the issues in that campaign. With regard to Secretary Clinton and some of the comments I made, I do believe that that could place my objectivity in question. I’ve given that thought.
I believe the proper thing for me to do, would be to recuse myself from any questions involving those kind of investigations that involve Secretary Clinton and that were raised during the campaign or to be otherwise connected to it.
Grassley: OK. I think, that’s—let me emphasize then with a follow-up question. To be very clear, you intend to recuse yourself from both the Clinton email investigation and any matters involving the Clinton Foundation, if there are any?
Sessions: Yes.
This exchange has two implications for how one understands the scope of Sessions’ recusal. First, it goes to defining the scope of the recusal that Sessions made on March 2, 2017. If it is a close call whether the Clinton Foundation matter is sufficiently connected to the Clinton campaign for the purpose of understanding Sessions’ recusal, it should be deemed to be sufficiently connected. After all, that’s essentially what Sessions told Sen. Grassley. Second, if the Clinton Foundation matter is deemed outside the scope of the recusal statement that Sessions made back in March last year, then his decision to fire McCabe shows that he failed to honor the promise for a broader recusal which he clearly made to the Senate in its decision to confirm him as attorney general. The same goes for Hillary Clinton’s emails. Sen. Grassley’s questions and Sessions’ answers specifically covered any matters involving that investigation as well.”
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Meanwhile, over at Reuters, Karen Freifeld, Sarah N. Lynch, Mark Hosenball have uncovered some evidence that contradicts Gonzo’s “revised account” of his meeting at which George Papadopoulos’s proposed “Russia contacts” were discussed with Trump campaign officials including Gonzo. It now appears that Gonzo’s story that he immediately and strongly denounced them could be a fabrication. Or just another “memory lapse.”
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ testimony that he opposed a proposal for President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign team to meet with Russians has been contradicted by three people who told Reuters they have spoken about the matter to investigators with Special Counsel Robert Mueller or congressional committees.
Sessions testified before Congress in November 2017 that he “pushed back” against the proposal made by former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos at a March 31, 2016 campaign meeting. Then a senator from Alabama, Sessions chaired the meeting as head of the Trump campaign’s foreign policy team.
“Yes, I pushed back,” Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee on Nov. 14, when asked whether he shut down Papadopoulos’ proposed outreach to Russia.
Sessions has since also been interviewed by Mueller.
Three people who attended the March campaign meeting told Reuters they gave their version of events to FBI agents or congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 election. Although the accounts they provided to Reuters differed in certain respects, all three, who declined to be identified, said Sessions had expressed no objections to Papadopoulos’ idea.
One person said Sessions was courteous to Papadopoulos and said something to the effect of “okay, interesting.”
The other two recalled a similar response.
“It was almost like, ‘Well, thank you and let’s move on to the next person,’” one said.
However, another meeting attendee, J.D. Gordon, who was the Trump campaign’s director of national security, told media outlets including Reuters in November that Sessions strongly opposed Papadopoulos’ proposal and said no one should speak of it again. In response to a request for comment, Gordon said on Saturday that he stood by his statement.
Sessions, through Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores, declined to comment beyond his prior testimony. The special counsel’s office also declined to comment. Spokeswomen for the Democrats and Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee did not comment.
Reuters was unable to determine whether Mueller is probing discrepancies in accounts of the March 2016 meeting.
The three accounts, which have not been reported, raise new questions about Sessions’ testimony regarding contacts with Russia during the campaign.
Sessions previously failed to disclose to Congress meetings he had with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and testified in October that he was not aware of any campaign representatives communicating with Russians.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions testifies before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on oversight of the Justice Department on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 14, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri GripasSome Democrats have seized on discrepancies in Sessions’ testimony to suggest the attorney general may have committed perjury. A criminal charge would require showing Sessions intended to deceive. Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee that he had always told the truth and testified to the best of his recollection.
Legal experts expressed mixed views about the significance of the contradictions cited by the three sources.
Sessions could argue he misremembered events or perceived his response in a different way, making any contradictions unintentional, some experts said.
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said Sessions’ words might be too vague to form the basis of a perjury case because there could be different interpretations of what he meant.
United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions visits families of opioid overdose victims at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, U.S. March 15, 2018. REUTERS/John Sommers II“If you’re talking about false statements, prosecutors look for something that is concrete and clear,” he said.
Other legal experts said, however, that repeated misstatements by Sessions could enable prosecutors to build a perjury case against him.
“Proving there was intent to lie is a heavy burden for the prosecution. But now you have multiple places where Sessions has arguably made false statements,” said Bennett Gershman, a Pace University law professor.
The March 2016 campaign meeting in Washington was memorialized in a photo Trump posted on Instagram of roughly a dozen men sitting around a table, including Trump, Sessions and Papadopoulos.
Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty in October to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his Russia contacts, is now cooperating with Mueller.
According to court documents released after his guilty plea, Papadopoulos said at the campaign meeting that he had connections who could help arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Papadopoulos continued to pursue Russian contacts after the March 2016 meeting and communicated with some campaign officials about his efforts, according to the court documents.
Trump has said that he does not remember much of what happened at the “very unimportant” campaign meeting. Trump has said he did not meet Putin before becoming president.
Moscow has denied meddling in the election and Trump has denied his campaign colluded with Russia.
Reporting by Karen Freifeld, Sarah N. Lynch and Mark Hosenball; Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay in Washington and Jan Wolfe in New York; Editing by Anthony Lin, Noeleen Walder and Jeffrey Benkoe”
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Like Trump, Gonzo is a congenital liar who has been pushing his “White Nationalist alternate world view” for so long that he wouldn’t recognize truth if it hit him in the face. I don’t know if he will ever be held accountable for all of his biased disingenuous deeds. But, at some future point, someone will “unpack” all of Gonzo’s disastrous abuses — immigration, civil rights, criminal justice, prisons — of justice at the Department of Justice and preserve them for history.
B.R.A. = “Banana Republic of America”
The Washington Post Editorial Board writes:
“MORE THAN the details of the case, President Trump’s tweet early Saturday celebrating the firing of former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe is what stands out: a marquee of bullying and unseemly behavior by a president. Mr. Trump acts like a nasty, small-minded despot, not the leader of a democracy more than two centuries old in which rule of law is a sturdy pillar. If there is doubt that the timing of Mr. McCabe’s dismissal was driven by political vengeance, Mr. Trump does everything he can to prove the worst with his own sordid words.
This is the language of a banana republic. In nations without a strong democratic foundation, tyrants cling to power by belittling perceived enemies and insulting and coopting other institutions, such as a free press, law enforcement and the military, coercing them into subservience. Just look around the world at practices today in Azerbaijan, Cambodia and Turkey, to name a few. The banana republic playbook has no place in the United States, not in a town hall, not in a statehouse, least of all in the Oval Office.
Mr. McCabe is a 21-year-veteran of the FBI and served as deputy director under James B. Comey, whom Mr. Trump fired earlier. A Justice Department inspector general’s report, not yet public, reportedly found that he authorized the disclosure of sensitive information to the media about an investigation involving Hillary Clinton and then misled investigators. He disputes the allegations, noting that he had authority to share the information and corrected what he told investigators. He previously stepped down from the deputy director’s job and was preparing to retire from the FBI on Sunday, which would have assured him of a full federal pension. The rushed timing of the firing on Friday night by Attorney General Jeff Sessions — whose own job security is perpetually threatened by Mr. Trump — robs Mr. McCabe of that full pension.
As Mr. Trump knows, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has been reported to be looking into possible obstruction of justice in the firing of Mr. Comey. Mr. McCabe could be a vital witness in such a prosecution. Now the president has attempted to discredit, and lauded the punishment of, a potential witness against him, an affront to the integrity and independence of law enforcement.
Mr. McCabe’s actions as deputy FBI director are hard to evaluate without release of the inspector general’s report, due out this spring. There will be time to judge him then. What is clear today is that the president jumped on Mr. McCabe with unseemly ferocity, tweeting: “Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI — A great day for Democracy.”
In fact, the hardworking men and women of the FBI, the Justice Department, the intelligence agencies and elsewhere in government come to work every day to uphold the values of a democratic system based on rule of law — a system that is distinguished by the simple principle that everyone is judged fairly, not by grudge or whim, and that no one is above the law, not even the president.”
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Lest there were any doubt about it, by canning McCabe less than 48 hours before his retirement, Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions cemented his position as a person just as small in heart, soul, character, and integrity as he is in stature.
The irony here is rich: What about Gonzo’s own frequent intentional and rather incredibly claimed “lapses” in candor, whether under oath or not?
PWS
03-19-18