"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
Over the past 3 1/2 years, President Donald Trump has aggressively pushed an “America First” agenda that has significantly weakened more than seven decades of peaceful cooperation between the United States and her treaty partners around the world. In parallel moves, this president has continued a courtship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and a dangerous, nuclear-armed North Korea while allowing China to extend its geopolitical reach and goal of economic dominance.
Despite the widening of perilous fault lines that have emerged from growing diplomatic tensions, the mercurial and ill-equipped president continues to criticize and undermine, with no intellectual rigor, the post-World War II order that has given us 70 years of relative political and economic stability.
Moreover, Trump’s isolationist moves are progressively weakening America. Withdrawing from the Paris climate accord (ratified by nearly 190 nations, including Russia and China), the Iran nuclear deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, UNESCO, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the World Health Organization and numerous other long-standing international commitments has become part and parcel of his unabashed goal of turning his back — and by extension America’s — on the world.
The same is true in the related field of international human rights, where we have gone from a former ”beacon of hope” to a notorious racist-driven regime of scofflaws, unabashed human rights violators, and shameless child abusers.
My appreciation again, on behalf of the “New Due Process Army” and the “Round Table of Former Immigration Judges” to “The Generals” for speaking out so articulately and forcefully.
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 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.
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.
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.”
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’sJacob Soboroff, who has actually been inside “Trump’s Kiddie Gulag.” Surprise spoiler: It’s not “nice.” More like “torture” and “child abuse.”
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!
Donald J. Trump Famous American Clown (Officially titled “Ass Clown”) Artist: Scott Scheidly Orlando, FL Reproduced by permissionD. Vader Minister of Justice Banana Republic of TrumpTrump Regime
Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.
Mr. Trump’s ruinous tenure already has gravely damaged the United States at home and around the world. He has abused the power of his office and denied the legitimacy of his political opponents, shattering the norms that have bound the nation together for generations. He has subsumed the public interest to the profitability of his business and political interests. He has shown a breathtaking disregard for the lives and liberties of Americans. He is a man unworthy of the office he holds.
Hillary is an amazing example of how the younger generation of the NDPA is courageously fighting for leadership positions that will change America for the better at all levels!The NDPA has been dominant in courtroom advocacy, scholarship, and clinical teaching. We now need to “take it beyond the courtrooms, classrooms, law journals, and op-ed pages!”
It’s time for the NDPA to make our shared vision of due process, fundamental fairness, and equal justice for all a reality! Take the fight for social justice and America’s heart, soul, and future to the judicial benches, legislatures, and public offices — from the municipalities, to the states, to the highest levels of our Federal System — and beyond to leadership on the world stage!
Supreme Court Nominee by Bob Englehart, PoliticalCartoons.com Published under licenseEric Levitz Associate Editor Intelligencer New York Magazine Photo source: Twitter
Even Republicans don’t have the stomach to outsource judgment on all modern constitutional questions to the slaveholding elite of a preindustrial, post-colonial backwater. As Dean of Berkeley Law Erwin Chemerinsky has observed, a ruthless adherence to text and history would require forfeiting judicial protection of “liberties such as the right to marry, the right to procreate, the right to custody of one’s children, the right to keep the family together, the right of parents to control the upbringing of their children, the right to purchase and use contraceptives, the right to abortion, [and] the right to refuse medical care,” none of which are guaranteed by the Constitution.
Amy Coney Barrett herself has acknowledged the undesirability of applying originalism indiscriminately, noting in 2016, “Adherence to originalism arguably requires, for example, the dismantling of the administrative state, the invalidation of paper money, and the reversal of Brown v. Board of Education,” and other institutions that “no serious person would propose to undo,” even if they lack constitutional grounding. Barrett’s proposed solution to this conundrum is for courts to simply avoid ruling on cases where originalism would dictate socially unthinkable overturnings of precedent; she wrote in 2017 that “discretionary jurisdiction generally permits [the Court] to choose which questions it wants to answer.”
But this expedient degrades originalism’s claim to neutrality. If an originalist Supreme Court can apply its doctrine opportunistically — taking only those cases in which its “neutral” juridical method will yield outcomes acceptable to a “serious” person (as they define that adjective) — then originalism isn’t much of a binding restriction on judicial discretion.
What’s more, Barrett’s concession tacitly betrays awareness of a critical fact that originalists love to elide when speaking for a lay audience: Amending the Constitution has become so phenomenally difficult it’s not at all clear that the American people could promptly replace an overturned Brown v. Board of Education with an amendment forbidding school segregation, despite overwhelming popular support for that Supreme Court decision. Originalists like to portray their judicial approach as highly democratic, since they purport to defer to the letter of a democratically enacted Constitution. But once one stipulates that the demos is manifestly no longer capable of passing constitutional amendments with regularity, it becomes clear that the originalist practice of striking down democratically elected laws in deference to the letter of a centuries-old document is profoundly anti-democratic.
Of course, in real life, “originalist” Supreme Court justices haven’t just applied their method opportunistically by selecting cases in which originalism will produce a favored outcome; they’ve also simply declined to abide by their method when they feel like it. On Monday, Barrett named Antonin Scalia as her guiding light on judicial philosophy. But as Georgia State University Law professor Eric J. Segall notes, Scalia voted “for broad rules limiting congressional power to enact campaign finance reform, to commandeer state legislatures and executives to help implement federal law, and to allow lawsuits against the states for money damages by citizens of other states” without “justifying these broad rules from a textual or historical perspective,” presumably because they have no textual or historical basis.
In sum: Amy Coney Barrett’s originalism does not work as a method of safeguarding democracy against an activist, ideologically motivated judiciary. It does, however, function quite well as a means of obscuring a far-right movement’s efforts to impose its unpopular agenda by judicial fiat.
************
Read Eric’s complete article, which is an outstanding debunking of“originalism” — a totally bogus invention of the reactionary right — intended to pervert the law and promote far-right attacks on humanity — at the link.
Just think about it: Supposedly a bunch of guys who risked everything on a never-before-realized long shot of defeating the British King and setting up a republic actuallyintended that 230 years after the fact the governors of that republic would be so backwards, unimaginative, and intellectually limited that they would still be attempting to divine the “true meaning” of various two-centuries out of date words and concepts that nobody agreed upon in the first place! Preposterous! Not to mention totally intellectually dishonest!
Obviously, if the GOP Senators actually believed that Coney Barrett would be an unbiased judge with an open mind to progressive, liberal, humane, common sense interpretations of law and committed to implementing the Constitutional guarantee of equal protection and due process under the law for all persons, they would be apoplectic. They would be outraged at Trump for foisting such an unreliable and unpredictable jurist on them!
I’m not necessarily saying that Coney Barrett couldn’t educate herself and “get smarter” on the bench — abandoning her false dogma and actually showing some empathy, courage, independence, and commitment to equal justice for all. She wouldn’t be the first GOP-appointed Judge or Justice to move left on the bench. After all, spending a lifetime mired on the wrong side of history screwing up the lives of your fellow humans can get old, even for well-trained right-wing ideologues.
Also, she will have the benefit of the only current Justice who actually appears up to the job and consistently understands the proper role of a High Court in a democratic republic — Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Sotomayor actually “gets it right” in an amazing number of cases and usually explains her reasoning in coherent, non-legalistic terms that most folks can understand.
But, sadly, I find relatively little in Coney Barrett’s career to predict that type of self-awareness, intellectual honesty, moral courage, and capacity for human growth. Her family situation shows some capacity for empathy and human understanding.
But, sadly, to date, she evidently has been unable to “connect the dots” between her kids’ lives and futures and the future of humanity. To understand that but for the grace of God, the refugee she is expelling based on BS non-defects could be someone she actually loves or regards as human. That the benefits that neo-Nazi Stephen Miller is unethically and illegally stripping from deserving immigrants could be the lifeline that, but for life’s quirks, would allow her, her family, or other loved ones to survive and achieve their full human potential. The capacity to function as a real jurist certainly is there, but the will and perspective seem to be largely lacking.
In a way, Coney Barrett’s squandered potential to achieve good is her own human tragedy. But, one for which those “other than Coney Barrett” are likely to pay the ultimate price.
WASHINGTON — The five U.S. attorneys along the border with Mexico, including three appointed by President Trump, recoiled in May 2018 against an order to prosecute all undocumented immigrants even if it meant separating children from their parents. They told top Justice Department officials they were “deeply concerned” about the children’s welfare.
But the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, made it clear what Mr. Trump wanted on a conference call later that afternoon, according to a two-year inquiry by the Justice Department’s inspector general into Mr. Trump’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy.
“We need to take away children,” Mr. Sessions told the prosecutors, according to participants’ notes. One added in shorthand: “If care about kids, don’t bring them in. Won’t give amnesty to people with kids.”
Rod J. Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, went even further in a second call about a week later, telling the five prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were. He said that government lawyers should not have refused to prosecute two cases simply because the children were barely more than infants.
“Those two cases should not have been declined,” John Bash, the departing U.S. attorney in western Texas, wrote to his staff immediately after the call. Mr. Bash had declined the cases, but Mr. Rosenstein “instructed that, per the A.G.’s policy, we should NOT be categorically declining immigration prosecutions of adults in family units because of the age of a child.”
The Justice Department’s top officials were “a driving force” behind the policy that spurred the separation of thousands of families, many of them fleeing violence in Central America and seeking asylum in the United States, before Mr. Trump abandoned it amid global outrage, according to a draft report of the results of the investigation by Michael E. Horowitz, the department’s inspector general.
The separation of migrant children from their parents, sometimes for months, was at the heart of the Trump administration’s assault on immigration. But the fierce backlash when the administration struggled to reunite the children turned it into one of the biggest policy debacles of the president’s term.
Though Mr. Sessions sought to distance himself from the policy, allowing Mr. Trump and Homeland Security Department officials to largely be blamed, he and other top law enforcement officials understood that “zero tolerance” meant that migrant families would be separated and wanted that to happen because they believed it would deter future illegal immigration, Mr. Horowitz wrote.
The draft report, citing more than 45 interviews with key officials, emails and other documents, provides the most complete look at the discussions inside the Justice Department as the family separation policy was developed, pushed and ultimately carried out with little concern for children.
This article is based on a review of the 86-page draft report and interviews with three government officials who read it in recent months and described its conclusions and many of the details in it. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to discuss it publicly, cautioned that the final report could change.
Before publishing the findings of its investigations, the inspector general’s office typically provides draft copies to Justice Department leaders and others mentioned in the reports to ensure that they are accurate.
Mr. Horowitz had been preparing to release his report since late summer, according to a person familiar with the investigation, though the process allowing for responses from current and former department officials whose conduct is under scrutiny is likely to delay its release until after the presidential election.
Mr. Sessions refused to be interviewed, the report noted. Mr. Rosenstein, who is now a lawyer in private practice, defended himself in his interview with investigators in response to questioning about his role, according to two of the officials. Mr. Rosenstein’s former office submitted a 64-page response to the report.
“If any United States attorney ever charged a defendant they did not personally believe warranted prosecution, they violated their oath of office,” Mr. Rosenstein said in a statement. “I never ordered anyone to prosecute a case.”
The Government did not seriously question the correctness of this finding!
Intentionally violating Constitutional rights (not to mention lying and attempting to cover it up) is clearly a violation of 18 USC 242.
Here’s the text of that section from the DOJ’s own website:
TITLE 18, U.S.C., SECTION 242
Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
Sure looks like an”open and shut” case for prosecution.
The irony: Families and their kids have been traumatized for life, perhaps even killed or disabled by the actions of these criminal conspirators; however, the “perps” remain at large.
Hamilton is on the public dole continuing to wreak-havoc on the Constitution, the rule of law, the Immigration Courts, and human decency at the corrupt Barr DOJ; Rosenstein works for a “fat cat” law firm hauling down a six figure salary while he avoids justice and accountability for his misdeeds; “Gonzo” had the absolute audacity to try to reinsert himself onto the public dole by running for the Senate from Alabama (thankfully, unsuccessfully, even though he previously held the seat for years and misused it as a public forum to spread his racist ideas, xenophobic venom, lies, false narratives, and unrelenting cruelty).
Where’s the “justice” in a system that punishes victims while letting “perps” prosper and go free?
BY DEVLIN BARRETT AND MATT ZAPOTOSKY report for WashPost:
Attorney General William P. Barr delivered a scathing critique of his own Justice Department Wednesday night, insisting on his absolute authority to overrule career staff, whom he said too often injected themselves into politics and went “headhunting” for high profile targets.
Speaking at an event hosted by Hillsdale College, a school with deep ties to conservative politics, Barr directly addressed the criticism that has been building for months inside the department toward his heavy hand in politically sensitive cases, particularly those involving associates of President Trump.
“What exactly am I interfering with?” he asked. “Under the law, all prosecutorial power is invested in the attorney general.”
Barr’s comments were remarkable, in that the head of the Justice Department catalogued all of the ways in which he thought his agency had gone astray over the years, and in its current formulation harms the body politic. Barr has drawn considerable criticism for intervening in criminal cases in ways that help benefit the president’s friends.
Barr said it was he, not career officials, who have the ultimate authority to decide how cases should be handled, and derided less-experienced, less-senior bureaucrats who current and former prosecutors have long insisted should be left to handle their cases free from interference from political appointees.
Barr said that argument, in essence, means “the will of the most junior member of the organization” would make decisions, but he insisted he would not “blindly” defer to “whatever those subordinates want to do.”
“Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but it is no way to run a federal agency,” Barr said.
The attorney general, the nation’s top law enforcement official, spent much of the speech eviscerating the idea of the Justice Department as a place where nonpolitical career prosecutors should be left to decide how sensitive cases are resolved.
. . . .
*****************
Read the rest of the article at the link.
I’m sure this does wonders for morale at the DOJ! But, demoralizing all the career lawyers and pushing them out the door appears to be part of the program. After all, the regime initially tried to “buy out” the holdover members of the BIA. Morale at the Immigration “Courts” is already at an all-time low!
Career civil servants at the DOJ and elsewhere actually work for the people of the U.S., not personally for Billy, other political appointees, or the President. Government employees take an oath to uphold the Constitution, not of loyalty to the President, the AG, or any other political official.
Billy clearly has been running the Immigration “Courts” as a politically weaponized part of the regime’s White Nationalist, authoritarian, race-driven immigration enforcement agenda. Funny how long it has taken the overall legal community to see that Barr basically considers the entire legal system, including the Article III Courts, as just as subservient as the Immigration “Courts.” And, to date, the Supremes have done little to discourage that view.
He is carrying out a personal agenda of replacing representative democracy with an authoritarian state where everybody and everything is subservient to an all-powerful totally unconstitutional “Unitary Executive” (actually a bogus right-wing “invented concept” with no actual legitimate basis in American political history, as cogently “debunked” by Ayer in his podcast). That certainly makes him one of the two most dangerous men in America!
Billy did say one thing I agree with. Politicos, particularly hacks like Billy and Trump, can be held accountable at the ballot box. Indeed, given the feckless performance of the GOP Senate and the overall failure of the Federal Courts to stand up to tyranny, that appears to be the very last hope for our democracy.
Had enough of the Liar in Chief, Billy the Bigot, Moscow Mitch, & Co? Vote the GOP out of every public office at every level this Fall, while there is still a chance to save our democracy!
This Fall, vote like your life and the continued existence of American democracy depend on it! Because they do!
Don Ayer American Lawyer Former U.S. Deputy Attorney General — Photo www.ali.orgDahlia Lithwick Supreme Court Reporter Slate Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain
Has Bill Barr Broken the Department of Justice Forever?
Bill Barr is not simply doing the president’s bidding, he is following his long-held beliefs about America.
What is Bill Barr doing, and why is he doing it? Donald Ayer, former U.S. attorney and principal deputy solicitor general in the Reagan administration and deputy attorney general under George H.W. Bush, on the attorney general’s ideology, how it predates Trumpism, and why it’s so dangerous.
In the Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern breaks down the latest voting breakdown in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, the latest Census case dead end, and the stupidity of Trump’s latest SCOTUS list.
************
How timely! Just yesterday on Courtside, I gave Billy the Bigot the nod over Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions and “John the Con” Mitchell in the hotly contested race for “The Worst AG in Modern American History.”
I still think that Gonzo could have pulled it out if he had only been given some more time! His overt racism, misogyny, intellectual dishonesty, fraud, stupidity, bias, and “crimes against humanity” set a standard for morally corrupt officials that seemed unassailable until Billy the Bigot went into “full destructo mode.”
As someone who started working at the DOJ in 1973, I witnessed (if only from the crowd standing outside the Great Hall) the “voluntary departure” of Elliot Richardson following the “Saturday Night Massacre,” where he resigned rather than carry out President T. Dick Nixon’s inappropriate demand that he fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor. Could you imagine Billy the Bigot refusing any demand from “His Don,” no matter how illegal, unethical, and/or outrageous? When it comes to the history of Government corruption and the DOJ, I know what I’m talking about.
Heck, I even survived long enough to get “purged” myself by Ashcroft in 2003, during my “DOJ reincarnation.” So, I’m no stranger to the imperfections and shortcomings in the supposed “independence” of the DOJ.
Nevertheless, I heartily agree with Don Ayer that the dishonesty, deceit, bias, bigotry, racism, and scofflaw attitudes installed into DOJ operations by Gonzo and Billy are light years beyond prior abuses I have witnessed during my nearly five decades in the law.
Don Ayer, my former DOJ colleague and partner at Jones Day DC, confirms what I have been saying for a long time on Courtside about Billy the Bigot’s unconstitutional and unethical control of the Immigration Courts.
Listen to this podcast and ask yourself: “How could any foreign national, particularly an asylum seeker, non-Christian, or person of color get a fundamentally fair and impartial hearing before ‘judges’ selected, directed, evaluated, and governed by Billy?” If that’s not enough, if the foreign national does happen to win, Billy just unilaterally intervenes and changes the results, even in cases completed back in the Bush II Administration!
Obviously, this isn’t justice; to use Don Ayer’s term, this is “Banana Republic” authoritarian injustice.
So, how have Congress and the Roberts-led Supremes let Billy get away with this disgraceful unconstitutional mockery of everything our nation stands for? Good question with no happy answer.
During Watergate, it took a concerted effort by a bipartisan Congress, the Federal Courts including the Supremes, and independent lawyers and investigators working for the Watergate Special Prosecutor within the DOJ to bring about Nixon’s forced resignation in the face of inevitable impeachment and conviction.
By contrast, today’s GOP Senate and the GOP-appointed “JR Five” on the Supremes have shown themselves to be shameless toadies, sycophants, and enablers in the face of clearly abusive Executive overreach and tyranny. The post-Watergate ethical reforms, checks, and balances put in place by former GOP-appointed AG Ed Levi, cited by Don, have been completely dismantled in broad daylight by the Trump regime with no pushback from Congress or the Supremes. This serious, entirely preventable, deterioration and abandonment of the rule of law and ethical norms cuts across all three Branches of Government and threatens the very foundations of our democracy.
Assuming (by no means a certainty) that our nation puts it together this Fall to remove the Trump kakistocracy, we need a careful and thoughtful re-examination of the types of individuals we are rewarding with life-tenured judicial appointments and why those now on the bench, as a group, failed so miserably to uphold the Constitution, protect human dignity and decency, and thwart the outrageous scofflaw agenda of Trump and his cronies like Billy the Bigot and neo-Nazi Stephen Miller.
Don Ayer specifically mentions the outrageous “Wall Charade” where Trump illegally and unethically steamrolled legislation, the Constitution, the public purse, and common sense to divert money to his “Political Wall” using a patently bogus and fabricated “national security” pretext.
But, here’s the rest of the story: When Trump-owned Solicitor General Noel Francisco presented this “false claim” to the Supremes, disingenuously asserting a clearly fabricated “emergency” he got the JR Five to roll over! Instead of upholding the lower court’s correct injunction and referring Francisco to bar authorities for unethical conduct, they actually approved this farce, by a 5-4 “party line vote.” Of course, that spineless performance has greenlighted other racist-driven White Nationalist policies and an aura of impunity among the Trump regime kakistocracy.
Gee wiz, a Federal Court actually determined some time ago that DHS honchos Chad “Wolfman” Wolf and Ken “Cooch Cooch” Cuccinelli are both illegally serving in their current positions. But, in the “no consequences no accountability” atmosphere established by the Roberts Court, Cooch and Wolfie continue to abuse migrants with arrogant impunity. They obviously have no fear of accountability. Even if they got in trouble, Trump would simply run over the Constitution to pardon them.
As I constantly say, “it’s not rocket science.” There are scores of talented courageous lawyers out there in the private, NGO, and academic sectors who could have out-performed the “JR Five” in protecting our republic. Why are they stuck in the trenches rather than sitting on the Federal Benches?
When Congress and the Executive fail, the nation turns to the supposedly independent Article III Courts as democracy’s last defender. But, Roberts & Co. have been more than “MIA” — they have actively contributed to the downfall with outrageous derelictions of duty on voting rights, civil rights, and grotesque, unconstitutional “Dred Scottifiction” of migrants of color that actually harms, maims, and kills innocent humans almost every day.
Think that “Dred Scottification” couldn’t happen to you? Guess again! Don Ayer says all of our freedoms and democratic norms will be on the line if Billy and “His Don” get another four years to complete their destruction. Believe him!
This Fall, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!
It is entirely fitting that Donald Trump — the least law-abiding president in our history — was renominated at a convention that was itself a seeming cavalcade of crime. Every night featured apparent violations of the 1939 Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activities “in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties by an individual employed or holding office in the Government of the United States.”
The White House certainly qualifies as such a facility. Yet Trump used it as a convention prop, even going so far as to televise a naturalization ceremony for immigrants — some of whom did not realize they would be shown at the Republican convention — as part of the nightly show. Trump not only flouted the law but also reveled in doing so. During his acceptance speech, he boasted, “We’re here — they’re not,” and the New York Times reported that Trump “relished the fact that no one could do anything to stop him.”
While the president is exempt from the civil provisions of the Hatch Act, he could be subject, once he leaves office, to criminal penalties if he should “intimidate, threaten, command, or coerce … any employee of the Federal Government … to engage in … any political activity.” That is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.
This is, of course, barely scratching the surface of an administration that should more accurately be described as an ongoing criminal conspiracy. While many of Trump’s awful acts — e.g., confining children in cages or unleashing riot police on peaceful protesters — are merely violations of democratic norms, there is also plentiful evidence of lawbreaking on his part.
The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York has identified Trump as “Individual-1” in a conspiracy with his attorney Michael Cohen to violate campaign finance laws by secretly paying off two women with whom Trump allegedly had affairs. Cohen went to prison; Trump, who as president claims immunity from prosecution, wasn’t indicted.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III uncovered a great deal more potential illegality. He found 10 instances when Trump might have obstructed justice, and in at least four of those cases he found evidence that Trump’s conduct met all three elements of the obstruction-of-justice statute. Each violation carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The recent report from the Senate Intelligence Committee suggests that Trump also lied to Mueller when, in written testimony, he claimed not to remember speaking to Roger Stone about WikiLeaks. If he committed perjury, that would subject him to up to five years’ imprisonment.
. . . .
Trump could try to short-circuit justice by seeking to pardon himself before he leaves office — or even by resigning a few hours early and having Vice President Pence sworn in to issue a pardon (as President Gerald Ford did for Richard Nixon). In that case, the special counsel would be limited to investigating Trump’s accomplices (unless they are also pardoned) and helping state prosecutors. But the special counsel should still issue a comprehensive report on Trump’s lawbreaking. We must expose and root out this ethical rot before it eats away at the foundations of our democracy.
**********
Read the rest of Boot’s article at the link. Actually, Max understates the case. Trump long ago ate the ethical underpinnings of American democracy for lunch, with the “JR Five” providing “table service.”
Under “normal” circumstances, the scenario outlined by Boot in his final paragraph would be beyond preposterous! But, in the failed state of American democracy under Trump, it’s perfectly plausible. Whose going to stop him from the “final abuse and mockery of our republic?” Feckless Congress? The Supremely and Serenely Complicit ones? No way. Trump will exploit the moral cowardice and spinelessness of the other failed two branches of Government until the end!
It started about the time that Roberts and his colleagues threw Muslims, refugees, and migrants under the bus in their ridiculously wrong and intellectually dishonest “Travel Ban Fiasco.” The “Dred Scottification” of migrants and people of color and open corruption, aided and abetted by Roberts and his gang, have continued largely unabated since then.
Max’s use of the term “rot” brings to mind the refugees from many nations, most people of color, rotting in Mexico, futilely waiting for “asylum hearings” that might never come and where denial without due process has been predetermined. This is what “American Justice” has become under Trump, Billy the Bigot, Wolfman the Illegal, and Roberts the Complicit!
Actually, separating families, misrepresenting the policy to Federal Courts, and long-term “civil” detention of families in life-threatening conditions as a “deterrent” to exercising important, fundamental legal and human rights might well be criminal violations in a functioning justice system. Sadly, America basically lacks the latter these days because of the Supremes’ coddling of the “crimes against humanity” committed by Trump, Miller, Barr, Wolf, Cooch, and their co-conspirators.
As those of us with experience adjudicating asylum cases know, lack of accountability before the courts and failure of the judiciary to exercise independent judgment to control a corrupt and tyrannical executive are hallmarks of failed states and banana republics.
Let’s see! America’s founders created an independent judiciary to insure the right of the “King” to use the Government as his personal servants to violate the Bill of Rights, exploit the nation for his own gain, and create “alternate Kings’ Courts” where the “judges” are his employees, he makes the rules, the results are largely preordained by the King’s personal biases and the interests of his royal cronies, and the penalty can be “death without due process.” Not likely!
But, that’s what happens when judges’ fealty to ideology, party, or personality often exceeds their loyalty to the Constitution and to the human rights and human dignity of their fellow men, women, and children. It happens when we create an elitist, right-leaning judiciary, out of step with and non-representative of the majority of Americans, where actual knowledge and experience defending the human rights of individuals against Government overreach, courage to speak truth to power, and demonstrated unswerving commitment to equal justice under law is far, far undervalued, even intentionally ignored. Where practical problem-solving skills and human empathy, perhaps the two most important qualities for fair and honest judging, are all too often disrespected and even demeaned.
Better Federal Judges for a better, fairer, functional America! One where the humanity of all persons is honored and respected, rather than being mocked by those in positions of power and privilege. One where the highest Court finally stands up for and enforces the hard-fought Constitutional right to vote, regardless of skin color or ethnicity, rather than aiding and abetting the blatant schemes of the GOP to suppress voting and deny deserved political power to Americans of color. One where an honest Court enforces to the maximum degree the Voting Rights Act rather than intentionally and disingenuously gutting it at the demand of some in the White power structure.
These travesties have unfolded right in front of us. Yet, even so called “liberal-progressive” commentators largely shrug them off as somehow “normal” or “just the way the system functions.” That’s BS! It’s “judicial malpractice.” It’s a major reason why two centuries after our founding we have not yet achieved racial justice and why our nation is coming apart at the seams under grotesque misgovernance and judicial complicity.
The current Federal Judiciary has facilitated the takeover of our Government by an ongoing criminal conspiracy, as described by Boot. We need change! Sooner rather than later! And, it can’t and won’t happen with the current cast of characters in the Executive, the Senate majority, and the Article III Judiciary.
Nothing will harm a campaign like the wishful thinking, fearful hesitation, or sheer complacency that fails to address what voters can plainly see. Kenosha gives Biden a chance to help himself and the country. Ordinarily it’s the incumbent president’s job to show up at the scene of a national tragedy and give a unifying speech. But Trump is temperamentally incapable of doing so and, in fact, has a political interest in America’s open wounds and burning cities.
Biden, then, should go immediately to Wisconsin, the crucial state that Hillary Clinton infamously ignored. He should meet the Blake family and give them his support and comfort. He should also meet Kenoshans like the small-business owners quoted in the Times piece, who doubt that Democrats care about the wreckage of their dreams. Then, on the burned-out streets, without a script, from the heart, Biden should speak to the city and the country. He should speak for justice and for safety, for reform and against riots, for the crying need to bring the country together. If he says these things half as well as Julia Jackson did, we might not have to live with four more years of Trump.
******************************
Read the rest of Packer’s article at the link.
Seems like a sound plan. Joe probably should take Kamala with him to Kenosha. Get the input of the residents and public officials living with this horrible situation every day and see what common ground they might suggest for both repairing the damage that has been done (to the extent it can be repaired — obviously, there is no restoring Mr. Blake to his pre-shooting condition) and moving forward as a united community and as a country. Assuming, as I do, that the vast majority of Americans favor both justice for all and peaceful, prosperous communities, what are some specifics about how we might get there by working together and across racial and party lines.
Threats and more force won’t solve the problem. We know that. But just that knowledge isn’t enough to solve the problem.
I think it also would be a good idea for Joe and Kamala to seek the views of individuals like LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Steph & Ayesha Curry,George Hill, Kenny Smith, Colin Kaepernick (who was born in Milwaukee and spent the first four yers of his life in Fond du Lac, WI)and others in the African-American community. How would they solve the problem of racial injustice while building community harmony. How could they use their influence to help. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Sen. Doug Jones (to name just a few) might also have some good ideas to contribute.
Donald Trump is not, and never will be, a thoughtful, unifying problem solver. It’s just not in his makeup or “skill set.” He has no coherent plan for anything.
By contrast, Joe Biden has shown himself to be thoughtful, willing to admit and move by past mistakes, and able to build on his experience and past views to address the present. Now, he needs to put it all together in “real time” and show America what a competent, caring, and listening Government could do for the common good. Without necessarily “becoming Elizabeth Warren,” he and Kamala “need a plan for that.” And listening to the “real people of Kenosha” seems like the place to start.
Great work, Eddie (and, of course artist Scott Scheidly for the enduring image of our “Clown Prince” reproduced, with permission, above)! Many congrats! Can’t see why the RNC rejected this masterpiece!
Another four years of Trumpism threatens not only the livelihood of hard-working professional clowns, but also is guaranteed to bring unnecessary suffering, lasting harm, and otherwise avoidable death to many. Perhaps you, your family, or your loved ones will be among the kakistocracy’s victims!
Better get out the vote for Joe, Kamala, and their better, more humane, more unifying program for America!
This November, vote like your life depends on it. Because it does!
As he seeks a second term, [Trump has] also made it clear that he hasn’t finished. He still wants to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program once and for all, drive out the millions of unauthorized immigrants living in the US and curb their political power, enact what he calls “merit-based” immigration reform, and pursue a slew of restrictive immigration regulations.
The US has already seen the harms of Trump’s first-term immigration policies, which could cut deeper if he’s given another four years: Legal immigration is plummeting, stymying growth in the labor force and threatening the US’s ability to attract global talent and recover from the coronavirus-induced recession. The US has abdicated its role as a model for how a powerful country should support the world’s most vulnerable people. And the millions of immigrants already living in the US, regardless of their legal status, have been left uncertain of their fate in the country they have come to call home.
Other concerns — including the coronavirus, racial justice, and unemployment — have recently eclipsed immigration as a top motivating issue for voters. But for Trump, who currently lags former Vice President Joe Biden in the polls, restricting immigration proved a winning message in 2016, and he will likely try to replicate that strategy again.
“It’s the thing he keeps going back to,” Douglas Rivlin, director of communication at the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, said. “It is his comfort zone — to go after people of color and turn them into sort of the specter of scary, violent people as a political strategy.”
. . . .
Whether any version of that proposal will get traction would largely depend on the makeup of the next Congress and whether Democrats win a majority in the Senate. Most immigration policy experts aren’t convinced that Trump will see success in negotiating with Democrats, but the political calculus could change if Democrats control both chambers of Congress and need Trump to sign their legislation.
It also depends on Republicans acting as a unified front on immigration. So far, pro-business Republicans aren’t challenging the restrictions and travel bans Trump has imposed during the pandemic, and as the US continues to grapple with its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and more than a million Americans are out of work, they will likely continue to follow the president’s lead. But in the long term, they might find themselves at philosophical odds with the anti-immigrant wing of the party.
“I think the reality of the economics of immigration and the sort of more ideological agenda are going to come into conflict,” Rivlin said.
But if Trump can overcome those hurdles, the prize would be substantial: the ability the leave his mark on the immigration system beyond a series of executive actions that could be reversed by the next Democrat who assumes office.
“Merit-based immigration reform would be a legacy for him on immigration, more so than a border wall,” the Bipartisan Policy Institute’s Cardinal-Brown said. “That would have impacts on the future of immigration for decades.”
***************
Read the rest of Nicole’s gloomy yet (as always) well-written outlook at the link.
Don’t be fooled. In “Trumpspeak” the term “merit-based” means “race-based” (favoring, of course, White guys, preferably rich, English speaking, and prospective GOP toadies). Again, to state the obvious, a “kakistocracy” by definition lacks the ability to recognize and reward true “merit.” That’s why it’s a “kakistocracy,” not a “meritocracy!”
America is a nation of immigrants. To change that, Trump will have to destroy America, which, as this week’s “clown show of hate, fear, loathing, and complete nonsense” (a/k/a “The GOP Convention”) shows, he and his followers are perfectly willing to do.
This perverted “vision” of America also ties in well with the Trump/GOP approach to racism and social justice: Ignore injustice and double down on violence administered by the largely White power structure against communities of color. Kill, maim, blame, punish, jail, intimidate, disenfranchise, and dehumanize the victims rather than looking for cooperative ways to solve the problems. Sow fear, hate, and division to insure that institutionalized racism and White grievance will be indelibly ingrained in America! As these self-inflicted grievances play out, the Trump family and its cronies will use the ensuing chaos as a diversion to loot the Treasury and use what remains of “government” to further their own personal interests, without regard to the common welfare. Nice folks!
It’s doubtful that America as the majority of us have envisioned it can survive another four years of Trump’s corruption, racism, and malicious incompetence. Despite some liberal wishful thinking, our democratic institutions and apparently overrated “checks and balances” are crumbling before our eyes.
The “JR Five” on the Supremes and the GOP Senate already have reached “Penceian levels” (“Pence” rhymes with “incompetence”) of mindless sycophantic subservience to the “Clown Prince” and his entourage. None of them would be able to extract their collective heads from the more than ample Presidential rear to see any daylight during a second term. Trump’s re-election would inevitably convert the “City on The Hill” to a “wealthy universally despised third world kleptocracy.” That’s the real “vision” of Trump and the GOP. (I think that Nicole’s “hypothetical” of a Trump victory and a Dem Senate is the “least likely scenario.”)
This November, vote like your life and the world’s future depend on it! Because they do!
Equal Justice & A Diverse America For All! Trump’s Dark, Evil, Dishonest Vision Of America, Never!
It is not news that the Republican Party has a stagnant governing agenda cobbled together from the long-discredited dogmas and shibboleths of the conservative movement. “The current iteration of the G.O.P. is indifferent to the substance of government,” Steve Benen, a political writer and producer for The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, writes in “The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics”:
It is disdainful of expertise and analysis. It is hostile toward evidence and arithmetic. It is tethered to few, if any, meaningful policy preferences. It does not know, and does not care, about how competing proposals should be crafted, scrutinized or implemented.
What is news is the extent to which the Republican Party has embraced the trappings of its leader, which is to say, the trappings of a right-wing cable news network: a nonstop parade of conspiracy, demagogy and grievance, in service to a cult of personality, all for the sake of a politics of plunder, theft and extraction.
**************
Read the rest of Jamelle’s op-ed at the link.
Pretty good explanation of The Party of Trump (formerly known as “The Party of Lincoln”).
My question is why the so-called “mainstream media” (excluding Jamelle and a few others) handles with “kid gloves” folks like Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Melania, who go on national TV and present knowingly bogus, totally disingenuous, fabricated portraits of Trump as a benign presence in U.S. politics. In a vain, continuing search for “normalization” of overt 21st century Jim Crow nationalist fascism, the “mainstreams” appear ready to credit speaking in complete, largely grammatical, sentences in the English language and not screaming racist tropes or absurdist internet conspiracy theories as all that is necessary to be considered “credible” and a “moderating force” in today’s “Trumpized” GOP!
The disingenuous treatment by the “mainstreams” of dishonest attempts to “soften” Trump’s true “Mini-Mussolini” persona as election-season gimmick is a gross dis-service to the public welfare and the abdication of the duty of courageous independent journalism to provide critical coverage — not just regurgitate RNC propaganda!
Why are “the mainstreams” rolling over for the RNC?
This November, vote like your life and the future of the world depend on it! Because they do!
Laura Coates is a CNN legal analyst. She is a former assistant US attorney for the District of Columbia and trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. She is the host of the daily “Laura Coates Show” on SiriusXM. Follow her @thelauracoates. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
(CNN)Attorney General Bill Barr’s written opening statement to the House Judiciary Committee was replete with mischaracterizations, fallacies and unnerving stereotypes that run afoul of the principle of equal justice — and which, taken together, show how he has transformed the Department of Justice that enforces the law to a department that undermines the rule of law.
These are but a few lines that should evoke a visceral reaction to the views of a man who sits at the helm of the most powerful prosecutorial office in the country.
1. “Ever since I made it clear that I was going to do everything I could to get to the bottom of the grave abuses involved in the bogus ‘Russiagate’ scandal, many of the Democrats on this Committee have attempted to discredit me by conjuring up a narrative that I am simply the President’s factotum who disposes of criminal cases according to his instructions.”
No, Attorney General Barr, you are not being accused of being a factotum, colloquially defined as a handyman. You stand accused of being a henchman who acts not only under the President’s instructions but, perhaps more nefariously, exclusively in the President’s interests. And what conveys this impression is not a deceptive narrative crafted by the Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee, but rather your own conduct.
Case in point: undermining career prosecutors in what appears to clearly be the interests of President Donald Trump. Not once can I recall an attorney general weighing in on a career prosecutor’s sentencing recommendations for a defendant convicted of multiple felonies by a jury. Yet, this appears to be an increasingly frequent endeavor by this Attorney General on behalf of Trump associates, including, most recently former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the President’s long-time friend Roger Stone.
The disturbing trend is underscored by the fact that the one convicted felon who has fallen out of the President’s favor, Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, felt the knife twisted rather than removed when the Justice Department recently, albeit briefly, sent him back to prison under questionable
And Barr’s misuse of terms continues with the use of the term “Russiagate.” The use of the suffix “gate” insinuates that it is conspiratorial, farcical and worthy of derision. And yet, the Attorney General has confirmed, as recently as today’s colloquy with Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond, that Russia did interfere with the past presidential election and will presumably continue to interfere with our upcoming presidential election. Perhaps the nod to conspiracy theorists was inadvertent in light of overwhelming evidence he fails to dispute.
2. “Like his predecessors, President Trump and his National Security Council have appropriately weighed in on law-enforcement decisions that directly implicate national security or foreign policy, because those decisions necessarily involve considerations that transcend typical prosecutorial factors.”
No one doubts the propriety of the President of the United States and members of his National Security Council to get involved in cases that directly implicate the national security of this nation or those matters that directly relate to our foreign policy interests. What is in doubt is whether Barr’s defense of deploying federal agents to US cities is anything more than a pretextual reason to infringe upon the constitutional rights of Americans, namely their First Amendment rights to assemble and to protest their grievances with the government. A bald assertion of a national security interest does not absolve the executive branch from having to provide an appropriate and lawful justification when constitutional rights are implicated. And yet Barr has offered no compelling reason.
3. “I had nothing to prove and had no desire to return to government. … When asked to consider returning, I did so because I revere the Department and believed my independence would allow me to help steer her back to her core mission of applying one standard of justice for everyone and enforcing the law even-handedly, without partisan considerations.”
This is just laughable. He had no desire to return to the government? I have a June 2018 memo that says otherwise. It was entirely unsolicited, offered Barr’s insight on special counsel Robert Mueller’s handling of an investigation into Russia’s interference in our presidential election and read like a solicitation for a job. And lo and behold, he got his wish. Now, Barr has launched an investigation into the origins of what he calls “Russiagate” that seems to track the very outline he presented when he, ahem, had no desire to put skin in the game.
Barr’s suggestion that he was compelled to return to the helm out of a sincere interest to restore the objectivity and credibility of the Department of Justice is belied by his decision-making. His sentencing decisions that seem to show political favor, his failure to justify the use of force against peaceful protestors and his involvement in the removal of Geoffrey Berman, the former Attorney General for the Southern District of New York, comprise just a handful of the many instances where his conduct has undermined — not restored — the credibility of the Justice Department.
. . . .
************************
Read the rest of Laura’s seven points at the link.
It’s a familiar pattern. After “stonewalling” Congressional oversight, Administration Kakistocrat finally shows up and arrogantly spews lies, misrepresentations, and false narratives under oath. Dems spend their time lecturing and pontificating, but don’t create the factual record for a subsequent perjury prosecution. (Ask yourself: What if Laura Coates were doing the questioning?)
GOP toadies in Congress “circle the wagons” and double down on the lies showing their complete contempt for truth, human decency, and good governance.
We already knew Barr was a shady character and that the GOP is unfit for any office in any branch. So, this hearing didn’t really accomplish much.
But it does demonstrate the absolute necessity for the majority of us who want to save our nation to get out the vote to remove Trump and the GOP at every level 🧹 in November.
This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does! Another four years of Trump’s racist malicious incompetence and the GOP kakistocracy could kill us all (including the truth-impervious Trumpsters and GOP toadies willing to seek the end of our democracy)! Victory for the “good guys” isn’t inevitable —it will take lots of energy and continuing hard work to save our nation!👍🏼🗽🇺🇸
“Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.
“When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.
“It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he’s the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he’s brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale. And let’s be clear. This isn’t happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.”
******************
That about sums it up!
Or, you could just say: “A kakistocracy led by a maliciously incompetent racist moron!”
This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!
