Whistleblower – immigrationcourtside.com

⚰️☠️🏴‍☠️KILLERS ON THE LOOSE, ON YOUR PAYROLL! — Whistleblower Report Shows How Corrupt Regime “War Criminals” Have Intentionally Falsified Information To Cover Up Deadly Conditions In Northern Triangle, Thereby Potentially Condemning Refugees To Death Without Due Process — Too Many Article III Judges Have Disingenuously Used “Standards Of Review” & Other Dishonest “Legal Gimmicks” To Hide Their Own Failures To Critically Examine Bogus Asylum Denials & Overtly Racist Restrictionist Policies Flowing From The Twisted Mind Of Neo-Nazi Stephen Miller!

Trump Dumping Asylum Seekers in Hondiras — Dumping Asylum Seekers in Honduras
Artist: Monte Wolverton
Reproduced under license

https://www.justsecurity.org/72451/whistleblower-dhs-suppressed-reports-on-central-america-and-inflated-risk-of-terrorist-border-crossers/

Susan Gzesh in Just Security:

. . . .

U.S. law and the United Nations Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees also require the United States to accept political asylum claims presented at the U.S. border and to not return applicants to a place where their “life or freedom would be threatened.” These conditions were, of course, not met with respect to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The Trump administration later ceased referring to the agreements with these Central American countries as “Safe Third Country” agreements and used the term “Asylum Cooperation Agreements,” perhaps in a cynical attempt to avoid U.S. law and regulations.

What Murphy’s Complaint Reveals

According to his whistleblower complaint (footnote 1 at pages 9-10) and earlier anonymous reports he filed with the DHS Office of Inspector General, career DHS intelligence official Brian Murphy presented intelligence reports to political appointees in DHS which found “high levels of corruption, violence, and poor economic conditions” in all three countries. It was no surprise that Murphy’s complaint recounts that in December 2019, as the Trump administration was sending the first asylum seekers to Central America, then Acting Assistant Secretary of DHS Ken Cuccinelli ordered Murphy to change those reports.

According to Murphy, Cuccinelli not only claimed the reports must be false, but also attributed them to forces within the intelligence community hostile to the President. He accused “unknown ‘deep state intelligence analysts’ of compiling intelligence information to undermine President Donald J. Trump’s policy objectives with respect to asylum.” According to Murphy, Cuccinelli further ordered him to identify those “who compiled the intelligence reports and to either fire or reassign them immediately” (see page 9 of Murphy’s complaint).

With respect to the policy rationale to support spending millions of dollars on a border wall, Murphy’s complaint recounts how he was asked to reinterpret and rewrite intelligence reports about Known or Suspected Terrorists (KSTs) attempting to enter the United States from Mexico to fit the White House’s policy arguments about the need for a wall. In several meetings during 2018 and 2019, Murphy delivered intelligence to then DHS-Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and other officials that the actual number of individually-documented KSTs was very tiny. Despite Murphy’s briefings, Nielsen and other officials in DHS issued documents and gave congressional briefings in which they greatly exaggerated the numbers, inflating a figure of 3 KSTs to over 3,000. (Murphy’s attorney has provided an amended complaint to correct an error in the original version of these events.) At one meeting in December 2019, after Murphy contradicted his superiors regarding the number of KSTs crossing into the United States, he was removed from the meeting by now interim DHS Secretary Chad Wolf (as noted in his amended complaint at pages 5-8).

Brian Murphy’s Whistleblower complaint confirms what the public has seen so often: White House officials and political appointees in federal agencies willing to hide carefully investigated and proven facts in order to substitute lies more in keeping with White House policy goals.

DHS Secretary-designate Chad Wolf is supposed to testify before a House panel later this week. Let’s hope he gives truthful answers to all the questions raised in Brian Murphy’s complaint.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Susan’s article at the link.

Hey, 3 known “suspected” terrorists vs 3,000! What’s the big deal? They both contain the number “3.”

This is the type of demonstrable nonsense that the Supremes’ majority disingenuously accepts in letting the regime declare bogus “immigration emergencies” and stomp all over the legal and constitutional rights of asylum seekers! Real people die, get tortured, and have their lives destroyed because elitist judges have removed themselves from humanity and kowtow to a scofflaw, corrupt, immoral Executive. This is what a failing democracy and a complicit judiciary look like.

I appreciate Susan’s optimistic hope in the last paragraph. But, the chance “Wolfman,” an “illegal,” will tell Congress the truth under oath is zero.

All three branches of our failing Government have conspired to insure that his lies and illegal actions will have no meaningful consequences for him or any of his co-conspirators. Only the health, safety, and lives of his, Trump’s, Miller’s, Barr’s, Session’s, and “Cooch’s” victims are on the line.

In the meantime, refugees entitled to protection under U.S. and international law continue to be returned to dangerous and deadly conditions in the Northern Triangle without due process or indeed any process whatsoever. Indeed, with the help of disingenuous Federal Courts, the regime has effectively repealed U.S. protection laws without enacting a single piece of legislation!

One of many unfortunate “practical consequences” of the Article IIIs overall lack of critical review: In addition to having to fight the unethical and often frivolous litigation “strategies and gimmicks” of the regime and the DOJ, advocates, often serving pro bono or low bono, now bear the burden of preparing their own “Country Reports” to rebut the falsified, misleading, and highly politicized versions of country conditions presented in DOS “Country Reports.”

The latter used to be considered the “international gold standard” for determining country conditions in asylum and refugee adjudications (although true expert judges and adjudicators still viewed them critically). Now, they are little more than “political propaganda screeds” for a corrupt, White Nationalist, bigoted regime.

But, most Article IIIs have been intentionally or negligently “asleep at the switch,” still disingenuously “deferring” to these deeply defective and intentionally misleading, sometimes fictionalized, accounts. For example, almost any legitimate asylum expert would say that Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions’s largely fictionalized account of conditions for women in El Salvador, presented in Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 316 (AG 2018), bears little resemble to reality.

Of course, the political branches have authority to set policy — but only within Constitutional and legal limits. Clearly, that authority to direct the activities of civil servants does not include authority to ignore facts and create false narratives in support of overtly racist, religiously bigoted, or improperly politically punitive agendas. Any Federal Judge who looks the other way when such overtly invidious objectives and motives are at work is derelict in his or her duty.

Our democracy is in deep trouble. And, to get it fully functioning and finally achieve the promise of equal justice under law, we eventually will need a better qualified Article III Judiciary.

The sooner that process starts, the better. It will take years or even generations to reform the life-tenured judiciary and get better qualified women and men on the bench. Judges who actually reflect the diversity of America and are unswervingly committed to equal justice for all under our laws.

We need Federal Judges, at all levels from the Supremes to the Immigration Courts, who actually know and understand asylum and human rights laws and their human dimension. Judges who have the courage and integrity to stand up for the rights of all persons for due process, fundamental fairness, and to be treated with human dignity, free of the overt racist bias demonstrated by Trump, Miller, and others.

In the end, the rights of foreign nationals to be treated as “persons” under our law are all of our rights! The dehumanization and “Dred Scottification” of asylum seekers by the regime and the Federal Courts diminishes each of us, including those complicit “go along to get along” judges who fail to see their own humanity in the faces and lives of those they oppress and fail to protect.

For now, they are largely getting away with it. But, eventually, somewhere down the line, there will be a “judgement of history” for their inhumanity and dereliction of duty. Of that, I am certain!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-17-20

MORE DEADLY ☠️ MISTAKES: 6th Cir. Finds BIA Ignored Relevant Evidence In Trying To Deny Asylum To Russian Whistleblower — Skripkov v. Barr

Dan Kowalski reports from LexisNexis Immigration Community:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca6-on-asylum-russia-corruption-skripkov-v-barr#

CA6 on Asylum, Russia, Corruption: Skripkov v. Barr

Skripkov v. Barr

“Andrei Skripkov, a citizen of Russia, seeks review of a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) upholding an Immigration Judge’s (IJ’s) denial of his application for asylum and the withholding of removal. Skripkov asserted in his application that he was persecuted in his home country on account of his political opinion. He specifically contended that his anticorruption whistleblowing activities motivated Russian officials to persecute him. The IJ and the BIA, on the other hand, found that the officials were motivated solely by their pecuniary interest in furthering a corrupt scheme disrupted by Skripkov. In his petition for review, Skripkov argues that the BIA erred in disregarding evidence that he would be criminally prosecuted for his political opinion if he is returned to Russia. For the reasons set forth below, we GRANT Skripkov’s petition for review and REMAND the case to the BIA for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

[Hats off to Brenna D. Duncan!]

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When the objective is to reject, not protect, mistakes are inevitable. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Most folks whose lives are being chewed up and spit out by the “designed to be unjust” Immigration Court system don’t have the good fortune to be represented by Brenna D. Duncan or someone of her caliber.

Indeed, under the ongoing illegal travesty that now passes for “justice” in America, most legal asylum seekers are turned away at the border without any hearing or meaningful process at all.

Interestingly, Brenna D. Duncan, a rising superstar at the international commercial law firm of Perkins Coie appears to have practiced primarily in the area of commercial litigation. Yet, she clearly understands immigration and human rights law better than the Immigration Judge and the BIA Appellate Immigration Judges involved in this case.

That’s why actual experience representing immigrants and asylum seekers is such a critical qualification for good Immigration Judges at both the trial and appellate levels as well as being something that should be a factor in appointing future Article III Judges at all levels right up to and particularly including the Supremes. Years of one-sided prosecutorial or law enforcement experience is often no substitute for the “real deal” of experience understanding immigrants and asylum seekers from their perspective.

The current Immigration Court system is intentionally and fatally skewed against asylum seekers, immigrants, due process, and fundamental fairness. Until that changes, equal justice under law will continue to be a cruel, unachieved illusion in our American justice system.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-22-20

UNHINGED SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI) ON MEET THE PRESS TODAY SHOWS WHY THE GOP IS THOROUGHLY UN-AMERICAN — You Can’t Discuss Facts With A Disingenuous Idiot! — GOP Encourages Most Corrupt President In History To Solicit Foreign Interference With Our Elections!

https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/full-johnson-interview-gop-attacks-press-over-trump-s-ukraine-actions-70723653963

Check it out at NBC News. Johnson obviously thinks the American people are even more stupid and dishonest than he is. The corrupt GOP is bringing down our country. Johnson is a coward, afraid to speak truth about a fraudulent President and his anti-American regime! Johnson’s attack on the press was also dishonest and totally out of line.

Here’s more on the Johnson meltdown. https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-sen-ron-johnson-loses-it-on-meet-the-press-i-do-not-trust-the-fbi-or-cia

PWS

10-06-19

“DUH” OF THE DAY — THREE ARTICLES EXPLAIN HOW SLEAZY SYCOPHANT BILLY BARR PUT HIMSELF AT THE CENTER OF TRUMP’S CORRUPTION — It’s No Surprise To Those Of Us Who Have Watched Barr’s “Ethics Free Zone” @ DOJ — Why Are Article IIIs Allowing This Biased “Political Hack” To Trash Justice In The U.S. Immigration Courts?

https://apple.news/AbSuy-8PHRYa0vX1p8I-F5Q

Sonam Sheth writes at Business Insider:

‘Pure insanity’: Intelligence veterans are floored by Barr’s ‘off the books’ overtures to foreign officials about the Russia probe

Intelligence veterans were puzzled by reports that Attorney General William Barr personally urged foreign officials to cooperate with a Justice Department investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation. “This is unheard of,” one former senior Justice Department official who worked closely with the former special counsel Robert Mueller when he was FBI director, told Insider. The Washington Post reported that Barr had already made overtures to British intelligence officials about the

Read in Business Insider: https://apple.news/AbSuy-8PHRYa0vX1p8I-F5Q

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Harry Litman in the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/01/did-william-barr-break-any-rules-only-most-important-one/

Did William Barr break any rules? Only the most important one.

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By Harry Litman

Contributing columnist

October 1 at 11:35 AM

Multiple news agencies reported Monday that Attorney General William P. Barr has had extensive personal involvement in the Justice Department’s investigations into the origins of the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

That involvement — including trips abroad for personal meetings with foreign officials — is certainly “fairly unorthodox,” in the words of a former Justice Department official. Is it also inappropriate?

After all, part of an attorney general’s job is to liaise with foreign counterparts. It’s not unusual to have in-person meetings, especially at the beginning of an attorney general’s tenure, both to meet and greet and to discuss mutual priorities.

Moreover, Barr is the head of the Justice Department. No department business is beyond his concern. Unlike, say, the barriers that are supposed to stand between the White House and the Justice Department, there is no out-of-bounds area for the department’s political appointees, much less the attorney general.

Thus, during Barr’s first tenure as attorney general, he personally argued a case in the Supreme Court, a task normally reserved to the solicitor general and his or her assistants. No one took him to task for weeding in the solicitor general’s garden.

So what, if anything, might be worrisome about Barr’s conduct now?

Well, plenty. For starters, while attorneys general do meet with foreign officials to cement working relationships and even communicate shared general priorities, transatlantic trips to ask for help on an individual investigation are beyond rare. It would even be unusual for an attorney general to pick up the phone to call a counterpart about an individual case.

Barr’s personal globe-trotting mission necessarily communicates that this one matter — of all the ongoing business of the Justice Department — is an unsurpassed priority of the department.

Second and relatedly, Barr already has appointed a respected U.S. attorney, John Durham, to undertake the investigation. Many Justice Department investigations require cooperation with our most important foreign friends, and there are established channels of communication for Durham to work through if he needs help from intelligence agencies of other countries.

Third, the attorney general’s personal involvement compromises the whole idea of Durham’s independence. How is Durham supposed to ignore the bear riding piggyback on his shoulders?

That would be so even if the attorney general had no particular prejudice or bias with respect to the investigation. But the next problem, larger still, is that this attorney general brings strongly held preconceptions into an investigation that is supposed to be free of them.

Barr has repeatedly expressed suspicions of impropriety in the initiation of the Russia probe, including his inflammatory suggestion that the probe constituted “spying” on the Trump campaign.

It is hard not to conclude that Barr’s driving motivation is to turn up some nefarious aspect to the probe’s origins, backed by the imprimatur of a foreign government. And of course, nothing would please President Trump more.

Which brings us to the next big problem with Barr’s unusual campaign. Its animating idea, in fact obsession, is simply wacky. No one has ever shown any satisfactory basis for the various conspiracy theories that Trump defenders have trotted out to argue that the investigation into Russian meddling was rotten at the core.

Indeed, the whole enterprise of trying to discredit the probe is half-cocked. The revelations in the Mueller report of extensive efforts by the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election are beyond dispute and extraordinarily grave. It is fortunate that the FBI undertook the probe with the seriousness it merited.

Finally, the attorney general has not simply inserted himself into Durham’s probe. He has entered into a working partnership with Trump. Thus, we learned that the president’s recent call to the Australian prime minister to urge him to assist Barr apparently came at Barr’s urging. And again, that Barr asked Trump to contact other countries to ask them to introduce the attorney general and Durham to appropriate officials.

The president should not be within a million miles of this probe. Barr’s improper tag-team approach links the attorney general to Trump’s goal of smearing anyone involved in investigating him and can only further undermine public confidence in the department’s evenhandedness.

The overall rule that Barr has broken isn’t found in so many words in the Code of Federal Regulations or the Department of Justice Manual. But it’s the first rule for any attorney general: the rule of sound judgment and impartial apolitical administration of justice.

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Barr’s enabling of Trump’s corruption just got more dangerous

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By Greg Sargent

Opinion writer

October 1 at 10:42 AM

We are now learning extraordinary new details about the lengths to which William P. Barr is going in service of President Trump’s corrupt and all-consuming goal of making core truths about his 2016 election victory disappear.

But this isn’t a story that only looks backward. It also looks forward. And we need to ask whether these new efforts by Trump’s attorney general are aimed at the 2020 election as well.

Barr appears determined to discredit the special counsel investigation’s finding that Russia engaged in “sweeping and systematic” interference in our election on Trump’s behalf.

Which raises the question: What if Barr’s activities — whether by coincidence or design — end up chilling how intelligence officials respond to the next foreign effort to sabotage a U.S. presidential election on Trump’s behalf?

The Post has some major new reporting that documents Barr’s efforts to enlist foreign governments in his campaign to discredit the origins of Robert S. Mueller III’s probe. Barr has made overtures to British and Italian officials, and Trump himself pressed the Australian president to assist in undermining the investigation’s genesis.

[Harry Litman: Did William Barr break any rules? Only the most important one.]

Barr has already claimed “spying” on Trump’s campaign occurred, feeding Trump’s favorite conspiracy theory of a “deep state” plot to block him from getting elected. The goal now appears to be to use the government’s investigative machinery to create the impression that the real crime was not Russian interference, for which a whole bunch of Russians were indicted, but rather the investigation itself — perpetrated by U.S. law enforcement.Current and former officials are alarmed by Barr’s direct involvement in the investigation into the probe’s origins currently being run by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut. As one former official tells The Post, this is “fairly unorthodox” and undercuts any hopes that Durham will be permitted to settle this in a “professional, nonpartisan manner.”

Another worry about Barr’s involvement

In an interview with me, Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), raised another worrisome prospect.

“This is designed to validate a conspiracy theory — that Russia didn’t interfere, and that the whole Mueller probe was a ‘witch hunt,’” Malinowski, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told me. The goal, he said, is to paint the intelligence community and FBI as the “villains in that conspiracy theory.”

Malinowski argued that intelligence officials eyeing how to respond to foreign interference in 2020 might take cues from the aggressiveness of Barr’s ongoing investigation of the investigators.

“There’s a message to our intelligence community, which is, ‘Don’t go there,’” Malinowski told me. “They’re being investigated for doing their jobs the last time.”

What’s more, Malinowski pointed out, foreign intelligence officials and governments might take a similar message from Barr’s efforts to enlist them in his current internal review.

“Are you going to share intelligence with this administration next year if you pick up evidence of Russian interference?” Malinowski noted, referring to foreign officials, who will ask themselves: “How will such information be received by the Trump administration? Do you pass along something that is clearly unwanted?”

Making that point more salient, The Post reports that Barr has taken a “sustained interest” in a conspiracy theory holding that the European academic who originally alerted Trump adviser George Papadopoulos to dirt Russia gathered on Hillary Clinton — which led to the FBI probe — was actually a plant hoping to falsely entrap the Trump campaign.

And one source tells The Post that in his conversations with British officials, Barr “expressed a belief” that the investigation of Russian interference “stemmed from some corrupt origin.”

A second source denies that characterization. But it simply cannot be dismissed as a very real possibility.

No end to Barr’s enabling of Trump

After all, we already saw Barr publicly legitimize Trump’s corrupt attacks on law enforcement by validating the “spying” and “witch hunt” language. Barr has even appealed to us to take into account how victimized Trump felt by Mueller’s witch-hunting in evaluating Trump’s corrupt efforts to obstruct it.

What’s more, Barr’s initial summary of the Mueller report misled the country by dishonestly downplaying what it actually determined about Trump officials’ efforts to conspire and benefit from Russian interference, and by minimizing the findings on obstruction of justice.

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All this feeds into the ballooning Ukraine scandal as well. One key thing that Trump demanded of the Ukrainian president in the July 25 call is help validating a whackjob conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the 2016 email hacks. This, too, would magically make the truth about 2016 disappear — and in the call, Trump directed the Ukrainian president to work with Barr to make it true.

The Justice Department has denied any such Barr involvement. But here again, we already know that Barr’s Justice Department helped direct efforts to keep Congress from learning of the whistleblower complaint detailing that corrupt pressure on a foreign leader to interfere in the next U.S. election. Barr didn’t recuse himself from that, despite being personally named in the complaint.

Barr’s efforts in that regard are now being scrutinized by House Democrats as part of their impeachment inquiry. Which raises the question of whether these latest activities abroad will also come under House Democratic scrutiny.

Such efforts by Democrats, Malinowski suggested to me, would show that Democrats have the “back” of the intelligence community, so it isn’t dissuaded from investigating the next foreign attacks on our political system. After all, as Malinowski bluntly put it, this dissuasion appears in part to be Barr’s “goal.”

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Barr’s political bias and his gross failure to provide asylum applicants and other migrants with the “fair and impartial” quasi-judicial hearings guaranteed by our Constitution has become painfully obvious, just as it was under unqualified White Nationalist AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions. The conflicts of interest, bogus legal rulings, ethical violations, and anti-immigrant bias simply scream out.

Yet, complicit Article IIIs continue to mindlessly accept the skewed and systemically unfair results of this corrupt and politicized “court” system largely without critical examination. Why aren’t life tenured Federal Judges performing their Constitutional duty to protect our individual Due Process?

PWS

10-01-19

HOW CORRUPT? — Billy “The Smirking Sycophant” Barr Aiming To Overtake “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions & “John The Con” Mitchell As Most Lawless & Corrupt AG In My Lifetime! — Federal Courts Share Blame For Deterioration Of Ethical Standards! — Judicial Complicity Has Real Life Consequences!

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/26/opinion/trump-william-barr.html

Michelle Goldberg writes in the NY Times:

Just How Corrupt Is Bill Barr?

By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

SEPT. 26, 2019

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By now you have probably read the opening of the whistle-blower complaint filed by a member of the intelligence community accusing Donald Trump of manipulating American foreign policy for political gain. But the whistle-blower’s stark, straightforward account of stupefying treachery deserves to be repeated as often as possible.

“In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. government officials that the president of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,” the whistle-blower wrote. “This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the president’s main domestic political rivals. The president’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.”

. . . . The whistle-blower’s complaint was deemed credible and urgent by Michael Atkinson, Trump’s own intelligence community inspector general, but Bill Barr’s Justice Department suppressed it. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion saying that the complaint needn’t be turned over to Congress, as the whistle-blower statute instructs. When Atkinson made a criminal referral to the Justice Department, it reportedly didn’t even open an investigation. And all the time, Barr was named in the complaint that his office was covering up.

Under any conceivable ethical standard, Barr should have recused himself. But ethical standards, perhaps needless to say, mean nothing in this administration.

In the Ukraine scandal, evidence of comprehensive corruption goes far beyond Trump. Former prosecutors have said that Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, may have been part of a criminal conspiracy when he pressed Ukrainian officials to open an investigation into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Vice President Mike Pence is also tied to the shakedown of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, having met with him this month to talk about “corruption” and American financial aid. When this administration complains about Ukrainian “corruption,” it almost inevitably means a failure to corruptly pursue investigations that would bolster conspiracy theories benefiting Trump.

The whistle-blower wrote that White House officials moved a word-for-word transcript of Trump’s phone call with Zelensky from the computer system where such transcripts were typically kept into a separate system for the most highly classified information. “According to White House officials I spoke with, this was ‘not the first time’ under this administration that a presidential transcript was placed into this codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive — rather than national security sensitive — information,” the whistle-blower said.

According to Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University School of Law, any lawyers involved in hiding these transcripts might have done something illegal. “The rule is it is both unethical and a crime for a lawyer to participate in altering, destroying or concealing a document, and here the allegation is that the word-for-word transcript was moved from the place where people ordinarily would think to look for it, to a place where it would not likely be found,” said Gillers. “That’s concealing.”

Then there’s Barr’s personal involvement in the Ukraine plot. In the reconstruction of Trump’s call with Zelensky that was released by the White House, Trump repeatedly said that he wanted Ukraine’s government to work with Barr on investigating the Bidens. Barr’s office insists that the president hasn’t spoken to Barr about the subject, but given the attorney general’s record of flagrant dishonesty — including his attempts to mislead the public about the contents of the Mueller report — there’s no reason to believe him. Besides, said Representative Jamie Raskin, a former constitutional law professor who now sits on the House Judiciary Committee, “the effort to suppress the existence of the phone conversation itself is an obvious obstruction of justice.”

But Barr’s refusal to recuse creates a sort of legal cul-de-sac. It’s only the Justice Department, ultimately, that can prosecute potential federal crimes arising from this scandal. Barr’s ethical nihilism, his utter indifference to ordinary norms of professional behavior, means that he’s retaining the authority to stop investigations into crimes he may have participated in.

“The administration of justice is cornered because the ultimate executive authority for that government role includes the people whose behavior is suspect,” said Gillers.

That makes the impeachment proceedings in the House, where Barr will likely be called as a witness, the last defense against complete administration lawlessness. “Just as the president is not above the law, the attorney general is not above the law,” said Raskin. “The president’s betrayal of his oath of office and the Constitution is the primary offense here, and we need to stay focused on that, but the attorney general’s prostitution of the Department of Justice for the president’s political agenda has been necessary to the president’s schemes and he will face his own reckoning.”

I hope Raskin is right. But until that day comes, people who care about the rule of law in this country should be screaming for Barr’s recusal, even if he won’t listen. He is now wrapped up in one of the gravest scandals in American political history. Can America’s chief law enforcement officer really be allowed to decide whether to criminally investigate misdeeds he might have helped to commit or to conceal? The answer will tell us just how crooked the justice system under Trump has become.

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Another serious transgression: This shockingly biased and corrupt Trump political toady is literally running the U.S. Immigration Courts into the ground while neither Congress nor the Article IIIs have the guts to require that migrants receive the “fair and impartial” adjudications to which they are entitled under the Due Process Clause of our Constitution.

Sure, Billy Barr is “the pits!” But those in Congress and the Article IIIs who are “letting him get away with murder” are equally to blame. Bullies like Barr take advantage of the “go along to get along” cowardice of those charged with holding them accountable.

Another example of how Barr’s DOJ has become an “ethics free zone:” Yesterday, before Judge Dolly Gee in the Flores litigation Barr’s DOJ lawyer August Flentje presented a totally disingenuous position.

“How can you as officer of the court tell me that the regulations are not inconsistent with the settlement agreement?” the judge asked a Justice Department lawyer. “Just because you tell me it is night outside does not mean it is not day.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/us/migrant-children-flores-court.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

But in the end, even Judge Gee, no “shrinking violet,” merely expressed her displeasure and ruled against the DOJ.

Why weren’t Flentje and his supervisors, all the way up to Barr, referred to their respective state bars for ethical violations and knowingly trying to mislead the court by presenting a frivolous “defense?” Would private counsel’s dishonesty before the court have been treated as leniently? At one time DOJ lawyers were expected to have higher ethical standards than the minimum. Now they have become ethical scofflaws.

But, as long as Federal Courts are unwilling to hold Barr & company ethically accountable, the dishonesty and disrespect for the system will continue to grow. When the Article IIIs find themselves in the middle of a morass of frivolous litigation and outright lies presented by the DOJ, they will have only themselves to blame for the deterioration of civility and ethical standards.

Indeed, the Supremes’ own shameful performance in Barr v. East Side Sanctuary Covenant, where they allowed the Solicitor General to unethically “short circuit the system,” dissolved a proper stay issued by a U.S. District Judge, and allowed an unconstitutional, illegal, not to mention immoral, program of racially targeted elimination of asylum opportunities sends a strong signal that the Supreme themselves have become part of the “ethics free zone.” Trump and Barr and their sycophantic subordinates have taken notice.

Chief Justice John Roberts might disingenuously moan the loss of civility and the dysfunction in the Legislative and Executive Branches. But, fact is, his Court’s unwillingness to fulfill their oaths of office by enforcing the Constitution and standing up for the rule of law by reinforcing it against Trump’s arrogant overreach is a major part of the problem. He and his spineless Supremes’ majority have essentially left America defenseless against the tyranny and corruption of Trump, Barr, and company.

And, as asylum applicants are abused, human lives are ruined, the Immigration Courts dissolve, and Trump’s betrayal of our nation unfolds each day, we see that there are “real life consequences” to the Supremes’ complicity.

09-28-19

CNN: WHITE HOUSE CONFIRMS KEY PART OF WHISTLEBLOWER’S “COVER UP” CHARGE – Yeah, Just Like the WB Said, WH Aides Tried To Hide The Improper Conversation With Ukrainian President In The Classified Docs System!

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/27/politics/donald-trump-ukraine-transcript-white-house/index.html

Pamela Brown reports for CNN:

Washington (CNN)The White House acknowledged Friday that administration officials directed a now-infamous Ukraine call transcript be filed in a highly classified system, confirming allegations contained in a whistleblower complaint that have roiled Washington.

In a statement provided to CNN, a senior White House official said the move to place the transcript in the system came at the direction of National Security Council attorneys.

“NSC lawyers directed that the classified document be handled appropriately,” the senior White House official said.

White House officials say the transcript was already classified so it did nothing wrong by moving it to another system.

Four days that pitched America into an impeachment nightmare

The admission lends further credibility to the whistleblower complaint description of how the July 25 transcript with the Ukrainian president, among others, were kept out of wider circulation by using a system for highly sensitive documents.

But the statement did not explain whether anyone else in the White House was part of the decision to put the the Ukraine transcript in the more restrictive system.

Nor did it delve into an accusation in the complaint that other phone call transcripts were handled in a similar fashion.

The suggestion that officials sought to conceal the content of the phone call — during which Trump suggested to his Ukrainian counterpart that he order an investigation into Joe Biden and his son — has led to accusations of a cover-up. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son.

The transcript of the Ukraine phone call — which the White House released publicly on Wednesday — did not contain information like intelligence secrets or military plans that might ordinarily merit moving it to a highly classified system.

Officials familiar with the matter say Trump and others at the White House sought to restrict access to phone calls with foreign leaders after embarrassing leaks early in the administration.

The White House’s statement on Friday indicates an effort to paint the practice as sanctioned by lawyers and overseen by the National Security Council, rather than a politically motivated attempt to keep Trump’s conversations from becoming public.

Trump himself lashed out against the whistleblower on Thursday for revealing information about his phone call to relevant authorities.

“I want to know who’s the person, who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information? Because that’s close to a spy,” Trump said during a private event in New York. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”

CNN’s Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.

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

Once again, the crack political analysis team at immigrationcourtside.com was out in front on this one by observing yesterday that there was little, if any, reason for the GOP to be attempting to sow doubts about then “second hand nature” of the Whistleblower’s factual allegations, since their credibility had already been largely confirmed by the White House’s own releases. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/09/26/betrayal-of-america-what-on-earth-are-trumps-sycophantic-gop-defenders-talking-about-the-evidence-of-wrongdoing-released-by-the-white-house-confirms-the-whistleblower/.

This is further proof of what I said yesterday. The facts here are actually much clearer than they are in any “normal” investigation of wrongdoing. Trump acted inappropriately, broke the law, endangered national security, lied about it, and the GOP is trying to help him “cover-up” (hard to do, since the damning facts are public) or “obfuscate” to maintain their minority political power. In other words, the “Trump Doctrine” of corruption, unbridled greed, and selfishness, driven to a large degree by racism, taken to its logical conclusion.

Speaking of being “”out front,” it finally dawned on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that Attorney General Billy Barr has “gone rogue.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-whistleblower-impeachment/2019/09/27/55b99276-e0a8-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html.

That’s hardly “news” to faithful readers of Courtside! https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/09/26/doj-is-a-national-disgrace-under-trump-the-race-to-the-bottom-started-under-white-nationalist-zealot-gonzo-apocalypto-becomes-a-death-spiral-under-shamelessly-corrupt-trump-toady/.

To me, it doesn‘t look like both the Trump Presidency and our nation can survive in the long run. Our next election will be about what we really want as a people: a Constitutional Republic committed to humane values and the rule of law; or a corrupt, selfish, cowardly racist charlatan who seeks to seeks to replace that republic with a “Cult of Personality.”

PWS

09-27-19

BETRAYAL OF AMERICA: What, On Earth, Are Trump’s Sycophantic GOP Defenders Talking About? — The Evidence Of Wrongdoing, Released By the WHITE HOUSE, Confirms The Whistleblower’s Complaint!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Exclusive for Immigrationcourtside.com

Sept. 26, 2109

Congressional Republicans continue to spout utter nonsense about the Whistleblower’s admitted lack of “first hand evidence” of Trump’s inappropriate conversations with the Ukrainian President that were both criminal and a threat to our national security.

But, the White House released a “transcript” that clearly shows that Trump improperly asked the Ukraine for a “favor” — to investigate political rival Joe Biden and his family in return for improved relations. Not the least among the latter was release of the Congressionally appropriated defense funding that Trump had put on hold and then lied about his reasons. His initial claim that funds were withheld out of a concern about “corruption” (this, from the most corrupt President in US history who recently closed bogus immigration “Safe Third Country Agreements” with the notoriously unsafe and blatantly corrupt Governments of the Northern Triangle) was later contradicted by an equally incredible claim that he was trying to get European Governments to pay their imaginary “fair share.”

The same transcript also shows Trump “pressing” the Ukrainian President about a fabricated right wing conspiracy theory relating to the non-existent Democratic Party “server” as well as making completely inappropriate and unethical references to Attorney General Barr and Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in connection with investigating the Biden family. (In fact, Hunter Biden was cleared of wrongdoing by a previous Ukrainian investigation, and there have never been any credible allegations of wrongdoing by Joe Biden).

In other words, the heart of the Whistleblower complaint was confirmed by Trump’s own evidence of his own misconduct.

So, in this context, the lack of first-hand information is totally irrelevant. Trump himself has corroborated the Whistleblower’s major concerns.

That GOP sycophants keep raising irrevancies as bogus ”defenses” merely confirms what everyone outside ”Trumpworld” already knows: There is no defense for the President’s illegal and unethical conduct and the GOP’s continued support of this sleazy charlatan.

PWS

09-26-19

“I’M HENRY VIII, I AM, HENRY VIII, I AM, I AM” – Unhinged Trump Confuses Himself With The State, Threatens “Whistleblower” Sources With Treason – Will “Drawing & Quartering” Be Next? — Audience “Stunned” By Latest Evidence Of Unfitness for Office!

I’m Henry VIII

Herman’s Hermits

I’m Henry the eighth I am
Henry the eighth I am, I am
I got married to the widow next door
She’s been married seven times before

And every one was an Henry (Henry)
She wouldn’t have a Willy or a Sam (no Sam)
I’m her eighth old man, I’m Henry
Henry the eighth I am

Second verse same as the first

I’m Henry the eighth I am
Henry the eighth I am, I am
I got married to the widow next door
She’s been married seven times before

And every one was an Henry (Henry)
She wouldn’t have a Willy or a Sam (no Sam)
I’m her eighth old man, I’m Henry
Henry the eighth I am

I’m Henry the eighth I am
Henry the eighth I am, I am
I got…

Source: LyricFind

Maggie Haberman
White House Correspondent
NY Times

Henry VIII
Former King, England
Executed Those Who Wouldn’t Swear Personal Allegiance

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/us/politics/trump-whistle-blower-spy.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Maggie Haberman reports for the NY Times:

By Maggie Haberman

President Trump told a crowd of staff from the United States Mission to the United Nations on Thursday morning that he wants to know who provided information to a whistle-blowerabout his phone call with the president of Ukraine, saying that whoever did so was “close to a spy” and that “in the old days,” spies were dealt with differently.

The remark stunned people in the audience, according to a person briefed on what took place, who had notes of what the president said. Mr. Trump made the statement several minutes into his remarks before the group of about 50 mission employees and their families at the event intended to honor the mission. At the outset, he condemned the former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s role in Ukraine at a time when his son Hunter Biden was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

Mr. Trump repeatedly referred to the whistle-blower and condemned the news media reporting on the complaint as “crooked.” He then said the whistle-blower never heard the call in question.

“I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistle-blower the information because that’s close to a spy,” Mr. Trump said. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right? We used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”

The complaint, which was made public on Thursday morning, said the whistle-blower obtained information about the call from multiple United States officials.

“Over the past four months, more than half a dozen U.S. officials have informed me of various facts related to this effort,” the complaint stated. It described concerns that the president was using his phone call with the Ukrainian president for personal gain to fulfill a political vendetta.

Full Document: The Whistle-Blower Complaint

The complaint filed by an intelligence officer about President Trump’s interactions with the leader of Ukraine.

Some in the crowd laughed, the person briefed on what took place said. The event was closed to reporters, and during his remarks, the president called the news media “scum” in addition to labeling them crooked.

The ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Knight Craft, was in the room.

A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An intelligence whistle-blower law protects intelligence officials from reprisal — like losing their security clearance or being demoted or fired — as long as they follow a certain process for bringing allegations of wrongdoing to the attention of oversight authorities.

The whistle-blower followed that process — filing a complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community. The Trump Justice Department later proclaimed that the information the whistle-blower put forward did not qualify under the intelligence whistle-blower law, raising the question of whether the official was still protected from reprisal. The acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has said he would not permit the official to suffer retaliation, but the inspector general has pointed out that this personal assurance is not a legal shield.

Moreover, whistle-blower laws are aimed at channeling complaints to certain officials with oversight responsibilities — Congress, supervisors or inspectors general — and do not protect officials who provide information to other people without authorization. For that reason, these laws almost certainly do not protect the officials who told the whistle-blower about the call in the first place.

Mr. Trump spoke as the director of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was testifying before Congress that the president had never asked for the identity of the whistle-blower, whose complaint was initially withheld from Congress by the Trump administration.

At a fund-raiser at Cipriani 42nd Street in Manhattan immediately after the United Nations event, Mr. Trump walked out before the crowd of several hundred donors clutching paper in one of his hands and said, “This is the call.” He then said it was “the greatest thing” to happen to the Republican Party because they had raised so much money off the controversy.

In a Twitter post later in the day, Mr. Trump referred again to the whistle-blower having “second hand information” and called the inquiry “Another Witch Hunt!”

Editors’ Picks

Charlie Savage contributed reporting.

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

Those of us who have been saying for some time now that Trump’s conduct makes him a “clear and present danger” to the continued existence of our nation have been proved right again. Not, of course, that it means that Trump, with lots of help from the GOP and complicit courts, won’t succeed in destroying American democracy. Democracy is “on the ropes” while Trump is still in office.

What would Thomas More, former Lord High Chancellor of England, say about Trump’s rhetoric? More was famously executed in 1535 for refusing to recognize Henry VIII as the head of the Church in England.

In a time where Trump, Barr, McAleenan, Mulvaney, Pence, Graham, McConnell, Pompeo, the majority of the Supremes, and many others illustrate the complete absence of integrity and ethics in Government, the “Whistleblower” reminds us that there still are are some persons of integrity left in our Government. Sadly, they appear to be an “endangered species.”

Voters have a chance to save our nation by throwing Trump and his GOP scoundrels out of office, at every level, in 2020. Whether they are “up to the task” or not remains to be seen.

PWS

09-26-19

DOJ IS A NATIONAL DISGRACE UNDER TRUMP: The Race To The Bottom, Started Under White Nationalist Zealot “Gonzo Apocalypto,” Becomes A Death Spiral Under Shamelessly Corrupt Trump Toady Billy Barr! — “Malicious Incompetence,” White Nationalism, & Anti-Democracy Are Institutionalized @ DOJ, Enabled By Feckless Article III Courts Pretending To Look The Other Way Rather Than Standing Up To Tyranny & Assaults On Our Constitution & The Rule Of Law By The Trump Administration!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/william-barr-trump-and-ukraine-the-doj-hit-a-new-low-to-bury-the-whistleblower-complaint.html

Mark Joseph Stern writes in Slate:

As more details emerge about Donald Trump’s whistleblower scandal, it’s clear the man standing in the way of any investigation into the president’s actions, once again, is Attorney General William Barr. The House’s now formal impeachment inquiry may be the last remaining tool that Barr cannot tamper with.

Barr has already successfully stymied one investigation of presidential misconduct: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. The attorney general released a misleading “summary” of the report before its publication, one that rankled Mueller himself. He also devised dubious legal standards to find insufficient evidence that Trump obstructed justice. Barr then prefaced the report’s release with an appalling press conference that painted Trump as the real victim. In congressional testimony, he trashed his own Justice Department to further defend Trump. Later, Barr took pains to hide the full Mueller report from Congress, deploying a baseless legal theory to conceal key redactions from lawmakers.

With each new development in the Ukraine scandal, we are seeing the Trump administration run the Barr playbook all over again. But there is an important difference. When Barr took the reins at DOJ, the Mueller investigation was near its end: Barr could not interfere with the probe itself; he could only run damage control once it concluded. This time, Barr has been in control from the start. And his Justice Department has blocked every avenue through which Trump might be held accountable.

Notes on the telephone conversation between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky suggest Barr is implicated in Trump’s dirty work. (The memo is not a transcript, but rather a compilation of “notes and recollections” from officials listening in.) Trump mentions his attorney general six times as a resource for Zelensky. The president urges Zelensky to investigate his potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden—referring to unsubstantiated allegations that, as vice president, Biden used his position to quash a Ukrainian investigation into his son. “[W]hatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great,” Trump adds. He also told Zelensky that he would have his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani “give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it.”

Barr has been in control from the start.

The Justice Department released a statement Wednesday claiming that neither Trump nor Giuliani have spoken with Barr about pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son. But there is ample evidence that Barr played a substantial role in protecting Trump from a whistleblower complaint over the call. House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler has already insisted that Barr recuse himself “until we get to the bottom of this matter.” House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff also sent a letter to Barr Wednesday saying the DOJ’s involvement “raises the specter that the Department has participated in a dangerous cover-up to protect the President.”

Before Barr’s possible involvement in the Ukraine affair had even been made public, the DOJ stepped in to mute the whistleblower complaint over this call. Under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, or ICWPA, whistleblowers in a federal intelligence agency must send their complaint to Michael Atkinson, Intelligence Community inspector general. The law tasks Atkinson with deciding whether the complaint is credible and of “urgent concern.” If it is, Atkinson must send it to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. ICWPA states that Maguire, in turn, “shall … forward” the complaint to congressional intelligence committees within seven days.

This process worked as intended—until the DOJ stepped in. Atkinson received the whistleblower complaint and found it to be a credible allegation of “urgent concern.” So he sent it to Maguire. Instead of sending it to Congress, as he was legally obligated to do, Maguire asked the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, which makes law that binds the executive branch. The OLC declared that he could not pass it on in an opinion later released to the public in modified form, holding that the whistleblower complaint did not pertain to a matter of “urgent concern.”

This opinion is bizarre, because the law does not allow Maguire—and, by extension, the OLC—to overrule Atkinson’s assessment of a whistleblower complaint. It tasks Atkinson with deciding whether the complaint meets ICWPA’s standards, not Maguire. OLC claimed a right, on Maguire’s behalf, to independently determine whether the complaint constitutes an “urgent concern.” No such right exists.

The OLC then followed a different law, which requires executive branch officials to notify the attorney general if they discover potential “violations of Federal criminal law involving Government officers.” So instead of going to Congress, the whistleblower’s complaint went to the DOJ and, apparently, to Barr himself. The DOJ then assessed whether Trump may have committed a campaign finance violation, since it is a federal crime for any person to “solicit” any “thing of value” from a foreign national in connection with an election.

On Wednesday, the DOJ released a statement announcing that the agency had determined that “that there was no campaign finance violation and that no further action was warranted.” It reached this finding by deciding that dirt on a political opponent is not a “thing of value”—disagreeing with Robert Mueller, who believed opposition research could qualify as a “thing of value.” The DOJ’s contrary conclusion theory of campaign finance law is far-fetched if not outright incorrect, ignoring the immense value that Trump and Giuliani evidently saw in a Biden investigation.

We don’t know for sure that Barr’s fingerprints are on this decision. But the OLC purported to follow a statute that required the whistleblower complaint to be “expeditiously reported to the Attorney General.” Thus, Barr was, at a minimum, presumably aware of the criminal referral. Moreover, there is no indication that Barr recused himself from the whistleblower matter, even though Trump invoked him on the call at the center of the affair.

In short, Barr’s Justice Department first manipulated ICWPA to prevent Maguire from sending the whistleblower complaint to Congress. It then manipulated campaign finance law to determine that Trump had committed no crime and refused to open an investigation. And the Attorney General himself, who appears to be implicated in the whistleblower’s complaint, almost certainly played a role in quashing any probe into the president.

Faced with this stonewalling at DOJ, House Democrats have no choice but to pursue impeachment if they want to get to the bottom of this scandal and punish Trump accordingly. Barr and his allies at the Justice Department certainly aren’t going to do it. To the contrary, the Justice Department seems eager to shield the president from any consequences. Under Barr, the DOJ has defended Trump’s refusal to comply with congressional subpoenas into his personal finances. It has even intervened on behalf of his former campaign chairman, convicted felon Paul Manafort, lobbying for him to receive special privileges behind bars. The Justice Department has all but announced that it will aide Trump’s allies and fight his enemies.

Barr will do whatever he can insulate Trump from federal law. We can certainly expect his DOJ to fight the House’s impeachment inquiry by attempting to stop executive officials from testifying, as it has before. But there is one important power that Barr lacks: He cannot stop Congress from concluding that the president has committed high crimes and misdemeanors.

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

Stern doesn’t even get into the equally serious problem of Barr’s “maliciously incompetent” mis-management, his intentional misconstruction of immigration law, and his promotion of biased, xenophobic, anti-asylum applicant decision making in the failing U.S. Immigration Courts which, despite their clearly unconstitutional structure, continue to operate as an appendage of DHS enforcement within the DOJ, as the Federal Appellate Courts disgracefully (and spinelessly) pretend to look the other way. History won’t be so kind to the “enablers” on the Federal Bench.

PWS

09-26-19

Due Process Forever!

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BETRAYAL OF AMERICA: What, On Earth, Are Trump’s Sycophantic GOP Defenders Talking About? — The Evidence Of Wrongdoing, Released By the WHITE HOUSE, Confirms The Whistleblower’s Complaint!

Exclusive for Immigrationcourtside.com

Sept. 26, 2109

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