Tag: doj

DOJ Filing on Forced Reset Triggers Contradicts Pledges and Complicates Midterms

“@TheJusticeDept  just filed an anti-gun statement of interest in Rare Breed Triggers’ lawsuit against @HoffmanTactical,” Gun Owners of  America posted on X Monday. “It says @ATFHQ  has a “strong interest… in limiting the sale and distribution of FRTs” or forced reset triggers.”

Read the full, anti-gun filing where @TheJusticeDept reveals its unconstitutional plans to hamstring ownership of forced reset triggers here,” GOA added, posting a copy of the “Statement of Interest of the United States of America” filed Monday in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.

That makes fair the question “Why?” since it’s not in the interests of the millions of gun owners who voted for a Trump administration based on promises he repeatedly made to roaring and adoring crowds:

“Right from the beginning, for four incredible years it was my honor to be the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House, by far. Now I stand before you with a very simple promise: Your Second Amendment will always be safe with me as your president when I’m back in the Oval Office,” Trump promised to resulting exuberance. “No one will lay a finger on your firearms. It’s not going to happen…”

Inarguably the administration has been “better” on the Second Amendment than any in our lifetimes, as exemplified by positive actions like filing briefs against bans on so-called “assault weapons” and standard capacity magazines, repealing “zero tolerance” of minor FFL errors, reviewing rules including “engaged in business” restrictions, supporting challenges to Hawaii’s restrictive carry laws, investigating “pattern or practice” by the Los Angeles County Sheriff for “slow walking” concealed carry permits, working on rights restoration and working to defund grants and foreign aid for gun control advocacy groups.

But it then turns around and in a seemingly bipolar move does things like backing NFA registration of untaxed firearms (to the exploitative delight of anti-gun groups).

Every infringement also contradicts the  promise made by AG Pam Bondi in her April 8 “all hands” memo from last year, where she pledged:

“For too long, the Second Amendment, which establishes the fundamental individual right of Americans to keep and bear arms, has been treated as a second-class right. No more. It is the policy of this Department of Justice to use its full might to protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.”

The purpose of that memorandum was to introduce the Second Amendment Task Force – an idea that seemed to have great political value at the time, until it became apparent that no gun owner representation meant everything would be decided by careerists with political stakes in the game. One wonders how many infringements would be advanced if groups like GOA or Firearms Policy Coalition had advisory seats at the table to help caution against missteps before they are made. You don’t have to contradict yourself and backtrack too often before people begin to suspect you’re insincere and will only tell voters what they want to hear long enough to secure their votes.

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Trump admin refers Minnesota case to DOJ over transgender athletes in girls’ sports

The Trump administration on Monday moved toward stripping federal funding from Minnesota by referring its investigation into alleged Title IX violations involving transgender athletes competing in girls’ and women’s sports to the Department of Justice for enforcement.

The civil rights offices at the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services said the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota State High School League have refused to comply with Title IX requirements by “allowing men to compete in women’s sports and occupy women’s intimate facilities.”

“Despite repeated opportunities to comply with Title IX, Minnesota has chosen defiance — continuing to jeopardize the safety of women and girls, deny them fair competition, and erode their right to equal access in educational programs and activities,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement.

McMahon also linked the referral to broader criticism of state leadership. “As Minnesota reels from a massive fraud scandal exposing Gov. Tim Walz’s dereliction of duty, today’s referral to DOJ underscores the state’s ongoing failure to safeguard its citizens and uphold the rule of law,” she said.

A joint federal investigation concluded in September that both the state education department and the high school sports league violated Title IX’s ban on sex discrimination by permitting males to compete in multiple female sports programs and use female-only locker rooms and facilities. Investigators offered Minnesota a proposed resolution agreement that would have allowed the state to voluntarily resolve the findings.

The Education Department said Minnesota indicated in December that it would neither accept the agreement nor negotiate its terms. Since then, federal officials say the state has taken no action to address the violations.

“Minnesota is violating Title IX, and we will not look the other way,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said. “When states allow males to compete in girls’ sports, they deny young women and girls the protections the law guarantees.”

The referral follows a February executive order signed by President Donald Trump directing federal agencies to enforce Title IX protections based on biological sex. The order authorizes agencies to review and, if necessary, withhold federal funding from schools and programs found to be out of compliance.

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Federal judge dismisses Justice Department lawsuit seeking Oregon’s voter rolls

A federal judge in Oregon dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking Oregon’s unredacted voter rolls on Monday in another setback to wide-ranging efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to get detailed voter data from states.

In a hearing, U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai said he would dismiss the suit and issue a final written opinion in the coming days. The updated docket for the case showed that Oregon’s move to dismiss the case was granted.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield welcomed the move.

“The court dismissed this case because the federal government never met the legal standard to get these records in the first place,” he said in an emailed statement. “Oregonians deserve to know that voting laws can’t be used as a backdoor to grab their personal information.”

The Justice Department declined to comment.

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Trump Rages As Jack Smith Accidentally Exposed The Partisan Scam Behind The Jan 6 Probe

Jack Smith’s testimony before Congress did more than expose weaknesses in his own case against President Trump. It also laid bare just how partisan the entire January 6th investigation had become—and how willing Democrats were to elevate sensational claims they knew could never survive real scrutiny.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan zeroed in on one of the January 6th Committee’s most infamous moments: the prime-time hearing on June 28, 2022, built almost entirely around the committee’s star witness, Cassidy Hutchinson. 

Jordan reminded Smith that Hutchinson was “their star witness” in what he described as a “staged and choreographed hearing” produced by a former ABC News president.

She was the only witness that night, and her testimony delivered a Hollywood-ready storyline.

Among Hutchinson’s claims was the outlandish assertion that President Trump “lunged across the back seat, grabbed the steering wheel, tried to drive the car to the Capitol.”

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A Stuttering Jack Smith Says He Can’t Remember Who Swore Him In as Special Counsel

Former special counsel Jack Smith appeared for a testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday as GOP lawmakers probed his efforts to interfere with President Trump’s 2024 election.

Merrick Garland, US Attorney General under Biden, appointed Jack Smith to investigate Trump in November 2022, just one day after Trump announced a 2024 White House bid.

In June 2023, Smith indicted Trump on 37 federal counts in Miami for lawfully storing presidential records at his Mar-a-Lago estate, which was protected by Secret Service agents.

In a separate case in Washington DC, Jack Smith indicted Trump on four counts: Conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

During Thursday’s hearing, Jack Smith said he could not remember who swore him in as special counsel.

It is required by law to be sworn in and take an oath of office.

GOP Rep. Lance Gooden grilled Jack Smith about this and suggested he was an illegitimate prosecutor.

In November 2022, Jack Smith was supposedly sworn in as special counsel.

However, 11 months later, Merrick Garland curiously administered a second oath.

Jack Smith repeatedly claimed he ‘couldn’t recall’ or ‘couldn’t remember’ executing an oath of office.

At one point, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan interjected, asking Jack Smith which oath of office counted.

Jack Smith did not give Chairman Jordan a straight answer.

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Mexico’s president says it was ‘sovereign decision’ to send cartel members to US

Mexico sent 37 cartel members to the United States at the request of the U.S. Justice Department, with President Claudia Sheinbaum saying Wednesday that it was a “sovereign decision” by her government.

Sheinbaum responded to criticism from analysts and opponents who said that the transfers on Tuesday were the result of mounting pressure from Washington. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to take military action on cartels.

Sheinbaum said that although the transfers were made at the request of the U.S. government, the decision was taken by the National Security Council after analyzing what was “convenient for Mexico” and in terms of its “national security.”

“Mexico is put first above all else, even if they ask for whatever they have to ask for. It is a sovereign decision,” she said at her regular morning news briefing.

Sheinbaum, who has been praised for her level-headed management of relations with Trump, has been forced to walk a fine line between making concessions to the Trump administration and projecting strength both domestically and internationally.

Observers say that the Mexican government has used the transfers as a sort of pressure valve to offset demands by Trump and show authorities are cracking down on criminal groups. Tension has only mounted since the U.S. carried out a military operation in Venezuela to capture then President Nicolás Maduro to face charges in the United States in an extraordinary use of force that set leaders across Latin America on edge.

Those sent to the U.S. on Tuesday were alleged members of the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel, known by its Spanish acronym CJNG, and the Sinaloa Cartel, which Washington has designated as terrorist organizations, and a number of other groups. It’s the third such transfer of capos over the past year. Mexico’s government said it has sent 92 people in total to the U.S. in total.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday said that the transfer was a “landmark achievement in the Trump administration’s mission to destroy the cartels.”

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Minnesota leaders subpoenaed in US criminal probe over opposition to immigration crackdown

The US Justice Department (DOJ) on Jan 20 subpoenaed the offices of Minnesota’s governor and attorney-general, and mayors of Minneapolis and St Paul, as it weighed whether their public opposition to US President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement surge in the Twin Cities amounts to a crime.

One of the jury subpoenas, shared with the media by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, orders his office’s custodian of records to produce documents since the beginning of 2025 related to “cooperation or lack of cooperation with federal immigration authorities”.

The federal grand jury subpoenas were served on six offices of state and local Democrats, according to a Justice Department official, including those of Governor Tim Walz and Attorney-General Keith Ellison.

“Whether it is a public official, whether it is a law enforcement officer, no one is above the law in this state or in this country, and people will be held accountable,” US Attorney-General Pam Bondi said in a Fox News interview after arriving in Minnesota on Jan 16.

“Our men and women in law enforcement deserve to be safe, and that is what we’re going to do in Minnesota,” Ms Bondi added, without explicitly addressing the newly issued subpoenas.

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‘No longer in my hands’: How Hill Republicans stopped caring about DOJ releasing the Epstein files

One month after the congressionally mandated deadline to release all its files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the Justice Department has made only a fraction of the files public — and it remains silent on its plans to fully comply with the law.

Also keeping quiet about the DOJ delays are congressional Republicans, almost all of whom voted in November to release the records after spending months heeding President Donald Trump’s opposition to the move.

Some of them are openly admitting it’s no longer a priority.

“I don’t give a rip about Epstein,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said last week when she was asked to take stock of the month since the Dec. 19 deadline.

“Like, there’s so many other things we need to be working on,” she added. “I’ve done what I had to do for Epstein. Talk to somebody else about that. It’s no longer in my hands.”

Boebert was one of four House Republicans, alongside Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who joined with Democrats to force a House floor vote on the Epstein legislation when leadership resisted moving it.

The White House lobbied these lawmakers heavily to take their names off the discharge petition to compel the bill’s consideration, with administration officials at one point summoning Boebert to the Situation Room for a final plea.

Now Washington’s attention has since shifted to other political firestorms, from Trump’s military action in Venezuela to the shooting of a U.S. citizen by an ICE agent in Minnesota, and congressional Republicans are eager to move on — underscoring the extent to which the GOP remains wary of crossing swords with the president.

The public falling out between Greene and Trump was largely over Greene’s support for releasing the Epstein files — Trump called her a “traitor” — and ultimately culminated in Greene’s resignation from the House earlier this month. Trump vetoed a bill that would have supported a water infrastructure project in Boebert’s district, and administration officials privately warned Mace that her defiance would likely to cost her the president’s endorsement in the South Carolina governor’s race.

Mace has vowed on social media to “keep fighting” for justice for Epstein’s victims but has not otherwise continued the drumbeat against the Justice Department.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who has worked with Democrats on a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation into the Epstein case, said in a recent interview she’s now more more focused on holding Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress for not honoring the panel’s subpoena to testify about Epstein.

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DOJ Now Investigating Disgraced Don Lemon and Radical Anti-ICE Mob for Potential Criminal Violations Following Minneapolis Church Disruption

A full-blown assault on Christian worship unfolded Sunday morning in Minnesota as a radical anti-ICE mob stormed a church service, shut down prayer, and harassed parishioners while disgraced former CNN host Don Lemon live-streamed the chaos.

The mob descended on the sanctuary because the church’s pastor reportedly also serves as a field director with ICE.

Lemon telegraphed his stunt the day before, boasting on Instagram that he was headed to Minnesota to “report on ICE” and urging followers to tune in to his live broadcast.

On Sunday, cameras rolled as agitators shouted down the pastor, disrupted prayer, and scattered congregants.

“This is the beginning of what’s going to happen here,” Lemon said on his stream as the service was derailed. Moments later, he admitted the obvious: “They’ve stopped the service—a lot of people have left.”

This wasn’t reporting. It was participation.

Far-left activist Nekima Levy Armstrong publicly praised the disruption on social media, thanking a roster of agitators and media allies—including Lemon, while declaring “judgment” had come to the “House of God.” The post reads like a victory lap over silencing Christian worship.

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DOJ Launches a CRIMINAL Investigation into Renee Good’s Widow for Her Alleged Role in ICE Self-Defense Shooting: Report

The widow of Renee Good is now reportedly in legal trouble following her actions in this month’s ICE self-defense shooting in Minneapolis.

NBC News reported on Saturday that the Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into Becca Good for allegedly impeding an ICE agent in the moments before her wife’s death.

The probe will focus on Becca’s ties to far-left activist groups and her actions leading up to her wife’s fatal shooting.

Becca Good’s lawyer released a statement claiming that he had no indication his client was the subject of a criminal investigation.

NBC News reported:

Federal officials are investigating the partner of Renee Nicole Good to determine whether she may have impeded a federal officer moments before he shot and killed Good in Minneapolis, according to two people familiar with the investigation who spoke to NBC News.

The federal investigation into the shooting by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross is focusing more on Becca Good, including what officials said were her possible ties to activist groups, and less on Ross’ actions when he fired into Renee Good’s vehicle during an immigration operation last week, the people said.

Antonio Romanucci, Becca Good’s lawyer, said in a statement Saturday that “there has been no contact from the FBI or federal officials indicating Becca Good is the subject of an investigation.”

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