Tag: doj

‘Colossal public interest’: Mainstream media, conservative groups fire back at DOJ rationale for withholding audiotapes of President Biden’s special counsel interview

As a fight to obtain audiotapes of Joe Biden’s five-hour interview with special counsel Robert Hur carries on in court, both a coalition of mainstream media organizations and conservative groups agree that the 46th president should not be able to hide behind executive privilege and worries of “deepfakes” to avoid disclosure in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case.

The Heritage Foundation, Judicial Watch, and the media coalition, composed of CNN, ABC, The Associated Press, CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, NBC, Reuters, and more, separately filed documents Friday opposing the motion for summary judgment that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s DOJ filed in late May.

The Heritage Foundation, calling this a “simple case despite the efforts of the Government to complicate it,” offered counterpoints to DOJ assertions that the public’s access to the transcripts of Hur’s Biden interview is more than sufficient in light of foreseeable “privacy harms.”

“While the transcript discloses spoken words (the ‘lexical’ portion of the interview), the audio recording is the only source of the ‘non-lexical’ portion that depicts the tone, tenor, cadence, pauses, hesitations, and other demeanor evidence of the interview,” wrote attorney Samuel E. Dewey. “As any junior trial lawyer can attest, a witness’s live recording speaks volumes more than a cold transcript of the same testimony.”

“Special Counsel Hur testified to Congress that he relied upon this ‘demeanor’ evidence to reach his controversial decision to recommend against criminal charges,” the filing continued.

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Biden’s DOJ refuses to prosecute Merrick Garland for contempt of Congress

The Department of Justice on Friday said that it would not prosecute Attorney General Merrick Garland after the House voted to hold him in contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with a congressional subpoena seeking the audio of Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur in the classified documents investigation. 

The DOJ stated in a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson that it has a “longstanding” position of not prosecuting executive branch officials who withhold information from Congress that is subject to executive privilege.  

According to CNN, the letter from the department’s top congressional liaison, said, “Consistent with this longstanding position and uniform practice, the Department has determined that the responses by Attorney General Garland to the subpoenas issued by the Committees did not constitute a crime, and accordingly the Department will not bring the congressional contempt citation before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the Attorney General.” 

The decision comes after an internal DOJ memo was revealed, stating that “Consistent with this longstanding position, no US Attorney has pursued criminal contempt charges against an Executive Branch official asserting the President’s claim of executive privilege.”

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Attorney General Garland Targets “Conspiracy Theories” After Launching “Election Threats Task Force” with FBI, Sparking Censorship Concerns

Some might see US Attorney General Merrick Garland getting quite involved in campaigning ahead of the November election – albeit indirectly so, as a public servant whose primary concern is supposedly how to keep Department of Justice (DoJ) staff “safe.”

And, in the process, he brings up “conspiracy theorists” branding them as undermining the judicial process in the US – because they dare question the validity of a particular judicial process that aimed at former President Trump.

In an opinion piece published by the Washington Post, Garland used one instance that saw a man convicted for threatening a local FBI office to draw blanket and dramatic conclusions that DoJ staff have never operated in a more dangerous environment, where “threats of violence have become routine.”

It all circles back to the election, and Garland makes little effort to present himself as neutral. Other than “conspiracy theories,” his definition of a threat are calls to defund the department that was responsible for going after the former president.

Ironically, while the tone of his op-ed and the topics and examples he chooses to demonstrate his own bias, Garland goes after those who claim that DoJ is politicized with the goal of influencing the election.

The attorney general goes on to quote “media reports” – he doesn’t say which, but one can assume those following the same political line – which are essentially (not his words) hyping up their audiences to expect more “threats.”

“Media reports indicate there is an ongoing effort to ramp up these attacks against the Justice Department, its work and its employees,” is how Garland put it.

And he pledged that, “we will not be intimidated” by these by-and-large nebulous “threats,” with the rhetoric at that point in the article ramped up to refer to this as, “attacks.”

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Biden DOJ Goes After Doctor For Revealing Ideological Hospital

The Biden administration has once again gone after a whistleblower. This time the Department of Justice has used its powers to shut up a doctor who exposed Texas Children’s Hospital for secretly performing transgender surgeries and minors.

“Last year, Haim anonymously leaked evidence of the child sex-change procedures to conservative journalist Christopher Rufo. The documents revealed that Texas Children’s Hospital had continued running its transgender program, despite announcing that the program had been discontinued in accordance with Governor Greg Abbott’s 2022 directive equating such medical interventions with child abuse.

The Houston-based hospital was ultimately forced to stop its trans-medical practices after a state law took effect in September 2023, prohibiting drug and surgical “gender-affirming” interventions for minors,” wrote The National Review.

“‘After understanding how far this corruption went, I had no other option but to take the story public and fight back,’ Haim previously told National Review. ‘If I don’t do this now, I’m going to pass on this conflict to my children. That’s something I will not tolerate.’”

That was too much for Merrick Garland and Joe Biden, though.

The City Journal reports that the Department of Justice has now made good on its threats to go after the whistleblower.

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DoJ accuses far-right Epoch Times of being money-laundering operation

The far-right Epoch Times media company was at the center of a fraudulent money-laundering and cryptocurrency scam involving tens of millions of dollars, the justice department said on Monday as it announced the indictment of its chief financial officer Bill Guan.

The 61-year-old executive “conspired with others to participate in a sprawling, transnational scheme to launder at least approximately $67m of illegally obtained funds”, according to a statement from the US attorney’s office of the southern district of New York.

Proceeds went to the company, it said, and for the personal enrichment of individuals including Guan, who faces up to 70 years in prison on one count of conspiring to commit money laundering and two counts of bank fraud.

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Merrick Garland and Chris Wray Proudly Announce Government Censorship Apparatus to Target “Cyber-Enabled Campaigns” and Censor Americans in Run-up to 2024 Election

Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and FBI Director Christopher Wray announced on Monday their latest plan to censor Americans under the guise of combatting “election threats.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland who is directly tied to the historic persecution of opposition candidate Donald J. Trump led the discussion today in Washington DC on election threats.

He should have mentioned his name first when he lectured on current election threats.

Merrick Garland today mentioned the DOJ and FBI’s work to protect elections from national security threats. Garland added, “It includes our National Security Division’s and the FBI’s work to protect our elections from national security threats, including malign foreign influence and cyber-enabled campaigns.”

Talk about gaslighting! These are three of the most controversial and corrupt officials in Washington DC today lecturing on clean elections.

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House Takes Steps to Hold Attorney General in Contempt

Two top lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on May 13 took steps to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, recommended the lower chamber hold Mr. Garland, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, in contempt for failing to comply with congressional subpoenas.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), meanwhile, scheduled a hearing this week to advance a resolution to hold Mr. Garland in contempt.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) did not respond to a request for comment.

The actions come after the DOJ, Mr. Garland’s department, declined to provide the House with audio tapes of President Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur, despite subpoenas being issued for the tapes. The department also refused to hand over recordings of President Biden’s ghostwriter speaking with Mr. Hur, who was appointed by Mr. Garland.

Mr. Hur said in his report that President Biden intentionally kept and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency ended. President Biden repeatedly consulted the documents after leaving office for a book, one of the “strong motivations” to not comply with rules governing retention of materials marked classified, according to the report.

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“Stunning On Multiple Levels”: DOJ Admits To Evidence Tampering In Trump Classified Docs Case

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team admitted on Friday that key evidence in Trump’s classified documents case was altered or manipulated – leaving two different chronologies; one that was digitally scanned vs. what’s in the actual boxes.

Smith also misled the court, after originally telling U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that the boxes remained “in their original, intact form as seized,” when in a footnote they conceded that they removed classified documents and left placeholder sheets, which prosecutors acknowledged has created an “inconsistent” record – in which some of the documents are no longer in the same order as they appear in digital scans made in the fall of 2022.

“The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court,” the footnote reads, according to Just the News.

The finding comes after Cannon ordered a review into whether the FBI may have seized legally privileged records in response to a request from Trump co-defendant Walt Nauta.

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Rescheduling Marijuana Does Not Address Today’s Central Cannabis Issue

The Justice Department yesterday confirmed that the Drug Enforcement Administration  (DEA) plans to move marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), a list of completely prohibited drugs, to Schedule III, which includes prescription medications such as ketamine, Tylenol with codeine, and anabolic steroids. The Associated Press notes that the change, which is based on an August 2023 recommendation by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that resulted from a review President Joe Biden ordered in October 2022, “would not legalize marijuana outright for recreational use.”

That is by no means the only thing rescheduling marijuana will not do. Biden wants credit for “marijuana reform,” which he hopes will help motivate young voters whose turnout could be crucial to his reelection. The announcement of the DEA’s decision seems designed to maximize its electoral impact. But voters should not be fooled: Although moving marijuana to Schedule III will facilitate medical research and provide a financial boost to the cannabis industry, it will leave federal pot prohibition essentially untouched.

Rescheduling marijuana will not resolve the conflict between the CSA and the laws of the 38 states that recognize cannabis as a medicine, 24 of which also allow recreational use. State-licensed marijuana businesses will remain criminal enterprises under federal law, exposing them to the risk of prosecution and forfeiture. While an annually renewed spending rider protects medical marijuana suppliers from those risks, prosecutorial discretion is the only thing that protects businesses serving the recreational market.

Even if they have state licenses, marijuana suppliers will be in the same legal position as anyone who sells a Schedule III drug without federal permission. Unauthorized distribution is punishable by up to 10 years in prison for a first offense and up to 20 years for subsequent offenses. That is less severe than the current federal penalties for growing or distributing marijuana, which include five-year, 10-year, and 20-year mandatory minimum sentences, depending on the number of plants or amount of marijuana. But distributing cannabis, with or without state permission, will remain a felony.

That reality suggests that banks will remain leery of providing financial services to state-licensed marijuana suppliers, which entails a risk of potentially devastating criminal, civil, and regulatory penalties. The dearth of financial services has forced many cannabis suppliers to rely heavily on cash, which is cumbersome and exposes them to a heightened risk of robbery. It also makes investment in business expansion difficult.

Although federal arrests for simple marijuana possession are rare, cannabis consumers likewise will still be committing crimes, even if they live in states that have legalized marijuana. Under 21 USC 844, possessing a controlled substance without a prescription is a misdemeanor punishable by a minimum $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail. Moving marijuana to Schedule III will not change that law, which only Congress can do. Nor did President Joe Biden’s mass pardons for people convicted of simple marijuana possession under that statute, which apply only retrospectively, “decriminalize the use of cannabis,” as he promised to do during his 2020 campaign.

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Federal Agency Had ‘Pallets’ Of Documents Sent To Mar-A-Lago One Year Before DOJ Raid

A federal agency worked with the Trump transition team to send two pallets of “document boxes” relating to former President Donald Trump’s presidency to his Mar-a-Lago home — one year before Special Counsel Jack Smith then raided the residence to look for classified documents.

Smith indicted Trump in June of 2023 for allegedly mishandling classified documents, one year after armed federal agents raided Mar-a-Lago in search of such documents.

The General Services Administration (GSA) was in talks with Trump’s team both during and after his term regarding “pallets” of items from the president’s tenure, emails show. The GSA informed Trump’s transition team that there were six pallets that needed to be transferred from Virginia to Florida.

Of the six pallets, two were designated to be sent to Mar-a-Lago and four to a West Palm Beach storage unit, according to emails. The two pallets to be delivered to Mar-a-Lago from an Arlington, Virginia facility contained “document boxes,” according to an email previewing the shipping charges.

“I understand that we are ready to ship,” read an email sent Aug. 26, 2021 by Kathy Geisler, the director of the Office of Portfolio Management and Real Estate’s Program Execution Division, that included Trump aide Beau Harrison as a recipient. “I know that originally we had 3 pallets going to the storage unit — that is now 4 pallets going to the storage unit. 2 Pallets will go to Mar-a-Lago.”

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