Tag: doj

The Government Says Money Isn’t Property—So It Can Take Yours

As a lawyer who sues the government, you get used to the different kinds of arguments that government lawyers use to justify abuses of individual rights—sweeping claims of government power, bad-faith procedural obstacles, and more.  

This was a new one: The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) argued that confiscating $50,000 from a small business did not infringe the business’ right to private property because money is not property.  

“Money is not necessarily ‘property’ for constitutional purposes,” the government’s brief declared—putting the very idea of property in square quotes. Reading at my desk, I practically fell out of my chair. 

The DOJ gave three rationales for the argument, all packed into a doorstopper of a footnote: (1) the government creates money, so you can’t own it; (2) the government can tax your money, so you don’t own it; and (3) the Constitution allows the government to spend money for the “general welfare.”

If a libertarian was asked to write a satire of a government lawyer’s brief, this is what they might come up with. But here it was, in black and white. 

Whose money, specifically, was the government saying wasn’t property? That of Chuck Saine, the owner of C.S. Lawn & Landscaping, a small landscaping business outside Annapolis, Maryland, which he has operated for over 40 years. 

Saine became a client of the Institute for Justice (I.J.), a public interest law firm, when the federal government sought to impose over $50,000 in liability on his business through a “trial” held deep inside the bowls of a federal administrative agency. At said trial, both the prosecutor and the judge were employed by the same federal agency. 

I.J. sued, arguing that before the government can impose that kind of liability, it has to provide a real trial before a real judge and jury. The specifics of what the government claims Saine did wrong (in short: arcane labor law) are beside the point. If the government wants to confiscate over $50,000 from your business, you must have the chance to argue your defense to an impartial judge and jury—not an agency bureaucrat. 

Now, the DOJ argued that Saine has no right to a real judge and jury because the government was only trying to take his money, not his property. They claimed that fiat currency is a legal fiction that the government can as easily destroy as create. Lest anyone miss the implicit connection to the history of the gold standard, DOJ’s footnote prominently cited the Legal Tender Cases—where the Supreme Court upheld laws forcing people to accept paper currency, rather than gold and silver, as payment for debts. 

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Judge Dismisses Charges Against Hero Texas Doctor Who Blew the Whistle on Sex Change Program at Texas Children’s Hospital After Trump DOJ Intervenes

The Trump Administration filed a motion to dismiss charges against Dr. Ethan Haim, the hero surgeon who blew the whistle on a sex change program at the Texas Children’s Hospital.

A few hours later, a federal judge dismissed the charges with prejudice.

As previously reported, Biden’s corrupt Justice Department indicted a Texas surgeon who blew the whistle on a sex-change program at the Texas Children’s Hospital.

In May 2023, Dr. Eithan Haim leaked the sex change documents to investigative reporter Christopher Rufo. Dr. Haim was careful not to disclose any patient information but the Biden DOJ indicted him on four felony counts related to HIPAA violations.

One day after Dr. Haim exposed the Texas Children’s Hospital, the Texas state legislature voted to ban transgender medical treatment and procedures on minors.

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Trump Makes an Epic Move Against the Department of Justice

In an epic move, President Donald Trump has turned the tables on the Department of Justice (DOJ) for its abuses after Trump left office in 2021. In an executive order signed Monday evening, Trump has directed his own government to investigate the agency for its misconduct in the aftermath of the January 6th events. 

Through this new executive order, Trump aims to address the weaponization of the federal government under the Biden-Harris administration to target political opponents and suppress constitutionally protected activities.

“The American people have witnessed the previous administration engage in a systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents, weaponizing the legal force of numerous Federal law enforcement agencies and the Intelligence Community against those perceived political opponents in the form of investigations, prosecutions, civil enforcement actions, and other related actions,” the executive order reads. 

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Three Senior DOJ Officials Caught Leaking Non-Public Investigative Details to Media Days Before Election, Inspector General Report Reveals

In a bombshell revelation, three senior officials at Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) were found to have violated internal policies by leaking sensitive, non-public investigative details to the media just days before an election, according to a report released by the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) on Monday.

The OIG launched its investigation after receiving complaints alleging politically motivated disclosures.

The leaked information, pertaining to ongoing DOJ matters, was shared with select reporters, resulting in two news articles containing confidential details.

The Inspector General’s investigative summary paints a damning picture of the senior officials’ actions. The report reads:

Findings of Misconduct by Three then Senior DOJ Officials for Violating the Department’s Confidentiality and Media Contacts Policy; and by one of these Senior Officials for Violating the Department’s Social Media Policy

The Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) initiated an investigation after receiving allegations that actions by a litigating division were politically motivated and violated DOJ policies regarding disclosing information about ongoing matters.

The OIG investigation found that three then Senior DOJ Officials violated DOJ’s Confidentiality and Media Contacts Policy by leaking to select reporters, days before an election, non-public DOJ investigative information regarding ongoing DOJ investigative matters, resulting in the publication of two news articles that included the non-public DOJ investigative information. The OIG investigation also found that one of these three then Senior DOJ Officials violated the Confidentiality and Media Contacts Policy and DOJ’s Social Media Policy by reposting through a DOJ social media account links to the news articles.

The three Senior DOJ Officials were not employed by DOJ when the OIG contacted them for interviews and either declined or did not respond to the OIG’s interview requests. The OIG has the authority to compel testimony from current DOJ employees upon informing them that their statements will not be used to incriminate them in a criminal proceeding. The OIG does not have the authority to compel or subpoena testimony from former DOJ employees.

The OIG has completed its investigation and provided its report to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General and, because the report contained misconduct findings against attorneys, provided its report to the Professional Misconduct Review Unit for appropriate action.

The OIG also provided its report to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which has exclusive jurisdiction to investigate alleged Hatch Act violations, for its consideration of whether the conduct of these officials violated the Hatch Act.

This isn’t the first time the DOJ has been embroiled in allegations of leaks.

According to the New York Post, in September, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) accused the DOJ and FBI of leaking information about a previously closed investigation into then-President-elect Donald Trump.

The investigation, related to alleged Egyptian funding of Trump’s 2016 campaign, was closed in 2020 due to insufficient evidence but resurfaced in an August 2024 Washington Post report, citing leaked court documents and confidential sources.

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From Woke to Law: Realigning the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to Correct Decades of Judicial Overreach

The Justice Department under the next Trump administration has a duty to remove protected classes for groups that have exploited civil rights laws to garner extra privileges and rights, over and above the rights of American citizens. Of note include illegal aliens and LGBT persons. Neither of these groups should have ever enjoyed the privileges of heightened scrutiny analysis within the purview of Title VII or Civil Rights law generally. These laws were never intended for such persons, however, over years they have been misapplied and misinterpreted, resulting in very real harms to society. In fact, heightened scrutiny analysis has no basis whatsoever in the text of the Constitution itself and can be rightly deemed anathema with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, though that is a separate topic worthy of its own discussion.

For decades, America’s civil rights jurisprudence has clouded and distorted the Constitutions’ original meaning and purpose. Activist judges, under the pretext of “judicial review,” have perverted the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment and other laws and constitutional provisions in service to a liberal ideology, now recognizably termed as “woke.” New standards of review were manifested into existence, such as “intermediate scrutiny,” which is used to adjudicate cases of alleged sex or gender-based discrimination. None of these developments have a relationship, directly or indirectly, to the text or original intent of the Constitution itself.

Instead, they have been weaponized in many cases against businesses, schools, and legacy American citizens, creating hostile work environments that actively prioritize non-Americans while at the same time discriminating against men and native-born people in many cases. The result has been to establish and legitimize a new form of institutionalized racism, directed primarily at whites – who themselves increasingly are a numerical minority in many states. All of this has been made in service to an ideology born out of the civil rights movement that is oriented around a fundamentally Marxist view of history. This ideology perceives all historically disenfranchised and “wronged” minorities as needing legal recourse, in the form of extra-constitutional remedies that ultimately seek to establish absolute equality – now commonly described as “equity” – in real world outcomes.

This is in sharp contrast with the far more limited goal of legal equality enumerated under the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Whereas the former is ordered towards achieving equal outcomes, the latter establishes a baseline of generally applicable standards like fairness and justice for all parties regardless of background that courts must adhere to.

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Biden’s DOJ Blocks MAGA Grandmother from Attending Trump’s Inauguration After She Walked Inside the US Capitol with a USA Flag on Jan. 6 – Says It Would Be Traumatizing to Capitol Police

Cindy Young, a grandmother from New Hampshire was arrested by the Joe Biden DOJ for walking inside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 with a USA flag.
According to the arresting report Young was brought into custody without incident.
Boston.com reported:

Young is shown entering the Capitol through the Senate Wing doors at around 2:22 p.m., according to officials.

“After entering, Young traveled through varying areas of the Capitol. Young came into possession of a Trump 2020 and an American flag,” according to court documents, Boston 25 News reported.

Chris Wray’s FBI spent days investigating this ‘dangerous’ grandma before her arrest.

Now, Cindy wants to attend the inauguration of President Donald Trump in January.

But toxic and lawless anti-Trump US Attorney Matthew Graves won’t allow her to attend.

Her presence might traumatize the police officers who saw her walking with an American flag through the US Capitol!

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Vindictive: Merrick Garland DOJ Continues Reign of Error: Feds Arrest J6er Who Served ENTIRE SENTENCE

Military veteran and MAGA African-American radio broadcaster Darrell Neely – was re-arrested on November 4, 2024. Reportedly, the Merrick Garland DOJ has told January 6 prosecutors to continue with business as usual and prosecute Trump supporters with no change.

But the Garland DOJ is clearly engaged in an angry, vindictive campaign against January 6 Defendants, “big mad” that all their lawfare smears of Donald Trump failed. Instead, Friday’s hearing sailed through and Judge Bates easily and quickly approved Darrell’s release with the able help of public defender Sandra Roland.

Today, December 14, Darrell is being released (again) from the D.C. Gulag, the jail in Washington, D.C. We did not want to report on this earlier because the DOJ kept the allegations of a probation violation under seal. Observers didn’t know what the charges might be except that his public defender said only that they were “technical” and to plan for him to be back in North Carolina shortly.

So we now have confirmation that there were only trivial and insignificant “technical” allegations about his probation. There were no surprises and no big deal. This, too, is a pattern many are seeing with the bitter clingers at the Biden DOJ. While Federal judges usually do not like having their time wasted, prosecutors are “violating” the probation of January 6 defendants on extremely minor issues that would normally be resolved at the probation officer level.

The only clues we had are that Darrell has been unable to pay restitution of $939.93. Like many others, such as John Mellis, even those with impeccable pre-January 6 work credentials have been unable to rent apartments or get jobs with the stigma of January 6 and/or just any criminal record.

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FBI had 26 informants at Jan. 6 Capitol riots — and most were involved, bombshell DOJ report confirms

The FBI had at least 26 confidential informants on the ground in Washington, DC, during the Jan. 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol — most of whom engaged in illegal activity during the chaos, the Justice Department’s watchdog confirmed in a bombshell report. 

Leadership at the bureau had long been adamant that it did not have sources who “orchestrated” the riot. Questions about whether the FBI had informants involved in the riots were met with “conspiracy theory” labels by many mainstream media outlets.

“If you’re asking if the violence at the Capitol was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources or agents, the answer is no!” outgoing FBI director Christopher Wray told lawmakers back in July. Wray had long refused to divulge exactly how many informants were present that day. 

But the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General found that of the FBI’s confidential sources on the ground, four entered the Capitol in the midst of the riot and 13 went into a restricted area. Only nine were not found to have engaged in illegal activity, according to a long-awaited report released Thursday.

Critically, that report also shot down unsubstantiated speculation that the bureau had agents stoking some of the mayhem that day, 

“We found no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6,” the report said.

Only three of its 26 informants present had been instructed to observe potential domestic terrorist suspects on the day of the riot, the DOJ watchdog found. The rest of the 23 appear to have gone to the Capitol of their own accord.

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Dem Rep. From Colorado Claims FBI and DOJ Stonewalling in Investigation of First Trump Assassination Attempt

Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, a Democrat, recently told National Public Radio that the FBI and the DOJ are stonewalling congress as they attempt to investigate the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, PA.

One of the frustrating aspects of this crime is that the public still knows so little about the shooter and how he was able to get so close to Trump with so many obvious red flags. There are also still many lingering questions about motive.

Surprisingly, Crow claims that the Secret Service has been very forthcoming so far.

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Lawyers Slam DOJ’s “Insane” Online Gag Order Against Texas Doctor Who Exposed Controversial Practices on Children

The Biden-Harris administration seems determined to do a little more damage to free speech while on the way out and one example is the Department of Justice (DOJ) trying to impose a gag order on Dr. Eithan Haim.

Perhaps it’s the haste of it all but a filing to support the request for the gag order cites a number of X posts that Haim should be prevented from reposting, the inclusion of which has variously been described by their authors as “absolutely insane,” “unbelievable,” etc. move by the DOJ.

This new filing comes in the case United States v. Haim, where the doctor – a Texas Children’s Hospital whistleblower, who revealed some controversial transgender medical practices – is sued for alleged felony violation of HIPAA by exposing sensitive information.

We obtained a copy of the filing for you here.

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