Tag: doj

Biden DOJ Indicts Journalist for Tucker Carlson Leaks

A Florida journalist who accessed and made public unaired video footage of an interview that former Fox News host Tucker Carlson conducted with the rapper Ye was arrested this week and hit with more than a dozen federal charges stemming in part from the disclosure, raising immediate concerns from press freedom advocates.

Timothy Burke, a Tampa-based media consultant and former Daily Beast staffer, obtained and disseminated clips of the 2022 Ye interview — during which the rapper formerly known as Kanye West made antisemitic remarks that were edited out of the final version — as well as behind-the-scenes footage of Carlson, who left Fox last year.

The 26-page indictment against Burke, revealed on Thursday, accuses him of “utilizing compromised credentials to gain unauthorized access to protected computers” and “scouring those protected computers for electronic items and information,” among other alleged crimes.

Though the indictment doesn’t explicitly mention Fox or Carlson, the Tampa Bay Times reported that it says Burke “accessed a video stream of an interview featuring a show host for a ‘multinational media company based in New York City’ on Oct. 6, 2022 — the same day Carlson’s interview with West aired.”

Burke and his legal team have denied any wrongdoing and rejected claims that Fox was “hacked,” maintaining that he accessed the video footage using information “publicly posted to the internet.”

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Justice Department Researcher Says ‘We May Need Better Tests’ For Marijuana Impairment, Questioning ‘Per Se’ THC Limits For Driving

A Justice Department research says states may need to “get away from that idea” that marijuana impairment can be tested based on the concentration of THC in a person’s system.

Frances Scott, a physical scientist at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences under DOJ, discussed the challenges of cannabis impairment testing in an episode of the Justice Today podcast that was posted late last month.

Scott questioned the efficacy of setting “per se” THC limits for driving that some states have enacted, making it so a person can be charged with driving while impaired based on the concentration of cannabis components in their system. Ultimately, there may not be a way to assess impairment from THC like we do for alcohol, she said.

One complication, Scott said, is that “if you have chronic users versus infrequent users, they have very different concentrations correlated to different effects.”

“So the same effect level, if you will, will be correlated with a very different concentration of THC in the blood of a chronic user versus an infrequent user,” she said.

That issue was also examined in a recent federally funded study that identified two different methods of more accurately testing for recent THC use that accounts for the fact that metabolites of the cannabinoid can stay present in a person’s system for weeks or months after consumption.

“The problem is we’ve funded this research that pretty conclusively shows that the THC concentration in the blood is not particularly well-correlated with impairment for driving,” Scott said. “One of the outstanding questions is trying to figure out, is there a good proxy, a good metric, that we can use?”

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Republicans ask why 9 boxes of Biden records were omitted in Special Counsel report

Department of Justice (DOJ) Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents omitted nine boxes of potentially classified records, according to Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin).

The senators made the existence of the records public after the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) responded to their oversight queries. NARA reportedly confirming that, at DOJ’s urging, it retrieved the 9 boxes out of concern for the sensitivity of their contents.

NARA further acknowledged to the senators that the FBI had reviewed the contents of the boxes. But it is unclear if NARA or the FBI shared their findings with Hur.   

Grassley and Johnson are pressing Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Hur on this “significant factual omission.”

Specifically, the senators are asking for a description of the boxes’ contents and an explanation of what the agencies did with them.  “…[W]e publicly revealed last year that NARA had retrieved nine boxes of Biden records from the Boston office of Patrick Moore, one of Biden’s personal counsels,” the senators wrote.

“Oddly, Special Counsel Hur’s report did not mention NARA’s retrieval of the nine boxes from Mr. Moore’s office… [I]t is unclear if Special Counsel Hur had any awareness of or reviewed the information contained in these nine boxes.” “DOJ, FBI, and the Special Counsel’s office owe Congress and the American people a complete explanation regarding this apparent omission in Special Counsel Hur’s report, a detailed description of the contents of the nine boxes, and what was done with them,” the senators concluded. 

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Democrat Cori Bush under DOJ investigation for misuse of security funds

The Justice Department is investigating Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) for possible misuse of funds surrounding her personal security.

Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman released the news Tuesday, citing six sources familiar with the investigation. Thus far, the DOJ has subpoenaed the House Sergeant at Arms for records about the funds being spent, Sherman reported.

The allegations date back to 2021 when Bush was accused of hypocrisy after making defund the police demands while spending nearly $70,000 on private security in the wake of the Jan. 6 attacks.

“You would rather me die? Is that what you want to see? You want to see me die? You know, because that could be the alternative,” she responded.

CNN reported a ruling from the Federal Elections Commission in March 2021, which said that campaign funds could be spent on such services. There were approximately two dozen lawmakers who spent more than $1,000 on personal security after the attacks on the Capitol.

But Bush spent more than any other lawmaker, the FEC reports cited by CBS News showed. She was also accused of hiring her then-boyfriend, now husband, to provide the security, raising ethical concerns.

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Jeffrey Epstein’s Brother Says DOJ Suicide Report Is “Bull*hit” – Demands New Investigation

Mark Epstein, the brother of elite sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, says his brother was murdered, and the Justice Department (DOJ) report concluding suicide is “bullshit.”

“I would like a full investigation of his death. If you look at all the evidence, including the autopsy, the photographs of his body, the bullshit DOJ report that is filled with inaccuracies, you would never come up with the conclusion that this was a suicide – but based on what,” he told The Guardian.

Epstein thinks another prisoner could have gotten into his brother’s cell and killed him on August 10, 2019, and he says he’s been told that not all the cell doors were locked that night.

Most notably, a camera pointing at Epstein’s door was not recording the night of his death. According to the DOJ, however, cellmates who might have had a view of Epstein’s door said they didn’t see anyone go in.

“The question is, who had him killed?” Mark Epstein asked.

In 2020, ’60 Minutes’ revealed several details in Epstein’s death which raised more questions than they answered – and suggested that the financier did not kill himself. In the interview, a forensic pathologist who observed the four-hour autopsy on behalf of Mark Epstein concluded that the evidence pointed to murder more than suicide – particularly due to unusual fractures present in Epstein’s neck that are not consistent with suicide by hanging.

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Justice Department Issues More Marijuana Pardon Certificates A Month After Biden’s Expanded Clemency Move

The Justice Department has already started issuing pardon certificates for certain marijuana offenses covered under an expanded proclamation that President Joe Biden issued last month.

Chris Goldstein, a cannabis activist who was arrested over possession of marijuana on federal land while protesting for reform in 2014, shared the certification he received from DOJ’s Office of the Pardon Attorney on Tuesday.

Goldstein was among those whose cannabis cases were omitted from Biden’s original mass pardon in October 2022, which only covered statutes related to the general offense of simple cannabis possession under federal or Washington, D.C. law. The president’s newly expanded pardon proclamation issued last month specifically added possession on federal property as an offense eligible for relief.

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Republican Majority Rewarded FBI-DOJ for Breaking the Law – Approved FISA Process Through Next Election Cycle

Former Defense Department Chief of Staff Kash Patel joined Maria Bartiromo this morning along with Attorney Alan Dershowitz to discuss political hitman Jack Smith and his political maneuvers to take down Donald Trump.

During their conversation Kash Patel reminded the FOX News audience that Republicans just voted to reauthorize the FISA Program through the 2024 election that was used to spy on President Trump by the FBI in 2016 and beyond.

It is well known today that the FBI knowingly and willfully lied to the FISA Court to spy on the Trump Campaign in 2016 and later on his administration and even family members.

Kash Patel: Yeah, it’s great to be with you, Maria. Look, the biggest concern I have going forward is the politicization and weaponization and creation of a two tier system of justice as a result. Back when Devin Nunes and I ran the Russia gate investigation and exposed the FISA corruption, we recommended a slew of fixes. So it never happened again. Unfortunately, Congress chose to allow 702 FISA to basically be reauthorized.

What does that mean? What is 702? It’s fancy for foreign intelligence surveillance. It means me, as a former national security prosecutor and intelligence operative, would go overseas and manhunt terrorists. That’s what it’s for. But the FISA court, in April of 2022, publicized an opinion that said the FBI used it illegally 275,000 times domestically against Americans, 16 different occasions against those affiliated with, January 6, 19,000 times domestically against donors to a congressional campaign, and, wait for it, 24,000 separate times against Americans and groups in and around January 6.

That FISA process has been turned on its head, redirected inwards. And anyone who says, oh, that’s just a Republican conspiracy speak, that’s the FISA court that rescinded Rod Rosenstein’s illegal surveillance of Donald Trump twice based on our investigation. And now they do it again, and they prove the FBI and DOJ have weaponized justice. And the Republican leadership in Congress allowed it to be reauthorized, essentially through the next election cycle…

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Blaze journalist who covered Jan 6 to be charged by Biden DOJ

Journalist for The Blaze Steve Baker has been notified by the FBI that he is going to be charged by Biden’s Department of Justice for his work covering the protest and riot at the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. He was told to surrender to authorities on Tuesday and has not yet been made aware of the charges.

He said that he entered the Capitol on that day, “like about 60 other journalists, but “Did no damage or parading or violence.”

Info Wars journalist Owen Shroyer just served a nearly 2 month sentence for having been on the Capitol grounds on that day. Other journalists have also been arrested and tried. 

Far-left journalist John Sullivan, who sold his footage of J6 to mainstream media outlets, was also charged after covering the event. He was charged with Obstruction of an Official Proceeding; Civil Disorder; Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building or Grounds; Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds; Disorderly Conduct in a Capitol Building; Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in a Capitol Building; and Aiding and Abetting, per the Department of Justice.

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Ahead Of Oral Arguments, Safe Drug Consumption Site Lawyers Call Out DOJ’s ‘Irreconcilable’ Legal Positions

With oral arguments set for Monday in a federal court case over a proposed Philadelphia safe drug consumption site, counsel for the would-be facility sent a letter to the judge in the case on Thursday calling out the Department of Justice (DOJ) for taking apparently contradictory legal positions.

In the Philadelphia safe consumption site case itself, the letter says, DOJ has argued that the harm reduction aims of Safehouse, the nonprofit attempting to open facility where people can use illicit substances in a medically supervised environment, are “socio-political” rather than religious.

In a separate case involving an Episcopal church in Oregon, however, DOJ recently filed a statement of interest arguing that “distribution of free meals to persons in need is ‘religious exercise’” that would be infringed by a local zoning ordinance.

Writing to Judge Gerald McHugh of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, DLA Piper attorney Ilana Eisenstein said the government can’t have it both ways.

DOJ’s arguments in the Oregon case, Eisenstein wrote, “demonstrate that Safehouse has adequately pled a substantial burden on its religious exercise.”

In other words, the letter asserts that if the government views handing out free meals to people in need as protected on religious grounds, it can’t simultaneously deny that harm reduction services could deserve similar protections.

“DOJ’s positions in that case are irreconcilable with its arguments here,” the letter says, “and confirm that this Court should deny the DOJ’s pending motion to dismiss.”

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Biden’s Justice Department Says Marijuana Consumers Are ‘Unlikely’ To Store Guns Properly In Latest Defense Of Federal Ban

The Biden administration has once again found itself in federal court defending a ban preventing people who use marijuana from buying or possessing firearms, arguing that historical precedent “comfortably” supports the restriction and that cannabis consumers with guns pose a unique danger to society, in part because they’re “unlikely” to store their weapon properly before using marijuana.

In a brief submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Wednesday, attorneys for the Justice Department responded to a series of prompts from the judges, asserting that the firearm ban for marijuana consumers is justified based on historical analogues to restrictions on the mentally ill and habitually drunk that were imposed during the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification in 1791.

The federal government has repeatedly affirmed that those analogues, which must be demonstrated to maintain firearm restrictions under a recent Supreme Court ruling, provide clear support for limiting gun rights for cannabis users. But several federal courts have separately deemed the marijuana-related ban unconstitutional, leading DOJ to appeal in several ongoing cases.

For the case before the Third Circuit, the government is defending the ban against Erik Matthew Harris, who was convicted of violating the federal statute prohibiting the possession of a firearm by a person “who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.” As the Daily Caller first reported, Harris’s legal representation also submitted a supplemental brief to the court on Wednesday that broadly disputes both the substance of the conviction under the statute, as well as the idea that there are relevant historical analogues to uphold the existing ban.

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