Attorney General William ‘Coverup’ Barr is obstructing justice (Updated)

Attorney General William “Coverup” Barr is the most corrupt attorney general since John Mitchell, Nixon’s attorney general who went to prison.

AG Barr, in his previous stint as Attorney General under Gorge H.W. Bush, also had a series of scandals and corruption for which he was never held accountable, The incredibly corrupt William ‘Coverup’ Barr, and went on to thrive in the wingnut welfare world of conservative politics. This experience no doubt emboldened him to believe that he can get away with doing anything he wants as AG without concern for ever being held accountable for his corruption. Barr sneers with contempt at ethics laws.

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Barr’s entirely misleading “summary” of the Mueller Report — in which he made the call not to refer obstruction of justice charges to Congress outlined in the report — and his continuing efforts to suppress the full unredacted report and supporting evidence from Congress, an unprecedented action by an attorney general, is grounds for his impeachment or charging him with obstruction of justice. DOJ obstructs House impeachment inquiry – asks federal court to block release of Mueller Grand Jury files:

In a stunning move Attorney General Bill Barr’s Dept of Justice late Friday afternoon filed a 40-page brief with a federal court, declaring the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry is not an impeachment inquiry, in an attempt to block release of files related to the Mueller probe.

It appears to be an unprecedented act, in which the top law enforcement agency is attempting to block Congress from carrying out its constitutional duties.

The DOJ is attempting to block the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury files, according to Politico. House Democrats have frequently said they cannot make an impeachment decision without the underlying materials from Mueller’s exhaustive investigation.

In a new court filing on Friday, Justice Department lawyers argued that the House Judiciary Committee’s effort to obtain former special counsel Robert Mueller’s most sensitive secrets — evidence and testimony collected by a grand jury — should be denied, in part because House Democrats can’t agree on what to call their investigation.

“Most prominently, the speaker of the House has been emphatic that the investigation is not a true impeachment proceeding,” the lawyers wrote, citing Pelosi’s June statement that Democrats were “not even close” to such a move.

House Democrats’ attempt to access Mueller’s grand-jury information hinges on the courts acknowledging that they are conducting an impeachment investigation. The Judiciary Committee argued in late July that their impeachment investigation satisfies one of the exceptions to federal grand jury secrecy rules: that the House is engaged in an “impeachment investigation” and therefore is taking an action preliminary to a “judicial proceeding” — the Senate’s trial on whether to remove Trump from office.

But the Justice Department rebuffed that claim on Friday, citing inconsistent statements from senior Democratic leaders — as well as their own claims that the ongoing investigation might lead to innumerable outcomes other than an impeachment vote.

“The committee’s own description of its investigation makes clear that it is too far removed from any potential judicial proceeding to qualify,” the filing states.

“As the committee’s chairman has stressed—and as the speaker of the House and the House majority leader both reiterated this week—the purpose of its investigation is to assess numerous possible remedial measures, including censure, articles of impeachment, legislation, Constitutional amendments, and more,” it continues. “What may come of this investigation—if anything—remains unknown and unpredictable.”

And then William “Coverup” Barr’s “Injustice” Department overreaches, arguing:

Even if a judge determined that the House activities were close enough to a preliminary impeachment probe, the Justice Department’s lawyers went further, arguing that impeachment itself — and a removal trial in the Senate — would still fall short of an exception to grand jury secrecy.

[I]mpeachment proceedings in Congress — including hypothetical removal proceedings in the Senate — are not ‘judicial proceedings’ under the plain and ordinary meaning of that term,” they wrote.

Did you catch that? Even if this is an impeachment proceeding, Congress is not entitled to grand jury proceedings pursuant to its oversight investigation. The president is above the law and not accountable to Congress according to AG Barr. (This is the most extreme assertion of an imperial presidency and the unitary executive theory ever made by the DOJ.)

Judge John Sirica would beg to differ from the Watergate impeachment. More importantly, Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski and the DOJ petitioned Judge Sirica to make the grand jury evidence and the Watergate Roadmap available to the House Judiciary and impeachment committees. Years later, Special Counsel Kenneth Starr and the DOJ also moved the court to make the Starr report and the underlying evidence available to the House Judiciary and impeachment committees in the Bill Clinton impeachment. The DOJ has never sought to obstruct Congress’s access to grand jury materials in an impeachment oversight.

DOJ lawyers attributed their argument in large part to the fact that Democrats said impeachment wasn’t the sole focus of their investigation, Nadler reiterated Friday night that it remains just one possible outcome.

“We have been very clear the last several months in filings into with the court, in public statements, in official statements in the committee that we are conducting an investigation with the purpose, among other things, of determining whether to report articles of impeachment to the entire House,” he said on CNN, when asked to respond to DOJ’s argument.

But Republicans say impeaching a president is a weightier step and that Democrats are refusing to provide the probe full House authorization because they lack the votes — a dynamic driven in part by Pelosi’s outward resistance to taking that step.

This is an incorrect statement of the law playing on the public’s ignorance of the impeachment process, in particular, Politico’s reporter’s ignorance of the law from their reporting. As Ed Kilgore explains, Does the Full House Have to Authorize Impeachment Proceedings? Not According to the Constitution.

[N]othing in the Constitution requires the House to authorize impeachment inquiries; a formal article of impeachment is all the founding document mentions. As to the requirements of House rules — well, that’s debatable. Those rules provide a procedure for authorization of impeachment hearings, but it’s entirely unclear that they are required. UNC professor of jurisprudence Michael J. Gerhardt testified before the Judiciary Committee earlier this year that no full House authorization has been acknowledged as mandatory in the past:

[There was no] House resolution authorizing this Committee to consider whether or not Justice William O. Douglas had committed any impeachable offenses. The matter died in committee but only after some initial, brief deliberation and investigation were done. Nor was there a House resolution authorizing three separate hearings held by this Committee in 2016, on whether John Koskinen, then the head of the Internal Revenue Service, had committed any impeachable offenses. Nor was there one, in the late 1980s, authorizing this Committee to explore whether to impeach three federal district judges. All three judges were eventually impeached, convicted, and removed from office. The lawsuit filed challenging the procedures held in the Senate was dismissed because, the Court found, it raised nonjusticiable questions left to the final discretion of the Senate. 

Ultimately, the House is the master of its own rules, and the majority is the master of the House … It’s a separate matter as to whether the federal courts will accept Nadler’s declaration (or the committee’s vote to clarify its own procedures) that it deserves the enhanced judicial deference paid to impeachment proceedings. We’ll know soon enough.

Back to Politico:

In their own legal filings, Democrats say they need Mueller’s grand jury material because it could pertain to their consideration of articles of impeachment against Trump. Mueller, in his 448-page report released in April, revealed evidence — some based on grand jury testimony — that Trump repeatedly attempted to obstruct the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The Justice Department on Thursday shared with the Obama-appointed judge — Beryl Howell, chief judge of the federal district court in Washington — elements of the grand jury material the House is seeking to obtain.

In their initial filing in July, Democrats argued that their authority for claiming to be in the midst of an impeachment probe stems from “Jefferson’s Manual” — a guide to parliamentary procedure employed by the House and Senate. The manual indicates that impeachment proceedings can be launched in a variety of ways, not just through a formal vote of the House. One method is via the referral of articles of impeachment to the Judiciary Committee.

As Nadler and other Democrats note, the House referred articles of impeachment to the committee in January, and they say those articles are now officially under consideration for approval or amendment.

Democrats in recent weeks have pointed to a series of House actions they say bolster their position. In early June, the House voted to allow all committee chairs to enforce subpoenas in court — with the approval of House leaders acting on behalf of the entire chamber.

And last month, the House adopted a resolution declaring all Trump-related subpoenas and demands for information — retroactively and into the future — to have the support of the full House. Impeachment inquiry supporters say this is evidence that the House intended, however indirectly, to back impeachment proceedings without a formal vote.

Similarly, Judiciary Committee officials have noted that previous votes to authorize impeachment proceedings have been intended to empower the committee to issue subpoenas and convene depositions in an era when committees had far less authority than they do in the modern era. Now, the committee already has subpoena and deposition authority, they note.

William “Coverup” Barr’s “Injustice” Department attempt to obstruct Congress from conducting its impeachment investigation is obstruction of justice. William “Coverup” Barr should be impeached or charged with obstruction of justice.

This is not the only evidence of William “Coverup” Barr’s unethical conduct and obstruction of justice.

There is also Barr’s “investigation into the investigators” — the FBI officials who initiated the Russia investigation out of political retaliation demanded by Donald Trump, and the attorney general has said he is working very closely with DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz. James Comey Won’t Face Charges For Sharing Memos About His Interactions With Trump (Former FBI director James Comey violated Justice Department and FBI policies — but he won’t face criminal charges). Prosecutors recommended indicting Andrew McCabe over ‘lack of candor’ about media leaks, but in a rare event, a secret grand jury apparently refused to indict. Andrew McCabe Asks Justice Dept. Whether Grand Jury Rejected Charges.

The DOJ Inspector General’s report into the “deep state” conspiracy theory of alleged FISA Court violations is now concluded and about to be released. DOJ inspector general completes investigation into alleged FISA abuse. Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee are demanding hearings on the IG report, and Senator Lindsey “Stonewall” Graham has said he will conduct Stalinist show trials of FBI officials in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Keep in mind that William “Coverup” Bar has already been held in criminal contempt of Congress for defying congressional subpoenas and obstructing Congress.

According to the New York Times blockbuster revelation, Deborah Ramirez accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were in college. The FBI was informed about the alleged assault and was given a list of at least 25 witnesses who might have been able to corroborate the report. None of the witnesses were interviewed.

So what is William “Coverup” Barr doing about it? Justice Dept. to Honor Team That Worked on Kavanaugh Confirmation Process: The Justice Department will present one of its most prestigious awards to the lawyers who worked on the highly contentious Supreme Court nomination process of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh. “Great job covering up Kavanaugh’s sexual assault, boys!

And finally there is AG Barr trolling legal ethicists with Donald Trump’s Emoluments Clause violations — which DOJ has tried to dismiss in court acting as Trump’s personal defense lawyers — by booking Trump’s hotel for $30,000 holiday party (will Justice Brett Kavanaugh be is guest of honor?): Barr booked President Trump’s D.C. hotel for a 200-person holiday party in December that is likely to deliver Trump’s business more than $30,000 in revenue. (Barr is paying for the event himself).

William “Coverup” Barr needs to be impeached or charged with obstruction of justice.

UPDATE: The above is not an exhaustive list of corruption and obstruction in the Trump administration, and here is one involving the Director of National Intelligence.

According to Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, a whistleblower who lodged an urgent complaint about wrongdoing within the intelligence community has gone ignored and left unprotected. In a letter released on Friday, Schiff accused a “top intel official of illegally withholding” a “whistleblower” complaint described as “urgent” by the Intelligence Community Inspector General (IC IG) — and one that could implicate the White House. Is the Trump administration squelching a whistleblower — and a major scandal?

“A month ago, a whistleblower within the intelligence community lawfully filed a complaint regarding a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of law, or deficiency within the responsibility or authority of the Director of National Intelligence,” Schiff said in a statement. The IC IG first notified the committee of the whistleblower complaint on Sept. 9. The next day, Schiff requested a full, unredacted copy of the complaint, the ICIG’s findings related to the matter, and all records connected to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (ODNI) involvement, “including any and all correspondence with other Executive Branch actors including the White House.”

In what may be the clearest example yet of obstruction in the Trump administration, acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, in direct contradiction to an unambiguous rule worked out in the wake of Watergate, is refusing to hand over the whistleblower’s complaint to Congress. The ODNI officially declined the Intelligence Committee’s request on Friday, saying that Maguire is withholding the complaint in part because it “involves confidentially and potentially privileged communications by persons outside the Intelligence Community.” But the statutory mandate being ignored by Maguire was specifically intended to deny intelligence officials this kind of discretion — that is, they’re not supposed to keep Congress from hearing whistleblower reports, or to let the officials implicated in any allegations unilaterally decide to bury them.

Schiff also issued a subpoena on Friday, requiring ODNI to produce the complaint and relevant records by Tuesday. If it doesn’t, Maguire will be directed to appear before the committee in an open hearing on Thursday.





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