Good News! Department Of Justice Starts To Clean House

Senator Lindsey “Stonewall” Graham delayed the confirmation hearing for Judge Merrick Garland as the next Attorney General in a snit over his golf partner Donald Trump’s impeachment, but thanks to voters in Georgia, this little prick is no longer the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

POLITICO reports, Senate Judiciary Committee schedules Merrick Garland confirmation hearing:

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a confirmation hearing for President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the Justice Department, Merrick Garland.

The hearing, scheduled for Feb. 22 and 23, sets Garland up for a March 1 vote out of committee and comes after Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) reached an agreement for the schedule.

“I’m pleased that we can announce that the Committee will be moving forward on a bipartisan basis,” Durbin said in a statement. “Judge Garland will serve the Justice Department and our country with honor and integrity. He is a consensus pick who should be confirmed swiftly on his merits.”

Bipartisan? Expect Republicans on the committee to be just as hostile and rude to Judge Garland as they were when President Obama nominated him to the U.S. Supreme Court. They would not even show him the courtesy of meeting with him, let alone holding a confirmation hearing, as Sen. Mitch McConnell shamelessly violated the Constitution to steal a Supreme Court seat.

The one question Trump Fluffer Lindsey Graham is going to want to ask is “Do you intend to prosecute Donald Trump for the insurrection on January 6?”

A trick question which Judge Garland cannot answer: that decision is left to the District of Columbia Attorney General, and DOJ line prosecutors. (The DC attorney general enforces local codes for the city. He does not have as robust criminal jurisdiction as the US Department of Justice, which handles prosecuting both federal crimes and the major crimes committed in Washington, DC.) DC attorney general says Trump could possibly be charged by city prosecutors with misdemeanor for role in Capitol insurrection. “Federal prosecutors said earlier this month that they are looking at everyone involved in the riot, including the role Trump played in inciting it.”

Restoring the reputation of the Department of Justice means that Attorney General Garland will not intervene in the prosecutorial decisions made by his line prosecutors, as the corrupt A.G. William Barr did.

Speaking of U.S. attorneys – the practice of a new administration to ask holdover U.S. attorneys from the previous administration to resign is still in effect. Justice Dept. Directs Trump-Appointed U.S. Attorneys to Leave:

Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson asked the remaining Trump-era U.S. attorneys on a conference call on Tuesday to step down at the end of this month, according to a Justice Department official on the call, paving the way for the transition to new leadership under the Biden administration.

Though it was routine for new administrations, Mr. Wilkinson’s request that U.S. attorneys from the Trump administration leave over a period of weeks stood in [stark] contrast with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s demand without warning in 2017 that Obama-era officials tender their resignations immediately. [See, Trump Abruptly Orders 46 Obama-Era Prosecutors to Resign.]

Mr. Wilkinson’s decision echoed transition processes of the Bush and Obama administrations, and it was in keeping with the Biden administration’s overall strategy of restoring executive branch norms.

U.S. attorneys, the top federal prosecutors in the Justice Department’s offices around the country, are typically political appointments made by presidents. When former President Donald J. Trump’s appointees leave office, their positions will be filled by acting officials, most often career prosecutors from those offices, until their replacements are confirmed, the department said in a statement on Tuesday.

“We are committed to ensuring a seamless transition,” Mr. Wilkinson said in the statement. “Until U.S. attorney nominees are confirmed, the interim and acting leaders in the U.S. attorneys’ offices will make sure that the department continues to accomplish its critical law enforcement mission, vigorously defend the rule of law and pursue the fair and impartial administration of justice for all.”

The Justice Department said that about one-third of the nation’s 94 U.S. attorneys’ offices were already being overseen by acting or interim leaders, and that President Biden would announce his nominees later.

Their confirmations will follow that of Judge Merrick B. Garland, Mr. Biden’s nominee for attorney general, whose confirmation hearing is not expected to begin until Feb. 22, according to a person briefed on the matter.

This week, Mr. Wilkinson also addressed questions about who will lead investigations that pose political challenges for the Biden administration and its hope to restore the Justice Department’s image of impartiality.

He allowed John H. Durham, who will tender his resignation as the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to remain at the department as the special counsel tapped to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia inquiry, according to a senior Justice Department official.

I assume this is a directive to Durham to wrap up his final report and to close this fruitless investigation. As reported last November, Durham Investigation Insiders Say ‘No Evidence’ to Support Obamagate Has Been Found in 18 Months:

Top prosecutors in the so-called Durham probe into the origins of the Russigate investigation have reportedly found “no evidence” to support the foundational theory that spawned the investigation—namely, that Obamagate occurred and that Barack Obama himself needed to be punished for it.

According to a New York Magazine story relying on anonymous sources “familiar with the probe,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut John Durham has come up empty-handed and is growing increasingly frustrated with Attorney General Bill Barr over developments in the investigation–or, rather, the lack thereof.

Barr, for his part, has reportedly pressured Durham and his team for months over the investigation into the investigation–insisting that the prosecutor release the results before Election Day in an effort to use the full apparatus of the U.S. Department of Justice as a salve for President Donald Trump‘s electoral woes.

* * *

In early September, Durham’s longtime aide Nora Dannehy resigned out of concern that the team was being pressured—by Barr for political reasons—to come up with results well before November.

Dannehy’s official resignation letter was terse and polite–lacking any reference to Barr’s alleged pressure campaign. But according to her colleagues, the government attorney was forced to choose between her years of working with Durham and her belief that the DOJ should not be used to exercise, facilitate or exert influence on U.S. elections.

Per the New York magazine report by Murray Waas:

Shortly after the resignation of his prized deputy and with the election looming on the horizon, Durham phoned Barr. He forcefully told the attorney general that his office would not be releasing a report or taking any other significant public actions before Election Day, according to a person with knowledge of the phone call. Dannehy’s resignation constituted an implied but unspoken threat to Barr that Durham or others on his team might resign if the attorney general attempted to force the issue, according to a person familiar with Durham’s thinking.

The report goes on to cite sources who say that Dennehy’s departure wasn’t actually aberrational at all. Instead, Durham actually shared the concerns that prompted his top aide’s exit, according to the report.

Those sources claim that both Dannehy and Durham were “troubled” that Barr has been misrepresenting the investigation in public since it began.

* * *

While the probe remains ongoing, there has reportedly been no evidence to support the White House’s long-promised pet theory that the 45th president was targeted by untoward Obama era officials—and the Obama White House itself— as part of unlawful deep state coup. That preliminary finding also reportedly extends to both Obama and Biden themselves.

One of those anonymous sources cited in the New York report there “was no evidence…not even remotely…indicating Obama or Biden did anything wrong.”

The Times report continues:

Mr. Wilkinson also asked David C. Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware appointed by Mr. Trump, to stay on and continue to oversee the tax fraud investigation into Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, the official said. [See, Joe Biden’s Justice Department will inherit an investigation into Hunter Biden.]

Dozens of U.S. attorneys appointed by Mr. Trump resigned in the weeks before and after the election, leaving 57 presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed leaders of the nation’s federal prosecutors’ offices.

Mr. Wilkinson instructed all of them except for Mr. Weiss to tender their resignations effective Feb. 28, according to the department official who was on the call.

Michael R. Sherwin, the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, will step down but remain at the Justice Department to oversee the sprawling investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, according to officials briefed on his status. He is likely to work out of the Justice Department headquarters in Washington, but the timing of his shift is unclear, an official said.

The inquiry has already resulted in scores of criminal charges, including a handful of conspiracy indictments. Investigators and counterterrorism experts expect that it will continue to yield evidence about far-right groups and individual extremists, many of whom have declared their allegiance to the former president.

Prosecute all of the insurrectionists present that day, including Donald Trump.