Attorney General

Special Counsel closes in on Trump inner circle in obstruction of justice investigation

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Our Confederate Attorney General, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, is in legal jeopardy as Special Counsel Robert Mueller closes in on the obstruction of justice leg of his investigation.

Sessions was directly involved in the firing of former FBI Director James Comey. According to Axios.com, “at the public urging of President Donald Trump — Sessions has [also] been pressuring FBI Director Christopher Wray to fire Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, but Wray threatened to resign if McCabe was removed. Scoop: FBI director threatened to resign amid Trump, Sessions pressure:

  • Wray’s resignation under those circumstances would have created a media firestorm. The White House — understandably gun-shy after the Comey debacle — didn’t want that scene, so McCabe remains.
  • Sessions told White House Counsel Don McGahn about how upset Wray was about the pressure on him to fire McCabe, and McGahn told Sessions this issue wasn’t worth losing the FBI Director over, according to a source familiar with the situation.
  • Why it matters: Trump started his presidency by pressuring one FBI Director (before canning him), and then began pressuring another (this time wanting his deputy canned). This much meddling with the FBI for this long is not normal.

McGahn has been informed about these ongoing conversations, though he has not spoken with Wray about FBI personnel, according to an administration source briefed on the situation. Trump nominated Wray, previously an assistant attorney general under George W. Bush, last June to replace James Comey as director.

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The Grand Obstruction Party – abuse of power and corruption of the independence of the Department of Justice

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Donald Trump’s general election campaign was built around two conspiracy theories that came from his chief political strategist Stephen Bannon’s partner at Breitbart and the Government Accountability Institute, Peter Schweizer, and his book “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.” Schweizer made unsubstantiated claims that foreign interests curried favor with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by paying huge speaking fees to her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

The second line of attack was the private email server used by Secretary of State Clinton, and the claim that she recklessly exposed highly classified state secrets to computer hackers.

The FBI conducted an investigation into both matters and closed its investigations without any charges being filed against the Clintons. (For Trump, this only became evidence of FBI bias and “deep state” support for the Clintons. It was one motivating factor behind his firing of FBI Director James Comey).

These conspiracy theories, nevertheless, were daily fodder in the conservative media entertainment complex and the Trump campaign, with Trump’s characterization of “crooked Hillary” and chants of “lock her up” at Trump campaign rallies.

During the second presidential debate, Trump went so far as to threaten to jail Clinton if he wins the election: “If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your (missing email) situation,” Trump said, “because there has never been so many lies, so much deception.”

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Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III visits Nogales, controversy ensues

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Charles Pierce at Esquire covers this story in the way only he can, so let him tell this story. This Is What America Means to Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III:

We’re going to have to make a semi-regular daily feature on the doings of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, presently the Attorney General and the only man in America who thinks Birth of a Nation was a documentary.

On Tuesday, he visited the Arizona-Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona, with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and, by way of encouraging the law-enforcement types gathered there, according to Tiger Beat On The Potomac, these were his prepared remarks:

“Depravity and violence are their calling cards, including brutal machete attacks and beheadings,” he said. “It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth.”

Nobody I know is in favor of depravity and violence—at least outside the studios of Fox News, anyway—nor is anyone I know in favor of machete attacks and/or beheadings, although some of our staunch allies elsewhere are rather high on the latter. But when you’ve got the attorney general of the United States planning to refer to other human beings, no matter how criminal they are, as “filth,” you’ve got the Department of Justice descending into the status of a Breitbart comment thread, and that is never good for anyone. When it came time for the speech, Sessions ultimately did not say “filth” out loud, but the Department of Justice doubled down on the word in a statement:

The Department of Justice declined to comment on the departure from prepared remarks, but said:

“As the Attorney General said in his statement, we must take a stand against filth like MS-13 and the cartels that turn cities and suburbs into warzones, that rape and kill innocent people, and that profit by trafficking in drugs and people. It is unfortunate that there are misinformed people that think that we need to treat such violent criminals as if they deserve anything but the worse kind of condemnation.”

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Silencing Sally Yates

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Nancy Le Tourneau at the Political Animal blog writes about the anatomy of a coverup. Yates Was Warned. Nevertheless, She Persisted:

The words that sparked the resistance movement to rally in support of Sen. Elizabeth Warren when McConnell tried to silence her now apply to Sally Yates. If you remember, she is the woman who served as the Deputy Attorney General in the Obama administration and was initially asked to stay on as the Acting Attorney General for Trump until he fired her for refusing to defend his Muslim travel ban.

Or was there another reason?

[Four days earlier], Yates warned the White House that the statements made by Michael Flynn about his contacts with the Russian Ambassador were not true and could potentially be used as blackmail against him, a warning that the White House chose to ignore until the information became public and Flynn was fired.

Yates is now eager to talk to congressional investigators about those developments.

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Trump fires a consummate public servant for defying his unconstitutional and unlawful executive order

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The Attorney General is supposed to maintain arms-length independence from the political influence of the White House in “the pursuit of justice.”  The last time a president fired someone in the attorney general’s office, it was Richard Nixon executing the infamous Saturday Night Massacre at the height of the Watergate scandal.

Last night, Donald Trump fired acting attorney general Sally Q. Yates for defying him by announcing that Justice Department lawyers would not defend  his executive order for a Muslim travel ban and a religious test for entry into the United States against legal challenges. Trump Fires Acting Attorney General Who Defied Him.

Nancy LeTourneau at the Political Animal blog tells us What You Should Know About the Public Servant Trump Just Fired, Sally Yates:

Sally Yates, who served as Deputy Attorney General since 2015, was asked by the Trump administration to be the Acting Attorney General until their nominee—Jeff Sessions—was confirmed. Yesterday she issued a memo to the top lawyers in the Justice Department directing them to not defend Trump’s executive order on immigrants and refugees as long as she was in that position. You can read her memo here.

By the end of the day, Trump fired Yates for taking that action, accusing her of “betraying the Justice Department” and suggesting that she is “weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration.” While some have compared this to Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre,” it might not rise to that level—but it certainly sends a chilling message to anyone in the federal bureaucracy who might contemplate resisting the administration.

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