Two thousand former US Justice Department officials call for resignation of William Barr
More than 2,000 former officials of the US Department of Justice have signed an online petition calling on Attorney General William Barr to resign. The number of signatures doubled in 24 hours after the petition was first made public on Sunday.
The campaign against Barr is the latest round in the ongoing political warfare in Washington, erupting after the failure of the Democratic Party’s impeachment drive against President Trump. That ended with a vote in the Senate that fell far short of the two-thirds required to remove him from office.
Trump has since gone on the warpath, firing or removing officials who testified against him in the House impeachment inquiry, as well as seeking to quash the remaining cases that arose from the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. That 22-month probe found no proof of a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign in the 2016 election.
The move against Barr was launched after he intervened into the ongoing case of Trump crony Roger Stone, overruling the prosecutors who had recommended a lengthy jail term and urging the judge to impose a lighter sentence. All four prosecutors involved in the case resigned in protest, one of them leaving the Justice Department entirely, the other three withdrawing only from the Stone case.
Stone was convicted last November of seven counts of lying to Congress, lying to the FBI in the Mueller probe, and witness-tampering. Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson is scheduled to sentence him on February 20, but Stone’s attorneys filed a motion last week seeking a new trial, claiming bias in the federal jury that heard the first case against him. A hearing on that motion is to take place in Jackson’s courtroom today.
Stone testified falsely before Congress and the Mueller probe, boasting about having been an intermediary between Trump and WikiLeaks, although he actually had no contact with the anti-secrecy organization.
WikiLeaks made public documents that damaged Clinton’s 2016 campaign by exposing her closed-door speeches to Wall Street audiences, in which she promised to serve their interests, as well as emails by Democratic National Committee (DNC) operatives in which they discussed how to undermine the campaign of Clinton’s main primary rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Two of the four Justice Department prosecutors who brought the case against Stone had been part of the Mueller investigation, and there was a concerted effort to exaggerate the significance of Stone’s actions in order to push the fabricated narrative that Russian agents had hacked the DNC and Clinton campaign email servers and supplied the leaked documents to WikiLeaks. This was used in the campaign of vilification and persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently in prison in London awaiting the start of hearings next Monday on the US request for his extradition to face espionage charges.
In reality, despite media claims to the contrary, there was no connection between WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign, and there is no evidence to support claims that Russia supplied the leaked material. (WikiLeaks operates a drop box which is designed to allow anonymous deposits of documents).
Stone himself is a despicable right-wing provocateur with a record of slanders and dirty tricks going back to the campaign of Richard Nixon in 1972. The prosecution alleged that he had sent death threats to a potential witness against him, Randy Credico, a comedian and liberal activist whom Stone knew and claimed was an intermediary with WikiLeaks.
Although Credico testified that he never took the threats to himself (and his dog) seriously, given Stone’s record as a blowhard and fabricator, they became the pretext for escalating Stone’s jail sentence from 15-21 months—the standard for a first-time perjury conviction—to 7–9 years in prison.
Barr did not intervene in the case because the lengthy jail term was particularly onerous for a 67-year-old man. Federal, state and local prosecutors seek draconian sentences for impoverished defendants from the working class all the time: it is an essential aspect of the repressive functions of the capitalist state.
Stone is a wealthy political operative and a longtime crony of President Trump, who was howling on Twitter about the injustice allegedly being carried out. In intervening on Stone’s behalf, however, Barr crossed the line that has been maintained since the Watergate scandal of 1972-74, which ended with the forced resignation of Stone’s first political boss, President Nixon.
According to this tradition, now nearly half a century old, the president may not interfere with the decisions of rank-and-file prosecutors in the Department of Justice. Even in the Trump administration, there were formal rules limiting contact between the Justice Department and White House on criminal matters: only the president, vice-president and White House counsel could speak to the Department of Justice, and then only to the attorney general and his closest aides, not to prosecutors at work on pending cases.
Trump’s intervention was not a secret effort to subvert the legal system, in the style of Nixon, but a brazen effort trumpeted to his 60-million-plus followers on Twitter. After Barr issued a mild reproof last week, suggesting that such tweets made it difficult for him to do his job, Trump replied, again publicly on Twitter, that he had every right to intervene in any criminal case, although he claimed not to have done so yet.
It is this assertion of sweeping and unconstitutional executive authority that sparked the response among former Department of Justice officials, in a petition organized by a group called Protect Democracy, which previously campaigned to defend Special Counsel Mueller from Trump threats. The group includes officials from both Democratic and Republican administrations going back three decades.
The petition declares that “President Trump and Attorney General Barr have openly and repeatedly flouted” the principle that “political interference in the conduct of a criminal prosecution is anathema to the Department’s core mission and to its sacred obligation to ensure equal justice under the law.”
The petition continues: “[I]t is unheard of for the Department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the President, as Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case.
“A person should not be given special treatment in a criminal prosecution because they are a close political ally of the President. Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies.”
The language of the petition indicates that the former prosecutors and other officials are concerned both that Trump’s actions are a threat to democratic rights, and that his intervention has discredited the federal “justice” system as a whole and weakened it in the eyes of the American people, thus undermining the authority of the capitalist state machine.
Significantly, the petition in effect calls on Department of Justice employees to rebel against Trump and Barr by following the example of the four prosecutors who resigned. It advises that Justice Department employees should “be prepared to report future abuses to the Inspector General, the Office of Professional Responsibility, and Congress; to refuse to carry out directives that are inconsistent with their oaths of office; to withdraw from cases that involve such directives or other misconduct; and, if necessary, to resign and report publicly…to the American people the reasons for their resignation.”
This appeal demonstrates that the same forces that instigated the impeachment inquiry against Trump—through the actions of an anonymous CIA “whistleblower” who filed a complaint against the president with the Intelligence Community Inspector General—are still engaged in political warfare with the White House.
A VERY STABLE GENIUS
THE BOOK
Schweizer:
Biden Needs to Address Ukraine Accusations ‘Front and Center’
Kushner, Inc.: Greed.
Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Hardcover – March 19,
2019
ANN COULTER - SWAMP KEEPER DONALD TRUMP AND HIS
PARASITIC FAMILY
Coulter:
All Hail President Javanka!
While other
reporters waste their time examining Donald Trump’s public statements, interviewing
his high school classmates and poring over legal filings, investigative
reporter Vicky Ward has produced the definitive book on our current president.
A VERY STABLE GENIUS
“This taut and terrifying
book is among the most closely observed accounts of Donald J. Trump’s shambolic
tenure in office to date.” - Dwight Garner, The
New York Times
Read
an excerpt:
‘You’re a bunch of dopes and babies’: Inside Trump’s stunning tirade against generals
‘You’re a bunch of dopes and babies’: Inside Trump’s stunning tirade against generals
THE BOOK
Washington
Post national investigative reporter Carol Leonnig
and White House bureau chief Philip Rucker, both Pulitzer Prize winners,
provide the definitive insider narrative of Donald Trump’s unique presidency
with shocking new reporting and insight into its implications.
“I
alone can fix it.” So went Donald J. Trump’s march to the presidency on July
21, 2016, when he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Cleveland,
promising to restore what he described as a fallen nation. Yet over the
subsequent years, as he has undertaken the actual work of the commander in
chief, it has been hard to see beyond the daily chaos of scandal,
investigation, and constant bluster. It would be all too easy to mistake
Trump’s first term for one of pure and uninhibited chaos, but there were
patterns to his behavior and that of his associates. The universal value of the
Trump administration is loyalty - not to the country, but to the president
himself - and Trump’s North Star has been the perpetuation of his own power,
even when it meant imperiling our shaky and mistrustful democracy.
Leonnig
and Rucker, with deep and unmatched sources throughout Washington, D.C., tell
of rages and frenzies but also moments of courage and perseverance. Relying on
scores of exclusive new interviews with some of the most senior members of the
Trump administration and other firsthand witnesses, the authors reveal the
forty-fifth president up close, taking readers inside Robert Mueller’s Russia
investigation as well as the president’s own haphazard but ultimately
successful legal defense. Here for the first time certain officials who have
felt honor-bound not to publicly criticize a sitting president or to divulge
what they witnessed in a position of trust tell the truth for the benefit of
history.
This
peerless and gripping narrative reveals President Trump at his most unvarnished
and exposes how decision making in his administration has been driven by a
reflexive logic of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement - but a logic
nonetheless. This is the story of how an unparalleled president has scrambled
to survive and tested the strength of America’s democracy and its common heart
as a nation.
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and
Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with
third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by
its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER.com
Peter Schweizer, author of “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class
Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,”
#1 New York Times Bestseller!
Peter Schweizer
has been fighting corruption―and winning―for years. In Throw Them All Out, he
exposed insider trading by members of Congress, leading to the passage of the
STOCK Act. In Extortion,
he uncovered how politicians use mafia-like tactics to enrich themselves. And
in Clinton Cash,
he revealed the Clintons’ massive money machine and sparked an FBI
investigation.
Now he explains
how a new corruption has taken hold, involving larger sums of money than ever
before. Stuffing tens of thousands of dollars into a freezer has morphed into
multibillion-dollar equity deals done in the dark corners of the world.
An American bank
opening in China would be prohibited by US law from hiring a slew of family
members of top Chinese politicians. However, a Chinese bank opening in America
can hire anyone it wants. It can even invite the friends and families of
American politicians to invest in can’t-lose deals.
President Donald
Trump’s children have made front pages across the world for their dicey
transactions. However, the media has barely looked into questionable deals made
by those close to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Mitch McConnell, and
lesser-known politicians who have been in the game longer.
In many parts of
the world, the children of powerful political figures go into business and
profit handsomely, not necessarily because they are good at it, but because
people want to curry favor with their influential parents. This is a relatively
new phenomenon in the United States. But for relatives of some prominent
political families, we may already be talking about hundreds of millions of
dollars.
Deeply researched and packed with shocking revelations, Secret Empires identifies
public servants who cannot be trusted and provides a path toward a more
accountable government.
Schweizer:
Biden Needs to Address Ukraine Accusations ‘Front and Center’
11 Oct 201910
1:18
Breitbart
News senior contributor Peter Schweizer, author of “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides
Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,” on Friday
stressed the importance of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden
addressing the Ukraine issue involving him and his son, Hunter.
Kushner, Inc.: Greed.
Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Hardcover – March 19,
2019
·
Hardcover: 304 pages
·
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
(March 19, 2019)
·
Language: English
·
ISBN-10: 1250185947
·
ISBN-13: 978-1250185945
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are the
self-styled Prince and Princess of America. Their swift, gilded rise to
extraordinary power in Donald Trump’s White House is unprecedented and
dangerous. In Kushner, Inc., investigative journalist Vicky Ward
digs beneath the myth the couple has created, depicting themselves as the
voices of reason in an otherwise crazy presidency, and reveals that Jared and
Ivanka are not just the President’s chief enablers: they, like him, appear
disdainful of rules, of laws, and of ethics. They are entitled inheritors of
the worst kind; their combination of ignorance, arrogance, and an insatiable
lust for power has caused havoc all over the world, and may threaten the
democracy of the United States.
Ward follows their
trajectory from New Jersey and New York City to the White House, where the
couple’s many forays into policy-making and national security have mocked
long-standing U.S. policy and protocol. They have pursued an agenda that could
increase their wealth while their actions have mostly gone unchecked. In Kushner,
Inc., Ward holds Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump accountable: she unveils
the couple’s self-serving transactional motivations and how those have
propelled them into the highest levels of the US government where no one, the
President included, has been able to stop them.
ANN COULTER - SWAMP KEEPER DONALD TRUMP AND HIS
PARASITIC FAMILY
One cautionary example is
President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose ticket into Harvard,
according to the 2006 book The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys
Its Way into Elite Colleges,
was his father’s $2.5 million dollar gift to the university. Jared got his
Harvard degree, but he has been the butt of social-media taunts precisely
because his daddy had to pay a fortune to get the school to admit him. The cost
of a brag-worthy degree? Millions. The cost of the right- and left-brain stuff?
Priceless.
THE TRUMP
FAMILY FOUNDATION SLUSH FUND…. Will they see jail?
VISUALIZE
REVOLUTION!.... We know where they live!
“Underwood is a Democrat and is seeking millions of dollars in
penalties. She wants Trump and his eldest children barred from running other
charities.”
Coulter:
All Hail President Javanka!
ANN COULTER
10 Apr 2019111
2:52
While other
reporters waste their time examining Donald Trump’s public statements, interviewing
his high school classmates and poring over legal filings, investigative
reporter Vicky Ward has produced the definitive book on our current president.
For example, did you know our president got breast implants in
high school (Ivanka claimed she was just “curvy”), bought his way into Harvard
(Jared is even dumber than you thought), and together have no books in their
New York apartment? (Some dispute that there are no books,
citing “a few art books” or “decorator-curated books.”)
Ward’s recently released blockbuster, Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, tells you all this and more about our actual commander in chief: President Javanka.
On the bright side, Jared has stopped rolling his eyes so much about his father-in-law now that Trump is president, er, “president.” Until Trump’s nomination was a virtual lock, Jared was back in New York pretending not to be related to him.
Only after Trump had racked up a slew of primary wins did a lightbulb go on in Jared’s head: Hey! This presidential campaign could be great for business! According to a close associate, Jared viewed the campaign as a terrific “networking opportunity.”
In short order, Jared moved himself in, and moved campaign manager Corey Lewandowski out.
Ward’s recently released blockbuster, Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, tells you all this and more about our actual commander in chief: President Javanka.
On the bright side, Jared has stopped rolling his eyes so much about his father-in-law now that Trump is president, er, “president.” Until Trump’s nomination was a virtual lock, Jared was back in New York pretending not to be related to him.
Only after Trump had racked up a slew of primary wins did a lightbulb go on in Jared’s head: Hey! This presidential campaign could be great for business! According to a close associate, Jared viewed the campaign as a terrific “networking opportunity.”
In short order, Jared moved himself in, and moved campaign manager Corey Lewandowski out.
Trump’s loyal campaign manager had been with
him through the “Mexican rapists” speech, Macy’s dumping Trump’s ties, the
“McCain isn’t a war hero” controversy, the Muslim ban, the “hand size”
embarrassment, and on and on and on. But when all was said and done and Trump
was still cruising to victory, Jared and Ivanka walked in and delivered an
ultimatum to Trump: “It’s Corey or us.”
Jared would later shyly cop to being “[The Man Who] Won Trump the White House,” as a Forbes magazine cover story put it.
And who understood the beating heart of the Trump voter like Jared and Ivanka? With Javanka in charge, the campaign schedule was soon bristling with such items as “women’s empowerment week,” “education week” and “entrepreneur week.”
In no time, Trump was 16 points down and sinking fast. Steve Bannon was brought in, whereupon he promptly threw out all the Working Women’s Intersectional Global Warming weeks and got back to Trump’s issues.
Jared assured Bannon that the campaign had $25 million on hand. That’s when Bannon had to explain “debits” to Kushner. The campaign had $25 million — provided you didn’t count all the unpaid expenses. When those were included, it turned out the campaign was in debt.
As the SAT board had discovered, math wasn’t Jared’s strong suit.
Although it has been well reported that Jared’s Harvard admission was purchased for him by his father, Ward produces a shocking new detail. Of the five tracks at Jared’s high school, he wasn’t at the bottom of track one, perhaps suitable for a lesser Ivy League with solid SAT scores. He wasn’t even in track two. Jared was in track three. But now he has co-opted the Make America Great Again movement for his own personal advancement. I guess that makes him smarter than Trump.
Apart from staging photo-ops, including her “princess moment” at the inaugural ball (her words), Ivanka’s first order of business upon winning the presidency was assigning White House office space. Her map showed a big office for her, a big office for Jared — and also a nice corner office, which was designated “Trump family office.”
Transition officials, Ward reports, “were surprised that the first lady did not appear to have an office. So, too, was Melania Trump, who quickly put an end to Ivanka’s scheming.”
Jared’s BFF, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Muhammad bin Zayed (MBZ), refer to Jared as “the clown prince.” Bone-cutter MBS assured those around him that he had Jared “in my pocket.”
MBS and MBZ derided Jared’s Middle East peace plan as infantile, while using him to achieve their objective: war with Qatar. According to an American businessman’s leaked emails, their attitude was, “Nobody would even waste a cup of coffee on him if it wasn’t for who he is married to.”
As one former top White House official explained: “Jared never understands the details of anything. He’s just impressed by names.”
Following meetings at the White House and also with the Kushners over their 666 Fifth Avenue property, former Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim reported back to the emir that “the people atop the new administration were heavily motivated by personal financial interest.”
After Ivanka’s speech introducing her father at the Republican National Convention — rivaled only by Billy Carter’s introduction of his brother, Jimmy! — she tweeted from her personal account: “Shop Ivanka’s look from her #RNC speech.”
After the Trump family was interviewed on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Ivanka’s company emailed out a “style alert” advertising the $10,800 diamond bracelet she’d worn on the show — “available from Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry.”
Ivanka has managed to win a slew of trademarks in China since her father became the Figurehead President, with several approvals being fast-tracked at about the same time Trump was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago.
Instead of “Make America Great Again,” the motto of the Trump presidency is, as one of Trump’s legal spokesmen put it: “The advance team for Jared and Ivanka.”
This is not what anyone voted for.
Jared would later shyly cop to being “[The Man Who] Won Trump the White House,” as a Forbes magazine cover story put it.
And who understood the beating heart of the Trump voter like Jared and Ivanka? With Javanka in charge, the campaign schedule was soon bristling with such items as “women’s empowerment week,” “education week” and “entrepreneur week.”
In no time, Trump was 16 points down and sinking fast. Steve Bannon was brought in, whereupon he promptly threw out all the Working Women’s Intersectional Global Warming weeks and got back to Trump’s issues.
Jared assured Bannon that the campaign had $25 million on hand. That’s when Bannon had to explain “debits” to Kushner. The campaign had $25 million — provided you didn’t count all the unpaid expenses. When those were included, it turned out the campaign was in debt.
As the SAT board had discovered, math wasn’t Jared’s strong suit.
Although it has been well reported that Jared’s Harvard admission was purchased for him by his father, Ward produces a shocking new detail. Of the five tracks at Jared’s high school, he wasn’t at the bottom of track one, perhaps suitable for a lesser Ivy League with solid SAT scores. He wasn’t even in track two. Jared was in track three. But now he has co-opted the Make America Great Again movement for his own personal advancement. I guess that makes him smarter than Trump.
Apart from staging photo-ops, including her “princess moment” at the inaugural ball (her words), Ivanka’s first order of business upon winning the presidency was assigning White House office space. Her map showed a big office for her, a big office for Jared — and also a nice corner office, which was designated “Trump family office.”
Transition officials, Ward reports, “were surprised that the first lady did not appear to have an office. So, too, was Melania Trump, who quickly put an end to Ivanka’s scheming.”
Jared’s BFF, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Muhammad bin Zayed (MBZ), refer to Jared as “the clown prince.” Bone-cutter MBS assured those around him that he had Jared “in my pocket.”
MBS and MBZ derided Jared’s Middle East peace plan as infantile, while using him to achieve their objective: war with Qatar. According to an American businessman’s leaked emails, their attitude was, “Nobody would even waste a cup of coffee on him if it wasn’t for who he is married to.”
As one former top White House official explained: “Jared never understands the details of anything. He’s just impressed by names.”
Following meetings at the White House and also with the Kushners over their 666 Fifth Avenue property, former Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim reported back to the emir that “the people atop the new administration were heavily motivated by personal financial interest.”
After Ivanka’s speech introducing her father at the Republican National Convention — rivaled only by Billy Carter’s introduction of his brother, Jimmy! — she tweeted from her personal account: “Shop Ivanka’s look from her #RNC speech.”
After the Trump family was interviewed on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Ivanka’s company emailed out a “style alert” advertising the $10,800 diamond bracelet she’d worn on the show — “available from Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry.”
Ivanka has managed to win a slew of trademarks in China since her father became the Figurehead President, with several approvals being fast-tracked at about the same time Trump was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago.
Instead of “Make America Great Again,” the motto of the Trump presidency is, as one of Trump’s legal spokesmen put it: “The advance team for Jared and Ivanka.”
This is not what anyone voted for.
One
cautionary example is President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose ticket
into Harvard, according to the 2006 book The Price of Admission:
How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges, was his
father’s $2.5 million dollar gift to the university. Jared got his Harvard
degree, but he has been the butt of social-media taunts precisely because his
daddy had to pay a fortune to get the school to admit him. The cost of a
brag-worthy degree? Millions. The cost of the right- and left-brain stuff?
Priceless.
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