Tag: Department of Justice

Member Post

Ammo.com
Ammo.com
43
 

Our Chief Historian Sam Jacobs had the fortunate opportunity to speak with author and former ATF agent, Vincent Cefalu. For those of you that might not know — Vincent Cefalu is best known as the primary whistleblower who exposed Operation Fast and Furious and Project Gunrunner to the American public. Cefalu is a curious figure, […]
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Michael Flynn’s Political Enemies

Richard Epstein
Richard Epstein
56
 

An unfortunate if longstanding political brawl intensified last week. The Department of Justice, acting under Attorney General William Barr, filed a motion (the Barr Report) in the Federal District Court for Washington DC asking that the criminal charges brought by Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office against Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI be dropped “with prejudice,” which means the case cannot be brought again by any future—read Democratic—administration. The original guilty plea was secured on December 1, 2017. This was over ten months after two FBI agents interviewed Flynn on January 24, 2017, concerning conversations he had with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, before Donald Trump was inaugurated as President.

Liberal commentators have rushed to denounce the decision as purely political, but they present a weak case against Barr’s motion to set aside the guilty plea, which they argue is yet the latest chapter in the Trump coverup that began with Barr’s criticism of the Mueller report of March 2019.

Law professors Neal Katyal and Joshua Geltzer, writing in the New York Times, argue that “appalling damage” will result from the DOJ’s decision, noting that Flynn had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, and that the FBI had done nothing to “set up” or entrap Flynn. In a similar vein, a bellicose indictment on the blog Lawfare spares no venom in denouncing an “Ugly Day for the Justice Department.”

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Can Trump Win Over Blacks?

Aaron Miller
Aaron Miller
7231
 

I heard something this week that made my jaw drop: Someone who, for decades, has said that Republican outreach to blacks is a waste of time now tells me that President Donald Trump might be uniquely capable of persuading another five percent of blacks to vote Republican.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-HB6XVmHXk

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A Smoking Gun

Paul A. Rahe
Paul A. Rahe
3727
 

IRS ScandalIt has been obvious to anyone who has paid attention that the Obama administration made use of the Internal Revenue Service to confine and paralyze the Tea Party movement by denying many of the organizations that grew up after 2009 the tax-exempt 501(c)(4) status they sought or by delaying until after the 2010, the 2012, and, in some cases, the 2014 elections a decision on their applications. Back in May 2013, the Inspector General for the Department of the Treasury issued a report, revealing that, starting in 2010, the IRS had singled out groups with words such as “patriot” and “Tea Party” in their titles for intensive scrutiny and that at that time they “began using inappropriate criteria to identify organizations applying for tax-exempt status (e.g., lists of past and future donors).”

With Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, and their minions in control of the Department of Justice, there was never any chance that there would be a full-scale investigation of these shenanigans and the lodging of criminal charges, and John Koskinen, who took over the agency at the end of 2013, has dragged his feet at every turn, vociferously denying that anything partisan in nature was done.

Judicial Watch, which has doggedly pursued this question through a Freedom of Information lawsuit first brought in October 2013, just discovered a smoking gun — notes taken at an interoffice meeting held in Washington DC, ca. August 2011 — where then IRS Director of the Office of Rulings and Agreements Holly Paz reported on what was going on:

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Department of Justice to Universities: Title IX Requires You to Violate First Amendment

Greg Lukianoff
Greg Lukianoff
1516
 

shutterstock_3359855The feds are once again pushing an unconstitutional definition of harassment on universities. The latest push, coming in the form of a “findings letter” issued to the University of New Mexico, is all the more concerning because it’s coming directly from the Department of Justice. Universities are forced to choose between adopting a wildly unconstitutional definition of harassment or face the possibility of losing their federal funding and the wrath of the DOJ.

As FIRE writes in our new press release:

The shockingly broad conception of sexual harassment mandated by DOJ all but guarantees that colleges and universities nationwide will subject students and faculty to months-long investigations—or worse—for protected speech. In recent years, unjust “sexual harassment” investigations into protected student and faculty speech have generated national headlines and widespread concern. Examples include:

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The Gun Grabbers’ Mask Slips

Kevin Creighton
Kevin Creighton
910
 

When Democrats and gun control advocates talk about “gun safety,” they mean only one thing: banning guns and attempting to confiscate them from law-abiding citizens. Sure, they may talk about “gun safety” or “gun violence*,” but what they really want are guns out of the hands of the private citizens.

Gun safety isn’t all that hard, actually. The four rules were laid out almost 50 years ago by Marine Colonel Jeff Cooper, and they’re still true today. But to the gun grabbers such as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV), those rules don’t exist. All guns are capable of magically leaping off the table or out of the holster and inflicting wanton destruction, all by themselves. Any attempt, therefore, to increase gun safety that doesn’t involve turning your guns in is evil, and in their eyes, deserves ridicule. But they have now taken their opposition to new lows by opposing a federal grant to help educate kids about gun safety.

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The Libertarian Podcast: Ferguson Revisited

Troy Senik
Troy Senik
13
 

I’d recommend this week’s installment of The Libertarian podcast if only because it’s rare to hear Professor Epstein hold forth with this level of passion. Our topic: the recent Department of Justice reports on Ferguson, Missouri — one exonerating Darren Wilson in Michael Brown’s death, the other alleging a systemic pattern of racial bias in the Ferguson Police Department. Richard’s less than happy with the political agenda of Eric Holder and his associates. Listen in to hear why (and subscribe to The Libertarian on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to take us on the go):

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The DOJ Inflames Racial Tensions in Ferguson

Richard Epstein
Richard Epstein
1614
 

FergusonThough it has scarcely garnered the attention it deserves, the U.S. Department of Justice has released a report exonerating Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown last year in Ferguson, Missouri. As I note in my new column for Defining Ideas, the Justice Department should, in the interest of civic harmony, be doing everything it can to call attention to the report’s findings:

What the DOJ now has to do is to acknowledge that the killing of Michael Brown was a justifiable homicide. It must abandon its contrived legalisms and defend Wilson, by condemning unequivocally the entire misguided campaign against him, which resulted in threats against his life and forced his resignation from the police force. Eric Holder owes Wilson an apology for the unnecessary anguish that Wilson has suffered. As the Attorney General for all Americans, he must tell the protestors once and for all that their campaign has been thoroughly misguided from start to finish, and that their continued protests should stop in the interests of civic peace and racial harmony. In light of the past vilification of Wilson, it is not enough for the DOJ to publish the report, and not trumpet its conclusions. It is necessary to put that report front and center in the public debate so that everyone now understands that Wilson behaved properly throughout the entire incident.

At the same time, however, the DOJ has issued a report claiming systemic prejudice in the Ferguson Police Department, an odd conclusion given that the investigation was surely undertaken to identify the “root causes” of Wilson’s misbehavior — misbehavior that they now admit did not occur. As I write:

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Obama, a Modern-day Lucius Mummius Achaicus?

Farrell Quinlan
Farrell Quinlan
12
 

The number of Obama Administration attacks on private industry are simply too numerous to count. A Google search of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “War on Coal” produces more than 2.8 million results! But the onslaught isn’t reserved only to the energy industry. The private sector “zone” is so flooded by relentless federal pressure that many of these regulatory crusades fail to get noticed anymore.

One such Presidential war that has largely escaped notice is the effort to obliterate for-profit higher education which the free market produced to fill in the gaps in service from the public and non-profit universities.

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