Image 01 Image 03

DOJ Tag

In July, the Department of Justice charged Russian national Maria Butina with conspiring to defraud the United States and acting as an unregistered foreign agent.  She has pleaded not guilty to all charges. U. S. prosecutors admitted they misread text messages they used in court Friday to claim that Butina traded sex for access.  They were attempting to show Butina as a flight risk and say the mistake should not diminish their case to continue holding her.  She had been denied bond in July, but her attorney wants her released on home confinement.

Federal prosecutors announced an indictment (pdf.) against Rep. Christopher Collins (R-NY) on insider trading charges and lying to the FBI along with his son Cameron Collins and Stephen Zarsky, the father of Cameron's fiancee. The charges stem from the "securities of Australian biotechnology company called Innate Immunotherapeutics, where the congressman served on the board."

GREAT NEWS! The man accused of murdering Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010 was extradited from Mexico to the U.S. Suspect Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes allegedly used a gun from Operation Fast & Furious, a gun-running scheme established under former Attorney General Eric Holder's Department of Justice. He will face charges of first degree murder and have an arraignment in Tucson, Arizona.

On Monday, the Department of Justice charged Russian national Maria Butina with conspiring to defraud the United States and acting as an unregistered foreign agent.  The focus of the media's attention has been on Butina's ties to the NRA and to Republican politicians. We are now learning, however, that Butina met with top officials from the Federal Reserve and from the U. S. Treasury Department during the Obama administration.

The Department of Justice released the FISA documents, 412 pages total (pdf.), related to the surveillance of Carter Page, an advisor to President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The heavily redacted documents show that officials used "the infamous and unverified Steele Dossier" to receive the warrant in 2016 and the renewals.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced today that a federal grand jury indicted 12 Russians, all officers with Russia's intelligence agency GRU, for allegedly hacking into the DNC and Hillary's campaign. The most important part of Rosenstein's speech: "There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime. There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result."

Chief Justice Roberts famously wrote that “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” That simple and correct formulation exposes how racial discrimination in the name of anti-racial discrimination perpetuates the problem. It's a problem inherent in affirmative action based on race, which, whatever the goals, is a form of racial discrimination.

The Department of Justice Inspector General has issued his report (pdf.) into the FBI/DOJ investigation of Hillary's email server and decision not to prosecute. Bottom line: Democrats got the narrative they wanted, that the FBI was not motivated by politics in exonerating Hillary, and that Comey made serious errors of judgment in his October 2016 disclosure to Congress. Yet the details show strong anti-Trump bias pervaded the FBI people involved.

In February 2011, the Obama/Holder DOJ abruptly announced it would refuse to continue defending the Defense of Marriage Act after years of arguing in Court that DOMA was constitutional. In defending DOMA for years, the DOJ was upholding an important principle, that DOJ should defend existing laws in court so long as there was any reasonable basis for doing so.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted James Wolfe, the Senate Intelligence Committee's former security director, for allegedly lying to the FBI about possible leaks to three reporters. The FBI investigated how New York Times reporter Ali Watkins "learned that Russian spies in 2013 had tried to recruit Carter Page, a former Trump foreign policy adviser" after she published an article about it at BuzzFeed. Turns out, Watkins and Wolfe had a relationship for three years.

Outgoing Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) caused quite a stir when he said on TV that he found no evidence that the FBI spied on President Donald Trump's campaign after he received a briefing from the DOJ and FBI. Now reports have emerged that Gowdy and others at the meeting did not see any documents or subpoenas they requested.

The Hill has reported that the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees will interview three witnesses in June over the FBI's handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email probe. They will interview "Bill Priestap, the assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, and Michael Steinbach, the former head of the FBI’s national security division," along with "John Giacalone, who preceded Steinbach as the bureau's top national security official and oversaw the first seven months of the Clinton probe."