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DOJ Tag

Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen has filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York for a Temporary Restraining Order regarding the records and evidence seized by the government when it executed a search warrant on Cohen's offices and homes on April 9, 2018. According to news reports, a hearing started this morning and is ongoing this afternoon before Judge Kimba Wood.

There isn't much of a pretense anymore that the Mueller investigation is about alleged Russian campaign collusion. Maybe it started out about collusion, but it veered off course within a couple of months, when Mueller decided that Paul Manafort needed to be investigated for conduct many years ago having nothing to do with the campaign, or even Russia. Rod Rosenstein created the paperwork in early August 2017 to retroactively expand Mueller's investigation and justify Mueller conduct that already had taken place.

The FBI raid on the home and office of Donald Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen reportedly took place after a referral from Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The search warrant apparently was obtained by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York.

As a "caravan of migrants" makes its way to our Southern border, President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions are working in tandem to tighten border security. The migrants are marching toward our southern border with the intent of entering the U. S. by seeking asylum, crossing illegally, or by exploiting the ongoing “catch and release” policy. Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has reported a 203% increase in illegal border crossings from March 2017 to March 2018 and a 37% increase from February 2018 to March 2018.

The breaking news last night was that the DOJ Office of Inspector General announced it was launching an investigation of possible Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court abuse. The presumption, though not literally in the OIG announcement, was that it concerned the FISA warrant to surveil Carter Page based on the Steele dossier.

The surveillance of Carter Page, based in part on the Steele Memo, has been the subject of a House Intelligence Committee memo authored by the Republican majority, and a Democrat counter-memo. The heart of the dispute is the failure to inform the FISA court that the Steele memo, which is almost entirely unverified, was paid for by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, and that Steele was hostile to Trump. Carter Page, however, clearly was not the target, he was the excuse, as I wrote last month:

The Trump administration has slapped sanctions on an Iranian company and nine Iranians for hacking into American universities. A tenth person received sanctions after he hacked accounts belonging to HBO employees to steal data and unaired episodes of shows like Game of Thrones. Officials said these individuals do not work for the regime, but did their work for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has fired outgoing FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was set to retire in about 24 hours. From The Washington Post:
Sessions announced the decision in a statement just before 10 p.m., noting that both the Justice Department Inspector General and the FBI office that handles discipline had found “that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions.”

It's clear that Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) wants to be president.  What's not clear is in what country she wants to president. She wants to be president of a country with no borders, with a Supreme Court that bases its decisions on "feelings" rather than law, with few (preferably no?) gun rights for citizens, with "free" college, with government-run (i.e. single payer) healthcare, with severely restricted speech, with unrestricted abortion funded by taxpayers.  To be fair to Harris, this is the same imaginary country in which all Democrat presidential hopefuls aspire to be president. Harris' ongoing, if not yet announced, 2020 presidential campaign is currently focused on flouting foiling our nation's immigration laws.

On Monday, I blogged about how Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) asked the FBI to declassify the criminal referral he and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sent to the DOJ over dossier author Christopher Steele. The FBI approved a less-redacted version and Grassley released it on Tuesday, including some parts of the documents that detail why the two senators believe Steele misled the FBI. However, the portion about Steele's second dossier that had information from an associate of the Clintons and member of the State Department remains the same. In other parts, it supports claims that the FBI used Steele's dossier to receive a surveillance warrant on carter Page.

Readers are familiar with the IRS targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. But there has been another targeting story percolating through the court system that has received little attention, until now.

President Donald Trump's Chief of Staff John Kelly said on Fox News Radio that the president will release House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes' memo soon. From Fox News:
In a radio exclusive, White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly, joined Brian Kilmeade at the White House to talk about President Trump's first State of the Union address. Kelly discussed President Trump taking the handcuffs off of the military in Afghanistan, working on a bipartisan solution on DACA, why his heart breaks over identity politics in America and President Trump releasing the Nunes memo "pretty quick and the whole world can see it."

Fox News has reported that the DOJ inspector general has announced that they have located the missing text messages:
Text messages from a critical five-month period between Trump-bashing FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who both served on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, have been located, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz has told Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.
*This is a breaking story. MORE TO COME.