Trump's corrupt DOJ takes the cake

This is one of the most gobsmacking stories on this regime we've had yet - and that's saying a lot.

Expect it

 

DOJ vs Powell is abandoned

 

For now, anyway.  Until they get Warsh confirmed.

Incredible incompetence plagues the Trump administration

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has once again tripped over the basics of litigation in its relentless quest for state voter registration records, blowing a deadline to properly serve Washington’s secretary of state with its lawsuit.

In a filing Monday, Eric Neff, the acting chief of the DOJ’s Voting Section, said miscommunication with local U.S. attorneys led to the complaint being sent to the wrong addresses. Neff said he then mistook a separate court order in the case — demanding to know why Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs had not yet been properly served — as an extension of the service deadline.

Neff begged the court to forgive his mistake. “The United States acknowledges that it should have filed a motion for extension of time from this Court and requested additional time to serve Defendant,” Neff wrote. “Counsel apologizes to the Court for not having sought a timely extension.”

  Democracy Docket

I guess that's a start.

“We would expect the U.S. Department of Justice to know how to properly file a lawsuit in federal court,” Hobbs’ office told Democracy Docket. “We would also expect them to follow official procedures of serving the complaint prior to reaching out to media outlets, considering the important nature of voter data.”

Surely they DO know. This isn't the first time they've missed a deadline in a case.

The DOJ appeared to make a similar error in its lawsuit against Massachusetts.* Despite this, Neff averred “under penalty of perjury” in a declaration to the Washington district court accompanying Monday’s filing that “[m]y Section has successfully served all other lawsuits of this nature in all other jurisdictions successfully.”

They know. They lie.

After Attorney General Pam Bondi took office, career DOJ attorneys fled by the hundreds and upwards of 75% left the Civil Rights Division as it shifted its focus from protecting voting rights to attacking them.

Last year, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said she welcomed the exodus of experienced attorneys, and has repeatedly advertised openings at the office on social media posts and urging inexperienced, but ideologically aligned, lawyers to apply.

Neff was one of those new hires. [...] Before the DOJ, Neff was a Los Angeles County prosecutor who brought flawed charges based on a conspiracy theory pushed by election deniers. That mistake ended up costing L.A. taxpayers $5 million in a settlement.

Was there no vetting? Actually, it's possible that since the experts in every agency have been fired, perhaps they simply look at loyalty oaths for new hires.

“The United States instituted multiple related actions across the country and is coordinating these actions out of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, Voting Section,” [Neff] wrote. “Litigating in multiple jurisdictions presents unique challenges to navigate each District’s local rules and varying service requirements in each state.”

Does that fit under the rubric of "ignorance of the law is no excuse?" Sorry your boss fired everybody who knew, but, too bad.

Election law experts have questioned the strategy behind filing dozens of nearly identical lawsuits, some in jurisdictions with adverse case law.

[...]

So far, the DOJ’s machine gun litigation strategy hasn’t been working. To date, three courts have ruled against the DOJ on the merits; the agency is now appealing all three. Another court in Georgia dismissed the case without prejudice because the DOJ filed in the wrong jurisdiction — they made the same mistake in California, but the judge there decided to rule against the DOJ on the merits.

Those are hardly the only legal errors. The DOJ’s filings have been riddled with typos, miscited statutes, and included undeleted drafting notes. The agency spent months emailing the wrong address in Oklahoma to demand voter rolls, and they sent demand letters to the wrong state officials in Rhode Island and Wisconsin.

And we can't forget the filings they've made using AI in which nonexistent cases are cited.

[W]hile the mistake is unlikely to doom the DOJ’s case, it is embarrassing.

And the delays this filing fault has already caused could frustrate the raison d’etre for the DOJ’s demands for state’s unredacted voter rolls — forcing election officials to purge their voter rolls ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

So, they win even if they don't know what they're doing?

So much corruption, so many lies

 

I don't actually think Stephen Miller is ignorant or as stupid as the rest of Trump's administration, which can only mean that he is so rabidly racist that he'd sooner see the country destroyed rather than contain brown people.

Meanwhile in the Epstein files

 

[I]t’s jaw-dropping to learn — some seven long years later — about the phone call that came into a popular Albuquerque disc jockey and was passed onto local authorities from a man who claimed he’d worked on a rural New Mexico ranch belonging to Jeffrey Epstein, the uber-connected financier and convicted sex offender.

The man said he knew where the bodies were buried.

Literally. Two of them, in fact — young girls whose life of abuse in Epstein World allegedly ended in murder and were hidden somewhere in the hills near the ranch not far south of Santa Fe.

[...]

New Mexico authorities were told back in 2019 not to investigate by U.S. Justice Department prosecutors in Manhattan who just as abruptly lost all interest in the matter.

[...]

[A] flurry of smaller but significant details in the latest and supposedly last tranche of Epstein Files has me convinced that 1) there might be some very active landmines in the case that haven’t been touched off yet, and 2) there definitely was, and still is, an active coverup at the highest levels of government.

[...]

The recently released files contain some surprising discoveries from the FBI’s investigation, especially centering on the actions of one of the two guards on duty that night. Both were fired for failing to check on their famous inmate and allegedly falsifying records.

The normally Trump-friendly New York Post reported last weekend that one of the two guards made an unusual $5,000 deposit just 10 days before Epstein’s death and, perhaps even more suspiciously, Googled “latest on Epstein in jail” twice, just 50 and then 40 minutes before her co-worker discovered the body. (The guard has denied in a sworn statement that she had anything to do with Epstein’s death.)

  Philadelphia Inquirer

Perhaps she believes that taking $5,000 for "falling asleep" while it happened isn't having something to do with it. It's a technicality.

The online commentator Alison Gill also notes that Epstein and his associates were discussing the possibility of blackmail material on Trump, presumably with the goal of ending Epstein’s criminal case, in the days right before he died.

Recall that one of the victims claimed Trump threatened her (and her family) with an allusion to a 12-yearold girl being killed.

[N]ow we know from a recently released 302 that Epstein was not just blackmailing the victims, but also his clients and he discussed this with Trump. (A 302 is the number of the FBI form that is used for interviews)

And [Gill] reported that he also discussed some dirt he might have on Trump

And that interview with the FBI took place 3 days before Epstein was found dead in his jail cell

Gill’s pointing out that some of the 302s especially about Trump and how he trafficked girls from his modelling agency are also missing.

[...]

Also reminds us that the DOJ withheld accusations of Trump committing sexual abuse of a minor (discovered by NPR sleuthing)

[...]

Also suspicious was the discovery of these documents in the time of Bondi and Blanche. When these were discovered, Bondi closed the case (or tried to on a 4th of July weekend) and Blanche went to talk to Maxwell. Also that closing memo talked about how no evidence of blackmail found. (Which makes us think that blackmail was found)

  Daily Kos

[T]he Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C., near where the [Trump] accuser [who was 13 years old at the time of her accusations] grew up [...] assigned reporters to look at anything and everything that could either confirm or cast doubt on what she told the FBI — real estate records, court filings, old newspaper clippings, and more — and even sent a journalist out to the West Coast,

The result? The things they could check out pretty much checked out, including her family’s relationship with an Ohio businessman whom she said introduced her to Epstein on Hilton Head Island. None of what the paper found relates to her veracity about the Trump encounter, but both its findings confirming other details, and the fact that the FBI spoke to this woman four times, bolster her credibility.

[...]

We know that during the fraught days between Epstein’s 2019 arrest and his death, the FBI ordered the New York Police Department and local Manhattan prosecutors to back off their own investigations into Epstein. Why? We know that in the New Mexico case, federal prosecutors hijacked the investigation and then absolutely nothing happened. Why? And we know that the three temporarily missing FBI interviews with the Trump accuser are part of a much bigger pattern of disappeared files, constant slow-walking, and other Justice Department irregularities. Why?

  Philadelphia Inquirer

I think we know the answer to those questions is the same answer: protect Trump and the Epstein class.

[L]ocal prosecutors in New York, New Mexico, Florida, the Virgin Islands, and elsewhere need to step up.

Gee, I wonder what the outcome will be

 

Getting closer to the Trump child rape case

 

Roger Sollenberger report on this is here:

Cleanup on aisle 47

 

Pulling out all the stops

 

Unbelievable

Incompetence or intention?  They've redacted names of people involved with Epstein and left the victims out in the open.

UPDATE 07:37 pm:

It doesn't get any more corrupt than this

 "Virtually won."   The only thing that stops this outrageous grift is if juries and judges rule against him.

The case of Don Lemon's illegal, unjustified arrest

Like other arrests of journalists and protesters, they have to know their success is unlikely.  They're doing this to intimidate others who might want to stand up to them.

UPDATE 02/03/2026:

Far afield of "we don't talk about ongoing cases."  Of course, they'll still use that excuse when it's some case that's bad for them.

Epstein file revelations continue

 It is absolutely no coincidence.

A fucking doctor.  Do no harm.  

If, Angus.  If.

Who's Lesley?  And why hasn't she/he been picked up?

UPDATE 10:53 am:

And, in fact, that is one of the reasons they claimed there was nothing about Trump to be revealed.  Because, the claim goes, if there were, Biden would have surely used it.  

They have a point: why DIDN'T he?  Who was HE protecting?

UPDATE 05:47 pm:  Even Epstein didn't want Elon around.

And why is this person's name redacted?

UPDATE 02/02/2026:

UPDATE 02/23/2026:

Fascist authoritarians arrest journalists

UPDATE 05:43 pm:

 

Trump losing in court

And...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally approved the deportation of five student activists last year after receiving memos largely describing their participation in pro-Palestinian protests and their writings about the war in Gaza, according to internal government documents unsealed by a federal judge on Thursday.

The documents reveal new details about how the Trump administration decided to target the activists, who were all foreign students visible in campus protests. They had been in the United States legally but were arrested and threatened with deportation last spring.

[...]

Judge William G. Young, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, ruled last year that the Trump administration had illegally targeted the students for deportation based on their speech — in particular their opposition to the Israeli government and its military operations in Gaza.

[...]

[The documents] also show that officials privately anticipated the possibility that the deportations might not hold up in court because much of the conduct highlighted could be seen as protected speech.

[...]

In one set of documents with the referrals, officials acknowledged that almost no grounds existed for deporting the students other than a rarely used 1952 law that says the secretary of state may deem noncitizens deportable for reasons related to foreign policy.

[...]

In justifying the attempt to deport the students, Mr. Rubio and other administration officials repeatedly asserted that they had supported terrorist organizations.

[...]

The students have denied that charge. They sued over their arrests, and judges last year ordered each of them released, citing concerns that their arrests had been based on protected speech.

The case before Judge Young, brought by two national academic organizations, argued more broadly that the arrests had chilled academic speech on the nation’s college campuses. Judge Young agreed, describing the behavior of Mr. Rubio and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, as an “unconstitutional conspiracy” to “pick off” a few students with an eye to “violating” the free speech rights of thousands of noncitizen scholars.

  NYT

Weaponizing the DOJ

 Despicable.  Totally unsurprising.

The truth will get you prosecuted in Trump's America

And you have no first amendment rights that cannot be overridden by the DOJ.

Three more Democratic lawmakers said they were contacted by federal prosecutors investigating their participation in a video last year reminding U.S. military and intelligence service members that they are obligated to refuse illegal orders.

The disclosures from Reps. Chris Deluzio (Pa.), Maggie Goodlander (N.H.) and Chrissy Houlahan (Pa.) means that five of the six lawmakers who appeared in the video are under investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

  Democracy Docket

There will be no independence at DOJ

Pam Bondi, as awful as she is, isn't satisfying Trump's craving to punish people he doesn't like.

On Jan. 8, the White House announced the creation of a new division in the Department of Justice for “national fraud enforcement,” to be headed by an assistant attorney general. What makes this move notable is that it will be run out of the White House, under the direct supervision of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Never before has the politicization of justice been so blatant or so dangerous.

Having a prosecutor directly answerable to the president and vice president crosses a line that no other administration has dared to cross. It is the kind of thing one might expect in an autocratic or totalitarian regime, but not in the United States.

  Yahoo

Except, the United States now IS an autocratic (or totalitarian) regime.

President Donald Trump's administration said on Thursday it was creating a new division at the U.S. Department of Justice to combat what the White House called "rampant" fraud across the country.

Rights advocates and critics have said the Trump administration has used fraud allegations as an excuse to target immigrants and political opponents. They have also dismissed Trump's ability to tackle fraud, citing pardons from Trump to those who have faced fraud convictions in the past.

[...]

The assistant attorney general for the new Justice Department division will be responsible for leading the department's efforts to investigate, prosecute and remedy fraud affecting the federal government, federally funded programs and private citizens, the White House said.

The White House said the official will advise the U.S. attorney general and deputy attorney general "on issues involving significant, high-impact fraud investigations and prosecutions and related policy matters."

  Reuters

Explaining why the administration is creating the new position, Vance said, “This is the person who is going to make sure we stop defrauding the American people. When we get the bad guys, we want to make sure we get them permanently and they don’t have some legal technicality they can get out of.”

  Yahoo

The courts will be the final arbiter of that. Or they used to be. How is Vance's office going to make sure there's no legal technicality available?

And how did Republicans in the Senate, which will be responsible for confirming the nominee to head the new division, react? Majority Leader John Thune said that the person “would be confirmed swiftly.”

Thune’s response is a clear dereliction of duty. It will now be up to his colleagues in the Senate to resist this dangerous power play.

Don't hold your breath.

And, in a moment of supreme irony, [after national security documents were recovered from Mar-A-Lago,] Trump said, “There could be no more heinous betrayal of American values than to use the law to terrorize the innocent and reward the wicked, and that’s what they were doing at a level that’s never been seen before.”

He was just foretelling his next administration. Remember: every accusation is a confession.

[T]he jurisdiction of the new assistant attorney general will extend to efforts against what Vance called “domestic terrorism networks” trying to thwart the administration’s immigration agenda. In his view, these supposed networks are “defrauding the United States by inciting violence against our law enforcement officers.”

Vance is not stupid. That's not fraud.

That’s an unusually expansive definition of fraud, but the administration is eager to let its newly created division loose to curb protest without letting niceties of the law — what Vance labeled “some legal technicality” — get in the way. Moreover, it seems not to matter to Trump and Vance that the Justice Department already has a Fraud Section housed within its Criminal Division.

What does matter is that going forward, decisions regarding some fraud prosecutions will be made in the White House and directed by the president and vice president. As Vance said at a press briefing, the new assistant attorney general “is going to kick [them] into high gear.”

That effort is also central to the administration’s ongoing effort to purge the Justice Department of any vestige of professionalism, an effort at war with the very reason the department was created by an act of Congress in 1870.

[...]

If Sen. Thune and his colleagues let this plan succeed, they will be taking a monumental step toward turning the American constitutional system upside down.

The Supreme Court is doing that job on their own quite nicely.

The Justice Department plans to insulate its criminal and civil fraud sections from a White House-run enforcement initiative rather than merge them into the newly established fraud division, according to an internal email reviewed by Bloomberg Law.

“It has been decided that the Fraud Section will remain entirely intact under the current Criminal Division structure and its mission will remain the same,” Tysen Duva, the Criminal Division’s assistant attorney general, wrote to the office’s employees late Monday.

  Bloomberg

They'll just be working on actual fraud cases?

The new Senate-confirmed position, which Vice President JD Vance said Jan. 8 will be supervised directly by himself and President Donald Trump, will “be in addition to both the Criminal Division Fraud Section and the Civil Division Fraud Section,” Duva continued. “When a nominee is confirmed, that individual will hire attorneys to staff his/her own office.”

How very unrepublican. Expanding government.

The Criminal and Civil divisions’ fraud sections based in department headquarters have decades of experience coordinating the government program fraud investigations that Vance and an accompanying White House fact sheet suggested will be taken over by the new office.

[...]

Duva told employees Monday that his division “will look forward to establishing a collaborative partnership with the new AAG-Fraud, such that we can assist and leverage our experience to help identify, investigate, and eliminate fraud of all kinds throughout our country.”

Trying to hold on to some semblance of relevance. Trump is not looking for experience or professionalism.

Duva was sworn in Dec. 23 to head the Criminal Division, after his acting predecessor protected it from politicization and case reversals that have taken place elsewhere in the department.

“I am committed to supporting the great work that you are already doing in this area,” Duva’s email said.

Trump won't care what they're doing, as long as they don't interferer with his agenda of retaliation.

Instead of investigating the murderer of Renee Good...

 DOJ is investigating Renee Good's wife.

The prosecutors walked because Trump’s DOJ refused to investigate what may be one of the most serious excessive-force killings by a federal agent in decades.

[...]

When career officials resign en masse, they’re sounding an alarm. They’re telling us the rule of law is being bent to protect power—and to shield a brutal immigration enforcement regime from scrutiny.

[...]

Renee Good is dead. Video evidence contradicts ICE’s story about her death. But, instead of doing what the Justice Department has always done, sending in the Civil Rights Division, Trump’s administration slammed the door shut on the case.

  The New Republic

If I remember correctly, they already hollowed out the Civil Rights Division.

Meanwhile, Trump’s FBI has begun digging into Good’s past, apparently attempting to smear her name while shutting local Minnesota authorities out of the investigation.

This is not a judgment call. This is a cover-up.

It's a "fuck you" to us all.

Donald Trump and JD Vance rushed to defend the shooter. Kristi Noem called Good’s interaction with police "domestic terrorism." And DOJ leadership told its own civil rights prosecutors: Stand down. Don’t go to the scene. Don’t ask questions.

[...]

This is how authoritarian systems work: first the violence, then the insulation of the perpetrators, then the silencing of anyone who objects.

The stunning resignations on Monday of four senior career officials from the Criminal Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division confirm that DOJ has gone profoundly off the rails in its handling of what increasingly appears to be one of the gravest federal excessive-force cases in decades.

The resignations reportedly had multiple causes, but the central one was the sidelining of the Criminal Section from the investigation of the January 7 fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross.

[...]

[L]eadership of the Civil Rights Division, under Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, informed the Criminal Section that it would not be investigating the case at all—a spectacular departure from past practice. Multiple career prosecutors offered to go to the scene but were told not to.

[...]

Calling this shooting into question would not merely implicate one agent; it would threaten the legitimacy of a brute-force enforcement regime that is Trump’s pride and joy. And it would come at a moment when the president is reportedly already furious with Attorney General Pam Bondi and senior immigration officials over perceived softness and setbacks.

[...]

Federal authorities reversed an initial plan for a joint investigation with Minnesota officials, shifting the probe to exclusive FBI control and cutting off the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from evidence and access. State officials—including Attorney General Keith Ellison and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty—have said publicly that this move hamstrung their ability to conduct an independent investigation.

Minnesota responded Monday with a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and senior federal officials, seeking to block the massive immigration enforcement surge in the Twin Cities. The complaint characterizes the deployment of more than 2,000 armed agents as an “invasion” and alleges unlawful tactics—warrantless stops and arrests in sensitive locations, racial profiling, and unconstitutional conduct that has disrupted daily life and eroded public safety. It further asserts that the campaign bears no genuine connection to its stated goals and instead reflects a retaliatory pattern of federal action aimed at Minnesota because of its political leadership and demographics.

  Harry Litman @ New Republic