Sneaky Pete

Barr hedging all his bets.

Attorney General William Barr has appointed the prosecutor investigating the origins of the 2016 Russia probe as a special counsel, a move that insulates U.S. Attorney John Durham from facing a swift removal in the incoming Biden administration.

Barr appointed Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut who has been investigating the origins of the Russia investigation since May 2019, as special counsel on Oct. 19.

[...]

“Following consultation with Mr. Durham, I have determined that, in light of the extraordinary circumstances relating to these matters, the public interest warrants Mr. Durham continuing this investigation pursuant to the powers and independence afforded by the Special Counsel regulations,” the order states.

Barr notified the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees of his decision in a letter sent Tuesday.

  The Hill

Is that what you'd call timely?

Barr said he waited to notify Congress of the move until more than a month later after “having previously determined that it was in the public interest to toll notification given the proximity to the presidential election.”

Congress isn't "the public" Bill.

Under this federal statute, only an attorney general can fire the special counsel, and they must provide a reason for the termination in writing that falls along the lines of misconduct, conflict of interest or dereliction of duty.

The misconduct in this case is Barr's.

Durham is currently conducting a criminal probe that has significantly narrowed, Barr says. Now Durham is focusing his probe on the conduct of FBI agents involved in Crossfire Hurricane, the name for the original FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians.

[...]

The Oct. 19 order authorizes Durham to investigate “whether any federal official, employee, or any other person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns, individuals associated with those campaigns, and individuals associated with the administration of President Donald J. Trump, including but not limited to Crossfire Hurricane and the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III.”

The order also authorizes him to prosecute any federal crimes that arise from the investigation.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: Jesus Christ.

Prepare for a politically motivated, tainted police report

A judge ruled Monday to allow President Trump’s police panel to publish its report and recommendations as long as it includes a disclaimer that the report was drafted in violation of federal open meeting laws.

U.S. District Judge John Bates, who was appointed by George W. Bush, issued his decision after he temporarily blocked the law enforcement commission from releasing its report last month.

A judge ruled Monday to allow President Trump’s police panel to publish its report and recommendations as long as it includes a disclaimer that the report was drafted in violation of federal open meeting laws.

U.S. District Judge John Bates, who was appointed by George W. Bush, issued his decision after he temporarily blocked the law enforcement commission from releasing its report last month.

Attorney General William Barr announced the policing commission in January to “conduct a modern fresh evaluation of the salient issues affecting American law enforcement and the communities they protect” after Trump issued an executive order, according to previous court documents.

[...]

The report was supposed to be given to the International Association of Chiefs of Police at the group’s annual conference before Bates blocked its release.

The NAACP LDF’s lawsuit claimed that the panel went against FACA by not allowing civil rights groups to provide input at public hearings and by filling the 18-member panel with only law enforcement officials.

[...]

Sherrilyn Ifill, the president and director-counsel of NAACP LDF, told The Hill in a statement that the report is "utterly discredited" and the commission's creation, process, recommendations and release "have all been tainted by the federal district court’s finding of illegality."

"A balanced and fair Commission would never have supported the conclusions of this report, so Attorney General Barr convened a rigged Commission, in violation of federal law, to generate a report that would serve political, rather than valid public safety ends," Ifill said.

[...]

Reuters previously received drafts of the report through public records requests. Those drafts indicated the report calls for more police surveillance powers and due process protections for officers, without discussing systemic racism in law enforcement.

  The Hill

Of course it did. It was drafted by law enforcement officials.

I suppose it's at least important that the judge waited until it would have no bearing on the election.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Impeach Barr

A group of over 1,600 former Justice Department (DOJ) attorneys are accusing Attorney General William Barr of seeking to help President Trump win reelection.

"We fear that Attorney General Barr intends to use the DOJ's vast law enforcement powers to undermine our most fundamental democratic value: free and fair elections," the group wrote in an open letter published Thursday on Medium.

[...]

“He has signaled this intention in myriad ways, from making false statements about the security of mail-in voting from foreign hackers to falsely suggesting that mail-in ballots are subject to widespread fraud and coercion.”

[...]

"[E]ven if there is a legitimate predicate for the Durham investigation, there is clearly no justification for taking public action on it in such close proximity to the November election,” the group wrote. “Such a blatant politicization and abuse of federal law enforcement power risks immense and lasting harm to our democracy and to the integrity and reputation of the DOJ.”

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Never-ending violations

A federal judge Thursday determined that a law enforcement commission ordered by President Trump violated federal rules on open meetings and that the panel must stop all work until it complies with the law.

U.S. District Judge John Bates said in the ruling that the 18-member Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice held private meetings without advanced notice to the public.

The judge noted that this violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which mandates that meetings of federal “advisory committees” “must be open to the public,” “must make its records and drafts publicly available” and “must give notice of any meetings in the Federal Register at least 15 days before the meeting is held.”

The judge added that the commission also violated the component of FACA that states committees must be “fairly balanced” in the viewpoints represented. The 18-member law enforcement commission, which Trump ordered Attorney General William Barr to create in October 2019, consisted exclusively of law-enforcement personnel.

  The Hill

The Trump administration cares nothing for laws.

According to Politico, Barr was scheduled to receive the committee’s final report later this month. However, the judge ruled that all recommendations and activities of the commission will only be allowed to resume once the group comes into compliance with FACA’s guidelines.

In the words of the country's worst president ever, we'll see.

Courage is contagious

I suppose attorney Herbert will be looking for a new job.  He can make more money -- lots more -- in a private practice firm anyway.

Impeach Bill Barr

Specifically, in a Montessori school.  What's Bill Barr got against Montessori schools?

I don't know who's calling him crazy or delusional, but if they are, yes, they should stop. He's fucking evil is what he is.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

They intend to exhaust you with lies

In his latest warning about the dangers of mass mail-in voting, Attorney General William P. Barr pointed to a case in Texas that he said highlighted the risk of fraud.

“Elections that have been held with mail have found substantial fraud and coercion,” Barr told CNN on Wednesday. “For example, we indicted someone in Texas, 1,700 ballots collected, he — from people who could vote, he made them out and voted for the person he wanted to. Okay?”

Federal prosecutors brought no such indictment. And while a Justice Department spokeswoman said Barr was referring to a local prosecution involving suspected mail-in voting fraud in a city council election, the assistant district attorney on that case said Barr’s description doesn’t match the facts.

“That’s not what happened at all,” said Andy Chatham, who is now in private practice.

[...]

After being asked about Chatham’s account, Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said in a statement: “Prior to his interview, the Attorney General was provided a memo prepared within the Department that contained an inaccurate summary about the case which he relied upon when using the case as an example.”

  WaPo

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The most corrupt administration in American history?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

In other interesting news: Berman is testifying today

“The Attorney General said that if I did not resign from my position I would be fired,” [SDNY Attorney Geoffrey Berman] said in his statement, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. “He added that getting fired from my job would not be good for my resume or future job prospects. I told him that while I did not want to get fired, I would not resign.”

Barr urged Berman to step aside, saying that if he did not, he would be fired, according to the statement.

[...]

Barr began by saying he “wanted to make a change in the Southern District of New York,” Berman wrote.

[...]

Berman told Barr he “loved” his job and asked the attorney general if he were “in any way dissatisfied” with his performance. Barr said he was not and that the move was “solely prompted by Jay Clayton’s desire to move back to New York” and the “administration’s desire to keep him on the team.”

And there was no other spot for him on the team, huh?

Berman told Barr he knew and liked Clayton but that “he was an unqualified choice.”

He said he was not interested in the civil division job or in resigning, and that he would leave when a nominee was confirmed. He told Barr that there were important investigations he wanted to see through to completion.

Which was no doubt exactly Barr's problem.

Berman said he was signaling to Barr “that I was not going to resign so he could disregard normal procedure and appoint someone from outside the Southern District” instead of his deputy.

During the meeting Barr asked Berman for his cellphone number so that Barr could call him later that day. Berman gave him his personal cell number and told him that his position “would not change this afternoon or in the future.”

After the meeting, Berman called senior aides and attorneys who might represent him if he were fired. He said he wanted to be ready to challenge the firing on the grounds that he was appointed by the judges of the Southern District and therefore could not be fired by the attorney general or the president.

[...]

Berman, 60, a lifelong Republican who had volunteered on the Trump transition team, was appointed U.S. attorney on an interim basis by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in January 2018. Trump personally interviewed Berman, who had been an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan from 1990 to 1994. When 120 days had passed without the president nominating a permanent U.S. attorney, the judges of the Southern District stepped in and appointed Berman to the job, pursuant to federal law.

[...]

Later that evening he had a brief conversation with Barr. He told Barr he wanted until Monday to discuss the situation with his executive staff. At that point Barr offered him the SEC chairman position, Berman demurred and repeated that he wanted to have a final conversation on Monday.

“This is about you,” Barr said. Replied Berman: “It’s about the office.”

That was the last time the two men spoke.

At 9:15 p.m. that Friday, in a surprise move, Barr announced that Berman was stepping down; that Trump planned to nominate Clayton, to take his place; and that in the interim Trump would appoint the U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, Craig Carpenito, to oversee the New York office in an acting capacity.

Appointing Carpenito as acting U.S. attorney “would have been unprecedented, unnecessary and unexplained,” Berman wrote.

About two hours later, Berman fired back, saying he had not resigned and intended to stay in his job until a nominee was confirmed.

[...]

At about 3:30 p.m., Barr released a letter he had sent to Berman notifying him that he had been fired by the president.

In what Berman called a “critical concession,” Barr also stated that Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, and not Carpenito, would serve as acting U.S. attorney until a successor could be confirmed.

“With that concession and having full confidence that Audrey would continue the important work of the office, I decided to step down and not litigate my removal,” he wrote.

[...]

Berman’s office brought a number of high-profile cases that involved Trump associates, including convicting the president’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen of tax evasion, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress. Last October, Southern District prosecutors charged two Trump and Rudolph W. Giuliani associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, with scheming to funnel foreign money to U.S. politicians while trying to influence U.S.-Ukraine relations.

[...]

Strauss, colleagues say, possesses the experience and acumen to guide the office through turbulent times while upholding its long tradition of independence.

A registered Democrat, she was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District from 1976 to 1983. While there, she bested defense attorney and political fixer Roy Cohn, a man Trump has called a mentor, in his attempt to overturn convictions of two Mafia members.

I think we can call that a big blow-up in Barr's fat face then.

The administration’s critics have said they believe that Trump wanted him gone because Berman’s prosecutors had been investigating the president’s allies, including Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Thursday’s closed-door session is part of the committee’s inquiry into Barr’s management of the Justice Department and what Democrats deem his “unprecedented politicization” of the historically apolitical agency. Barr, who has been criticized for intervening in cases of personal consequence to the president, is due to testify publicly before committee at the end of July.

  WaPo

Any bets he won't? Besides mine, that is.

Committee Republicans dismissed the testimony of Berman, a lifelong Republican and party donor. “Berman provided no testimony today that any case involving the president or any other human being was at all a part of the decision to move him out of the Southern District,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.)

Hmmm. Matt. We're talking about Barr. Why do you bring up Trump? Hm?

Trump has nominated Jay Clayton, the current head of the SEC, to be the next U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York although he has no experience as a federal prosecutor — a point Berman made to Barr.

Senate Republicans have indicated they are unlikely to move ahead on the nomination.

Damn brave of 'em.

Check out Laura Rozen's Twitter thread on it here.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Impeach Bill Barr.

Let's do it

GWU regrets giving Bill Barr an honorary degree

More than 80% of the faculty of George Washington University Law School, the alma mater of Attorney General William Barr, issued a scathing six-page letter this week condemning his conduct. “His actions have posed, and continue to create, a clear and present danger to the even-handed administration of justice, to civil liberties, and to the constitutional order,” it says.

  Forbes

Ouch.

Earlier this month, reports surfaced that faculty members were discussing the possibility of stripping Barr of the honorary degree he received from the law school in 1992 when he served his first term as Attorney General under President George H.W. Bush.

[...]

Instead the discussion turned to the idea of writing a letter that would detail Barr’s misconduct. Faculty members circulated a draft and many agreed that the letter was the best way to take a stand.

[...]

“We knew we were taking an extraordinary step,” says [Catherine Ross, who has been a professor of constitutional law at GW for 25 years]. “But he is our alumnus and we have honored him and we gave him a law degree. He is undermining the rule of law and corrupting the Department of Justice. If we don’t say anything it looks like we’re OK with it.”

The letter lays out four instances of Barr’s misconduct. They include his order to clear Lafayette Square, his misrepresentation of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Barr’s intervention in the sentencing of Robert Stone and his conduct in the Michael Flynn case.

The letter is strongly worded throughout. About Barr’s actions in the Stone case, it says, “This is not fidelity to the rule of law and to even-handed justice. It is fidelity to the whims of the President, the stuff of autocracies, not a constitutional republic.”

Some prominent members of the faculty declined to sign, including Jonathan Turley, who recently published an op ed in support of the Attorney General. “The letter makes a number of legal statements that I believe are contested, unestablished, or mistaken,” he wrote to Forbes in an email. Ross says she respects Turley’s decision but fundamentally disagrees.

While the letter was being circulated to faculty members, Barr fired Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, an action that was widely criticized as politically motivated. “The way the news was breaking, we decided we had to release the letter the way it was or it was going to become like the Oxford English Dictionary,” says Ross. “Every day we would have had to add a section.”

From the letter:

Sadly, in his current (second) term as Attorney General Mr. Barr has demonstrated repeated disregard of the principles for which our institution stands. Since 2019 Attorney General Barr has made the Department of Justice unrecognizable to those of us who prize its independence from politics and its commitment to the highest standards of the legal profession.

[...]

William Barr’s actions as Attorney General since 2019 have undermined the rule of law, breached constitutional norms, and damaged the integrity and traditional independence of his office and of the Department of Justice.

[...]

We regard Attorney General Barr’s purported summaries [of the Mueller report] as misleading and deceptive, and we must ask ourselves why he issued them. The only answer that seems plausible is that Attorney General Barr intended the result that Special Counsel Mueller warned about: i.e., to create public confusion about critical aspects of the Mueller investigation and to undermine full public confidence in the outcome of the investigation.

[...]

[R]oughly 2,000 veterans of the Department of Justice (“DOJ Alumni”) joined in a Feb. 16, 2020 public letter criticizing the President and Attorney General Barr [for interfering in the sentencing of Roger Stone]. We borrow from that public statement in describing the significance of the Stone case. The letter explains:

[i]t is unheard of for the Department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors [who serve as civil servants without political appointments], who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the President. That is what Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case. And, worse, he did so after the President publicly condemned the sentencing recommendation that line prosecutors had already filed in court.

We agree with the DOJ Alumni that the public could only conclude that the Attorney General believed that fulfilling the President’s personal wishes was more important than ensuring evenhanded justice for all federal criminal defendants.

[...]

DOJ Alumni, including many who had protested the revised sentencing memorandum in the Stone case, also criticized the motion in the Flynn case. The Attorney General once again sought to do a favor for the President, despite Flynn’s lies to his superiors and to the FBI, and Flynn’s robust admission to criminal acts. As the DOJ Alumni put it in a public letter on May 11, 2020: “Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are autocracies, not constitutional republics.”

[...]

Although Attorney General Barr has denied issuing any orders to the law enforcement officers [at Lafayette Square during a peaceful protest to violently clear the area], spokespersons for the Department of Justice and the White House have said he was in charge and gave the orders. We need not attempt to resolve those discrepancies here. It is undeniable that the Attorney General, who was on the scene, made no effort to assure that the First Amendment rights of lawful protestors were protected. He made matters worse by participating with President Trump in a photo opportunity in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, whose leaders had neither been asked for nor granted permission for partisan exploitation of their house of worship. At a critical moment in American history, Attorney General Barr could have been a leader in protecting Americans’ First Amendment right to express their outrage at our nation’s long history of institutional racism, and police brutality against people of color. Instead, Attorney General Barr stands on the wrong side of history.

[...]

DOJ Alumni initially called upon Attorney General Barr to resign, though they conceded he was unlikely to do so. They requested that Congress exercise its oversight authority to review Barr’s official conduct and formally censure him. They further asked the Inspector General of the Department of Justice to initiate a formal inquiry into Barr’s conduct. We endorse all of those requests.

We express the most severe opprobrium for Barr’s actions as Attorney General. We are not motivated by political partisanship. We include members of both major political parties, and of none. We have different legal specialties and represent a broad spectrum of approaches to the law. Our diversity is a strength as we pull together to respond to a time of national crisis, exacerbated by an Attorney General who has fallen well below the minimal threshold his office requires.

[...]

By this letter, we seek to demonstrate to our current and former students, our colleagues in the legal profession and legal academia, and the general public that we are deeply disturbed by Barr’s actions as Attorney General since 2019 and their implications for our democracy. Attorney General Barr has besmirched the basic values of our law school and the legal profession.

UPDATE:

Behind the Berman firing

By the time [AG Bill] Barr was sworn into office in February, [Michael] Cohen, who had paid hush money to an adult film star who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump, had already pleaded guilty and was set to begin a three-year prison sentence, all of which embarrassed and angered the president.

But Mr. Barr spent weeks in the spring of 2019 questioning the prosecutors over their decision to charge Mr. Cohen with violating campaign finance laws.

[...]

At one point during the discussions, Mr. Barr instructed Justice Department officials in Washington to draft a memo outlining legal arguments that could have raised questions about Mr. Cohen’s conviction and undercut similar prosecutions in the future, according to the people briefed on the matter.

The prosecutors in New York resisted the effort, the people said, and a Justice Department official said Mr. Barr did not instruct them to withdraw the case.

[...]

The New York Times reported previously that Mr. Barr had questioned the legal theory of the campaign finance charges against Mr. Cohen, but it was not known that the attorney general went so far as to ask for the draft memo or had raised his concerns more than once.

[...]

Mr. Barr’s unexpected involvement in such a politically sensitive case suggested that he planned to exert influence over prosecutors in the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, long known for operating independently of Washington. Mr. Barr and other officials have told aides and other United States attorneys that the Southern District needs to be reined in.

[...]

More than any other federal prosecutor’s office, the Manhattan office had pursued investigations that angered Mr. Trump. During the case against Mr. Cohen, for instance, prosecutors had indicated that Mr. Trump directed the hush money payments, although the office was not seeking charges against the president.

In addition to prosecuting Mr. Cohen, the president’s former personal lawyer, the office has also been investigating his current one, Rudolph W. Giuliani, over his actions in Ukraine.

[...]

Mr. Barr’s role in the Cohen case also presaged his involvement in two other high-profile prosecutions of Trump associates: Michael T. Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser, and Roger J. Stone Jr., a political operative close to Mr. Trump who was convicted of lying to Congress and other crimes.

[...]

Mr. Barr’s maneuvering in the Cohen case was not his only attempt to insert himself in Southern District cases. After Mr. Barr was sworn in, one of his first actions was to seek briefings on politically sensitive investigations in the office and elsewhere, people briefed on the discussions said.

One matter that Mr. Berman’s office described to Mr. Barr early on was the growing investigation into Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Soviet-born businessmen who were helping Mr. Giuliani unearth potentially damaging information in Ukraine about Mr. Trump’s political rivals. Mr. Berman eventually announced charges against the two men, in October 2019, and the Southern District has continued to investigate whether some of Mr. Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine violated lobbying laws.

[...]

The arrival of the coronavirus in New York forced Southern District prosecutors to cancel interviews with witnesses in the investigation into Mr. Giuliani and his former associates, people briefed on the matter said.

The pandemic also forced a delay in the trial of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman from this October until next February, putting off what could have been an embarrassing spectacle for the president until after the election.

  NYT

Too bad, but I'd bet that his handling of the pandemic will be a greater problem when it comes to the 2020 election than more information about his Russian dealings would have been. His supporters don't give two hoots about the latter, but some of them might care about the former if their relatives are dying.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

WTF

Jesus Christ, Nadler.  That's the same excuse you all gave for not impeaching Trump until you were forced to do the right thing.  

Democrats are absolutely pathetic.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ooops

UPDATE:

Impeach them both.

And another one

Trump has fired Geoffrey Berman as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, sources familiar with the decision told ABC News.

The surprise move comes two years into a tenure that included the prosecution of Michael Cohen, Jeffrey Epstein and two associates of Rudy Giuliani.

The decision was delivered personally by U.S. Attorney General William Barr, who a Justice Department official told ABC News offered Berman other positions, including head of the Civil Division at Main Justice.

He declined the offer and was subsequently fired and Craig Carpenito, the U.S. attorney in New Jersey, was named to lead the office on an interim basis.

  Yahoo

Berman followed Preet Bharara, who was fired at the beginning of Trump's reign when Bharara refused to pledge allegiance to Trump.

"I learned in a press release from the Attorney General tonight that I was 'stepping down' as United States Attorney," [Berman] said. "I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position, to which I was appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. I will step down when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate."

"Until then, our investigations will move forward without delay or interruption," he continued.

[...]

Trump intends to nominate Jay Clayton of the Securities and Exchange Commission to replace Berman.

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti wondered if the abrupt personnel change might be to protect Rudy Giuliani.

[...]

“Given Trump’s history, would anyone be surprised if he fired Berman to influence or quash the investigation of Giuliani?

[...]

“Be concerned,” former DOJ official David Laufman warned his Twitter followers. “Be very concerned.”

  Raw Story

And the Senate is controlled by Republican Trump lackies.  He won't have a problem there.  It's just as important in November to flip the Senate as it is to remove Trump.

SDNY has been handling an investigation into the Trump Organization, the pay-off to Stormy Daniels, Trump's hidden inaugural donors, and Deutsche Bank's sketchy loans to Trump.

“The SDNY presents the greatest ongoing legal threat to Trump and his people,” says Mimi Rocah, a former chief of the office’s organized crime unit. In February the Times reported that Trump had asked Barr’s predecessor, Matthew Whitaker, whether a perceived loyalist could be put in charge of the SDNY’s work; Whitaker subsequently denied, under oath, having had any such conversation. But it’s hard to imagine Trump won’t try to intercede if the famously independent SDNY—currently back in the headlines for charging billionaire Jeffrey Epstein with sex trafficking—moves to indict one or more of the president’s high-ranking associates. (Epstein has pleaded not guilty.) “The fear is that Trump doesn’t even need to say it out loud anymore, because Barr is so protective of him,” Rocah says. “It would be ridiculously naïve not to be concerned.”

  Vanity Fair        July 2019

And, here's your bottom line:

UPDATE:

I'd like to think so, but I'm not that confident.

UPDATE:

There seems to be a little confusion.  So unusual for this administration.

UPDATE:  Berman steps down.

Smug prick

And shame on them for doing it.

Despicable, as always

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Prosecutor Kravis breaks his silence

[Jonathan Kravis, a federal prosecutor for 10 years who resigned from the DOJ,] broke his silence Monday to denounce the DOJ’s recent move to drop charges against former Trump adviser Michael Flynn.

[Kravis] was a member of the four-person prosecution team that withdrew from [Roger] Stone’s case earlier this year after top DOJ officials overruled career prosecutors to seek a lighter sentence against Stone. Kravis took the extraordinary step of quitting the department entirely.

On Monday he commented publicly for the first time about his decision to leave the DOJ, highlighting what he sees as an alarming trend of the department putting “political patronage ahead of its commitment to the rule of law.”

“I feel compelled to write because I believe that the department’s handling of these matters is profoundly misguided, because my colleagues who still serve the department are duty-bound to remain silent and because I am convinced that the department’s conduct in the Stone and Flynn cases will do lasting damage to the institution,” Kravis wrote in a Washington Post op-ed.

  The Hill

Since my resignation, I have not commented on the Stone sentencing; it is not easy for me to do so now. Prosecutors are trained to make their cases in the courtroom and let the results speak for themselves.

[...]

[Stone] was tried and convicted of obstruction of Congress, false statements and witness tampering, based on evidence that he had lied repeatedly to a congressional committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, and then threatened a witness who could have exposed those lies.

In February, the Justice Department filed a sentencing memorandum, signed by all four prosecutors in the case, recommending a sentence of seven to nine years, within the range set by the U.S. sentencing guidelines. In my experience, the Justice Department staunchly defends sentences within the guidelines range, particularly for defendants (such as Stone) who are convicted at trial, and especially for defendants (such as Stone) who repeatedly demonstrate disrespect for the judicial system.

The next morning, the president posted a tweet criticizing the sentencing recommendation as a “miscarriage of justice.” Later that day, the Justice Department submitted a revised memo revoking the original recommendation and proposing that Stone receive a much shorter sentence. All four career prosecutors who had tried Stone withdrew from the case. I resigned because I was not willing to serve a department that would so easily abdicate its responsibility to dispense impartial justice.

Last week came an equally appalling chapter: the department’s motion to drop the Flynn case. Flynn pleaded guilty to the crime of making false statements in connection with lies he told in an FBI interview about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. Flynn twice admitted under oath that he had committed this crime, and the trial judge issued a lengthy opinion upholding the plea.

Nevertheless, after public criticism of the prosecution by the president, the department moved to dismiss Flynn’s case, claiming that new evidence showed that the plea had no basis. None of the career prosecutors who handled Flynn’s case signed that motion.

In both cases, the department undercut the work of career employees to protect an ally of the president, an abdication of the commitment to equal justice under the law.

[...]

Indeed, the department chose to assign these matters to a special counsel precisely to avoid the appearance of political influence. For the attorney general now to directly intervene to benefit the president’s associates makes this betrayal of the rule of law even more egregious.

The attorney general’s public comments worsened matters. William P. Barr gave nationally televised interviews in which he disparaged the work of prosecutors and agents who handled these cases, criticizing the Stone prosecutors for losing “perspective” and the Flynn team for becoming “wedded to a particular outcome.”

As the attorney general knows, those career prosecutors and agents cannot respond. The department prohibits employees from talking to the media about criminal cases without high-level approval. Department lawyers are ethically bound to protect the confidences of their client. Barr’s decision to excuse himself from these obligations and attack his own silenced employees is alarming. It sends an unmistakable message to prosecutors and agents — if the president demands, we will throw you under the bus.

  Kravis @ WaPo

Which is exactly the message Barr wants to send.

The task of repairing this damage will fall to the department’s career agents and prosecutors, and it is for them that I write this. Your work of investigating and prosecuting criminal cases is hard, and it becomes even harder when witnesses and jurors start to believe that the Justice Department’s handling of these cases is infected by politics. Your service during these times is a credit to the department. And you will be at your posts, serving justice, long after this attorney general is gone.

We hope.

Impeach Barr.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Losing the rule of law in the US

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Unsurprisingly, Michael Flynn will not even suffer prosecution be sentenced for his crime

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE: