#the doj

Trump fires the worst Attorney General in our nation’s history

On Thursday, Trump fired the worst Attorney General in our nation’s history. Her offense? She was not corrupt enough, nor sufficiently ruthless in persecuting Trump’s political enemies. She destroyed the independence and integrity of the once-proud Department of Justice. She reduced an agency designed to “do justice” into “a political hit squad” that targeted innocent Americans whose only offense was to resist Trump’s lawlessness. She coordinated the ongoing conspiracy to conceal Trump’s involvement in Epstein’s criminal enterprise. She ignored survivors of sexual abuse while testifying before Congress and oversaw the dismantling of the FBI and DHS units dedicated to combating trafficking, child exploitation, and sex crimes. She single-handedly turned congressional oversight hearings into a mockery of decorum by engaging in juvenile name-calling and childish tantrums that would have resulted in suspension from middle school. During her tenure, federal judges ended the presumption that DOJ lawyers spoke with integrity and candor—because they so frequently did not.

Pam Bondi debased herself beyond recognition. She sacrificed her already questionable professional reputation by abandoning all principle to defend the most corrupt president in our nation’s history. She is destined to become the textbook example of the “anti-lawyer” for future generations of law students—the paradigm of all that is reprehensible and odious about lawyers who forfeit their integrity, decency, and morality.

Worse, she breached her oath to protect and defend the US Constitution. She exalted loyalty to Trump above all else.

And now, Trump has abandoned her because hollowing out her soul was not enough for Trump’s capacious need for revenge. She was a tool, a mote, a cipher for Trump. Her name will forever serve as the standard unit of debasement.

I describe the ignominious end of Pam Bondi’s term as Attorney General not to gloat but to describe the inevitable end that awaits every Trump lackey who wrongly believes that debasing themselves for Trump will enhance their careers or enshrine themselves as MAGA immortals. They are wrong.

Instead, those who surrender their self-respect and integrity will carry Trump’s brand for the remainder of their lives. Accountability and justice are coming. Trump will no longer be president soon, and history’s judgment will be harsh. When Trump is gone, his enablers and minions will carry that judgment in his stead for the rest of their lives.

Sadly, there is an endless supply of posers and strivers with questionable credentials and failed careers who see an appointment in the Trump administration as a path to redemption. It is, instead, a path to damnation and disgrace.

Just ask Pam Bondi.

Coda: See HuffPo, More Firings Could Be On Deck For Other Trump Officials: Reports. (Others who have been the subject of such discussions include FBI Director Kash Patel, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.) See also The Guardian, Trump polled advisers about replacing Tulsi Gabbard as intelligence chief .

Compare Hegseth’s firing of the Army Chief of Staff

Compare Trump’s firing of Bondi to Pete Hegseth’s firing of Army Chief of Staff Randy George, who was appointed by President Biden. Per the NYTimes, Hegseth fired General George, in part, because he resisted Hegseth’s demand to remove two women and two Black officers from a list of candidates for promotion to one-star general. See NYTimes, Hegseth Fires Army Chief Amid Battle With Its Leaders (Gift article, accessible to all.)

Per the Times,

Mr. Hegseth has also clashed in recent months with General George and [Secretary of the Army] Driscoll over [Hegseth’s] decision to block the promotion of four Army officers to be one-star generals. Two of the officers targeted by Mr. Hegseth are Black and two are women on a promotion list that consisted of 29 other officers, most of whom are white men. Mr. Hegseth had been pressing Mr. Driscoll and General George for months to remove the officers from the promotion list. But Mr. Driscoll and General George refused, citing the officers’ long records of exemplary service.

So, Trump fired Bondi for failing to be sufficiently corrupt and ruthless, while Hegseth fired General George because he stood by his officers under his command who were denied promotion by Hegseth because of their race and sex.

I don’t know General Randy George, but his actions suggest that he is a person of honor and principle who served as an advocate for those under his command. He will be replaced by a former assistant to Pete Hegseth, who is apparently willing to do a Full Bondi in order to be promoted to Army Chief of Staff.

Fallout from Trump’s “defeat is victory” address to the nation

Trump’s “defeat is victory” speech on Iran on Wednesday resulted in higher oil prices and lower stock prices. See The Hill, Stocks sink, oil surges after Donald Trump Iran War speech.

In the UN, Bahrain is sponsoring a Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But three permanent members of the Security Council with veto power—China, Russia, and France—oppose the motion, so it will not pass.

Trump made good on his threat to destroy Iran’s infrastructure by bombing a suspension bridge between Tehran and Karaj. See The Guardian, Trump warns Tehran ‘more to follow’ after strike destroys Iran’s largest bridge.

It is a war crime to intentionally target civilian infrastructure. See Reuters, US experts say American strikes on Iran may amount to war crimes. (“Dozens of international law experts in the U.S. have signed an ​open letter saying that American strikes on Iran may amount to war crimes, after ‌President Donald Trump reiterated his threats this week to strike Iran’s power and desalination plants.”)

Finally, Iran is strengthening its defenses as it prepares for a potential US ground invasion. See WSJ, Iran Beefs Up Defenses, Recruits Children as It Prepares for Ground War. (Gift article, accessible to all.)

Per the WSJ,

Tehran is also mobilizing its population in ways that seek to harness the spirit of the 1980s war with Iraq. They include drives to recruit millions of Iranians, including children—a fixture of the tributes to martyrs via street signs and posters that are still a part of Iran’s daily life.

The WSJ article provides sobering insight into the many ways Iran is preparing for a long, bloody ground fight. As noted above, the article is accessible to all.

Concluding Thoughts

The firing of Bondi and the potential firings of Kash Patel (FBI), Howard Lutnick (Commerce), Tulsi Gabbard (DNI), Daniel Driscoll (Sec. of Army), and Lori Chavez-DeRemer (Labor) illustrate Trump’s weakness and failures. The firing of one cabinet member after one year is significant; the potential firings of five more point to disaster.

The last year has been challenging. Trump has ignored the law and undermined the Constitution (as he continues to do even today). He acts through his lackeys and acolytes who do his bidding. But we have resisted and fought back every step of the way.

Today, we can see that the courageous act of not surrendering may be all it takes to beat Trump. Don’t quit. Don’t surrender. We can outlast Trump; indeed, we are doing so as we speak. The toxic clown show that masquerades as the Trump administration is buckling under the weight of reality, which includes an unwinnable war, a deteriorating economy, and an electorate that is fed up, exhausted, and feeling betrayed by Trump’s string of broken promises.

Perseverance in the face of daunting odds is an act of hope and courage. On Friday, April 3, 2026, we should be proud that our refusal to quit is turning the tide.

Talk to you tomorrow!

Daily Dose of Perspective

The members of the Artemis II mission are 51,111 miles from Earth as I write on Thursday evening. They will “fly by” the Moon (but not orbit) and use the Moon’s gravity to sling the Orion spacecraft on a “free return” trajectory back towards Earth.

Historical footnote: When Apollo 13 was severely damaged on its flight toward the Moon, NASA engineers used the “free return” technique to bring the capsule back to Earth despite the loss of most of its fuel and spacecraft propulsion ability.

* * * *

Bring it on!

September 26, 2025

Robert B. Hubbell

Trump’s favorability ratings on a dozen issues are in free fall. True to form, he created new controversies to distract attention from the dumpster fire raging in the Rose Garden Club at the White HouseTM (formerly known as the White House Rose Garden).

In the face of his collapsing approval, Trump lashed out against his “enemies”—real and imagined.

Trump’s hand-picked newbie Acting US Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia somehow convinced a grand jury to indict James Comey on charges that will result in a “Not Guilty” verdict after trial (assuming they are not dismissed beforehand).

Trump also issued an executive order declaring that a non-existent “enterprise”—Antifa—is a “domestic terrorist organization.” See Executive Order, Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization. “Antifa” is a broad ideology based on historical opposition in Europe to fascist regimes. To the extent that anyone organizes, incites, or commits violence in the name of “anti-fascism” or any other ideology, such conduct is already illegal under dozens of US statutes. Trump’s executive order is purely performative, a carnival barker’s wild claims designed to deceive and distract.

Here’s the point: Trump’s actions on Thursday ooze desperation and weakness. The case against Comey will be a major embarrassment for Trump. The war on Antifa will go the way of Trump’s “invasion” of Chicago—i.e., nowhere.

Rather than cower in fear in the face of Trump’s bluffing, we should welcome the political fight. Bring it on! We will win!

The indictment of James Comey is a sham and a violation of law.

The real lawyers in the US Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia refused to bring an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey. Trump was forced to go to a third-string lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, who was willing to violate her ethical obligations by presenting misleading evidence to a grand jury to secure a weak-sauce indictment.

The entire indictment is set forth below:

Note that the indictment was signed by Acting Attorney General Lindsey Halligan—a tacit admission that no reputable attorney in her office would put their name on the indictment!

The core of the indictment is that Comey lied when he testified to the Senate that he did not authorize the anonymous disclosure of information to the Wall Street Journal.

The reason Halligan was forced to sign the indictment is that the DOJ Inspector General investigated Comey’s testimony, which forms the basis of the indictment, and concluded that there is no evidence that Comey lied. Instead, the DOJ Inspector General concluded that Comey’s subordinate, Andrew McCabe, was the source of the leak to the Wall Street Journal—and that McCabe lied to Comey about the leak!

The DOJ Inspector General’s report is here: Office of Inspector General, Report of Investigation of Allegations Relating to Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

The report says former Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, repeatedly lied to James Comey and to the Inspector General about his conversations with James Comey.

For example, the report concludes:

We found that, in a conversation with then-Director Comey shortly after the WSJ article was published, McCabe lacked candor when he told Comey . . . that McCabe had not authorized the disclosure and did not know who did. . . . We also found that on May 9, 2017, when questioned under oath by FBI agents from INSD, McCabe lacked candor when he told the agents that he had not authorized the disclosure to the WSJ and did not know who did. . . . We additionally found that on November 29, 2017, when questioned under oath by the OIG in a recorded interview during which he contradicted his prior statements by acknowledging that he had authorized the disclosure to the WSJ, McCabe lacked candor when he: (a) stated that he told Comey on October 31, 2016, that he had authorized the disclosure to the WSJ;

The problem for the DOJ is that it cannot prosecute Comey without calling Andrew McCabe as a witness. And McCabe was interviewed on CBS 60 Minutes (behind a paywall) and admitted that he misled James Comey about the leak to the Wall Street Journal.

During a conversation between Comey and McCabe after the leak, Comey stated his belief that Andrew McCabe would not have leaked the information to the WSJ. As McCabe explained to 60 Minutes, rather than speaking up to say, “Jim, I did leak the information to the WSJ,” McCabe said nothing to correct Comey’s mistaken belief.

As McCabe told 60 Minutes:

I should have corrected it. I should have spoken up and said, ‘Wait a minute, that’s not true.’

By failing to speak up to admit that he leaked the information to the WSJ, McCabe allowed Comey to labor under a mistaken belief about the nature and source of the leak. Comey relied on that mistaken belief (based on McCabe’s lie) when Comey testified to the Senate.

No jury will convict Comey of intentionally lying to the Senate. Indeed, no judge should allow the case to get to the jury after the prosecution rests. There is simply no credible evidence to support the charge.

Comey has come out swinging. Shortly after the indictment, he posted a video statement on Instagram, here: NBC News, Comey responds to indictment saying ‘I’m innocent’. (Be sure to unmute the sound.)

Comey said:

My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump. But we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either. Someone I love dearly recently said, “Fear is the tool of a tyrant.” And she is right. But I am not afraid, and I hope you are not either. I hope, instead, you are engaged, you are paying attention, and you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it—which it does. My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system. I am innocent, so let’s have a trial.

James Comey is entitled to a speedy trial under 18 U.S. Code § 3163, which is known as the Federal Speedy Trial Act. Generally, the government must bring the case to trial within 30 to 70 days after indictment. Those periods are extended for pre-trial motions. It is possible that Comey could force a trial in little more than two months.

Comey has at least one pre-trial motion that is likely to be granted. He can easily demonstrate that he was prosecuted for political reasons based on Trump’s numerous posts demanding his prosecution. Indeed, after the indictment, Trump posted that Comey was “one of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to” and was “guilty as hell.” Trump has supplied all of the elements for selective or vindictive prosecution.

Trump and AG Bondi have made a huge mistake—in addition to committing obstruction of justice. The trial of James Comey will be Jimmy Kimmel 2.0 for Trump, so let’s bring it on!

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 28, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson

May 29, 2026

It’s an excellent bet that future books and films made about the Trump Era will begin with an image of the White House this week. The world-famous Rose Garden has been replaced with a patio that looks like one at Mar-a-Lago. The East Wing is rubble. And on the sweeping South Lawn, right outside the front door of the White House, construction is underway on a massive Ultimate Fighting Championship arena for cage matches to be held on Trump’s 80th birthday.

Now treating the nation’s capital as his property, Trump appears to be leaning on his past role as a real estate developer as a solution in Iran remains elusive, inflation in the U.S. climbs, and his popularity drops.

In addition to turning back to real estate, Trump seems to be lashing out to reassert his dominance over those who have hurt him.

Last night, Hannah Rabinowitz, Paula Reid, and Kara Scannell of CNN reported that the Department of Justice under President Donald J. Trump has launched a criminal investigation into whether 82-year-old E. Jean Carroll, the journalist who successfully sued Trump for defamation and for sexual assault, committed perjury in her testimony by saying she was not being paid to launch the lawsuit when it turned out later that billionaire Reid Hoffman had paid some of her legal fees and expenses.

Trump also refiled his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal over its publication of an article describing a card for sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s fiftieth birthday. The card shows a crude sketch of a girl, bearing words that refer to “certain things in common” and saying, “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

Trump’s lawsuit says that the article damaged his reputation and that the card is fake, although it came from Epstein’s estate. The estate later provided a copy of the card to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which published it on its own website.

U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles tossed out the original lawsuit last month, saying that Trump came “nowhere close” to establishing that the article’s authors acted with “actual malice” to defame him, but said Trump could amend the lawsuit and refile it. Yesterday, he did.

On Tuesday, Alan Feuer of the New York Times noted that Trump’s politicization of the Department of Justice means grand juries as well as judges appear to be losing faith in the department. Although it is a common saying that prosecutors can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, government prosecutors have had trouble getting the indictments Trump wants against his perceived political enemies.

In part this is because Trump has replaced career prosecutors with inexperienced loyalists, as Feuer notes, but it is also because of trumped-up charges against people like former FBI director James Comey and the six Democratic lawmakers who released a public video reminding military and intelligence personnel that they must not obey illegal orders.

Federal judges have been accusing prosecutors of misconduct, most recently in a case last week in Chicago in which a grand jury indicted six people, including a Democratic congressional candidate, for interfering with a federal agent and conspiring to interfere with a federal agent at a protest at a detention facility.

As Julie Bosman of the New York Times reported, U.S. District Judge April Perry dismissed the case after she discovered that prosecutors had talked to individual grand jurors outside the courtroom and removed those jurors who refused to indict, as well as apparently overstating the strength of the evidence against the defendants. After making these maneuvers, the prosecutors then tried to hide evidence of them by redacting the transcripts from the grand jury.

Judge Perry said: “I have read hundreds, if not thousands, of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. attorneys who appeared before the grand jury. I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”

If Trump can end the rule of law, he can do as he wishes.

At least some of what he appears to want is corrupt dealings that put money into the pockets of himself and his family members. Today Robert Faturechi of ProPublica reported that Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro personally pressured the Pentagon to loan $620 million to Vulcan Elements, a small North Carolina startup company in which Donald Trump Jr. has a financial stake.

Navarro and Don Jr. appear to be close, and a Pentagon official told Faturechi that “[t]he call came from the White House: We have to get this done.”

According to Faturechi, the Pentagon invested $620 million in Vulcan, a rare-earth magnet company, and another $80 million in its partner ReElement. The Commerce Department provided another $50 million in incentives, and the government took a $50 million stake in Vulcan.

When Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm 1789 Capital invested in Vulcan in August 2025, the company was worth about $200 million. After the government investments, that valuation jumped to around $2 billion. Bloomberg reported last week that the investment in ReElement might not go through because of concerns over its ability to scale up its technology.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon told Faturechi that the Vulcan deal was sped up as defense officials balance “lightning speed with rigorous diligence to close high-impact deals that directly strengthen America’s defense and empower our warfighters.”

And yet, despite their evident attempt to warp the U.S. legal system to their own purposes, Trump and his MAGA loyalists insist that they are the ones against whom the Department of Justice has been used. That is their justification for the $1.776 billion slush fund for paying off those who were convicted of crimes for their participation in Trump’s schemes to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Last night, a group of thirty-five former federal judges took on that slush fund.

As Maegan Vazquez of the Washington Post reported, the former judges, appointed by members of both political parties, asked U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams to reopen the legal case Trump, his oldest sons, and the Trump Organization brought against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for a “judicial review of the extraordinary—and historically unprecedented—circumstances presented by this litigation and by the collusive ‘settlement’ that invokes this litigation as the legal justification for its terms.”

Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization dropped the lawsuit after Williams appeared to question whether it was actually a legitimate lawsuit, since Trump was both the plaintiff and the person in charge of the IRS, then announced they had reached a “settlement agreement” with the Department of Justice. Williams was clear in her order closing the case that there was “no settlement of record” in it.

The judges expressed concern that the Trumps were manipulating the judicial system, “which threatens to undermine confidence in the administration of justice.” They suggested that “this ‘case’ that the parties purport to have ‘settled’ is itself a fraud on the Court.” They also maintain that “this ‘settlement’ is a product of collusion and is itself a fraud on the Court,” and that “[f]raud on the court is established by clear and convincing evidence.”

“The parties have used this lawsuit—which was never an adversarial proceeding over which the Court even had jurisdiction—as a means to allow a ‘commission’ controlled by the President to dole out $1.776 billion in taxpayer dollars without constitutional or congressional authority to do so, and to confer unlawful private benefits to the President and his family by purportedly prohibiting the United States from prosecuting any and all claims against them.”

“To be clear,” the judges wrote, “the parties’ settlement was not, and never will be, legally justified.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

illus: Steve Brodner

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Sept 21, 2023

The fight over how we conceive of our federal government was on full display today.

The Biden administration announced the creation of the American Climate Corps. This will be a group of more than 20,000 young Americans who will learn to work in clean energy, conservation, and climate resilience while also earning good wages and addressing climate change. 

This ACC looks a great deal like the Civilian Conservation Corps established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democrats in 1933, during the New Deal. The CCC was designed to provide jobs for unemployed young men (prompting critics to ask, “Where’s the She, She, She?”) while they worked to build fire towers, bridges, and foot trails, plant trees to stop soil erosion, stock fish, dig ditches, build dams, and so on. 

While the CCC was segregated, the ACC will prioritize hiring within communities traditionally left behind, as well as addressing the needs of those communities that have borne the brunt of climate change. If the administration’s rules for it become finalized, the corps will also create a streamlined pathway into federal service for those who participated in the program. 

In January, a poll showed that a climate corps is popular. Data for Progress found that voters supported such a corps by a margin of 39 points. Voters under 45 supported it by a margin of 51 points. 

While the Biden administration is establishing a modern version of a popular New Deal program, extremists in the Republican Party are shutting down the government to try to stop it from precisely this sort of action. They want to roll the government back to the days before the New Deal, ending government regulation, provision of a basic social safety net, investment in infrastructure, and protection of civil rights.

Extremists in the House Republican conference are refusing to acknowledge the deal worked out for the budget last spring by President Biden and Republican speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Instead, in order to pass even a continuing resolution that would buy time for Congress to pass an actual budget, they are insisting on cuts of up to 8% on discretionary spending that Senate Democrats, as well as Biden himself, are certain to oppose.

The White House has noted that the cuts the Republicans demand would mean 800 fewer Customs and Border Protection agents and officers (which, in turn, would mean more drugs entering the United States); more than 2 million women and children waitlisted for the WIC food assistance program; more than 4,000 fewer rail inspection days; up to 40,000 fewer teachers, aides, and key education staff, affecting 26 million students; and so on. 

House speaker McCarthy cannot corral the extremists to agree to anything unless they get such cuts, which even other Republicans recognize are nonstarters (those cuts are so unpopular that Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News reported today that Republicans are somewhat bizarrely considering changing their messaging about their refusal to fund the government from concerns about spending to concerns about border security). 

Meanwhile, the extremists are threatening to throw McCarthy out of the speakership. There are rumors that Republican moderates are considering working with Democrats to save McCarthy’s job, but Democrats are not keen on helping him when he has just agreed to open a baseless impeachment inquiry into the president in order to appease the extremists. 

“If you’d asked about two months ago I would have said absolutely,” Representative Dean Phillips (D-MN) told Manu Raju, Lauren Fox, and Melanie Zanona of CNN. “But I think sadly his behavior is unprincipled, it’s unhelpful to the country,” he said.

As a shutdown appears more and more likely, even Republicans acknowledge that the problem is on their side of the House. Until the 1980s, funding gaps did not lead to government shutdowns. Government agencies continued to work, with the understanding that Congress would eventually work out funding disputes. But in 1980 a fight over funding the 1,600-employee Federal Trade Commission led President Jimmy Carter to ask Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti if the agency could continue to operate when its funding ran out. Civiletti surprised participants by saying no. 

Four years ago, Civiletti told Ian Shapira of the Washington Post that his decision was about a specific and limited issue, and that he never imagined that politicians would use shutdowns for long periods of time as a political weapon. And yet, shutdowns have become more frequent and longer since the 1990s, usually as Republicans demand that Congress adopt policies they cannot pass through regular procedures (like the 34-day shutdown in 2019 over funding for the border wall former president Trump wanted).

Many observers note that “governing by crisis,” as President Barack Obama put it, is terribly damaging and that Civiletti’s decision should be revisited. Next month’s possible shutdown has the potential to be particularly problematic because there is no obvious solution. After all, it’s hardly a surprise that this budget deadline was coming up and that the extremists were angry over the deal McCarthy cut with Biden back in May, and yet McCarthy has been unable in all those months to bring his conference to an agreement. 

Republicans appear resigned that voters will blame them for the crisis, which, honestly, seems fair. “We always get the blame,” Representative Mike Simpson (R-ID), a senior appropriator, told Katherine Tully-McManus and Adam Cancryn of Politico. “Name one time that we’ve shut the government down and we haven’t got the blame.” 

Meanwhile, the House extremists continue to push their vision for the nation by undermining the institutions of the government. The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), today held what normally would have been a routine oversight hearing focused on policy, law enforcement, and so on. Instead of that business, though, Jordan and the hard-right Republicans on the committee worked to construct a false reality in right-wing media by attacking Attorney General Merrick Garland over his role in the investigation of President Biden’s son Hunter, begun five years ago under Trump. 

Glenn Thrush of the New York Times noted drily that “[m]any of the claims and insinuations they leveled against Mr. Garland—that he is part of a coordinated Democratic effort to shield the Bidens and persecute Mr. Trump—were not supported by fact. And much of the specific evidence presented, particularly the testimony of an investigator who questioned key decisions in the Hunter Biden investigation, was given without context or acknowledgment of contradictory information.”

Instead, Jordan and his extremist colleagues shouted at Garland and over his answers, producing sound bites for right-wing media. Those included the statement from Representative Victoria Spartz (R-IN) that the rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, were actually “good Americans” who brought “strollers and the kids.” Even as both Biden and Garland have prioritized restoring faith in the Justice Department after Trump’s use of it for his own ends, the extremist Republicans are working to undermine that faith by constructing the false image that the Department of Justice is persecuting Trump and his allies.  Their position was not unchallenged on the committee, even within their own party. Representative Ken Buck (R-CO) defended Garland from their attacks, while Democrats on the committee went after the Republicans themselves. Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) accused Jordan of making the Judiciary Committee into a “criminal defense firm for the former president.” 

Garland, who is usually soft-spoken, pushed back too. “Our job is not to take orders from the president, from Congress, or from anyone else, about who or what to criminally investigate,” he told the committee. “I am not the president’s lawyer. I will add I am not Congress’s prosecutor. The Justice Department works for the American people.”

“We will not be intimidated,” he added. “We will do our jobs free from outside influence. And we will not back down from defending our democracy.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

tRump's tactic to stop himself or his enables & cultists from being truly investigated.

My oh my 👀👩🏾‍⚖️

Over the past day, we've seen a flurry of stories on the Department of Justice's position on the AT&T/Time Warner cable merger, which was first announced back in October 2016. This story has been bouncing back and forth a fair bit--here's what we know thus far.

The post The DOJ, AT&T, and the Time Warner Merger: What We Know Thus Far appeared first on ExtremeTech.