Tag Archives: U.S. Justice Department

The Start Of What?

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On September 9, Red State posted an article about homes raided and subpoenas issued to dozens of supporters of President Trump. On September 10, Red State posted an article with some of the names who were subpoenaed.

The first article includes a screen shop of one of the subpoenas. The subpoena includes the following:

Why is the Justice Department asking that the subpoena be kept secret?

The September 10 article notes:

William Russell wasn’t home when the two FBI agents came to his house Wednesday morning, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Russell served in the Trump White House as a special assistant to the president and the deputy director of advance before moving down to Florida to work as an aide to Trump after he left the White House.

Russell has also been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury investigating Jan. 6, sources familiar with the matter said. The subpoena requests documents and communications related to the so-called fake slates of electors pushed in various states in support of Trump, the sources said.

The NY Times is claiming they’re aware of a dozen people including Brian Jack, former White House political director under Trump, and a big name, Stephen Miller, Trump’s top speechwriter, and a senior policy adviser, who received subpoenas. Jack is currently both an adviser to Trump as well as to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

The subpoenas were issued to a wide range of people who either worked in the White House or on the Trump campaign, including senior officials like the campaign’s chief financial officer; personal aides to Mr. Trump; and the former chief of staff to Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter who also served as one of his senior advisers. [….]

Among the recipients of subpoenas from a grand jury sitting in Washington are relatively junior aides from the White House and Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign. While the subpoenas asked for information concerning the Save America PAC, they also sought communications with several pro-Trump lawyers — like Kenneth Chesebro — who helped devise the electors plan.

Numerous subpoenas focused solely on the fake elector plan were sent to Republican state lawmakers and state Republican officials allied with Mr. Trump starting this spring.

We previously reported of subpoenas being dropped on Republican Pennsylvania state lawmakers and seizing the phone of a member of Congress, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA).

The NY Times notes that Miller was not known to have had a planning role in the electors plan or the fund-raising efforts. So it’s not clear why they are dropping a subpoena on him. Nor is it clear what their legal justification is in regard to the electors plan.

This looks an awful lot like the politicization of the Justice Department. I hope it is not. If it is, I hope the mid-term elections will put enough brave people in Congress who will put a stop to this.

 

The Fix Has Always Been In

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On Saturday, The New York Post posted an article about some of the connections between Hunter Biden’s lawyer and an attorney at the the Justice Department.

The article reports:

A top official at the U.S. Justice Department was a law partner with Hunter Biden’s attorney Chris Clark, raising serious concerns about potential conflicts of interest as the years-long federal probe into the president’s son has reportedly reached a critical stage.

Clark, a partner at New York-based firm Latham & Watkins, worked with Nicholas McQuaid on at least four different cases when he was also a partner at the practice, court records indicate.

The cases were high-stakes commercial litigation where the pair regularly defended clients facing multimillion-dollar lawsuits.

McQuaid was named acting head of the Justice Department’s criminal division on Jan 20, 2021 — the day President Biden was inaugurated.

Obviously that was simply an incredible coincidence.

The article continues:

McQuaid’s presence leading the Department of Justice’s criminal division raises questions about the extent of his involvement in the Hunter Biden probe — which both the White House and the DOJ have refused to answer.

“It’s yet another abject failure of accountability in a long list,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told The Post. “If Republicans retake a majority in the Senate, the department can expect additional pressure and process from me as chairman [of the Judiciary Committee ] and from my colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee. We’d be seeking information from dozens of individuals, and empowered by a committee majority — we’d no longer just be asking,”

Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s office said they had sent no less than five letters on “potential conflicts of interest at the Biden Justice Department. Including McQuaid.”

“Thus far DOJ refuses to provide responses to Sen. Johnson’s questions/requests,” a spokesman said.

The Senate has the responsibility of oversight of the Justice Department. It doesn’t sound as if transparency is the order of the day.

What Constitution?

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In the not so distant past, even when Democrats and Republicans disagreed, both parties attempted to follow the guidelines of the U.S. Constitution. It seem as though that has changed in recent years. Alan Dershowitz is a well-known Democrat who has been called out by his party more than once for his apolitical support of the U.S. Constitution. On Tuesday, he posted an article at The Epoch Times about the arrest of Peter Navarro.

The article notes:

The indictment of Peter Navarro for contempt of Congress violates several provisions of the Constitution and should be dismissed. Navarro has a strong claim of executive privilege that should be decided by the courts before any indictment can lawfully issue.

Either the Justice Department or Congress should seek a judicial ruling that Navarro’s claim of executive privilege is invalid. If the court rules that it is invalid and orders him to respond to the congressional subpoena, Navarro should have an opportunity to comply. If he fails to comply with a judicial order, he can either be indicted or held in contempt by the court. But absent a judicial order, he cannot lawfully be indicted for invoking executive privilege and refusing to reveal arguably privileged material just because a committee of Congress, controlled by Democrats, has voted that he should. It is not enough to allow him to appeal after the fact, because information, once revealed, cannot be erased. He is obliged to claim privilege now and refuse to respond. That is not a crime. It is the constitutionally correct action.

Navarro’s indictment violates several key constitutional rights, including due process, fair warning and executive privilege. It also violates the separation of powers, under which the courts have the authority to resolve conflicts between the legislative and executive branches over claims of executive privilege in response to legislative subpoenas. Due process and fair warning require that these issues first be resolved by the courts before an indictment can be issued.

Please follow the link to the article for further details.

The bottom line here is simple. The Democrats need something to run on in the mid-term elections. They have chosen January 6th, stating that the events of that day were a threat to our Democracy. First of all, we are a representative republic–not a Democracy. Second of all, the protesters were not armed. If you are going to have an insurrection, you should probably carry a weapon. Two women died that day at the hands of the Capitol police–one shot and one gassed and beaten to death (article here). I don’t think the protesters were the problem.

What An Amazing Coincidence

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On Friday, The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

Federal authorities are investigating three Democratic megadonors who made an enormous bet on shares of Activision Blizzard just days before Microsoft agreed in January to acquire the video game company for $69 billion.

The U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are both looking into the suspiciously timed trading activity of Barry Diller, owner of the Daily Beast, his stepson Alex von Fürstenberg, and his friend David Geffen, a longtime Democratic donor who gave $500,000 to the scandal-plagued Lincoln Project in 2020.

…The Journal (The Wall Street Journal) notes that Activision stock options similar to those purchased by Diller, Geffen, and von Fürstenberg were “sparsely traded” in the days before the Microsoft acquisition was announced, but “exploded” in response to the news. The wealthy Democrats’ stock options instantly surged in value by more than 60 percent—an amazing coincidence, indeed.

The men have yet to exercise their options, which don’t expire until 2023. They could realize a profit of about $60 million if they sold today, based on Activision’s current share price of $80. They stand to make more than $100 million if the Microsoft acquisition, expected to close this summer, goes forward at the agreed-upon price of $95 per share.

What better way to ensure generous donations than to help those donors make money in the stock market? Is this an incredible coincidence as those involved claim?