{"id":37028,"date":"2019-09-12T07:12:24","date_gmt":"2019-09-12T11:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=37028"},"modified":"2019-09-12T07:12:24","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T11:12:24","slug":"when-the-department-of-justice-forgets-what-it-is-supposed-to-be-doing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=37028","title":{"rendered":"When The Department Of Justice Forgets What It Is Supposed To Be Doing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Judicial Watch<\/a> posted an article revealing documents that had received from the Department of Justice through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

Judicial Watch today released\u00a014 pages<\/a>\u00a0of records from the Department of Justice showing officials\u2019 efforts in responding to media inquiries centering on talks within the DOJ\/FBI allegedly invoking the 25th<\/sup>\u00a0Amendment to \u201cremove\u201d President Donald Trump from office and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein offering to wear a \u201cwire\u201d to record his conversations with the president.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The records show that, following a September 21, 2018,\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0on Rosenstein suggesting he would wear a wire to secretly record Trump and his discussions on using the 25th<\/sup>\u00a0Amendment, Rosenstein sought to ensure the media would have \u201cdifficulty\u201d finding anyone in the DOJ to comment and a concerted effort within the DOJ to frame the reporting as \u201cinaccurate\u201d and \u201cfactually incorrect.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The records show DOJ officials had also discussed characterizing Rosenstein\u2019s reported offer of wearing a wire to record Trump as merely \u201csarcastic.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Additionally, the records show DOJ Public Affairs officer Sarah Isgur Flores, after conferring with other top DOJ officials and Rosenstein\u2019s office about her email exchange with\u00a0New York Times<\/i>\u00a0reporter Adam Goldman, waited 12 hours to forward the email exchange to DOJ Chief of Staff Matthew Whitaker. Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly had referred to Whitaker as the president\u2019s \u201ceyes and ears<\/a>\u201d in the DOJ.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Judicial Watch obtained the records through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)\u00a0lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0filed after the Justice Department failed to respond to three separate FOIA requests\u00a0dated September 21, 2018 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice<\/i><\/a>\u00a0<\/i>(No. 1:19-cv-00388)). The lawsuit seeks all written and audio\/visual records of any FBI\/DOJ discussions regarding the 25th<\/sup>\u00a0Amendment and plans to secretly record President Trump in the Oval Office.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The records obtained by Judicial Watch include a September 21, 2018,\u00a0email<\/a>\u00a0from Assistant U.S. Attorney (DOJ\/NSD) Harvey Eisenberg to Rosenstein informing the DAG that Washington Post reporter Ellen Nakashima had called inquiring about a\u00a0New York Times<\/i>\u00a0report on the 25th<\/sup> Amendment\/wire discussion, Rosenstein responds: \u201cThanks! Hopefully we are being successful, and the reporters are having difficulty finding anybody to comment about things. [Remainder of email redacted.]\u201d Apparently in response to the redacted portion of Rosenstein\u2019s reply, Eisenberg responds, \u201cI\u2019m aware. Besides letting you know, [redacted]. My best to you and the family.\u201d Rosenstein replies, \u201cI don\u2019t mean about me. [Redacted.]\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The emails also detail the DOJ\u2019s response<\/a>\u00a0to the initial story as it was being prepared by the\u00a0New York Times<\/i>. On September 20, 2018, the\u00a0Times<\/i>\u2019 Goldman emails DOJ\u2019s Flores that he and fellow reporter Mike Schmidt were working on a story and wanted a DOJ response to certain questions, including that at a May 16, 2017, meeting of senior federal law enforcement officials, Rosenstein offered to wear a \u201cwire\u201d to record his conversations with Trump. \u201cHe also said McCabe could wear a wire.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a second request for comment, Goldman alleges that in a separate conversation between Rosenstein and McCabe, they discussed using the 25th Amendment \u201cto remove President Trump\u201d and \u201cRosenstein said that he may be able to get (then-Attorney General Jeff) Sessions and Kelly to go along with the plan.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a third request for comment, Goldman said he\u2019d learned that Rosenstein in a May 12, 2017, conversation at the DOJ Command Center \u201cappeared \u2018upset\u2019 and \u2018emotional\u2019 over the Comey firing.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a fourth request for comment, Goldman said that in a May 14, 2017, conversation with McCabe, \u201cRosenstein asked McCabe to reach out to Comey to seek advice about appointing a special counsel. McCabe believed that was a bad idea.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a fifth and final request for which he sought DOJ comment, Goldman wrote, \u201cRosenstein considered appointing (former Deputy Attorney General) Jim Cole as the special counsel.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Sept 20, 2018, Flores forwarded the Goldman email to \u201cAnnie\u201d and \u201cBill\u201d \u2014 apparently White House Deputy Counsel\u00a0Annie Donaldson<\/a>\u00a0and White House Communications Director Bill Shine \u2014 telling Donaldson, \u201cBoss calling Don re the below \u2013 if you think appropriate, share with Don [presumably referring to White House Counsel Don McGahn]\u201d. She tells Shine, \u201cWe\u2019ve sent a response from the DAG that\u2019s below and had someone in the room dispute the \u2018wire\u2019 part noting the dag was being sarcastic.\u201d She then includes the DAG response, which reads, \u201cThe New York Times\u2019s story is inaccurate and factually incorrect. I will not further comment on a story based on anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the Department and are advancing their own personal agenda. But let me be clear about this: based on my personal dealings with the President, there is no basis to invoke the 25th<\/sup>\u00a0Amendment.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shine thanks Flores and asks her to \u201cshare with Elliott ASAP.\u201d Flores responds that if Shine is directing her to share with Elliott, \u201cI don\u2019t think I know who that is referring to.\u201d Flores sent that response at 10:09 PM on September 20, but Flores waits until 10:00 a.m. the next day to forward the entire exchange to DOJ Chief of Staff Whitaker, saying: \u201cShould have sent this to you last night.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a mostly redacted\u00a0email exchange<\/a>\u00a0on the evening of September 20, 2018, shows the efforts of officials in the Public Affairs and DAG\u2019s office to produce a response to the impending news article. DOJ Official Bradley Weinsheimer forwarded to Flores the \u201cDAG response\u201d to the allegations in the article, saying \u201cDAG has cleared this, which is what we just discussed.\u201d He then provides the official DAG response about the allegations over Rosenstein wanting to invoke the 25th<\/sup>\u00a0Amendment against Trump as being \u201cinaccurate and factually incorrect.\u201d Deputy Attorney General\u2019s office official Ed O\u2019Callaghan responds, \u201cThink good.\u201d The rest of his response is redacted under (b)(5) \u2013 deliberative process.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the final draft of the official DAG response approved by O\u2019Callaghan, the statement is changed from \u201cBased on my dealings with the President, there is no basis to invoke the 25th<\/sup>\u00a0Amendment\u201d to \u201cBased on my personal dealings with the President, there is no basis to invoke the 25th<\/sup>\u00a0Amendment.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article concludes with an amazing statement:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is remarkable that Judicial Watch has done more to investigate the DOJ\/FBI\u2019s discussions about overthrowing President Trump than the DOJ or Congress,\u201d said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. \u201cThese documents essentially confirm the coup discussions about wearing a wire when speaking with President Trump and plans to remove him under the 25th Amendment.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

America just survived an attempted coup, and the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were part of that coup. No one has been held accountable, and that is frightening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Judicial Watch posted an article revealing documents that had received from the Department of Justice through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request. The article reports: Judicial Watch today released\u00a014 pages\u00a0of records from the Department of Justice showing officials\u2019 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[69,3637,790,420,11084,886,2640,2207,11698,11559,3620,11070,2153],"class_list":["post-37028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-department-of-justice","tag-doj","tag-fbi","tag-federal-bureau-of-investigation","tag-federal-bureau-of-investigation-fbi","tag-freedom-of-information-act","tag-judicial-watch","tag-judicialwatch","tag-rod-rosenstein","tag-special-counsel","tag-tom-fitton","tag-u-s-department-of-justice","tag-white-house-chief-of-staff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37028"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37029,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37028\/revisions\/37029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}