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THE cover-up by Barr
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real-human



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PostPosted: Fri Jul 30, 2021 4:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

two former prosecutors from congress know there needs to be an investigation on why this foreign hidden lobbyist was not brought to justice when the federal prosecutor was ready to in 2019. again the guy was paid 1.5 Billion dollars and what was that for. Well a federal prosecutor at that time had determined he should be arrested in 2019. Lets find out who stopped him from doing so. Gee he could afford to pay a 250 million dollar bail.

Nothing like the Supreme court right wing citizens united to allow this kind of banana republic.



https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/new-docs-show-trump-pressing-doj-lie-about-election-corruption-n1275506?cid=eml_mra_20210730&user_email=e73377d3e40790eecbf6a99203e1476ea2a23c644c2045abd739b8f9e629a73b


New docs show Trump pressing DOJ to lie about election corruption


Quote:
A sitting president urged the Justice Department to lie about imaginary election corruption, as part of a scheme to hold onto illegitimate power.

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 01, 2022 4:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

now he speaks out, vs cover up

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/team-trump-features-growing-list-members-oppose-trump-rcna18099?cid=eml_mra_20220301&user_email=e73377d3e40790eecbf6a99203e1476ea2a23c644c2045abd739b8f9e629a73b


Team Trump features a growing list of members who oppose Trump


[quote]

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wsurfer



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PostPosted: Tue Mar 08, 2022 12:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is exactly what I wish my former boss had to say about me:


I made many great appointments during my Administration, and we accomplished more than most Administrations could even dream of, but Bill Barr was not one of my better picks. He crumbled under the pressure, and bowed to the Radical Left—And that is not acceptable. Now he is groveling to the media, hoping to gain acceptance that he doesn’t deserve.

"I would imagine that if the book is anything like him, it will be long, slow, and very boring," Trump said of Barr.
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real-human



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PostPosted: Tue Aug 23, 2022 10:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/bill-barr-lied-about-considering-charging-trump-with-obstruction-of-mueller-court-says-146781253791?cid=eml_maddow_20220823&user_email=e73377d3e40790eecbf6a99203e1476ea2a23c644c2045abd739b8f9e629a73b&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TRMS%208/23/22&utm_term=Rachel%20Maddow%20Show


Bill Barr lied about considering charging Trump with obstruction of Mueller, court says


Quote:
Rachel Maddow reports on a panel decision by a federal appeals court in Washington that said that contrary to Bill Barr's public announcement that he had evaluated the evidence of obstruction in Robert Mueller's report and decided there was not enough to charge Donald Trump, Barr did not give consideration to such a charge before declaring insufficient evidence.




https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/maddow-blog-court-rejects-barr-s-claim-orders-release-of-memo-on-trump-obstruction/ar-AA110QDR?ocid=winp2sv1plustaskbarhover&cvid=162510a469b44e22b66cd4f7a7ee9bcb


Maddow Blog | Court rejects Barr’s claim, orders release of memo on Trump, obstruction


Quote:
When Robert Mueller completed his investigation into the Russia scandal a few years ago, the special counsel’s findings had two parts. The first examined Russia’s efforts to target U.S. elections in the hopes of putting Donald Trump in power, while the second documented the many instances in which the then-Republican president took alleged steps to obstruct the investigation.

All of this, of course, was submitted to the then-attorney general, Bill Barr, whom Trump had tapped for the job, and who had played a direct role in politicizing the Justice Department on the White House’s behalf.

According to Barr, when he saw the second part of the Mueller report, he reviewed the evidence, consulted with Justice Department attorneys, and decided that Trump had not committed any crimes. As we’ve discussed, it was an important declaration: The then-attorney general didn’t say that Trump was in the clear because sitting presidents can’t be indicted; Barr instead told the public that Trump wouldn’t be charged anyway because he and the Justice Department lawyers, after a careful analysis, agreed that the then-president’s actions didn’t run afoul of the law.

There was even a Justice Department memo about this on March 24, 2019, specifically on the matter of whether Trump obstructed justice.

The problem, we now know, is that there was no careful analysis. As Rachel noted on the show last night, Barr apparently made that up. Axios quoted a unanimous D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling:

In other words, the judiciary was able to review the Justice Department memo from March 24, 2019, and it knows that Barr’s claims about its contents weren’t true. The Republican said the DOJ attorneys considered whether to charge Trump with obstruction, and concluded that the facts didn’t warrant it, when in reality they “never considered” the possibility.

What I find especially amazing about this is the number of times Barr has received legal rebukes for his deceptions.

Circling back to our earlier coverage, let’s not forget that when Barr first received Mueller’s report, the then-attorney general initially thought it’d be a good idea to release his own brief summary of the investigation’s conclusions, rather than share the materials with the public directly. The Republican similarly believed the smart thing to do would be to a hold a press conference, putting a political spin on the special counsel’s conclusions, before anyone could verify whether he was telling the truth or not.

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As it turns out, he wasn’t. In 2020, Judge Reggie Walton — a conservative jurist chosen for the bench by George W. Bush — slammed the then-attorney general for his “lack of candor,” while also calling out Barr’s “distorted” and “misleading” account of Mueller’s findings.

Last year, it happened again when Judge Amy Berman Jackson concluded that Barr was also “disingenuous“ with her on the question of why Trump didn’t face criminal charges — specifically on the matter of obstruction of justice — based on the evidence collected as part of the Mueller probe.

Indeed, in those proceedings, the judge wanted to know exactly what guidance Barr received from Justice Department attorneys. Barr said that legal advice constituted internal deliberations over a prosecutorial decision, and therefore couldn’t be shared.

Jackson, unsatisfied, came to the opposite conclusion, ruling that the legal advice Barr pointed to wasn’t real: What apparently happened was that the then-attorney general decided to give Trump a pass, and he then had the DOJ cook up an after-the-fact rationalization of the decision Barr had already made.

Late last week, a three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Jackson.

All of this matters in the interest of accountability — there’s still some debate over the details of the Russia scandal and Mueller’s findings, so Barr’s public deceptions remain relevant — and also in terms of upcoming disclosures. In fact, in light of Friday’s ruling, we’re now more likely to actually see the hidden memo from March 24, 2019.

That said, the Justice Department, in pursuit of institutional interests, may yet appeal the ruling. Watch this space.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPThuNdWGJY


Last edited by real-human on Sun Aug 28, 2022 2:47 pm; edited 1 time in total
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real-human



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PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2022 8:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

here it is at least 10 times trump obstructed justice can be claimed...

geeeee only 10 times.... With that a partisan special prosecutor should have been appointed to go into all trump crimes for years, gee clintons was 6 years over a loss of an investment before he was president. These very serious crimes of treason were never investigated by a pit bull. Starr and supreme rappy idiot Kavanaugh had 6 years and not one grand jury indictment for which Starr was paid a million a year by outside interests and rewarded with major cush jobs of protecting Epstein and college sports rapists and child molesters.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/that-s-not-what-our-report-said-mueller-lawyer-nails-bill-barr-for-lying-in-bombshell-trump-memo/ar-AA114alx?ocid=winp2sv1plustaskbarhover&cvid=3e91d3b29ef5437a836e33cd99ecc796


That's not what our report said': Mueller lawyer nails Bill Barr for lying in bombshell Trump memo


Quote:
Last week, a Washington court of appeals ruled that former Attorney General Bill Barr lied about Donald Trump's involvement in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign cycle. Just days prior to Mueller's report being released, Barr said that he'd read the report and Trump did nothing wrong.

The Justice Department released the memo on Trump's obstruction of Mueller's prob revealing that it was more than clear he believed that Trump committed a crime in several cases when he tried to obstruct justice.

Speaking to MSNBC about the release of the memo on Wednesday, former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann explained that the memo, penned by Barr's two top deputies Steven Angel and Ed O'Callaghan, provides new evidence that Barr covered up for Trump.

"Essentially it lays out a lot of what was redacted and we know it was a heavily redacted form of this before and it lays out the basics," explained NBC News justice reporter Ryan Reilly. "It does seem to be making what amounts to a defense argument for Trump in a lot of these cases. There's one line in here regarding the line where this was [former FBI Director James] Comey telling the president that he hoped that he could let this go, and they actually write in here that there was not -- it was not directing a, quote, clearly directed particular action in the investigation and Comey did not react at the time as though he had received the direct order from the president."

READ: Former US ambassador: 'No comparison' between Trump’s top secret docs and Hillary’s emails

He went on to call it "defensive" and make a case for what Barr had already decided: that Trump wasn't going to be guilty of anything.

But it was Weissmann who gave inside information into what he experienced while working for Mueller. The Mueller report made it clear that there were at least 10 instances of obstruction of justice by the former president. Barr, on the other hand, wrote there was no obstruction.

"This memo, as you said, is a doozy because it has been kept under wraps and the Department of Justice thought even giving it to the district court for [the judge] to read, there is a reason when she read it that her decision was that this needs to be made public. The court of appeals agreed with her. Now to the substance. Why did they try and keep this under wraps? There is a sentence in here that is astounding to me," Weissmann continued. "The two senior staff, say to Bill Barr that the reason he should make the decision is because if the memo comes out it might be read to imply that the president committed obstruction. Let me just repeat that: that the reason Bill Barr needs to say something is because if the memo because if the report comes out it could be read to say that the president committed obstruction."

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He explained that it's noticeable that there's no discussion on the memo about Bill Barr telling Mueller that he wants the special counsel to conclude whether Trump committed any obstructions of justice in his investigation or not.

"We now know clearly from his memo did not send it back to Mueller — who reported to him — was because he knew exactly what the answer would be. Because it says in black and white that this memo could be read to conclude that the president committed obstruction," Weissmann concluded.

There is another point, he explained, that is simply "dead wrong." At one point in the memo it says that Trump didn't commit obstruction of justice because you can't obstruct justice when you're not guilty of the underlying crime.

"That is legally wrong," he explained. "Our report actually addresses that. We cite all cases including the Arthur Anderson case which I know very well and this memo simply does not successfully, at least in my view, address the legal precedents, and it is not the case that you cannot be guilty of obstruction if you didn't commit the underlying crime."

Finally, he said that the point the memo gets completely wrong is that Mueller's report found no evidence of an underlying crime or conspiracy with the Russians.


"That's not what our report said," Weissmann concluded. "It said that there's evidence. It's just that we didn't think there was evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. So, the sort of upshot, Nicolle is, I can understand why the department has fought long and hard not to have this see the day and it's quite a shocking document."

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real-human



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PostPosted: Thu Aug 25, 2022 11:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here is another one the Barr trump in justice department covered up for, and idiot Garland is just pathetic and will not go after.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/doj-s-hands-off-approach-to-zinke-undercuts-trump-s-weaponized-claim/ar-AA115yzz?cvid=8cceb3eea4c044c2dba7e4ed7d0dd1f7&ocid=winp2sv1plustaskbarhover


DOJ’s hands-off approach to Zinke undercuts Trump’s ‘weaponized’ claim


Quote:
Ever since we learned that the FBI executed a search warrant at former president Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month, the refrain on the right has been that the Justice Department has been “weaponized” against Trump. Despite our knowing next to nothing about the evidence behind the search, hard-and-fast conclusions were reached almost immediately that President Biden’s DOJ was grasping at legal straws in an effort to target Trump and his allies.

The Justice Department’s handling of a former Trump Cabinet secretary, Ryan Zinke, paints quite a different picture. Indeed, it suggests a real reluctance to pursue even what would seem to be a strong case for prosecution.

On Wednesday, a long-awaited report from the Interior Department’s inspector general found that Zinke lied and misled his way through an inquiry into potential misdeeds during his time as secretary of that department.

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Crucially, this is the second time the IG has reached such a conclusion about Zinke, who is favored to win a congressional seat in Montana this fall. And also crucially, it’s the second time the Biden Justice Department has declined to prosecute the case.

The new report lays out the ways in which Zinke allegedly lied and hid the truth about his handling of a casino operating matter in 2017. Zinke ultimately declined to make a decision, returning proposed amendments that the would-be operators needed to declare that their plan to jointly operate the casino wouldn’t violate existing gaming agreements. He did so after extensive lobbying against the project — lobbying that Zinke downplayed to the point of burying the truth, Inspector General Mark Greenblatt found.

And the evidence is compelling:

Zinke claimed he and an unnamed U.S. senator — apparently then-Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) — hadn’t discussed the project in detail and that, to the extent they did, the senator didn’t ask him to take a position on the subject. It turns out the senator told investigators that he was clear that he opposed the project and that they spoke at length. “There was no confusion in our conversations,” the senator said.
Zinke claimed he hadn’t met with lobbyists and casino representatives who opposed the project, but emails and other documents showed these people had regular contact with Zinke as part of an effort to get him to deny the application.
Zinke claimed he based his decision not on the feedback of that U.S. senator or those opposed to the project, but on advice from attorneys at the Interior Department. But the attorneys said they didn’t advise him on the matter or approve his ultimate action.
Despite Zinke downplaying the role of others besides attorneys in the Interior Department, the evidence showed a lobbyist attended a dinner with Zinke at the White House the night before Zinke returned the amendments and told a casino executive that Zinke “thinks he helped us.” The senator also recounted a lengthy conversation the day the decision was made, in which he “directly” told Zinke he shouldn’t approve the amendments. Zinke also doubled down when confronted with the evidence contradicting him.

The inspector general concluded this wasn’t just a matter of a faulty memory, either.

Related video: What to know about the DOJ’s criminal probe into Trump

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“In short, Secretary Zinke was contacted repeatedly, personally, and directly in the days leading up to and the day of the final decision, and it strains credulity to conclude that Secretary Zinke simply forgot or misspoke when he was interviewed by OIG investigators less than 1 year after the events in question,” the report said. “This is particularly true here, as Secretary Zinke was expressly given the opportunity to correct his statements during his second interview with the OIG.”

It might not be surprising that the Trump Justice Department didn’t act on these findings when the inspector general referred it for potential prosecution in 2018 — given its handling of legal matters involving other Trump allies. But the Biden Justice Department also formally closed the matter last summer after reviewing it for six months.

And notably, it’s the second time the Biden DOJ has passed on pursuing Zinke for allegedly lying to investigators. Another IG report released earlier this year found Zinke had allegedly lied about his involvement in a land deal in his hometown of Whitefish, Mont., which he stood to benefit from personally. Zinke claimed his role was minimal and that a meeting he held with the project’s developers at the Interior Department’s headquarters was “purely social.”

The evidence, again, showed something else entirely, as The Post’s Anna Phillips and Lisa Rein reported in February:

Email and text message exchanges show he communicated with the developers 64 times between August 2017 and July 2018 to discuss the project’s design, the use of his foundation’s land as a parking lot, and his interest in operating a brewery on the site.
Email and text message exchanges show he communicated with the developers 64 times between August 2017 and July 2018 to discuss the project’s design, the use of his foundation’s land as a parking lot, and his interest in operating a brewery on the site.

“These communications, examples of which are set forth below, show that Secretary Zinke played an extensive, direct, and substantive role in representing the Foundation during negotiations with the 95 Karrow project developers,” Inspector General Mark Greenblatt’s office wrote.
“These communications, examples of which are set forth below, show that Secretary Zinke played an extensive, direct, and substantive role in representing the Foundation during negotiations with the 95 Karrow project developers,” Inspector General Mark Greenblatt’s office wrote.

Zinke “was not simply a passthrough for information,” the report said. “He personally acted for or represented the Foundation in connection with the negotiations.”
Zinke “was not simply a passthrough for information,” the report said. “He personally acted for or represented the Foundation in connection with the negotiations.”

Not only had Zinke allegedly misled investigators, the inspector general found, but his involvement in the project itself broke federal ethics rules. Zinke had told federal officials he would resign from the foundation and not do work on its behalf.

Prosecutors declined to press charges in this case around the same time — last summer.

Zinke has so far escaped legal jeopardy for these and other ethics investigations that dogged his tenure as secretary and ultimately forced his resignation in December 2018. He’s now running for Congress and narrowly won the GOP nomination for one of Montana’s two House seats, thanks in part to Trump’s endorsement.

To the extent the Biden Justice Department is hellbent on taking down the Trump team, Zinke would seem like relatively easy pickings. But proving someone lied to investigators is a high bar, and the Biden Justice Department has apparently determined that pursuing Zinke isn’t worth it.

Not that it’s stopping Zinke from claiming persecution. In response to the report, he called it a “political hit job” by the Biden administration, citing the report’s proximity to the 2022 midterms. He did so even though Greenblatt was a Trump appointee, and even though the delay in releasing the report was in large part because the Trump Justice Department spent more than two years reviewing Greenblatt’s criminal referral.

Greenblatt said he followed all relevant procedures and argues that more than 60 days before an election is plenty of time. He also said that withholding the report would itself be political.

Of course, if the Biden administration really wanted to hit Zinke, they could’ve gone quite a bit further.

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real-human



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PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2022 8:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/justice-department-pressured-us-attorney-bring-cases-trump/story?id=89745338


Justice Department pressured former US attorney to bring cases against Trump enemies, Geoffrey Berman says


Quote:
Geoffrey Berman, who served 2 1/2 years as United States attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2018 to 2020, said the Justice Department pressured him and his office to pursue criminal cases against perceived enemies of former President Donald Trump, including former Secretary of State John Kerry.

"I had never seen anything like that before," Berman told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos in his first interview about his new book, "Holding the Line: Inside the Nation's Preeminent US Attorney's Office and its Battle with the Trump Justice Department." "People who had been in the office for 40 years never saw anything like that. It was unprecedented and scary."

MORE: Fired US attorney Geoffrey Berman appears before Congress
Berman described a tenure under Attorney Generals Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr and acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker rife with politics and constant interference, pressuring him to remove references to Individual-1, aka Donald Trump, in the case against Michael Cohen, the president's former lawyer.

"On the eve of Cohen's guilty plea, main Justice tried to get our office to remove any reference to Individual-1, who was President Trump. They were unsuccessful in that venture. And they were unsuccessful in every attempt to politically interfere with our office. We held the line in every instance," Berman told ABC's "Good Morning America."


Berman said his office was urged to bring charges against Kerry for violations of the Logan Act -- which makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to take part in unauthorized foreign diplomacy -- over Kerry's discussions about the Iran nuclear agreement.


"That was truly outrageous," Berman said.

No charges were ever brought against Kerry.

"President Trump attacks John Kerry in two tweets saying that Kerry engaged in possible illegal conversations with Iranian officials regarding the Iran nuclear deal. The very next day, the Trump Justice Department refers the John Kerry criminal case to the Southern District of New York. Two tweets by the president and the John Kerry criminal case becomes a priority," Berman said.

MORE: Berman relents, leaves post as US attorney after taking stand against firing
Berman wrote that the Justice Department asked him to "even things out" by prosecuting a Democrat after his office successfully prosecuted former Republican Congressman Chris Collins.

"The Justice Department told us, 'Hey, you have just indicted two allies of the president, Chris Collins, who is a Republican congressman from upstate New York, and Michael Cohen, who was the president's lawyer and fixer, and it's time for you guys to even things out and indict a Democrat before the midterm election,'" Berman said. "It was something we never heard or seen before."


Berman was asked repeatedly to resign by Barr, he said, with the then-attorney general announcing Berman had resigned on June 19, 2020. He denied he had resigned but ended a brief standoff with the administration by announcing he would leave his role at U.S. attorney a day later.

Berman's book comes out Tuesday.


second source





How Trump Loyalists In The DOJ Pushed Prosecutors To Protect 'Individual-1'


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB9MMeIVono

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Last edited by real-human on Tue Sep 20, 2022 3:02 pm; edited 1 time in total
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2022 8:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/justice-department-pressured-us-attorney-bring-cases-trump/story?id=89745338


Justice Department pressured former US attorney to bring cases against Trump enemies, Geoffrey Berman says


Quote:
Geoffrey Berman, who served 2 1/2 years as United States attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2018 to 2020, said the Justice Department pressured him and his office to pursue criminal cases against perceived enemies of former President Donald Trump, including former Secretary of State John Kerry.

"I had never seen anything like that before," Berman told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos in his first interview about his new book, "Holding the Line: Inside the Nation's Preeminent US Attorney's Office and its Battle with the Trump Justice Department." "People who had been in the office for 40 years never saw anything like that. It was unprecedented and scary."

MORE: Fired US attorney Geoffrey Berman appears before Congress
Berman described a tenure under Attorney Generals Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr and acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker rife with politics and constant interference, pressuring him to remove references to Individual-1, aka Donald Trump, in the case against Michael Cohen, the president's former lawyer.

"On the eve of Cohen's guilty plea, main Justice tried to get our office to remove any reference to Individual-1, who was President Trump. They were unsuccessful in that venture. And they were unsuccessful in every attempt to politically interfere with our office. We held the line in every instance," Berman told ABC's "Good Morning America."


Berman said his office was urged to bring charges against Kerry for violations of the Logan Act -- which makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to take part in unauthorized foreign diplomacy -- over Kerry's discussions about the Iran nuclear agreement.


"That was truly outrageous," Berman said.

No charges were ever brought against Kerry.

"President Trump attacks John Kerry in two tweets saying that Kerry engaged in possible illegal conversations with Iranian officials regarding the Iran nuclear deal. The very next day, the Trump Justice Department refers the John Kerry criminal case to the Southern District of New York. Two tweets by the president and the John Kerry criminal case becomes a priority," Berman said.

MORE: Berman relents, leaves post as US attorney after taking stand against firing
Berman wrote that the Justice Department asked him to "even things out" by prosecuting a Democrat after his office successfully prosecuted former Republican Congressman Chris Collins.

"The Justice Department told us, 'Hey, you have just indicted two allies of the president, Chris Collins, who is a Republican congressman from upstate New York, and Michael Cohen, who was the president's lawyer and fixer, and it's time for you guys to even things out and indict a Democrat before the midterm election,'" Berman said. "It was something we never heard or seen before."


Berman was asked repeatedly to resign by Barr, he said, with the then-attorney general announcing Berman had resigned on June 19, 2020. He denied he had resigned but ended a brief standoff with the administration by announcing he would leave his role at U.S. attorney a day later.

Berman's book comes out Tuesday.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 27, 2023 11:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-worst-attorney-general-in-50-years-was-even-more-corrupt-than-we-thought/ar-AA16OdLC?cvid=01215df9adef4c99ded6f50f138b2692&ocid=winp2fptaskbar

The Worst Attorney General In 50 Years Was Even More Corrupt Than We Thought


Quote:

Single Malt Justice
It turns out Bill Barr and John Durham were sipping scotch as they burned down Main Justice.

Extraordinary new reporting from the New York Times peels back more layers of corruption, malfeasance, and politicization within the Barr Justice Department. In a groundbreaking story that is focused on Special Counsel John Durham but is really an indictment of Barr, the NYT unveils several previously unreported episodes:

Durham Investigated Trump?!? The most explosive revelation in the NYT piece is that Barr allegedly directed Durham to dramatically expand his brief beyond “investigating the investigators” by opening a financial crimes investigation in the fall of 2019 of President Donald Trump based on a tantalizing tip from Italian authorities. It’s unclear how and to what extent Durham investigated the tip. No charges ever resulted. While it’s unclear what exactly Durham did with the tip, the strong impression left by the story is that the Trump investigation was buried.

Oopsies! The New York Times and other news outlets later misleadingly reported that Durham’s review of the origins of the Trump-Russia probe had turned into a criminal investigation, suggesting that the Durham was zeroing in on the investigators of Trump. In fact, Durham’s criminal probe involved Trump himself. Barr never sought to correct the widespread public misperception:
The news reports, however, were all framed around the erroneous assumption that the criminal investigation must mean Mr. Durham had found evidence of potential crimes by officials involved in the Russia inquiry. Mr. Barr, who weighed in publicly about the Durham inquiry at regular intervals in ways that advanced a pro-Trump narrative, chose in this instance not to clarify what was really happening.

Resignations … Lots Of Them. Multiple members of Durham’s team allegedly resigned in disputes over prosecutorial ethics and the charging decisions he was making.
Bogus Intel. In an unbelievably ironic twist, Durham allegedly used dubious intel from the Dutch and sidestepped a federal judge’s objections to obtain emails from a U.S. citizen who worked at a pro-democracy organization founded by George Soros. Later the Trump administration would infuriate the Dutch by publicly revealing the intel.

Election Interference. The bad-faith machinations of Barr and Durham reached their zenith in the summer of 2020, when Barr allegedly pressed Durham to draft an interim report before Election Day. The draft interim report was never released but it prompted the resignation of a longtime Durham protege. Then there’s this nugget about how Durham’s original investigation had never panned out:

By summer 2020, it was clear that the hunt for evidence supporting Mr. Barr’s hunch about intelligence abuses had failed. But he waited until after the 2020 election to publicly concede that there had turned out to be no sign of “foreign government activity” and that the C.I.A. had “stayed in its lane” after all.

There’s a lot more. Definitely worth a read.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/barr-pressed-durham-to-find-flaws-in-the-russia-investigation-it-didn-t-go-well/ar-AA16M9x9?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=7efe51e12cf748ebbdc4b0bc2c87c54c

https://www.iwindsurf.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=35952&start=10&sid=8890478872a6ffa8ebd4565c6abf1474


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-financial-crimes-investigation-was-buried-kirschner-says/ar-AA16OAaj?cvid=0d89c37ecfc14e6ca2c7d800f96c76c4&ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover

Trump Financial Crimes Investigation Was 'Buried,' Kirschner Says


Quote:

An investigation into potential financial crimes allegedly committed by former President Donald Trump was "buried" at a time when Trump's legal team was investigating the FBI's Russia probe, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner said Thursday.

Above, former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media after voting at a polling station setup in the Morton and Barbara Mandel Recreation Center on November 08, 2022 in Palm Beach, Florida.
Above, former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media after voting at a polling station setup in the Morton and Barbara Mandel Recreation Center on November 08, 2022 in Palm Beach, Florida.
© Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Special counsel John Durham, who led a 3 1/2-year probe that looked into the details of the 2016 FBI Trump-Russia collusion report, was asked to investigate suspected financial crimes that involved Trump, according to a report released by The New York Times on Thursday.

The report revealed that Durham at that time opened a probe into potential financial crimes involving Trump after former Attorney General William Barr asked him to do so.

"While they [Trump's legal team] were globe trotting, meeting with Italian government officials, those government officials said I can't help you on the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, but we do have evidence of financial crimes by Donald Trump," Kirschner said, citing the Times report.

The recently revealed financial crimes allegations come at a time when Trump is already facing a number of criminal probes. He is being investigated for mishandling classified documents, which the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago home in August, and his alleged involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election on January 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.
Glenn Kirschner: I believe Donald Trump must be indicted to save our democracy
Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and continues to criticize the Department of Justice and FBI.



Interviews by the Times with current and former officials revealed that Barr and Durham never announced that they were expanding their probe to look into suspected financial dealings that involved Trump based on a tip from Italian officials. Details of the tip remain unclear.

Kirschner argued that at that point, another prosecutor, not Durham, should have been assigned to investigate the information provided by the Italian officials.

"That's not what Bill Barr did," Kirschner said. "No, he said to John Durham, 'Why don't you just look into this one yourself' and it was serious. They said they even opened the criminal investigation into this allegation of financial crimes by Donald Trump and then it got buried.

"We know nothing about it. We don't know whether charges should have been brought but were killed by some combination of Durham and Bill Barr. We have no idea what happened. So I suspect this is just one of the first big old shoes to drop about what was going on in this Durham investigation."

Durham's Russia investigation ended with Russian analyst Igor Danchenko acquitted on four counts of lying to the FBI. The case revolved around the so-called Steele dossier, a since-discredited report presented by retired British spy Christopher Steele to the FBI looking into allegations of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. Danchenko was the source of much of the information in the dossier.


https://www.rawstory.com/top-legal-experts-call-for-ethics-probe-into-bill-barrs-handpicked-special-counsel-john-durham/?cx_testId=4&cx_testVariant=cx_undefined&cx_artPos=9&cx_experienceId=EXC93HV4HK4I#cxrecs_s

Top legal experts call for ethics probe into Bill Barr’s handpicked special counsel John Durham



another one...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/deliberately-deceived-the-nation-legal-experts-stunned-by-jaw-dropping-report-on-barr-durham-protecting-trump/ar-AA16OEjx?cvid=0fcf7d16e1f642c29ce14215f7a1bbb5&ocid=winp2fptaskbar

'Deliberately deceived the nation': Legal experts stunned by 'jaw-dropping' report on Barr, Durham protecting Trump


Quote:
Legal experts are now weighing in on Thursday’s bombshell, massive and months-long reporting from The New York Times that reveals, among several previously unknown allegations, that then-Attorney General Bill Barr and his special counsel, John Durham were handed apparent evidence of suspicious financial acts by Donald Trump, and proceeded to create a false public narrative that Durham’s investigation found evidence of “suspicious financial dealings” related to Trump, suggesting it was on the part of the FBI, not the president, in order to protect the president.

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, Marcy Wheeler, C-SPAN
Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, Marcy Wheeler, C-SPAN
© provided by AlterNet
“On one of Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham’s trips to Europe,” The Times reveals, “according to people familiar with the matter, Italian officials — while denying any role in setting off the Russia investigation — unexpectedly offered a potentially explosive tip linking Mr. Trump to certain suspected financial crimes.”

The Times adds that “Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump.”


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READ MORE: Bombshell NYT Report Reveals Bill Barr’s Special Counsel Opened ‘Secret’ Financial Crimes Probe Into Trump But Never Prosecuted

“Mr. Durham never filed charges, and it remains unclear what level of an investigation it was, what steps he took, what he learned and whether anyone at the White House ever found out. The extraordinary fact that Mr. Durham opened a criminal investigation that included scrutinizing Mr. Trump has remained secret.”

Until now.

Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law expert who literally wrote the book on the U.S. Constitution, calls the Times’ report “jaw-dropping.”

“When Durham unexpectedly found evidence of crimes committed BY rather than AGAINST Trump, he and Barr deliberately deceived the nation into thinking the opposite! This deep dive by the NYT is as jaw-dropping as anything I’ve read in the past decade,” Tribe says.

Law professor and former President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) Sherrilyn Ifill, one of TIME’s 2021 most influential people in the world, accused Barr of “gaslighting” the public.

READ MORE: ‘Moral Turpitude’: Trump Coup Memo Author John Eastman Now Facing 11 Counts of Alleged Ethics Violations – and Disbarment

“Every line of this article must be read,” Ifill implored. “Horrifying breaches of professional ethics, misuse of DOJ investigative resources, and deliberate lies to, and gaslighting of the public. A grotesque perversion of the appropriate role of Attorney General.”

Related video: Trump and Barr lose as ‘deep state’ bomb goes off: Failed DOJ plot revealed in exposé (MSNBC)

kind of pieces that makes you thankful for independent journalism

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, the well-known MSNBC legal contributor and professor of law, also calls it “jaw dropping.”

“Jaw dropping reporting. Lots here including an explanation of why Durham’s colleague resigned: under pressure from Barr to release an ‘interim’ report damaging Clinton & the FBI as the election drew near, Durham had a draft prepared that wasn’t factual,” she says.

Andrew Weissman, the former General Counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who spent 20 years at DOJ, including working under Special Counsel Robert Mueller, calls Barr “corrupt.”

“Can anyone really be surprised by this?” he asks. “Barr was just so corrupt and so corrupted the DOJ.”

MSNBC legal analyst Jill Wine-Banks, a former Watergate prosecutor and the first woman to serve as US General Counsel of the Army was troubled by the picture The Times painted of how close Barr and Durham were, when special counsels are supposed to have great autonomy and not be shaded by any Attorney General interference.

“Even more troubling than Barr and Durham frequently having drinks and discussing the investigation is the fact that the only crime they discovered on their foreign trip was Italian intel about crimes by Trump,” she says via Twitter. “I want to know the status of that investigation!”

READ MORE: Republicans Claiming ‘Censorship’ Threaten to Haul AT&T and DirecTV Into Congress for Dropping Far-Right Newsmax

Some legal experts lament that despite the bombshells in The Times’ report, it appears nothing will come of it – certainly nothing from the House Republicans.

Former Associate White House Counsel Ian Bassin sardonically asks, “Surely McCarthy and Jim Jordan’s new Select Committee on ‘the Weaponization of the Federal Government’ will focus on this story and the actions of Bill Barr, John Durham and Donald Trump. Surely, right? Right?”

Wine-Banks also points to House Republicans’ new committee investigating what they claim is “weaponization” of the federal government.

“Barr’s relationship with Durham, his pressure on him to reach a certain result and their failure to follow up on Trump’s crime revealed during the investigation is what weaponization of the DOJ looks like — not what Republicans want to investigate now.”

Pete Strzok, who spent 26 years at the FBI including as Deputy Assistant Director of the Bureau’s Counterintelligence Division, and led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States election, speaks from experience.

“I can see Barr allowing the stunning amount of craziness (a gentle choice of word) described in this article,” he writes. “But does anyone in the current OAG or ODAG care about this? Durham has reported to AG Garland for twenty two (22) months now.”

“This,” Weissman adds separately, pointing to The Times article, “is all about the Trump weaponization of the DOJ – but we know that the House Rs won’t give a damn about it.”
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2023 9:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/william-barr-durham-report.html?action=click&algo=bandit-all-surfaces-shadow-lda-unique-diversify-time-cutoff-30&alpha=0.05&block=trending_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=301540565&impression_id=00b3eef8-a0aa-11ed-ab73-d7fbeacaf1db&index=0&pgtype=Article&pool=pool%2F91fcf81c-4fb0-49ff-bd57-a24647c85ea1&region=footer&req_id=294816536&shadow_vec_sim=0.4688320288894978&surface=eos-most-popular-story&variant=0_bandit-eng30s-diversify-shadow-lda-unique

Bill Barr’s Image Rehab Is Kaput


Quote:
By David Firestone

Mr. Firestone is a member of the editorial board.


Former Attorney General William Barr has spent the last year in a desperate salvage operation for what’s left of his legal and ethical reputation. During his 22 months in office, he allowed his Justice Department to become a personal protection racket for his boss, Donald Trump, and left prosecutors, the F.B.I. and other law enforcement officials subject to the worst impulses of the president. But then, in his 2022 memoir, Mr. Barr did an about-face, bashing Mr. Trump for lacking a presidential temperament and singling out his “self-indulgence and lack of self-control.”

In the book, he urged Republicans not to renominate Mr. Trump in 2024, accusing the former president of going “off the rails” with his stolen-election claims by preferring the counsel of “sycophants” and “whack jobs” to that of his real advisers. Clearly concerned that history was paying attention, he was even stronger in his videotaped testimony to the Jan. 6 committee, loosing a variety of barnyard epithets and bitter insults to describe Mr. Trump’s legal strategy. He said the president had become “detached from reality” and was doing a disservice to the nation.

The hollow and self-serving nature of this turnabout was always apparent. Mr. Barr never made these concerns public at a time when his dissent would have made a difference. Instead, he left office in 2020 showering compliments on his boss, praising Mr. Trump’s “unprecedented achievements” and promising that Justice would continue to pursue claims of voter fraud that he must have known were baseless.

But if Mr. Barr harbored any fantasy that he might yet be credited with a wisp of personal integrity for standing up for democracy, that hope was thoroughly demolished on Thursday when The Times published the details of what really happened when Mr. Barr launched a counter-investigation into the origins of Robert Mueller’s report on the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. The reporting demonstrated a staggering abuse of the special counsel system and the attorney general’s office, all in a failed attempt by Mr. Barr to rewrite the sour truths of Mr. Trump’s history.

It was bad enough when, in March 2019, Mr. Barr tried to mislead the public into thinking the forthcoming Mueller report exonerated Mr. Trump, when in fact the report later showed just how strong the links were between the campaign and the Russian government, which worked to help defeat Hillary Clinton. A few months later Mr. Barr assigned John Durham, a federal prosecutor in Connecticut, as a special counsel to investigate Mr. Mueller’s investigation, hoping to prove Mr. Trump’s wild public allegations that the federal intelligence officials had helped instigate the claims of Russian interference to damage him.

Attorneys general are not supposed to interfere in a special counsel’s investigation. The whole point of the system is to isolate the prosecution of sensitive cases from the appearance of political meddling. But the new Times reporting shows that Mr. Barr did the opposite, regularly meeting with Mr. Durham to discuss his progress and advocating on his behalf with intelligence officials when they were unable to come up with the nonexistent proof Mr. Barr wanted to see. (Aides told Times reporters that Mr. Barr was certain from the beginning that U.S. spy agencies were behind the allegations of collusion.)

When the Justice Department’s own inspector general prepared to issue a report saying that, while the F.B.I. made some ethical mistakes, the investigation was legitimate and not politically motivated, Mr. Durham lobbied him to drop the finding. When that effort was unsuccessful, Mr. Barr reverted to his usual pattern of trying to spin the report before it was issued, disagreeing with its finding before it was even out. Mr. Durham then followed up with a similar statement, shattering the clear department principle of staying silent about a current investigation.

The two men even traveled to Britain and Italy together, pressuring government agencies there to disclose what they told U.S. spy agencies about the Trump-Russia connections. That infuriated officials of those governments, who said they had done nothing of the kind, and no evidence was ever found that they had. But on one of those trips, The Times reported, Italian officials gave the men a tip which, people familiar with the matter said, linked Mr. Trump to possible serious financial crimes. (It is not clear what those crimes were, and more reporting will be necessary to reveal the details.) Did Mr. Barr follow protocol and turn the tip over to regular prosecutors in his department for investigation? No. Instead, he gave it to his traveling companion, Mr. Durham, who opened a criminal investigation but never made it public and never filed charges, and when word began to trickle out that a suspected crime had been discovered, he falsely let the world think it had something to do with his original goal.

The Durham investigation, of course, has never presented any evidence that the F.B.I. or intelligence agencies committed any misconduct in the course of the Russia investigation, bitterly disappointing Mr. Barr and especially his patron, Mr. Trump, who had assured his supporters for months that it would produce something big. Desperate for some kind of success, Mr. Durham indicted Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who had worked for Democrats in their dealings with the F.B.I., over the objections of two prosecutors on the special counsel team who said the case was far too thin and who later left the staff.


Mr. Sussmann was acquitted last May of lying to the bureau, and the jury forewoman told reporters that bringing the case had been unwise. Mr. Barr later tried to justify the trial by saying it served another purpose in exposing the Clinton campaign’s starting the Russia narrative as a “dirty trick.” The trial did nothing of the kind, but it did expose Mr. Barr’s willingness to abuse the gratuitous prosecution of an individual to score political points against one of Mr. Trump’s most prominent enemies.

One of the other casualties of this deceitful crusade was the deliberate damage it did to the reputations of the F.B.I., the intelligence agencies and officials in Mr. Barr’s own department. All of these agencies have had many problematic episodes in their pasts, but there is no evidence in this case that they willfully tried to smear Mr. Trump and his campaign with false allegations of collusion. They were trying to do their jobs, on which the nation’s security depends, but because they got in Mr. Trump’s way, Mr. Barr aided in degrading their image through a deep-state conspiracy theory before an entire generation of Trump supporters. Republicans in the House are launching a new snipe hunt for proof that these same government offices were “weaponized” against conservatives, an expedition that is likely to be no more effective than Mr. Durham’s and Mr. Barr’s.

But weakening the country’s institutions and safeguards for political benefit is how Mr. Barr did business in the nearly two years he served as the nation’s top law enforcement official under Mr. Trump. He has a long history of making the Justice Department an instrument of his ideology and politics; when he was attorney general in 1992 during the Bush administration, the Times columnist William Safire accused him of leading a “Criminal Cover-up Division” in refusing to appoint an independent counsel to investigate whether the Bush administration had knowingly provided aid to Saddam Hussein that was used to finance the military before Iraq invaded Kuwait. Under Mr. Trump, Mr. Barr did the opposite, demanding that an unnecessary special counsel do the bidding of the White House and trying to steer the investigation to Mr. Trump’s advantage. His efforts came to naught, and so will his campaign to be remembered as a defender of the Constitution.

David Firestone is a member of the editorial board. Mr. Firestone was a reporter and editor at The Times from 1993 to 2014, including serving as a congressional correspondent and New York City Hall bureau chief, and was executive editor for digital at NBC News until 2022.

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