#Attorney General Loretta Lynch

[fwilliamwallace]

Convicted felon Donald Trump gets brutal election news as a group of former and current Justice Department officials enthusiastically endorse Kamala Harris for president because the "stakes could not be higher."

And it gets even better...

"The fabric of the nation, the rule of law and the future of the Democracy are at stake in this election," the over 40 officials wrote in their endorsement letter.

The signatures are from men and women who have served under presidents from both parties including former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former deputy attorneys general Sally Yates, David Ogden, and Jamie Gorelick.

"The stakes could not be higher. Former President Trump presents a grave risk to our country, our global alliances, and the future of democracy," they write.

They correctly state that Trump "regularly ignored the rule of law" when he was president, slamming the "unconstitutional Muslim travel ban" and his attempt "to stay in power by defying election results and the will of the American people."

They add that Harris is "the best choice to defeat Donald Trump and lead the nation. As attorney general of California, she "oversaw the largest state justice department in the country. She forged strong relationships with law enforcement to keep people safe, fought for American consumers and fought against those preying on the American people."

"We all have had the honor of serving as United States Attorneys, in other leadership roles at the United States Department of Justice and as civic leaders," the letter adds. "We love our country and believe in its infinite possibilities. But this takes work. We urge all Americans to join us in supporting Vice President Harris for President of the United States."

These Justice Department employees firmly believe that Harris, a former prosecutor, will uphold the law in ways that Trump clearly will not. They couldn't be more right.

[sataniccapitalist]

[lboogie1906]

Attorney General Loretta Elizabeth Lynch (born May 21, 1959) is a lawyer who served as the 83rd Attorney General. She was appointed by President Barack Obama to succeed Eric Holder and served as the US Attorney for the Eastern District of NY under both Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. She oversaw federal prosecutions in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Long Island.

Born in Greensboro, she graduated from Harvard Law School. She practiced law in NY and became a federal prosecutor, rising to become head of the Eastern District office. She returned to private law practice until she again became the top district prosecutor. She served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

President Barack Obama nominated her to succeed Eric Holder as Attorney General. On February 26, 2015, the Judiciary Committee of the Senate recommended her confirmation by a 12–8 vote, with all Democrats of the committee and three Republicans in favor. She was confirmed by the Senate by a 56–43 vote, making her the second African American, the second woman, and the first African-American woman to be confirmed for the position. She was sworn in as AG on April 27, 2015. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #deltasigmatheta

[opedguy]

More Classified Docs Found for Biden

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Jan. 12, 2023.--Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland, 70, announced today that he was appointing Special Counsel Robert Hur, a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney in Maryland, to investigate 80-year-old President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents after leaving as Vice President Jan. 20, 2017.  Biden called 76-year-old former President Donald Trump “irresponsible” for housing classified docs at his Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago estate, piling on with the rest of the U.S. press against the former president.  Biden applauded Atty. Gen. Merrick Garlands decision to have the FBI raid Trump’s estate to remove any classified docs, returning them under the Presidential Records Act to the National Archives.  Garland’s decision to appoint another Special Counsel was a response to cover the Department of Justice from potential GOP investigations into corruption and partisan treatment in vaunted government agencies.

When you look at the big picture, Democrats and the press looked for anything to end Trump’s political career, hoping, beyond anything else, to prevent him from running for president in 2024.  Finding classified docs at Mar-a-Lago, Democrats and the press thought they had an open-and-shut case to charge Trump with violating any number of U.S. laws related to handling classified information, including the Presidential Records Act and Espionage Act. All of a sudden, Biden’s lawyers have uncovered sensitive docs found and Biden’s former Univ. of Pennsylvania offices but, more recently, in the garage of his Wilmington, DE. home and personal library.  Where else Biden’s attorneys find more classified documents is anyone’s guess.  Biden denies knowing anything about the whereabouts of classified documents from his time serving as former President Barack Obama’s Vice President.

Instead of wasting more DOJ time on complete nonsense, Garland should not appoint a new Special Counsel to investigate old inconsequential classified docs collecting dust in Biden’s garage of anywhere else. Garland should withdraw Jack Smith as Legal Counsel looking into Trump’s classified docs found at Mar-a-Lago and end the complete waste of DOJ time and energy.  No one cares about the small number of useless classified docs found in Trump or Biden’s archives.  When it came to Trump, Garland must deal with the “deep state” political operatives in the DOJ that would used a respected government agency for political purposes, like harassing Trump.  Garland’s No. 2 Deputy Atty. Gen. Lisa Monaco has a personal vendetta with Trump and pushed the Attorney General to appoint Jack Smith as Special Counsel.  Garland should immediately remove Jack Smith.

Appointing Robert Hur to investigate Biden’s mishandling of classified docs accomplishes nothing other than giving the DOJ political cover before House Republicans investigate egregious political abuses at the DOJ, FBI, CIA and National Security Agency [NSA] during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and his four years in office. Can you imagine,  62-year-old former FBI Director James Comey launched, with fomer Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch’s approval, a counterintelligence investigation into a Republican presidential nominee?  If Lynch approved the FBI investigation of Trump, it reasonable to think that former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden approved the investigation as well.  So when Garland appoints a Special Counsel for Bidenl, it only for the purpose of proving how even-handed he’s administering U.S. justice at the DOJ.

Wasting DOJ resources is not how to deal with investigations of Trump’s handling of classified docs.  Now that it’s known that Biden also mishandled classified docs, Garland should not waste more DOJ time appointing Robert Hur as Special Counsel to look into Biden’s mishandling of classified docs.  He should appoint a Special Counsel to look into corruption at the DOJ.  No one other than political hacks looking to retaliate against Trump and Biden cares about improper handling of classified docs.  Garland needs to have the professionalism to recognize that egregious abuses have taken place at the DOJ, FBI, CIA and NSA, abusing the agencies by political operatives.  Appointing Hur Speical Counsel accomplishes nothing to deal with past abuses of power.  Biden says he’s “cooperating fully and completely” with the DOJ, but that doesn’t rectify current or past abuses at the agency.

Garland isn’t facing undeniable current and past abuses at the DOJ, FBI, CIA and NSA.  When Garland decided to order the FBI to raid Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, he must be held accountable for letting Deputy Atty. Gen. Lisa Monaco, an Obama deep state operative, to call the shots.  Whatever Garland thought he could do to advance a Democrat agenda to prevent Trump from running in 2024, he must acknowledge the Mar-a-Lago raid was inappropriate, politically motivated and a product of extreme partisanship in the DOJ.  Appointing as Special Counsel to look into current and past DOJ corruption would be a start in the right direction. Garland has done nothing for equal justice under the law, only obscuring systemic corruption at the Department of Justice.  Political operatives like Lisa Monaco must be removed their positions, not continue the charade of investigating Biden’s classified docs.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

[darkmaga-returns]

Loretta Lynch, former Attorney General under Barack Obama, joins other ex-U.S. government officials in being paid for allegedly betraying American interests. Lynch collaborates with DJI, China's largest drone manufacturer known for producing weaponized drones for the CCP. Similarly, Chevron profits heavily by continuing oil production for Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro, despite the controversy following Venezuela's disputed election.

[dertaglichedan]

'Selling Out': Elise Stefanik Slams Obama AG for Representing Chinese Military Firm in Pentagon Lawsuit

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) slammed Obama-appointed attorney general Loretta Lynch for "selling out" to the Chinese Communist Party by representing a U.S.-designated Chinese military firm in its lawsuit against the Pentagon.

Shenzhen DJI Technology Company (DJI), a Chinese drone manufacturer, is suing the Pentagon over its 2022 decision to add DJI to its blacklist of "Military Companies Operating in the United States," which are considered potential national security threats. In its lawsuit, DJI—which is one of the largest producers of drones in the world—alleged that the Chinese military label has negatively impacted its business and "violates the law and DJI’s due-process rights."

Stefanik said that Lynch "has turned her back on her nation, selling out to our greatest adversary Communist China and suing the United States on behalf of CCP-owned drone company DJI."

"Not only is her lawsuit full of factual errors, it is also an obvious effort by DJI to distract from CBP’s recent halting of DJI imports due to Uyghur slave labor concerns and a futile attempt to disrupt the momentum behind my unanimously passed Countering CCP Drones Act," the New York representative told National Review.

*** I have 3 DJI drones.. Not thrilled about this whole thing.

[nfliplnews]

[ad_1] The NFL has responded to the lawsuit filed in September by former NFL Media reporter Jim Trotter.In a four-page letter sent Friday to U.S. District Court Judge Paul Crotty, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch explains that the NFL intends to file a motion to dismiss Trotter's case. The letter also provides a glimpse into the league's overall position regarding the termination of Trotter's employment."In March 2020, after an initial two-year contract, the NFL renewed Plaintiff’s contract for another three years," Lynch writes. "In March 2023, Plaintiff’s contract expired and, as part of a broader cost-cutting measure and strategic shift away from traditional broadcast journalism and towards interactive media, the NFL made the decision not to renew the contracts of several reporters, including Plaintiff. That reasoning was communicated to Plaintiff and is well documented."Whether the league has indeed shifted "away from traditional broadcast journalist and toward interactive media" (whatever that means) is irrelevant for now. However, it sheds light on how the league will try to defend the case.Trotter claims the decision was motivated in whole or in part by discrimination and retaliation, under federal, state, and local law.Lynch contends that Trotter's complaint is "fatally deficient" on its face. She writes that Trotter "does not plausibly allege that he engaged in any protected activity supporting" a claim for retaliation."Plaintiff does not allege that he complained, including through his reporting, about any such [discriminatory] practice by the NFL," she explains. "His generalized allegations — that he questioned what he viewed as a 'lack of diversity' and was 'skeptical' of the NFL’s initiatives to promote diversity — do not suffice."She downplays Trotter's questioning of the Commissioner at a February 2023 press conference regarding persistent lack of diversity in the newsroom at NFL Media by stating Trotter "concedes that he posed the exact same questions to the Commissioner at a prior conference — and remained employed for more than a year afterward."Of course, his contract did not expire for more than a year afterward.The letter also attacks in broad terms Trotter's discrimination claim, and it contends that he cannot state claims under New York State or New York City law, because he was a California resident working in California. (California law undoubtedly affords equal, if not greater, employment protections than New York law.)She concludes by explaining that the NFL intends to seek a stay of the discovery process pending resolution of its motion to dismiss. Which means that they don't want to give up any documents or make any witnesses available for questioning under oath until a decision is made on the motion to dismiss.Attorney Doug Wigdor, who represents Trotter in the case, issued this comment: "We are very confident any motion to dismiss will be unsuccessful and is simply an attempt to delay which is why they are also requesting a stay of discovery."The NFL's initial position is not surprising. This is how matters of this nature unfold. The defendant attempts at every turn to short circuit the case, hopeful that eventually a trial will be avoided.Notably absent from Lynch's letter is any reference whatsoever to an attempt to force the case into NFL-controlled arbitration. Trotter's contract contained no such clause preventing him from seeking relief in open court.Thus, regardless of how the case plays out, it will happen in a public forum and not in the NFL's preferred venue — the secret, rigged, kangaroo court into which most of the legal claims against the league are resolved. [ad_2] Source link

[fifihunterbakariafrocentric]

OBAMA NOMINATES LORETTA LYNCH AS ATTORNEY GENERAL

[partisan-by-default]

For Justice Department employees who had spent weeks contemplating the possibility of two-time federal criminal defendant Donald Trump returning to the presidency, Joe Biden’s decision to drop out and endorse Kamala Harris offered a sense of relief.

Former and current Justice Department employees believe that a future president Harris, a former prosecutor, unlike Trump, would respect the norms that have been in place to ensure DOJ independence in the half-century since Watergate.

Those fears of another Trump term are central to a new letter endorsing Harris, signed by more than 40 former Justice Department officials who served under presidents of both parties. They include former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former deputy attorneys general Sally Yates, David Ogden and Jamie Gorelick, and John McKay, who was appointed as a top federal prosecutor in Washington state during the George W. Bush administration, among others.

“The fabric of the nation, the rule of law and the future of the Democracy are at stake in this election,” reads the letter, first obtained by NBC News. It warns: “The stakes could not be higher. Former President Trump presents a grave risk to our country, our global alliances and the future of democracy.”

[usatodayopinion]

The millions of Americans who watched — from homes and businesses, bars and classrooms across the USA — James Comey's extraordinary congressional testimony on Thursday saw several sides to the 6-foot-8 lawman from Yonkers, N.Y.

Our view. Other views.

[sarcasticcynic]

Me Neither

Image from WTVG

Hey, remember when the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation formally announced back in 2016 that Hillary Clinton’s conduct did not amount to a crime and that there were no reasonable grounds to charge her with anything?

Remember how the Democrats and President Obama screamed (falsely) that Secretary Clinton had been totally exonerated?

And insisted (falsely) that Clinton had never done anything wrong whatsoever, and that there had never been any reasonable uncertainty or potential evidence against her, and that it was all just a giant “witch hunt”?

And castigated everyone who had investigated Clinton, and everyone who had supported the investigation, and everyone who had reported on the investigation in any way that reflected negatively on Clinton, and every Republican in the entire country?

And accused all of them of a massive conspiracy against Clinton, of knowingly lying and defrauding the American people, and of committing treason?

And demanded that everyone who ever thought there had been any reason to investigate Clinton should themselves be investigated and then jailed?

And remember how Republicans, in contrast, nodded politely and accepted the conclusion of the U.S. Intelligence Community and the DoJ?

And never suggested there was anything wrong, less than truthful, biased, or corrupt about the investigation or the people who conducted it?

And never sought any additional investigations into either Clinton or those who decided there were no grounds to charge her with anything?

And never threatened to continue investigating Clinton for years to come even if she were president?

And never accused the Clintons, the FBI, the Justice Department, and the entire Obama administration of a massive “deep state” conspiracy and coverup?

And that was the end of it?

[theteriobrienshow-blog]

Note to the U.S. Government: Unaccompanied "Children" Aren't Refugees. Show Notes, The Teri O'Brien Show, 9-10-2017

Note to the U.S. Government: Unaccompanied “Children” Aren’t Refugees. Show Notes, The Teri O’Brien Show, 9-10-2017

  The Teri O’Brien Show, Office of Refugee Resettlement turns Unaccompanied “Children” Over to Illegals. Why? Senators Graham, Schumer Dick “Eddie Haskell” Durbin and . Flake propose a DREAM Act with all the problems of W’s 2007 amnesty. Listen to this episode here by using the player on the right of this page, or here on spreaker.com. (more…)

[opedguy]

Atty. Gen. Garland Lacks Common Sense

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Jan. 13, 2023.--Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland, 70, embarrassed himself and the White House appointing a Special Counsel to see whether 80-year-old President Joe Biden mishandled classified docs from his time as former President Barack Obama’s Vice President.  Recently found classified docs in Biden’s former office at the U of Penn. Biden Center then another batch of classified docs in his Wilmington. De. garage raise questions similar to 76-year-old former President Donald Trump but Garland clearly jumped the gun.  No Special Counsel is needed to determine whether Biden mishandled classified docs from his time as Vice President.  Garland would be far better off appointing a Special Counsel to investigate corruption at the Department of Justice, FBI, CIA and National Security Agency [NSA], all conspired a covert effort to discredit Trump’s 2016 campaign and presidency.

Facts related to Biden’s classified docs found in at least three locations, including the U of Penn. office, Wilmington home garage and his personal library, don’t need a Special Counsel.  Garland needs a Special Counsel to investigate whether the DOJ, FBI, CIA and NSA conspired to investigate Trump to interfere with his 2016 campaign and presidency.  Surely, Garland knows the logic behind ordering the FBI to raid Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate but was never able to explain himself.  In some ways, ordering a Special Counsel is outrageous, all because he wants to show even-handedness with Trump.  But Garland isn’t admitting that the raid on Mar-a-Lago was orchestrated by 54-year-old former Obama holdout Deputy Atty. Gen. Lisa Monaco, someone who authorized the FBI’s 2016 counterintelligence investigation of Trump’s alleged Russian connections.

Garland should resign as Attorney General knowing that there’s no basis for appointing a Special Counsel to investigate Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified docs.  Whether Biden held classified docs since 2017 or not, Garland showed bad judgment or let Lisa Monaco call the shots.  When it comes to Trump, Garland knows that the DOJ, FBI, CIA and NSA abused its power, weaponized its Article 2 authority to persecute the former president.  Classified docs found in Biden’s personal custody pale in comparison to the inappropriate business dealings with his 52-year-old son Hunter and bother Jim for the years while Obama’s Vice President [2009-2017] and the years before he ran for president in 2019.  House Republicans, led by 58-year-old Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio, are starting to look into “Biden Inc,” the family business used to rake in millions overseas.

Everyone in Washington knows the egregious partisanship and bias against Trump, both in the media and with elected officials. Whether or not Jordan can ever shed light on the Russian hoax, he can still show a corrupt DOJ, willing to use the nation’s most powerful law enforcement and intel agencies to go after Trump for purely political purposes.  Conspiracies inside the upper echelon of the FBI showed that former Agent Peter Strzok and former FBI Atty. Lisa Page actively conspired inside the FBI to sabotage Trump’s 2016 campaign.  Comey’s counterintelligence investigation of Trump started when former CIA Director John Brennan turned over former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s opposition research AKA the Steele dossier to Comey in the summer of 2016.  Whether admitted to or not, Obama and Biden authorized former Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch to investigate Trump.

Garland, a former Chief Justice of D.C.’s Second Court of Appeals, knew little about leading the Justice Department, relying heavily on Lisa Monaco.  Monaco organized the Aug. 8, 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago, all to discredit Trump, hoping to eventually bring charges against the former president.  Monaco appointed former U.S. Atty. Jack Smith as Special Counsel to determine whether to charge Trump with any crimes.  Judging by new revelations about Biden’s classified docs, Garland should terminate Smith as Special Counsel.  There’s simply no basis to play House Democrats political games especially when it comes to using the DOJ.  Certainly nothing presented by the Jan. 6 House Select Committee has any merit for criminal charges.  Garland would do the DOJ a favor ending Special Counsel Jack Smith’s assignment.  Instead, Garland appoints 49-year-old U.S. Atty. Robert Hurn Biden’s Special Counsel.

Garland, under heavy influence of Lisa Monaco, has only harmed the DOJ;s credibility, now disgracing the department appointing Special Counsel Robert Hur to investigate Biden’s classified docs.  Garland should fire Monaco immediately and rescind Special Counsel Jack Smith and Robert Hur’s assignments.  No one can possibly think that finding a few classified docs in Biden’s possession amounts to anything more than a hill of beans.  When it comes to Trump, Garland should appoint a Special Counsel to investigate years of corruption at the DOJ.  No federal agency should be used to persecute political opponents like the DOJ did with Trump.  Biden’s classified docs pale in comparison to his family corrupt business dealing with foreign governments.  Spending billions on the Ukraine War, it’s no accident that Biden’s son Hunter made millions at a corrupt Ukrainian natural gas company.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

[mikesoldblog]

"The journalist who broke the story about the controversial 2016 tarmac meeting between former President Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch was found dead Saturday morning, according to police.

The body of 45-year-old Christopher Sign, a news anchor for ABC 33/40 in Birmingham, was discovered by Hoover police and fire personnel at around 8 a.m. following a 911 call about a person down in a residence in Alabama, according to AL.com.

Hoover police Lt. Keith Czeskleba said Sign's death is being investigated as a suicide, the report added."

Oh wow, another Clinton enemy just "committed suicide". How fucking convenient for them.

[your-krazy-uncle-bob]

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday held a belated press conference to explain that he had personally approved the FBI’s raid of Donald Trump’s Florida residence to seize documents deemed U.S. government property. 

A clearly agitated and nervous Garland sought to exude confidence in the raid. He went on to heatedly defend the professionalism and integrity of the Justice Department and FBI. 

But almost immediately after his sermon, the Justice Department and its affiliates were back to their usual selective leaking (“sources say” . . . “according to people familiar with the investigation”) to liberal newspapers. 

In no time, the Washington Post claimed the raid was aimed at finding Trump Administration documents relating to “nuclear secrets.” The now-familiar desired effect was achieved. “Presidential historian” Michael Beschloss quickly tweeted a picture of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, noting that in the past revealing such nuclear secrets had led to the death penalty. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden, previously known for comparing Trump’s border detention facilities to Auschwitz and falsely claiming the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian “disinformation,” replied: “Sounds about right.” That is, without any proof, it was legitimate to imagine that the former president of the United States, like the Rosenbergs, should be executed for passing nuclear secrets.

So, as intended, the Justice Department and FBI leaks touched off a round of intended liberal hysteria of the sort we saw during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian collusion with Trump’s 2016 campaign aimed at disguising government misdeeds or overreach. 

Sources Tell Us

Despite Garland’s pious assertions, we know the modus operandi of selective leaking from the career of Andrew McCabe. The disgraced former interim FBI director admitted to lying to federal investigators about his role in leaking to the Wall Street Journal. And the inspector general found McCabe lied on several other occasions about his efforts to leak to and massage the media. At this point, we should assume that “sources tell us” and “according to unnamed sources” are indications that the sources are Justice Department and FBI contacts who were given the green light to manipulate the news by their superiors.

Let’s put Garland’s decision to approve the raid on Mar-a-Lago in the context of the past seven years. The Justice Department and FBI in 2016 interfered in a presidential election in two major ways: They exonerated Hillary Clinton’s clearly illegal use of a private server and her destruction of subpoenaed data. The FBI hired Clinton operative Christopher Steele as an informant and gave its “Crossfire Hurricane” imprimatur to the entire Russian collusion hoax, feeding a 2016 left-wing mantra that Trump was a Russian “asset.” 

In 2015, we learned that candidate Hillary Clinton, as Barack Obama’s secretary of state, had emailed classified government materials using her own private server, likely as a way of skirting Freedom of Information Act requirements. 

In the thick of the 2016 campaign a year later, FBI Director James Comey reported that Clinton had, in fact, broken the law. Yet he assumed a role of federal attorney that was not his own, deciding Clinton’s wrongdoing should not lead to an indictment. 

In that improper role, Comey, not U.S. attorneys, declined to hold Clinton accountable. We learned later that Attorney General Loretta Lynch had met secretly on an airport tarmac (“a brief, casual, social meeting”) with Bill Clinton. 

Somewhere within this tangle of lies (both said they met only to talk about their grandchildren, not about whether the Justice Department would charge Hillary Clinton), we learned: 1) Lynch abdicated her role and simply let Comey play the role of investigator and prosecutor, and 2) Hillary Clinton had “bleached” thousands of emails, some of them under federal subpoena, and destroyed her communication devices and records—all federal felonies.

Trump won the election in 2016, but he never controlled the federal government. For 22 months, at a cost of $40 million, Robert Mueller investigated whether Trump had “colluded” with the Russians to take the White House. Ironically, there was ample evidence to show that Hillary Clinton may, in fact, have done exactly that. 

After all, Clinton worked with the Democratic National Committee,  which, in turn, hired the Perkins Coie legal firm, which hired Fusion GPS, which hired ex-spy Christopher Steele, who hired Russian disinformation source Igor Dyachenko, who used Moscow-based former Clintonite Charles Dolan to find dirt on Trump. Where Dyachenko and Dolan located their false dirt for Steele, no one knows for certain. Some Russian source is most likely the culprit. 

In the end, the ruse was exposed. But in the process of exposing that scandal, the Justice Department’s inspector general found that FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith had altered an application for a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to make it appear Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page was a Russian agent. (In reality, Page was working with the CIA.) Clinesmith’s FBI superiors had signed off on that fraudulent document that contained legions of errors. 

We learned also that two of the FBI investigators working for Mueller in 2017 were rank partisans and in their amorous exchanges before the 2016 election had texted about how to “stop” Trump amid  slanders and slurs about his candidacy and supporters. Until they were “reassigned,” both had played key roles in investigating Trump.

We also learned that the FBI had “lost” key cell phone data under court request. We were told that the point man of Mueller’s “dream team,” “all-stars,” and “hunter-killer team”—as the Left gushed of the liberal legal ensemble—former Justice Department attorney Andrew Weismann, before, during, and after his tenure on Mueller’s team was a self-admitted anti-Trump partisan. 

Mueller closed shop in 2019, finding no evidence of collusion, after putting two years of a presidency under a constant cloud of implied criminality. Mueller under oath admitted he knew nothing of the Steele dossier or the role of Fusion GPS in disseminating the fraud. No sane person could believe Mueller, given that the role of the dossier and Fusion GPS were the two chief catalysts leading to his own appointment. Was Mueller addled or simply not telling the truth?

The Walls Are Forever Closing In

Throughout this sordid nightmare, the FBI and Justice Department routinely leaked details the left-wing media serially blared were “bombshells” and evidence that the “walls are closing in.” All assured the public that Trump and his family would soon be behind bars for their ties to Russia and sundry other crimes 

No one has been held accountable for these lies. James Comey hired the lying Christopher Steele as an informant. The FBI fired him when they discovered he kept leaking secret information to his own media friends. When Comey was finally called to testify by Congress, he swore under oath 245 times that he had no memory or knowledge of the questions asked. 

Comey did admit, however, that after a private one-on-one conversation with President Trump, he immediately memorialized his version of the confidential discussion using FBI time and devices. He then acknowledged that he later leaked his version of events to the media through a third party. The goal was to prompt the appointment of a special counsel, eventually to be his friend Robert Mueller. Comey went to great but vain lengths to explain how leaking a government memo of a confidential presidential conversation, which was either classified or confidential, was not illegal. 

Comey also later bragged publicly how he sent agent Peter Strzok on a preplanned mission to surprise National Security Advisor Michael Flynn in hopes of finding Flynn in violation of the Logan Act, a 1799 law that has never been prosecuted successfully. Nevertheless, the threat of prosecution was enough to take down a high-profile Trump appointee.

After Comey was rightly fired, his deputy Andrew McCabe assumed control of the FBI. Again, he lied serially to federal investigators. McCabe oversaw the notorious email investigation that exonerated Hillary Clinton—at the very time his wife was running for office in Virginia, aided by funding from a political action committee with ties to the Clintons. McCabe, remember, also purportedly discussed wearing a wire stealthily to monitor Trump, in hopes of recording embarrassing private conversations that would help convince the cabinet to remove him under the 25th Amendment.

In 2020, the FBI sat on the Hunter Biden laptop and its analysts helped feed leaks protecting Joe Biden’s presidential campaign  from otherwise damaging disclosures. 

Some of the laptop’s contents, however, were in the public domain prior to FBI confiscation, and they had variously suggested that Joe Biden and his family were likely involved in selling influence for sizable sums to foreign governments. The laptop evidence suggested, additionally, that Hunter Biden had committed a series of tax, drug, and sex felonies. 

Yet somehow, 50 former CIA and other intelligence officials—among them prior intelligence heads John Brennan, Leon Panetta, Michael Hayden, and James Clapper—believed they had enough knowledge of the laptop on the eve of the election to assure the country it was “Russian disinformation.” Note that Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and other senators believe that an FBI agent and or analyst had deliberately mischaracterized the laptop as “disinformation” to protect Biden.

Merrick Garland can defend but cannot explain the strange role of the FBI informants. Aside from the infamous Steele, informants keep reappearing in almost every sensationalized political event. Twelve of them apparently were the de facto architects in a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. 

Their nefarious role is one of the reasons why two of the charged defendants were acquitted and two were not found guilty due to mistrials. 

Nor could Garland explain the strange statement from New York Times reporter Michael Rosenberg: “There were a ton of FBI informants among the people who attacked the Capitol” on January 6, 2021. 

There is also the strange asymmetry of the FBI. It routinely now resorts to pre-dawn SWAT raids, shackling the legs and hands of elderly men, and swooping in on would-be targets on the street. Trump associates Peter Navarro, Rudy Giuliani, and John Eastman have all been confronted by the FBI, and either arrested, had their offices searched, or had their phones seized, or all three. But so far only Roger Stone, the target of an FBI SWAT team—which CNN just happened to be on hand to cover—was charged and convicted of a crime. 

Last week’s events at Mar-a-Lago are part of this pattern—raiding the home of the current Republican presidential frontrunner who would beat Joe Biden and Kamala Harris if the general election were held today.

The FBI: What Not to Do

So, to answer Merrick Garland’s scolding, how might the FBI not have lost the faith of the American people? 

It might not have altered documents to ruin the life of an American citizen. When subpoenas arrived for phone records, it could have submitted them rather than wipe them clean.

Its directors might not have stonewalled Congress while under oath or lied to federal investigators or leaked confidential government memos to the press. The FBI did not have to mislead about the contents of a controversial laptop. There was no need to hire foreign nationals during a presidential election to supply dirt on one of the two candidates. 

The attorney general did not need to meet secretly with the husband of someone under FBI investigation. Just as the FBI apparently did not need to raid Kevin Clinesmith’s home to find information about his doctoring of an email, or to put legs irons on Andrew McCabe for lying to a federal prosecutor, or to ambush Christopher Steele and grab his cell phone to ensure he stopped leaking FBI information and lying to the bureau, so too it had no need of shackling Peter Navarro or publicly seizing the phone of Representative Scott Perry (R-Pa.).

Finally, there are existential threats to the United States on the open southern border, from cartel drug runners and terrorists to child traffickers. For 120 days in 2020, Antifa and Black Lives Matter coordinated violent riots that led to over 35 dead, $2 billion in property damage, and over 1,500 law enforcement officers injured. A federal courthouse, a police precinct, and the historic St. James Episcopal Church in Washington were at various times torched. Rioters attempted to storm the White House grounds and sent the Secret Service scrambling to a secure bunker with the president. 

All of the above were mostly ignored by the FBI. Yet these and other violence and illegality posed far more dangers to the American people than do the worried Virginia parents upset about the critical race theory indoctrination of their children.

Finally, Garland has failed to explain why he had sought out a particular federal magistrate to approve the warrant to raid Mar-a-Lago—a magistrate who earlier had recused himself from another case involving Trump. Apparently, Magistrate Bruce Reinhart felt that either his own past partisanship or prior legal work made it impossible for him to remain unbiased in cases involving the former president—except on the present occasion to empower the FBI to raid Trump’s home.

But again, Garland did give a spirited, almost angry defense of the Justice Department and FBI. He was in hot denial that they were anything but professional civil servants. Yet he did not explain why “nuclear secrets,” long sitting in a locked room at Mar-a-Lago, were suddenly putting the nation in harm’s way in a manner they had not eight or 18 months ago.

That raises the question whether Garland is disingenuous or simply naïve. After all, the American people have long trusted their FBI. They want to remain confident in its leadership. Yet it was not the public, but high-ranking Justice and FBI officials themselves—among them most recently Merrick Garland himself—who squandered that confidence. And they should now look inward rather than blast critics for what they have done to themselves and to the country.

[news4dzhozhar]

Miriam Conrad has dedicated her three-decade-long law career to defending the poor and sometimes those — like Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — who committed unspeakable crimes. She sees it as her duty to convey a picture of a defendant ”as a whole person” and to help judges and juries see that picture, too.

That dedication and compassion will be sorely missed, colleagues say, when she steps down next spring from her position as the chief federal public defender in Massachusetts after more than 15 years in the post — a decision she just recently announced.

Conrad, responsible for cases in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, can be fierce when cross-examining a witness, her colleagues say, and tenacious with expert witnesses and law enforcement. As a boss, they say, she’s down in the trenches with her team, laughing at the absurd, always available for advice, and able to “deliver a kick in the posterior” when necessary.

“She’s a superb lawyer,” said retired federal judge Nancy Gertner. “She’s as good as it gets; she’s dogged and courageous and untiring, and cares unbelievably deeply about her clients.”

Conrad was Bill Fick’s boss for a decade, and he was part of the five-member team that defended Tsarnaev in 2015.

“She built the office into a great collection of lawyers and support staff, and created an environment where she took care of all the bureaucracy and got us the necessary resources to do what needed to be done for our clients,” said Fick, now in private practice.

The emotionally charged Tsarnaev trial was a demanding two-month ordeal under a media spotlight that took place at an exceedingly quick pace for a death penalty case, Fick said. The case is still pending. Tsarnaev was convicted and sentenced to death, but the sentence was overturned on appeal.

“I really quite frankly don’t know how she managed to keep running the office and remain on the team,” Fick said. “But it worked.”

While the trial was underway, Conrad also was fighting for resources.

“She fought hard for more staffing and money for her office,” said US District Judge Patti B. Saris, who at the time was chief judge for the District of Massachusetts.

She hasn’t let up, said the current chief judge, Dennis Saylor.

“If she has 11 things that she wants brought up, she’s not going to stop at 10,” Saylor said. “She’s very effective and a very strong advocate.”

When she formally steps down March 31, Conrad expects to remain involved in the legal field, perhaps representing poor defendants part time or volunteering on policy initiative work.

But first, Conrad is “thinking of just taking a gap year,” focused on travel and relaxation, she said.

Before Conrad had a law career, she worked as a journalist. She earned a journalism degree at Northwestern University and in the early 1980s worked as a crime reporter for the Miami Herald. She next worked at the Kansas City Times, now called the Kansas City Star.

A car accident in which Conrad suffered a pulverized heel when she was 25 would help steer her toward the law. She used a settlement from the accident to pay for her third year of law school at Harvard.

It was a natural progression, Conrad said. Her training as a reporter taught her to write quickly and clearly, to view facts as sacrosanct, and to tell her defendants’ stories.

“It’s storytelling,” said Conrad, who is 64. “Our work is telling our client’s personal stories to convey a picture of who they are as a whole person.”

Conrad graduated from Harvard Law School in 1987, clerked for a federal judge, and in 1992 joined the Federal Public Defender Office in Massachusetts, where she worked as an assistant public defender for 13 years. She is serving her fourth four-year term as chief defender.

When Conrad went to law school, she had no plans to become a criminal defense lawyer. She was even considering returning to journalism, Conrad said. That was until she started work as a public defender, and then she knew she’d found her calling.

“It just felt like home,” Conrad said. “It’s been incredible to have this opportunity to do something that I love so much, and to have had the opportunity to do meaningful work with an incredibly talented and dedicated staff.”

As chief defender, Conrad draws accolades from across aisles, benches, and circuits.

“She has a large footprint, not only in the circuit but within the country,” Saris said.

Saris has watched Conrad grow from a fledgling lawyer, to a standout chief public defender, to the voice of the nation’s federal defenders testifying before the 2018 US Sentencing Commission (which Saris chaired).

Conrad has testified several times before the sentencing commission, most recently about first-time offenders and alternatives to incarceration.

“In the courtroom, she is very forceful, and when she’s advocating institutionally for positions she’s not somebody along the lines of, ‘Hey, let’s reach a compromise,’ ” Saris said. “She’s a zealous advocate for both defendants and defense policy.”

Gertner, the retired judge, recalled a pornography trial that Conrad played a role in that was based on Photoshopped images. In a withering cross-examination, Conrad challenged a prosecutorial expert who claimed he could use metadata to authenticate photos. Among those he allegedly authenticated was a doctored image of Shrek, the movie ogre.

“This was not Miriam’s strong suit,” Gertner said. “But she dug in. It was at first deadly dull . . . but she did one of the most amazing cross-examinations of the witness that I can remember.

“The takeaway was she was unafraid to take on experts, unafraid to do the work,” Gertner said.

In 2016, Harvard Law School named Conrad as one of its International Women’s Day honorees, nominated by a student, faculty, or staff member for her work as a public defender and mentor and “in recognition of her commitment to zealously advocating for and providing top quality legal services to indigent clients.” Also honored that same year were Senator Elizabeth Warren, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and former US attorney general Loretta Lynch.

“To do the work as long as she has,” said Fick, Conrad’s former employee, “you have to see the humanity in everybody and take seriously the responsibility to focus on the needs of the client and not really anything else.”