#Rod Rosenstein

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

On the right, the word of the week is “Rubicon.”  MAGA commentators from social media to Fox News are arguing that President Joe Biden and the Democrats passed a point of no return when a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with a scheme to conceal the hush-money payoff made to a porn star in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign.  They claim Trump is the victim of a politicized prosecution that requires Republicans to respond in kind by trying to throw Democrats in jail.

But Trump’s supporters are just trying to concoct a righteous excuse for doing what they have already done. Trump and the right-wing press spent his presidency teaming up to demand federal criminal probes of his political foes, only for those investigations to collapse when Trump’s own law enforcement appointees assessed the purported Democratic crimes. Indeed, Republicans and Trump appointees have overseen nearly all of the high-profile investigations of political figures conducted over the last decade. When those Republicans and Trump appointees have investigated Republicans, the probes have regularly led to criminal charges and convictions, and when those Republicans and Trump appointees have investigated Democrats, they largely have not.  And for all the right’s claims of politicized prosecutions, the record shows Democratic presidents bending over backward to appear impartial, while Trump as president constantly and publicly accused his political opponents of crimes and demanded their prosecution.

Republicans keep finding Republican crimes

One of the huge holes in the right’s argument is their claim that Biden is connected to Trump’s myriad legal travails.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who successfully prosecuted Trump, is a Democrat — but he was elected by New York voters and charged Trump under state law, requiring the right to gin up a baroque conspiracy theory to explain how Biden supposedly masterminded the probe.  Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney who filed racketeering charges in Georgia over Trump’s election subversion plot, is likewise elected in her own right without a tie to Biden.

Meanwhile, Trump’s classified documents and January 6 federal prosecutions are led by Jack Smith, a political independent who prosecuted politicians of both parties as head of the Justice Department’s political corruption unit. Smith took over probes launched under FBI director Christopher Wray, a Trump-appointed Republican, and received special counsel status from Biden-appointed Attorney General Merrick Garland to keep him walled off from political pressure. Trump is now a convicted felon like many of his former associates, including his former legal fixer Michael Cohen, his former campaign chair Paul Manafort, and his longtime political consigliere Roger Stone. Robert Mueller, a Republican who was appointed as FBI director by President George W. Bush, led their successful prosecutions. Mueller in turn was hand-picked to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election by Rod Rosenstein, a Republican and a Trump appointee at the Justice Department.

Republicans keep not finding Democratic crimes

At the same time, the MAGA media spent years demanding the Trump Justice Department conduct criminal probes of high-profile Democrats and other public officials who had otherwise tangled with Trump. Fox hosts like Sean Hannity, a close adviser to the former president, would read long lists of purported crimes committed by Trump’s political opponents and demand they face justice. 

But when Republicans and Trump appointees actually tried to turn frothy right-wing media reports into real cases, they failed. Trump led chants of “lock her up” during his campaign against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but FBI Director James Comey — a Republican who oversaw the probe of her use of a private server — recommended no charges against her, and Trump’s law enforcement appointees apparently found no cause to reverse that determination.  Nor did Trump-appointed Republicans bring charges following federal probes of the Clinton Foundation and the Hillary Clinton Uranium One pseudoscandal. And the much-touted probe into the origins of the Russia probe, overseen by a Trump appointee with the full backing of Trump Attorney General William Barr, ended with a whimper.

Ever since the 34-count felony verdict against Donald Trump was handed down last week, the MAGA cult and their mouthpieces have been screeching about a “Rubicon” by demanding frivolous investigations into from Democrats in retaliation.

[1americanconservative]

@DefiyantlyFree

The following people lied to Congress and none of them went to jail:

1. James Comey

2. Christine Blasey Ford

3. Peter Strozyk

4. John Brennan

5. James Clapper

6. Andrew McCabe

7. Eric Holder

8. Bruce and Nelly Ohr

9. Rod Rosenstein

10. Susan Rice

11. Samantha Power

Trump didn’t put his enemies in prison. But Harris and Biden did.

But this time, if you violated the constitution you should lawyer up now.

[justiceheartwatcher]

Sham!

[trump-jp]

@realDonaldTrump: ....財団はレポートの上部に記載されていますか?リン・ジェームズ・コミーについて書かれた痛烈な文書は、tによって...

....Foundation be listed at the top of the Report? Will the scathing document written about Lyin’ James Comey, by the man in charge of the case, Rod Rosenstein (who also signed the FISA Warrant), be a big part of the Report? Isn’t Rod therefore totally conflicted? Will all of....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 2018年12月7日

[garudabluffs]

A Front Company and a Fake Identity: How the U.S. Came to Use Spyware It Was Trying to Kill

April 3,2023 This article is based on more than three dozen interviews with current and former American and Israeli government officials, corporate executives, technology experts and a review of hundreds of pages of government documents, some of them produced under Freedom of Information Act requests by The Times.

"Yes, the guy who “investigated Trump” Rod Rosenstein, was working on the backend with Trump and associates. Think about that for a minute.

The Biden administration has been trying to choke off use of hacking tools made by the Israeli firm NSO. It turns out that not every part of the government has gotten the message.

The secret contract was finalized on Nov. 8, 2021, a deal between a company that has acted as a front for the United States government and the American affiliate of a notorious Israeli hacking firm.

Under the arrangement, the Israeli firm, NSO Group, gave the U.S. government access to one of its most powerful weapons — a geolocation tool that can covertly track mobile phones around the world without the phone user’s knowledge or consent.

If the veiled nature of the deal was unusual — it was signed for the front company by a businessman using a fake name — the timing was extraordinary."

"The secret contract further illuminates the ongoing battle for control of powerful cyberweapons, both among and within governments, including the United States."

"During the Trump administration, NSO was already beginning to break into the U.S. government market, and in 2019 the F.B.I. purchased a license for Pegasus. The bureau had two aims: to study the spyware to see how adversaries might use it and to test Pegasus for possible deployment in the bureau’s own operations inside the United States."

READ MORE https://www.jtmp.org/2023/04/03/__trashed/

[msclaritea]

Barr’s treason took place when he integrated Chinese-Israeli technology into the Department of Justice without even testing whether or not they work or could be back doored.

These companies included:

DJI drones, which he purchased for the DOJ over the recommendations of other departments which had banned them.

NSO Group, which received over $5 million from the DOJ, before Rod Rosenstein — Barr’s second in command — joined the company.

Chainalysis, a Bitcoin tracking technology which doesn’t work and which has sent at least one innocent man to jail. Its investors include a who’s who of Chinese and Israeli fronts.

Cellebrite, a phone hacking tool that falsely claimed involvement in solving the San Bernardino terrorist attack.

Tik Tok — Barr repeatedly refused to do anything about the Chinese compromised company.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Elie Mystal at The Nation:

There has probably never been a president who was more ignorant of the government, the Constitution, and the laws of this country than Donald Trump was in 2017. The man came to power with a child’s understanding of civics and a mob boss’s understanding of power. Instead of using the power of government to effectuate his agenda, he thought he could simply bend the law to his will. Trump was wrong, and the Department of Justice showed him why. Trump fired FBI director James Comey (whose decision to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails happened to be one of the proximate causes of his election in the first place) for his lack of loyalty. That led the DOJ to investigate Trump’s abuse of power. Trump likely assumed that his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, a longtime senator and an early supporter of Trump’s vile candidacy, would put a stop to the inquiry. But to Trump’s surprise, Sessions followed department rules and norms and recused himself from the case, leaving Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to handle the investigation. Rosenstein eventually appointed former FBI director Bob Mueller as a special counsel, and while Trump was never held accountable for this crime, he learned that the Justice Department could be a threat to his lawless abuse of power.

It’s a lesson he will not have forgotten if he wins or steals a second term. Mandate for Leadership, the Project 2025 blueprint for an eventual authoritarian takeover of the federal government, contains a lot of dangerous proposals for how Trump and his ruling conservatives can remake the executive branch. The authors’ ideas for the Department of Justice reflect not only their lust for unchallenged power, but also a deep fear of the DOJ’s independence—and, more particularly, the way that independence might be used against them if the DOJ is not brought to heel. Put simply: The conservatives hope to use the DOJ to make their darkest desires legal, while at the same time taking away the best legal means to stop them. As a first step, the Project 2025 Mandate recommends hollowing out the FBI. Why the FBI? Think of it this way: If Project 2025 is basically a conservative heist plot, then the chapter on the DOJ is the part where the plotters explain how they plan to take out the security cameras and floodlights so they can proceed under the cover of darkness.

The chapter begins like the Seinfeld holiday of Festivus: with an airing of grievances that the conservatives have against the FBI, including its alleged attempts to “convince social media companies and the media generally that the story about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop was the result of a Russian misinformation campaign.” There are also entire paragraphs dedicated to railing against the FBI and the DOJ for trying to halt the spread of lies about the 2020 election—and, again, if you understand who these people are, you can see why stopping the government from policing their lies is a key goal. In order to accomplish this, Project 2025 proposes pushing Congress to demote the FBI, and its director, to a lower rung on the DOJ’s organizational chart and make the director report to a political functionary. It also wants Congress to eliminate the 10-year term of the FBI director to make it easier for the president to replace the director at will, like most other political appointees. Again, Trump got burned for firing Comey, and this proposal would make sure any future FBI director is sufficiently loyal.

If the conservatives simply wanted to destroy the FBI, I might agree with them. Even a cursory knowledge of the bureau’s history shows that the FBI is problematic: a dangerous tool of the surveillance state that, more often than not, has been deployed against civil liberties, civil rights, and social progress.

The problem with Project 2025 is that it doesn’t actually want to destroy the FBI; it wants to get rid of its independence—while keeping all of the FBI’s jackbooted thuggery so that it can hurt the “right” people. The Project 2025 Mandate calls for renewing the bureau’s focus on “violent” crime—and that word choice is important, because it leaves out nonviolent crimes like bank fraud, tax evasion, bribery, and document theft—you know, all the things that Trump or his business or donor-class friends are accused of doing. The document further suggests stripping the FBI of its legal workforce—the 300 or so attorneys employed by the bureau—which would turn the FBI into an even blunter weapon than it already is, completely untethered from the Constitution or civil rights. In line with the mission of hurting the “right” people, Mandate’s chapter on the DOJ details big plans for resuming Trump’s campaign against immigrants. Those plans include deploying the power of the Justice Department against Democrats who govern in “sanctuary cities.” Indeed, there’s a whole paragraph devoted to the wild idea of using the DOJ to sue district attorneys who use their discretion in ways that the conservatives don’t like—including, though hardly limited to, refusing to help deport immigrants.

[...] Toward that end, this chapter proposes transforming the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ into a tool to fight for white supremacy instead of against it. It aims to do this by using the division to prosecute institutions and organizations that promote diversity as violating the civil rights and equal protection of whites, and it’s the logical conclusion of the conservative assault on affirmative action and DEI programs. [...]

Using the DOJ to sue companies that hire people of color or women is meant to dissuade companies from hiring people of color or women, because according to conservative whites, anytime a person of color or a woman is hired for anything, it is because of affirmative action or DEI. This section is an attempt to whitewash America through force of law, since “the market” has rejected white supremacy (at least superficially) as a sound business practice.

When you break down what Project 2025 wants to do with the Justice Department, it’s chilling and terrifying, and yet I’m also struck by how petty and mean-spirited the tone of the document is. These people are consumed by their personal grievances (against Black people, against the media, against Hunter Biden and his laptop). There are multiple passages devoted to complaining that the DOJ has prosecuted people who threaten abortion clinics and parents who threaten school boards, as if being vile and hateful toward pregnant people and schoolteachers is their most precious “freedom.” Giving these people the DOJ is like giving a chimpanzee a gun: It’s inherently dangerous even when the chimp wields it like a crooked club.

Next time, Trump will not be handing the DOJ to people like Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr—people who wanted to use the department to further the MAGA agenda but felt bound by the rule of law. Next time, Trump will let someone like Stephen Miller, a ghoul who wants the law to promote bigotry instead of eradicating it, run the Justice Department. He’ll hand it to a devout loyalist and unreconstructed racist who wants to weaken the DOJ so it can’t hurt Trump, while weaponizing it against Trump’s enemies and the vulnerable communities he has decided to harass and terrorize. Project 2025 is telling us exactly how the conservatives plan to take away the rights of women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community. I beg the American people to believe them. This dystopian future isn’t a threat, it’s a certainty, should we give these people power again.

Elie Mystal wrote in The Nation that the DOJ under a 2nd Trump term would be the legal wing of the MAGA movement. The extreme MAGA movement must be crushed at all costs.

See Also:

The Nation: June 2024 Issue

[conniejoworld]

Rosenstein: Trump special counsel appointment signals DOJ belief in a ‘viable potential case’ | The Hill

Said nothing here- waste of air.

[truck-fump]

Rosenstein says he "probably would not have" named special counsel for <b>Trump</b> cases

New Post has been published on https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rod-rosenstein-special-counsel-trump-cases-face-the-nation/&ct=ga&cd=CAIyGjUzM2UwMTY5ZmFhZTIwMGQ6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AOvVaw1jofahtiegoaYyj8SIljEh

Rosenstein says he "probably would not have" named special counsel for Trump cases

Attorney General Merrick Garland named Jack Smith special counsel last week.

[opedguy]

Trump Says He’s Put in Double-Jeopardy

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Nov. 19, 2022.--Looking for a way out of his new legal challenge, 76-year-old former President Donald Trump says he’s subjected to “double-jeopardy,” something expressly forbidden in the Constitution.  Trump was acquitted in his second impeachment trial Feb. 13, 2021 of “incitement of insurrection,” only to wind up with the Jan. 6 House Select Committee trying to tie him to planning the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.  With Trump, anything goes when the nation’s vaunted law enforcement and intel agencies used to harass him.  Trump couldn’t believe Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith to go after Trump’s alleged crimes.  Truth be told, Garland didn’t need to appoint a Special Counsel, something that looks like another government witch hunt.  Garland’s team could have evaluated whether or not Trump committed a crime worth prosecuting with appointing a Special Counsel.

Trump called the decision to appoint a Special Counsel “appalling,” harking back to May 17, 2017 the day Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Bob Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate Trump’s alleged ties to the Kremlin.  Mueller and FBI officials at the time knew that former FBI Director James Comey used former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s opposition research AKA “the Steele dossier.”  Rosenstein was hounded by Democrats after Trump fired Comey May 8, 2017, for leaking fake stories to the New York Times and Washington Post.  Trump reacted harshly to Smith’s appointment because he knew what the government has put him through before.  Yet, like with Mueller’s appointment, Democrats and the press hailed Garland’s decision, anything to get back at Trump, especially if it prevents him from running in 2024.

Trump’s point about double-jeopardy would only apply if he were tried for the exact same charges.  When it came to his second impeachment trial, Trump was charged with “incitement of insurrection,” different from planning or orchestrating the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.  Trump’s analogy to double-jeopardy probably doesn’t apply to an impeach trial, because its doesn’t have the same burden of proof in criminal trials.  Trump called the Biden administration “egregiously corrupt,” working in concert with the Democrat Party and the press to stop Trump from running in 2024.  No question the impeachment charges are similar to the ones pushed by the Jan. 6 House Select Committee.  But whether or not that triggers the Constitution’s double-jeopardy charge is anyone’s guess.  Trump’s former Atty. Gen. Bob Barr said today that appointing a Special Counsel meant the DOJ had enough evidence to charge Trump.

At the time of Trump’s second impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that Trump whipped a Jan. 6 crowd into a frenzy before they attacked the Capitol.  Once the FBI researched what happened, the found out that right-wing militia groups has actually planned the Capitol mayhem for months.  So, when Trump was acquitted Feb. 13, 2021, he assumed the story would go away.  Yet Pelosi couldn’t let go of what Democrats accused Trump of planning and orchestrating the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.  Pelosi wants Trump prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, even if he did noting to plan the riots.  Democrats and their friends in the press are euphoric about Garland appointing a Special Counsel, hoping to finally get a conviction.  Final say on any charges lies with Garland.  Barr thinks the DOJ has enough evidence that Trump broke the law handling classified docs.

CNN’s senior justice correspondent Evan Perez told host fact-checker John Berman that “the former president is just making it up,” showing, if nothing else, that CNN has not changed its Democrat bias.  “There is  . . . nothing to say that this was a dead investigation or that it was being abandoned—far from it,” Perez told Berman.  “People around him have been getting subpoenas in recent days.  So there was nothing to indicate that is was about to go away,” Perez said, showing his zeal about going after Trump.  Broadcast and print media outlets have to work toward neutrality because where it stands now, no one can trust the press as objective.  Why are all the liberal journalists  backing Garland’s announcement of a Special Counsel?  Whatever happens with the Special Counsel investigation, Garland will have the final say to go ahead and prosecute Trump for any alleged crimes.

Trump called the Special Counsel appointment “the worst politicization of justice in our country,” Trump said.  When the FBI under Comey opened up a counterintelligence investigation of Trump in the 2016, it’s difficult to get more political bias.  Reporters at the New York Times or CNN have to stop jumping-for-joy expecting an indictment against Trump.  Charging someone with crimes at the Feb. 13, 2021 Senate impeachment trial found out, doesn’t mean it will lead to conviction.  Trump has strong arguments to make that he’s been subject of government harassment since 2016.  Whatever documents were found in the Aug. 8 Mar-a-Lago raid, it doesn’t mean they exposed the U.S. to any national security risks.  When it comes to the Jan. 6 House Select Committee, former Vice President Mike Pence said he would not cooperate with the committee’s subpoena because of extreme bias.

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.

[politicaldilfs]

Rod Rosenstein

[smallcomic]

This man likes to separate infants from their family. Goes by the name of Rod Rosenstein.

Lil late inktobie from yesterday.

[fuckyeahscootmcnairy]

Scoot McNairy as Rod Rosenstein in The Comey Rule, Part One