https://www.rawstory.com/2020/10/16...-bill-barr-plans-to-undermine-free-elections/ 1600 Justice Department alumni warn Bill Barr plans to ‘undermine’ free elections
'ol Billlie boy is going to find himself in a pickle. His crimes mean he's got to stick w/cheetoh, but this over the top behavior endangers his strategy and plausible deniability in case he can't slant the election enough for him. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ws-clinton-obama-biden-obamagate-b885971.html Trump gives Bill Barr ultimatum as he demands roundup of political enemies Rambling phone interview on Fox Business sees president vent rage about rivals’ supposed crimes against him During a live phone-in on Fox Business, Donald Trump complained again that not enough of his political enemies have been arrested – and said attorney general Bill Barr could find himself in “a sad situation” if he doesn’t start rounding them up. The blunt warning comes after Mr Trump left Walter Reed Medical Centre and returned to Twitter with a blizzard of angry tweets and retweets, many of them calling for the indictment of Obama administration figures. The president’s rambling and ill-tempered interview with Maria Bartiromo on Thursday saw him run through a long list of his usual grievances, but he was particularly rancorous on the subject of supposed Obama-era “crimes” against him for which he wants to see his predecessor indicted, along with Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and many others. “Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes,” declared the president, “the greatest political crime in the history of our country, then we’re gonna get little satisfaction unless I win. Because I won’t forget it. But these people should be indicted, this was the greatest political crime in the history of our country. And that includes Obama, and that includes Biden; these are people that spied on my campaign, and we have everything. “Now they say they have much more, and I say Bill, you got plenty. You don’t need any more.”
let's just tamper w/evidence.... https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/07/doj-altered-flynn-document-427280 Justice Department acknowledges ‘inadvertently’ altering Flynn document with sticky note The errant note gave President Donald Trump political ammunition against his campaign rival, Joe Biden. “The government has learned that, during the review of the Strzok notes, FBI agents assigned to the … review placed a single yellow sticky note on each page of the Strzok notes with estimated dates,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn Ballantine wrote. Why it matters: Despite little ambiguity about the date of the Oval Office meeting, the inclusion of Jan. 4, 2017, as a potential earlier date allowed President Donald Trump to weaponize the issue during his debate last week with Democratic nominee Joe Biden. The erroneously dated notes also mark the third time the DOJ and Flynn's legal team misdated the meeting as potentially occurring before Jan. 5. On June 24, the DOJ filed an earlier version of Strzok's notes that included an inaccurate date range as well.
Attorney General Barr is in the doghouse after failing to deliver on 2 politically charged investigations Trump demanded before the election https://www.businessinsider.com/bil...-durham-flynn-investigations-election-2020-10 Attorney General William Barr is on thin ice after failing to deliver on two investigations that President Donald Trump claimed would uncover evidence of a broad conspiracy against him. This week, one of those investigations wrapped up with no criminal charges or public report. The other investigation will not be finished before November 3, throwing a wrench into Trump's plans to tout its findings to boost his reelection chances. Trump on Wednesday refused to say whether he would keep Barr on as attorney general if he won the election. "Can't comment on that," he told Newsmax. "It's too early. I'm not happy, with all of the evidence I had. I can tell you that. I am not happy." The statements mark a stunning shift for Barr, whom the president has long praised as one of his most loyal defenders. Attorney General William Barr is in the doghouse after failing to deliver on two Department of Justice investigations that President Donald Trump claimed would show evidence of a broad conspiracy against him by the former administration, senior FBI and DOJ officials, and the so-called deep state. Trump has made no secret of his anger, and on Wednesday he declined to say whether he would keep Barr on as head of the DOJ if he won the November election. "Can't comment on that," Trump told the conservative outlet Newsmax TV. "It's too early." "I'm not happy, with all of the evidence I had. I can tell you that," the president added. "I am not happy." Trump's comments mark a stunning shift for Barr, whom Trump has long praised as one of his most loyal defenders. The president tapped Barr for attorney general after Barr wrote a memo saying the special counsel Robert Mueller's obstruction-of-justice investigation into Trump's actions was "fatally misconceived" and "legally insupportable." When he was confirmed by the Senate, one of the first things Barr did was open an investigation into the origins of the Russia probe. In his public statements, Barr often echoed the president's claims, even when they weren't supported by evidence, like the notion that the FBI illegally "spied" on his 2016 campaign. The DOJ inspector general concluded last year that no such improper surveillance took place. After Barr overrode career prosecutors in February to request a more lenient sentence for the Trump ally and felon Roger Stone, the president applauded the attorney general "for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought." Three months later, when Barr and senior DOJ officials moved to dismiss the department's case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump told Fox News in an interview that "Bill Barr is a man of unbelievable credibility and courage, and he's going to go down in the history of our country." And last year, while he was strong-arming the Ukrainian government into launching politically motivated investigations targeting his Democratic rival, the president told Ukraine's president it "would be great" if he contacted Barr and Trump's personal defense lawyer Rudy Giuliani to probe the matter. But Barr's fortunes took a turn for the worse in the past week. On Friday the attorney general drew the president's ire when he told Republican senators that a separate investigation he was overseeing on the origins of the FBI's Russia investigation would not conclude in time to release a report before the November election. Trump has long said that investigation, spearheaded by US Attorney John Durham, will show evidence that the Obama administration and the "deep state" masterminded a plot to take him down by illegally launching the FBI's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. So far, the Durham probe has resulted in a criminal charge against a former FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to making false statements to investigators. But it has not uncovered evidence of a nefarious conspiracy against the president and his loyalists by his perceived political foes. The president unleashed his anger on Barr after it was reported that the Durham report would not be released before the election. "To be honest, Bill Barr is going to go down as either the greatest attorney general in the history of the country or he's going to go down as, you know, a very sad situation," Trump told Fox's Maria Bartiromo. In another blow to Trump, The Washington Post reported this week that an internal DOJ investigation commissioned by Barr that focused on whether Obama-era officials improperly "unmasked" Flynn's name in intelligence reports formally ended closed with no criminal charges or public report. "Unmasking" refers to the practice of revealing the identity of a US person whose name is incidentally collected in intelligence reports monitoring the communications of foreign agents. The US intelligence community surveils hundreds of thousands of foreign targets per year, and unmasking is a routine and legal tool officials use to make more sense of the communications they're monitoring. The intelligence community gets thousands of unmasking requests a year. Trump and his allies have repeatedly claimed that senior Obama administration officials, as well as high-ranking FBI and DOJ officials, illegally "unmasked" Flynn's name in intelligence reports monitoring the communications of Sergey Kislyak, then Russia's ambassador to the US. But the DOJ's investigation into the matter found no irregularities or evidence of substantive wrongdoing related to the unmasking requests.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/nyregion/jean-carroll-trump-rape-lawsuit.html Justice Dept. Says Trump’s Denial of Rape Accusation Was an Official Act The writer E. Jean Carroll sued the president for defamation after he denied sexually assaulting her in the 1990s. Now the government wants to defend him. The Justice Department said on Monday that President Trump should not be sued personally for having denied a rape allegation because he made the statement while acting in his official capacity as president. Lawyers for the government made the argument as they defended Attorney General William P. Barr’s decision to intervene in a defamation lawsuit filed in a New York court against President Trump by E. Jean Carroll, the writer. Ms. Carroll has said that Mr. Trump raped her in a department store two decades ago and then falsely denied the attack while in office, branding her a liar and harming her reputation. But Justice Department lawyers say that even though the allegation concerns an incident that occurred decades before Mr. Trump became president, his denial was still an official act because he “addressed matters relating to his fitness for office as part of an official White House response to press inquiries.” “Given the president’s position in our constitutional structure, his role in communicating with the public is especially significant,” the Justice Department wrote, adding, “The president’s statements fall within the scope of his employment for multiple reasons.” On Sept. 8, the Justice Department took the highly unusual step of seeking to intervene on Mr. Trump’s behalf even though the lawsuit concerns a claim of defamation stemming from an event that allegedly occurred in the 1990s, long before Mr. Trump became president. Using a law designed to protect federal employees from defamation suits when they perform their duties, Mr. Barr sought to transfer the lawsuit from state court to Federal District Court in Manhattan and to substitute the federal government for Mr. Trump as the defendant. That maneuver, if approved by a judge, would have the practical effect of dismissing Ms. Carroll’s lawsuit because government employees enjoy immunity from most defamation claims. Earlier this month, Ms. Carroll’s lawyers attacked the effort in court papers, asking a federal judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, to reject it. “There is not a single person in the United States — not the president and not anyone else — whose job description includes slandering women they sexually assaulted,” Ms. Carroll’s lawyers wrote. In its filing on Monday, however, the Justice Department argued that Mr. Trump had not slandered Ms. Carroll but merely rebutted her allegations. That fell within the scope of his official role as president, the department said, because a claim of rape — even a false one — could have an impact on his job. Ms. Carroll’s allegations “sought to call into question the president’s fitness for office and a response was necessary for the president to effectively govern,” the Justice Department said. “The president’s challenged statements were directly relevant to his role as president and leader of the executive branch.” The controversy over the case even arose during a presidential campaign event last week, when the Democratic candidate, Joseph R. Biden Jr., alluded to it, among other examples, to accuse Mr. Trump of treating the Justice Department “as if it’s your own law firm.” “‘I’m being sued because a woman’s accusing me of rape. Represent me. Represent me,’” Mr. Biden said sarcastically, as if speaking in the president’s voice, adding, “What’s that all about?” A day after the requested transfer of the case, Mr. Barr told reporters in Chicago that it was routine to substitute the government as the defendant in lawsuits against federal officials and that the action was taken at the White House’s request. “The law is clear,” Mr. Barr said. “It is done frequently. And the little tempest that’s going on is largely because of the bizarre political environment in which we live.” In their court papers attacking the government’s move, Ms. Carroll’s lawyers, Roberta A. Kaplan and Joshua Matz, acknowledged that while it may be typical for the government to take the place of low-level federal employees like letter carriers when they are sued, it was not normal to do so for the president. Ms. Carroll, a longtime advice columnist for Elle magazine, wrote in a book published last year and in excerpts in New York magazine that Mr. Trump attacked her in a dressing room in the luxury Manhattan department store Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s. According to Ms. Carroll’s account, Mr. Trump had stopped her and said, “Hey, you’re that advice lady!” She claimed Mr. Trump threw her against a wall, pulled down her tights, opened his pants and raped her. In response, Mr. Trump denied that he had ever met Ms. Carroll and accused her of lying, adding, “She’s not my type.” In a written statement, Mr. Trump also said Ms. Carroll was “trying to sell a new book.” He added, “It should be sold in the fiction section.” In her lawsuit, filed in November, Ms. Carroll said Mr. Trump’s defamatory statement had led her to lose good will and the support of her readers. The defamation suit is a legal tactic that at least one other woman, Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” Mr. Trump’s reality television show, has adopted in an effort to force the president to give a sworn deposition about her allegation that she was sexually harassed. Several women accused Mr. Trump of sexual harassment and assault during the 2016 election; he denied all the allegations, calling them liars. In the Carroll lawsuit, Mr. Trump, initially represented by private lawyers, tried to delay the case on grounds that as a sitting president, he was immune to civil lawsuits in state court. But in August, a New York State judge, Verna L. Saunders, denied his request. She cited a ruling by the United States Supreme Court this summer, which rejected a claim by Mr. Trump that, as president, he was immune from a state criminal investigation. That dispute arose after the Manhattan district attorney’s office subpoenaed Mr. Trump’s accountants for his tax returns. The judge’s ruling meant that Mr. Trump would have to provide a DNA sample, as requested by Ms. Carroll’s lawyers, to determine whether it matched material on the dress Ms. Carroll said she was wearing during the encounter.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/27/federal-judge-trump-jean-carroll-defamation-432736 Federal judge rebuffs Justice Department's bid to aid Trump in defamation case The ruling deals a temporary setback to the president's legal efforts. A federal judge has dealt a setback to the Justice Department’s attempt to take over President Donald Trump’s defense in a defamation suit brought by a New York writer who accused him of raping her more than two decades ago. U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected the government’s motion to essentially step into Trump’s shoes as the defendant in the suit, brought by E. Jean Carroll. The move, if successful, would almost certainly have scuttled the litigation.