“Key GOP senators — John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina— have indicated they’ll withhold their needed votes to confirm Blanche until they get written assurances that the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund won’t be resurrected, along with certain commitments about tax investigations.
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Blanche has already said the controversial fund is “dead” and the Justice Department told courts the program was abandoned, but officials have previously declined to put the commitment in writing. The fund, originally established by a settlement agreement between the Internal Revenue Service and Trump’s personal lawyers, would have offered taxpayer money to those who claimed they were victims of weaponization by the federal government — including those involved with the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot.
Cornyn has been adamant that he also wants Blanche to clarify an addendum to that agreement that offers the president and members of his family tax immunity. The senator wants Blanche to explicitly acknowledge that it only applies to past tax investigations against the president and those listed in the lawsuit that was settled.
The demands have left Blanche in a difficult place since putting limits on the tax addendum could anger the president.”
Career prosecutor and FBI man say that these professional roles used to not notice much when a new president came in. Trump changed that. He used the justice system to protect his friends and attack his political opponents. Trump is corrupting justice and weakening US democracy.
Jack Smith prosecuted Trump because the facts supported prosecution. If they didn’t support that, he wouldn’t have brought that. He’s a career prosecutor who cares about the law, not a partisan actor.
“Trump sued the IRS and the Treasury Department for $10 billion in January, accusing the agencies of failing to prevent a leak of the president’s tax information during his first term.
The DOJ is now holding internal discussions about potentially settling the case
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This is a novel case given that Trump oversees the IRS, and two parties in a lawsuit must be on opposite sides.”
Trump and his supporters ludicrously exaggerated the extent that Biden or Democrats were committing lawfare, then got into office and are repeatedly in a black and white manner abusing the power of justice to target political opponents on charges that don’t make sense to waste police, Justice Department, and lawyer resources on.
Officials and lawyers are acting in ways that are illegal, and should be appropriately prosecuted and punished for these blatant abuses of power. One reason many seasoned lawyers have quit rather than fulfill Trump’s requests to prosecute political opponents is because they fear just and appropriate disbarment.
When the Justice Department is used to seek Trump’s revenge rather than justice, the US is not a strong democracy.
“The Justice Department has removed the career Miami federal prosecutor leading the investigation into John Brennan, after she resisted pressure to quickly bring charges against the former CIA director and prominent critic of President Donald Trump, according to people briefed on the matter.
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The investigation into Brennan is focused on one of the president’s longest standing political grievances — the 2017 intelligence assessment that found Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help him.
Trump’s demands have taken on more urgency for the Justice Department after Trump fired former Attorney General Pam Bondi, in part because of dissatisfaction at the slow pace of cases he wants brought. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has redoubled efforts to satisfy the president’s demands as he seeks to keep the job after Bondi’s ouster.”
The US is paying out 1.2 million dollars in a case it won. This is corruption by the Trump administration–subverting the rule of law for a political ally.
The Trump administration goes out of its way to arrest people on camera and then makes crude and mean memes out of the images. Rather than focusing on justice, like building a case, arresting when appropriate, and then trying to convince a jury of guilt, justice department resources are wasted on unnecessarily arresting people who don’t even get indicted and making sure to get sweet propaganda images. They’ve even edited some of them to make the arrestee look more pathetic. Lying to the public with false images is the opposite of justice.
In one example, the Trump administration is misusing federal laws to arrest obnoxious protestors in order to make propaganda memes when the people are likely guilty of local trespassing laws, which is for local law enforcement to deal with.
“Before Donald Trump made him second in command at the Justice Department, Todd Blanche was the president’s most prominent defense attorney, shielding him from an avalanche of criminal cases that threatened to land him in jail for years.
That loyalty led Trump to appoint Blanche as his designated representative to the National Archives, the keeper of White House records from the president’s first term. Large swathes of those first-term records are slated to become publicly available next week, and under the Presidential Records Act, the president’s designees play an outsized role in governing the public’s access to those files.
American Oversight, a prominent left-leaning government transparency group, is urging Blanche to relinquish his role as the gatekeeper to Trump’s presidential records, saying his attorney-client relationship with the president — in addition to his role as deputy attorney general — presents a conflict. Anything less, the group argues, will erode public confidence in the process.”
Trump called his Department of Justice lawyers weak and told them they needed to get on his retribution campaign. After this meeting, the lawyers went after the Fed chairman, Jerome Powell.
Unusually, some Republican Congressmen are breaking with Trump and criticizing this move.