justice – Lone Candle

Trump Is Weaponizing the DOJ Just Like He Accused Democrats of Doing

Posted on March 10, 2025March 10, 2025 by Lone Candle

Trump Is Weaponizing the DOJ Just Like He Accused Democrats of Doing

https://reason.com/2025/03/07/trump-is-weaponizing-the-doj-just-like-he-accused-democrats-of-doing/

Order to drop New York Mayor Adams’ case roils Justice Department as high-ranking officials resign

Posted on February 14, 2025February 14, 2025 by Lone Candle

“The departures amounted to a stunning condemnation of the actions of the department’s leadership just days after a close Trump ally, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, was sworn in as attorney general. Just three weeks into Trump’s second term, the department has been rocked by firings, transfers and resignations.
Adams pleaded not guilty last September to charges that while in his prior role as Brooklyn borough president, he accepted over $100,000 in illegal campaign contributions and lavish travel perks such as expensive flight upgrades, luxury hotel stays and even a trip to a bathhouse from people wanting to buy his influence. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Federal agents had also been investigating some of Adams’ aides. It was unclear what will happen to that part of the investigation.

In a memo Monday, Bove had directed Sassoon to drop the case as soon as practicable, so the mayor of America’s largest city could help with Trump’s immigration crackdown and could himself campaign for reelection unencumbered by criminal charges. Adams faces multiple challengers in June’s primary.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/manhattan-us-attorney-resigns-refusing-192647391.html

6 things we learned from Day 1 about how Trump will govern

Posted on January 21, 2025January 21, 2025 by Lone Candle

“Just over a week ago, soon-to-be-Vice President JD Vance opined that nonviolent trespassers prosecuted for entering the Capitol on January 6, 2021, should be pardoned — but that day’s violent rioters “obviously” should not be.
Trump had other ideas when he issued his sweeping clemency for those he called the “J6 hostages.” He did separate out 14 members of two far-right groups, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who had been convicted of seditious conspiracy, commuting their sentences instead of giving full pardons. But “all other individuals convicted” of offenses related to the Capitol chaos that day received full unconditional pardons — including those who assaulted police officers, and including the Proud Boys’ leader, Enrique Tarrio.

Trump, it has always been clear, was “delighted” by the storming of the Capitol on January 6; he doesn’t care that his supporters assaulted police, terrorized members of Congress, and threatened to hang his own vice president. What mattered to him was that they were his supporters. So he handed them a get-out-of-jail-free card, even to those who violently tried to overthrow democracy.”

…

Trump’s Day 1 executive orders were most numerous and detailed on the topic of immigration. The president revived previous hard-line administration policies, such as a refugee admissions freeze, deportation orders, and border wall construction. He also rolled back some Biden policies intended to let more migrants come in legally if they followed an orderly process, ending Biden’s “parole” program and shutting down an app created for migrants to schedule appointments to make asylum requests.

But on some fronts, Trump’s orders already went much further than he did in his first term and showed a newly emboldened willingness to defy legal caution. For instance:

He ordered that the US military would now be responsible for the “mission” of closing the border.
He used a public health emergency rationale to shut down the asylum system even though there’s no public health crisis at the moment.
He ordered that federal prosecutors recommend the death penalty for any unauthorized immigrant convicted of a capital crime.
He fired several top officials in the US immigration court system, including the system’s acting head.
And he declared that despite what the Constitution says, birthright citizenship would no longer apply to children born in the US to unauthorized immigrants or visa-holders (unless one parent was a US citizen or lawful permanent resident).”
…

“Though Trump fired some federal employees Monday, the first day did not seem to bring a mass firing of federal bureaucrats, but the groundwork was laid for something like that to happen in the future.

First off, Trump restored what was previously known as his “Schedule F” executive order, issued in late 2020 shortly before he left office (it was never really implemented and Biden soon revoked it). The idea behind Schedule F — now rebranded as “Schedule Policy/Career” — is to reclassify various important civil servant jobs as exempt from civil service hiring rules and protections, making it easier for those workers to be fired.

Secondly, Trump took aim at part of the federal workforce known as the Senior Executive Service (SES). These are, basically, the top jobs at agencies in the civil service, which liaise with the political appointees to run things. Trump’s order demanded plans from his agencies for making SES more “accountable” (easier to fire). His order also said hiring for SES jobs would now be done by panels composed mostly of political appointees, rather than civil servants as is currently the case.

Third, the Office of Personnel Management issued a memo letting agencies hire unlimited “Schedule C” appointees — another class of political appointees that don’t go through the civil service hiring process. And fourth, another order instructed Trump appointees to come up with plans for reforming the civil service hiring process itself.

Altogether, this shows an intense focus from Trump’s people on wresting agency authority away from civil servants and toward greater numbers of political appointees — and though mass firings haven’t happened yet, it may be only a matter of time.”

…

“A Trump order Monday made the unexpected announcement that, in fact, an existing part of the executive branch — the US Digital Service, set up during the Obama administration to modernize government IT — would become the US DOGE Service.
Now, this executive order laid out a surprisingly limited mission of “modernizing federal technology and software,” rather than DOGE’s previously announced remit of overhauling government spending, regulations, and personnel. Liberals on social media crowed at this apparent demotion for Musk.

I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Reports on Musk’s planning, and public statements from people in contact with his team, suggest they are planning to go very big indeed, in ways that haven’t yet been revealed. With a new report that Musk is likely to get a West Wing office, it’s hard to believe he’s scaled back his grand ambitions.”

https://www.vox.com/politics/395882/trump-day-one-agenda-executive-orders-takeaways

Why a GOP governor’s pardon of a far-right murderer is so chilling

Posted on June 4, 2024June 4, 2024 by Lone Candle

“in Texas, you can commit murder without suffering the legal consequences of that crime, so long as your victim’s politics are loathed by the right and your case is championed by conservative media. Or at least, this is the message sent by Gov. Greg Abbott’s pardoning of Daniel Perry.

“In the weeks after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, the proliferation of Black Lives Matter protests had filled Perry with apparent bloodlust. Then an active-duty Army officer, Perry texted and messaged friends, among other things:
“I might go to Dallas to shoot looters.”
“I might have to kill a few people on my way to work they are rioting outside my apartment complex … No protesters go near me or my car.”
“I wonder if they will let [me] cut the ears off of people who’s decided to commit suicide by me.”
When a friend of Perry asked him if he could “catch me a negro daddy,” Perry replied, “That is what I am hoping.”

Weeks later, Perry was driving an Uber in Austin, Texas, when he came upon a Black Lives Matter march. According to prosecutors, Perry ran a red light and drove his vehicle into the crowd, almost hitting several protesters. Activists gathered angrily around Perry’s car. Garrett Foster, a 28-year-old Air Force veteran who was openly carrying an AK-47 rifle, approached Perry’s window.

Perry then shot Foster dead.

At trial, Perry’s defense team alleged that Foster had pointed his rifle at the defendant. But witnesses testified that Foster never brandished his weapon, only carried it, which is legal in Texas. And Perry corroborated that account in his initial statement to the police, saying, “I believe he was going to aim at me. I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me.” A jury convicted Perry of murder last year.

But..the governor of Texas used his pardoning power to release Perry from prison.

In a statement, Abbott said, “Texas has one of the strongest ‘stand your ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive district attorney.” He noted that in the Lone Star State, a person is justified in using deadly force against another if they “reasonably believe the deadly force is immediately necessary” for averting one’s own violent death. The Texas governor argued that it was reasonable for Perry to believe his life was at stake since Foster had held his gun in the “low-ready firing position.”

Yet this claim is inconsistent with Perry’s own remarks to the police, which indicated that Foster did not aim a rifle at his killer, but merely carried it. Needless to say, seeing a person lawfully carrying a firearm cannot give one a legal right to kill them.

But pesky realities like this carry less weight than conservative media’s delusional grievances. Shortly after Perry’s conviction in April 2023, then-Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson aired a segment portraying Perry as a helpless victim of “a mob of rioters” and a “Soros-funded” district attorney. Carlson decried the jury’s verdict as a “legal atrocity” and lambasted Abbott for standing idly by while his state invalidated conservatives’ right to defend themselves. “So that is Greg Abbott’s position,” he said. “There is no right of self-defense in Texas.”

The next day, Abbott pledged to work “as swiftly as Texas law allows regarding the pardon of Sgt. Perry.””

https://www.vox.com/politics/2024/5/17/24159084/daniel-perry-pardon-greg-abbott-samuel-alito-flag

A 25-Year Prison Sentence for Beating Up a Dog Is Not Justice

Posted on September 20, 2022 by Lone Candle

“In early February 2019, a passerby filmed Fonseca as he punched his dog on his porch. He kicked and choked him and hit him with a piece of wood. The video was shared with Animal Care Services (ACS) of San Antonio, which questioned Fonseca, who told them that that was his way of disciplining Buddy. The dog was removed from Fonseca’s home, aided to a full recovery, and placed with a new family that presumably has a better handle on obedience training.

Fonseca, meanwhile, will spend the next 25 years in prison. While I love dogs as much as the next person, this is not justice. Fonseca’s sentence for beating up his pet—which was his property under Texas law—grossly exceeds most punishments Texas dispenses for those convicted of assaulting a human being. Defendants found guilty of an assault causing physical harm face up to a year in prison. When the alleged victim is a government official, security officer, emergency services worker, family member, or date, that punishment may be anywhere from two to 10 years behind bars. And when someone brandishes a deadly weapon and causes serious physical harm, they may land behind bars for anywhere from two to 20 years.

The city of San Antonio boasted about forcing taxpayers to house Fonseca in a steel cage for the next 25 years—for $22,751 annually, well over half a million dollars total—for losing his temper and beating an animal.”

…

“So why is Fonseca, 56, getting what amounts to a life sentence for hurting his dog? While Norwood’s statement suggests this is about sending a message to other dog punchers, the government says Fonseca had felony priors for crimes of retaliation and drug possession.

It’s difficult to argue with a straight face that a years-old drug possession conviction should be used to increase his sentence for hurting Buddy. Fonseca’s consumption habits may harm himself, but invoking that offense at sentencing is not about keeping San Antonio safe. It is about securing a sentence that would otherwise be impermissible under the law. Access to that kind of leverage is one of the primary reasons law enforcement groups oppose ending the war on drugs.

And while the same cannot be said for “crimes of retaliation,” in which people threaten government workers, Fonseca had already paid his debt to society for that, just as he had for possessing drugs. It’s certainly reasonable to consider a criminal defendant’s history at sentencing—someone who assaults people over and over again, for example, should not receive the same sentence each time.

But even if you find animal cruelty to be abhorrent, as I do, a decades-long prison term is not the appropriate response to all objectionable behavior—something we often forget in the context of the U.S. system, which is utterly addicted to lengthy prison terms. Desensitized bystanders may view Fonseca’s punishment as normal. It shouldn’t be.”