Free Republic

As more details about Obama’s great SpyGate crime start to come into public view, recent revelations appear to shed more light on the important, but often overlooked, role of Dana Boente, as REX explains. On 13 January, 2017, three days after the Senate Judiciary Committee began hearings on President-elect Trump’s nomination of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, then President Obama quietly signed EO 13762, Providing an Order of Succession Within the Department of Justice. It was just seven days before the end of Obama’s presidency. In a major breach of protocol, the change was never communicated to President-elect Trump’s transition...

The fix was in to protect Justice Department officials as high up as the US Attorney General even before the Awan investigation started, FBI veterans with knowledge of the case now fear. And so far President Barack Obama, who appointed the US Attorney in the District of Columbia who is slow walking the case, has proven insulated too from an investigation now on the fringes of exposing espionage and blackmail of Democratic members of Congress. The US Attorney in DC is Channing Phillips, who worked for Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder in key roles during their tenures as US Attorney...

A legal filing prosecutors submitted in advance of a hearing set in federal court in Washington on Wednesday for Libyan militia leader Ahmed Abu Khatallah is vague about his role in the 2012 attack that killed four Americans at a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi. Abu Khatallah was captured in Benghazi last month by U.S. military special forces and FBI personnel. He was brought across the Atlantic in a Navy ship before being helicoptered into Washington on Saturday morning for an arraignment in federal court on an indictment charging him with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists in connection...

The Obama administration’s just-released criminal complaint against the alleged mastermind of the Benghazi terrorist attacks provides a final contradiction to its own evolving explanations for what happened that day. The Justice Department’s indictment spells out a calculated conspiracy by Ahmed Abu Khatallah and associates to attack the U.S. diplomatic mission and CIA annex, which killed four Americans. The indictment might be viewed as a death knell for a theory that the attack resulted from a spontaneous protest against a U.S.-produced video. Now in custody, Khatallah was a commander of Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, and is himself...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Libyan militant charged in the 2012 Benghazi attacks was in federal law enforcement custody, the U.S. attorney's office said Saturday. Security at the city's federal courthouse was heightened.

Amid Thursday’s over-hyped brouhaha about Jeff Sessions meeting with the Russian ambassador, a curious detail emerged. In Sessions's recusal memo, it was explained who at the Justice Department would be handling any investigations into the Trump campaign's alleged ties to Russia. "Consistent with the succession order for the Department of Justice, Acting Deputy Attorney General and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Dana Boente shall act as and perform the functions of the Attorney General with respect to any matters from which I have recused myself to the extent they exist," reads Sessions's official statement on the matter....

On his way out the door, Obama also rewrote the line of succession in cases where the AG recuses himself. (I didn't know there was such a previously-planned chain of succession.) He specifically wrote one senior guy out of the succession, and re-routed the succession to go right to his friendlies. Amid Thursday;s over-hyped brouhaha about Jeff Sessions meeting with the Russian ambassador, a curious detail emerged. In Sessions's recusal memo, it was explained who at the Justice Department would be handling any investigations into the Trump campaign's alleged ties to Russia. "Consistent with the succession order for the Department...