Posted on 08/31/2017 10:16:32 AM PDT by jazusamo
The United State Department of Justice has issued subpoenas to force a Christian pastor in Virginia to disclose under oath his views on Islam.
Pastor Steve Harrelson of the Mt. Lebanon Baptist Church in Boston, Virginia, has been served with a wide-ranging subpoena by lawyers for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. The subpoena demands his presence to testify under oath in response to questions from Justice Department lawyers about his views on Islam as well as several other issues:
DOJ Subpoena listing documents targets must provide to the government Harrelson is not a party to any lawsuit or other action brought by the Justice Department. He is a private citizen. The Justice Department subpoena also demands that the pastor bring any papers or documents that he has to his deposition with government lawyers that relate to or mention Islam and turn them over to the government.
In addition to Harrelson, other Christian third-party private citizens have also been subpoenaed to reveal under oath their views on Islam and to deliver any documents they possess related to Islam to federal attorneys.
The Justice Department case alleges that Culpeper County refused to grant a permit to allow the Islamic Center of Culpeper to pump and haul away sewage. The case was brought under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. The mosque purchased land that was unsuitable for a septic system at the time of purchase.
The United States Department of Justice is pursuing the case against Culpeper County and forcing a Christian pastor and other Christians to testify under oath about their views on Islam even though the mosque itself has already settled all claims with the county . (Full settlement here ).
The fact that the mosque settled with the county led one federal judge to call into question the Justice Department’s zeal to continue to pursue the case even though the purported victim is satisfied and will be building a mosque:
At a federal court hearing Friday at which the county argued to dismiss the suit for a second time, Judge Moon sided with Culpeper in providing his take on the sustained complaint, saying the continued litigation still puts the Islamic Center at odds with the county.“It’s an artificial division of a settlement agreement. They tried to come together, said they would try to live together peaceably, now it seems you are putting a wedge between the county and the Islamic Center of Culpeper,” he told the federal attorney arguing against dismissing the case. The Justice Dept.’s continued pursuit of the lawsuit does not help the Islamic Center, Moon added.
The underlying action is a controversial civil court case alleging that Culpeper County discriminated in zoning decisions regarding an application to build a mosque. The case was filed a month after President Trump was elected but before the inauguration by Acting Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta . It has continued with unbroken zeal.
Federal law prohibits discrimination in zoning practices against religions. During the Obama administration, a radical new argument was pressed by DOJ lawyers: that zoning boards can be saddled with any "naked animus or resistance from the community." In other words, if some people don't want a mosque in the community, then any zoning decision against the mosque must be because of citizen opposition. It's the everyone-is-racist if anyone-is-racist theory advanced by academia and others.
The lawyers on the subpoena documents are listed as Onjil McEachin and Sameena Shina Majeed.
Onjil McEachin came to the Justice Department in the last couple of years from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where McEachin’s office was deeply involved in advancing disparate impact legal theories to prove racial discrimination.
Sameena Majeed was formerly a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia and won the Steere Prize in Women’s Studies at Yale for her work entitled “Feminist Voices: An Ethnographic Examination of Feminist Consciousness in Urban Pakistani Women.”
The case was brought by the Civil Rights Division's Housing and Civil Enforcement Section. The hiring practices of the Civil Rights Division under President Obama has been the feature of PJ Media’s Every Single One series and an inspector general Report of the Department of Justice. (The lawyers featured in the Every Single One Series from that section can be viewed here .) After obtaining resumes of lawyer hires after PJ Media was forced to file a lawsuit against the DOJ, the series revealed that under President Obama, every single one of the lawyers hired was a partisan or ideological leftist . This led the inspector general to recommend that the department end certain hiring criteria that have led to the perception that only lawyers of a certain leftist ideological perspective are hired.
Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez refused to implement the recommendations of the inspector general.
The Washington Post obtained and reported information in a story about the controversial case that the Culpeper sheriff had conducted seminars on jihadi networks in the United States -- a fact the Washington Post found to be relevant to the zoning dispute.
The county sheriff has previously come under fire for hosting a seminar on “Jihadi Networks in America” led by a former FBI agent who claims terrorists control most leading American Muslim groups.
Since President Trump’s inauguration, the notorious Civil Rights Division has been run by caretakers without a Senate-confirmed political appointee head. President Trump has appointed Eric Dreiband to head the Civil Rights Division.
Next week, senators have a chance to ask about whether it is a good use of resources to subpoena Christian pastors to ask them about their views on Islam when in a case where the primary parties have already settled .
Not to worry! Jeff Sessions is on the job...
Just tell the truth. It is evil, it is a cult, it destroys all it touches, it wants to control the world and it is a compulsive murderer.
Neither; Sessions is a corrupt and complicit member of the lawless.
I never thought I’d be tempted to agree. My view of Sessions has done a 180.
I agree.
For the good pastor. Find a lawyer, quick, and plead the fifth.
I’ll have to say, Sessions is beginning to seriously worry me.
He’s been in long enough to have had some impact, and I don’t see any.
Maybe I’m not paying close enough attention, but it appears to me he’s practically invisible. I see no evidence of him turning things around.
With what he had to work with, we should see countless evidences of him turning things around by now.
Am I missing his good works?
Reincarnation of Bartleby the Scrivener .
BTW: Thanks for your note of agreement. I agree with your take also.
All Steve needs to do is show those PRCs this: http://defendproclaimthefaith.org/tracking_influence_of_muslims.htm
If you’re missing some of his good works I’m missing it also.
I’ve been hesitant to criticize him but like you say, he’s been there long enough to be turning things around and haven’t seen anything as yet.
The president has the ultimate authority to hire and fire the deputy AGs
Trump has no interest in Sessions. He could order a special counsel. He could fire many people and/or change their jobs. He can order Sessions to release records along with State, IRS, etc... He is doing “none of this” What else are we to think.
Then there’s the practical side. When Trump lit into Sessions he was condemned on all sides and no one—not a single congress person—supported him.
What I think is that Trump can only do so much with both the Democrats and the Republicans opposing every move he makes. McConnell and Ryan loved Obama but they both hate and detest Trump. Maybe if Trump had a single ally in Congress it would help.
Another swamp that has not been drained. Take the 5th Pastor.
Absolutely. The swamp is rising, not falling.
Has Sessions done ANYTHING to justify his paycheque since he’s been appointed? When Holder was AG we never stopped hearing about his agenda and involvement with high profile cases. Sessions does nothing. He’s a dead loss.
It's ok -- some people have to be presented more proof than others to change their minds.
I've been on the bad end of some Freeper insults because I was way ahead of the curve on Sessions and warned them that his appointment to AG was not a Good ThingTM.
(Ever since I found out he voted for the Iran Deal, I knew he was compromised.)
There's a reason for this: The Republicans want, and need, someone like Sessions to be the AG. In particular, the Iran Deal was literal treason, and Sessions was one of the 98% of the Senate that voted Yea
for it. (Boxer didn't vote, Cotton was the only one voting No
.) They desperately need someone who can/will squash the prosecution of such high-crimes, as well as things like the Clinton Foundation and it's influence-peddling and pay-to-play precisely because it illustrates a literal conspiracy in addition to the blatant corruption… and what better way than putting someone who would definitely hang with them should word get out?
There are a few ways Trump could get around it, but the optics thereof would be very, very easy to get wrong
and make it look like the *GASP* He's a Nazi who'll grab tyrannical power!
-crowd look right. (Which is exactly why the Republicans made such a hard-line stand on the issue.)
That’s an interesting take. It’s clear the swamp has nothing to fear from Sessions, and will therefore fight tooth and nail to keep him. I hope Trump can oust Jeff sooner than later. We need a clean, aggressive AG.
My opinion of Sessions began to shift fairly early in the campaign. He made the claim that Cruz had singlehandedly stopped amnesty. Now that was a flat lie, with only two explanations. Sessions was going senile, or he deliberately chose to deceive. It looked more like B...then and now.
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