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[H/T combat_boots]Nothing highlights a guilty intent quite like Main Justice backtracking to tell the judge their prior request was really, double dog swear, not intended to intimidate a congressional witness just a few hours before the testimony. [SOURCE]

According to federal investigators familiar with the matter and talking to Politico, the person who brought cocaine into the White House is likely never to be discovered. It’s just too difficult to track down. There are too many people who walk around the West Wing of the White House willy nilly. That’s their story and the Top Men are sticking to it. WASHINGTON DC – Law enforcement officials confirmed on Wednesday that cocaine was found at the White House over the weekend. But one official familiar with the investigation cautioned that the source of the drug was unlikely to be...

The FBI and other US government agencies failed "at a fundamental level" to assess the potential for violence ahead of the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021, a new report claims.Democrats on a Senate panel found the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) "downplayed" the risks and so did not properly prepare. The 105-page report, titled Planned in Plain Sight, was released on Tuesday. It criticises officials for misjudging and reacting slowly to tip-offs. "At a fundamental level, the agencies failed to fulfil their mission and connect the public and non-public information they received," the report reads.

Steve Bannon has been sentenced to four months in federal prison and fined $6,500.

The Department of Justice declines to answer to Howard or me, but it might answer to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Utah Senator Mike Lee. Senators Grassley and Lee have now sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein seeking an update on the Justice Department’s inquiry into professional misconduct committed by prosecutors and higher-ups who brought the charges against Howard and have since sought to prevent him from being heard. In the letter Senators Grassley and Lee note that “reports suggest a pattern of threatened and actual retribution against defendants and witnesses borne out of the...

Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Thursday stepped up the pressure on Baltimore officials to reach a deal with the federal government to overhaul the city’s police practices, saying “the ball is in the city’s court” to conclude negotiations soon. Lynch, who took office in April 2015 as riots roiled Baltimore after the death of a black man in police custody, said she intends to return to Baltimore in January to give an update on efforts to reach a court-enforceable consent decree. Her statements seemed intended to publicly push Baltimore toward a resolution and appeared to reflect disappointment in the pace...

Attorney General Lynch abdicated her duty in the Clinton probes. Fewer than three of 10 Americans trust government to do the right thing always or most of the time, Gallup reports, and the years since 2007 are “the longest period of low trust in government in more than 50 years.” The details emerging about the multiple investigations into Hillary Clinton explain a lot about this ebbing public confidence in institutions such as the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation. *** Start with Attorney General Loretta Lynch. A cavalcade of former Justice heavyweights are now assailing FBI director James Comey...

The Comey-Lynch confrontation unfolded on Thursday, some time after Comey was fully briefed on the existence of the trove of emails uncovered by agents investigating Anthony Weiner's sexting of a 15-year-old girl. Lynch made it known that she thought his decision violated department policy, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday. As Comey and Lynch aides debated last Thursday whether alerting Congress about the emails would comply with longstanding Justice Department policy against announcing overt investigative steps that would influence an upcoming election, Comey asked whether he was being explicitly directed not to do so. Lynch never...

Holding up a copy of the U.S. Constitution to make his point, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said that a Republican-introduced gun bill will prevent terrorists from obtaining weapons while not infringing on Americans’ due process and Second Amendment rights. “There isn’t a person in Congress that wants a terrorist to get a gun. But we also want to make sure that we do not undermine those ongoing terrorist investigations that law enforcement is conducting,” Ryan said Wednesday at the Republican National Committee (RNC) in Washington. […] Ryan characterized the Homeland Safety and Security Act, which House Majority Leader Rep....

In an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, which the court will hear tomorrow, the U.S. Department of Justice argues that state laws prohibiting two people of the same sex from marrying each other are unconstitutional. In its argument to the court, DOJ approvingly cites a statement issued by the government relations office of the American Psychological Association that says: “There is no scientific basis for the assertion that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons are not fit to marry or to become parents of health and well-adjusted children.” …

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. vowed a firm response on Friday to what he called “appalling” racial misconduct by law enforcement officials in Ferguson, Mo., suggesting he was prepared to seek the dismantling of the police force there if necessary. “We are prepared to use all the powers that we have, all the power that we have, to ensure that the situation changes there,” Mr. Holder told reporters here after returning from Columbia, S.C., where he appeared with President Obama at a town hall-style meeting at Benedict College. “That means everything from working with them to coming up with...

The Obama administration’s Department of Justice shut down an attempt to force the Internal Revenue Service to search for Lois Lerner’s missing emails at off-site storage facilities. The IRS never looked for Lerner’s backup email tapes at the West Virginia storage facility where they were being housed. Treasury deputy inspector general Timothy Camus told Congress that the IRS never asked IT professionals at the New Martinsville, W.V. storage site for the backup tapes. Camus only found the backup tape for Lerner’s missing 2011 emails about two weeks ago. But the Obama administration knew that emails were stored at off-site facilities,...

When it comes to most of the thorny issues she’ll be asked to referee on between President Obama and Congress, Loretta Lynch, the woman nominated to be the next attorney general, said she doesn’t yet have a sense for how she’ll come down. Ms. Lynch, who faces a probable vote Thursday in the Judiciary Committee and likely action by the full Senate next month, deflected dozens of questions in 221 pages of written responses to the panel, saying she wasn’t familiar with the fight over documents from the Fast and Furious gun-walking operation, couldn’t talk accurately about major parts of...

On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder kicked off the first of a series of community forums on Ferguson at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Monday night. Holder suggested to the activists that US police are an “occupying force.” “The problems we must confront are not only in Ferguson. The issues raised in Missouri are not unique in that state or to that small city. We are dealing with concerns that are truly national is scope and have threatened the entire nation. Broadly speaking without mutual understanding between citizens whose rights must be respected and law enforcement officers who make...

In one Aug. 30 email, he wrote of his critics, “Some people can kiss my ass.” The newly released emails are a result of the roughly 64,000 documents the U.S. Department of Justice was ordered to hand over to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. President Barack Obama previously exerted executive privilege to keep the documents from being released.

(Gov. Bobby Jindal shakes hands at a pro-voucher rally on the Capitol steps on Wednesday, May 15, 2013. On Aug. 22, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a petition to limit automatic participation in vouchers for districts operating under desegregation orders.) The U.S. Justice Department is suing Louisiana in New Orleans federal court to block 2014-15 vouchers for students in public school systems that are under federal desegregation orders. The first year of private school vouchers "impeded the desegregation process," ... -snip- The statewide voucher program, officially called the Louisiana Scholarship Program, lets low-income students in public schools graded...

The Department of Justice supposedly just called and a man named "Jerry" who sounded of Indian or Pakistani origin (thick accent) asked if a V.M. (name obscured in case this is real) were here. I was busy and got his number to call him back. The phone number is 814-289-8211. I called back and got another foreign-sounding individual on the phone. He transferred me to "Agent Jerry's" office. Upon reconnecting with "Agent Jerry", I told him she doesn't work here (never heard of her). I asked him how a foreigner could get that kind of work in the DOJ and...

''I've got your back." That's what U.S. District Judge Richard Roberts said to his decades-long friend, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., in introducing the AG at an April 22 speech at Vassar College. At that time, Judge Roberts was ignoring several legal deadlines to the benefit of Mr. Holder's administration on numerous motions and countermotions in a key lawsuit for which Mr. Holder's underlings effectively were acting as defense attorneys. Pressed by a higher court to justify his delays, Judge Roberts two months later ruled completely in the administration's favor - tossing out the suit, without trial, of Gerald...

Holder: Feds may sue over Arizona immigration lawBy the CNN Wire Staff May 9, 2010 2:06 p.m. EDT Washington (CNN) -- Attorney General Eric Holder said Sunday that the Justice Department was considering a federal lawsuit against Arizona's new immigration law. "We are considering all of our options. One possibility is filing a lawsuit," Holder told NBC's "Meet the Press." Possible grounds for the lawsuit would be whether the Arizona law could lead to civil rights violations, he said. The recently enacted Arizona law initially allowed police to ask anyone for proof of legal U.S. residency, based solely on a...

The federal investigation into allegations of pay to play in one state agency may be over, but that doesn’t mean Gov. Bill Richardson is in the clear, a top New Mexico political analyst said today.In an interview with NMI, Albuquerque pollster and analyst Brian Sanderoff pointed out that federal and state investigators are still looking into allegations in the investment scandal that began in New York and has since spread to New Mexico and other states. That case, which is separate from the probe that has ended, involves some prominent Richardson friends and donors.The probe that we learned today...