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Attorney General Loretta Lynch is declining to comply with an investigation by leading members of Congress about the Obama administration’s secret efforts to send Iran $1.7 billion in cash earlier this year, prompting accusations that Lynch has “pleaded the Fifth” Amendment to avoid incriminating herself over these payments, according to lawmakers and communications exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) initially presented Lynch in October with a series of questions about how the cash payment to Iran was approved and delivered. In an Oct. 24 response, Assistant Attorney General...

If you had any doubt whether or not Obama’s politicized DOJ was deliberately targeting conservative elected officials, this should confirm your suspicions. The US Supreme Court overturned a convictionin June against former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell for bribery. This was extremely significant, because the decisionwas unanimous — even all the liberal justices on the court agreed the criminal charges were a sham. Writing the opinion for the court, Chief Justice Roberts saidthe prosecutors had taken an overly broad interpretation of federal bribery law, and that if the court had allowed the conviction to stand, it would have made it extremely...

Concerned with increased anti-Muslim threats and backlash in the wake of terror attacks in Europe and San Bernardino, California, numerous attorneys from the US Justice Department are launching a campaign to combat discrimination. US attorneys from 11 states will meet with local officials, community leaders, and law enforcement between April 12 and May 6 in order discuss the potential threats against Muslim, Arab, Sikh, and South Asian Americans.

SAN FRANCISCO – In the latest clash over privacy rights in the digital age, Microsoft is suing the U.S. government over a federal law that allows authorities to examine customer emails or online files without the individual’s knowledge. The lawsuit comes as the tech industry is increasingly butting heads with U.S. officials over the right to view a wide range of information – including emails, photos and financial records – that customers are storing on smartphones and in so-called “cloud” computing centers. Microsoft says the U.S. Justice Department is abusing a decades-old law, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, to obtain...

The conservative media sites CNS News and The Blaze generated a buzz when they reported that U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch had discussed taking legal action against “climate change deniers.” The stories focused on recent testimony Lynch gave before a Senate committee hearing. But the stories appear to exaggerate the extent to which the Department of Justice has gone after climate change skeptics. According to Lynch’s office, the action, asking the FBI investigate an allegation of wrongdoing, involves one party — the oil company Exxon Mobil. Individuals have not been targeted for investigation, according to the department, nor were any...

The Justice Department today announced that it is resuming a controversial practice that allows local police departments to funnel a large portion of assets seized from citizens into their own coffers under federal law. The "equitable-sharing" program gives police the option of prosecuting asset forfeiture cases under federal instead of state law. The Justice Department had suspended payments under this program back in December, due to budget cuts included in last year's spending bill. "In the months since we made the difficult decision to defer equitable sharing payments because of the $1.2 billion rescinded from the Asset Forfeiture Fund, the...

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Wednesday she has received a federal court ruling that says the Justice Department may not invoke executive privilege to withhold documents from a congressional committee investigating the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal. But that doesn't mean the Justice Department will now give those subpoenaed documents to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Sen. Jim Lankford (R-Okla.), who previously served on the House Oversight Committee, noted that the court told Lynch's office to turn over those documents by February 2nd. ...

For all those who revel in the fact that there are 374 days until President Obama finally gets the hell out of the White House, a cautionary note: Obama and his colleagues are rigging the bureaucracy so that their unique brand of "hope and change" extends far beyond their tenure. The latest evidence: Attorney General Loretta Lynch told New York Magazine this week, "My goal is to position the [Department of Justice] where it will carry on in all of these issues long after myself and my team have moved on." She was responding specifically to questions about how she...

Calling a secretive government operation to strangle politically out-of-favor businesses “more dangerous” than the IRS targeting scandal, a congressman with a background in banking is preparing to introduce legislation to kill the Obama administration initiative. “I believe this activity is probably more dangerous and more disastrous than that of the IRS scandal because this is running people out of business for no reason and it’s harming livelihoods, incomes [and] families,” Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., said today in an interview with The Daily Signal. Luetkemeyer, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, was comparing the Department of Justice’s Operation Choke...

The Justice Department reached an agreement Monday with Peapod, a popular Internet grocer, to settle claims that the company’s website discriminated against people with disabilities.The agreement forces Peapod LLC and parent company Ahold USA to update www.peapod.com so assistive technologies like text-to-speech and Braille displays function with the site.The DOJ hailed the action as ensuring that anti-discrimination laws under the Americans with Disabilities Act apply to Internet businesses as well as brick and mortar stores.“This agreement ensures that people with disabilities will have an equal opportunity to independently and conveniently shop online for groceries,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Vanita...

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) on Friday questioned whether the Justice Department lied on its warrant to secretly obtain a Fox News reporter’s email and phone records. Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Chairman, is investigating whether Attorney General Eric Holder perjured himself in testimony to Congress about the DOJ’s investigation of a leak of classified information to Fox reporter James Rosen. The DOJ has said that Holder’s testimony was “accurate and consistent with the facts” in the case and that the DOJ never sought to press charges against Rosen in its prosecution of the alleged leaker, Stephen Kim. Goodlatte...

NEW YORK (AP) -- A judge in New York says he finds it "stunning" that federal budget woes could delay the start of a terrorism trial for Osama bin Laden's son-in-law. ~~snip~~ Kaplan suggested he might set a trial date as early as September. But Ghaith's lawyer complained, saying public defenders are being furloughed for more than five weeks because of automatic budget cuts. ~~snip~~ In other news: Obama Plans $195 Million in Renovation and New Construction at Guantánamo/a>

DOJ: Children Do Not Need—and Have No Right to--Mothers March 3, 2013 By Terence P. Jeffrey Georgetown Law School. (AP Photo/Haraz Ghanbari) (CNSNews.com) - The Obama Justice Department is arguing in the United States Supreme Court that children do not need mothers. The Justice Department’s argument on the superfluity of motherhood is presented in a brief the Obama administration filed in the case of Hollingsworth v. Perry, which challenges the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that amended California’s Constitution to say that marriage involves only one man and one woman. The Justice Department presented its conclusions about...

On Thursday, the iconic Gibson Guitar Corporation issued a press release stating that government officials raided their Tennessee manufacturing facility over warrants concerning the legality of the importation of wood purchased from India that they use in their world famous guitars. The wood–which is certified and regulated by the Forest Stewardship Council–is not illegal, but rather subject to a domestic law in India frowns upon the processing of this wood by non-Indians. (Gibson uses American labor for the processing.) Gibson’s press release claims that, while this incident marks the second raid of their facility in around two years, this is...

On Cavuto now. Judge Napalitano explaining Obama's latest assault. He has ordered Holder to sue every Republican governor, claiming that their states' early voting rules are unconstitutional in that they "confuse minority voters." The judge claims this is a bald-faced move to drain Repub states' funds to defend against this frivolous tyranny. Also expected to make it more difficult for Red states to determine the winner of the presidential election as the count may also be held-up in court by Holder.

The Justice Department is objecting to a new photo ID law in Texas for voters, saying the state has failed to demonstrate that the the law is not discriminatory by design against Hispanic voters. The department's head of the civil rights division, Tom Perez, wrote a a six-page letter to Texas' director of elections saying that Texas has not "sustained its burden" under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to show that the new law will not have a discriminatory effect on minority voters. About 11 percent of Hispanic voters reportedly lack state-issued identification. Perez wrote that while the...

<p>March 12 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration blocked Texas’s new law requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification at the polls, escalating a partisan dispute over voting restrictions.</p> <p>The U.S. Justice Department is using its power under the Voting Rights Act to halt the Texas law, saying in a letter to the state today that the measure may disproportionately harm Hispanics. The department in December blocked a similar law in South Carolina.</p>