The politicized Department of Justice
[Hat tip: commenter “stan.”]
Here’s an interesting look back at the history of the DOJ, and how it’s been a politicized force for a long time – often but not always on behalf of the Democrats. The article includes suggestions for reform.
I want to add that one of Obama’s less well-known but nevertheless consequential acts was to import large numbers of leftist lawyers into the DOJ during his term. And by “large numbers” I mean large. Attorneys J. Christian Adams and Hans A. Von Spakovsky have written about it here, in a series of pieces that much alarmed me at the time (starting in 2011):
In 2011, we produced the Every Single One series for PJ Media about an unprecedented wave of ideological hiring of leftist attorneys into the career ranks of the Justice Department. The series documented the partisan and radical background of every single one of the 113 new Justice Department lawyers hired into the Obama Civil Rights Division from January 2009 to January 2011.
With the help of PJ Media, we will now be updating that revealing report — and sharing details about the background of Justice Department attorneys hired since 2011. Because we have obtained all of the resumes of the attorney hires in the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice since then.
And once again, every single one of them has an intensely ideological background…
When we are finished, you will see that the Obama Justice Department has assembled a law firm of hundreds of fringe leftists to enforce a brave new vision of civil rights law.
Why the Civil Rights Division? Simple — it may be one of the most powerful components of the entire federal government. If a president wanted to “fundamentally transform” the nation, he would likely start with the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.
The tentacles of the Division reach into virtually every crevice of American life.
And that’s exactly what happened, making things much much worse.
You can also read this piece about why Adams resigned from the DOJ.
It was around that same time – 2011 – that attorney Harvey Silverglate wrote the book Three Felonies a Day, a book with the thesis that the expansion of federal law allows the DOJ to successfully target anyone it wishes. This represents a grave and obvious danger to liberty. From the description at Amazon:
In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior. The volume of federal crimes in recent decades has increased well beyond the statute books and into the morass of the Code of Federal Regulations, handing federal prosecutors an additional trove of vague and exceedingly complex and technical prohibitions to stick on their hapless targets. The dangers spelled out in Three Felonies a Day do not apply solely to “white collar criminals,” state and local politicians, and professionals. No social class or profession is safe from this troubling form of social control by the executive branch, and nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional democracy hangs in the balance.
But as long as it’s the right that’s being targeted, Democrats don’t mind. In fact, they cheer.
Here’s an idea. The appropriation for the Civil Rights Division is reduced to $0. Everybody riffed.
One has only to investigate the ideologies of the three top officials under the odious Garland (fully worthy of being impeached and found guilty) at the Stasi-like DOJ (Lisa Monaco, Vanita Gupta, and Kristen Clarke) in order to realize what a clear and present danger is the Department of (In)Justice to our beleaguered republic.
The Twitter Files 6 is up and it involves the FBI and Twitter.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857534737072128
Obama’s “wing man” Eric Holder has continued his radical ideology and is behind much of the corporate ESG behavior.
Never forget.
Never forgive.
Barak Obama is an exceptionally evil man, so there is very little surprise that he would surround himself with evil people.
Kristen clarke in particular was sympathetic to cop killers i call it miniluv in its fully orwellian sense
“as long as it’s the right that’s being targeted, Democrats don’t mind. In fact, they cheer.” neo
Collectivist ideologies reject basic aspects of both human nature and key operative principles that govern the external reality in which we all exist. Rejection of reality is essential to all collectivist ideologies.
Which is why the Trotskyist true believer never really believes that sooner or later the Stalins will show up and purge them… with prejudice.
That is also why the Trotskyist true believers insist that their ideology only failed because the ‘wrong’ people were in charge. Which as Jordan Peterson points out, implicitely reveals that in their arrogance, they believe that if they were in charge… their ideology would succeed. It’s that arrogance that leads them to dismiss the obvious flaws in collectivist ideologies. It’s all of a piece.
Even if the incoming Republican majority House does take legislative action against the corrupt DOJ the Leftist majority Senate, plus the usual RINO suspects, will never allow it to become law. Elections have consequences.
Judge Alex Kozinski wrote an article on this subject. I found it very difficult to locate this article in a search. Maby he’s been banned.
http://alex.kozinski.com/articles/Youre_Probably_a_Federal_Criminal.pdf
Interestingly enough SCOTUS justice Sotomayor noticed this dangerous feature.
She seemed to consider it a benefit rather than a defect. We have far more laws than the state can enforce. If the state enforced every law on the book, they would be bankrupt. We have so many laws that law enforcement officials can only target a fraction of the offenders. The Executive has enormous discretion about which lawbreakers to prosecute. This has dire consequences for the rule of law. Prosecution depends more on the exercise of police, prosecutorial and executive power rather than any objective application of the law. We therefore have rule by lawer, not rule by law. As Sotomayor noted, these people have enormous discretion in deciding which laws they want to enforce. This essentially means that any prosecution is arbitrary and capricious.
Hiring is policy.
The gop seems terrified of the doj / fbi. Or perhaps accepts their behavior as a small cost to get Trump. And the Democrats are ok with it, since it furthers their causes.
The actions by the fbi/ doj and resources allocated in Jan 6 are terrifying. No wonder do many people see the doj as highly politicized. And 80 People in the fbi swirling to censor Twitter content? And all the ex fbi people at Twitter?
The book 3 felonies a day has terrifying content, but is a dry read. This is why I’m shocked they have not managed to get Trump yet.
Note the fbi whistleblowers are being ignored by the gop. The rumor is they are too hot to handle.
Tucker Carlson had a podcast with Tulsi about how he was portrayed in fbi briefings to a house member as a Russian agent.
Why did Barr not clean up the doj? As Musk has done at Twitter.
Why did the Senate stonewall Trump on his preferred appointments to doj and Intel agencies?
Per Sundance, lots of corruption between the senate Intel committee, Intel agencies, and gang of 8. The texts between a Senator and Russian oligarch were mind boggling. Texts stopped after an fbi warning.
Ryan sidelined Nunes during his investigation of Russiagate that displayed the fbi corruption. Why?
Why has the fbi / doj ignored election fraud?
a dozen gop senators put clarke and gupta and monaco in their posts, and they are wagging garlands tail, i mentioned in the other thread how strzok and mccabe rose up from every disasters, also laufman who defended christine ford’s atty, mary mccord who consults from georgetown on ‘the insurrectionists’ of course jim baker and his gang at twitter,
our real enemies abroad in moskva in beijing in tehran, in doha, must be kicking themselves they don’t need to do much, these ring wraiths are practically working for them,
— See also: Ham Sandwich Nation. (based on observed truth that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich,)
— more reason to think that Trump is the cleanest person to ever hold political office
— as for why nothing is done to clean up the sewer: simple. The denizens of the sewer have blackmail material on everyone. We know that the Democrats sift through all the NSA material for anything useful. Judge Collyer’s opinion when she was chief judge of FISA court told us this. Can anyone doubt that Roberts is someone’s puppet? His opinion on Obamacare (after his well-known 180) is so pathetic in its reasoning that it reads like a cry for help. Like blinking “torture” in the equivalent of judicial morse code.
Ray — THANKS for that link.
A search for “Ham Sandwich Nation” by Glenn Reynolds also yields more on the subject, as well as more popular renderings of this huge component to US political corruption.
One is reminded of Heinlein’s innovation: turn our two House legislative bodies into law making and law removing bodies, respectively.
Until this is achieved, no one is free anymore.