Left Goes Bananas On Barr’s DOJ After Ignoring Far Worse Under Obama
By: By Chip Roy
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
No one should be above the law, Republican or Democrat. Nor should our elected leaders undermine equal justice under the law.
Okay, now that these obvious statements have been made, what should we make of the 1,100 signatures to a letter calling on Attorney General Barr to resign amid all the debate regarding the Department of Justice (DOJ)? As someone who served, albeit briefly, as a federal prosecutor, this question is of particular interest to me.
First, consider that the DOJ resides in the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Department of Justice Building. Bobby Kennedy was his brother’s closest political ally and advisor. Does the media suggest we should re-name the building or raise a fuss because the younger Kennedy was political?
Don’t believe it? Go back to February 1962, in U.S. News and World Report : “Bobby is forever putting out political brush fires. If something goes wrong somewhere, Bobby will take a look at his list of friends scattered through the Government. He will get someone on the phone, maybe a high official, and ask him to do a political job for him.”
More from the same article: “One day in January, more than a dozen young men trooped into Bobby’s office. Most of them were in their 30s. They came from the Defense Department, the State Department, from various agencies of the Government… Most of these men had worked closely with Bobby when he engineered his brother’s election campaign. They developed great loyalty and affection for the Attorney General, became his trusted lieutenants.”
Is this a problem? It depends. As Jack Kennedy quipped, he wanted his brother to “have a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law.”
What about an attorney general who politicizes the DOJ at the expense of adherence to the rule of law, packs the department with activists, is repeatedly struck down by the Supreme Court, and acts in direct conflict with well-accepted policies and procedures, then hides it? What if that attorney general is Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch?
Put aside the fact that Holder was held in contempt in the U.S. House—let’s chalk that up to politics and overlook the 17 Democrats who voted for contempt. Even a cursory review of the record shows that Holder, and his successor Lynch, abused power in the Department of Justice for a full eight years while carrying out hatchet work for President Obama.
After all, in an interview with Juan Williams, Holder proudly declared himself “an activist attorney general,” and acknowledged that he turned the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division into a political weapon, saying he was “proud of it.” How soon my leftist colleagues and media flacks forget they engaged in “community organizing” for left-wing activism at the highest levels of the Department of Justice. For just several major examples:
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Under Holder, the notorious “Fast and Furious” operation was carried out. In it, guns were run to Mexican drug cartels, resulting in the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. Holder refused to cooperate with House investigators to turn over information.
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Holder encouraged President Obama to use executive power to unconstitutionally and illegally give status and benefits to both children and parents illegally present in the United States after failing to pass legislation. In other words, the chief law enforcement officer encouraged an end-run of the Constitution and the law, one of which courts have already struck down, while the other is being litigated.
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Holder effectively dismissed the Lois Lerner Internal Revenue Service’s clear targeting of conservative groups and refused to carry out a true investigation into this corruption.
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Holder corrupted the Civil Rights Division, turning it into a radical political organization—led once by Tom Perez, who is now the head of the Democratic National Committee. DOJ’s own inspector general concluded in a report that the division was guilty of “deep ideological polarization” and a “disappointing lack of professionalism.”
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That same radical Holder-Perez Civil Rights Division was repeatedly smacked down by the courts for its egregious positions and overreach. For example, the division was rebuked in a Florida case where the DOJ abusively prosecuted peaceful abortion protesters. It argued that the First Amendment did not protect the hiring decisions of a church in the Hosanna-Tabor decision. There were similar decisions involving voter ID and immigration issues, among countless others.
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Holder used race as a political weapon. He declared voter ID a racially charged “poll tax,” and used immigration and cases like the tragic events in Ferguson and Sanford, Florida, as political events to whip up President Obama’s base while completely ignoring the constant terrible gang violence in Chicago, for example, all while leaving law enforcement (of all races) dangling in the wind.
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Holder used civil rights as a hammer to prevent states from trying school choice to help move children out of poverty.
- And books will long be written about the politicization of the DOJ, the FBI, and countless government officials in the Obama administration all through the 2016 elections involving Russia collusion and targeting Donald Trump and his campaign.
No matter what political party is in power, the DOJ should not be used to advance policy contrary to the Constitution, or to carry out policy contrary to law, or to undermine the core principles of equal justice under law, among other things. If there are allegations of true wrongdoing, as a member of the Oversight Committee—and, frankly, as a member of Congress—I certainly believe we should look into it.
I will be the first to admit that the president does, in fact, make Barr’s ability to do his job much more difficult by constantly tweeting about decisions in real time. Moreover, Roger Stone is hardly a sympathetic figure, making his own bed in this situation.
But is the attorney general correct to review a seven- to nine-year sentence recommendation for a first-time offender who admittedly engaged in witness tampering but in the context of a politically charged situation? With a jury foreperson with questionable objectivity? Of course he is, and a review up the chain of command about sentencing is not something that in and of itself should draw alarm, as these are legitimate questions. Also, lost in all the controversy is that this is just a recommendation that does not control! The final decision about Stone’s sentencing is still completely up to the judge on the case, not the DOJ.
So let’s keep a little perspective. Far from “whataboutism,” there are very clear differences here. With the current situation and no matter what has been tweeted, the conviction stands, the judge controls, this is just a recommendation, and there are reasonable questions that would lead to Barr or his team moving the recommendation downward.
We should not let the media and a bunch of left-wing activists drumming up former prosecutors to complain and obfuscate the facts, nor allow them to ignore the unbelievably rampant abuse at the DOJ under the most recent Democrat administration.
Chip Roy is the Republican representative for the 21st congressional district in Texas.
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Barr is still the steady hand at the helm.
Rules of civility apply
Started under Bush Jr - investigated and punished those that were actually at fault.
The courts did not agree this was "unconstitutional".
The IRS were investigating all groups that were using the cover of religion to influence politics.
AND
Those two are the parts of the same issue. It's not right and they got stopped in the courts like many of the Trump over reaches.
We have Republicans on record saying the Voter ID bills in states were setup to shave 1 to 4 percentage points off Democratic vote totals because of race.
Fuck school choice! It's a disguise to cherry pick students and end run state guidelines.
Word salad bullshit, but as long as conservatives waste their money buying it, whatever...
Fast & Furious did not "start under Bush." That's simply false.
investigated and punished
Sure, Holder looked into his department's Fast And Furious like OJ hunted for the real killers.
Who just happens to be a lawyer whose personal social media posts are anti-Trump. While being interviewed as a prospective juror, she didn't reveal that information to the judge.
The selection of the Juror was agreed to by Stones' Attornies. Our Justice System allows for Stones Attorney to deny certain sitting of Jurors. They did not do so in this case. You disrespect our Jurisprudence system and trial by Jury by your comment.
She was not truthful when questioned under oath by the lawyers, so don't tell ME that I'm disrespectful of our jurisprudence system, dude.
Stone must have really incompetent lawyers then. They didn't make a peep. And other than you and propaganda sites, where is the proof SHE lied about anything?
In a federal case lawyers on either side submit questions. The judge then has the final say on jurors. Do I think Judge Amy Berman Jackson will do the right thing? Not a chance. She is moving towards sentencing and leaving execution of the sentence until the court addresses Stone's request for a new trial.
The prosecutors were biased, the foreperson on the Jury was biased and the Judge seems biased. Look at the world Obama has left us.
Amy Berman Jackson, liberal political activist and Obama appointee.
And if Stone's lawyers knew this and let it go, counting on her becoming a possible cause for mistrial,
they could be disbarred ( no pun intended ).
A fair assessment
A fair assessment from a source we are not allowed to use as the basis for an article?
No thanks.
I agree with you about the source. They did, however, manage to reach the right conclusion - an obvious one!
Since I did not use The Gateway Pundit as the basis for an article or seed in comment 4.1.5 , what's your point?
Feel free to fact check Judge Amy Berman Jackson's history for yourself, and you'll find the same that I posted in comment 4.1.5 within other sources.
You expressed a partisan opinion backed up by what you and others believe is some sort of evidence of bias.
She's as much a liberal political activist as you are.
NOT ONCE has Mr. Barr intervened in a sentencing guideline filing. Only now that it is tRumps political hack that he does.
Show us the pattern of concern for similar defendants CONVICTED of a crime being reviewed. Obviously Barr can not. The sheer perversion of our Rule of Law by the Grifter King is bad enough. But the wholesale sellout of the Rule of Law by the GOP is a mortal sin against our Constitution than tRump's venereal one.
The Democratic opposition takes ordinary behavior and turns it into a scandal. It has been going during the entirety of this administration and even before.
"The Democratic opposition takes ordinary behavior and turns it into a scandal. "
Would that be like taking an electoral loss and fabricating things to come up with fictitious charges?