Just the News Editor-in-Chief John Solomon on Tuesday sued the Justice Department and National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), alleging they have wrongly kept from public inspection hundreds of pages of documents chronicling the FBI’s bungled Russia collusion probe that were declassified by former President Donald Trump. Solomon’s suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. with help from the nonprofit America First Legal public interest law firm. It alleged that the two federal agencies were violating the Presidential Records Act by keeping the declassified Russia probe documents out of the Archives’ official collection for the Trump presidency.
Read MoreTag: DoJ
FBI, DOJ Investigating TikTok Parent over Surveillance of Americans: Report
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are investigating Chinese company ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, for surveilling Americans, according to Forbes.
The DOJ Fraud Section and the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia subpoenaed information from the company about its employees’ efforts to access the location and other private information of American journalists through TikTok, Forbes reported, citing an anonymous source. The FBI is conducting interviews on the same subject.
Read MoreBiden DOJ Indicts Eight Pro-Life Protesters on Federal Charges
On Wednesday, the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the indictment of eight pro-life protesters in Michigan on federal charges, continuing an alarming trend of the weaponization of federal law enforcement agencies for the targeting of political opponents.
Read MoreTwo Dozen AGs Sue Biden’s ATF for Taxing, Registering Pistol Braces
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey joined 24 other attorneys general in suing President Biden’s administration for implementing a rule outlawing pistol braces.
The regulation will “result in the destruction or forfeiture of over 750,000 firearms and will cost the private sector somewhere between $2 and $5 billion,” according to the filing.
Read MoreCongress Takes First Shot at Federal Censorship: A Moratorium on DOJ Payments to Social Media
Stunned by a growing body of evidence showing federal pressure to silence Americans’ voices online, House Republicans have unleashed their first legislation to slow government requests to Big Tech to censor content.
The ELON Act, introduced this month by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and backed by nine other cosponsors, would impose a one-year moratorium on taxpayer payments from the Justice Department to social media firms as well as require an audit on how much money changed hands since the start of 2015 between DOJ and Big Tech firms.
Read MoreBiden’s Second Home in Delaware Searched by FBI for Classified Documents
President Joe Biden’s personal residence in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, was searched by the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday as part of an ongoing probe into classified documents, according to a statement released by Biden’s personal attorney. “Today, with the President’s full support and cooperation, the DOJ is conducting a planned search of his home in Rehoboth, Delaware,” attorney Bob Bauer said in a statement. “Under DOJ’s standard procedures, in the interests of operational security and integrity, it sought to do this work without advance public notice, and we agreed to cooperate.”
Read MoreDOJ Indicts Radical Activists for Attacking Florida Pro-Life Facilities
Following attacks on over 78 pro-life groups across the nation, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has finally indicted two pro-abortion activists for attacking pro-life facilities in Florida.
Twenty-seven-year-old Caleb Freestone and 23-year-old Amber Smith-Stewart “targeted pregnancy resource facilities and vandalized those facilities with spray-painted threats,” according to the DOJ. The threatening language that the two used to vandalize the pro-life facilities mirrors that of the terrorist group Jane’s Revenge.
Read MoreDOJ to File Lawsuit Against Google over Dominance of Digital Ad Market
The Biden Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google, alleging that the company has an unfair dominance over the digital ad market. As reported by the New York Post, the federal lawsuit could be filed as soon as Tuesday against Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc. The suit will target Google’s lucrative advertising business, which accounts for 80 percent of Google’s overall revenue; in 2023, Google is projected to make at least $73.8 billion from advertising alone.
Read MoreReport: DOJ Demanded Data on House GOP Intel Staffers During Russia Probe
During the failed investigation into so-called collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russian government, the Department of Justice (DOJ) used grand jury subpoenas to secretly obtain communications between staffers working for Republican members of the House of Representatives.
The New York Post reports that the first such demands came in November of 2017, when the DOJ ordered search engine giant Google to hand over information on two senior staffers for the House Intelligence Committee, which at the time was led by Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). The material was ultimately delivered to the DOJ by Google on December 5th.
Read MoreBiden’s DOJ Tried to Seize Pennsylvania GOP Lawmaker’s Texts: Report
The Justice Department (DOJ) has sought to access text messages on Republican Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry’s cell phone as part of a 2020 election interference probe, having confiscated it in August, CNN reported
FBI agents seized Perry’s phone Aug. 9, he confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation that day, ostensibly as part of a federal criminal investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol riots and efforts to hinder the transfer of power to President Joe Biden, CNN reported. The DOJ’s approach to Perry’s phone seizure involved using one warrant to image the phone and pursuing a data access warrant in confidential proceedings, sources familiar with the investigation and public filings indicated, according to CNN.
Read MoreCongresswoman Seeks DOJ Review of Missing Data for 3.1 Million New York Voters
As New York state struggles with allegations of election fraud, a new review of its voter lists shows that basic personal identification information is missing for 3.1 million registered voters, in apparent violation of federal law.
States vary, but the general standard for voter registration information is to include either a Social Security number or a driver’s license number, according to a report by the Public Interest Legal Foundation.
Read MoreTrump Explains Why He Took DOJ to Supreme Court: Political Prosecution ‘Has to Stop’
Former President Donald Trump says his two most recent legal strikes — suing CNN for defamation and taking the Biden Justice Department to the Supreme Court — aim to restore fairness in America’s courts of law and public opinion.
In an interview Tuesday evening hours after his legal team took its battle over presidential records to the nation’s nine justices, Trump told the “Just the News, Not Noise” television show that the case was about erasing politics from DOJ and the FBI.
Read MoreRepublicans Urge DOJ to Investigate Cyberattacks Targeting Christian, Pro-Life Websites
A group of Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland urging him to look into a string of recent cyberattacks that have deliberately targeted pro-life and Christian websites, in clearly politically motivated attacks following the Supreme Court’s historic overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Read MoreFBI Whistleblower: ‘Nobody I Know Signed Up’ to Investigate Parents Who Vented at School Board Meetings
An FBI whistleblower who was recently suspended said in an interview this week that he became a whistleblower last November because of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s email ordering the FBI to use Patriot Act counterterrorism tools to target parents at school board meetings.
Special Agent Kyle Seraphin, who was indefinitely suspended on June 1 after nearly six years with the Bureau, said that he was so disturbed by the directive, he went to his congresswoman’s office in New Mexico, and made a “protected disclosure.”
Read MoreTrump Accuses Biden of Waging Unprecedented ‘Political Repression’ That Will Backfire in Election
Former President Donald Trump leveled a blistering attack Saturday night against the man who succeeded him in the White House, telling a rally in Ohio that Joe Biden’s Justice Department was waging unprecedented “political repression” against MAGA supporters while his inflationary economic policies were “incinerating trillions of dollars of middle-class wealth.”
Read More‘Massive Abuse of Power’: Intel Committee Rep Mike Gallagher Vows to Use ‘Power of the Purse’ to Get Transparency from Biden, DOJ
Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, denounced a “massive abuse of power” and vowed to use congressional funding powers to get transparency from the Biden administration about the Aug. 8 raid on Mar-a-Lago during a Sunday appearance on Fox Business.
“For something of this magnitude, something unprecedented, you would expect the FBI and the DOJ to go to great lengths to insure they are conducting themselves with the highest level of professionalism, but they never notified our committee — which you would expect them to do if, indeed, there was a danger posed by the classified material that was in Donald Trump’s possession,” Gallagher told former Republican Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin, who guest-hosted the show, adding that many committee members found out details of the raid from news reports based on leaks from the Justice Department.
Read MoreGarland Sends Memo Warning DOJ Against Talking to Congress
Attorney General Merrick Garland has circulated a memo to Department of Justice personnel articulating DOJ policy that its personnel are not to communicate with Congress directly, but to go through an internal office first.
Read MoreTrump Calls DOJ’s Heavily Redacted Affidavit for Mar-a-Lago Raid a ‘Total Public Relations Subterfuge’
The Justice Department ordered the FBI raid of former President Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida out of concern that “highly classified national security documents” stored in the estate’s basement could be disclosed and compromise “clandestine human sources” used in intelligence gathering, according to a heavily redacted version of the affidavit used to obtain the warrant.
Judge Bruce E. Reinhart on Thursday ordered that a redacted version of the affidavit be unsealed by noon today. The order came hours after the Justice Department submitted a proposal for extensive redactions to the document.
Read MoreAlan Dershowitz Predicts DOJ Will Not Indict Trump After Affidavit’s Release
Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Friday that he doubted the Justice Department would indict Donald Trump after the agency released the affidavit that accompanied the search warrant authorizing the FBI’s search of the former president’s Florida estate.
Read MoreDOJ Releases Affidavit Showing FBI Collected 184 Sensitive Documents at Mar-a-Lago Before Raid
The redacted affidavit released Friday by the Justice Department related to the recent FBI raid on former President Trump’s Florida estate shows the agency in part made their case by saying agents in May had already collected 184 sensitive documents from Mar-a-Lago.
Read MorePoll: Americans Skeptical of DOJ’s Motives in Trump Raid
The Federal Bureau of Investigation raid on former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence has led to a drop in trust for the law enforcement agency, a new poll shows.
Convention of States Action, along with the Trafalgar group, released the poll Thursday, which showed a large segment of Americans say the raid has lessened their confidence in federal law enforcement and that they question the motives for the raid.
Read MoreBiden White House Facilitated DOJ’s Criminal Probe against Trump, Scuttled Privilege Claims: Memos
Long before it professed no prior knowledge of the raid on Donald Trump’s estate, the Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to instigate the criminal probe into alleged mishandling of documents, allowing the FBI to review evidence retrieved from Mar-o-Lago this spring and eliminating the 45th president’s claims to executive privilege, according to contemporaneous government documents reviewed by Just the News.
The memos show then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ and National Archives as early as April, shortly after 15 boxes of classified and other materials were voluntarily returned to the federal historical agency from Trump’s Florida home.
Read MoreDOJ Targets Conservatives, Trump Allies
The Justice Department has come under intense scrutiny for allegedly weaponizing federal law enforcement to target allies of former President Donald Trump and critics of the Biden administration, stoking fears of a politicized, two-tiered justice system riddled with double standards.
Read MoreDOJ Admission It Over-Collected Evidence in Trump Raid Creates New Legal Drama
Three passports, Privileged documents. A file on a presidential pardon. As evidence surfaces about what FBI agents seized during the raid of former President Donald Trump’s estate in Mar-a-Lago, new questions about the real focus of the investigation and new avenues for legal challenges are bubbling to the surface.
Read MoreDOJ Admits ‘Mistakenly’ Taking Trump’s Passports, Offers to Return Them
In an acknowledgment the FBI over-collected evidence during the Mar-a-Lago raid, the Justice Department informed Donald Trump’s team Monday that agents seized the former president’s passports and are obligated to return them, Just the News has learned,
DOJ was making plans Monday evening to return the passports and have also alerted defense lawyers the FBI may have obtained materials covered by various privileges that will be returned in the next two weeks, two sources told Just the News.
Read MoreDOJ Workers Want Paid Travel for Out-Of-State Abortions
Some Department of Justice (DOJ) workers want to be paid if they take leave and travel to more permissive states to have abortions, according to CNN.
The employee-run DOJ Gender Equality Network sent an Aug. 4 letter to Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland and other high-ranking officials calling for the Biden administration to provide paid time off and fully cover travel expenses for staff going across state lines for “abortion care,” the outlet reported.
Read MoreCommentary: As New Trial Looms, Justice Department Silent on Whitmer Kidnapping Plot
For the first time since the government failed to win a single conviction in the alleged criminal plot to “kidnap” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, a top Justice Department official was publicly confronted about the FBI’s primary role in concocting the hoax.
It was not a welcome line of inquiry, to say the least.
Read MoreJulie Kelly Commentary: Justice Department Threatens Oath-Keepers with Life in Prison
In a letter obtained by American Greatness, the U.S. Department of Justice is threatening defendants charged with seditious conspiracy in the sprawling Oath Keepers case to accept plea deals or face life in prison.
Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia handling every prosecution related to the events of January 6, 2021, imposed a May 6 deadline for the remaining defendants to accept plea deals. Three men have pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy; nine others, including Oath Keepers’ founder Stewart Rhodes, have rejected government attempts to reach a plea.
Read MoreAuthorities Confiscate 150,000 Fentanyl Pills in Largest Seizure in Oregon’s History
A joint federal and local law enforcement operation in Portland, Oregon, recently led to the largest single seizure of fentanyl in the state’s history, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The March 1 seizure included around 150,000 counterfeit prescription pills containing fentanyl and 20 pounds of suspected bulk fentanyl, the DOJ said in a press release. The contraband reportedly had an estimated street value of around $4 million.
The drugs were confiscated as a result of the arrest of four drug traffickers, the DOJ said. The ringleader of the group, Ufrano Orozco Munoz, 27, was allegedly involved in a conspiracy to traffic fentanyl from Mexico and other areas for distribution and sale in Oregon.
Read MoreWatchdog Sues DOJ to Force Release of Records Related to Durham Probe
A nonprofit watchdog group on Wednesday sued the Justice Department, seeking to force the release of documents related to Special Counsel John Durham’s inquiry into wrongdoing during the FBI’s now-discredited Trump-Russia investigation.
Read MoreDOJ Kills the China Initiative, Kowtowing to a Chinese-American Group with Documented Chinese Communist Party Ties
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the termination of the China Initiative Wednesday citing agreement with Asian-American groups critical of the anti-espionage strategy.
While announcing the termination of the China Initiative Wednesday, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen launched the Strategy for Countering Nation-State Threats, a program aimed to counter espionage stemming from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
In addition to the high-profile December 2021 conviction of Harvard nanotechnology professor Charles Lieber, the Department of Justice website lists eight examples of successful 2021 China Initiative cases, which include crimes such as the theft of GE trade secrets, misleading global financial institutions, lying on government grant applications, illegally exporting $100,000 of U.S. goods to a Chinese military university, economic espionage against Coca-Cola, two cases involving the theft of trade secrets related to pediatric medical conditions and the illegal exportation of cesium atomic clocks.
Read MoreActivist Pressure to Nix DOJ Program to Catch Chinese Spies Grows Despite Conviction of Harvard Professor
Aloose coalition of lawmakers, nonprofits, and academics has continued to pressure the Biden administration to end the so-called China Initiative, despite the Justice Department program to thwart Chinese spies winning a key conviction last month of a high-profile Harvard professor.
The Trump administration launched the China Initiative in 2018 to preserve America’s technological edge. The program, which the Biden administration has so far continued, is designed to identify and prosecute those engaged in hacking, stealing trade secrets, and conducting economic espionage for the Chinese government on U.S. soil.
Charles Lieber, a renowned nanotechnology professor who chaired Harvard’s Chemistry Department, became one of the China Initiative’s most prominent targets. Federal prosecutors accused him of lying to government authorities about multiple links to Beijing.
Read MoreNikki Fried Consultant Wants FBI to Investigate Right Wingers Who Criticized Her on Twitter
A communications consultant for one of Florida’s Democrat candidates for Governor suggested Monday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation should investigate right wingers who criticized her on Twitter.
“In the last days, after posting the above,I am also getting followed by retired police who follow Breitbart, people who work for the alt-right publication in Spanish The American, and other alt-right people,” Evelyn Perez-Verdia said on Twitter.
Read MoreDEA Directive to Stop Saying ‘Mexican Cartel’ Was the Biden Administration’s Way of ‘Appeasing’ Mexico, Recently Retired Agency Officials Say
The directive for Drug Enforcement Administration officials to not use the term “Mexican cartel” came directly from the Biden administration to ease relations with the Mexican government, two recently retired DEA officials told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The DCNF exclusively obtained an email in August that instructed DEA officials to “now avoid saying ‘Mexican cartel’” when speaking with the media. The email was sent as drugs continued to surge across the U.S.-Mexico border.
One recently-retired DEA official told the DCNF that when the new administration came in, the Department of Justice (DOJ) required DEA to submit news interview requests for approval. The retired official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the DOJ declined many of the national news requests on top of the language guidance, but eventually eased up and allowed some to do local interviews where he used the term “Mexican drug cartel” and called each by its name.
Read MoreCommentary: Schiff, Democrats Pivot Hard on Justice Department Election Interference
For five years, U.S. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) insisted, without evidence, that the Russians helped Donald Trump win the White House in 2016. Schiff, along with Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), first seeded the collusion narrative in July 2016—the same month James Comey’s FBI launched Crossfire Hurricane—by falsely claiming Kremlin hackers confiscated thousands of emails off the Democratic National Committee’s server, correspondence damaging to Hillary Clinton.
From that point forward, Schiff leveraged his political power and newfound cable news stardom to perpetuate the lie that the 2016 presidential election was illegitimate.
So it’s beyond ironic that Schiff now sits on the January 6 select committee, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s latest weapon to annihilate TrumpWorld. After spending every waking minute during Trump’s presidency to conduct what author Lee Smith called The Permanent Coup, Schiff is flipping his coup-plotting script on anyone who questions the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Read MoreFlorida Business Owners Plead Guilty to Fraud in Worker Visa Scheme
Two business owners based in Florida pleaded guilty this week after their fraudulent scheme to hire illegal workers was uncovered.
“According to court documents, Educational World Inc. (Ed World), a visa processing company based in North Point; and Larisa Khariton, 73, and Jon Clark, 71, also of North Point, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Georgia on April 8,” the Department of Justice said in a press release. “The 36-count indictment also contained allegations against Regal Hospitality Solutions LLC (RHS), a Louisiana-based staffing company, and seven current and former RHS employees.”
Read MoreTrump Slams DOJ Plan to Monitor Parents Fighting ‘Radical Left School Boards’ over Critical Race Theory in Classrooms
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday denounced the Justice Department for asking the FBI to investigate parents who are pressuring school boards to stop teaching critical race theory, saying it was part of a larger leftist agenda to sideline moms and dads from having a say over their children’s future.
Read MoreCommentary: Mandatory Vaccinations Undermine Roe v. Wade and Choice
Well, isn’t this interesting.
Recall Roe v. Wade? The famous abortion decision from the U.S. Supreme Court that was issued in January of 1973? It said this:
This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment‘s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or … in the Ninth Amendment‘s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” — Roe, 410 U.S. at 153
In the vernacular, this quickly was reduced to a pro-Roe movement that self-identified as “pro-choice.” Or, as the saying goes, “abortion rights” boosters supported the idea of “my body, my choice.”
Read MoreDOJ Legal Threats Against State Election Audits Suggest Unease about Potential Findings
The U.S. Department of Justice’s recent guidance on the process of state election audits indicates that the federal agency is apparently deeply unsettled by the string of election audits and election reform efforts carried out by state Republicans since last November’s presidential election.
The guidance, distributed last week and directed in part toward state legislatures, instructs investigators on “how states must comply with federal law” when conducting election audits. It also addresses efforts by some state legislatures to repeal emergency COVID-19 voting rules that other states have in some cases sought to make permanent.
Read MoreIn Suppression of First Amendment, Biden Forbids Immigration Judges from Using the Term ‘Alien’
The Biden Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) issued an order last week demanding that immigration judges no longer use the term “alien” when referring to illegal aliens in court or in their written opinions, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
The order, first issued on July 23rd, came from a DOJ official named Jean King. King’s order applies to all 539 immigration judges in the country, and orders them to instead use more politically correct terms, such as “respondent, applicant, petitioner, beneficiary, migrant, noncitizen, or non-U.S. citizen.” “Alien” has been the correct terminology for anyone who enters the United States illegally ever since the Immigration and Nationality Act, which defines an alien as “any person not a citizen or national of the United States.”
In the order, King admitted that the DOJ decision was influenced in part by the mainstream media, citing the fact that the Associated Press first decided back in 2013 to drop the use of the term “illegal immigrant,” which led to a left-wing trend to replace the word “illegal” with “undocumented.” Since taking office in January, Biden has taken steps to remove the use of the phrases “alien” and “illegal immigrant” through several executive orders. Some radical Democrats, including Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), have advocated for passing a law to ban the use of such phrases. And in New York City, a recent law was passed to make it a crime to use the phrases “illegal” and “illegal alien.”
Read MoreCommentary: Biden’s DOJ Denies January 6 Prisoners Constitutional Right to Speedy Trial
A group of six Republican lawmakers held a press conference outside the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday to demand answers about the treatment of those arrested over the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. Congress members Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Louis Gohmert (R-Texas), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Bob Good (R-Va.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) gave remarks from a podium outside the office of the DOJ.
Read MoreBiden’s Department of Justice Drops Charges Against Chinese Soldiers Who Lied to Acquire Jobs at American Universities
The Biden Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) announced last week that it was dropping charges against five members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who had lied about their histories to obtain jobs at American universities, Breitbart reports.
The five soldiers were seeking visas in order to apply for jobs and doctoral positions at several universities in the states of California and Indiana. They had all been arrested in the summer of last year as part of a wider crackdown on Chinese infiltrations into American upper education. All five of them sought either J-1 or F-1 visas in order to apply to positions at the University of California, San Francisco, the University of California, Davis, Stanford University, Indiana University, and the University of California, Los Angeles.
However, officials revealed the stunning decision to drop the charges in statements to the Wall Street Journal last week, claiming that since “the defendants had all been detained or under other restrictions in the U.S. since their arrest a year ago,” the agency had determined “that further litigation in the group of cases would unnecessarily prolong their departure from the U.S., and that their situations since their arrests amounted to sufficient punishment and deterrence.”
Read More59 of 96 Phones Assigned to Mueller Probe Missing; GOP Senators Demand Answers from DOJ
Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa sent a letter to the Justice Department Wednesday asking for more information regarding missing phones used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team during the Russian collusion investigation.
Read MoreBiden’s DOJ Comes Out Swinging Against West Virginia, Arkansas Trans Laws
The Department of Justice argued in court filings Thursday that transgender legislation passed in West Virginia and Arkansas is unconstitutional.
The DOJ filed statements of interest supporting lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against West Virginia’s House Bill 3293 and Arkansas’ “Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act,” otherwise known as the SAFE Act.
The West Virginia bill bans biological males at public schools from participating in women’s sports in middle school, high school, and college. The SAFE Act prohibits physicians from performing gender transition procedures, such as puberty blockers or “top” and “bottom” surgeries, on minors.
Read MoreU.S. Senate Confirms Controversial DOJ Nominee Who Once Wrote Black Supremacist Essay
On Tuesday, the United States Senate confirmed one of Joe Biden’s most controversial federal nominees, Kristen Clarke, to a key leadership post in the Department of Justice, as reported by the Daily Caller.
Clarke was confirmed as head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division with 51 votes, when Republican Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) sided with the chamber’s 50 Democrats to confirm her nomination. As previously reported, her nomination originally stalled in the Judiciary Committee after the committee vote to advance her nomination ended in a tie, before Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) brought the motion to a full floor vote to advance it out of the committee.
Read MoreFormer Ohio State Professor Sentenced to Prison for Lying About China Ties
Song Guo Zheng, a former professor and researcher at Ohio State University, will spend 37 months in prison after being convicted of lying about his ties to the Chinese government on applications for NIH grant funding and failing to disclose his China ties to his employers. Zheng will also be required to pay roughly $413,000 to Ohio State University and $3.4 million to the National Institutes of Health.
“Zheng pleaded guilty last November and admitted he lied on applications in order to use approximately $4.1 million in grants from NIH to develop China’s expertise in the areas of rheumatology and immunology,” said the DOJ when it announced the sentencing.
Zheng’s teaching and scholarship were in the medical field, with emphasis on rheumatology and immunology at Ohio State University. Zheng’s researcher biography states that he has also taught at the University of Southern California and Penn State University.
Read MoreDOJ Considering New Domestic Terrorism Laws Aimed at Violent Domestic Extremism
In response to continued threats of domestic extremism following the deadly riot on Jan. 6, the Department of Justice is considering new domestic terrorism laws, an official announced Thursday.
The FBI reported an elevated risk of violence associated with domestic extremists after the attack on the Capitol and increased assaults on Asian Americans, Department of Justice (DOJ) Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brad Wiegmann told the House Committee on Appropriations.
Virginia Republican Rep. Ben Cline asked Wiegmann about his proposal to codify a domestic terrorism charge in the criminal code.
Read MoreDOJ to Probe Minneapolis Police Department
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the Justice Department launched a sweeping investigation into practices of the Minneapolis Police Department.
Garland’s announcement came one day after a jury convicted ex-Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin of the murder of George Floyd.
Read MoreDOJ ‘Unlikely’ to Represent FBI Officials Sued by Carter Page for Misconduct in Russia Case
The Justice Department has informed current and former FBI officials sued by Russia probe target Carter Page that it is unlikely to represent them in the civil case, signaling they will need to get private lawyers, according to new court filings.
At least two defendants — fired FBI Director James Comey and current FBI intelligence analyst Brian Auten — have already hired private counsel and notified the presiding judge in the case of their representation.
Read MoreTwo Weeks After Trump Declassified Russia Memos, Most Aren’t Released
More than two weeks after Donald Trump officially declassified the evidence, the vast majority of documents detailing FBI and Justice Department failures in the now-discredited Russia collusion investigation remain out of public view in a delay that has thwarted the former president’s goal of sweeping transparency.
Read More