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Tag: department of justice

  • Gov. Greg Abbott Says He’ll Defy DOJ Orders On His Floating Border Wall

    Gov. Greg Abbott Says He’ll Defy DOJ Orders On His Floating Border Wall

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    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) sent a letter to the Biden administration Monday declaring his plans to continue using a floating wall along the state’s southern border, even after the Justice Department warned him last week that it plans to sue him for deploying the barricade.

    “Texas will see you in court, Mr. President,” the governor wrote, saying it’s within his constitutional rights to respond to the “unprecedented crisis of illegal immigration” that he says is caused by President Joe Biden’s border policies.

    “The fact is, if you would just enforce the immigration laws Congress already has on the books, America would not be suffering from your record-breaking level of illegal immigration,” Abbott continued, defending the miles of buoy barricades he oversaw going up in the Rio Grande earlier this month.

    Workers take a break from deploying large buoys to be used as a border barrier along the banks of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, on July 12.

    While U.S. border officials have been stopping a record high number of migrants in recent years, there’s been a lull in crossings for months. Experts say that’s likely because potential migrants are waiting to see what happens with U.S. border policy, and because more migrants are taking advantage of new legal pathways for seeking asylum from violence, political instability and corruption in their home countries.

    In his letter, Abbott said his floating barricade is essential to protecting both migrants and U.S. citizens.

    “If you truly care about human life, you must begin enforcing federal immigration laws,” he said. “By doing so, you can help me stop migrants from wagering their lives in the waters of the Rio Grande River. You can also help me save Texans, and indeed all Americans, from deadly drugs like fentanyl, cartel violence, and the horrors of human trafficking.”

    In reality, recent data shows nearly 90% of convicted fentanyl traffickers were U.S. citizens, and just 0.02% of migrants arrested for illegal crossings had any fentanyl on them.

    Abbott’s letter is a response to a notice the DOJ sent him last week disclosing that it plans to sue Texas for the deployment of an “unlawful construction of a floating barrier in the Rio Grande River” that may impede on the federal government’s duties. The department cited the Rivers and Harbors Act.

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  • Trump Claims He Is A ‘TARGET’ Of Special Counsel’s Jan. 6 Probe

    Trump Claims He Is A ‘TARGET’ Of Special Counsel’s Jan. 6 Probe

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    Former President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that he is anticipating another potential criminal indictment, this time related to the special counsel probe into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

    Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that “Deranged Jack Smith,” the special prosecutor appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, sent his attorneys a letter saying he is “a TARGET” of the investigation and has “a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury, which almost always means an Arrest and Indictment.”

    But his criminal investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election has yet to yield charges. Trump’s statement suggests that may be about to change.

    Trump’s attorneys delivered the “HORRIFYING NEWS,” as the ex-president put it, on Sunday evening.

    This story is developing. Please check back soon for more.

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  • Mystery GOP Whistleblower Accused Of Being Unregistered Foreign Agent, Arms Dealer

    Mystery GOP Whistleblower Accused Of Being Unregistered Foreign Agent, Arms Dealer

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    Federal prosecutors on Monday unsealed charges against a think tank leader who claims he has incriminating information about President Joe Biden.

    The Justice Department said Gal Luft, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Israel, engaged in “multiple international criminal schemes,” including arms dealing and acting as an unregistered foreign agent of the People’s Republic of China.

    The government said Luft was arrested in Cyprus in February but that he’s now on the run after having been released on bail. In its news release, the Justice Department asked for tips about Luft’s whereabouts.

    Luft said in a video published online by the New York Post last week that he gave investigators details about arrangements between the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and a Chinese energy company, and that he was arrested in order to prevent his testimony before the House Oversight Committee.

    “Instead of showing appreciation for my whistleblowing, I became public enemy number one,” Luft said in the video.

    Hunter Biden’s financial arrangements with CEFC China Energy have been previously reported by journalists as well as by Republicans wielding bank records and subpoenas from Capitol Hill.

    Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement that Luft “subverted foreign agent registration laws in the United States to seek to promote Chinese policies by acting through a former high-ranking U.S. Government official; he acted as a broker in deals for dangerous weapons and Iranian oil; and he told multiple lies about his crimes to law enforcement.”

    Luft, the director of a Washington, D.C., think tank called the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, said in his video that the government official Williams referred to is former CIA Director James Woolsey, who served as an adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. All he did, Luft said, was ghostwrite an article with Woolsey’s name on it.

    The indictment says Luft schemed to “educate” the official so that he would make public statements favorable to China and that this official would be paid $6,000 per month for articles in a Chinese newspaper.

    According to emails quoted in the indictment, Luft and an associate hoped Woolsey would get a prominent position within the new administration. Woolsey wound up resigning as a Trump adviser before Trump took office.

    House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.), who has been conducting investigations into the Biden family, said earlier this year that one of his sources had gone missing, prompting mockery from Democrats.

    After the New York Post made Luft’s video public, Comer said he’d been vindicated.

    “He’s very credible, and the people on MSNBC who made fun of me when I said we had an informant that was missing, they should feel like fools right now,” Comer told Newsmax TV last week. “This is their worst nightmare.”

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  • A.G. Merrick Garland Resisted Investigating Trump’s Connection to January 6: Washington Post

    A.G. Merrick Garland Resisted Investigating Trump’s Connection to January 6: Washington Post

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    The Department of Justice delayed plans to investigate Donald Trump and his associates’ links to January 6 and attempts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a bombshell investigative report by The Washington Post.

    It took nearly a year after the Capitol attack for a DOJ inquiry to commence, and the FBI only opened its investigation into the fake electors’ plot in April 2022.

    The Post attributed the DOJ’s slow-walking to “a wariness about appearing partisan, institutional caution, and clashes over how much evidence was sufficient to investigate the actions of Trump and those around him.”

    High-ranking officials at the DOJ, including Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and FBI Director Christopher Wray remained wed to this approach “even as evidence emerged of an organized, weeks-long effort by Trump and his advisers before Jan. 6 to pressure state leaders, Justice officials, and Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of Biden’s victory.”

    “A decision was made early on to focus DOJ resources on the riot,” one former Justice Department official familiar with internal debates over department strategy told the Post. “The notion of opening up on Trump and high-level political operatives was seen as fraught with peril. When Lisa [Monaco] and Garland came on board, they were fully onboard with that approach.”

    The strategy came even as Michael Sherwin, acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. during the early months of 2021, promised soon after the attack that prosecutors were “looking at all actors, not only the people who went into the building.”

    The approach generated dissension within DOJ ranks. The Post investigation revealed that “some prosecutors” below Garland and Monaco “chafed, feeling top officials were shying away from looking at evidence of potential crimes by Trump and those close to him.”

    Department employees tasked with putting together briefing materials for the attorney general and his deputy were told to steer clear of mentioning Trump or Trump allies. One former Justice official told the Post, “You couldn’t use the T word.”

    “You can take it to the extreme,” Peter Zeidenberg, who was part of a special counsel probe of the Bush White House in the 2000s, said of the department’s desire to avoid the appearance of political impropriety. “You work so hard not to be a partisan that you’re failing to do your job,” he told the Post.

    When the DOJ finally began investigating the fake elector scheme in early 2022, the bipartisan House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack was already conducting its own inquiry into top Trump officials and allies. The Post quoted a person familiar with internal DOJ discussions who “felt as though the department was reacting to the House committee’s work as well as heightened media coverage and commentary,” drawing attention to the scheme. “Only after they were embarrassed did they start looking,” the person said.

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    Jack McCordick

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  • Minneapolis Police Department Engaged in Systemic Racism and Excessive Force: DOJ

    Minneapolis Police Department Engaged in Systemic Racism and Excessive Force: DOJ

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    The Department of Justice excoriated the Minneapolis Police Department in an 89-page report released Friday, accusing the department of systemic racial and behavioral discrimination—years before the death of George Floyd in 2020.

    The two-year investigation was prompted by the April 2021 conviction of Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer who murdered Floyd the previous May by pinning his knee onto Floyd’s neck for nearly 10 minutes as three other officers looked on. The report found that before Chauvin murdered Floyd, the officer had used excessive force in other incidents in which “multiple other M.P.D. officers stood by.”

    Floyd’s death, along with the killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, ignited a summer of nationwide protests over policing and racial injustice.

    The DOJ report alleges a pattern of “excessive force, including unjustified deadly force” concentrated on the city’s Black and Native American residents. Between 2016 and mid-2022, the report uncovered nearly 200 instances of Minneapolis officers using neck restraints like the one Chauvin used on Floyd; some officers continued the practice even after the city banned them in June 2020.

    Police, the report said, “used dangerous techniques and weapons against people who committed at most a petty offense and sometimes no offense at all” and “used force to punish people who made officers angry or criticized the police.”

    At a Friday news conference at a Minneapolis courthouse, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “The patterns and practices we observed made what happened to George Floyd possible.” Garland added that the report found numerous examples of officers responding to residents’ complaints that they could not breathe with “some version of, ‘You can breathe, you’re talking right now’”—similar to comments made by the officers involved in Floyd’s arrest.

    “As I told George Floyd’s family this morning, his death has had an irrevocable impact on the Minneapolis community, on our country and on the world,” Garland said. “His loss is still felt deeply by those who loved and knew him and by many who did not. George Floyd should be alive today.”

    Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the DOJ report “objective” and “thorough.” “We understand that change is non-negotiable,” he said.

    The city will likely soon start negotiations with the federal government on the terms of a court-enforced consent decree, which would put the Minneapolis police under federal supervision. “Consent decrees have been a useful tool for making progress on police reform in other cities,” Frey said Saturday morning. In recent years, several other cities have put their police departments under consent decrees, but critics argue that the oversights are a waste of taxpayer money and don’t provide meaningful reform.

    On Friday, President Joe Biden called the report’s findings “disturbing” and said they “underscore the urgent need for common sense reforms that increase public trust and thereby strengthen public safety.” He called on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Negotiations on the bill, which passed in the House and would have cracked down on certain police tactics and made it easier to prosecute officers accused of misconduct, stalled in the Senate in 2021.

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    Jack McCordick

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  • Will Trump Get a Speedy Trial?

    Will Trump Get a Speedy Trial?

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    Settle in, America: This could take a while.

    When Special Counsel Jack Smith announced last week that a federal grand jury had indicted former President Donald Trump, he made a point of saying that the government would “seek a speedy trial in this matter, consistent with the public interest.” Whether Trump gets one could determine whether he goes to prison for his alleged crimes.

    In just over 18 months, Trump could be serving as president again, at which point he’d be in a position to attempt to pardon himself or instruct the Department of Justice to dismiss its case against him. That might seem like a long way away, but for the nation’s tortoiselike federal-court system, it’s not. Complex, high-profile cases sometimes take years to get to trial, and former federal prosecutors told me that, even under the fastest scenarios, Trump’s trial won’t begin for several months and potentially for more than a year. Trump may well be waiting for a trial when voters cast their presidential ballots next fall. Although Smith will do all he can to hurry up the prosecution, the former president’s legal team could move to dismiss the charges—though that would almost certainly be futile—and file other pretrial motions in order to bog down the process.

    “There’s a pretty obvious incentive from [Trump’s] point of view for delaying this,” Kristy Parker, a lawyer at the advocacy group Protect Democracy who tried cases for 15 years at the Justice Department, told me. “That is especially true if he understands that the evidence against him is significant and that the chances of him being convicted of these offenses are pretty high.”

    David A. Graham: This indictment is different

    Different federal courts operate at different speeds. The Eastern District of Virginia, for example, has long been known as “the rocket docket”; it’s raced through even high-profile cases such as the 2018 trial of Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort. Trump’s trial will occur in the Southern District of Florida and will reportedly be overseen by one of his own appointees, Judge Aileen Cannon. “Federal judges have enormous control over their courtrooms and over the schedule and timing of their cases,” Chuck Rosenberg, a former U.S. attorney in Virginia and Texas, told me. “Some are very good at docket management, and some are not.” Having served as a judge for less than three years, Cannon hasn’t developed much of a reputation either way.

    Cannon presided over a lawsuit Trump filed last year after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago estate. She issued a series of rulings favorable to him. Representative Dan Goldman, a New York Democrat and a former federal prosecutor who served as a top counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment, told me it was “concerning” that Cannon would apparently run the former president’s trial. “It was pretty clear that her initial rulings did not follow the law but followed some preconceived personal and political viewpoints, and there’s no place for that in the judiciary,” Goldman said. Indeed, the conservative Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a pair of Cannon’s decisions, including one that barred the government from accessing some of the documents that the FBI recovered from Mar-a-Lago.

    Another former Democratic co-counsel during the Trump impeachment, Norm Eisen, has called for Cannon to recuse herself or be taken off the case.

    If Cannon stays on the case, she will have fairly wide latitude to set its tempo. She will be responsible for scheduling any pretrial motions and hearings, determining what evidence is admissible, and ruling on potentially time-intensive challenges that Trump’s lawyers could bring.

    In their indictment, the prosecutors estimated that a trial would take 21 days in court—not an especially long trial for a case of such magnitude. The timeline suggests the government believes it has a pretty “straightforward” argument, Parker said.

    The fact that this case centers on documents Trump had in his possession—illegally, the government argues—means that he may have already seen a significant portion of the evidence the Justice Department has on him. Theoretically, that could speed up the discovery process that occurs before any trial. But cases that involve classified documents tend to take longer, former prosecutors told me, because the court will have to determine who can access sensitive materials and how to protect government secrets before and during a trial. Most of the pretrial rulings that Cannon could make are subject to appeal, and those delays can quickly add up.

    Another scheduling complication is that Trump is facing another criminal trial, in New York, on charges that he falsified business records, and he could face yet another indictment and trial in Georgia related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s Manhattan trial is scheduled for March, which would be about 10 months after his indictment in that case and right in the middle of the Republican primary season. (Although the cases are in different jurisdictions, the 10-month lag could be a rough guide for how long Trump’s federal trial will take to get under way.)

    David A. Graham: The stupidest crimes imaginable

    One of the biggest questions Cannon may face is whether the election should factor into her decisions about how soon to schedule a trial and whether to agree to delays that Trump might seek. Parker argued that the election is a legitimate consideration. “We are in uncharted territory,” she said, “and quite frankly, I would think that a court would want to try to get this matter resolved ahead of that point.” Even if Trump’s trial concludes before the 2024 election, however, it’s unlikely that (if he’s convicted) his appeals will be exhausted by then.

    The former prosecutors I spoke with could only guess at what would happen if Trump were elected president while awaiting trial or sentencing. The case would likely proceed after the election, and the Constitution doesn’t explicitly bar convicted felons from taking office. Whether Trump could pardon himself is a matter of debate; no president has ever tried, but in 1974, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion stating that a presidential self-pardon would be unconstitutional. Even if Trump did not attempt to pardon himself, though, he could lean on or simply direct his appointees in the Justice Department to drop the case against him. He’d surely argue that, by electing him, voters had rendered a verdict more legitimate than any jury’s.

    For all the legal wrangling to come, Trump’s ultimate fate may yet rest with the voters. If he is the Republican nominee, they will have what amounts to the final word on his future, political and otherwise. “These cases are important, but they are not magic wands,” Parker said. “They will not relieve the voting public of its problems.”

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    Russell Berman

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  • Pence Berates DOJ For Indicting Trump Over Handling Of Top-Secret Documents

    Pence Berates DOJ For Indicting Trump Over Handling Of Top-Secret Documents

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    GREENSBORO, N.C. — Former Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday criticized the Department of Justice, rather than Donald Trump, for a devastating 37-count indictment accusing his former boss of conspiring to hide top-secret documents from authorities seeking their return.

    “The American people have a right to know the basis of this decision,” Pence told North Carolina Republicans gathered for their state convention, where Trump was scheduled to speak just hours later. “Attorney General Merrick Garland, stop hiding behind the special counsel and stand before the American people and explain why this indictment went forward.”

    Pence, as he was leaving following his 40 minutes on the stage, ignored repeated questions from reporters asking if he had read the indictment and if he believed it would’ve come had Trump turned over improperly retained classified documents when the FBI requested them.

    Pence’s choice to blame prosecutors for charging Trump with a crime — rather than Trump for refusing to turn over hundreds of the documents, even in the face of a subpoena — aligns him with most other candidates running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination against Trump.

    Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy went so far as to promise to pardon Trump on his first day in office, should he win.

    Only former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have said Trump is to blame for his own troubles and that his behavior made him unfit for the presidency.

    After the FBI searched Trump’s Florida country club following his failure to turn over all the classified documents in his possession last summer, and after aides to Joe Biden also discovered files at the Democratic president’s home, Pence looked through his own residence and similarly found classified material. He called in the FBI, resulting in further searches. The DOJ announced recently that its investigation into Pence had been closed with no charges.

    “I took full responsibility, and I was pleased the Department of Justice concluded it was an innocent mistake,” he said at a campaign stop Friday in New Hampshire. “But it was a mistake. We must secure our nation’s secrets.”

    Pence was nearly killed during Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt in Washington. A mob, brought to a boiling rage as Trump criticized Pence for lacking the “courage” to help overturn his 2020 election loss, came within yards of encountering Pence at the Capitol. Many of Trump’s followers chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” as they roamed the halls looking for him.

    Despite this, Pence has remained measured in his criticisms of Trump. Only in his campaign announcement last week did Pence say, for the first time, that Trump’s behavior after the 2020 election through the Jan. 6 insurrection disqualified him from being president again.

    He has echoed that belief in subsequent appearances, and did so again Saturday in North Carolina.

    “Anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” Pence said in his remarks. Republicans at the Sheraton ballroom in Greensboro offered polite applause as Pence explained his actions on Jan. 6, when he refused Trump’s demands.

    Melissa Crespo, a delegate from the Lincoln County party committee, said she absolutely could not support Pence.

    “I feel like he should not run against Trump. I just feel like that’s disloyal,” she said. “He’s betraying the people who supported him as vice president.”

    Pence’s “First in Freedom” luncheon brought in 600 convention-goers, who paid $75 each to attend the fundraiser. His was one of three ticketed meals the party is holding. A dinner featuring fellow GOP hopeful Ron DeSantis attracted about 900 attendees who paid $150 a ticket, while a Saturday night dinner with Trump sold nearly 1,000 tickets at $150 each.

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  • Former Biden Chief Of Staff Says DOJ Needs To Be ‘Aggressive’ On Voting Rights, Abortion

    Former Biden Chief Of Staff Says DOJ Needs To Be ‘Aggressive’ On Voting Rights, Abortion

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    Former White House chief of staff Ron Klain said Sunday that he’d like to see the Justice Department be more “aggressive” in protecting voting and abortion rights ― comments that point to a behind-the-scenes divide between some of President Joe Biden’s top advisers and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

    Klain made his comments on “Inside with Jen Psaki,” an MSNBC show hosted by Biden’s former press secretary ― a not-so-subtle indication that Klain’s feelings are shared by others in Biden’s inner circle, even as the president has made clear he wants to avoid directly influencing the Justice Department.

    “I think that Judge Garland believes very much in the integrity of the Justice Department and institutional norms there,” Klain told Psaki. “And I think at a time when a lot of Americans, including me, would like to see the Justice Department get more aggressive in court, defending voting rights, defending reproductive rights ― that more cautious, measured approach seems just not aggressive enough, given the threats that our rights face.”

    Some high-ranking Democrats have long privately viewed Garland as too cautious and apolitical to do battle with a right-wing judiciary and an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party, but they’ve largely kept their criticisms quiet because of Biden’s desire to protect DOJ’s integrity. Many had preferred former Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) for the role when Biden was first filling his Cabinet spots.

    When Psaki asked what steps Garland should take, Klain said the department should be looking for voter intimidation cases to prosecute, and should more aggressively target state-level laws limiting travel to get abortions.

    “I think they should look for opportunities to go to court and make it clear that voter intimidation is wrong,” he said. “And that some of these efforts in these states to limit women’s rights to travel, get information, get the medical care they need, is contrary to our laws and contrary to the broader principles of our Constitution.”

    However, Klain declined to weigh in on the pace of investigations into former President Donald Trump, which were under Garland’s control until the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith shortly after the midterm elections in November.

    Anthony Coley, a former top spokesperson for Garland, fired back at Klain on Twitter, calling his comments “a cheap shot inconsistent w/the facts” and noting that the Justice Department successfully sued Idaho to block part of the state’s near-total ban on abortion.

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  • Roma man stashes $33M in marijuana, escapes drug house – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

    Roma man stashes $33M in marijuana, escapes drug house – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

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    ROMA, Texas (ValleyCentral) — A Roma man pleaded guilty to possessing over 5,000 pounds of marijuana in a drug house, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced.

    Adan Ontiveros Jr., 34, is accused of drug trafficking after trying to escape a drug house in Roma.

    In a press release from the Southern District of Texas U.S. Attorney’s Office, the suspected drug house was monitored by authorities for suspicious activity.

    On July 16, 2020, authorities observed Ontiveros attempting to escape the drug house through an attic vent.

    Police quickly arrested Ontiveros and conducted a search inside the drug house. Authorities found 5,460 pounds of marijuana valued at more than $33 million.

    Ontiveros admitted he was aware there was marijuana in the stash house, the press release said. He is being charged with conspiring to possess with the intent to distribute [5,460 pounds of marijuana].

    Original Author Link click here to read complete story..

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    MMP News Author

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  • Justice Department Files Immediate Appeal To Abortion Pill Ruling

    Justice Department Files Immediate Appeal To Abortion Pill Ruling

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    The Department of Justice filed an immediate appeal following a Texas federal judge’s shocking decision Friday to pull the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortion.

    The Justice Department appealed directly to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Friday night, only a few hours after the initial ruling.

    U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that the DOJ “strongly disagrees with the decision” and “will be appealing the court’s decision and seeking a stay pending appeal.”

    “Today’s decision overturns the FDA’s expert judgment, rendered over two decades ago, that mifepristone is safe and effective,” Garland wrote. “The Department will continue to defend the FDA’s decision.”

    U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that the FDA’s approval of mifepristone was unlawful when the drug first went to market in 2000. Kacsmaryk stated in his decision that the FDA “manipulated and misconstrued” certain parts of the drug approval process in order “to greenlight elective chemical abortions on a wide scale.”

    The decision does not take effect for seven days, allowing the DOJ’s appeal to play out.

    Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group, filed the suit in November in a federal court in Amarillo, Texas, arguing that the FDA went beyond its authority 22 years ago and fast-tracked the approval of mifepristone. But medication abortion, the combination of mifepristone and another drug called misoprostol, has a highly safe and effective track record in the 20-plus years it’s been FDA-approved. Medication abortion accounts for nearly 60% of all abortion and miscarriage care in the U.S.

    A federal judge in Washington state issued a competing ruling also on Friday, which blocks the FDA from pulling mifepristone approval in 17 states and the District of Columbia. The dueling decisions will likely force the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in quickly, legal scholars speculated.

    Garland said in his Friday night statement that the DOJ is also reviewing the Washington state judge’s decision.

    Although there is much confusion around the Texas judge’s ruling and what will happen next, it’s safe to say this is a staggering blow to abortion rights around the country.

    Vice President Kamala Harris said in a Friday night statement that the ruling is an “unprecedented decision.”

    “Simply put: this decision undermines the FDA’s ability to approve safe and effective medications ― from chemotherapy drugs, to asthma medicine, to blood pressure pills, to insulin ― based on science, not politics,” she wrote.

    “Each person in our nation should have the right to access safe and effective medication which has been approved by the FDA. In the face of attacks on a woman’s right to access an abortion, our Administration will continue to fight to protect reproductive freedom and the ability of all Americans to make health care decisions with their doctors free from political interference.”

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  • MSNBC Analyst Predicts Trump Will Seek Desperate Measures If Hit With Indictment

    MSNBC Analyst Predicts Trump Will Seek Desperate Measures If Hit With Indictment

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    MSNBC legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner said he believes former President Donald Trump will throw “his own family members” under the bus if he’s hit with an indictment.

    Kirschner, who spoke with Dean Obeidallah for his SiriusXM show on Friday, weighed in on the former president’s possible course of action as the two discussed Trump lawyer M. Evan Corcoran, who reportedly appeared before a federal grand jury investigating his mishandling of classified documents.

    Corcoran, who communicated with federal officials as they looked for the return of documents and drafted a statement that all documents were turned over, has reportedly lawyered up amid the probe, according to Reuters.

    A Department of Justice filing noted that the FBI uncovered over 100 classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate months after the drafted statement.

    Kirschner told Obeidallah that Trump has typically burned everyone who comes within an “arm’s reach of him.”

    “That’s true of his Cabinet officials when he was president. It’s true of his lawyers who end up being disbarred and potentially prosecuted,” Kirschner said.

    The former federal prosecutor said it’s difficult to understand why people would compromise themselves for Trump; however, he added that there’s a “beauty” to it.

    “Once Donald Trump gets indicted –- and he will be indicted –- he will throw every single person under the bus, including his own family members, if it will reduce his prison term by just one day or one hour,” Kirschner said.

    “So hold on tight because that’s coming.”

    Kirschner has previously predicted that the former president will be indicted for his role in the Jan. 6 attack and, in an interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid last month, criticized the Justice Department’s response to the deadly riot.

    “I still believe he will [be indicted] and I still believe he must if we are to save our democracy. We’ve all heard the phrase ‘justice delayed is justice denied,’ justice has been delayed, I hope it’s not entirely denied,” Kirschner said.

    “But during the two year period, what message has the Department of Justice sent to the next wannabe dictator who might try to overthrow our government? ‘You know what, when you do it, we’re going to give you a full two years to figure out what your next move is.’ Boy, that is the opposite of promptly deterring criminal conduct.”

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  • Trump Team Has Turned Over Items Marked As Classified: Source

    Trump Team Has Turned Over Items Marked As Classified: Source

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump have in recent months voluntarily turned over to federal investigators additional papers marked as classified, as well as a laptop belonging to a Trump aide, a person familiar with the situation said Friday night.

    The legal team also provided an empty folder with classified markings, according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press to discuss an ongoing investigation. It was not immediately clear what material was supposed to have been in the folder.

    A Justice Department special counsel has been investigating the retention by Trump of hundreds of documents marked as classified at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. FBI agents who served a search warrant at the property in August recovered roughly 100 classified documents, including records classified at the top-secret level.

    A federal grand jury has been hearing evidence in the case for months. Prosecutors are investigating whether Trump willfully hoarded the material and whether he or anyone else sought to obstruct their probe, court filings show.

    ABC News first reported the discovery of the additional documents.

    The person familiar with the matter said a handful of pages with classified markings were found during a search weeks ago at the Mar-a-Lago complex that was supervised by the Trump legal team, and were promptly provided to the Justice Department. The documents were found in a box containing thousands of pages, the person said. The Trump legal team had enlisted investigators to search for any other classified documents that had not yet been recovered by the government.

    Separately on Friday, the FBI searched the Indiana home of former Vice President Mike Pence and found an additional document with classified markings, following the discovery by his lawyers last month of sensitive documents. FBI officials have also searched the Delaware homes of President Joe Biden after his lawyers found documents with classified markings at his former office in Washington and at his Wilmington property.

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  • U.S. Department Of Justice Shuts Down Crypto Exchange Bitzlato, CEO Arrested

    U.S. Department Of Justice Shuts Down Crypto Exchange Bitzlato, CEO Arrested

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    The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced the closure of the Bitzlato cryptocurrency exchange, along with the FBI’s arrest of the exchange’s owner, Anatoly Legkodymov. In a live stream hosted on January 18, representatives from the law enforcement bureau revealed that the Hong Kong-based exchange was allegedly a part of a large illicit cryptocurrency network designed to circumvent sanctions, launder money and conceal crimes. 

    “Legkodymov operated Bitzlato as a high-tech financial hub that, in his own words, catered to ‘known crooks,’” the DOJ statement reads. “Bitzlato failed to implement safeguards required by U.S. law – safeguards that enable authorities to detect and investigate financial crimes.”

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  • U.S. Justice Department Split Over Decision To Charge Binance In Criminal Investigation

    U.S. Justice Department Split Over Decision To Charge Binance In Criminal Investigation

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    • A Reuters report stated that several sources close to the investigation claim there is deliberation on whether to not to file charges against individual Binance executives including CEO Changpeng Zhao.
    • Others within the investigating entities, which include the Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section (MLARS), have argued in favor of reviewing more evidence.
    • The investigation, which was launched nearly two years ago, comes at a precarious time for the industry as it reels from the collapse of FTX.

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  • Biden Administration Approves Loan Relief Applicants Amid Pending Program Appeal

    Biden Administration Approves Loan Relief Applicants Amid Pending Program Appeal

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    The Biden administration started contacting students who have been approved for student loan debt relief, CNN reported on Saturday. The move comes on the heels of the administration’s request for the Supreme Court to lift the nationwide injunction on the loan relief program.

    According to emails acquired by CNN, Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona sent emails on Saturday to those who have been approved for loan debt relief. The administration’s student loan debt relief program has been facing numerous legal challenges since its launch last month, which Cardona addressed in the emails.

    “Unfortunately, a number of lawsuits have been filed challenging the program, which have blocked our ability to discharge your debt at present. We believe strongly that the lawsuits are meritless, and the Department of Justice has appealed on our behalf,” Cardona said in the emails to students approved for the loan relief, CNN reported.

    The highly-anticipated student loan forgiveness program offers $10,000 of federal student debt cancellations to qualified loan borrowers. But the government stopped accepting applications on Nov. 10 after a Texas federal judge struck down the plan, deeming it “unconstitutional.”

    “We believe strongly that the Biden-Harris Student Debt Relief Plan is lawful and necessary to give borrowers and working families breathing room as they recover from the pandemic and to ensure they succeed when repayment restarts,” Cardona said in a recent press release.

    According to the Associated Press, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a nationwide injunction of the plan earlier this week after six Republican-led states challenged the plan. The Department of Justice filed a request on behalf of the Biden administration on Friday asking the Supreme Court to lift the hold on the plan while the legal proceedings play out.

    “The Eighth Circuit’s erroneous injunction leaves millions of economically vulnerable borrowers in limbo, uncertain about the size of their debt and unable to make financial decisions with an accurate understanding of their future repayment obligations,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said in the request sent to the court.

    Prelogar urged the court to accept the appeal, warning that a continuous hold on the program could cause borrowers’ uncertainty to extend into the next two years.

    Data shows that 43.4 million people face student loan debt. According to the Department of Education, 26 million people have submitted applications for Biden’s loan forgiveness program. In August, Biden announced the plan, which fulfilled a promise he made during his presidential campaign.

    The plan incited praise from thousands of people following its launch in October. But in the months leading up to the launch, criticism also ensued from Republicans who labeled the plan to be an unfair handout.

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  • DOJ Charges Chinese Intelligence Officers Over Attempt To Thwart Investigation

    DOJ Charges Chinese Intelligence Officers Over Attempt To Thwart Investigation

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    The U.S. Department of Justice charged two Chinese intelligence officials with obstruction of justice on Monday, accusing them of attempting to steal files and other information relating to a U.S. investigation into a Chinese telecommunications company.

    The two officials ― Guochun He, who also goes by “Dong He” and “Jacky He,” and Zheng Wang, also known as “Zen Wang” ― remain at large.

    This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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