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Saying Trump Issues 'An Invitation To Corruption,' Schiff Promises Hearings

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA.) outlined how meticulously President Donald Trump has cultivated the potential for corruption in and around the Oval Office.

“There is a culture of impunity in the White House,” Schiff told MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace on Thursday. “They basically have defanged the justice department of any meaningful oversight by installing (Trump’s) criminal defense lawyers to run that department. They fired the truly independent inspector generals. They've done away with all the safeguards. So, in that environment, you have these people of very dubious morals who are essentially told 'there's no one watching. You can do whatever you want. No one's going to hold you accountable.' An invitation to corruption.

Trump appointed his legal defense lawyer Todd Blanche, from his hush money criminal trial, to serve as the second-highest ranking Justice Department official. In March, he also fired at least 20 leaders of federal offices created by Congress to hold administrations accountable.

Schiff also warned that, unlike past administration, the modern Republican Party is beholden to Trump. All but five Republicans voted in favor of an effort to dismiss Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial for “incitement of insurrection” a mere 20 days after Trump led the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol siege.

“Republicans didn't want to investigate Russia’s interference in our election. They didn't want to investigate the president's effort to extort [Ukranian President Volodymyr] Zelensky into helping him in the next election.”

Instead, it fell to Democrats to conduct investigations as a minority, and Schiff said that’s how it will go again this year.

“[T] his is what we're going to have to do now,” Schiff said. “We're likewise seeing people step forward. I did a hearing a few days ago with Rep. Jamie Raskin, where we had witnesses who both quit or were fired at the Justice Department because they saw corrupt things going on that they would not participate in, and I think that hearing was powerful. We need to do a lot more of that.”

“We're not without our tools, even in the minority,” he added.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Emergency! Supreme Court Avoids Catastrophe -- For Now

Supreme Court twice in one day gives the Administration emergency assistance, but the bottom line might be palatable.

There's a lot to try to figure out about the U.S. Supreme Court’s intervention in favor of the Trump administration in two different high-profile cases today. In brief, there's a lot to like, a lot to fear, and a lot of uncertainty that will only be clarified in the weeks ahead.

Let’s start with the Supreme Court’s 5-4 per curiam opinion in Trump v. J.G.G., vacating the temporary restraining orders that Chief Judge Jeb Boasberg had entered in the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) case.

The most important aspect of the opinion was heartening, and dodged a cannonball: the Court made clear that review is available to test the identity of the deportee and the Administration’s (wacky) interpretation of the AEA.

That headline aside, which would have been stunning if the Court had gone the other way, I think the opinion was overall disappointing for a few reasons.

First, it provided a vivid reminder of the razor-thin margin on which our democracy may stand or fall. Notwithstanding some shifting alliances in the U.S. Supreme Court, the ultimate repudiation of Trump at the critical moment will likely depend on the decision of Chief Justice Roberts, who cast the fifth vote to provide the government emergency relief Monday evening. I've explained before my reasons for thinking that Roberts is essentially two different judges—the pro-Republican judge and the pro-Supreme Court judge—depending on how he sees the case. Today’s pivotal vote for the administration is something of a dry run for what could be a catastrophic and pivotal vote down the line.

Second, there was a certain sterility to the opinion that gave no indication of the bedrock gravity of the case, in which the administration has spirited away hundreds of Venezuelan nationals, at least one in error, under a very tenuous interpretation of the AEA. The reasoning is wholly procedural and the prose is wholly bureaucratic, as if the Court were interpreting some obscure federal regulation. In other words, there was not even a recognition of the overall stakes of the case and its integral relationship to a series of executive orders that have not simply aggrandized the president but also victimized countless residents.

The contrast was stark, with the dissenting opinions from both Justice Sotomayor (with whom Justices Kagan, Jackson, and, yes, Barrett joined as to the most important portions) and Justice Jackson. Sotomayor highlighted the harrowing facts and the fundamental issues of justice, and even decency, that they present. She takes the majority to task for not even mentioning “the grave harm Plaintiffs will face if they are erroneously removed to El Salvador.” And she further chastises the Court for “reward[ing] the Government's efforts to erode the rule of law.” Her opinion is about five times as long as the per curiam’s bland recitation.

Justice Jackson joined Sotomayor’s dissent in full and adds her own pointed criticisms of the ultimate horror latent in the case: “The President of the United States has invoked a centuries-old wartime statute to whisk people away to a notoriously brutal, foreign-run prison. For lovers of liberty, this should be quite concerning.”

For the second time in recent days, Jackson questioned the Court’s willingness to hop to when the Administration cries “emergency.” The emergency setting necessarily entails less consideration and thought; moreover, Jackson writes, when the Court deviates from the normal process of full briefing followed by oral argument and internal deliberation, “the risk of error always substantially increases.”

This suspicion of emergency process has become a strong fault line in the Court. Kagan too has written about it of late. But so far, the five men on the Court (the 5-4 decision broke down by gender) have expressed no concern.

Third, the Court pulled the rug out from under Boasberg, whom it knows very well from the record and the media. Boasberg has exhibited patience and prudence in confronting a series of callous, evasive, and misleading claims from the government. The decision can't help but be taken as at least a soft vote of no confidence in a judge who more than deserves the higher courts to have his back. (The D.C. Circuit, in fact, did provide a strong shot in the arm to Boasberg when it denied the government’s motion to stay the orders.)

Fourth, as both dissents document, the Court has become way too promiscuous in its use of emergency procedures—as the Administration continually urges and abuses—to determine important questions that it easily could have addressed after full briefing, oral argument, and intra-court deliberation. Here, Boasberg’s TRO was due to expire in a few days. There is no persuasive reason the Court couldn’t have waited for his ruling and considered the issue in the normal course.

Finally, while the per curiam in no way forces Boasberg to stand down on his separate, and totally righteous, effort to get to the bottom of whether the Administration knowingly violated his orders in the initial hearing on March 15, the reversal could well take the wind out of his sails and arm the Administration with additional arguments for resistance (additional, that is, to the series of inconsistent and fatuous arguments it has offered thus far—most recently the State Secrets Privilege, which it then had to back away from).

ON THE OTHER HAND, as I say, the most important feature of the opinion is that all nine members of the Supreme Court agreed that deportees have a right to notice from the Administration and an opportunity to bring a habeas corpus action to contest the attempted deportation. More, a fair reading of the opinion suggests they agree that the challenges can encompass not simply a claim that the government got the wrong guy—the claimant isn’t part of Tren de Aragua—but also Trump’s far-fetched attempt to apply the AEA, which requires at a minimum a predatory incursion by a foreign country, to the few hundred gang members supposedly loose in the country.

That portends an emphatic rejection of the Administration’s most brazen and dangerous position: that Trump’s judgment as to what falls within the AEA is unreviewable. Any fair reading of the AEA should strike this interpretation down and invalidate Trump’s entire misadventure with the wartime statute. Had the Court gone the other way here, it would have been a giant lift for Trump in his efforts to use the pretext of national security to work his will in manifold ways across government and civil society. So that’s a huge collective sigh of relief.

But it raises another potential rub with the opinion. Habeas corpus petitions have to be brought in the district where the petitioner is in custody. Recall that the United States rounded up all the 200+ Venezuelan nationals and transported them to Harlingen, Texas, before the planes took off for El Salvador and the notorious CECOT Prison. If, going forward, the government can repeat the same maneuver, it will consign the deportees to bringing habeas actions in the Southern District of Texas and, even worse, appeals in the Fifth Circuit—the court of appeals that is even more conservatively extreme than the Supreme Court.

As I see it, there's an argument that the government has to provide notice, and therefore an opportunity for a habeas action, before it rounds up any deportees and whisks them away to Harlingen. That would mean that habeas actions would be brought all over the country. But that remains an unresolved issue, and the Administration will surely argue it can first assemble the potential deportees in its preferred venue of Harlingen, 30 miles from the Gulf of Mexico.

Better yet would be if the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia proceeds first in the District of Maryland before Judge Paula Xinis. Xinis is almost certain to rule correctly and be affirmed by the court of appeals.

This was the second case in which the Supreme Court, or more precisely Roberts again, parachuted in on Monday to do the Trump Administration a solid. Xinis had ruled that the government had to work to return Abrego Garcia to the United States by Monday evening. In a posture as ugly as it is untenable, the government, which concedes it “disappeared” him in error, has been contending that there is no power to bring him back.

And as with the Boasberg case, the court of appeals rebuffed the Administration’s plea for emergency relief. The vote was unanimous, including from a highly respected conservative judge, J. Harvie Wilkinson.

This error from the Administration has been a primer in different sorts of stays from the Supreme Court. This one is the most benign: it’s an “administrative” stay that Roberts entered to permit the Court as a whole to consider the argument for emergency relief.

It does get the Administration off the hook for producing Abrego Garcia by yesterday at midnight, and one senses that they had taken no steps in that direction notwithstanding the Xinis order. In that respect, Roberts spared them distinct embarrassment and a likely scolding by Xinis.

If the Court, likely by the same 5-4 vote, permits the Administration to just walk away from the ultimate constitutional nightmare for which it is solely responsible, that would be an abomination matched only by the notorious immunity decision. It also would be a harbinger of more opinions to come green-lighting Trump’s authoritarian agenda. And it would give credence to the worst suspicions raised by the J.G.G. opinion.

But we're not there yet. I see it as likely that the Court, in any event, will trim back on Xinis’s order and permit the Administration to comply at something like “all deliberate speed.” But notwithstanding that all hope seems to rest on the thin and fragile reed of the Chief Justice—a distressing state of affairs in and of itself—I can’t fathom that he will countenance the Administration’s cynical effort to perpetrate an ultimate injustice.

Reprinted with permission from Talking Feds

Harry Litman is a former United States Attorney and the executive producer and host of theTalking Feds podcast. He has taught law at UCLA, Berkeley, and Georgetown and served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton Administration. Please consider subscribing toTalking Feds on Substack.

Reprinted with permission from Substack.

The Unlawful And The Awful: DOJ Is Decaying Under Pam Bondi And Ed Martin

The Department of Justice is now awash in the corrupt abuse of federal prosecutorial power.

In just a matter of weeks, the newly installed Trump appointees have repeatedly undertaken conduct that violates the core principles of justice that have driven the department’s mission throughout our lifetimes. Their most ardent goal is to humiliate and exact retribution against the career professionals who worked the prosecutions of either Donald Trump or the January 6 insurrectionists. Separately, they have harnessed department power as a tool for hounding Democrats and advancing Trump’s political interests.

Simply put, they are ruining the place. And they are destroying the morale and sense of mission that have been the chief reward for the public servants who have proudly served there for decades.

The episode involving the dismissal of charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams for wholly improper reasons, which prompted a wave of resignations of some of the department’s best and most qualified prosecutors, was the canary in the coal mine. The DOJ is the mine itself, and much of it is now suffocating, even as the country’s attention is captivated by other domestic and international outrages.

As it turns out, the Adams case, which is still unresolved, was prelude to a series of less well-publicized abuses.

1. The EPA contract investigation

Even more grave than dismissing a case that is amply supported on the facts, as in Adams, is initiating one with no predication. Interim D.C. US Attorney Ed Martin, Jr. has persisted in a campaign to launch an apparently baseless criminal investigation into the Biden Administration’s award of a substantial contract with the EPA. The demands prompted the resignation (at the insistence of acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove) of a 24-year veteran and top supervisor in the Washington D.C. office, Denise Cheung. As Cheung wrote in her resignation letter, both she and a series of white-collar colleagues in the office concluded that there was not adequate predication under DOJ guidelines to open a criminal investigation.

“I took an oath of office to support and defend the Constitution, and I have executed this duty faithfully during my tenure, which has spanned through numerous Administrations,” Cheung wrote.

Martin’s response to Cheung’s forced departure, and the unanimous assessment of his senior prosecutorial staff that there was no predication to pursue a criminal investigation, were astonishing.

Martin personally submitted a search warrant application. The magistrate judge rejected the request, agreeing with Cheung and her colleagues that the application failed to establish a reasonable belief that a crime occurred. That happens basically… never. I can’t recall a single instance when it happened in a US Attorney’s office where I was serving.

Did I mention that Martin has exactly zero federal prosecutorial experience, the first appointee to that post in over 50 years without having been a prosecutor or judge? His background is as a Republican political operative in Missouri, and his main credential that brought him to Trump’s attention was his involvement on Trump’s behalf in the “Stop the Steal” efforts.

Even after the magistrate rebuffed Martin, he and Bove still forged ahead. Bove’s office approached at least one other US Attorney’s office to launch the grand jury investigation and seek a court-ordered bank freeze, but prosecutors in that office wouldn’t do it.

It now appears possible that Martin and Bove have found a path forward. Several groups that had been awarded money through the EPA contract said the bank has frozen their accounts and won't tell them why. If so, it's no vindication of the lawless campaign. Probable cause is not a casino game where you keep pulling the lever until you get the result you want. It's a factual legal predicate, and all indications are it is lacking here. In that instance, the ethical prosecutor stops.

In fact, it's ironic that a spokesperson for the department took a swipe at Cheung on her way out the door, saying that failing to follow orders “is not an act of heroism.” That's exactly what it is when the orders are to violate the Constitution. As a Supreme Court famously put it, the interest of the United States attorney in a criminal case “is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.” Cheung’s adherence to that maxim was in the best traditions of the Department of Justice. It was Bove’s and Martin's indifference to it that was dishonorable.

2. “Operation Whirlwind”

Martin has announced an initiative, which he has dubbed "Operation Whirlwind,” to investigate and prosecute threats to public officials. Except, it turns out to be an initiative to harass Democratic members of Congress for sharp political rhetoric that does not fall within the boundaries of normal criminal prosecution.

Martin's two targets to date have been Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Robert Garcia. Garcia came into Martin's crosshairs for saying on CNN that Americans "want us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy.” Schumer, speaking at a pro-choice rally, called out Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and said, "you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."

Schumer's remarks were over the top, and he apologized for them. But one thing they weren’t was an actual physical threat to the justices, and Garcia’s even less. Under federal criminal law, the government would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Garcia and Schumer intended to communicate an actual physical threat that a reasonable person would perceive that way, as opposed to heated political rhetoric.

No professional US Attorney's office would greenlight such an investigation. It would be a rank violation of binding DOJ principles. For one, no reasonable jury would mistake Garcia and Schumer's political rhetoric as a genuine threat.

That's why Martin couldn't open an actual federal investigation. Instead, Martin bluffed: he sent a letter saying he personally had received an unspecified request for information and clarification, and insisting, with an essentially empty but unsubtle threat, on an explanation. “Your cooperation is more important than ever to complete this inquiry before any action is taken. I remind you: no one is above the law.” (Bold and underlining in original.)

That's not how investigation of federal crimes works. US Attorneys do not insist in public letters that the targets of investigation, much less members of a coordinate branch, explain themselves. In fact, there's a clear rule that they don't communicate with members of Congress at all except through the Office of Legislative Affairs. It was particularly unethical for Martin to imply that the DOJ would lower the boom if the members didn’t “cooperate.”

If Martin were serious about policing threatening language by members of Congress, here's some low hanging fruit:

During her 2020 campaign (so still within the statute of limitation for threats), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene shared a meme depicting herself holding a rifle next to images of Democratic Reps Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. The caption read, "Squad's worst nightmare."
In November 2020, Representative Paul Gosar posted an animated video depicting him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortex with swords and attacking President Biden.

Don't expect Martin to be demanding an explanation from Greene or Gosar anytime soon. They both have his good housekeeping seal of approval as certified election deniers and rabid Trump supporters.

3. January 6 demotions

Martin also was instrumental in the latest outrage, which came a few days ago, when he demoted several of the office's most senior and respected prosecutors. These are the career attorneys who handled the most significant January 6 cases, including the prosecutors who handled the contempt of Congress cases against Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, the leaders of the Proud Boys prosecution, and the leader of the Steward Rhodes prosecution.

These are the sorts of respected professionals that are the lifeline of a US Attorney’s office. They now have been relegated to the most junior duties—the duties of a newcomer—prosecuting local misdemeanor offenses. It is the equivalent of being ordered to scrub the bathrooms with a toothbrush.

As disgraceful as is each of these episodes, I end with the recent development I found most distressing, for what it said about the damage to the department’s most valuable asset—the integrity, pride, and motivation of its career staff—that Bondi & Co. have managed inflict on the Department of Justice in less than two months.

Last week, Joshua Stueve resigned his post as senior communications advisor at the DOJ. Stueve is the paradigm of the honorable public servant. He has spent the last 25 years in service to his country, 10 of them on active duty in the US Marines. For the last 15 years he's been a spokesman for agencies within the Department of Defense and Justice.

In his letter of resignation, Stueve notes "the extraordinary expertise, patriotism, selflessness and steadfast commitment to mission of public servants throughout the federal service.”

He emphasizes that his resignation has nothing to do with Trump's victory; on the contrary, he writes that it has been his honor to serve this department under multiple administrations led by both Republicans and Democrats. Until now. All previous administrations “treated career staff with respect and dignity. It is heartbreaking," he writes, " to see that basic decency come to an end.”

Stueve continues, “Simply put, I cannot continue to serve in such a hostile and toxic work environment, one where leadership at the highest levels makes clear we are not welcome or valued, much less trusted to do our jobs."

Simply put, but gut-wrenching. For anyone who has served in the Department of Justice, Stueve’s report shows that the department has been turned upside down, and its most valuable asset—the integrity and dedication of its career staff—is pouring out.

I’ve detailed in past dispatches the toxic arrivals of Trump's hand-picked senior officials for the Department of Justice, beginning with Attorney General Pam Bondi and her 14 day-one directives that were thick with distrust of department attorneys and accusations of weaponization.

Stueve’s resignation letter makes clear that Bondi’s initial fusillade of accusations and disrespect has only continued. Attorneys General of both parties have always held the Department’s 10,000+ attorneys in the highest regard and have made it a priority to defend them against unfair attacks. The new invaders, in stark contrast, are launching attacks from within, with ominous effects on department culture and morale. And we should never forget that the ultimate victims are the American people they signed on to serve.

The traditional independence of the federal prosecutorial function, combined with the Supreme Court’s infamous opinion on Presidential immunity, make citizen scrutiny a challenge. But we can credit and amplify the words and deeds of honorable Department professionals who have given up their jobs rather than violate their oaths—Danielle Sassoon, Hagan Scotten, Denise Cheung, Joshua Stueve. We can keep the heat and light on the serial abuses by Martin and push Senators to reject his nomination, which has yet to go through. And we can repeat, and repeat again, that the accusations of misconduct leveled by the Attorney General on down—the actual constitutional villains—are contemptible lies; and the truth will out.

Reprinted with permission from Talking Feds

Emboldened Neo-Nazi Terrorists 'Quickly Rebuilding' As Patel Takes Over FBI

The Base, a paramilitary neo-Nazi/white supremacist group founded in 2018, was a major target of the FBI and its former director, Christopher Wray, during Joe Biden's presidency. And in 2022, according to The Guardian's Ben Makuch, The Base "seemed to disappear" in the United States.

But Makuch, in an article published on February 24, warns that The Base appears to be "regrouping" in 2025.

"An international neo-Nazi terrorist group with origins in the U.S. appears to be quickly rebuilding its global and stateside ranks, according to information obtained by The Guardian from its digital accounts," Makuch reports. "Founded in 2018, The Base has been the intense focus of a years-long FBI counterterrorism investigation that has resulted in more than a dozen of its members arrested. It has plotted an assassination, mass shootings and other actions in Europe, which made it a proscribed terrorist organization in several countries."

The Base's "regrouping," according to Makuch, "comes at a time when the Trump Administration has made it a policy goal to move away from policing far-right extremism" and the FBI is now under the direction of Trump loyalist Kash Patel.

Makuch reports, "Experts say federal law enforcement ignoring far-right groups such as The Base could expose Americans to increased domestic terror threats…. A flurry of new images on The Base's various social media accounts, some closed and some open, show members claiming to be in the U.S. and across Europe brandishing pistols or military-style rifles and donning the trademark skull mask of the accelerationist neo-Nazi movement — one that demands acts of terrorism to bring down world governments. In one photo, a member is holding a knife and what appears to be a pistol in front of the Base flag in the United Kingdom, while others feature members in Bulgaria, Italy, Belgium and Sweden. "

Steven Rai of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) warns that The Base's activities in the U.S. need to be taken seriously.

Rai told The Guardian, "The Base has released a slow but steady trickle of propaganda over the past several months that has mostly highlighted their presence in Europe, so this shift in focus towards the U.S. should raise alarms. The timing of this shift is particularly noteworthy. While neo-Nazi accelerationist groups like The Base have been on their back foot due to intense law enforcement pressure, which disrupted their most integral organizers and propaganda artists, they may sense an opening with the recent change of administration in the U.S…. Violent extremists are absolutely paying attention to the changes in the national security establishment in the U.S."

Terrorism expert Colin Clarke, who serves as director of research at the Soufan Center, stresses that The Base are well-aware of changes in leadership at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

Clarke told The Guardian, "I think groups like The Base, far-right extremist groups that are strategic, have been waiting for the right opportunity before reinvigorating their respective organizations. This means that far-right extremist groups likely perceive the reelection of Trump as a green light to rebuild without fear of arrest or prosecution."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

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Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Saying Trump Issues 'An Invitation To Corruption,' Schiff Promises Hearings

Emergency! Supreme Court Avoids Catastrophe -- For Now

The Unlawful And The Awful: DOJ Is Decaying Under Pam Bondi And Ed Martin

1. The EPA contract investigation

2. “Operation Whirlwind”

3. January 6 demotions

Emboldened Neo-Nazi Terrorists 'Quickly Rebuilding' As Patel Takes Over FBI

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