Attention to the Unseen

The former deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, writes: The imperative of Justice Department independence from political influence has deep roots. After the Watergate scandal, Attorney General Griffin Bell sought to reestablish Justice’s independence and ensure that the department would be “recognized by all citizens as a neutral zone, in which neither favor nor pressure nor politics is permitted to influence the administration of the law.” The nation had lost faith in the Justice Department and the rule of law, so…

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The New York Times reports: Attorney General William P. Barr has assigned an outside prosecutor to scrutinize the criminal case against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, according to people familiar with the matter. The review is highly unusual and could trigger more accusations of political interference by top Justice Department officials into the work of career prosecutors. Mr. Barr has also installed a handful of outside prosecutors to broadly review the handling of other politically sensitive…

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The Daily Beast reports: Something strange happened in mid-December involving Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch. Late last year, the U.S. government signaled that it was about to level a new round of sanctions targeting people and entities linked to Deripaska, according to two Western officials with knowledge of the communication. Back in April 2018, the U.S. sanctioned the oligarch, who once lent millions of dollars to convicted Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort as part of a decades-long relationship between the…

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Aaron Blake writes: Attorney General William P. Barr offered his first public comments Thursday after a controversy erupted at the Justice Department this week. And while he offered a significant rebuke of President Trump, Barr’s comments seem as much geared toward creating a veneer of independence as addressing the root of the controversy. Barr told ABC News that Trump’s tweets about ongoing criminal matters — in this case, Roger Stone’s — “make it impossible for me to do my job.”…

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The Washington Post reports: First he went after the prosecutors who recommended a multiyear sentence for his friend Roger Stone. Then President Trump turned his Twitter ire to the “witch hunt disgrace” of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, which led to Stone’s indictment. But perhaps most surprising was Trump’s decision to target U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson — who will determine Stone’s fate when he appears in her courtroom next Thursday. It was not the first time…

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Joyce White Vance writes: Among the Founding Fathers’ chief goals was to do away with a government where the king was above the law and had absolute power over the lives of his subjects. In our system, the President, like every other citizen, is meant to be subject to the law. The Founding Fathers were explicit about that intention when they debated the shape the new government they were creating would take. And that quintessentially American view that no man…

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Kimberly Wehle writes: President Donald Trump has defanged Congress’ oversight authority. That became clear when the Senate acquitted the president of obstruction. But one conservative judge isn’t willing to let the executive branch steal power from his branch of government. In a jaw-dropping opinion issued by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago on January 23, Judge Frank Easterbrook—a longtime speaker for the conservative Federalist Society and someone whom the late Justice Antonin Scalia favored to replace him…

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Jonathan Chait writes: Two days after Senate Republicans acquitted President Trump on both counts of impeachment, the Trump administration fired a number of national-security officials: European Union ambassador Gordon Sondland and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council staffer, for voluntarily testifying before the House, as well as the latter’s twin brother, Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny Vindman, for being related to Alexander. Now, the “Friday Night Massacre” is extending into this week. The New York Post reports that the administration…

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CNBC reports: Three federal prosecutors in the criminal case against Republican operative Roger Stone dramatically quit the case Tuesday shortly after the Department of Justice said it will force prosecutors to cut their recommendation that the longtime ally of President Donald Trump serve as long as nine years in prison. Jonathan Kravis, who delivered the closing argument at Stone’s trial last fall, resigned as an assistant U.S. Attorney, according to a court filing Tuesday in Washington, D.C., federal court. Kravis,…

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Judge Andrew P. Napolitano writes: The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump ended not with a bang but a whimper. What different outcome could one expect from a trial without so much as a single witness, a single document, any cross-examination or a defendant respectful enough to show up? Law students are taught early on that a trial is not a grudge match or an ordeal; it is a search for the truth. Trial lawyers know that cross-examination is the…

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Noah Feldman writes: As Republicans scramble to argue that they don’t need to call witnesses in President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, one argument seems to be gaining traction: that witnesses are irrelevant, because even if Trump did everything he’s accused of doing, abuse of power is not an impeachable offense. This argument isn’t merely wrong. It is the single most dangerous argument that any of Trump’s defenders have made during the entire impeachment process. If abuse of power isn’t…

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Reuters reports: The U.S. Supreme Court gave the go-ahead on Monday for one of President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies, allowing his administration to implement a rule denying legal permanent residency to certain immigrants deemed likely to require government assistance in the future. The justices, on a 5-4 vote, granted the administration’s request to lift a lower court’s injunction that had blocked the so-called public charge policy while litigation over its legality continues. The rule has been criticized by immigrant…

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Just Security reports: All relevant judicial precedents make clear that Bolton should not be able to invoke executive privilege to avoid testifying in the Senate impeachment trial. As a threshold matter, there is no precedent for the president invoking executive privilege to preclude the private testimony of a witness who is able and willing to testify. Bolton is a private citizen who is no longer a member of the executive branch. He has already indicated his willingness to testify, and…

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Neal K. Katyal, Joshua A. Geltzer and Mickey Edwards write: An overwhelming number of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, believe the Senate should hear from relevant witnesses and obtain documents during President Trump’s impeachment trial. Striking new revelations about the president’s role in the Ukraine affair, as reported from an unpublished manuscript by John Bolton, underscore the need for his testimony and that of others. Yet Republican members of the Senate have signaled that they intend to uphold Mr….

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Maya Wiley writes: The Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump has begun. Senators now face the monumental question of whether to remove the president from office—and yet, something bigger is at stake here. The Constitution’s fundamental design is on trial too. This is clear from the articles of impeachment themselves. Start with the first article, which charges that the president abused his power by holding support for an ally foreign government hostage to better his chances at reelection, rather…

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BuzzFeed reports: The country’s top intelligence official has failed to turn over to Congress a report on the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, sources said, flouting a law passed last month. In December, lawmakers passed a sweeping defense bill that included a provision ordering the director of national intelligence to send Congress an unclassified report identifying those responsible for Khashoggi’s death at a Saudi Arabian consulate in 2018. The legislation set the deadline for the report at 30…

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