House Republicans are demanding that the Department of Justice investigate New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office over a massive deal the governor struck between the state and one of her wealthy campaign donors.
Hochul’s office came under scrutiny earlier this month following the revelation that the governor organized a $637 million deal to buy COVID tests from a company owned by one of her largest campaign donors.
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Former President Donald Trump on Thursday scored a major win in the ongoing court battle pertaining to the FBI’s seizure of documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate in early August.
“There shall be no separate requirement on Plaintiff at this stage, prior to the review of any of the Seized Materials, to lodge ex ante final objections to the accuracy of Defendant’s Inventory, its descriptions, or its contents,” wrote U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in the Thursday ruling.
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To the surprise of no one paying attention, the Department of Justice recently acknowledged the use of several FBI informants in its investigation of the Oath Keepers, an alleged militia group tied to the events of January 6.
Prosecutors last week asked for a protective order to conceal from jurors information about confidential human sources (CHS) expected to testify during the seditious conspiracy trial of five members of the Oath Keepers; jury selection is now underway. Not only does the government want to prevent defense attorneys from asking personal questions that could reveal the informants’ identities but prosecutors don’t want the sources to publicly disclose any involvement in past or pending criminal investigations or details of “the FBI’s CHS program and the training and methods used by the FBI as part of their undercover operations.”
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A Pennsylvania pro-life activist has pleaded not guilty to federal charges alleging he used force to interfere with a reproductive health care provider, after a state court previously threw out the case.
In October 2021, Mark Houck “forcefully shoved” Planned Parenthood volunteer Bruce Love, 72, the Department of Justice alleges, according to Fox News. The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act bars the use of force to interfere with or coerce reproductive health providers. Houck on Tuesday pleaded not guilty on two counts.
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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.”
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A panel of three judges for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has allowed the Department of Justice to continue reviewing documents the FBI seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, upending part of an earlier ruling from the district court judge.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon earlier this month enjoined further federal review of the documents and appointed New York Judge Raymond Dearie as special master to independently review them.
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The Department of Justice’s tally of how many people died while in custody missed hundreds of deaths over the past couple of years, a 10-month U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations probe revealed.
The problems spanned many years over multiple administrations, and committee staffers said there is widespread blame for the oversight. The investigation found that changes to the methods for collecting the data and a transition of the agency within the Justice Department responsible for carrying out the act’s requirements led to the problems.
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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.”
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The Biden education department announced Thursday it was awarding more than $7 million in competitive grants to eight organizations that have worked to achieve what the department calls “the Biden-Harris Administration’s ongoing efforts to enhance and increase parent and family engagement in local education.”
Grants from the Statewide Family Engagement Centers (SFEC) program, the announcement states, “provide financial support to organizations that offer technical assistance and training to state educational agencies and school districts that effectively engage families over policies, programs, and activities that lead to improvements in student development and academic achievement.”
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With less than two months to go before the November midterms, the Biden Administration is refusing to release its plan to interfere in the 2022 midterms, even though a document exists at the Department of Justice (DOJ) detailing such a plan.
As reported by Breitbart, the 15-page document allegedly lays out a strategy for a “voter access” policy that will expand some of the questionable election practices that were implemented in the 2020 election. The administration reportedly plans to coordinate this rollout with several far-left groups.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A few days after federal agents stormed Donald Trump’s castle in Palm Beach last week, Judge Beryl Howell berated a man from Georgia for his involvement in the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021.
“Listening without question to political rhetoric that leads to serious offenses, criminal conduct, is not an excuse when you’re standing in a court of law,” Howell told Glen Simon, a Trump supporter who pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct on restricted grounds. “You’ve got to use your common sense and your own sense of who you are and how you’d like to conduct yourself as an American citizen before just blindly doing what a political figure says.”
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Former President Trump is calling for the full release of the affidavit submitted with the warrant allowing the FBI to raid his Mar-a-Lago estate – after the Justice Department asked the document to remain sealed.
“There is no way to justify the unannounced RAID of Mar-a-Lago, the home of the 45th President of the United States … by a very large number of gun toting FBI Agents, and the Department of ‘Justice’ but, in the interest of TRANSPARENCY, I call for the immediate release of the completely Unredacted Affidavit pertaining to this horrible and shocking BREAK-IN,” Trump wrote late Monday evening on his platform Truth Social.
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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.
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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.
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Nineteen attorneys general, led by Arizona AG Mark Brnovich, filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in a case the Biden administration is fighting after a federal judge in Texas ruled against it last month.
Texas and Louisiana sued over a Department of Homeland Security directive altering deportation policy.
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President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is forming a “Reproductive Rights Task Force” to monitor state and local abortion restrictions, the agency announced Tuesday.
The task force will track state and local legislation that restricts women’s ability to seek abortions or seeks to legally penalize medical workers who perform abortions in a manner consistent with federal law, according to the DOJ announcement. The unit will also collaborate with other federal agencies and take steps to secure and promote abortion access, “including proactive and defensive legal action where appropriate.”
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When Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the Indonesian island of Bali on Saturday, the FBI will likely be in the process of launching a new probe into Chinese espionage against the U.S. — if it hadn’t already done so earlier in the day.
That’s based on an estimate by FBI Director Christopher Wray, who on Wednesday said his agency opens counterintelligence investigations into China roughly every 12 hours.
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The Department of Justice invested almost $1.5 million of taxpayer dollars into a “transgender programming curriculum” focused on transgender inmates’ needs.
The curriculum is designed to help transgender inmates with their gender “identity,” sexual health and safety, according to a summary of the government contract. Though it’s unclear if the curriculum has been implemented, the program could be available for up to 1,200 transgender inmates, according to Justice Department estimates.
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A former U.S. Army helicopter pilot admitted to serving as a paid agent of the Chinese government, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday.
Shapour Moinian pleaded guilty to making false statements during security background checks and also admitted to accepting payment in exchange for passing aviation secrets obtained from his defense contractor employer to Chinese agents, the DOJ announcement stated. Moinian now faces 15 years in prison and a fine up to $500,000 for his crimes at his August 29 sentencing.
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The Biden Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) announced its plans to spend at least $1 million on a new center for so-called “two-spirit” youth, as part of its broader commitments to the LGBTQ agenda during “pride month.”
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In a pre-dawn raid Wednesday, armed federal law enforcement agents searched the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former Trump Justice Department official who has emerged as a central figure in the partisan House Select Committee’s investigation into the January 6 riot.
Clark’s name was expected to come up in the Jan. 6 Committee hearing on Thursday.
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A statement that appears to be from the violent pro-abortion group Jane’s Revenge was posted online Tuesday, saying “the leash is off” for attacks on pro-life operations and declaring violence until pro-life groups shut down.
The statement was posted to Abolition Media, an “online news source for revolutionary movements,” and promised violent attacks on pro-life organizations such as crisis pregnancy centers.
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The Alliance for Free Citizens, a education-focused advocacy group, denounced a reported plan by President Joe Biden’s Department of Education to create the “National Parents and Families Engagement Council.”
According to a report from Fox News, the new organization will work to improve the relationship between parents and schools.
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Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) is one of 16 Republican senators who joined in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland Tuesday that calls for federal law enforcement to investigate acts of violence against organizations working to protect the unborn and to prevent future acts.
The letter follows one written by Johnson in May to Garland, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, in which the senator asked the federal officials why the violent attack on the Wisconsin Family Action office in Madison has not been identified as an act of “domestic terrorism.”
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The Elijah Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, D.C. is center stage this month to two competing tales of stolen presidential elections.
In the courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper, federal prosecutors have presented a detailed account of the greatest scandal in U.S. political history: the conspiracy of the country’s most powerful interests to fabricate the Trump-Russia collusion hoax in order to sabotage Donald Trump before the 2016 election.
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On Thursday, two of Joe Biden’s Cabinet members announced plans to create a new division within the Department of Justice that will focus on fighting for “environmental justice.”
As reported by Fox News, the joint announcement was made by Attorney General Merrick Garland and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan. The new Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ) will serve as a “central hub” for a “comprehensive environmental justice enforcement strategy,” and will soon lay out a “series of actions” that will be taken in order to ostensibly “secure environmental justice for all Americans.”
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A federal grand jury found a professor at a public university guilty on espionage charges Wednesday, according to court records.
The jury found Mingqing Xiao, a math professor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC), guilty on four counts related to filing false tax statements, according to records from The Southern District of Illinois United States District Court.
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After losing in court and receiving a nationwide injunction against the institution of the mask mandate, the Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had a decision to make: accept the court’s decision and move on to other means to combat Covid-19 without resorting to mask mandates; try to start from scratch and put a mask mandate rule in place that might conform better with statutory requirements; or appeal the case.
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The Biden administration released documents Thursday that endorse children and adolescents with claims of gender dysphoria to experience “gender-affirming care,” including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and body-mutilating transgender surgeries, including elective double mastectomies and castrations.
Biden appeared in a video endorsing transgender treatments and surgeries for children.
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Fourteen Republican attorneys general, led by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, have sued the Biden administration for not responding to a Freedom of Information request related to the Department of Justice calling for surveillance of parents expressing opinions at school board meetings and other forums.
The lawsuit follows a chain of events that began last October.
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Bipartisan members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday requesting an investigation into Amazon for alleged criminal obstruction of the committee’s probe into the tech giant.
The letter, sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland, alleged Amazon misled committee members and engaged in “potentially criminal conduct” during a 15-month investigation into competition in digital markets. The letter was signed by House Judiciary Committee Chair Democratic New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, Democratic Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline, Republican Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, Democratic Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal and Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz.
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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.
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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.
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At least eight of Joe Biden’s nominations for the Department of Justice have been placed on hold by Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), due to the Department’s failure to answer Cotton’s questions about its inaction over the Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots of 2020.
As reported by Fox News, Cotton’s criticisms have focused specifically on the DOJ’s failure to properly defend a federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, which ended up under siege by far-left domestic terrorists on a daily basis throughout 2020 and even into 2021. Cotton has already sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland pointing out that, on top of letting the courthouse itself be attacked, the DOJ has not offered any legal assistance to several U.S. Marshals who have been sued for defending the courthouse against rioters.
“These courageous officers were attacked by left-wing street militants with weapons such as mortar fire, ball bearings, and blinding lasers,” Cotton’s letter reads in part. “A refusal to represent these Deputy Marshals would violate the Department’s long-standing practice — not to mention its moral duty — to defend law-enforcement officers when they’re sued for actions in the line of duty.”
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Former Obama White House adviser Seth Andrew this week pleaded guilty to participating in a wire fraud scheme in which he attempted to steal over $200,000 from a network of schools he helped found.
Andrew “admitted today to devising a scheme to steal from the very same schools he helped create,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement on the Justice Department’s website.
“Andrew now faces time in federal prison for abusing his position and robbing those he promised to help,” Williams noted.
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The Department of Justice (DOJ) is planning to form a special unit focused on the threat of domestic terrorism, a top official told lawmakers Tuesday.
Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen announced the creation of the new unit in his opening remarks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday.
“I decided to establish a domestic terrorism unit to augment our existing approach,” Olsen said. “This group of dedicated attorneys will focus on the domestic terrorism threat, helping to ensure that these cases are handled properly and effectively coordinated across the Department of Justice and across the country.”
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The Small Business Administration is not taking action against its partner lenders that issued billions of dollars in fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program forgivable loans, Just the News has learned.
Congress appropriated almost $1 trillion in forgivable PPP loans to assist businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Approximately 15% of the $961 billion is projected to have been obtained fraudulently, according to a study.
A House of Representatives panel estimated that $84 billion in PPP funds was issued fraudulently.
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On Tuesday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it would be permanently extending the early release of thousands of federal inmates who were set free due to a spike in COVID cases, as reported by the New York Post.
In doing so, the DOJ reversed an order previously made by President Donald Trump in January that would have seen such prisoners eventually returned to confinement. Instead, over 5,000 prisoners will now either remain in home confinement or be allowed to roam completely free.
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Electric truck manufacturer Nikola announced Tuesday it had settled fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), agreeing to pay the regulator $125 million.
The settlement is in response to allegations by the SEC that Nikola’s founder and former chief executive Trevor Milton misled investors about Nikola’s products and technological progress in order to boost the company’s share price. The SEC alleged that Milton misrepresented the anticipated costs and sources of electricity for its truck venture.
Milton was indicted by the Department of Justice in July on fraud charges, to which he pleaded not guilty.
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A prominent Harvard professor was found guilty Tuesday of lying about his ties to China, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Charles Lieber, a scientist in Harvard University’s chemistry and engineering departments, was found guilty on six counts of lying related to his work at the Wuhan University of Technology, the WSJ reported.
Lieber was first arrested by federal authorities in January 2020 and charged with making false statements regarding his participation in the Thousand Talents Plan, a Chinese recruitment program that aims to foster foreign academic talent. The Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged that Lieber was paid by the Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) “$50,000 USD per month, living expenses of up to 1,000,000 Chinese Yuan (approximately $158,000 USD at the time) and awarded him more than $1.5 million to establish a research lab at WUT.”
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Four FBI officials engaged in sexual intercourse with foreign prostitutes, according to an internal report.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) concluded an investigation into six FBI officials related to their involvement with foreign prostitutes, finding that four of the officials engaged in sexual intercourse, while a fifth solicited “commercial sex,” according to a report issued Tuesday by the DOJ OIG. A sixth official “committed misconduct” by failing to report the incidents, according to the report.
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President Joe Biden’s administration put a policy in place that requires all employees in a federal education program to get the COVID-19 vaccine, which program directors argue will have a detrimental effect on Montana’s programs that assist underserved communities in the state.
If enforced, the requirement will have a negative impact on Montana’s Head Start program, according to program directors and information provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation by the state’s Department of Justice (DOJ). The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), along with the White House, has mandated the vaccine for teachers and staff who work for Head Start and Early Head Start programs nationwide.
Head Start includes preschool programs for 3 and 4-year-old children, while Early Head Start programs are for infants, toddlers and pregnant women to “promote the school readiness of children ages birth to 5 from low-income families by supporting their development in a comprehensive way,” according to its website.
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China’s government is paying social media influencers in the U.S. to promote the Beijing Olympics and distract from diplomatic boycotts over its human rights violations, according to disclosures filed with the Department of Justice.
The Chinese consulate is paying Vippi, a New Jersey based public relations firm, $300,000 to have influencers on Instagram, TikTok and Twitch promote the Beijing Olympics, according to the disclosures. The influencers will also be required to promote U.S.-China cooperation on issues including energy and climate change.
The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics have inspired diplomatic boycotts from the U.S., Australia and the U.K. due to China’s purported ethnic cleansing and torture of Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority in Western China.
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For months, Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice has tried every trick in the law books to conceal from Americans a massive trove of video evidence that captured all the activity at the Capitol complex on January 6. Federal judges have played along, approving hundreds of protective orders to keep video clips—particularly footage recorded by the Capitol Police’s extensive closed-circuit television system—out of the public eye.
Time, however, is running out for the government.
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Sen. Rand Paul sharply criticized the “politicized” FBI and the Department of Justice, calling for more whistleblowers to expose government trampling of American liberties.
“I think anytime someone is breaking the law in government, it’s a good idea to hear about it,” the Kentucky Republican said in a Thursday interview with The Daily Signal. “And so, frankly, yes, I think it is a good idea for people to reveal when the government’s breaking the rules.”
Paul’s remarks follow news that the head of the FBI’s Criminal and Counterterrorism divisions reportedly ordered agents Oct. 20 to identify threats against school board members and teachers with a “threat tag”—although Attorney General Merrick Garland told lawmakers the next day that the FBI was not using counterintelligence tools to target parents.
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Even as the Department of Justice Inspector General released a report this week criticizing the politicization of the department, the FBI on Tuesday raided the homes of a Republican election official and several of her associates in Mesa County, Colo., in connection with a dispute about efforts to preserve 2020 election files.
In collaboration with state and county law enforcement, the FBI raided the homes of Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters, Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert’s former campaign manager Sherronna Bishop, and two others.
The FBI operations targeting skeptics of the 2020 election results follow the bureau’s raids earlier this month on the homes of conservative guerrilla journalist James O’Keefe and several of his associates with Project Veritas.
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Whatever else can be said about the FBI’s vendetta against James O’Keefe and Project Veritas, his investigative journalism enterprise, it is a useful reminder of two things: 1) that we increasingly live in a two-tier society in which the lower tier can expect the arbitrary intrusion of all the coercive elements of the state, and 2) that the fundamental legitimacy of many important American institutions is draining away rapidly like a full bathtub that is suddenly unplugged.
Scott Johnson at Powerline has an excellent summary of the case thus far.
Last Thursday, the FBI conducted a raid against two former employees of Project Veritas.
A few days later, they conducted a dawn raid against O’Keefe himself. It was the full monty.
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