Update on our case about the memo Bill Barr relied on to justify saying the Mueller Report did not support obstruction charges against Donald Trump: we just filed our opposition to the government blocking the full memo from coming to light immediately.
The DOJ only released a few paragraphs of the 9 page memo, but even that is significant. Let’s talk about it.
The documents show that DOJ wasn't deciding whether Trump obstructed justice, they were deciding on a PR strategy.
How do we know?
The first document is the OLC memo, which DOJ officials prepared for Barr. The authors knew that presidents couldn’t be charged with crimes while in office. That’s not a new opinion for OLC.
But these authors actually advised Barr to go further and say that the evidence was too weak for Trump to be charged regardless of the ban on indicting presidents.
This made it seem like Trump was cleared of wrongdoing. And it allowed him to claim “TOTAL EXONERATION.”
The second document includes a summary of the memo included in an opinion from Judge Amy Berman Jackson. She criticized DOJ for “deliberately obscuring” the memo by claiming that it was legal analysis, when really it was a PR strategy to make it seem like Trump was innocent.
So now it is even clearer that Barr used the DOJ to protect Trump and tried to cover it up.
But we’re missing the details of DOJ’s efforts to protect Trump—and that’s what we’re suing to get.
We think DOJ should release the full document immediately.
But in the meantime — we know Barr’s DOJ protected Trump in an unprecedented way, and Biden’s DOJ failed to restore trust with the public and disavow itself from Trump-era corruption by releasing the full memo.
On a final note: we shouldn’t have to spend years in court for the public to see documents like this about critical government decisions.
But since that’s the only way to achieve transparency for now, we’ll keep fighting as long as it takes.
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When you see anti-HR 1 talking points getting tweeted out by certain members of Congress, you have to remember that the Koch network has backed plenty of those members, and really does not want HR 1 to pass
Erik Prince was reportedly behind a campaign to surveil and discredit perceived enemies of President Trump inside the government, like H.R. McMaster and employees of the FBI. There's nothing normal about that. nytimes.com/2021/05/13/us/…
The fact that Prince founded a mercenary army and is the brother of Betsy DeVos makes it even more concerning, as does the fact that he was also reportedly advising the White House at the same time. theintercept.com/2017/01/17/not…
Prince is already under investigation by the DOJ over whether he lied to a congressional committee examining Russian interference in the 2016 election.
We’ve been hearing a lot about “woke corporations” so we thought we’d check in on how those corporate pledges about not donating to insurrectionists are holding up.
Toyota said in January that "Given recent events and the horrific attack on the U.S. Capitol, we are assessing our future PAC criteria.”
Since then, it’s given a total of $51,000 to 34 different members who voted to reject the results of the election.
Koch Industries said they would take into account “the civility of candidates” before donating to them.
But it’s donated a total of $12,500 to five different members who voted to reject the results of the election.
We had a huge victory in court, got two FOIA scoops, sent letters to DHS and FinCEN and sued the government for records (again). Here’s a round-up
On Monday night, a federal judge ruled in a CREW lawsuit that the DOJ needs to make public a secret memo that Bill Barr cited when he announced he would not charge Trump with obstruction. citizensforethics.org/news/press-rel…
We also sent a letter along with 84 partners urging DHS not to destroy records of abuse in its detention facilities. citizensforethics.org/legal-action/l…
This may sound extreme, but to save our democracy, the filibuster needs to go.
Here’s why:
If 41 senators agree to block a bill, they can—even if the other 59 senators support it. That means that majority rule no longer exists in the United States Senate.
If the Founding Fathers knew about this, we don’t think they would be happy. They *literally* enshrined majority rule in the Constitution.
NEWS: Mike Pompeo violated federal ethics rules when he and his wife, Susan, asked State Department employees to carry out tasks for their personal benefit more than 100 times politico.com/news/2021/04/1…