Political appointees of the Department of Justice
filed a motion. The career prosecutors all resigned from the case.
If the DOJ can "order a judge", we may as well be living in a banana republic. A federal judge must continue to be able to
hold accountable to truth telling, defendants, other witnesses, and lawyers who appear in each judge's court representing they
are stating or pleading verfiable facts.
" LINDSEY GRAHAM RESPONDS TO NEWS OF POTENTIAL ONGOING CRIME BY PROMISING TO IGNORE IT
October 29, 2020/.. /by
emptywheel
As I have been laying out, there is growing evidence that when DOJ added dates (a misleadingly incorrect one in at least one case) to Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe notes, they altered the documents in some other ways. At the very least, they
redacted protection order footers in the first documents shared with Sidney Powell, but there appear to be
other irregularities in the McCabe notes,
irregularities that may be far more serious.
And that’s before you get to DOJ’s claims that:
- They didn’t know the date of the January 5, 2017 meeting (even though documents in the docket make that date clear)
- The Bill Barnett “report” was a 302
- Lawyers for Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe had affirmed there were no (other) alterations to their clients’ notes
Those are all false, and the last one is fairly demonstrably maliciously false.
I’ve been trying to chase down places where original versions of the Andrew McCabe notes might exist, to compare with what got released in the docket. In addition to DOJ IG (which might have the notes in investigative files relating to the Carter Page investigation), I figured the Senate Judiciary Committee should have a copy.
After all, McCabe
had been scheduled to testify on October 6, before he canceled on account of the GOP COVID cluster.
So I called the committee spox, Taylor Reidy, asking if they had copies of McCabe’s notes, since I wanted to use them to see whether FBI had committed a crime. She (credibly) claimed not to know about DOJ altering official documents, given the mad rush to confirm Amy Coney Barrett.
So I sent her information to help her out.
..
I got no answer yesterday. I pinged her again today, mentioning that I thought Lindsey Graham’s disinterest in what might be a crime in progress newsworthy: ..
....
Reidy responded to my question about DOJ’s current actions by stating that her boss is totally committed to continuing to review events that happened four years ago.
.....
And while I followed up to clarify the seemingly shocking detail — that SJC intended to call McCabe as a witness without obtaining any of his records! — it appears to be the case that DOJ didn’t even share those documents with SJC.
I tried again, noting that she hadn’t answered the question I asked.
.....
I’ve had no response, from which I guess it is fair to conclude that former JAG Officer Lindsey Graham is going to do nothing about what might be a crime in progress.
FBI, for what it’s worth, yesterday referred my questions about why Executive Assistant Director John Brown certified what was almost certainly a classified document for release that lacked any declassification stamp as authentic to DC’s US Attorney’s Office.
I asked again if FBI had comment about the further alterations exhibited in the McCabe document, but got no answer there, either (I’m wondering what will happen if I report that FBI is doctoring documents to the FBI tip line).
It’s really weird that all these people who are supposed to guard the rule of law in this country are so disinterested
in what might be a crime in progress.
Update: After I posted, the FBI reiterated that they still want me to ask DOJ why their EAD certified what appears to be a formerly classified document that lacks a declassification stamp.
I’m asking again for
reference to what policies in question EAD Brown just certified to."