From Above the Law blog;
DOJ Goes Full Gangster
Oh, you blend!
The DOJ is entering its thug era.
Attorney General Todd Blanche spent the week hopping from microphone to microphone, alternately ducking his head in a show of Aw shucks! earnestness and scowling in feigned indignation. His message was clear: If you come after us, we’re coming after you.
Never mind that oversight is Congress’s actual job, and even this Supreme Court has said that congressional subpoenas are presumptively valid. Trump screeches on social media that Democrats are “EXTORTIONISTS” and he’s “ordering the Department of Justice to look into this criminal act, immediately!” And the DOJ says “How high, Mister Genius President?”
(Side note: It’s so weird that the Trump administration pretends that Mazarsmeans that Todd Blanche gets to scrutinize Congress’s motives when it issues subpoenas. Ways and Means got Trump’s tax documents and published them — that’s why Thomas and Alito dissented!)
Earlier this week, White House Counsel Will Scharf did his own performative dickwag in the direction of Rep. Robert Garcia, the incoming chair of Oversight when Democrats take back the gavel. And yesterday, Aaron Reitz, the bumptious bumpkin US Attorney in the Western District of Texas, sent what he seemed to think was a preservation letter to Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal.
You’re doing great, sweetie!
Meanwhile back at Main Justice, Blanche’s chief enforcer Aakash Sing, the 34-year-old PADAG, has been cracking the whip on US Attorneys.
Singh’s interference in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case was a big reason the court dismissed it as a vindictive prosecution. And a lawsuit filed last week by a fired FBI agent says that Singh’s fingerprints are all over the “Broadview 6” case in Chicago, which fell apart after the grand jury transcripts revealed gross prosecutorial misconduct. That tracks with a report in February from Ben Penn of Bloomberg Law News, that Singh’s solution for no-bills is “to ask the chief judge to dismiss jurors who presented hurdles and then ‘rinse and repeat’ to a new panel.”
Penn’s latest scoop is that Singh is demanding that all US Attorneys and FAUSAs get on a “wartime footing” or GTFO:
In the first meeting for DOJ’s field office leaders since since voters repudiated the Trump agenda at the polls, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh advised US attorneys and their first assistants to consider resigning if they’re not prepared for full-on battle and to obey the administration’s orders, said three people briefed on the call.
Maximum lethality, not tepid legality! No beardos, no weirdos, no fatties! Oh, wait, that was some other MAGA freak. But the sentiment’s the same: Carry out our increasingly questionable orders without hesitation, or clean out your desk.
This genius plan does carry some risks. Associate Attorney General Stan Woodward, a trailblazer in the Middle Finger School of trial advocacy, looks on track to score an outside investigator in two cases and is on the precipice of getting sanctioned in several courts at once. But apparently, that is what’s required to work at today’s DOJ.
[Singh] didn’t specify which prosecutors he had in mind, but cautioned that some US attorneys may want to talk to their families and voluntarily leave before it’s no longer their choice.
Well, that should solve the DOJ’s recruitment problem! It’s not like Trump was bothering to get US Attorneys confirmed anyway.
And if Democrats drop subpoenas on anyone who decides to stay, those prosecutors can just march into Congress and start making arrests. So gangster, bro! Let’s do it and be legends.
DOJ Chief Urges Wartime Footing, Warns of US Attorney Purges [Bloomberg]
Earlier: White House Counsel Goes Full Mob Consigliere, Threatens Dems If They Investigate Trump
Richard Blumenthal Humiliates Grandstanding Texas U.S. Attorney With Remedial Constitutional Law Lesson
Liz Dye produces the Law and Chaos Substack and podcast. You can subscribe by clicking the logo:
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