tagged w/ DOJ - Missing In Action
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In a rare blistering attack on the Department of Justice, a career veteran of the agency recently told Raw Story that the Obama administration handing Bush-era officials "a get out of jail free card” sets “a dangerous precedent" that could encourage other offenses by future leaders.
J. Gerald Hebert, a former acting Justice Department chief who served the government's enforcement wing in various capacities between 1973 and 1994, said in an exclusive interview that the failure of federal prosecutors to charge former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) with even a single crime was indicative of a greater problem.
On the heels of the successful prosecution of DeLay for money laundering and conspiracy in Texas, Hebert said he hoped it was clear that the Department of Justice had nothing to do with that conviction.
Rather, the Obama administration's Justice Department in August closed down a six-year investigation into DeLay -- without filing a single charge.
He said that the success of the Travis County District Attorney’s office, which had DeLay sentenced to three years in jail, not only highlighted the Justice Department’s “unfathomable” failure in one prosecution, but also a “disturbing pattern” of less vigorous pursuit in congressional corruption cases since Obama took office.
As a private citizen, Hebert has worked as executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, a non-partisan group that monitors government ethics, campaign finance and elections, and served as an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center. (http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/)
The 20-year DOJ veteran also criticized the administration's refusal to investigate or prosecute any serious criminal activities from the Bush-era, such as sanctioning the waterboarding of military detainees and directing the political firings of US Attorneys. These “at a minimum deserve complete investigation,” he said.
The Obama administration’s excuse “to look forward and not backward” fails to fulfill the agency’s “duty” to investigate, he said -- a charge that includes “any federal office holder who violates the Constitution or federal law."
“The department makes decisions based on the facts, evidence and the law, and nothing else," Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney remarked in an email to Raw Story.
Has justice gone 'gun-shy'?
Hebert, who served in multiple supervisory positions at the Department of Justice, commented that "everybody" from the Bush-era has seemed to land their own "get out of jail free card."
In regard to prosecuting political corruption in Congress, Hebert said that “the Justice Department is gun-shy” since the botched handling of a case against deceased former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK).
“It is unfathomable for me to believe that after all was said and done, and knowing as much information that was out there about what DeLay and his high-level cronies had done, that there wasn’t a single prosecution,” Hebert continued.
“So my hats are off to the Travis County prosecutors who were able to at least bring some amount of justice to this,” he said.
Hebert noted that his disbelief also rests in the fact that the Justice Department had given convicted former Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff a deal to delay his sentencing for months in exchange for providing information.
“They delayed his sentencing so they could take advantage of that,” he explained, expressing shock that Abramoff's information did not result in a DOJ indictment of DeLay.
“In the arrogant world that Tom DeLay lived in, he was kingpin,” Hebert said. “He did a lot of damage to people, and to the democracy ultimately, when he tried to undermine and circumvent important rules about corporate funding and clean money.”
“DeLay basically put Congress up for sale,” he continued. “He went down and stood on the corner of K Street and tried to sell it.”
Hebert also cited numerous other Congressional corruption cases, on both sides of the aisle, that left him scratching his head as to why prosecutions were not pursued – including Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) on conspiracy charges and Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) on tax evasion.
“The Justice Department has been missing in action when it comes to public corruption cases,” he charged.
'Bush and Cheney are not above the law'
“When [Obama and Holder] took over they made it clear that they weren’t going to get caught up in the past,” Hebert said. “They were going to look to the future and make it a brighter day and full of hope.”
But this view is inconsistent "with the Constitution, federal law and what the Department of Justice is sworn to uphold," he insisted.
Hebert said he believed that in wanting to appear nonpartisan, they instead weakened the Justice Department, sending a consequential message to the American people.
“It’s one thing to want to appear like you’re above the political fray and your cases aren’t motivated by politics,” Hebert pointed out. “But it’s another to not hold people accountable and to not bring justice.”
He also said that running the Justice Department in such a manner sets a “dangerous precedent.”
“Bush and Cheney are not above the law," Hebert concluded. "Whether it’s the president, the vice president or any federal office holder who violates the Constitution or federal law, or there are serious allegations suggesting that such violations may have existed, then the Department of Justice has a duty and an obligation to fully investigate that.
"And if there are no consequences to any of the actions that violated the federal law in the last administration, then why would anybody think that they would ever be prosecuted for doing it in the future?"In a rare blistering attack on the Department of Justice, a career veteran of the... more
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Professor Jonathan Turley said there is an "uncanny similarity in term of timing," drawing a comparison with voting scandals shortly before the previous two presidential elections.
by: David Edwards and Andrew McLemore
The McCain campaign's allegations of voter fraud "look like" an attempt to suppress voting in battleground states, said a professor of George Washington University.
Professor Jonathan Turley said there is an "uncanny similarity in term of timing," drawing a comparison with voting scandals shortly before the previous two presidential elections.
"I think it is fair to say that some of these challenges do look like suppression efforts," Turley said in an interview on MSNBC. "So I think there is really grounds to be concerned here."
The allegations of voter fraud made by the McCain campaign about ACORN and Sen. Obama's alleged connections to it sound similar to another scandal during President Bush's administration, said Robert Bauer, a lawyer or the Obama campaign.
"This is an astonishing repeat of the kind of toxic intrusion of politics into the lawful administration of justice that we saw during the U.S. attorney scandal," Bauer said. "We're seeing a repeat of that."
The Obama campaign asked Friday for a federal investigation into whether the Bush administration and the McCain campaign have been illegally working together to spread "unsupported, spurious allegations of voter fraud."
The campaign's attorney wrote the request to Attorney General Michael Mukasey after learning from an Associated Press report that the FBI is investigating the controversial organization ACORN, Bloomberg reported.
In Wednesday's final presidential debate, McCain insinuated that Obama is involved with the organization and claimed it is attempting to sway the November election.
"We need to know the full extent of Sen. Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating maybe one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy," McCain said.
Democrats and Barack Obama have attacked the controversy as ridiculous political mudslinging, the Associated Press reported.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN, has championed liberal causes since 1970. This year, ACORN hired more than 13,000 part-time workers and sent them out in 21 states to sign up voters in minority and poor neighborhoods.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow suggested the McCain campaign's allegations are an attempt to reduce the turnout of newly registered voters, most of whom are Democrats.
"To keep turnout low, prevent votes from being counted and scare voters into thinking there are massive voting shenanigans and that their vote won't count anyway," Maddow said.
The MSNBC host cited a comment from Steve Schmidt, McCain’s chief strategist as an implication of their plan.
"The scenario for winning for us is a narrow-victory scenario," Schmidt said in an interview with The New York Times.
This video is from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast October 17, 2008.
Professor Jonathan Turley said there is an "uncanny similarity in term of... more
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast - Drinking the ACORN Kool-Aid: How Cries of Voter Fraud Cover Up GOP Elections Theft
Virtually the entire mainstream electronic media drank ACORN Kool-Aid this month brewed up by the Republican National Committee. Almost no one seriously challenged John McCain's comical assertions that ACORN, a grassroots voter registration group, "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."
While the Republicans had the distracted media searching for links between Obama and ACORN, RNC operatives were busily completing one of the most massive voter suppression and purging efforts in American history, stealing hundreds of thousands of Democratic votes across the embattled swing states and striving to arrange chaos and endless lines at the voting booths next week.
First the facts about ACORN. Months ago, we obtained, as part of our investigation for Rolling Stone magazine, the Republican's list the GOP alleged were the very worst cases of vote and registration fraud by ACORN and similar groups. We went through the names the GOP asserted were "obviously, undeniably and clearly fraudulent" voter registrations.
First, there was Melissa Tais, a dubious ACORN registrant. Her two voter registration forms show, admittedly, suspiciously different signatures. Republicans suggested Melissa was part of a massive fraud to allow Democrats to vote twice.
They were wrong. Ms. Tais, a Cerrillos, New Mexico, waitress, told us she had signed one form on a table and one form holding the paper in her hand. Hence, a second, wobbly signature.
Then there was Patricia White, who Republicans claimed was a fictitious voter. When we filmed her at home in Albuquerque, she seemed real enough.
And so on, through the entire GOP list -- not one fraud. And these were their best cases out of the five million "illegal voters" who Republican leaders claim have infiltrated America's voting rolls.
The overblown histrionics about ACORN do not surprise those of us who have been watching the RNC's election manipulation antics. For eight years White House operatives have been trying to gin up press stories about voter fraud. David Iglesias of New Mexico was one of seven U.S. Attorneys fired by the White House for their refusal to bring voter fraud prosecutions. "We took over 100 complaints," from the GOP, he told us, "We investigated for almost 2 years, I didn't find one prosecutable voter fraud case in the entire state of New Mexico."
Iglesias, a McCain supporter, has, for the first time, leveled a new and serious charge: Despite finding none of the 200 voters guilty, he says the White House nevertheless ordered him to illegally prosecute baseless cases against innocent citizens, just to gin up voter fraud publicity. His refusal, he says, cost him his job. "They were looking for politicized -- for improperly politicized US attorneys to file bogus voter fraud cases."
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast - Drinking the ACORN Kool-Aid: How Cries of... more
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With reports of voting problems rife in the media, and instances of vote flipping seen in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Texas, elections watchdogs are on their toes for any more foul play.
In spite of their activism, 50,000 voters have been lopped off Georgia's rolls.
CNN's Abbie Boudreau and Scott Bronstein reported:
College senior Kyla Berry was looking forward to voting in her first presidential election, even carrying her voter registration card in her wallet.
But about two weeks ago, Berry got disturbing news from local election officials.
"This office has received notification from the state of Georgia indicating that you are not a citizen of the United States and therefore, not eligible to vote," a letter from the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections said.
But Berry is a U.S. citizen, born in Boston, Massachusetts. She has a passport and a birth certificate to prove it.
Berry is one of more than 50,000 registered Georgia voters who have been "flagged" because of a computer mismatch in their personal identification information. At least 4,500 of those people are having their citizenship questioned and the burden is on them to prove eligibility to vote.
Experts say lists of people with mismatches are often systematically cut, or "purged," from voter rolls.
The Associated Press reported that federal judges have order Georgia to stop using Social Security Numbers and driver license numbers to verify voters' immigration status.With reports of voting problems rife in the media, and instances of vote flipping seen... more
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The Electronic Voting Machine Glitches Begin
By The Editorial Board
Voters in West Virginia, which is conducting early voting, are complaining that ES & S voting machines recorded votes for Democratic candidates as votes for Republicans.
Calvin Thomas of Ripley, a retired factory worker, said that when he tried to vote for Barack Obama, it registered the vote for John McCain. He said his daughter had the same problem.
They got an election worker to fix their ballots, but Mr. Thomas said he was worried other voters might not notice the problem.
In Tennessee, the problem seems to be the reverse. At least three voters complained that ES & S voting machines registered their votes for Mr. McCain as votes for Mr. Obama.
“Vote flipping,” as this glitch is known, is an acknowledged problem with electronic voting machines. It’s also pretty scary for anyone who cares about democracy.
West Virginia’s secretary of state asked localities to “recalibrate” their machines, and said the problem was then solved.
We believe the problem will be solved when voting is no longer done on electronic voting machines.
We favor paper ballots, counted by an optical scan reader. And when the paper ballots are counted, if the total is different from what the optical scan reader reports, the paper ballots’ total should be the official election result.
We also encourage voters to pay extra attention if they are voting on electronic machines.
The Electronic Voting Machine Glitches Begin
By The Editorial Board
Voters in West... more
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