Tag: Attorney General Merrick Garland

Biden Invokes Executive Privilege to Prevent Release of Recording with Special Counsel Hur

Just the News

President Joe Biden on Thursday claimed the recording of his interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur about his retention of classified documents should not be released due to executive privilege just hours before House Republicans were set to move toward holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for not releasing the recordings.

The Justice Department’s Legal Counsel Office said the recording should be considered protected by executive privilege, and Garland should not be punished for not releasing it, Associate Attorney General Carlos Uriatre said.

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Former Biden DOJ Official Prosecuting Trump Received Thousands of Dollars From DNC

South Carolina Sun Staff
Matthew Colangelo

The lead prosecutor for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump received thousands of dollars from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2018, Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show.

Matthew Colangelo, who was President Joe Biden’s acting associate attorney general and spent two years in the current president’s Department of Justice (DOJ), joined the Manhattan District Attorney’s office as senior counsel in December 2022. The lawyer received $12,000 from the DNC in 2018 for “political consulting” in two payments of $6,000 on Jan. 31 of that year, FEC records show.

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Julie Kelly Commentary: The DOJ’s Doctored Crime Scene Photo of Mar-a-Lago Raid

Julie Kelly

A few weeks after the armed FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, the Department of Justice released a stunning photograph depicting alleged contraband seized from Donald Trump’s Palm Beach estate that day; the image showed colored sheets representing scary classification levels attached to files purportedly discovered in Trump’s private office.

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Commentary: The Travesties of the Trump Trials

South Carolina Sun Staff

Do not believe the White House/mainstream media-concocted narrative that the four criminal court cases—prosecuted by Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis—were not in part coordinated, synchronized, and timed to reach their courtroom psychodramatic finales right during the 2024 campaign season.

These local, state, and federal Lilliputian agendas were designed to tie down, gag, confine, bankrupt, and destroy Trump psychologically and physically. They are the final lawfare denouement to years of extra-legal efforts to emasculate him.

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Commentary: DOJ and Judge Chutkan, Not Trump, to Blame for ‘Delay’ in J6 Case

Julie Kelly
U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan

The Supreme Court will hear history-making arguments on Thursday in the case of Donald J. Trump v United States. For the first time, the highest court in the land will publicly debate the untested and unsettled question as to whether a former president is immune from criminal prosecution for his conduct in office. And despite claims by Democrats, the news media, and self-proclaimed “legal experts” to the contrary, the matter is far from clear-cut.

The case arises from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment against Trump related to the events of January 6 and alleged attempts to “overturn” the 2020 election. Smith’s flimsy indictment—two of four counts are currently under review by SCOTUS and the other two fall under similarly vague “conspiracy” laws—-and an unprecedented ruling issued last year by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan will be put to the test by the justices.

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Feds Crack Down on Pernicious Chinese Hacking Group that Targeted U.S. Gov’t, Dissidents

South Carolina Sun Staff
Hacker mugshots

The U.S. on Monday announced actions aimed at exposing a sweeping Chinese hacking campaign that has targeted U.S. government institutions, critical infrastructure, media and political dissidents for more than a decade.

Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company, Limited (Wuhan XRZ), served as a front company for China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), which deals with overseas policing and espionage, allowing Chinese hackers to hide a multitude of malicious cyber operations, the Treasury Department said after sanctioning the organization on Monday in a statement alongside other U.S. agencies and the United Kingdom. In an indictment unsealed separately, the Department of Justice accused Chinese nationals Zhao Guangzong, Ni Gaobin and five others for their role “in furtherance of [China’s] economic espionage and foreign intelligence objectives” over the past 14 years.

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DOJ Creates New Center to Help Local Officials Apply ‘Red Flag’ Laws Against Certain Gun Owners

South Carolina Sun Staff
Merrick Garland

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Saturday the creation of a new entity to train state and local officials on procedures to apply “red flag” laws that temporarily prevent certain individuals from owning a firearm.

The National Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) Resource Center is an entity created under the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP) that will both educate and assist local officials when they initiate legal proceedings to obtain “red flag” orders that rescind an individual’s right to bear arms based on the belief that they pose a risk of harm to themselves or others, according to the DOJ’s press release. The individuals to be trained are “law enforcement officials, prosecutors, attorneys, judges, clinicians, victim service and social service providers, community organizations, and behavioral health professionals.”

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Commentary: Was It Legal to Appoint Jack Smith in the First Place?

South Carolina Sun Staff
Jack Smith

Was Special Counsel Jack Smith illegally appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland and is his prosecution of former Pres. Donald Trump unlawful? That is the intriguing issue raised in an amicus brief filed in the Supreme Court by Schaerr Jaffe, LLP, on behalf of former Attorney General Ed Meese and two law professors, Steven Calabresi and Gary Lawson, in the case of U.S. v. Trump.

We won’t get an immediate answer to this question because on the Friday before Christmas, the Supreme Court issued a one-line order refusing to take up Smith’s request that the court review Trump’s claim of presidential immunity, which was denied by the trial court, in the federal prosecution being pursued by Smith in the District of Columbia. The special counsel had petitioned the court to take the case on an expedited basis, urging the justices to bypass review by the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

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