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A federal Justice Department attorney expressed concerns to a Michigan judge about conservative media coverage suggesting that President Joe Biden’s administration is persecuting Christians and pro-lifers for their beliefs.
The discussion took place during a March pre-trial conference in USA v. Zastrow, in which the federal government brought Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act charges against eight pro-life individuals who tried to stop abortions of unborn babies from taking place at Michigan abortion clinics.
Those pro-life activists are Calvin Zastrow, Eva Zastrow, Chester Gallagher, Heather Idoni, Caroline Davis, Joel Curry, Justin Phillips, and Eva Edl (a communist death camp survivor who recently spoke with The Daily Signal).
The FACE Act is a 1994 law that prohibits individuals from obstructing the entrances of both abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers, although it has been heavily enforced by Biden’s DOJ against pro-lifers since the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.
During the pre-trial motion hearing, according to a transcript obtained by The Daily Signal, DOJ attorney Laura-Kate Bernstein raised concerns that “there’s a great deal of press about this case and the case in Nashville recently.” Bernstein was referring to a case in Tennessee where six pro-lifers were praying outside of an abortion clinic in 2021 and were charged with FACE Act violations.
Bernstein did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Where?” questioned Judge Matthew Leitman. “I haven’t seen any.”
Bernstein explained that she was referring to online media “like Mike Huckabee’s show or Laura Ingraham’s show, and those sorts of sources, and some written sources, too, in which at least one of the defense attorneys is making very acerbic statements about the government’s case and the legitimacy of the laws at stake, and that the Biden regime is persecuting Christians.”
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“My concern is one of the jury pool,” she continued. “My concern is that as these national media reach more and more people, including people in the district, that they may be tainted with a preconceived notion of the Biden regime’s persecution of Christians and be unable to try the case as neutral jurors.”
The DOJ attorney said that she was not asking the court to do “something in particular,” but then told the judge that it is the court’s “affirmative, constitutional duty to minimize the effects of prejudicial pretrial publicity.”
Leitman, after asking for clarification on her question, noted that he could ask the jurors whether they had read anything about the case. But he said that Bernstein’s question seemed to be rooted in “important political speech.”
“It seems to me that your first statement, the Biden administration is persecuting Christians … that’s pretty core, important political speech, whether you agree with it or not,” the judge said. “I mean, I’d be hard pressed to tell somebody not to say that.”
The DOJ attorney then pushed back, saying she was referring to interviews in which the pro-lifer’s attorney said that “this case is a war on pro-lifers, that the Department of Justices is using the FACE Act as a weapon against pro-lifers,” or that “the clients are victims of political persecution.”
She also pushed back against the idea that “there’s a two-tier justice system, one for friends of the administration who go free and one for people who are on the wrong spiritual side of the administration.”
“There’s also extremely inflammatory language undermining the legitimacy of the laws to be implied in this case, that you’ve already ruled on—the constitutionality of it—whether reproductive health care includes abortion, as the statue defines it,” she continued. “And because the court has this affirmative, constitutional duty, we wanted to bring it to your attention.”
Bernstein then asked the judge to admonish Thomas More Society attorney Steve Crampton “about speaking about this case in inflammatory and acerbic ways that might taint the jury pool.”
“This isn’t about trying to, you know, interfere with any of his First Amendment rights,” she followed up, noting that Crampton is “of course” free to speak about his clients. “It’s about trying to protect the due process rights in this trial and the government’s right and the public’s right to a fair trial.”
Crampton clarified to the court that Bernstein was referring to Tennessee pro-life activist Paul Vaughn’s interview on the “Mike Huckabee Show,” in which Vaughn made such comments “only after the jury verdict” was entered in his case.
In January, a federal jury convicted Vaughn and five other defendants of a felony conspiracy against rights and a FACE Act offense for trying to stop abortions from taking place at a Mount Juliet, Tennessee, abortion clinic in March 2021.
BREAKING: Six pro-life activists were just found guilty in federal court after being prosecuted by Biden's DOJ under the FACE Act for protesting outside a Nashville abortion clinic.
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 30, 2024
Here's a snippet of the protest, which occurred on March 5, 2021.
For the crime of praying and… pic.twitter.com/UPzZvtZebM
“Any reference to United States against Zastrow and this case were, at best, minimal to nonexistent,” the Thomas More Society attorney said. “So I think the government, perhaps, is overreacting to the press coverage of the Nashville case. Nobody’s called any press conference regarding this case, and we certainly have no intention of doing so.”
This week, seven pro-life defendants have been sentenced to prison time on DOJ FACE Act charges related to their attempts to stop abortions from taking place at a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic. That abortion clinic is run by Cesare Santangelo, an abortionist who has been accused of allowing babies to die if they survive his botched abortions.
The District of Columbia does not have laws restricting abortion.
The DOJ said in a release Wednesday: “Lauren Handy was sentenced to 57 months in prison, John Hinshaw was sentenced to 21 months in prison, and William Goodman was sentenced to 27 months in prison,” adding that “Jonathan Darnel was sentenced to 34 months in prison, Herb Geraghty was sentenced to 27 months in prison, Jean Marshall was sentenced to 24 months in prison, and Joan Bell was sentenced to 27 months in prison.”
Those efforts are led by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, who just admitted, following a report from The Daily Signal, that she hid an arrest and its subsequent expungement from investigators when she was confirmed by the Senate to her Justice Department post.
“Violence has no place in our national discourse on reproductive health. Using force, threatening to use force, or physically obstructing access to reproductive health care is unlawful,” said Clarke in a statement accompanying this week’s DOJ release.
“As we mark the 30th anniversary of the FACE Act, it’s important that we not lose sight of the history of violence against reproductive health care providers, including the murder of Dr. David Gunn in Florida—tragic and horrific events that led to passage of the law,” she added. “The Justice Department will continue to protect both patients seeking reproductive health services and providers of those services. We will hold accountable those who seek to interfere with access to reproductive health services in our country.”
The post EXCLUSIVE: DOJ Attorney Expressed Concerns About Conservative Media Coverage of Biden Admin Persecuting Christians, Pro-Lifers appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The Department of Justice under President Joe Biden failed to comply with federal protections when suspending whistleblowers’ security clearances, according to a memo released Tuesday by the Office of the Inspector General.
The inspector general found that the Justice Department doesn’t give employees a way to appeal suspended security clearances, which does not align with a federal regulation updated in 2022, according to its memo. Additionally, the inspector general found that the DOJ under Biden failed to provide employees a reasonable opportunity to stay on the federal payroll if they think the department suspended their clearance to retaliate against them for protected whistleblower activity.
“Existing DOJ practice is inconsistent with the intent of the federal statute,” the inspector general’s office announced in a news release.
House Republicans accused the FBI in a May 18, 2023, report of retaliating against FBI special agent Stephen Friend, FBI special agent Garret O’Boyle, and FBI staff operations specialist Marcus Allen for speaking out against the agency. O’Boyle said being placed on unpaid suspension by the FBI left his family effectively homeless.
The Office of Inspector General said it unearthed these concerns after receiving complaints from “employees alleging that their security clearances were suspended in retaliation for protected whistleblowing activity.”
Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt, who represents Allen through his organization, stated on social media that the memo was prompted in part by Allen’s complaint.
? This morning @JusticeOIG released a memo citing concerns about DOJ's compliance with whistleblower protections for employees with a security clearance. The review was in part prompted by the whistleblower complaint of @EMPOWR_us's client, Marcus Allen. https://t.co/Xg0u8bSCGM
— Tristan Leavitt (@tristanleavitt) May 14, 2024
Though the DOJ provides employees with an appeals channel if their security clearance is revoked, no such path exists for employees whose clearance is suspended pending a final decision on whether or not to revoke it, according to the Office of Inspector General. The inspector general identifies this as a problem because the law requires the DOJ to provide a path for whistleblowers to challenge suspensions lasting longer than a year as retaliatory.
Since the DOJ lacks a way for employees who suspect retaliation to contest suspensions if they go on for longer than a year, the agency “does not meet the requirements” required by law, according to the inspector general’s memo.
Losing security clearance often means DOJ employees can no longer do their jobs, seeing as jobs in the department can require that employees have clearance in order to perform their duties, according to the memo. This means, in addition to having their clearance suspended, these employees are often suspended from their jobs without pay.
Federal law mandates that individuals who believe the DOJ suspended their security clearance in retaliation for whistleblowing must be permitted, as far as it is practical, “to retain their government employment status” during the course of the suspension, according to the inspector general.
The Office of Inspector General also found that the DOJ’s existing policies create “the risk that the security process could be misused, as part of an inappropriate effort to encourage an employee to resign.”
The DOJ did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
The post Inspector General: Biden DOJ Broke Law on FBI Whistleblower Protection appeared first on The Daily Signal.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Justice Department’s Kristen Clarke allegedly reached out to her ex-husband Reginald Avery in May 2021, he told The Daily Signal, asking him for a statement saying that she was not a domestic abuser during a confirmation process where she did not disclose her past arrest.
The revelation is significant given that Clarke, at that time, had been nominated for a high-ranking position in the Department of Justice but chose not to disclose her 2006 arrest during a domestic violence incident. She now serves as the assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
The Daily Signal first revealed the existence of that arrest, and its subsequent expungement, in an April 30 report that has prompted calls for her resignation from figures including Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.
“Kristen Clarke is in charge of enforcing civil rights laws,” said Lee on April 30. “She enforces those laws aggressively against anyone who sneezes near an abortion clinic. And not at all against those who vandalize churches. She lied under oath during her confirmation proceedings, and should resign.”
New allegations indicate that Clarke sought her ex-husband’s help handling the potential publicization of her arrest just days before she was officially confirmed.
In May 2021, as some evidence emerged that Clarke might have an arrest in her background, Avery says that Clarke called him with her publicist on the line. According to Avery, Clarke asked him to provide her with a statement that clarified she was not a domestic abuser.
At this point, Clarke’s April 14, 2021, confirmation hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee had already taken place. She had already submitted her “responses for the record” to senators.
That includes her answer to Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton’s question: “Since becoming a legal adult, have you ever been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime against any person?”
“No,” Clarke responded.
Avery says that at Clarke’s request, he sent an email on May 19, 2021, to his ex-wife’s publicist, Clothilde Ewing. The email, which he shared with The Daily Signal, read: “Kristen Clarke was not an abuser in our relationship.”
Clarke did not end up publicly using the statement from Avery, which related to a 2006 incident wherein Avery says she was arrested after she allegedly stabbed him with a knife. Earlier this month, following the publication of The Daily Signal’s report, Clarke accused Avery of being a domestic abuser but confirmed that she had not disclosed the arrest.
Avery told The Daily Signal that Clarke and Ewing (who did not respond to requests for comment) wanted him to say that Clarke was not “the” abuser in their relationship. He chose to say “an” rather than “the” to avoid giving the impression that he himself was an abuser, he shared.
Since Clarke and Avery share a son (who is now 19), Avery said he was eager to put the matter to to rest. He said his understanding at the time was that Clarke was facing underhanded attacks from conservatives and that his statement would “bring closure to the whole thing.” He does not have a record of the 2021 phone call.
“I thought it was harmless,” he explained of the email. “Looking back, it was a huge mistake, but I didn’t foresee any of this coming. So it was probably stupid on my part. But the bottom line is, they did approach me.”
The same day that Avery sent this email to Ewing, the American Accountability Foundation (AAF)’s Tom Jones published a report on AAF’s findings that the FBI failed to properly vet Clarke when it did not interview Avery.
AAF had distributed that report to its lists around 11:30 a.m. on May 19, 2021. Avery could not recall the exact day on which Clarke called him, but his email to Ewing was sent at 11:50 a.m. on May 19, 2021.
Jones previously told The Daily Signal that he began digging into Clarke’s background during her confirmation process and spoke to Avery around the same time. In early May 2021 text messages, Avery told Jones that Clarke attacked him with a knife, slicing his finger to the bone, during a domestic dispute in July 2006.
“The accusations against Kristen Clarke of lying to Congress and domestic violence are deeply troubling,” Jones told The Daily Signal last week. “Clearly she does not possess the character or integrity to be in any position of power. She must resign now.”
Clarke was confirmed to the DOJ, to lead the Civil Rights Division, on May 25, 2021.
Congratulations to Kristen Clarke on making history — there’s no one better to lead the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. I know she’ll work tirelessly to advance civil rights and push our nation closer to our founding ideals of liberty, justice, and equality for all. https://t.co/57OTZDrb8c
— President Biden (@POTUS) May 26, 2021
The revelation comes after The Daily Signal published a report April 30 highlighting evidence that Clarke had not disclosed a 2006 arrest and subsequent expungement during her 2021 confirmation to the DOJ—and then explicitly denied ever having been arrested to Cotton in an interview April 21, 2021.
Clarke has not responded to requests for comment from The Daily Signal, though the DOJ acknowledged receipt of these requests. She did speak to CNN earlier this month, however, confirming that she did not disclose the arrest and expungement and alleging that Avery domestically abused her.
He denied that he had abused his ex-wife in a statement to The Daily Signal, though he did say that Clarke got a restraining order against him shortly before he moved out of their shared home as they were getting divorced (court records show that Avery and Clarke finalized their contentious divorce in 2009).
Clarke got the order “after an argument,” Avery told The Daily Signal. “It was temporary but I just moved out anyway. She lied in court then too. Bunch of nonsense … but I just got my own place. I was so over it.”
That restraining order was the subject of an inquiry from The Washington Post to AAF’s Jones: On May 19, 2021, The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin reached out to Jones asking about his “allegation regarding Kristen Clarke’s role in domestic abuse.”
Rubin’s press inquiry to Jones included a query about Avery (who says that Rubin never actually reached out to him).
“Do you have any comment on court documents showing she successfully obtained a restraining order against Reginald Avery?” Rubin asked Jones, who replied with a statement “unequivocally” condemning domestic violence and calling for a proper investigation into Clarke’s background.
Rubin did not respond to inquiries from The Daily Signal as to why she ultimately did not write her story.
Ewing, who Avery said is Clarke’s publicist, is a children’s author who previously worked for “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” for former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and for former President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. Ewing also has not responded to requests for comment from The Daily Signal.
The Daily Signal’s reporting on Clarke prompted calls for her to resign from Lee, the New York Post Editorial Board, and more. In early May, a group of conservative leaders called on Clarke to resign from her leadership position in a letter sent to the high-ranking DOJ official.
“The American people have lost trust in your ability to lead the Civil Rights Division,” reads a letter to Clarke, signed by Advancing American Freedom Executive Director Paul Teller, American Accountability Foundation’ Jones, Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins, and CatholicVote President Brian Burch. “We request that you resign immediately.”
That letter repeatedly references The Daily Signal’s reporting and attaches a copy of the original report itself. It also points to Clarke’s enforcement of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act against pro-life activists.
“The American people deserve a Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice led with honesty and integrity,” the letter says. “Since taking over the Civil Rights Division, you have weaponized the Department of Justice by wielding the FACE Act against pro-life Americans in an unprecedented manner—even while standing idly by as churches and pro-life pregnancy centers are vandalized, and Jewish students are unable to attend class on college campuses.”
The DOJ did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
When Jones reached out to Avery as part of his 2021 investigation into Clarke’s background and police records, the two men discussed the July 4, 2006, incident over text messages.
“I was seeing another woman,” Avery shared in the May 2021 text message exchange. “She was angry. Attacked me with a knife. I instinctively grabbed it. As I said earlier, I’m not blameless.”
“That’s the story,” Avery insisted. “That’s what happened. She went to jail.”
Prince George’s County Police Department records show that the department was called on nine different occasions by someone at Avery’s and Clarke’s Upper Marlboro, Maryland, household between May 2003 and December 2007.
Seven of those calls were for a “threat” or some type of domestic violence, but most were cleared without a report. The July 4, 2006, call was made by “Mr. Reginald” (Avery’s first name) and accompanied by a 760 code, according to a mainframe print-out from Prince George’s County computer-aided dispatch system obtained by The Daily Signal.
That 760 code is the department’s clearance code for “arrest,” the Prince George County Police Department confirmed. That call was not cleared for four hours. Avery says it was Clarke who was arrested. Clarke has not addressed the specific incident.
The DOJ official’s ex-husband also shared with Jones that on the night of the incident, he called 911 due to his injury and the “cops came because [his] finger was cut off.” (Avery clarified to The Daily Signal that the finger was sliced to the bone, not cut off.) Police allegedly decided to arrest Clarke, and Avery said he went to the emergency room in Bowie, Maryland, for the injury.
Jones and Avery speculated via 2021 text messages about why Clarke would hide the arrest.
“I assume she just thinks she won’t get caught,” Jones queried, to which Avery responded at the time, “Yes, the arrogance has always been there. But I don’t understand lying on a federal application.”
The post EXCLUSIVE: DOJ’s Kristen Clarke Asked Ex-Husband to Say She Wasn’t an Abuser During Confirmation Process, Ex Alleges appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Years before the prosecution called the former porn star to testify Tuesday in Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial in Manhattan, Democrats viewed Stormy Daniels as an avenue for impeaching Trump when he was president.
My 2020 book “Abuse of Power” details the origins of Left’s lawfare against Trump, which began immediately after his 2016 election to the presidency.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, led the first criminal case against Trump, followed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia and two federal prosecutions by special counsel Jack Smith.
Indicted in four separate criminal cases for a total of 91 counts, Trump got some good news Tuesday when a federal judge in Florida postponed indefinitely his trial in the classified documents case, one of Smith’s.
Below is an adapted excerpt from “Abuse of Power”:
It’s funny how “legal experts” who would pop up working for Democrats were talking and writing about Trump’s demise for other reasons months earlier.
Two lawyers whom the House Judiciary Committee hired for impeachment, Norman Eisen and Barry Berke, wrote a New York Times opinion piece along with Noah Bookbinder, also a lawyer, with the headline: “Is This the Beginning of the End for Trump?”
The lawyers suggested Trump could be taken down for a possible campaign finance violation tied to alleged flings with former porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
Or, as the lawyers characterized it in their Times piece, federal prosecutors determined that “Mr. Trump, the Trump Organization, and the campaign were all directly involved in an illegal scheme to silence two women who claimed they had affairs with Mr. Trump.”
The lawyers’ op-ed in the Times further says Trump “could be named as an unindicted co-conspirator” or “charged if he leaves office before the statute of limitations runs out (most likely in 2022).”
Still, regarding the hush money [for Daniels and McDougal], even House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi had said after the news of Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen’s planned guilty plea that it wasn’t grounds for impeachment, even as some of her members were pushing for that.
“Impeachment has to spring from something else. If and when the information emerges about that, we’ll see,” Pelosi said in 2018. “It’s not a priority on the agenda going forward unless something else comes forward.”
But impeachment was a priority for members of the House Democratic Caucus, which she led.
In December 2018, when Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign finance violation for paying hush money to Daniels, the plea agreement referred to “Individual 1” as directing him to do so. It was clear that this individual was Trump.
Cohen also pleaded guilty to tax evasion and other financial crimes and was sentenced to three years in prison. He later pleaded guilty to lying to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
In late 2019, with Democrats in control of the House, many of the hardliners in Pelosi’s caucus were pushing the speaker to go beyond Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as grounds for impeachment.
Democrats in the House Progressive Caucus wanted to include the ambiguous obstruction arguments from special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the discredited Trump-Russia claims, the campaign finance allegation in the Stormy Daniels case, the emoluments clause of the Constitution, and potentially other matters. By this point, the House had launched 12 separate investigations into Trump.
But after initial resistance, Pelosi had already caved once to the members demanding Trump’s impeachment on the Ukrainian phone call. The other matters would only prolong the process.
Trump admitted he and Zelenskyy talked about Joe Biden. Now, Democrats just had to turn it into an impeachable case.
Nevertheless, keeping swing district House Democrats in the loop was one reason why, early in the process, leadership had considered progressives’ demands for a “kitchen sink” impeachment involving Russia, Stormy Daniels, emoluments, and anything else they could think of.
This would allow moderate Democrats to go home and say they had voted against some articles of impeachment while still voting to oust Trump in order to appease the base and avoid a potential primary challenger from the left. In the age of MAGA and #Resistance voters, primary challenges are a forefront concern for incumbents on both sides.
During the impeachment hearing, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee called former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to testify.
As with other witnesses, Yovanovitch’s legal counsel was steeped in Democratic politics. Lawrence S. Robbins represented both Republican and Democrat clients.
But in a December 2018 op-ed for Politico, Robbins called for either impeaching or prosecuting Trump for campaign finance violation regarding the Daniels hush money.
Robbins wrote: “The Department of Justice’s description of the role of Individual 1—the president himself—leaves no doubt that career Justice Department prosecutors regard Trump as a full blown co-conspirator. And most serious-minded criminal lawyers agree that, if these allegations are true, the president, but for his day job, would have been sitting in the dock with his long-time fixer.”
Robbins further wrote that Trump would use his office as president to shield himself from prosecution, so “Congress would surely have no choice but to hold him accountable in the way prescribed by the Constitution.”
That way, of course, was impeachment.
The post How the Left Tried to Use Stormy Daniels to Impeach Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The lead prosecutor for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s “hush money” case against former President Donald Trump received thousands of dollars from the Democratic National Committee in 2018, Federal Election Commission records show.
Matthew Colangelo, who was President Joe Biden’s acting associate attorney general and spent two years in the current president’s Justice Department, joined the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office as senior counsel in December 2022.
The lawyer received $12,000 from the Democratic National Committee for “political consulting” in two payments of $6,000 on Jan. 31, 2018, FEC records show.
Fox News Digital first reported the payments to Colangelo from the DNC.
Reports say Matthew Colangelo received $12,000 from the DNC for "political consulting" in 2018.
— Daniel Baldwin (@baldwin_daniel_) May 6, 2024
Colangelo delivered the opening statement for the prosecution in the Trump hush money case.
Yet Trump can't talk about this due to his unconstitutional gag order.
Trump is not supposed to speak about Colangelo because Judge Juan Merchan imposed a gag order that prevents the former president from speaking about prosecutors on the case besides Bragg.
Colangelo was appointed in 2022, while Bragg was still investigating Trump in relation to a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her silent regarding an alleged affair. Colangelo delivered opening statements for the prosecution in April, arguing that Trump falsified business documents about the payment as part of a broader initiative to “corrupt the 2016 election.”
“It was election fraud, pure and simple,” Colangelo said.
Trump consistently has characterized the case as “election interference,” referring to it as a “Biden witch hunt” and the “Biden case.”
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Merrick Garland regarding Colangelo, requesting documents and communications from his tenure at the Justice Department. Jordan demanded personnel files pertaining to Colangelo’s hiring, employment, and termination there, as well as records and correspondences related to Trump or his organization.
“Bragg is engaged in one such politicized prosecution, which is being led in part by Matthew B. Colangelo, a former senior Justice Department official,” Jordan wrote. “Accordingly, given the perception that the Justice Department is assisting in Bragg’s politicized prosecution, we write to request information and documents related to Mr. Colangelo’s employment.”
While at the New York State Attorney General’s Office before Biden became president, Colangelo led the probe into the Trump Foundation, which resulted in its dissolution. He also led the investigation that eventually became Trump’s civil fraud case, according to The New York Times.
Neither Bragg nor the Democratic National Committee immediately responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
The post Former Biden DOJ Official Prosecuting Trump Received Thousands of Dollars From DNC appeared first on The Daily Signal.
White House officials met with liberal activists to discuss boosting voting among prisoners and immigrants just four months after President Joe Biden signed an executive order on turning out the vote, newly released records show.
On July 12, 2021, White House officials held a “listening session” that included dozens of organizations, many known for turning out Democrat voters. Justin Levitt, who was the White House senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights at the time, kicked off the event along with Jesselyn McCurdy of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Keeda Haynes, legal adviser with the Sentencing Project, a legal assistance and training organization for prisoners, said the administration should assist “eligible voters who are incarcerated have been left out of voting,” according to notes of the meeting. Haynes added, “Felony disenfranchisement is voter suppression.”
The records were obtained from the Justice Department by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project through the Freedom of Information Act. (The Heritage Foundation founded The Daily Signal.)
That session with White House and other Biden administration officials included staffers from more than four dozen left-leaning groups, including the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Democracy Fund, the Al Sharpton-founded National Action Network, the George Soros-backed Open Society Policy Center, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. But only a few of the groups were participants in the meeting. Participants were sent a Zoom link.
The meeting and agenda were first discovered by the Foundation for Government Accountability, a government watchdog group in 2022. What’s new from the recently released batch of documents are details about what was said in the meeting, as well as Justice Department communications leading up to the conference.
The records also show the email correspondence between the White House and the Justice Department for the weeks leading to the meeting. The documents showed that voting for certain incarcerated individuals was a priority.
Less than a month after Biden signed the order, then-associate White House counsel Larry Schwartztol emailed Associate Deputy Attorney General Myesha Braden on April 1, 2021.
Schwartztol said the White House counsel’s office is working with the Domestic Policy Council and wrote about helping people in custody or under the supervision of the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshals Service to vote.
“Section 9 of the [executive order] directs the [attorney general] to take various steps to facilitate voter registration and voting for people in [Bureau of Prisons] and [U.S. Marshals Service] custody and to coordinate with the probation and pretrial services on providing similar resources and assistance to people under supervision,” Schwartztol wrote.
The Daily Signal previously reported that the Bureau of Prisons partnered with left-leaning groups such as the League of Women Voters, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Campaign Legal Center, and the Washington Lawyers’ Committee to boost voting among eligible citizens who were incarcerated while awaiting trial or other circumstances, or in restoring their voting rights after serving their sentence.
At the July 2021 meeting with White House officials and liberal groups, Nik Youngsmith, legislative staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, spoke to the gathering about “immigrants and noncitizens.”
The public record showed Youngsmith wanted to be cautious.
“We support registration efforts. We also want to make sure they are done in a careful way,” the meeting notes paraphrase Youngsmith as saying. “All fed employees must be well trained in this. Need to trust people are acting in bounds of the law. Especially when there are language issues. Federal employees should know who should be properly registered and not. Don’t want someone to face charges for registering on bad info.”
The Washington Examiner first reported on the Justice Department documents obtained by the Oversight Project.
“One of the biggest dangers to free and fair elections is the Biden Administration’s weaponization of every single federal agency to work with far-left groups for the biggest get-out-the-vote operation in human history,” said a joint statement from Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Oversight Project, and Kyle Brosnan, chief counsel for the Oversight Project.
“Of course, these efforts are only being pointed in one direction in an illegitimate attempt to keep President Biden in the White House,” the Howell and Brosnan statement continued. “Our findings prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this whole effort was implemented in a radically partisan manner. We will be releasing much more on this threat soon and urge all members of the public to stay alert.”
Jose Morales, the deputy director of Fair Fight Action, an anti-voter ID group founded by twice-losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, also spoke. Morales called for allowing federal employees to take the day off to vote. He also complained that “based on experiences last year and this year, there are many new ID requirements,” according to the Justice Department notes about the session.
Fair Fight didn’t get everything it wanted from Biden on federal employee voting.
While the administration did not give federal employees a whole day off to vote, The Daily Signal previously reported the Office of Personnel Management adopted a policy to give four hours of leave to federal employees to vote and volunteer to be election workers.
Two staffers from the ACLU—Sarah Brannon and Ceridwen Cherry—told the gathering that the HealthCare.gov website, better known as the Obamacare exchanges, reaches 20 million people per year and should be used for signing up voters.
Demos, a liberal think tank that drafted much of the executive order after Biden was elected but before his inauguration, was also part of the gathering.
Laura Williamson, then associate director of Demos, said the Department of Housing and Urban Development should register voters at public housing units. It also called for the Fair Housing Administration to engage in voter registration when making loans to buy homes.
The Daily Signal first reported that under the executive order, HUD authorized targeting votes at public housing units.
The post Here’s the Kind of Voters Left-Wing Activists Are Scheming With the White House to Turn Out in November appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee is calling for the resignation of Kristen Clarke, the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
“Kristen Clarke is in charge of enforcing civil rights laws,” Lee said in a statement posted to X on Tuesday evening. “She enforces those laws aggressively against anyone who sneezes near an abortion clinic. And not at all against those who vandalize churches. She lied under oath during her confirmation proceedings, and should resign.”
“She lied under oath to mask her arrest for committing a violent crime, yet she zealously prosecutes peaceful pro-life protesters,” the senator added.
Kristen Clarke is in charge of enforcing civil rights laws.
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) May 1, 2024
She enforces those laws aggressively against anyone who sneezes near an abortion clinic.
And not at all against those who vandalize churches.
She lied under oath during her confirmation proceedings, and should resign. https://t.co/5tHpaG4a2W
Lee weighed in on Clarke following a Daily Signal report revealing that Clarke, who testified in 2021 to senators that she had never been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime, was involved in a violent domestic dispute with her now ex-husband, one in which he alleged that she sliced his finger to the bone with a knife.
Court documents, records, and text messages obtained by The Daily Signal indicate that Clarke was arrested, but that arrest was ultimately expunged.
“Since becoming a legal adult, have you ever been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime against any person?” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked then-nominee Clarke in 2021, to which she responded, “No,” according to responses she submitted to the Senate under oath in a document called “Questions for the Record.”
Neither Clarke nor the DOJ has responded to requests for comment from The Daily Signal. The FBI, asked about the background checks it performed on Clarke, declined to comment.
Ed Whelan, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center where he holds the Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies, similarly called for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to demand Clarke’s resignation.
“Kristen Clarke, loony ideologue at DOJ on transgender issues, appears to have flat-out lied under oath during her confirmation process when she denied ever having been arrested,” Whelan said in an X post on Tuesday night.
“Per article, she was arrested in 2006 for attacking her then-husband with a knife and slicing his finger to the bone,” he continued, before adding: “President Biden and AG [Attorney General Merrick] Garland should demand her resignation.”
“Expungement of arrest record has consequences under Maryland law, but it can’t excuse Kristen Clarke for falsely stating to Congress during her confirmation process that she had never been arrested for committing a violent crime,” Whelan said.
Kristen Clarke, loony ideologue at DOJ on transgender issues, appears to have flat-out lied under oath during her confirmation process when she denied ever having been arrested. Per article, she was arrested in 2006 for attacking her then-husband with a knife and slicing his… https://t.co/TIc9uohRPE
— Ed Whelan (@EdWhelanEPPC) April 30, 2024
Whelan further suggested that the establishment media may abstain from covering Clarke out of a bias for Democratic nominees.
“If news broke that controversial DOJ official in Republican administration lied during confirmation process to conceal arrest for violent crime, it would be front-page news in NYT and WaPo,” Whelan said, referring to The New York Times and The Washington Post. “We’ll see if they pay any attention to Kristen Clarke’s lie.”
Clarke was nominated by then-President-elect Biden on Jan. 7, 2021, and later confirmed by the U.S. Senate on May 25, 2021, to lead the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
The Daily Signal previously reported that Clarke, who oversees investigations into violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, has used FACE to charge dozens of pro-life individuals since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. This includes Mark Houck, a Catholic father of seven arrested at gunpoint by the FBI and charged with violating FACE in September 2022.
A jury found Houck was not guilty in January 2023.
The post ‘She Lied Under Oath’: Sen. Mike Lee Calls for DOJ’s Kristen Clarke to Resign appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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