Senate Judiciary Committee

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Grassley Statement On Kavanaugh’s Accuser (Updated)

September 17, 2018 by

Sen. Chuck Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released a statement today regarding Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and her allegations of an attack by Judge Brett Kavanaugh while they were teenagers. The statement below does a good job at being respectful to Ford, calling out Dianne Feinstein and the Democrats, and nailing those in the media who leaked Ford’s name. Grassley has always championed whistle blowers and he brings that credibility to this statement.

WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley issued the following statement regarding the nomination of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

“Anyone who comes forward as Dr. Ford has deserves to be heard, so I will continue working on a way to hear her out in an appropriate, precedented and respectful manner.

“The standard procedure for updates to any nominee’s background investigation file is to conduct separate follow-up calls with relevant parties. In this case, that would entail phone calls with at least Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford. Consistent with that practice, I asked Senator Feinstein’s office yesterday to join me in scheduling these follow-ups. Thus far, they have refused. But as a necessary step in evaluating these claims, I’ll continue working to set them up.

“Unfortunately, committee Republicans have only known this person’s identity from news reports for less than 24 hours and known about her allegations for less than a week. Senator Feinstein, on the other hand, has had this information for many weeks and deprived her colleagues of the information necessary to do our jobs. The Minority withheld even the anonymous allegations for six weeks, only to later decide that they were serious enough to investigate on the eve of the committee vote, after the vetting process had been completed.

“It’s deeply disturbing that the existence of these allegations were leaked in a way that seemed to preclude Dr. Ford’s confidentiality.

“Over my nearly four decades in the Senate I have worked diligently to protect whistleblowers and get to the bottom of any issue. Dr. Ford’s attorney could have approached my office, while keeping her client confidential and anonymous, so that these allegations could be thoroughly investigated. Nevertheless, we are working diligently to get to the bottom of these claims.”

UPDATE: A special meeting is scheduled for Monday and both Ford and Kavanaugh will appear.

Judiciary Committee to Hear from Kavanaugh, Ford in Public Hearing


WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today announced that the Committee will hold a public hearing with Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.


“As I said earlier, anyone who comes forward as Dr. Ford has done deserves to be heard. My staff has reached out to Dr. Ford to hear her account, and they held a follow-up call with Judge Kavanaugh this afternoon. Unfortunately, committee Democrats have refused to join us in this effort. However, to provide ample transparency, we will hold a public hearing Monday to give these recent allegations a full airing,” Grassley said.


Below is the official notice for Monday’s hearing.


NOTICE OF COMMITTEE HEARING CONTINUATION


The Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearing on the nomination of the Honorable Brett M. Kavanaugh to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States will continue Monday, September 24, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. in Room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building.
By order of the Chairman.

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A New Word For The Political Lexicon – Feinsteined

September 14, 2018 by 4 Comments

Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for Pres. George W. Bush, has come up with a new word for the political lexicon. It is Feinsteined. This is when an anonymous letter from an anonymous source with an unknown allegation is supposedly sent to the FBI in an effort to derail the nomination of a judicial candidate. In this case, the nominee is Judge Brett Kavanaugh and the allegations may or may not be something non-sexual he did at a party with a girl when he and she were 17 years old.

In the interest of full disclosure, I may or may not have gotten drunk at a New Year’s Eve party when I was 17 and may or may not have kissed a girl at the stroke of midnight who was another guy’s girlfriend and may or may not have gotten in trouble with my mom for coming home drunk from a party.

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Day Two Of Project Gunwalker At Lynch’s Confirmation Hearings

January 30, 2015 by 4 Comments

The second day of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Loretta Lynch featured nine witnesses who touched upon a number of things. There were the “Loretta was a great US Attorney and I felt fortunate to work with her comments” from attorney David Barlow and former FBI Assistant Director in Charge Janice Fedaryck. There was the “Loretta comes from a good Baptist family” testimony by Rev. Dr. Clarence Newsome. There was the testimony from law professor Stephen Legomsky that said he was “the” expert on immigration law and Obama’s actions on making illegal aliens legal was OK with him.

Then there was what I consider the meat of the day:  the witnesses who described just bad the Department of Justice has gotten, how it has screwed people over, and how it has looked the other way at the abuses of power by the White House. Catherine Englebrecht of True the Vote described how the dogs of war were unleashed on her when she filed applications for non-profit status for two organizations. These “dogs of war” include the IRS, OSHA, the FBI, and BATFE. Sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee discussed how the Department of Justice under Eric Holder was actively hostile to local law enforcement. He discussed how Holder and DOJ made the situation in Ferguson, Missouri worse by inserting itself where it had no business. Professor Nicholas Rosenkranz of Georgetown and the Cato Institute spoke about the role of the Attorney General in providing legal advice to the President and how Eric Holder has failed in this regard.

Then there was the testimony of Sharyl Attkisson and Professor Jonathan Turley. They were the bookends, so to speak, as they began and ended the testimony for the day. Leading off was Ms. Attkisson who described how she had been targeted by the Justice Department for her factually accurate reporting on
Operation Fast and Furious (among other things).

When I reported on factual contradictions in the administration’s accounts
regarding Fast and Furious, pushback included a frenzied campaign with White
House officials trying to chill the reporting by calling and emailing my superiors and
colleagues, and using surrogate bloggers to advance false claims. One White House
official got so mad, he angrily cussed me out.

The Justice Department used its authority over building security to handpick
reporters allowed to attend a Fast and Furious briefing, refusing to clear me into the
public Justice Department building.

Advocates had to file a lawsuit to obtain public information about Fast and Furious
improperly withheld under executive privilege. Documents recently released show
emails in which taxpayer paid White House and Justice Department press officials
complained that I was “out of control,” and vowed to call my bosses to try to stop my
reporting.

Let me emphasize that my reporting was factually indisputable. Government
officials weren’t angry because I was doing my job poorly. They were panicked
because I was doing my job well.

While the testimony of Ms. Attkisson was damning, I think the testimony of Prof. Jonathan Turley of George Washington University was even more damning of the Justice Department under Eric Holder. Turley admitted he voted for Obama and supported many of the Administration’s policies. Turley is a DC insider. He appears on Sunday morning talk shows, he writes op-eds, he goes to the insider cocktail parties, and he rubs elbows with the powers that be.

Turley submitted a 26-page written testimony accusing the Justice Department of being the architect of the effort to expand the power of the presidency beyond what was Constitutional. He says that they actively attempt to block legislative authority and Congressional oversight. The most egregious example of this, in Turley’s opinion, and the one that best captures the obstruction of Congress in recent years is Operation Fast and Furious. Turley devotes seven pages of his testimony to it.

However, the controversy that best captures the obstruction of Congress in recent years is
the response of the Obama Administration in the Fast and Furious investigation. The
reason that Fast and Furious is particularly illustrative is for a couple of salient factors.
First, no one (not even General Holder) defends the Fast and Furious operation, which
proved as lethal as it was moronic. It is a prototypical example of a program that is
legitimately a focus of congressional oversight authority. A federal agency was
responsible for facilitating the acquisition of powerful weapons by criminal gangs,
including weapons later used to kill United States Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in
December 2010. Congress has investigated not only the “gunwalking” operation, but
also what it saw as concealment and obstruction, by the Administration, in its efforts to
investigate the operation. Second, Congress had ample reason to expand its investigation
after the Justice Department sent a letter on February 4, 2011 stating categorically that no
gunwalking had taken place. It was not until December 2011 that Attorney General Holder informed Congress that it had been given false information and the letter was
formally withdrawn. Congress responded by expanding the investigation into the false
information given to it by the Executive Branch and the months of delay before Congress
was informed of the misrepresentation of the facts underlying Fast and Furious. Finally,
the position of the Justice Department on withholding documents has, in my view, been
facially invalid and lacking in any credible good-faith interpretation of the executive
privilege.

Turley goes on to say that one of the most troubling aspects of the Justice Department’s behavior has been its refusal to prosecute the House of Representative’s contempt citation against Eric Holder.

One of the most troubling aspects of the Fast
and Furious investigation was not just the withholding of non-privileged material but the
later refusal of the Justice Department to submit the alleged violation to a grand jury—
despite a historic vote of the House of Representatives finding General Holder in
contempt. The decision to block any prosecution was a violation of a long-standing agreement between the branches and represents a serious affront to the institutional
authority of this body.

He goes on to attack the Obama Administration’s circular reasoning cited for withholding requested documents saying “I have had criminal defense clients
who would only envy such an ability to cite the basis for a criminal charge as the defense
to a criminal charge.”

I don’t think any of the testimony given in day two of the hearings will derail Ms. Lynch’s confirmation as the next Attorney General. I really have no doubt that she will be confirmed. I see this testimony as more an airing of grievances and an attempt to put the Administration on notice that a Republican-majority Senate – unlike the Democratic-majority Senate run by Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) – is watching them.

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Project Gunwalker Makes It Into Loretta Lynch’s Confirmation Hearing

January 28, 2015 by

Project Gunwalker aka Operation Fast and Furious was mentioned today as the confirmation hearings for Loretta Lynch to become the 83rd Attorney General began. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) had this to say in his opening statement:

The Department’s own Inspector General listed as one of its top management challenges:
“Restoring Confidence in the Integrity, Fairness, and Accountability of the Department.”

He cited several examples, including the Department falsely denying basic facts in the Fast and
Furious controversy. The Inspector General concluded this “resulted in an erosion of trust in the
Department.”

In that fiasco, our government knowingly allowed firearms to fall into the hands of international
gun traffickers.

And it led to the death of a Border Patrol Agent, Brian Terry.

And then, after Congress called on the leadership of the Department to account for this foolish
operation, what did they do?

Did they apologize to the family and rush to uncover the truth?

Quite the opposite.

They denied, spun and hid the facts from Congress and the American people.

They bullied and intimidated whistleblowers, members of the press, and anyone who had the
audacity to investigate and uncover the truth.

 You can listen to this in the live video of Lynch’s hearings at the 25:00 to 26:09 marks.

While it won’t bring back the lives of Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata, I’m glad Sen. Grassley at least hasn’t forgotten them and what was a proximate cause of their deaths.

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Senate Judiciary Committee Confirmation Hearings On Loretta Lynch

January 27, 2015 by 1 Comment

Loretta Lynch, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, is President Obama’s nominee to succeed the despicable Eric Holder as Attorney General. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on her nomination starting tomorrow at 10am. The committee is now headed by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

The committee has released its witness list. Looking it over there are some very interesting names on the list such as Sharyl Attkisson, Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote, and Sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee. You have to wonder if they will discuss Operation Fast and Furious, the hacking of Attkisson’s computer, the targeting of conservative non-profits by the Obama Administration, the vilification of law enforcement by Holder, and other such topics. I would also note that Professors Rosenkranz and Turley both are affiliated with the libertarian Cato Institute.

The full list is below:

Witnesses


Panel I


Loretta Lynch
U.S. Attorney For The Eastern District Of New York
U.S. Department of Justice
Brooklyn , NY


Panel II


Sharyl Attkisson
Investigative Journalist


David Barlow
Partner
Sidley Austin LLP


David A. Clarke, Jr.
Sheriff
Milwaukee County, Wisconsin


Catherine Engelbrecht
Founder
True The Vote


Janice K. Fedarcyk
Fedarcyk Consulting LLC


Stephen H. Legomsky
John S. Lehmann University Professor
School of Law at Washington University


The Reverend Doctor Clarence Newsome
Cincinnati , OH


Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz
Professor Of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies Cato Institute


Johnathan Turley
Professor, J.B. And Maurice C. Shapiro Chair Of Public Interest Law
Georgetown Law School Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies Cato Institute
Washington , DC

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Dick Durbin’s Dog And Pony Show On Stand Your Ground

October 30, 2013 by 1 Comment

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, finally held his delayed hearing on so-called Stand Your Ground laws. The hearing entitled, “‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws: Civil Rights and Public Safety Implications of the Expanded Use of Deadly Force”, was originally scheduled to be held on September 17th.

The witness list changed somewhat from the earlier scheduled hearing. It added three US Representatives as witnesses in one panel and substituted the president of a prosecutor’s association for a Florida state’s attorney. The list is below:

Panel I

The Honorable Marcia L. Fudge
United States Representative (D-OH-11)
Washington, DC

The Honorable Luis V. Gutierrez
United States Representative (D-IL-4)
Washington, DC

The Honorable Louie Gohmert
United States Representative (R-TX-1)
Washington, DC

Panel II

Sybrina Fulton
Miami, FL

David LaBahn
President and CEO
Association of Prosecuting Attorneys
Washington, DC

Lucia McBath
Atlanta, GA

Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr.
Clinical Professor of Law, Director of the Criminal Justice Institute
Harvard Law School
Cambridge, MA

John R. Lott, Jr., Ph.D.
President
Crime Prevention Research Center
Swarthmore, PA

Ilya Shapiro
Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies
Cato Institute
Washington, DC

The webcast of the 2 hour hearing can be seen here.

Fortunately, you don’t have to wade through all 2 hours of testimony to get the gist of what was said. Attorney Andrew Branca, author of The Law of Self Defense, 2nd Ed. has done it for us over at the Legal Insurrection blog. In addition to summarizing the testimony of each witness as well as that of the senators on the panel, he gives his take on the whole charade.

My first general observation is that the anti-SYG folks were, as experience would suggest, big on emotion and small on actual facts, law, or data.

One of the anti-SYG witnesses, Professor Sullivan from Harvard Law School, did raise some actual data–but when these were utterly destroyed by the later testimony of Dr. John Lott and Elliot Shapiro of CATA (sic), Professor Sullivan was swift to discount the use of data (which he himself had introduced into the testimony) and instead focus on the “real people” behind the data. In sharp contrast, the testimony of the pro-SYG speakers was focused and direct.

Second, the anti-SYG folks persistently conflated the legal concept of Stand Your Ground with utterly discrete legal concepts, such as presumptions of reasonableness and civil/criminal immunity.

When this is done by people without legal training or experience, such as Sabrina Fulton, one can of course accept it as an unknowing error. When it is persistently done by a Harvard Law Professor and a head of an (allegedly) leading association of State Prosecutors, one can only wonder at either their actual intent or their underlying intelligence.

Indeed, their misstatements of the law were so egregious that at one point Dr. Lott was obliged to read aloud from the actual Florida statute they had badly mischaracterized, to which they naturally had no substantive response. In that case they were claiming that even criminal aggressors could claim Stand Your Ground privilege under Florida law, a claim that the plain language of the statute read by Dr. Lott clearly destroys.

In any case, it is clear that their effort is intended to be a broad attack on all three fronts — likely with immunity being the true target, as it represents the largest pot of gold for their supporters — rather than any focused concern on Stand Your Ground, per se.

Finally, the bottom line is I expect this hearing, and any similar subsequent efforts, to be little more than political theater, with no substantive changes resulting to the law of self-defense.

I certainly hope Mr. Branca is correct that there will be no substantive changes and that this is nothing more than political theater. One explanation that I’ve heard for these hearings is that they are an effort by Sen. Durbin to keep alive a polarizing issue so as to promote higher turnout by African-Americans in the 2014 mid-term elections. Given that Durbin has shown time and again that he is a shameless opportunist, I wouldn’t put this past him.

UPDATE: Kurt Hofmann, the St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner, gives his take on Durbin and these hearings. I agree with Kurt that having Durbin chair any committee with the word “Constitution” in its name is “a grim joke.”

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Durbin’s “Stand Your Ground” Hearings

September 16, 2013 by 3 Comments

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. As mentioned before, he plans to hold a hearing on so-called Stand Your Ground laws. He has entitled his hearings, “‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws: Civil Rights and Public Safety Implications of the Expanded Use of Deadly Force”. This hearing is scheduled for tomorrow at 10am.

The witness list for the hearing has been published.

Sybrina Fulton
Miami, FL


Lucia McBath
Atlanta, GA


William N. Meggs
State Attorney
Second Judicial Circuit
Tallahassee, FL


Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr.
Clinical Professor of Law, Director of the Criminal Justice Institute
Harvard Law School
Cambridge, MA


John R. Lott, Jr., Ph.D.
President
Crime Prevention Research Center
Swarthmore, PA


Ilya Shapiro
Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies
Cato Institute
Washington, DC

Sybrina Fulton really needs no introduction as she got more than her 15 minutes of fame during the George Zimmerman trial.

Lucia McBath was the mother of Jordan Davis who was killed in a confrontation in Jacksonville, FL by Martin Dunn. Mr. Dunn is charged with 1st Degree Murder in the case. Ms. McBath is concerned that Dunn will try to claim self-defense under Florida’s “stand your ground” law.

Willie Meggs is the State Attorney (or DA) for the 2nd Judicial Circuit which includes the Tallahassee area of Florida. He is a well-known opponent of the Florida “Stand Your Ground” law and has called it “the dumbest law ever put on the books.”

Ronald Sullivan is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. About the only thing I could find about regarding either Trayvon Martin or “Stand Your Ground” laws is that he spoke to a pro-Martin demonstration held by the Black Law Students Association at Harvard. He will also be a speaker on a panel  discussing “Guns, Violence, and Children” at the American Association of Law Schools conference in January 2014.

John Lott, of course, needs little introduction as he is one of the leading pro-gun researchers.

Ilya Shapiro is a Fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. The Cato Institute has made Durbin’s enemies list. In an article posted in August, Shapiro practically demanded Durbin include him in the list of speakers at this hearing.

This is unacceptable. Senator Durbin, care to invite me to testify at your little hearing? I rather enjoyed discussing Citizens United at the kabuki theatre you ran last year—though you seemed more interested in accusing me of being a pawn of the Koch brothers (with whom I have no beef, but who were actually suing Cato at the time)—and would be happy to have another tete-a-tete with my fellow University of Chicago Law School alum.

What will make this joke of a hearing even more interesting is that the Ranking Member for the Republican side is Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). While Durbin will rail on about the Koch Brothers, ALEC, and conservatives, I expect Cruz will be up to the challenge.

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So Durbin Wants Hearings On Stand Your Ground

July 22, 2013 by 2 Comments

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) announced on Friday that he plans to hold hearings on Stand Your Ground laws in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on The Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights of which he is the Chair.

In a statement, Durbin said the Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee on Constitution, civil rights and human rights ”will examine the gun lobby’s and the American Legislative Exchange Council’s influence in creating and promoting these laws; the way in which the laws have changed the legal definition of self-defense; the extent to which the laws have encouraged unnecessary shooting confrontations; and the civil rights implications when racial profiling and ‘stand your ground’ laws mix, along with other issues.”

Normally, I’d be dreading the nonsense that would come out of such a hearing. While this still could be true, the composition of the subcommittee gives me some hope.

The Ranking Member of the subcommittee is Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) who is a fierce proponent of the Second Amendment and gun rights. The Republican members also include Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Orrin Hatch (R-U). While Graham and Hatch have been wishy-washy on many things, they have been solid on gun rights.

The subcommittee’s Democrats consist of Durbin, Al Franken (D-MN), Richard Bluementhal (D-CT), Chris Coons (D-DE),and Mazie Hirono (D-HI). Blumenthal is a hard-core anti gunner while the rest are reliably anti-gun.

Ted Cruz, while a mere freshman, has shown no hesitation in taking it to the anti’s. He took Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) on in full Judiciary Committee over her AWB and made her look petty. I think he can do the same to those who would seek to diminish the laws of self-defense.

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Senate Judiciary Hearing On B. Todd Jones (Updated)

June 10, 2013 by 1 Comment

The Senate Judiciary Committee takes up the nomination of B. Todd Jones to be the Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives next Tuesday, June 4th, at 10am – it has been rescheduled to June 11th at 9:30am. Jones is currently the Acting Director as well as the US Attorney for the District of Minnesota. Interestingly, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) will be presiding over this nomination hearing instead of Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT).

Given the Obama Administration’s efforts to punish whistle blowers as well as intimidate the press, Mr. Jones’ roll in this should be examined. Last July, Jones issued a video to all ATF employees under his “Changecast” set of videos. Changecast No. 8 was entitled Choices and Consequences. While Jones tried to portray this as a warning not to do stupid stuff, most in the field took it as a warning not to follow the path of whistle blowers like Senior Agent John Dodson. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) saw it this way as well and pressed him on this. I don’t know if he ever bothered to answer their letter.

Even if Jones sticks with his denial that it was meant as a warning to whistle blowers, it most certainly has had that impact. A case in point is the CleanUpATF.org website. Many who have followed this blog for a while know that it is a website run by and for dissident ATF agents who were fed up with the cronyism, stupidity, and malfeasance of the ATF leadership.

For the most part, this website has gone quiet since the beginning of the year. The Grapevine thread which used to be very active has had no posts since March. The Fast and Furious page has had nothing except a cartoon since February, The ATF-EEO violations thread has had nothing since January.

I’m sure veiled and not so veiled threats have been made to ATF Special Agents that they are to keep their mouths shut if they want to keep their badge. I do realize that correlation isn’t causation but I don’t think CUATF going quiet is just happenstance. While I do think ATF needs a permanent director, I don’t think B. Todd Jones is the person for the job.

UPDATE: The webmaster at CUATF posted the following on June 4th regarding the nomination of B. Todd Jones and their adamant opposition to it. I think they make a good case as to why B. Todd does not deserve to serve as Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will soon hold hearings
regarding B. Todd Jones, Barrack Obama’s nominee to become the next
Director of ATF. By any rational measure, Jones has been a pathetic disgrace and utter failure as ATF’s Acting Director. He represents exactly what is wrong
with the Bureau; a profound lack of integrity, transparency and
competence, shameless cronyism, vicious protection of the ATF management
“good `ol boy club”, and institutionalized corruption. His
confirmation as Director will only ensure that what was once one of the
world’s greatest law enforcement agencies will contine to decline and
fail in its primary mission. If anything, Jones should be summarily fired, if not prosecuted for his breathtaking malfeasance as Acting Director.


While it is certainly true that ATF desperately needs a
permanent Director, can’t we do better than this? In a nation of over
300 million people, can’t we find someone who actually has the basic
integrity, commitment to justice, and elemental competence to finally
put an end to the embarrassing plague of disgusting corruption and
managerial stupidity that has paralyzed the Bureau for far too many
years?

As Acting Director of ATF, B. Todd Jones has:


  • Played a starring role in ATF’s criminal obstruction of justice and
    outrageous stonewalling of Congress in a wide variety of matters, but
    particularly with regard to the “Fast & Furious” debacle.
  • Engaged in flagrant relatiatory conduct against legitimate
    Whistleblowers. He is currently the subject of several federal
    investigations for this illegal conduct.
  • Presided over one of if not the lowest government-wide employee approval ratings ever recorded since such surveys have been conducted.
  • Repeatedly protected, promoted or otherwise rewarded profoundly
    incompetent and corrupt managers, including the SAC/DAD of Milwaukee,
    who was directly responsible for ignominously failed operations. Jones
    personally ensured that this beacon of performance was quietly
    transferred to where he had been begging to go for years.
  • Allowed the ATF Reno office to be closed due solely to grotesquely incompetent local leadership, with zero adverse consequences for the guilty managers.
  • Personally approved or at least looked the other way regarding the
    blatantly illegal arrangement” under which William McMahon, one of the
    primary perpetrators in the horrendous “Fast & Furious” scandal, was
    allowed to “double-dip” (collect a “no-show” ATF paycheck while
    actually working elsewhere) in flagrant violation of federal law and ATF
    policy. This was most likely done to buy McMahon’s silence and protect
    both the Obama Administration and ATF from rightful scrutiny.
  • Personally assisted the notoriously lawless, abusive and shockingly
    corrupt Chief Counsel’s office to unlawfully attack, smear, relaiate
    against and personally destroy legitimate Whistleblower and EEOC
    complainants, while aggressively protecting the litany of corrupt
    managers who necessitated the complaints.
  • Promoted one of the most viciously corrupt, dishonest and
    incompetent managers in the history of ATF (and that is really saying
    something) to head the Bureau’s Internal Affairs Division.
  • Has repeatedly rewarded unethical or demonstrably incompetent
    Assistant Directors that have miserably failed in their HQ duties by
    giving them paid moves back to cushy SAC positions of their choice.
  • Engaged in numerous additional actions to cover ATF management’s
    asses at all costs, regardless of trivial considerations such as truth,
    justice, law, policy or the disasterous consequences that all of this
    corruption has wrought on the agency and its ability to protect the
    American public.


The U.S. Congressional Committee on
Government Oversight and Reform assesses B. Todd Jones’ tenure as Acting
ATF Director as follows:


  • Failure to hold all the ATF personnel responsible for Operation Fast and Furious accountable –
    Nearly two years have gone by since the congressional investigation
    began. Still, several key individuals identified by both Congress and
    the Inspector General as having played prominent roles in using reckless
    tactics remain with the agency.
  • Failure to support Fast and Furious whistleblowers –
    The Congressional investigation, the independent Department of Justice
    Inspector General, and an internal ATF review during Jones’ tenure exonerated the Fast and Furious whistleblowers.
    Yet, Jones has never commended or publicly defended these agents who
    brought the wrongdoing in Operation Fast and Furious to light. These whistleblowers faced retaliation
    from both inside and outside the Department of Justice, but Jones has
    steadfastly declined to recognize their heroic efforts to stop ATF
    gunwalking.
  • Perceived hostility to ATF whistleblowers – In a video sent agency wide, Jones instructed ATF employees not to complain about problems outside their chain of command.
    ATF released the video as Fast and Furious remained prominently in the
    news. Agents within ATF were concerned enough to contact Congress
    about what they perceived to be a veiled threat and indirect criticism
    of Fast and Furious whistleblowers who spoke to Congress and reporters
    about gunwalking after complaints to ATF officials had fallen on deaf
    ears.
  • Affording special treatment to ATF supervisor cited for negligence in Fast and Furious – In a particularly outrageous series of events, one of the key players in Operation Fast and Furious accepted a lucrative job at J. P. Morgan
    while still on ATF’s payroll. While the agency had no obligation to do
    so, the supervisor was given a special waiver under Jones’ tenure as
    Acting Director to remain employed by ATF while he simultaneously worked
    for J.P. Morgan. This was apparently done so that the agent could gain
    seniority for his government pension.
  • An unwillingness to engage Congress – Jones
    has refused to discuss his actions and problems within his agency
    related to Operation Fast and Furious with congressional investigators.
    This position stands in stark contrast to his predecessor, former
    Acting ATF Director Ken Melson, who proactively sought an opportunity
    to tell investigators his understanding of what had gone wrong in
    Operation Fast and Furious and with the Justice Department’s flawed
    response to whistleblower allegations.
  • Failure to apply lessons ATF has learned from Fast and Furious
    – Jones has, to date, exhibited a general failure to articulate to
    Congress, ATF agents, and the public his understanding of what went
    wrong, who is responsible, and what ATF needs to do in the future to be
    successful in its mission of enforcing firearms laws. He has not
    offered plans for reforming or restructuring the failed supervisory
    framework that allowed reckless tactics to continue for over a year and
    contributed to the death of a Border Patrol agent and numerous Mexican
    citizens.


Please contact your Congressmen and Senators immediately and urge them to just say “Hell No!” to B. Todd Jones.

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“Jumped-Up Refugee From A Zoning Board”

March 15, 2013 by 2 Comments

The title of this post comes from a description of Sen. Dianne Feinsten (D-CA) made by Tam in a post back in February. I loved it then and I especially love it now that DiFi is all butt hurt over the eloquent thrashing she took from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.

Ted Cruz asked DiFi whether she thought Congress could likewise limit the right of the people under the 1st and 4th Amendments as she is seeking to do with her Assault Weapons Ban of 2012. As you can see in the video below, DiFi gets all huffy about it. Three male Democrats also have to jump in because it seems that they are worried that a woman can’t make a strong enough argument or so it would seem.

After the committee business meeting, DiFi had to run to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to wrap the mantle of victimhood across her shoulders. She said, “Well, I just felt patronized. I felt he was somewhat arrogant about it.” CNN is still playing the clip below of DiFi whining about her treatment as I saw just this morning on TV in a local McDonalds.

Did DiFin really say she put her fingers in the wounds of George Moscone and Harvey Milk? Hmnm. I wonder when DiFi will get around to telling people that fellow Supervisor Dan White didn’t use an AR or an AK or even an FN-FAL to murder them. No, Dan White used a S&W Model 10 in .38 Special – a plain old everyday revolver then used by police forces around the country.

20 years in the Senate and 9 years as the accidental mayor of San Francisco still doesn’t make one a expert on Constitutional matters. Nor does it seem to engender any real respect for it either. She is, and will always remain, what Tam described her as – a meddling harpy and a jumped-up refugee from a zoning board.