#justice-department

#justice-department

LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- The fight over California's new congressional map designed to help Democrats flip congressional House seats will go to court Monday as a panel of federal judges considers whether the district boundaries approved by voters last month can be used in elections. The hearing in Los Angeles sets the stage for a high-stakes legal and political fight between the Trump administration and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who's been eyeing a 2028 presidential run.

In March, Erez Reuveni, a veteran Justice Department lawyer, was promoted to the position of acting deputy director of the Office of Immigration Litigation. He decided to personally take on the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had been wrongly sent back to El Salvador, in violation of a 2019 court order. On April 5th, Reuveni told his supervisor he would not sign an appeal brief that said Abrego Garcia was a "terrorist." According to a whistle-blower complaint that Reuveni later filed, he said, "I didn't sign up to lie." He was suspended and then fired.

President Trump's second term has brought a period of turmoil and controversy unlike any in the history of the Justice Department. Trump and his appointees have blasted through the walls designed to protect the nation's most powerful law enforcement agency from political influence; they have directed the course of criminal investigations, openly flouted ethics rules and caused a breakdown of institutional culture.

The replacements came after online commenters seized on striking similarities in the president's signature across a series of pardons dated Nov. 7, including those granted to former New York Mets player Darryl Strawberry, former Tennessee House speaker Glen Casada and former New York police sergeant Michael McMahon. In fact, the signatures on several pardons initially uploaded to the Justice Department's website were identical, two forensic document experts confirmed to The Associated Press.

I am planning to travel to Washington, D.C., after hearing through Leader Jeffries and media reports that Speaker Johnson finally intends to swear me in,

"We need you, because it is a war, and it's something we will not win unless we keep on fighting," Blanche said Friday at an annual Federalist Society conference. He said the Justice Department's lawyers are "bouncing around this country fighting these activist judges," who he said are "more political, or certainly as political, as the most liberal governor or" district attorney, Blanche said. Blanche said there were "a group of judges that are repeat players."

Given the federal shutdown, they argued, they just didn't have the lawyers to do the work. "Department of Justice attorneys and employees of the federal defendants are prohibited from working, even on a voluntary basis, except in very limited circumstances, including 'emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property,'" they wrote in their filing Oct. 1, the first day of the shutdown.

When Donald Trump appointed Lindsey Halligan to act as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, critics worried that he had tapped her specifically to bring prosecutions against his enemies. It didn't take long for Halligan to prove the critics right. On September 25, she successfully persuaded a Virginia grand jury to indict former FBI Director James Comey. Yesterday, she secured an indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James.

The U.S. Justice Department sued six more states on Thursday, saying the states refused to turn over voter registration lists with complete information as the agency mounts a wide-ranging effort to get detailed voter data. It also accused the states of failing to respond sufficiently to questions about the procedures they take to maintain voter rolls. The department's newest lawsuits targeted California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania

Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam Shifty Schiff, Leticia??? They're all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done. Then we almost put in a Democrat supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with a really bad Republican past.