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The post Politics Influenced Justice Department In Roger Stone Case, DOJ Lawyer Tells Hill appeared first on Virus Reports.
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Critics have called Attorney General William Barr too willing to do the bidding of President Trump. Justice Department attorneys say they’ve seen political pressure in big cases.
Evan Vucci/AP
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Evan Vucci/AP
Critics have called Attorney General William Barr too willing to do the bidding of President Trump. Justice Department attorneys say they’ve seen political pressure in big cases.
Evan Vucci/AP
Updated at 4:30 p.m. ET
A current Justice Department prosecutor is planning to tell lawmakers on Wednesday that in his many years in the government, “I have never seen political influence play any role in prosecutorial decision making … with one exception: United States v Roger Stone,” according to a copy of his prepared testimony.
Aaron Zelinsky, who has worked at Justice since 2014, is scheduled to testify at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday as one of two “whistleblowers” set to describe politicization at the Justice Department, said Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D–NY.
In his written statement, Zelinsky said he heard that Stone received different treatment “because of his relationship to the president.”
Zelinsky said the person in charge of the U.S. Attorney’s office at the time was “receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break.”
And, he said: “I was also told that the acting U.S. Attorney was giving Stone such unprecedentedly favorable treatment because he was ‘afraid of the president.'”
Zelinsky described “significant pressure … to water down and in some cases outright distort the events that transpired in [Stone’s] trial and the criminal conduct that gave rise to his conviction.”
Eventually, higher-ups in the office overrode the original recommendation about how stiffly to punish Stone and filed a new memo “at odds with the record and contrary to Department of Justice policy.”
Zelinsky ultimately withdrew from the case, along with three others, after the department refused to heed their objections that “such political favoritism was wrong and contrary to legal ethics and department policy.”
A judge eventually sentenced Stone to serve 40 months in prison. He had been due to report there next week. But Stone’s lawyer filed an unopposed motion to delay his surrender until September, citing a “heightened risk” of COVID-19 in the “close confines” of a prison.
Attorney General Bill Barr said at the time of Stone’s sentencing that he’d acted on his own to get involved with the submission of a second memo asking the judge in the case to impose a lighter sentence than contemplated in the first one.
But Trump also wrote about the case on Twitter, which brought criticism about the perception that the president was calling the shots. Barr eventually reached the point of publicly asking Trump not to comment on Justice Department matters. The president hasn’t complied.
Anticipating questions from lawmakers
Ahead of the hearing, Zelinsky’s prepared testimony said that he understands the Justice Department may wish to shield certain facts about the case against Stone, a longtime political adviser to Trump.
And in many cases, Zelinsky said, he will respect the DOJ’s assertions of legal privileges.
But, he added, “the deliberative process privilege does not apply when testimony sheds light on government misconduct, or when the government has disclosed deliberative information selectively and misleadingly.”
A second Justice Department attorney, John W. Elias, intends to tell House lawmakers that he was so concerned about antitrust investigations launched under Barr that he reported his fears to the department’s inspector general, according to his prepared testimony.
Elias said he feared possible “abuse of authority, a gross waste of funds, and gross mismanagement.”
Elias, who has worked as a career lawyer at Justice for presidents of both political parties, said he had two sets of concerns. The first involved a directive by Barr to launch 10 full-scale reviews of mergers taking place in the marijuana industry, a step Elias said did not meet “established criteria” for such probes.
The second, Elias said, is an investigation the antitrust division initiated four days after tweets from Trump, criticizing an arrangement between California and four automakers on fuel emissions.
Elias said that investigation was opened under atypical process and without considering what defenses the auto companies might raise. It was closed, without charges, in February 2020.
Unusual testimony
It’s unusual for current Justice Department lawyers who are not supervisors to testify before Congress. In fact, the department told the U.S. House of Representatives in a 2000 letter that it generally barred line attorneys and agents from appearing on Capitol Hill to protect their independence.
But the official who wrote that letter, Robert Raben, told NPR that Wednesday’s hearing is a different matter altogether for the Justice Department.
“It is being accused of using enforcement as a political weapon,” Raben said. “It has no standing in this context to cry ‘politics.’ The normal thing to do would be for [Attorney General] Barr to testify, and hold himself politically accountable, which he is. But we are not in normal times.”
Committee Chairman Nadler told MSNBC earlier this week that Democrats expected to issue a subpoena to the attorney general in the coming days. Relations between the House majority and Barr have long been sour; last year Nadler’s committee voted to hold him in contempt of Congress.
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]]>The post Politics vs. science during the COVID-19 pandemic appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Just in case we needed a reminder, the debate over the desirability and duration of stay-at home orders during the current coronavirus pandemic has exposed the uncomfortable relationship that exists between science and democracy. Science points in the direction of the rule of the expert while democracy is rooted in the principle of popular sovereignty.
While the American people and scientists have competing claims to rule (popular consent vs. scientific knowledge), each actually needs the other to survive peaceably and comfortably, so neither can afford to completely discredit or abandon the other.
Modern, rights-oriented democracies like the United States desire much of what science has to offer, including a real shot at comfortable preservation for the many and not just for the few. There are good reasons, then, for democracies to be perplexed when it comes to the relationship they should seek with persons who have mastered the physical and natural sciences.
The tension between competing claims to rule based on popular consent on the one side, and scientific knowledge on the other side, only came to a head once the democratic model of government was shown to be defensible, principally by the Founding generation in the United States.
Living with the tension between democracy and science in a responsible way requires that we distinguish the respective spheres within which “political” reasoning and “scientific” reasoning should prevail. This is easier asserted than accomplished, but doing this intelligently is critical to having a decent and competent democratic nation.
One major distinction between the realm of politics and the scientific realm is that the political arena is dominated by matters that are fundamentally variable, something that is not true in the realm of science. Additionally, political decision-makers by definition are persons of practical action who are expected to deliberate and issue commands whereas scientists are not obligated to take action or issue commands.
Political officials who are reputed to be “prudent” are persons who excel at adjusting policies to changing circumstances, including changing public opinions, and who recognize that “contingency” is a characteristic of political life. The prudent decision-maker understands that promoting the common good requires the continuous adjustment of a complex array of matters (e.g., political, economic, cultural, etc.) that are highly variable in nature.
The most esteemed political decision-makers are persons who are adept at adjusting policies in such a way as to promote what is good for human beings, which requires a recognition that some ways of behaving and conducting human affairs are better than other ways. Knowledge of this kind benefits more from good intuition and extensive experience than from the mastery of some body of scientific knowledge.
Admittedly, national and state officials who seek to act prudently need the knowledge that scientists possess in order to give people a good shot at enjoying the full benefits of living in a modern, right-oriented democracy. Political decision-making, however, ultimately should prevail in a democracy over the knowledge of scientists when it comes to matters bearing on the quality of life of the people, for example, deciding whether churches provide “essential” services.
A political community that abdicates decision-making to experts on fundamental issues related to the way of life of the people is no longer a democratic community. Additionally, the kind of knowledge required to make intelligent decisions about what constitutes a healthy life for human beings (e.g., risk taking as community service and as a source of personal distinction) transcends the realm of purely scientific knowledge in the direction of morality.
While good scientific knowledge may help when it comes to knowing how to survive, the consummate political knowledge of a George Washington or Winston Churchill makes survival with dignity possible. Consider how Founding-era Americans distinguished themselves for all time by following the prudent counsel of Washington and James Madison.
All of this accentuates the enormous responsibilities that fall to the people in a democracy. Nurturing a citizenry that is up to the task of selecting persons for public office who are capable of deliberating and acting prudently when it comes to the common good is enormously difficult. It was among the greatest challenges facing the Founders.
Carrying out this task well requires that citizens appreciate the extremely complex decision-making that is required to protect, restrain and/or balance diverse religious, racial, ethnic, economic and political interests, while also recognizing that political decision-making at its best should satisfy human longings that transcend creature comforts and mere survival.
Despite the protestations of many journalists and political pundits, nothing about all of this is easy. Preserving the integrity and vitality of the nation during the COVID-19 pandemic will require that the American people possess the knowledge and the courage to insist on a prudential relationship between science and politics that preserves the democratic bona fides of our constitutional republic and also points us in the direction of rational, dignified existence — an existence that requires the discipline to control our fears and face adversity with the dignity appropriate to a free people — at this point, we have left the realm of scientific knowledge.
• David Marion is Elliott Emeritus Professor of Government and a faculty fellow at the Wilson Center for Leadership in the Public Interest at Hampden-Sydney College.
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]]>The post WHO says partisan politics and lack of global solidarity is ‘fueling’ coronavirus pandemic appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>The World Health Company’s leading authorities said Monday that partisan politics and absence of global solidarity are helping to sustain the coronavirus pandemic.
He urged countries to collaborate as Covid-19 continues to spread out throughout the world.
” The cracks between individuals and the fractures in between celebrations is sustaining it,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated. ” Do not use this infection as a chance to combat versus each other or score political points. It’s dangerous. It resembles playing with fire.”
Without international solidarity, the worst of the pandemic is still “ahead of us,” Tedros stated throughout an interview at the company’s Geneva head office. The Ethiopian microbiologist previously stated he has actually received death dangers and racist insults.
” This virus is dangerous. It exploits fractures between us,” he stated. “We require worldwide solidarity that’s sealed on real national unity. Without national unity and worldwide uniformity, trust us, the worst is yet ahead of us. Let’s avoid this catastrophe.”
The virus, which emerged in Wuhan, China over three months earlier, has actually contaminated more than 2.4 million individuals worldwide and killed a minimum of 165,000 as of Monday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Transmittable illness professionals say the number of those who have had the virus is likely much greater as people go undiscovered and countries battle with screening.
Tedros’ comment came six days after President Donald Trump revealed that the U.S. will suspend moneying to WHO while it examines the company’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Trump slammed the worldwide agency’s reaction to the outbreak, stating “one of the most harmful and pricey choices from the WHO was its dreadful choice” to oppose travel limitations.
The WHO said it would rely on other countries to help fill any spaces in financing its Covid-19 response work, expressing “remorse” for Trump’s choice.
The U.S. agency’s financing runs in two-year budget cycles. For the 2018 and 2019 funding cycle, the U.S. paid a $237 million needed assessment along with an additional $656 million in voluntary contributions, averaging $446 million a year and representing about 14.67%of its overall budget, according to spokesman Tarik Jasarevic.
Tedros said Monday the agency had actually alerted developed nations the virus would “surprise” them.
” It did. We said that,” he said. “Let’s stop additional surprises.”
” Please interact. We require national unity. We’ve seen the disaster and we require worldwide solidarity that’s based upon sincere and authentic national unity,” he included.
— CNBC’s Jasmine Kim contributed to this post.
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