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      Progressives denounce FBI attacks by right wing but push for agency reforms

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      Christopher Wray appeared stupefied. As the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation testified on Wednesday before the House judiciary committee, Republicans on the panel painted him as a liberal stooge abusing his power to punish Joe Biden’s political enemies.The accusations stunned Wray, a registered Republican who was appointed by Donald Trump and previously served in George W Bush’s administration.“The idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background,” Wray told the committee.Some progressives share Wray’s disbelief. The two indictments of Donald Trump, as well as Hunter Biden’s plea deal with federal prosecutors and conspiracy theories about the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, have fueled Republicans’ accusations that the FBI and the justice department are unjustly targeting rightwing groups.Those allegations have somewhat complicated progressives’ longstanding criticism of the FBI over the bureau’s documented surveillance of liberal activists. Even as progressives denounce rightwing conspiracy theories about the FBI, they continue to push for an overhaul of the bureau’s surveillance and data collection methods.“If Republicans really care about FBI overreach of civil liberties, then they will get serious about the real reforms,” Representative Cori Bush, a Democrat from Missouri, said. “But that’s not really what they’re pushing right now. Instead, they’re still amplifying those conspiracy theories and trying to distract the public, to gaslight the country and distract us from Trump’s criminality.”Progressives’ skepticism of the FBI long predates Trump’s presidency. In 1956, the FBI launched its domestic counterintelligence program (Cointelpro) to infiltrate and discredit political organizations that the bureau considered suspicious. The program, which shuttered in 1971, resulted in the surveillance of many leaders in the anti-Vietnam war and civil rights movements, including Dr Martin Luther King Jr.Progressive activists’ concerns about FBI surveillance stretch into the present day. According to a 2022 memo declassified by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in May, the FBI violated its own guidelines in running so-called “batch queries” related to 133 people “arrested in connection with civil unrest and protests” after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. The memo found that the FBI conducted similarly inappropriate inquiries of more than a dozen people suspected of participating in the January 6 Capitol attack.“The FBI for many decades – almost a century – has been sort of the chief secret police entity against the left and progressives,” said Vince Warren, executive director of the progressive Center for Constitutional Rights. “During that time, the right wing and Republicans have been the biggest cheerleaders of this illegal activity when aimed at communists, civil rights advocates, anti-war advocates, all the way up to [Black Lives Matter] protesters. That seemed to change in 2016, when they backed a lawless president who didn’t like that his illegal activities were being investigated.”Republicans’ sentiments toward the FBI have indeed shifted as Trump has come under increasing legal scrutiny, marking a notable sea change for a party that long claimed the mantle of law and order. When Trump was indicted on 37 federal charges last month for his alleged mishandling of classified documents, the former president’s congressional allies jumped to his defense, accusing the FBI and the justice department of exploiting its powers to target Republicans.Opening the hearing with Wray on Wednesday, Representative Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the judiciary committee, bemoaned the “weaponization of the government against the American people” and “this double standard that exists now in our justice system”.Jordan repeatedly suggested that Republicans and Democrats could work together on reforming the FBI’s data collection methods, specifically in the form of overhauling the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa). That law, which is currently set to expire at the end of the year, has long been a source of outrage on the left. One particularly controversial provision of Fisa, section 702, allows the FBI to carry out warrantless surveillance of targeted foreigners overseas, and the personal data of many Americans – including Black Lives Matter protesters – have been swept up in the expansive searches made possible by the law.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhen Representative Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, questioned Wray on Wednesday, she focused her queries on the FBI’s data collection methods and warned that Fisa would face “a very difficult reauthorization process”.During a press call on Wednesday, Jayapal expressed dissatisfaction with “the vagueness of the director’s answers” and suggested Democrats and Republicans could indeed work together to ensure a significant overhaul of Fisa.“I think that this is actually a bipartisan area of concern,” Jayapal said. “We have an opportunity here to ensure that any [Fisa] reauthorization that we pass contains some significant reforms that protect the privacy and the personal information of people across the country.”On the possibility of bipartisan Fisa reform efforts, Bush said she was “open to working with anyone who cares about real people and bringing about real change”, although she remained skeptical of Republicans’ commitment to the cause.“If that’s what they actually want to see, then yes, I’m open to working with them,” she said.Warren was even more dubious about bipartisan efforts to overhaul the FBI’s surveillance methods. Given Republicans’ decades-long history of endorsing the FBI despite its controversial tactics, he considered it unlikely that the party’s leaders would now embrace reform.“While the right and left may both see a problem with the FBI, I don’t see them agreeing on a reform solution,” Warren said. “The foundational challenge with federal law enforcement is that it broadly criminalizes communities of color and activists, and I think that, so long as those activists are environmental or [Black Lives Matter] ones, the right wing will be perfectly happy with the way things are going.” More

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      Wray calls conspiracy theories of FBI involvement in January 6 ‘ludicrous’ – as it happened

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      From 5h agoIn his testimony to the House judiciary committee, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, decried conspiracy theories promoted by rightwing figures such as former Fox News host Tucker Carlson as well as some Republican lawmakers that the bureau’s agents were involved in the January 6 insurrection.Wray’s comments came in an exchange with Democratic congressman Steve Cohen, who asked Wray whether Ray Epps, a man Carlson and others have claimed was a government agent and provoked the storming of the US Capitol, worked for the FBI.“No,” Wray replied. “I will say this notion that somehow the violence at the Capitol on January 6 was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources and agents is ludicrous and is a disservice to our brave, hardworking, dedicated men and women.”Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Epps was considering suing Fox News for Carlson’s comments about him. The conservative network earlier this year agreed to pay $787.5m to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by voting equipment manufacturer Dominion over misinformation Fox personalities spread about its business’s involvement in the 2020 election.FBI director Christopher Wray wrapped up a lengthy day of testimony before the House judiciary committee, which was as riven by partisanship as ever. Democrats defended the Donald Trump-appointed FBI chief, while Republicans tried to get him to admit misconduct or weigh in on various conspiracy theories. In the course of the six-hour hearing, Wray denied any involvement by the bureau in the January 6 attack, jousted with two rightwing lawmakers over allegations of corruption against Joe Biden and his family, and a memo warning about “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology”, and at one point tried to remind a GOP lawmaker of his own ties to the party.Here’s what else has happened today:
      Ray Epps, who was repeatedly accused by Tucker Carlson of being a federal agent and instigating the January 6 attack, sued the former Fox News host and the network. In his testimony, Wray denied that Epps worked for the bureau.
      A top aide to conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas took money from several lawyers with business before the court, apparently in connection to a Christmas party, a Guardian investigation has found.
      Inflation continued to cool in the United States last month, good news both for Biden and the Federal Reserve’s quest to halt the price increases without driving the economy into a recession.
      House speaker Kevin McCarthy made it clear he was onboard with his fellow Republicans’ efforts to hold the FBI and justice department to account.
      House Republicans may release more January 6 surveillance footage in the weeks to come.
      Politico reports that House Republicans plan to turn over security camera footage recorded on January 6 to media outlets sometime before Congress takes its annual recess in August:Earlier this year, GOP House speaker Kevin McCarthy handed over some of the footage to Tucker Carlson, then a primetime Fox News host who had repeatedly downplayed the severity of the insurrection. McCarthy later vowed to allow other media outlets to see the footage:Christopher Wray was appointed FBI leader in the wake of one of the biggest upheavals of the early part of Donald Trump’s presidency: his firing of then-director James Comey.Wray seemed like a solid GOP-aligned choice to take the reins of the bureau. He was a former assistant attorney general under Republican president George W Bush, and at the time of his nomination in 2017 was working for a law firm that advised Trump’s family trust and donated to Republican candidates.Six years later, Wray couldn’t help but seem a little aghast in his hearing before the judiciary committee at being accused by Republican lawmakers – many of whom were endorsees of Trump, the president who gave him his job – of being biased against the right.He let his dismay show, albeit briefly, in the clip below:The FBI is making extra efforts to ensure director Christopher Wray’s answers in the ongoing House judiciary committee hearing are not lost in the partisan fray.Its official Twitter account is sending out snippets of his responses to some of the questions. Here is what he had to say about allegations that the FBI was investigating parents at school board meetings:And here is Wray’s response to calls from some Republicans to reduce the bureau’s funding:Ray Epps, an Arizona man who twice voted for Donald Trump, has sued the conservative Fox News network over statements made by host Tucker Carlson on his now-canceled show accusing him of playing a role in the January 6 insurrection, the New York Times report.The suit, in which Carlson is also named, is the latest legal trouble facing Fox, whose personalities acted as major conduits for conspiracy theories about Joe Biden’s 2020 election win and the attack on the Capitol. Earlier this year, it agreed to pay voting equipment firm Dominion $787.5m to settle a suit over statements made about its business by Fox’s hosts and anchors.In his ongoing testimony before the House judiciary committee, FBI director Christopher Wray was asked about Epps, and denied that he was working for the bureau.Here’s more on the lawsuit, from the Times:
      Ray Epps, the man at the center of a widespread conspiracy theory about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing Fox News and its former host Tucker Carlson of defamation for promoting a “fantastical story” that Mr. Epps was an undercover government agent who instigated the violence at the Capitol as a way to disparage then-President Trump and his supporters.
      The complaint was filed in Superior Court in Delaware, where Fox recently agreed to a $787.5 million settlement in a separate defamation case brought against the network by Dominion Voting Systems to combat claims that the company had helped to rig the 2020 election against Mr. Trump.
      “Just as Fox had focused on voting machine companies when falsely claiming a rigged election, Fox knew it needed a scapegoat for January 6th,” the complaint says. “It settled on Ray Epps and began promoting the lie that Epps was a federal agent who incited the attack on the Capitol.”
      Fox News did not immediately respond when asked for comment. But the network moved quickly to have the venue changed to Federal District Court in Wilmington, Del.
      Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who is now running to be the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, has come out in support of Christopher Wray, saying he had “done a very good job”.Speaking to Fox News, Christie criticised attacks on the FBI director during the judiciary committee hearing and dismissed them as “theater and people trying to raise money for campaigns”.You can watch his remarks here:All-expenses-paid trips, book promotions and property selling.Some of the US supreme court’s conservative judges are mired in ethical controversies that have prompted members of Congress to call for not only testimony from Chief Justice John Roberts, but also for formal accountability, for what they say is democracy’s sake.Senate Democrats this week have called for a vote on a bill to establish a code of conduct for the supreme court justices similar to those that other government agencies must follow. The bill, unlikely to pass in a divided Congress, would demand the court create a code within 180 days and establish rules on recusals related to potential conflicts of interest and disclosure of gifts and travel.The ethical concerns involving court justices have continued to mount. Most recently, the Guardian reported that lawyers who have conducted business before the US supreme court have paid an aide to Clarence Thomas money via Venmo.Here’s a rundown of the ethical controversies supreme court justices have been involved in.FBI director Christopher Wray’s testimony before the House judiciary committee is ongoing. It’s been a generally partisan hearing, with Democrats defending the Donald Trump-appointed FBI chief, and Republicans trying to get him to admit misconduct or weigh in on various conspiracy theories. So far, Wray has denied any involvement by the bureau in the January 6 attack, and had heated back and forths with two rightwing lawmakers over allegations of corruption against Joe Biden and his family, and a memo warning about “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology”. It’s not over yet, so we’ll let you know what more may come out of the encounter.Here’s what else has happened so far today:
      A top aide to conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas took money from several lawyers with business before the court, apparently in connection to a Christmas party, a Guardian investigation has found.
      Inflation continued to cool in the United States last month, good news both for Biden and the Federal Reserve’s quest to halt the price increases without driving the economy into a recession.
      House speaker Kevin McCarthy made it clear he was onboard with his fellow Republicans’ efforts to hold the FBI and justice department to account.
      Donald Trump’s legal entanglements were raised once again in the House judiciary committee hearing, this time by Democratic congresswoman Madeleine Dean.She wanted to know if the FBI director, Christopher Wray, thought it was a good idea to store classified documents in a bathroom or ballroom – which is where federal investigators determined Trump kept secret material at his Mar-a-Lago resort (as pictured above).“I want to use and examine the case of the Mar-a-Lago documents because it’s been used by the former president as a pitying moment, as though he has somehow been victimized,” Dean said. “Director Wray, a ballroom, a bathroom, a bedroom, are those appropriate places to store classified, confidential information?”Wray replied: “I don’t want to be commenting on the pending case, but I will say that there are specific rules about where to store classified information and that those need to be stored in a SCIF, a secure compartmentalized information facility, and in my experience, ballrooms, bathrooms and bedrooms are not SCIFs.”See the exchange here:Let’s step away from the House judiciary committee hearing with FBI director Christopher Wray for a moment to focus on another corner of the America justice system: the supreme court. The Guardian’s Stephanie Kirchgaessner has uncovered new details about the relationship between conservative justice Clarence Thomas and lawyers with interests before the court:Several lawyers who have had business before the supreme court, including one who successfully argued to end race-conscious admissions at universities, paid money to a top aide to Justice Clarence Thomas, according to the aide’s Venmo transactions. The payments appear to have been made in connection to Thomas’s 2019 Christmas party.The payments to Rajan Vasisht, who served as Thomas’s aide from July 2019 to July 2021, seem to underscore the close ties between Thomas, who is embroiled in ethics scandals following a series of revelations about his relationship with a wealthy billionaire donor, and certain senior Washington lawyers who argue cases and have other business in front of the justice.Vasisht’s Venmo account – which was public prior to requesting comment for this article and is no longer – show that he received seven payments in November and December 2019 from lawyers who previously served as Thomas legal clerks. The amount of the payments is not disclosed, but the purpose of each payment is listed as either “Christmas party”, “Thomas Christmas Party”, “CT Christmas Party” or “CT Xmas party”, in an apparent reference to the justice’s initials.Republicans have been particularly interested in getting answers from Christopher Wray about a memo from the FBI’s field office in Richmond, Virginia warning about “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology”.That’s an antisemitic set of ideas adhered to only by a minority of American Catholics, the Southern Poverty Law Center says, but the GOP has decried the memo as an overreach by the bureau that amounts to religious oppression.The judiciary committee’s chair, Jim Jordan, had a heated exchange with Wray about the memo, which you can watch below:After taking control of the House earlier this year, Republicans convened a subcommittee tasked with uncovering the “weaponization of the federal government”. Chaired by Jim Jordan, an acolyte of Donald Trump and promoter of many of his conspiracy theories, the committee has so far this year held hearings examining whether the Biden administration has stifled free speech and taking testimony from FBI whistleblowers, among other subjects.Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee asked the FBI director, Christopher Wray, about the allegation at the heart of the subcommittee.“Republican members of this committee have spent much time of this Congress claiming that various aspects of the US government have been weaponized against the American people. Director Ray, are you or your staff or auxiliaries weaponizing the FBI against the American people?” Lee asked.“Absolutely not,” he replied. More

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      House Republicans grill FBI director as Democrats deride attacks on agency

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      House Republicans grilled the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Christopher Wray, at a frequently contentious committee hearing on Wednesday. While Republicans accused the FBI of political bias in its handling of investigations into Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, Democrats derided the attacks on the bureau as a smokescreen driven by conspiracy theories.The Republican chair of the House judiciary committee, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, kicked off the hearing with a litany of complaints about the FBI’s alleged targeting of rightwing leaders and activists, lamenting the supposed “double standard that exists now in our justice system”. Jordan suggested that the allegedly misguided leadership of Wray, a Trump appointee, could jeopardize government funding for the FBI’s planned new headquarters.“I hope [Democrats] will work with us in the appropriations process to stop the weaponization of the government against the American people,” Jordan said in his opening statement.The top Democrat on the committee, Representative Jerry Nadler of New York, countered Jordan’s allegations by accusing Republicans of acting as Trump’s attack dog at the expense of Americans’ safety. Last month, Trump was indicted on 37 federal counts, including 31 violations of the Espionage Act, over allegations that he intentionally withheld classified documents from federal authorities.“Republicans may want to downplay Trump’s behavior and blame the FBI for his downfall. But no matter what they say, Trump risked the safety and security of the United States to remove those documents from the White House, then lied to the government instead of returning them,” Nadler said. “Donald Trump must be held accountable, and attempts to shield him from the consequences of his own actions are both transparent and despicable.”A White House spokesperson, Ian Sams, echoed that sentiment. “Extreme House Republicans have decided that the only law enforcement they like is law enforcement that suits their own partisan political agenda,” he said. “Instead of backing the blue, they’re attacking the blue – going after the FBI, federal prosecutors and other law enforcement professionals with political stunts to try to get themselves attention on the far right.”Several progressives on the committee noted their own concerns about the FBI’s methods of surveillance and data collection, particularly of Black Lives Matter protesters, and they assailed Republicans for focusing so much of their energy on defending Trump rather than on fortifying Americans’ civil liberties.“These are the real oversight issues. They matter to my district, where there is real and justified skepticism of whether the civil rights of Black and brown people are adequately protected,” said Representative Cori Bush, a Democrat of Missouri. “What my district is not concerned about is the Republican conspiracy theories and selective targeting of law enforcement agencies who try to hold their twice-impeached, twice-indicted cult leader Donald Trump accountable.”As House Democrats emphasized the need to hold Trump accountable, Republicans’ questioning of Wray repeatedly turned to Hunter Biden. The president’s son reached a deal with federal prosecutors last month to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges while entering a pre-trial diversion agreement on a separate felony gun charge. The deal, which will result in the dismissal of the gun charge if Hunter Biden meets certain conditions, will allow the president’s son to avoid jail time.Representative Matt Gaetz, a Republican of Florida, asked Wray whether he was “protecting the Bidens” from criminal liability. “Absolutely not,” Wray replied. “The FBI does not, has no interest in protecting anyone politically.”Representative Chip Roy, a Republican of Texas, later derided the FBI as “tyrannical” over the 2020 arrest of anti-abortion activist Mark Houck, claiming the bureau’s agents “stormed” Houck’s house.“I could not disagree more with your description of the FBI as tyrannical,” Wray said. “They did not storm his house. They came to his door. They knocked on his door and identified themselves. They asked him to exit. He did without incident.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWray’s status as a registered Republican who was appointed by Trump and served in the George W Bush administration did not prevent committee members from painting the FBI as an unjust agency on a crusade against rightwing priorities.“The idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background,” Wray told the committee.Although much of the hearing focused on the investigations into Trump and Hunter Biden, Wray made a point to remind lawmakers of the FBI’s extensive efforts to combat violent crime and drug trafficking. Those efforts could be curtailed by the FBI funding cuts threatened by some House Republicans, Democrats warned.“The work the men and women of the FBI do to protect the American people goes way beyond the one or two investigations that seem to capture all the headlines,” Wray said.Wray himself has been the subject of many headlines in recent months. In May, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia, introduced articles of impeachment against Wray because of his handling of the Hunter Biden investigation, among other matters.Wray has also recently found himself in the crosshairs of Representative James Comer, the Republican chair of the House oversight committee. Last month, Comer threatened to hold Wray in contempt of Congress over his refusal to allow the committee to review a document outlining unsubstantiated bribery allegations against Joe Biden and his son. The contempt vote was ultimately called off after Wray agreed to allow committee members to review a redacted version of the document.The Wednesday hearing underscored that Wray’s troubles are not going away anytime soon. More

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      With Trump in trouble, Republicans step up assault on DoJ and FBI

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      When Merrick Garland was nominated to the US supreme court by Barack Obama, Republicans refused to grant him a hearing. Now that Garland is the top law enforcement official in America, the party seems ready to give him one after all – an impeachment hearing.Republicans on Capitol Hill are moving up a gear in a wide-ranging assault on the justice department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that would have been unthinkable before the rise of Donald Trump. The party that for half a century claimed the mantle of law and order has, critics say, become a cult of personality intent on discrediting and dismantling institutions that get in Trump’s way.“I often think, what would Richard Nixon say?” observed Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “He was the original ‘law and order’ president, with that slogan. What would he think now the party is going after the primary institutions of law and order, at least at the federal level? The law and order party has become the paranoid party.”The trend, apparent for years, has become palpable since Republicans gained narrow control of the House of Representatives in January. Within a month they had set up a panel, chaired by Trump loyalist Jim Jordan, to investigate “the Weaponization of the Federal Government” and examine what they allege is the politicisation of the justice department and FBI against conservatives.Their frustrations intensified last month when Trump became the first former president to face federal criminal charges, over his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Far from condemning a potential law-breaker in their own ranks, nearly all Trump’s rivals for the presidential nomination in 2024 accused the FBI of political bias, with some even calling for its abolition and vowing to pardon him if elected.Many Republicans then spoke of a “two-tiered” justice system when Joe Biden’s son Hunter struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors over tax evasion and gun possession charges that will keep him out of prison. A former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employee has alleged political interference in the investigation and accused Garland of failing to tell Congress the truth, a claim Garland denies.Some Republicans, especially on the far right, are now demanding Garland’s impeachment, a sanction that no cabinet official has suffered since 1876. Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker, told the conservative Fox News network recently: “Someone has lied here. If we find that Garland has lied to Congress, we will start an impeachment inquiry.”Meanwhile, Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, is discovering that his status as a Trump appointee offers no immunity against the Republican onslaught.In May congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a leading Trump ally, introduced articles of impeachment against him, claiming that “the FBI has intimidated, harassed, and entrapped American citizens that have been deemed enemies of the Biden regime” and that he “has turned the FBI into Joe Biden and Merrick Garland’s personal police force” with “Soviet-style tactics”.Last month the House oversight committee was poised to hold Wray in contempt until he agreed to let all its members review a 2020 document containing bribery allegations against Biden – allegations that Democrats say were examined and dismissed by the justice department during Trump’s presidency.Wray is now due to testify at a House judiciary committee hearing, chaired by Jordan, on Wednesday, with topics likely to include Trump’s indictment, Hunter’s plea deal and the special counsel John Durham’s criticism of the FBI’s Russia investigation.Greene has also introduced impeachment articles against Biden and other members of the cabinet and indicated that she intends to force floor votes on her resolutions. This would doubtless create a spectacle for conservative TV channels and satisfy a desire among the “Make America great again” (Maga) base to avenge Trump after years of hearings in which he was the accused.However, any impeachments would be dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate and could backfire among the electorate at large, with many voters sensing a desperate attempt to distract from policy debates.Sabato commented: “It would excite their activists, but most Americans would be repulsed and shake their heads and say, these people need to get their house in order, then we’ll consider voting for them. I’m sure Biden, in a way, hopes he is impeached, and the others too.“It’s a waste of time: there’s no chance of the conviction in the Senate. They just sticking the knife in their own chest. They’re committing suicide. It’s fine, go right ahead, have a good time!”Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project watchdog, agreed. He said: “The party of Maga is following the leader, Donald Trump, who is currently in serious legal troubles across the country. The party seems willing to try to deflect from those legal problems by running interference vis-a-vis investigations that they’re doing in Congress. What they’re doing is playing 30% of their base without realising you need another 20% to win elections.”Some establishment Republicans are aware of such dangers and reluctant to abandon the party’s law-and-order credentials, not least because they see crime as a major talking point in next year’s elections. It is a particularly awkward issue for 18 Republican members of the House from districts that Biden won in the 2020, all of whom have good reason to avoid voting with extremists such as Greene. The internal struggle threatens a political headache for McCarthy.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “There are definitely people in the Republican party and in Congress who would like to proceed to impeach the head of the justice department, Garland, to go after the head of the FBI and to even go after Joe Biden.“But there are cooler heads who appreciate that the kind of paranoia-infected Trump contagion is wrong and could be a real setback for the 2024 election.“Independent voters, who tend to swing US elections that have become so close, don’t buy into the Trump line. You don’t see support for this unhinged view that the justice department and the FBI are somehow corrupt. There’s not support for that except in the fringe of the Republican party. The question, though, is does the fringe of the Republican party have enough leverage, particularly in the House of Representatives, to force impeachment votes and other measures?”The acrimony threatens to dominate the rest of the year in an already unproductive Congress. Republicans might take aim at law enforcement budgets and have already withheld more funding for a new FBI headquarters.Their stance represents a stunning reversal for a party with a long tradition of pitching itself as pro-police and tough-on-crime, from Nixon speaking of cities “enveloped in smoke and flame” to Ronald Reagan’s embrace of mass incarceration. It has its roots in the years of political attacks by Trump against an alleged “deep state” that is out to get him – and, by extension, his supporters.His rancour towards the FBI began in earnest when the bureau scrutinised alleged ties between his 2016 election campaign and Russia while deciding not to prosecute him opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, for using a private email server when she was secretary of state. Then FBI director James Comey rebuked Clinton, calling her handling of classified information careless, but said there was no clear evidence she or her aides intentionally broke laws.Trump’s relentless broadsides via campaign rallies and social media had an effect: a Reuters/Ipsos poll in February 2018 found that three out of four Republicans thought the FBI and justice department were actively seeking to undermine Trump through politically motivated investigations.The sowing of distrust reached full bloom with a baseless conspiracy theory that the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol was a hoax orchestrated by the bureau. Seen through this prism, each FBI investigation of those involved and each justice department prosecution of them is a violation, not an affirmation, of law enforcement.Kurt Bardella, who was a spokesperson and senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee from 2009 to 2013, said: “It’s really something to watch the political party that spent the 2022 midterms hollering about being pro-law enforcement and anti-defund the police when now they’re using all of their resources and their very narrow House majority to do exactly that: tear down law enforcement and defund the police.”Bardella, now a Democratic strategist, added: “It seems like Republicans love the idea of law enforcement except when it comes to white-collar crime and when it comes to people of their own. It’s interesting that they want two sets of justice systems: one that looks the other way and condones the multitude of crimes that their leader, Donald Trump, has been accused of and another justice system for just about everybody else.” More

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      James Comey: ‘I’d like to take readers inside the White House’

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      After a long career as a state attorney in New York, James Comey became director of the FBI in 2013. He was due to serve 10 years, but was dismissed by President Trump in 2017, having ordered an investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Comey has subsequently published two bestselling accounts of his time in office. His first novel, Central Park West, a crime thriller set in the New York district attorney’s office where Comey once worked, will be published this month.Have you always been a fan of crime fiction?I found it too hard when I was dealing with crime or terrorism in my day job to read about those things. The FBI job was really a 24-hour thing and I didn’t want to fill any spare moments reading fiction about my work.Do investigators and writers share an eye for detail?I think that good journalists and good lawyers think and communicate in stories. Even as a kid, I was always someone who would try to remember details so I could go home and tell my family the story at our dinner table.There must have been an element of nostalgia in locating this novel in the New York law courts where you once worked?I enjoyed travelling back in my mind to those places. I could picture myself in courtroom 318, where a lot of the action in the book takes place. But here’s the thing that made it both slightly strange and wonderful for me: when I was writing this, my oldest daughter was the chief of the violence and organised crime unit in Manhattan, and she was also literally standing in courtroom 318, prosecuting Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator. That made it easy to make Nora, the protagonist in my book, a woman, and to picture her in those places.The book also draws on your experience of prosecuting New York crime families.My life changed when I watched the bail hearing for the mafia boss “Fat Tony” Salerno and his co-defendant Vincent “the fish” Cafaro [in 1989]. As I watched the young prosecutors in court, I was struck by how they stood up straight. They didn’t interrupt answers. When they didn’t know something, they said they didn’t know it. It was like being struck by proverbial lightning sitting there in that old federal courtroom. I always hated bullies. I’d been bullied as a kid. And I thought: here’s a way of [taking on] some of the biggest bullies in the world. I went home and called my girlfriend, now my wife, and said: I figured out what I want to do.You wrote in your memoir, A Higher Loyalty, of your immediate sense that President Trump shared characteristics with some of those mafia mob bosses you had prosecuted. In particular in the demand for loyalty above truth…Yes, I saw it so early that I resisted that sense to begin with. But something I was seeing was reminding me of scenes from my prosecutorial life. Those impressions can be misleading. But this one was dead on.The extraordinary thing was how quickly his extreme behaviour was normalised?I think it was. For the great bulk of people, there was an inability to get their mind around how bad this person is, because he was occupying an office that we endow with all kinds of dignity and importance. I remember cases I was involved with as a prosecutor, where fraud victims came to the fraudster’s sentencing to speak for him, because they simply could not acknowledge they had been defrauded. It was too painful. Supporters of Donald Trump, they see the images of January 6, which shout to them: “You fool! Look what you did!” Some people can face that. But most people turn from that pain and retreat deeper into the lie.Do you see yourself writing fiction about that period as well?I do. My wife is my ideas person. Her view is that it’s too close to write about now. I have in mind doing a trilogy [of novels] based in New York. And I’d like to write a trilogy based in Virginia, where I was a prosecutor for many years. And then I’d like to take readers inside the White House and the FBI and the justice department of the CIA. I’ve spent a lot of time in those places.You have insisted many times that you will never run for political office. Are there other ambitions still in public life, or is that chapter over?I would never, as you said, run for office. It’s just not something that suits me. And I think I’ve disqualified myself from other [legal] roles, because I intentionally became a political partisan after I got fired, because I thought the existential danger to democracy was so great from Donald Trump. So I’m going to try to write novels until I’m old and foolish, and also try to be, as some of my coffee mugs already claim, the world’s greatest grandfather.It sounds like your wife is the big reader of fiction in your household. But are there novels that have been guiding lights for you in taking on this new career?The first sustained reading of fiction I did, in thinking about this, was Le Carré. Partly because I knew he had struggled with the question: how do I write about my work? The criticism of his early books was that he hewed too closely to the truth of his job: desks and files and so on. At some point, his letters reveal, he realised he needed to get the Berlin Wall and some barbed wire in there. I’m no Le Carré, but I’ve tried to do something similar in Central Park West. I don’t think my friends [from the FBI] are going to find significant unrealistic details. But I’ve tried to see if I can keep it real and entertaining at the same time… More

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      in US Politics

      Robert Hanssen, ex-FBI agent convicted of spying for Moscow, dies in prison

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      Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent who took more than $1.4m in cash and diamonds to trade secrets with Moscow, in one of the most notorious spying cases in American history, died in prison Monday.Hanssen, 79, was found unresponsive in his cell at a federal prison in Florence, Colorado, and later pronounced dead, prison officials said. He is believed to have died of natural causes, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press. The person was not authorized to publicly discuss details of Hanssen’s death and spoke on condition of anonymity.Hanssen had divulged a wealth of information about American intelligence-gathering, including extensive detail about how US officials had tapped into Russian spy operations, since at least 1985.He was believed to have been partly responsible for the deaths of at least three Soviet officers who were working for US intelligence and executed after being exposed.He got more than $1.4m in cash, bank funds, diamonds and Rolex watches in exchange for providing highly classified national security information to the Soviet Union and later Russia.He didn’t adopt an obviously lavish lifestyle, instead living in a modest suburban home in Virginia with his family of six children and driving a Taurus and minivan.Hanssen would later say he was motivated by money rather than ideology, but a letter written to his Soviet handlers in 1985 explains a large payoff could have caused complications because he could not spend it without setting off warning bells.Using the alias “Ramon Garcia”, he passed some 6,000 documents and 26 computer disks to his handlers, authorities said. They detailed eavesdropping techniques, helped to confirm the identity of Russian double agents and spilled other secrets. Officials also believed he tipped off Moscow to a secret tunnel the Americans built under the Soviet embassy in Washington for eavesdropping.He went undetected for years, but later investigations found missed red flags. After he became the focus of a hunt for a Russian mole, Hanssen was caught taping a garbage bag full of secrets to the underside of a footbridge in a park in a “dead drop” for Russian handlers.He had been serving a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole since 2002, after pleading guilty to 15 counts of espionage and other charges.The story was made into a movie titled Breach in 2007, staring Chris Cooper as Hanssen and Ryan Phillippe as a young bureau operative who helps bring him down.The FBI has been notified of Hanssen’s death, according to the Bureau of Prisons. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump lawyers meet with DoJ to stave off indictment in Mar-a-Lago case

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      Lawyers for Donald Trump met with top US justice department officials on Thursday to complain about perceived misconduct in the criminal investigation into the former US president’s handling of national security materials and obstruction, according to two people familiar with the matter.The meeting involved Trump lawyers Jim Trusty, John Rowley and Lindsay Halligan speaking with the special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the investigation, and a senior career official to the deputy attorney general, one person said. CBS News first reported the meeting.Trump’s lawyers made a general case as to why Trump should not be charged in the Mar-a-Lago documents case and suggested that some prosecutors working under special counsel Jack Smith engaged in what they considered prosecutorial misconduct, the people said.The exact allegations are not clear but Trump’s lawyers for weeks have complained privately that Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence and espionage section at the justice department, once sought to induce a witness into confirming something they declined to, one of the people said.Complaints of that nature result in an internal note to the special counsel and are unlikely to delay the criminal investigation.The meeting comes weeks after Trump’s lawyers asked the justice department for a meeting with the attorney general, Merrick Garland, to raise grievances about what they considered as unfair treatment of Trump over his handling of classified documents compared to other former presidents.“No president of the United States has ever, in the history of our country, been baselessly investigated in such an outrageous and unlawful fashion,” said the letter written by Trusty and Rowley.While it is not unusual for lawyers to seek a meeting with prosecutors near the end of an investigation, it typically is not with the attorney general. That is especially the case in special counsel investigations, where charging decisions can only be overruled if department rules were not followed.The development comes as prosecutors have recently asked witnesses before the grand jury hearing evidence in the case in Washington whether Trump showed off national security materials, including a document concerning military action against Iran, people close to the case said.Prosecutors have seemingly been trying to identify whether that Iran document was the same document Trump referenced on an audio recording in which he said he could not discuss it because he did not declassify it while in office – though he should have, the Guardian previously reported.The investigation has also examined whether the failure by Trump to fully comply with a subpoena last year demanding the return of any classified documents was a deliberate act of obstruction, the people said.Last June, the since-recused Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran found 38 classified documents in the storage room at Mar-a-Lago and told the justice department that no further materials remained at the property – which came into question when the FBI seized 101 additional classified documents months later.The Guardian has reported that Corcoran later told associates he felt misled in the subpoena response because he had asked whether he should search elsewhere at Mar-a-Lago, like Trump’s office, but was waved off. Corcoran’s notes also showed he told Trump he had to return all classified documents in his possession. More

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      in Elections

      Republican faces questions over whether he lied under oath to key panel

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      A key Republican witness is facing questions over whether he lied under oath about receiving financial aid from an ally of former US president Donald Trump.Garret O’Boyle, a former FBI field agent turned purported whistleblower, testified last week to a congressional panel investigating what Republicans assert is the “weaponisation” of the federal government against conservatives.At one point, O’Boyle was asked by Democrat Dan Goldman whether Kash Patel, who held multiple roles in the Trump administration, is helping finance O’Boyle’s legal counsel. The witness replied: “Not that I’m aware of.”The answer has raised eyebrows because, during a previous interview with the House of Representatives’ weaponisation subcommittee in February, O’Boyle disclosed that his legal fees are being paid by a nonprofit organisation called Fight With Kash, also known as the Kash Foundation and run by Kash Patel.Furthermore, a Democratic staff report published in March notes that Patel arranged for Jesse Binnall, who served as Trump’s top “election fraud” lawyer in 2020, to serve as counsel for O’Boyle. Binnall sits on the Kash Foundation’s board of directors and has acknowledged working on past lawsuits funded by the foundation.In light of these details, Democrats are concerned that O’Boyle was not fully truthful before the committee chaired by Republican Jim Jordan, a staunch Trump backer. Lying to Congress carries a penalty of up to five years’ imprisonment.Goldman told the Guardian: “Mr O’Boyle’s answers in the subcommittee hearing on Thursday appear to contradict his previous testimony in the transcribed interview with subcommittee staff. In order to ensure witnesses are truthful when they come before the subcommittee, Chairman Jordan must determine whether or not Mr O’Boyle lied under oath on Thursday.”O’Boyle was an FBI special agent from 2018 until earlier this year. He was among several former FBI employees who accused the bureau of politicisation at the hearing, which took place a day after the FBI announced that two of them had their security clearances revoked after either attending the January 6 insurrection or espousing conspiracy theories about the attack.The Congressional Integrity Project, a watchdog monitoring the Republican investigations, had previously noted that the witnesses on Thursday included anti-vaxxers, election deniers and supporters of far-right groups.Jordan and other Republicans on the committee hailed the ex-FBI employees as patriots who were facing retribution for speaking out against government abuse. Democrats dismissed the testimony, calling the hearing another partisan attempt by Republicans on the committee to help Trump.Stacey Plaskett, who represents the US Virgin Islands, said: “This select committee is a clearinghouse for testing conspiracy theories for Donald Trump to use in his 2024 presidential campaign.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a series of contentious exchanges, Democrats complained that one of Thursday’s witnesses was only interviewed by Republican members of the committee. Many pointed to House rules that state minority and majority staff are required to have equal access to witness testimony, whether it is a whistleblower account or not.O’Boyle’s testimony could pile pressure on Jordan over the credibility of the weaponisation subcommittee, seen by critics as a brazen attempt to damage Joe Biden ahead of next year’s presidential election.Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, said: “Mr O’Boyle’s testimony in this week’s hearing should be investigated immediately by Chairman Jordan’s subcommittee. The fact that O’Boyle’s own lawyer has such deep ties to Kash Patel, a January 6 co-conspirator and close ally of Donald Trump, is already enough to call any of his testimony into question.”Jordan’s office denies that O’Boyle lied under oath. Russell Dye, a spokesperson for the chairman, said: “Yet again the Democrats distorted the facts in their report on our brave FBI whistleblowers. Jesse Binnall is representing Mr O’Boyle pro bono.”Dye pointed to a transcript of O’Boyle’s interview in which Binnall sought to explain his role. Binnall told the subcommittee that “although Mr O’Boyle was not aware of this directly, his representation by counsel is actually not being paid by anybody because it’s pro bono”.However, Democrats rejected this argument at the time. They wrote in their report that “O’Boyle’s own testimony concerning his interactions with Kash Patel undercuts Binnall’s apparent attempt to distance himself and his client from Patel.“Committee Democrats note further that as recently as February 12 – two days after O’Boyle testified – Patel praised Binnall on Truth Social, calling him ‘Americas lawyer.’ Binnall and Patel appear to operate out of the same Alexandria, VA, office building.” More