Justice Dept. lawyers seeing the incoming Democratic Congress warming up in the bullpen to go after Trump and Republics 18 month old Trump 2.0 free -for-all actions are jumping ship….
This while their boss Blanche is trying to intimidate Congressional Democrats efforts to do investigations…
A top Justice Department official delivered a gung-ho message to Trump-appointed federal prosecutors around the country on Monday, as they reckoned with the Republican drubbing in the midterm elections: We are now a wartime department, he declared.
The official, Aakash Singh, the principal associate deputy attorney general, exhorted dozens of U.S. attorneys during a teleconference call to step up their pressure on emboldened local officials in Democratic-controlled localities, like Houston, to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, according to three people briefed on the exchange.
But it is hard to double down when you are running low on chips.
The department, which has already seen the exodus of hundreds of career officials who were forced out or left because they disagreed with President Trump’s priorities, faces a daunting new staffing dilemma spurred by the election.
Many career officials who hung on until now, including some who broadly support the department’s current mission, are eyeing the exits to avoid two grim years of partisan combat. They are joined by a second, higher-profile group: senior department officials who have submitted resignations, some after a discreet shove, in a leadership reshuffle over the past week….
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Patrick Davis, the former head of the department’s legislative affairs office, left before the election — averting the possibility that he would have to confront a torrent of congressional action.
The upheaval is hardly a surprise. Democrats will soon have the power to try to constrain Mr. Trump’s authority to directly control the department for the first time since his victory two years ago. Representative Robert Garcia, the California Democrat who is the top member of the House Oversight Committee, has taunted administration officials to “lawyer up,” promising wide-ranging investigations into Mr. Trump and those in his orbit.
Former officials now at private law firms said they were receiving calls from officials on the inside reporting that morale, already sagging, had gotten much worse since Election Day….
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“This has the feel of rats fleeing the sinking ship,” added Ms. McQuade, now a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.
Attorney General Todd Blanche has made clear that he intends to use the Justice Department to fight off any attempts by Congress to investigate administration officials, including Stephen Miller, the new White House chief of staff.
“I’ll tell you what,” Mr. Blanche said in a TV interview in recent days. “Stephen Miller has a lawyer. It’s me. It’s me and the entire Department of Justice.”…
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In another interview, Mr. Blanche adopted a less confrontational posture and said he would obey the law and comply with any reasonable congressional inquiry, although he did not say how he would make such a determination….
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One example: The acting head of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Western District of Washington acknowledged to a federal judge in recent weeks that he did not have the staffing capacity to represent the government in all the cases in which immigrants legally challenged their detention….
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Mr. Blanche and his team will continue to confront the reality that cost his predecessor, Pam Bondi, her job — Mr. Trump’s insistence that he pursue investigations against political adversaries, often despite a lack of evidence and a questionable basis in the law.
Regardless of Mr. Trump’s calls, his revenge campaign has so far been largely unsuccessful. None of his most prized targets are in prison, although they have had to suffer the financial and reputational costs of investigation.
What the White House mostly has to show for these efforts is a remarkable string of losses in court. They include the increasing willingness of grand juries to reject indictments they see as specious, an occurrence that was once very rare, and a growing number of rebukes from judges appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents.
Their actions have also created a small army of disgruntled department veterans, fired or driven from federal service, and seeking an arena to tell their own stories….
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The administration’s own frequent threats to Democrats over their public statements have thus far proved unpersuasive. An effort to indict six lawmakers last year, at Mr. Trump’s demand, was tossed out of court by a grand jury in the District of Columbia….
Note….
The above linked story IS about the American System of Democracy IS clawing it’s way Back at a President and Co. who THOUGHT they could get rid of it and had Americans come down against them…There are MORE stories to be reported….
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