Tag: kristen clarke
Attorney General Merrick Garland

Garland Fulfilling Commitments On Civil Rights, Police Reform

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

The Department of Justice had the kind of pro-police reform week that doesn't happen every year. In a seven-day period, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a ban on chokeholds and no-knock warrants, an overhaul on how to handle law enforcement oversight deals, and a promise to make sure the Justice Department wasn't funding agencies that engage in racial discrimination.

"This was a big week for civil rights at the DOJ," Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, shared in a thread about the progress on Twitter Thursday. "Proof that elections matter and that having civil rts attys in DOJ leadership matters. Let me walk you through what's happened in just this one week. It's actually astounding."

The first step forward on Ifill's list came in the form of a review of the Department of Justice's use of monitors who oversee implementation of consent decrees. The New York Timesdefined the legal mechanisms as "court-approved deals between the Justice Department and local governmental agencies that create a road map for changes to the way they operate." Garland rescinded Trump-era policy that blocked consent decrees from addressing police misconduct in April. "This has been a concern among community groups in cities where police dept's are covered by consent decrees after DOJ investigations," Ifill tweeted. Garland announced on Monday 19 actions the department will take to address that concern.

"The department has found that – while consent decrees and monitorships are important tools to increase transparency and accountability – the department can and should do more to improve their efficiency and efficacy," Garland said in a news release. "The Associate Attorney General has recommended – and I have accepted – a set of 19 actions that the department will take to address those concerns." Those actions include capping monitoring fees on consent decrees, requiring stakeholder input, imposing specified terms for monitors, and requiring a hearing after five years "so that jurisdictions can demonstrate the progress it has made, and if possible, to move for termination."

"Consent decrees have proven to be vital tools in upholding the rule of law and promoting transformational change in the state and local governmental entities where they are used," Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in the news release. "The department must do everything it can to guarantee that they remain so by working to ensure that the monitors who help implement these decrees do so efficiently, consistently and with meaningful input and participation from the communities they serve."

That was only Monday.

Kristen Clarke, who leades the Justice Department's civil rights division, announced on Tuesday that the Justice Department has launched an investigation into allegations of unconstitutional mistreatment of prisoners in Georgia, according to The New York Times. "Under the Eighth Amendment of our Constitution, those who have been convicted of crimes and sentenced to serve time in prison must never be subjected to 'cruel and unusual punishments,'" Clarke said in her announcement of the investigation.

At least 26 people died last year by "confirmed or suspected homicide" in Georgia prisons, and 18 homicides have been reported this year in the state. That's not including those who have been left to die in horrible conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Inmates facing that threat rioted at Ware State Prison last August in a viral uprising. Two inmates at the facility had died of COVID-19, and 22 prisoners and 32 staff members had tested positive for the virus during the time of the riot, according to Georgia Department of Corrections recordsobtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

"This is huge. The humanitarian crisis in southern prisons is a critically important issue," Ifill tweeted of Clarke's announcement."Then the DOJ announced that it will ban the use of no-knock entries and chokeholds by federal law enforcement officers (except in cases where deadly force is authorized - more to probe abt the exception to be sure) ."

The decision follows the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, was sleeping when officers executing a no-knock drug warrant smashed in her door after midnight and shot her at least eight times in her Louisville, Kentucky, home on March 13, 2020. Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020 when a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for more than nine minutes despite Floyd saying repeatedly that he couldn't breathe. "Building trust and confidence between law enforcement and the public we serve is central to our mission at the Justice Department," Garland said in a news release. "The limitations implemented today on the use of 'chokeholds,' 'carotid restraints' and 'no-knock' warrants, combined with our recent expansion of body-worn cameras to DOJ's federal agents, are among the important steps the department is taking to improve law enforcement safety and accountability."

Also on Ifill's list of Justice Department wins is a review to make sure it isn't awarding grants to law enforcement agencies that engage in racial discrimination. That review could have wide-reaching effects, touching education, health care, transportation, pretty much every facet that receive federal funding, The New York Times reported. "Approximately $4.5 billion in federal funding flows through the department to police departments, courts and correctional facilities, as well as victim services groups, research organizations and nonprofit groups," Times writer Katie Benner wrote. "All of these organizations, not just police departments, could be affected by this review."

Ifill tweeted it's been a long time since she's seen a week like last week, with the Justice Department announcing multiple measures to reform criminal justice "each with the potential to result in fundamental shifts in longstanding discriminatory practices." "I'm remembering AG Garland's confirmation testimony in which he explained that he needed AAG @vanitaguptaCR & Asst AG for Civil Rights @KristenClarkeJD on his team in particular to help him with critical areas of the work with which he does not have experience.

"This week feels like an important return on his commitment to assembling this rich team."

Kristen Clarke, a longtime voting rights advocate, was confirmed on May 25, making her the first woman and the first Black woman to lead the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division since it was created in 1957. When Gupta was confirmed on April 21, she became the first woman of color and the first civil rights lawyer to serve as associate attorney general.

Ifill went on to tweet: "For many I know this all may seem slow and clunky - it is after all, the government. I'm gratified to see that they're using the tools they have to undertake measures civil rights groups have been asking for for years. And they're working carefully and smart."

Kristen Clarke, President Biden's choice to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Smearing An Eminently Qualified Black Woman Is Business As Usual

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call

She has been endorsed by many law enforcement groups, including the National Association of Police Organizations, yet she was accused of being anti-police. Baseless innuendo thrown her way has been refuted by support from the National Council of Jewish Women, the Anti-Defamation League, and dozens of other local, state, and national Jewish organizations. She's been tagged as "extreme," which only makes sense if being an advocate for an equitable society qualifies.

The nomination of Kristen Clarke, President Joe Biden's choice to serve as assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, barely made it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Panelists split 11-11 along party lines, and then on Tuesday, the full Senate voted 50-48 to discharge the nomination from the committee, setting up a final floor vote.

Is anyone surprised at the roadblocks this nomination has faced?

Clarke, a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia Law School, is a Black woman and president and executive director (now on leave) of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law — and that may be the problem. The fight for "civil rights" for all, or even truthfully teaching about the struggle that made the fight necessary, has become controversial in some quarters, especially the Republican congressional caucuses.

Women of color have had a particularly tough time before the Senate Judiciary Committee with those who won't let the facts get in the way of partisan pushback. Vanita Gupta, despite her experience and endorsements, was attacked at her hearing before her eventual confirmation as associate attorney general. And then it was Clarke's turn.

The Usual Suspects

Some of it was comical, as when Sen. John Cornyn, took Clarke's satirical college writings criticizing the racism of The Bell Curve as literal. Some of it was just bullying, the well-trod territory of Cornyn's Texas partner, Sen. Ted Cruz, who insisted that a Newsweek column, in which Clarke agreed with Biden's call for more police funding, said the opposite.

Usually, presidents get the benefit of the doubt when choosing their teams. President Donald Trump certainly did, despite questionable qualifications for a host of them. His education secretary, Betsy DeVos, not only had no education experience, she also barely hid her contempt for the public schools neither she nor any of her children attended. But the majority of Republicans approved of her, and her prioritizing of Christian and charter schools.

Fellow Texan and former governor of the state Rick Perry got Cruz's vote for secretary of energy, the department he forgot he wanted to eliminate during his infamous "oops" moment at a presidential debate in 2011. Perry also admitted he had to play catch-up on what the department actually did.

You can't make this stuff up.

Hypocrisy is not exactly new to Washington. Recently, Republican lawmakers were falling all over themselves to speechify the honoring of law enforcement during National Police Week. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, in a floor speech, recognized officers "willing to risk their own lives to protect others" and warned that "demonization of law enforcement will have lasting consequences, and it will ultimately make all of us less safe." This, as members of his GOP are resisting calls to investigate the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol and downplaying injuries suffered by officers protecting those lawmakers' hides.

A Familiar Refrain

Most every Black person gets a certain bit of oft-repeated parental advice: "You have to work twice as hard to get half as far." It's resulted in a lot of overworking achievers (too close for comfort right here), and a lot of stuffed résumés. But even if you follow it to the letter, as Clarke did when she earned a scholarship to an elite prep school that took her far from her Brooklyn home and on to positions in both Republican and Democratic administrations, you might get smeared when you dare to be excellent while Black, and use that excellence to make life better for all Americans.

Many Black female leaders, allies and organizations have supported Clarke, who would be the first Black woman to hold the post, and she would certainly be a needed change from the previous administration. Business leaders, perhaps less timid after finding their voice on other issues, have signaled their approval. The Biden Justice Department, under new leadership, has tried to rebuild its mission after the Trump team seemed bound and determined to make a mockery of its name.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, who did pass muster this time at his Senate confirmation after then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to consider his Supreme Court nomination by President Barack Obama, is settling in with a full agenda. Garland has announced that the DOJ is reinstating consent decrees to reign in rogue police departments and going after white supremacists that Trump's own FBI director deemed the No. 1 domestic terror threat.

It's a big job that the likes of Trump's attorney general, Jeff Sessions, not only ignored but subverted. In Clarke, the department would get a professional who has seen unequal treatment in her work and up close.

As Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and another Black woman who is about the country's unfinished business, told theGrio: "Those who oppose her confirmation are actually opposed to the confirmation of a real civil rights advocate to run the Civil Right Division. They don't really oppose Kristen — they oppose robust civil rights enforcement."

In her own remarks before the Judiciary Committee, Clarke made her mission clear by quoting the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, under whose leadership the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund was founded: "'Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.' I've tried to do just that at every step of my career."

If only her opponents could say the same.

Mary C. Curtis has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Charlotte Observer, as national correspondent for Politics Daily, and is a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. Follow her on Twitter @mcurtisnc3.

Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett

GOP Wants To Expand Arizona ‘Audit,’ But DOJ May Shut It Down

This article was produced by Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Arizona's Republican-led Senate is looking to expand its post-election audit of 2.1 million ballots in the state's most populous county, while Arizona's Democratic secretary of state and the U.S. Department of Justice appeared headed to federal court to shut down the post-election exercise.

On Wednesday, May 5, the Senate's liaison to the audit, former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, a Republican, confirmed that the GOP-led Senate is negotiating with a California nonprofit to conduct a new and separate audit of Maricopa County's 2020 fall election votes.

The nonprofit, Citizens Oversight, would conduct an audit based on analyzing the digital images of every paper ballot that is created at the start of the vote-counting process, when election system software reads hand- or machine-marked paper ballots and tallies the vote counts. The nonprofit has been developing its Audit Engine tool for several years and has tested it in a handful of counties in California and Florida and is now using it in Georgia.

"I know our election procedures and overall processes are good enough to prove to somebody if they really lost an election by more than one percent or more, but not by one-third of one percent," Bennett said. "But that's not good enough because that's not precise enough."

Bennett noted that Donald Trump, statewide, lost to Joe Biden by 10,457 votes and 33,359 ballots contained no vote for president. In addition to the ballot image audit, which would reveal marked ballot ovals skipped by scanners—such as voters who circle ovals instead of filling them in—Bennett said that he wanted to hire a firm to review the digital images of absentee ballot return envelopes to see if any lacked a voter's signature.

"I think we can exponentially magnify the level of trust in our elections by doing exactly what we're doing, and even a few things that haven't even been talked about yet," he said, adding he expected that this entire exercise would take "two to three months" to conclude.

An expanded and prolonged audit appears to be on a collision course with the U.S. Department of Justice, which, along with Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, is on the verge of going into federal court to try to shut down the unprecedented post-election audit led by partisans and conducted by private firms that have not been certified by federal election agencies.

On May 5, Hobbs sent a letter to Bennett saying that the audit's procedures were inconsistent with the protocols laid out in the state's election procedures, were not being done by "qualified, unbiased counters," and failed "to adequately protect and document chain of custody of ballots." These conclusions came from observers sent by Hobbs, who only were allowed into the site after a court ordered the Senate to allow their presence.

At the same time, the Justice Department weighed in on two fronts. In a letter to the Arizona Senate, Kristen Clarke, the head of the Civil Rights Division, said the use of private contractors could violate federal law requiring ballots to remain in the control of elections officials for 22 months, the Associated Press reported. And the principal deputy assistant attorney general, Pamela S. Karlan, said that the Senate's plans to directly contact voters by knocking on their doors and interviewing them could be illegal voter intimidation.

"If Justice can find a federal judge who agrees, they can shut it down," said Chris Sautter, a Washington-based lawyer specializing in recounts and post-Election Day procedures.

The Eye Of A Growing Storm

The AP reported that the DOJ's "letter came six days after [a coalition of] voting rights groups asked federal officials to intervene or send monitors to the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix," where the audit is occurring under tight security by state police. The groups, led by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, have been very critical of Republican-led efforts across the county to pass new laws curtailing voting options and access to a ballot following the 2020 election.

Inside the arena, two recounting procedures could be seen on Wednesday. The first was a hand recount of ballots, where teams of four or five people would put each ballot on an easel-like rotating stand, mark down which candidate (if any) the vote was for—or whether the voter's intent was not clear—and then compile a tally sheet. Bennett said that this process was following Arizona's election procedures manual. However, Hobbs' letter to the Senate president said that this operation "departs from best practices for accurate hand tallying of ballots."

"[A]lthough the aggregate totals of at least two tally sheets must match, there is no guarantee that the counters counted all 100 ballots the same way nor is there a reliable process for ensuring consistency and resolving discrepancies," the letter said.

The second process underway Wednesday was a novel process created by a "failed treasure hunter," as Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office put it in January, who has positioned himself as an adviser to Trump-supporting Republicans. Each ballot card is first placed on a tray below a camera, where a high-resolution photograph is taken. Then the same ballot is placed on a second tray where cameras attached to four microscopes take photographs of printer alignment marks, the marked oval, and borders of the ballot card.

John Brakey, an Arizona-based election transparency activist who is a progressive Democrat but has positioned himself as an adviser to Bennett and has been a spokesperson for the audit, said that operation was counting ballots that had been folded as one way to detect forgeries. It was also looking for "bamboo fibers" to prove that 40,000 ballots had been printed in Asia and smuggled into Maricopa County in an elaborate ballot-box stuffing operation—which Brakey said was absurd and lacked evidence, but needed to be disproven.

"The only way you're going to persuade people on changing [their minds] is having facts, and we're on a mission for facts," he said.

In a Tuesday media briefing organized by the National Task Force on Election Crises—a group comprised of 50 experts in election law, administration, security and civil rights—Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser for elections at the Democracy Fund and former Maricopa County election federal compliance officer, said that this line of inquiry was baseless and indicative of an amateur partisan operation.

"There's an assumption [by the audit contractors] that all vote-by-mail ballots would have a fold, but they don't," Patrick said, saying that ballots that are spoiled, such as being torn or stained by coffee, are copied. "That's also not true for provisional ballots or for someone who votes in person."

Ballots also are printed on various paper stock and not all at the same time, she said. "There can be some slight variation in the paper, some slight variation in the ink used. But when it comes down to laying forth a narrative to continue to perpetuate all of the [stolen election] falsehoods and [purportedly] missing information, this is where it gets particularly problematic."

On Wednesday, Bennett said that he joined the audit team after the Arizona Senate president—a position he previously held—hired the initial contractors conducting the audit. He said that he heard and investigated similar conspiracy theories when he was secretary of state, such as false allegations of massive illegal voting by Mexicans crossing the border into Yuma.

"If I, as a public servant, don't go out and address concerns like that, even some that are crazy—if somebody says there's bamboo in these ballots, I may think that's crazy—but if I don't verify, yes or no, I'm just allowing that [narrative to fester]," he said. "I respectfully disagree with people [whom] I trust or respect [who say] that this process lacks credibility, because, to me, it's the exact process that we have to go through to rebuild trust in the minds of the half of the people, this year, [who] think the 2020 election was stolen or a fraud."

Steven Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has reported for National Public Radio, Marketplace, and Christian Science Monitor Radio, as well as a wide range of progressive publications including Salon, AlterNet, The American Prospect, and many others.

Sen. John Cornyn

#EndorseThis: The Joke Is On GOP Sen. Cornyn, But He Doesn't Get It

Either the Senate GOP is grasping at straws or they really are this stupid.

During the confirmation of Justice Department civil rights division nominee Kristen Clarke, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) attempted to grill her by dredging up an op-ed she wrote in college about the racist book The Bell Curve. She opened the piece with a satirical statement that African Americans are genetically superior to Caucasians-- clearly referring to the absurdity of the book.

"This was satire?" Sen. Cornyn doltishly asked.

Duh! Watch him flounder -- it's too funny.

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