Tag: reggie walton
'You Were Gullible': Senior Judge Torches Trump Election Lies At Rioter's Hearing

'You Were Gullible': Senior Judge Torches Trump Election Lies At Rioter's Hearing

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Although former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Al Gore both lost presidential elections, there are some crucial differences between their responses to their losses. Gore, in 2000, eventually conceded defeat to then Texas-Gov. George W. Bush and congratulated him on his victory; Trump, however, still doesn't admit that now-President Joe Biden defeated him in 2020. And Senior District Judge Reggie Walton noted, in blunt terms, that Gore/Trump contrast when Capitol rioter Adam Johnson appeared in his courtroom this week for a plea hearing.

Johnson, one of the many Trump supporters who invaded the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6 in the hope of stopping Congress from certifying Biden's Electoral College victory, bought into Trump's false, debunked claims of widespread voter fraud.

Walton told Johnson, "Al Gore had a better case to argue than Mr. Trump, but he was a man about what happened to him. He accepted it and walked away."

Following the 2000 presidential election, Gore questioned the election results in Florida. Gore went weeks without conceding, but some prominent Democrats urged him to concede for the good of the country — including former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell, who had become chairman of the Democratic National Committee and later became a two-term governor of Pennsylvania. Gore eventually took Rendell's advice, congratulated the president-elect and conceded to Bush, who was sworn in as president on January 20, 2001.

Republican Dick Cheney was sworn in as vice president that day, and his arch-conservative daughter, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, has become a scathing Trump critic on the right. Cheney is part of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's select committee on the January 6 insurrection.

When various Democrats, in 2001 and 2002, asked Gore if he believed that he really won Florida, the former vice president would emphatically state: George W. Bush is president of the United States, I lost the election. End of discussion. And Walton, a Bush appointee, made it clear to Johnson that he has a lot more respect for Gore than he does for Trump. Walton essentially called Trump a sore loser and called Johnson a sucker for believing him.

The judge told Johnson, "What concerns me, sir, is that you were gullible enough to come to Washington, D.C. from Florida based on a lie, and the person who inspired you to do what you do is still making those statements, and my concern is that you are gullible enough to do it again."Another key difference between Gore and Trump: Gore won the popular vote in 2000 even though he lost the electoral vote, whereas Trump lost both.

Johnson was in Walton's courtroom to plead guilty to a charge of being on restricted grounds illegally, which is a lesser charge than what he was originally looking at. According to CNN reporters Hannah Rabinowitz and Holmes Lybrand, "Johnson was originally charged with three federal crimes, including theft of government property, but those charges will be dropped as part of his plea deal. He could face a sentence of up to six months in prison, according to his agreement with prosecutors read at his plea hearing on Monday. He will also pay $500 in restitution for damage done to the Capitol during the riot."

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Judge Reggie Walton

Judge Smacks Barr Over Mueller Report Distortions

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ruled in a scathing decision on Thursday that Attorney General Bill Barr's handling of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report demonstrates that his department cannot be trusted to faithfully redact the document. Therefore, his court will review the redactions itself to ensure that they didn't improperly conceal information from the public.

Judge Walton was critical — as many observers were at the time — of a letter Barr sent purporting to summarize the conclusions of the Mueller report weeks before the document was officially made public:

The speed by which Attorney General Barr released to the public the summary of Special Counsel Mueller's principal conclusions, coupled with the fact that Attorney General Barr failed to provide a thorough representation of the findings set forth in the Mueller Report, causes the Court to question whether Attorney General Barr's intent was to create a one-sided narrative about the Mueller Report—a narrative that is clearly in some respects substantively at odds with the redacted version of the Mueller Report.

He noted that even Mueller himself wrote a letter to Barr, expressing the worry that the letter "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of th[e] [Special Counsel's] Office's work and conclusions."

"[A] review of the redacted version of the Mueller Report by the Court results in the Court's concurrence with Special Counsel Mueller's assessment that Attorney General Barr distorted the findings in the Mueller Report," the judge wrote.

Specifically, Walton faulted Barr for misleading the public about two key aspects of the report. First, though Barr said Mueller did not establish that Trump was involved in the 2016 Russian election interference, the special counsel did find numerous "links" between the campaign and Russia and only did not find that the evidence showed these links to amount to a criminal conspiracy. Second, Barr did not convey that Mueller determined not to make a prosecutorial decision on the question of whether Trump obstructed justice. Mueller listed extensive analysis and evidence suggesting that, in fact, Trump had committed such a crime; and he said Congress or a future prosecutor could potentially try Trump for this conduct.

The judge continued:

[The] Court has reviewed the redacted version of the Mueller Report, Attorney General Barr's representations made during his April 18, 2019 press conference, and Attorney General Barr's April 18, 2019 letter. And, the Court cannot reconcile certain public representations made by Attorney General Barr with the findings in the Mueller Report.

Because of these discrepancies, the judge wrote, it appears Barr may have "made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary."

The case was brought by Jason Leopold of BuzzFeed News and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, who sought to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the redacted information in the Mueller Report.

The decision concluded:

[The] Court must conclude that the actions of Attorney General Barr and his representations about the Mueller Report preclude the Court's acceptance of the validity of the Department's redactions without its independent verification. Adherence to the FOIA's objective of keeping the American public informed of what its government is up to demands nothing less. Accordingly, the Court will conduct an independent review of the unredacted version of the Mueller Report to determine whether it concurs with the Department's determination that the redactions of the Mueller Report are authorized by the FOIA exemptions upon which the Department relies.

In other words, Barr proved his Justice Department cannot be trusted. Elsewhere, Walton said Barr showed a "lack of candor." So the court itself will take the responsibility of ensuring that the Mueller report redactions comply with the law.

It's an extraordinary decision for a judge to make — and one that should signal just how much the Trump administration has warped the federal government.

More Than 1100 Former DOJ Officials Demand Barr’s Ouster

More Than 1100 Former DOJ Officials Demand Barr’s Ouster

More than 1,100 former Justice Department employees have signed an online petition calling on Attorney General William Barr to resign, saying his interference in criminal matters for Donald Trump’s friends and allies poses a “grave threat” to the country.

“In this nation, we are all equal before the law. A person should not be given special treatment in a criminal prosecution because they are a close political ally of the President,” the petition reads.

It continues, “Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies.”

The petition comes after Barr apparently intervened in the sentencing of longtime Trump ally Roger Stone, overruling the career prosecutors on the case to recommend the judge give him a lighter sentence. Stone was convicted in November on seven counts of obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and lying to Congress, actions discovered during the course of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s nearly two-year-long Russia probe.

The announcement that Stone’s recommended prison time had been changed took place hours after Trump tweeted that he thought the proposed nine-year sentence was “unfair,” even though that sentence followed federal guidelines.

Barr’s apparent interference in the case led the four top prosecutors who secured his conviction to resign in protest.

The signatories of the petition applaud those resignations.

“We support and commend the four career prosecutors who upheld their oaths and stood up for the Department’s independence by withdrawing from the Stone case and/or resigning from the Department,” the petition reads. “Our simple message to them is that we — and millions of other Americans — stand with them.”

Trump, for his part, has claimed the “legal right” to intervene in criminal matters relating to his friends — despite the fact that this violates the precedent of an independent DOJ.

Judge Reggie Walton — who was appointed by former President George W. Bush — said last week that Trump’s targeting of perceived political enemies such as former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, whom Trump has claimed was part of a broader attempt to undermine his presidency from within the Justice Department, is something that happens in a “banana republic.

The DOJ on Friday closed its investigation into McCabe and announced it would not pursue criminal charges over claims he leaked information about a confidential case to media outlets.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Judge Rebuked DOJ Over Trump’s Unrelenting Assault On McCabe

Judge Rebuked DOJ Over Trump’s Unrelenting Assault On McCabe

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton gave the Justice Department a pointed rebuke last September because of President Donald Trump’s relentless attacks on former Deputy FBI Director Andy McCabe, new documents released on Friday showed.

At the time, McCabe was the target of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department for charges that arose regarding his apparent lies during an inspector general investigation. But as was also revealed on Friday, the department has now determined that it will not pursue charges against McCabe in this matter.

Judge Walton was overseeing a related Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the non-profit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics Washington. In September, the Justice Department was seeking delays in the case because it hadn’t yet decided how it would handle the potential charges against McCabe. But Walton didn’t think it was appropriate to drag out the process.

Assistant U.S. Attorney J.P. Cooney told the court that the situation surrounding the case had been “exceedingly difficult.”

He didn’t say why it was so difficult, but it’s not hard to imagine why. Trump has publicly lambasted McCabe for years, and he clearly wanted him prosecuted. Though the potential charges are entirely unrelated, Trump’s animus at McCabe stems from the former deputy director’s role leading the Russia investigation.

Judge Walton’s comments, which had previously been sealed, reflected broader concerns in the public and the media that Trump’s efforts to publicly pressure the Justice Department are corrupting the rule of law.

“I fully appreciate the complexity of the assessment, especially, unfortunately, to be candid in light of the way by the White House, which I don’t think top executive officers should be doing,” Walton said. “Because it does I think really complicate your ability to get a fair adjudication from the government’s perspective.”

He continued: “Because the public is listening to what’s going on, and I don’t think people like the fact that you got somebody at the top basically trying to dictate whether somebody should be prosecuted. I just think it’s a banana republic when we go down that road and we have those type of statements being made that are conceivably even if not influencing the ultimate decision, I think there are a lot of people on the outside who perceive that there is undo inappropriate pressure being brought to bear.”

He added that the “mess” created by the inappropriate pressure was “disturbing.”

“I just think the integrity of the process is being unduly undermined by inappropriate comments and actions on the part of people at the top of our government,” Walton said. “I think it’s very unfortunate. And I think as a government and as a society we’re going to pay a price at some point for this.”

It seemed Cooney took the judge’s remarks seriously, accepting a shorter timeline and saying that he would “report back” on the court’s complaints.

“I want to assure the court that I and others involved in this take our representation of the United States and the Department of Justice very seriously,” Cooney said. The judge made clear, though, that he wasn’t criticizing the prosecutor himself.

After Walton agreed on the extension, Anne Weismann, a lawyer for CREW, was allowed to speak to the judge.

“Sadly, we’re in dark times where there’s growing evidence that the president, aided by the attorney general, is using the power of his office to go after perceived political enemies,” she said. “He’s going after the intelligence community. He’s going after the law enforcement community. And we believe that Mr. McCabe was swept up in that.”

“Going after the courts, too,” the judge interjected.

“And he’s going after the courts, the press,” Weismann agreed. “It’s hard to find someone who isn’t a victim of his abuse of powers.”