Jeff Danziger lives in New York City and Vermont. He is a long time cartoonist for The Rutland Herald and is represented by Counterpoint Syndicate. He is a recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at jeffdanziger.com.
President Donald Trump is committing impeachable offenses at a dizzying clip, weaponizing the federal government against his enemies and lining his pockets with taxpayer dollars.
In his latest offense, Trump’s Department of Justice is criminally investigating E. Jean Carroll, the writer whose lawsuits led to Trump being found liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
According to CNN, the DOJ is investigating Carroll for perjury, claiming that she lied in a 2022 deposition in her ultimately successful lawsuit against Trump. DOJ prosecutors say Carroll perjured herself when she said her lawsuit against Trump wasn’t being financed by any outside entities. But before the trial was set to begin, Carroll’s lawyers told the judge and Trump attorney Alina Habba that billionaire Reid Hoffman covered some of the trial expenses.
Habba—whom Trump later appointed to serve as a U.S. attorney until a judge kicked her out—had accused Carroll’s lawyers during the trial of having “conspired to conceal the truth for nearly six months.”
Yet a judge blocked Trump’s legal team from asking about how Carroll’s lawsuit was being financed during the trial, which Carroll went on to win.
Trump’s DOJ going after Carroll is clearly a revenge effort. He is livid that she was awarded nearly $90 million in damages between two separate cases—$5 million for damages related to the alleged sexual abuse and another $83 million for defamation. (Trump has been appealing both decisions for years and is now hoping the Supreme Court, which he stacked with right-wing hacks, will throw out the cases and prevent Carroll from receiving the funds awarded to her.)
“This is an unbelievable abuse of power,” Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of California told CNN on Wednesday.
Sen. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who is also a target of Trump’s weaponized DOJ over bullshit mortgage-fraud allegations, also slammed the DOJ probe into Carroll.
“First, Trump weaponized the DOJ to target his political enemies. Now, perversely, he’s targeting E. Jean Carroll, the woman who credibly and successfully sued him for sexual assault,” Schiff wrote in a post on X. “He’s using the power of the DOJ to go after his own victims. It’s a vile attack on the rule of law and a disgusting insult to victims everywhere.”
Should charges be brought against Carroll, it will be the just latest vindictive prosecution effort by the DOJ.
Already, Trump forced the DOJ to charge former FBI Director James Comey twice on dubious charges—once for supposed perjury and again for allegedly making threats against Trump. The first case has been thrown out because the court determined the U.S. attorney who sought the charges—Lindsey Halligan—was not legally serving in her role when she sought the indictment.
Trump also sought charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James for bogus mortgage-fraud charges, which were thrown out by a federal judge for the same reason as in Comey’s case. Trump’s DOJ tried to indict James again but failed when a grand jury declined to pursue charges—something that rarely happens.
Trump went after James because she successfully prosecuted him for charges of falsifying business records, which now makes him forever a convicted felon.
And a federal judge last week went as far as to throw out criminal charges against Maryland resident Kilmar Albrego Garcia—whom Trump wrongfully shipped off to a torture prison in El Salvador—due to vindictive prosecution. Again, that is a ruling that almost never happens since it is so difficult to prove.
If Carroll were ultimately charged, she would almost certainly seek to have the case thrown out on similar grounds.
Ultimately, Trump’s use of the DOJ as his revenge squad is not popular, with majorities of Americans saying that indictments of Trump’s perceived enemies have been unjustified.
What’s more, a majority of Americans now believe Trump should be impeached.
Should Democrats win control of the House this fall, you can be sure they will probe these investigations—and possibly move forward with impeachment.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos
There was certainly a lot on the agenda when Pope Leo XIV recently met with Marco Rubio: the pontiff sharing the message of the gospel; the secretary of State, a Catholic, trying his best, no doubt, to make peace after the American president dragged the pope into a back-and-forth on war and peace.
And, by official accounts, it went well.
They met “to discuss the situation in the Middle East and topics of mutual interest in the Western Hemisphere,” according to the State Department. “The meeting underscored the strong relationship between the United States and the Holy See and their shared commitment to promoting peace and human dignity.”
Human dignity.
I didn’t hear whether the conversation ever turned to the Trump administration’s recent pledge to ramp up executions for those who’ve received the death penalty after being convicted of federal crimes, a move signaled by Donald Trump on his first day back in office.
The Justice Department, in a statement released in April, said that “among the actions taken are readopting the lethal injection protocol utilized during the first Trump Administration, expanding the protocol to include additional manners of execution such as the firing squad, and streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases.”
Other proposals included expanding the kinds of crimes eligible for the ultimate penalty.
To get around state laws that forbid the death penalty or certain methods of carrying it out, the Justice Department proposed finding a state that would allow it to do whatever it wants. Mostly, the current administration seemed eager to reverse the checks put in place by the Biden administration and its Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.
The Catholic Church is pretty clear on this.
Language in the Catechism of the Catholic Church at one time had approved, though hardly enthusiastically, the death penalty in “very rare, if not practically nonexistent” circumstances. But in 2018, under Pope Francis’ leadership, it was revised to read that “a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state,” thus “the death penalty is inadmissible,” as reported in the Vatican News.
Pope Leo, the first American pope, strongly affirmed that “the dignity of the person is not lost even after very serious crimes are committed,” in a video message released in April to a gathering at DePaul University marking the 15th anniversary of the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois.
Believing in the sanctity of life from conception to natural death is not so difficult to understand when you’re talking about the innocence of those yet to be born. Even most women and men who believe in choice will admit that from the moment the doctor first announced, “You’re going to have a baby,” it was a baby, with a life of future possibility.
The challenge is when that life does not come with a clean slate, when the person with life hanging in the balance is a prisoner on death row, convicted of a heinous crime, awaiting an ultimate punishment deemed justified by a court and jury of his or her peers.
But following Catholic teachings has always been a challenge, especially when political leaders you support may contradict the message you hear at Sunday Mass.
Bolstered by friendly Supreme Court rulings, the Trump team has never hesitated to blur the line between church and state. And though polls show general public disapproval of this secular and religious mix, I don’t expect the administration’s actions to change, not as long as white evangelicals remain loyal.
Considering this wearing of religion on its collective sleeve, it’s interesting that I haven’t heard a peep from vocal Catholics in the administration on the death penalty pronouncement. Vice President JD Vance, who writes and speaks often about his conversion to the faith, spends more time lecturing the Augustinian Pope Leo on the fine points of Catholic teachings — and the words of St. Augustine.
I wonder why he chose a faith he so often disagrees with.
I’d like to ask if their consciences are clear about the clash between what their faith demands and what their administration requires.
I don’t expect anyone in an administration that is rushing prisoners to execution and shortening the time they and their lawyers have to fight to be moved by inequalities in the criminal justice system.
It’s no coincidence that the poor, minorities, the marginalized, and those described in religious texts as “the least of us” are the ones who most often end up without adequate representation or attention in the courts or on death row.
When I interviewed anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, on the Slate “What Next” podcast several years ago, she spoke about an upcoming execution spree in the state of Oklahoma. She was just one voice for men with severe mental illness, personal histories of childhood abuse, inadequate legal representation, or claims of innocence.
“The least of us.”
Somehow, I feel her voice is one Pope Leo, Pope Francis and the Catholics I grew up around would recognize.
Whether someone lives or dies should be the most important question of all, I reason, especially for those who profess that all life is sacred.
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. She is host of the CQ Roll Call “Equal Time with Mary C. Curtis” podcast. Follow her on X @mcurtisnc3.
Reprinted with permission from Roll Call
Ed Martin, former interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, had to look hard, but somehow managed to find the “dumbest possible rake” to step on, as Mark Joseph Stern tells Slate. Now the former Trump appointee is in even more trouble than he was.
“On Tuesday, the disciplinary counsel for the D.C. bar announced a formal complaint against Martin for professional misconduct,” said Stern. “The charges accuse him of violating his oath to the Constitution, then interfering with the investigation into his alleged malfeasance. If found culpable, he could be suspended from the practice of law or disbarred in D.C.”
Martin’s alleged unconstitutional behavior is already a matter of public record, said Stern. But it’s what he did after receiving notice of the complaint that sets Martin’s arrogance apart from all others. Upon receiving the initial complaint, Stern said Martin “launched a pressure campaign against the D.C. Court of Appeals … to suspend the lead investigator on his case.”
This, it turns out, was a much more egregious violation of court process than what the D.C. bar was initially investigating him for. The initial complaint was all about Martin’s harassment of Georgetown University Law Center, when he sent a letter to then-Dean William Treanor warning the school to remove all traces of DEI or the Trump administration would not hire Georgetown Law grads. He even threatened that the school might lose federal funding.
But while Martin’s letter was “absurd and malicious,” Stern said it might not constitute a violation of his oath. There was even a chance that the Board on Professional Responsibility or the D.C. Court of Appeals would agree.
But instead of contesting the claim against him through the proper legal channels, Martin allegedly tried to quash the complaint by committing “a far more clear-cut ethical breach,” said Stern. “According to the charges, Martin refused to respond to the complaint, and instead wrote directly to the chief judge and senior judges of the D.C. Court of Appeals. In his letter, he requested a “face-to-face meeting with all of you to discuss this matter and find a way forward.”
The chief judge, Anna Blackburne-Rigsby, told Martin to go pound sand and follow standard procedure. But rather than take her advice, Martin reportedly told the disciplinary counsel that he was essentially “calling their manager” — and he copied Blackburne-Rigsby on the email.
Furious, the disciplinary counsel demanded Martin turn over his letter to the judges. But rather than comply, he wrote to the chief judge again, insisting “that you not only suspend Mr. Fox immediately to investigate his conduct, but also to dismiss the case against me because of his prejudicial conduct.”
“Unfortunately for Martin, the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct expressly forbid lawyers from communicating with a judge ‘unless authorized to do so by law or court order,’ which he was not,” said Stern. “There appears to be no serious dispute that Martin communicated with Blackburne-Rigsby ex parte not once, not twice, but three separate times, all in an effort to evade discipline against him.”
If proven, Stern said this behavior “is a textbook example of misconduct sanctionable by the bar. So, of course the D.C. bar’s disciplinary counsel charged Martin with violating that rule, as well as another prohibiting conduct that ‘seriously interferes with the administration of justice.’”
“The erstwhile interim U.S. attorney, then, is in a pickle of his own making,” said Stern. “Had he simply fought Fox’s complaint the right way, he may well have defeated the charges in short order. But because he allegedly tried to obstruct the investigation, he faces a separate set of charges on much firmer legal ground.”
Reprinted with permission from Alternet
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