Justice Department announces tougher enforcement for white-collar crime

The Justice Department announced a series of policy changes Thursday aimed at toughening the federal response to white-collar crime, particularly offenses involving corporate misconduct.

Speaking to lawyers who often defend individuals and companies against such charges, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said the new approach would do more to deter crime in the nation’s boardrooms and executive suites.

“Corporate culture matters. A corporate culture that fails to hold individuals accountable, or fails to invest in compliance — or worse, that thumbs its nose at compliance — leads to bad results,” Monaco said in virtual remarks to an American Bar Association conference on white-collar crime in Miami. “Although we understand the costs that enforcement actions can place on shareholders and others, our responsibility is to incentivize responsible corporate citizenship, a culture of compliance and a sense of accountability. So, the Department will not hesitate to take action when necessary to combat corporate wrongdoing.”

Monaco said the Justice Department is dropping a policy that gave companies credit for cooperation when they identified all employees “substantially involved” in misconduct.

“Such distinctions are confusing in practice and afford companies too much discretion in deciding who should and should not be disclosed to the government,” she said.

Now, corporations will have to come clean about all employees who took part in misconduct “regardless of their position, status, or seniority,” she said. Prosecutors will decide who merits prosecution or may turn out to be a valuable source of testimony against others, the DOJ official added.

Monaco also said the Justice Department won’t hesitate to bring cases against company executives, even though such cases are typically vigorously contested by well-funded defense counsel and sometimes result in acquittals or dismissal.

“I recognize that cases against corporate executives are among some of the most difficult that the department brings, and that means the government may lose some of those cases. But I have and will continue to make clear to our prosecutors that, as long as we act consistent with the principles of federal prosecution, the fear of losing should not deter them,” Monaco said. “So long as those principles are followed, we will urge prosecutors to be bold in holding accountable those who commit criminal conduct.”

Monaco said the Justice Department will now look at a company’s full range of prior actions in making enforcement decisions, dropping a prior policy that only took account of “similar misconduct.” That could mean an end to banks and other companies getting multiple reprieves from prosecutors in the form of deferred prosecution agreements and non-prosecution agreements, although the DOJ official stopped short Thursday of ruling out giving more than one such deal to the same firm.

Monaco also said the department will step up the use of outside monitors to make sure companies involved in misconduct have corrected course and embed a squad of FBI agents in the department’s section that prosecutes criminal fraud.

The changes made public on Thursday fit a pattern in recent decades of Democratic administrations generally taking a more aggressive posture toward white-collar crime and Republican ones taking a more lax approach, particularly when it comes to charging companies themselves with criminal offenses.

However, in practice, enforcement has proven more similar than different. A major drive against corporate crime was launched under former President George W. Bush following several high-profile corporate implosions, like that of Enron. And under former President Barack Obama, the Justice Department was sharply criticized for bringing no significant criminal cases against bank officials in connection with the mortgage-backed securities that fueled the financial meltdown in 2007 and 2008.

Leah Nylen contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/28/biden-administration-targets-white-collar-crime-517425
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Garland set to appear before House Judiciary next week

Welcome to Congress Minutes, your real-time guide to what’s driving the day in and around the halls of Congress.

Source: https://www.politico.com/minutes/congress/10-13-2021/garland-to-the-hill/
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Betsy Woodruff Swan

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DOJ launches probe of Phoenix police department

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is launching a probe of the city of Phoenix and its police department, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke announced Thursday afternoon.Thi…

Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/566564-doj-launches-probe-of-phoenix-police-department
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Trump seeks to block Treasury Department from handing over his tax returns to Congress

Lawyers for Trump said the stated reason for seeing the returns, to examine how the IRS audits presidents, is simply a pretext for wanting to look for something embarrassing.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-seeks-block-treasury-department-handing-over-his-tax-returns-n1275907
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Pete Williams

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DOJ sues Texas over Abbott order restricting transportation of migrants

Attorney General Merrick Garland made good on a threat to sue the state of Texas, filing a lawsuit Friday challenging an executive order from Gov. Greg Abbott (R) that limits nongovernmental organizations from trans…

Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/565723-doj-sues-texas-over-abbott-order-restricting-transportation-of
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Call notes show Trump urged DOJ to declare election “corrupt” and “leave the rest to me”

Then-President Trump pressed top Justice Department officials in a December phone call to “just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me” and Republican congressmen, according to handwritten notes of the call released by the House Oversight Committee on Friday.

Why it matters: It’s the latest example of how aggressively Trump publicly and privately pressured the Justice Department to overturn the results of the election, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

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Driving the news: In a phone call on Dec. 27 with the acting attorney general at the time, Jeffrey Rosen, and his deputy, Richard Donoghue, Trump raised fraud claims that the department had already dismissed. Rosen told the then-president that the DOJ could not change the election outcome.

• Trump also suggested that he would receive support from some Republican members of Congress. He had referred to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) at other points in the phone call.
• Rosen and Donoghue told Trump that they were doing their job, had looked at the allegations, and that “[m]uch of the info you’re getting is false.”
• Trump also demanded that the Justice Department “figure out what to do” with Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, saying that he needed to be “investigated for real,” according to the notes.

The big picture: The Democratic-led House Oversight Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee are both investigating Trump and his allies’ efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election based on conspiracy theories about voter fraud.

• Donoghue’s notes were handed to Congress as part of the investigation.
• The Fulton County district attorney is also investigating Trump’s efforts to pressure Georgia election officials to overturn his loss to Biden in the state.

What they’re saying: “These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency,” House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a statement.

Source: https://www.axios.com/trump-voter-fraud-doj-pressure-42191546-f6b7-4e76-a833-274dca8e2f7a.html
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Nearly 100 members of Congress call for probe into DOJ’s alleged racial profiling of Asians

Nearly 100 members of Congress are urging Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate the Justice Department’s alleged racial profiling of Asians, according to a letter shared with Axios.

Why it matters: The case of Anming Hu, a scientist who was baselessly targeted in an espionage probe, has renewed scrutiny of the DOJ after an FBI agent admitted to falsely implicating the Chinese Canadian.

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• The bicameral coalition, led by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), delivered the letter to Garland on Thursday.

What they’re saying: “Over the years, multiple people who happened to be of Asian descent have been falsely accused by the Department of Justice of espionage,” the letter states, citing Hu, Wen Ho Lee, Sherry Chen and Xiaoxing Xi.

• “The common thread in every one of these cases was a defendant with an Asian surname — and an innocent life that was turned upside down.”
• Lawmakers are asking for an investigation into DOJ operations and specifically the China Initiative, a program launched under President Donald Trump that targeted the Chinese government’s attempts to steal intellectual property.
• They also asked for an update on the agency’s implicit bias trainings, which were mandated in 2016 after the DOJ dropped several espionage charges against Asian researchers.

“This is across administrations and it’s both Democratic and Republican administrations, making the same mistakes over and over again,” Lieu told Axios.

• It’s not confined to the DOJ either, he said, referring to a “rogue” Commerce Department division that relied on race-based investigations.
• “I would urge all Cabinet secretaries to look at their agencies and figure out if they need to do training for their personnel.”

Worth noting: At a roundtable hosted by Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) last month, Chen and Xi gave emotional testimonies about the anxiety and turmoil caused by the DOJ’s actions.

• Last week, the DOJ dropped individual cases against five Chinese researchers accused of hiding ties to the Chinese military.

Source: https://www.axios.com/china-asians-racial-profiling-doj-congress-ffb865e1-329b-4b08-a6ea-9a48ecc02260.html
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The Justice Department just fired two more shots across Trump’s bow

Here are the three main implications of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s key decisions this week.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/doj-s-decisions-could-sink-trump-efforts-avoid-capitol-riot-ncna1275359
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Attorney General Garland halts federal executions, orders review of procedures

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday ordered a moratorium on federal executions while the Department of Justice reviews its death penalty policies and procedures.

Driving the news: Garland said in a memo that “serious concerns” have been raised about the use of the death penalty, “including arbitrariness in its application, disparate impact on people of color, and the troubling number of exonerations in capital and other serious cases.”

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• No federal executions will be scheduled while the review takes place.

The big picture: Garland also raised concerns about the lethal injection protocol adopted during the Trump administration.

• During the previous administration the Justice Department changed its capital case policies and procedures, leading to the “first federal executions in nearly two decades between July 2020 and January 2021,” notes a DOJ press release.
• The Trump administration carried out 13 executions in six months, per AP.
• Garland had previously indicated that he wished to review the federal government’s death penalty policies, per Reuters.

The bottom line: “The Department of Justice must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely,” Garland wrote.

Source: https://www.axios.com/merrick-garland-federal-executions-pause-2a9627a7-04d3-4129-8806-883343306406.html
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‘We have to protect them’: DOJ to investigate threats to election workers

Federal prosecutors and the FBI are being instructed to prioritize dangers to individuals and the electoral process.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/we-have-protect-them-doj-vows-investigations-prosecutions-threats-election-n1272415
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US Justice Dept sues Georgia over restrictive state voting law

Republicans in Arizona, Florida and Iowa have also adopted new voting restrictions; Pennsylvania and Texas may follow.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/25/us-sues-georgia-over-restrictive-new-state-voting-law
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DOJ warns Missouri officials state can’t ignore federal gun laws

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has warned Missouri state officials that they can’t ignore federal gun laws, …

Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/558992-doj-warns-missouri-officials-state-cant-ignore-federal-gun-laws
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DOJ National Security chief John Demers to step down amid leak probe furor

The chief of the Justice Department’s National Security Division is set to leave the department by the end of this month, a source familiar with his plans confirmed to POLITICO.

John Demers, who has headed the division since February 2018, will be the last Senate-confirmed Trump appointee to leave DOJ. While he focused on combating Chinese intellectual property theft and espionage, his departure comes as the department draws scorching criticism for seizing reporters’ phone records as part of an investigation into leaks during the Trump administration.

In recent days, news reports have also revealed that DOJ obtained a subpoena that required Apple to produce phone records belonging to two prominent Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee.

In a statement Monday, Attorney General Merrick Garland expressed concern about prosecutors’ demands for lawmakers’ information and acknowledged the sensitive issues raised by such probes into the legislative branch.

“There are important questions that must be resolved in connection with an effort by the department to obtain records related to Members of Congress and Congressional staff,” Garland said. “Consistent with our commitment to the rule of law, we must ensure that full weight is accorded to separation-of-powers concerns moving forward.”

Garland also said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco “is already working on surfacing potentially problematic matters deserving high level review,” which he did not describe further. He said he’s also asked Monaco “to evaluate and strengthen the department’s existing policies and procedures for obtaining records of the Legislative branch.”

Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department dramatically amped up investigations into leaks of classified material, securing more convictions than all other presidential administrations combined. Trump’s national security team took that work even further; at a press conference in August 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that since the end of the Obama administration, the department had tripled the number of leak probes underway.

In the years following that press conference, the department secured numerous convictions and prison sentences for people who shared classified information with reporters. But now its senior leadership faces condemnation for its scrutiny of reporters — including at the New York Times and Washington Post.

President Joe Biden said last month that it was wrong for the department to seize reporters’ records. DOJ later announced that it would no longer do so, despite longstanding regulations that create a process to approve such subpoenas in some cases. The attorney general must approve any efforts by DOJ to obtain journalists’ records.

Last week, the Department’s internal watchdog announced the opening of an investigation into how DOJ came to scoop up the lawmakers’ records.

Garland’s statement and word of Demers planned exit come as the attorney general is set to meet this afternoon with the leaders of three newsrooms whose records were seized by DOJ.

The New York Times first reported the news of Demers’ impending departure. He has stayed at the department longer than his other Trump-appointed colleagues because senior officials there repeatedly asked him to postpone his departure, the source told POLITICO. This was Demers’ third stint at DOJ.

Last month, Biden nominated longtime national-security lawyer Matt Olsen to take over Justice’s National Security Division. As a top Justice Department lawyer during President Barack Obama’s administration, Olsen oversaw a major review of war-on-terror detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. He also served as general counsel to the National Security Agency and as head of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Olsen is currently the security chief for Uber, a position he has held since 2018.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/14/john-demers-step-down-probe-494320
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AG Garland to double enforcement staff to protect voting rights

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday announced the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division will double the number of enforcement staff dedicated to protecting the right to vote in the next 30 days.

Why it matters: After an election fraught with baseless claims of fraud and a recent flurry of voter restriction bills in state legislatures, Garland underscored his dedication to protecting voting rights. He said the DOJ will “do everything in its power to prevent election fraud, and if found to vigorously prosecute” but will also scrutinize “new laws that seek to curb voter access.”

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• “There are many things that are open to debate in America, but the right of all eligible citizens to vote is not one of them,” Garland said in his speech. “The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy. The right from which all other rights, ultimately flow.”
• Garland criticized some post-election audits, saying they have relied on “assertions of material vote fraud in the 2020 election that have been refuted by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”
• He said the DOJ has “not been blind” to the rise in threats toward election workers, saying it undermines “our electoral process, and violate a myriad of federal laws.”
• He said the criminal section of the Civil Rights Division will work to investigate and prosecute when federal laws have been violated.

What to watch: Garland said that Justice officials are looking at practices that discriminate against voters of color, including specifically jurisdictions where non-white voters wait in line longer than white voters to cast their ballot.

• The agency will publish guidance explaining post-election audits and on early and mail-in voting.
• Garland said agency officials will work with Congress on federal legislation to protect voting rights. “We need Congress to pass S-1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would provide the department with the tools it needs,” he said.

The big picture: Republicans have floated hundreds of restrictive voting bills in state legislatures this year, and at least 22 have been enacted, according to the Brennan Center.

• Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) has all but dashed Democrats’ hopes of passing the For the People Act, a sweeping election reform bill.
• Biden earlier this month tapped Vice President Harris to lead the administration’s push to protect voting rights.

This all comes ahead of the decennial redistricting process, where district lines are redrawn based on new Census counts.

• A study found that one-in-two states are at risk of gerrymandering, or having lines drawn to favor one political party.
• It will be the first time in decades that certain states will not be required to get their maps pre-cleared by the Justice Department, due to a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision. Under the same pre-clearance requirement no longer in effect, DOJ objected to more than 1,000 state voting changes between 1965 and 2006, Garland said.

Source: https://www.axios.com/voting-rights-justice-department-merrick-garland-b52db1c9-190c-4d60-9d6a-c6af07d0fe58.html
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Adam Schiff calls for investigation after report of his phone records being seized by Trump DOJ

Rep. Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, called for an inspector general investigation of the Trump Justice Department on Thursday after a report said that his phone records, along with those of aides and another member of the committee, had been seized — what he condemned as a “terrible abuse of power.”

“It also makes the Department of Justice just a fully owned subsidiary of the president’s personal legal interests and political interests,” the California Democrat told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

The New York Times, citing knowledgeable sources, reported on Thursday night that as the Department of Justice hunted for leakers behind the distribution of classified information early in the Trump administration, prosecutors — in an extraordinary move — subpoenaed Apple for communications data of at least two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, as well as that of aides and a family member. One was a child.

In the end, the data didn’t tie the committee to the leaks, and there were discussions about dropping the investigation, according to the report. But a year later, William Barr, after becoming attorney general, revitalized the investigation, moving around department employees to work on the Schiff case.

Rep. Eric Swalwell of California confirmed on Thursday that he was the second committee Democrat whose records were seized, telling CNN that he was notified by Apple.

“We have seen this through the Justice Department by Donald Trump, whether it was the reason he was impeached, for trying to go after Vice President Biden at the time, or just other efforts, you know, through the Mueller investigation,” Swalwell said. “And I support Chairman Schiff’s call for an inspector general report into not only this conduct, but other conduct that was corrupt by Donald Trump and those who worked for him.”

When Maddow asked Schiff on Thursday whether Congress should also investigate the department’s seizing of the records, Schiff said it should, adding that Attorney General Merrick Garland would be questioned on the matter. He said he himself shouldn’t have a role in the investigation, given that his records were subpoenaed, but said other committees in Congress could exercise oversight.

As for Garland’s role, Schiff said that the current attorney general had a responsibility to “clean house,” and that it would be at least a decade before the department recovered from politicization.

“I think that the attorney general has an obligation to clean house, to essentially understand exactly what the department was doing over the last four years — make sure there’s accountability for those that were engaged in political and partisan investigations within the department,” Schiff said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi backed Schiff’s call for an investigation, calling the Times report “harrowing.”

“These actions appear to be yet another egregious assault on our democracy waged by the former president,” Pelosi said in a statement. “I support Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s call for an investigation into this situation and other acts of the weaponization of law enforcement by the former president. Transparency is essential.”

The seizing of metadata, if corroborated, would show how eager Trump administration officials were to identify and prosecute the sources. The Justice Department, just as it did in investigating news organizations, was reported to have issued a gag order against Apple. Lawmakers didn’t learn they were being investigated until last month, when the gag order expired and Apple notified them of the seizure, according to the Times report.

Schiff said that, while unprecedented, the department’s move was a “patent abuse” and “another example of the president politicizing” the department.

“We’re obviously deeply suspicious of what the Justice Department was doing,” he said. “More than that, this looks like a patent abuse of the department. Yet another example of the president politicizing, using the Department of Justice as a cudgel to go after his enemies. He would repeatedly attack our committee, attack me personally, call for investigations of our committee while we were doing an investigation of him.”

He added: “And apparently those pleas were met with a receptive audience at the very top level of the Justice Department.”

Schiff also said Thursday that it was still unclear how many members were targeted by the subpoenas, and whether only Democrats’ records were seized. He said they would learn more in coming days as members of the committee rechecked old emails for the notice from Apple — an email that members and staff thought was spam, Schiff said.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/10/adam-schiff-investigation-trump-doj-493343
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Trump DOJ seized CNN correspondent’s phone and email records

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department “secretly” obtained phone and email records from a CNN reporter, the network said on Thursday.

CNN reported that the department informed Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr last week about the move, in which prosecutors were able to get her email and phone records for two months in 2017. Those records included both her personal and work phones and emails.

A Justice Department spokesperson, Anthony Coley, confirmed to POLITICO on Thursday night that the legal process to get the records was approved last year, but he did not explain why the records were sought.

The news comes less than two weeks after The Washington Post reported Trump’s Justice Department secretly got three Post reporters’ phone records and tried to get their email logs. The move was in an apparent bid to uncover the sources for a story in 2017 on a federal investigation into alleged links between Russia and the then-president’s campaign.

“This is a big story that just got bigger,” Bruce Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in a statement. “That a journalist from another news organization had communications records seized by the Trump Justice Department suggests that the last administration’s efforts to intrude into reporter-source relationships and chill newsgathering is more sweeping than we originally thought.”

Brown called on the Justice Department to give a “detailed explanation” of what happened and why, and how “it plans to strengthen protections for the free flow of information to the public.” Coley told POLITICO that department leaders are convening with reporters “soon” to “hear their concerns” and “further convey Attorney General [Merrick] Garland’s staunch support of and commitment to a free and independent press.”

CNN President Jeff Zucker criticized the Justice Department’s actions.

“CNN strongly condemns the secret collection of any aspect of a journalist’s correspondence, which is clearly protected by the First Amendment,” Zucker said.

The Post’s story on Russia, which indicated then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak had said he discussed Russia-related topics with Jeff Sessions, a Trump campaign adviser at the time, drew the ire of Trump in the early months of his term. Two weeks after the story, Sessions — who at that time was attorney general — announced a crackdown on a supposed “culture of leaks.”

A Justice Department spokesperson, Marc Raimondi, said that the goal of the investigation involving Post reporters wasn’t to prosecute reporters.

“The targets of these investigations are not the news media recipients but rather those with access to the national defense information who provided it to the media and thus failed to protect it as lawfully required,” Raimondi said.

CNN said it was unclear when the investigation involving Starr began, whether it was under Sessions or Attorney General William Barr, and what the Trump administration might have been searching for.

Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/20/trump-doj-cnn-correspondent-490091
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Trump Justice Department obtained phone records of WashPost reporters

Former President Trump’s Justice Department in 2017 secretly obtained the phone records of three Washington Post reporters, the newspaper revealed Friday.

Between the lines: The reporters — Ellen Nakashima, Greg Miller and Adam Entous — at the time were looking into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

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• They each received a letter from the DOJ earlier this week informing them that the department had been monitoring their phone calls from April 15 to July 31, 2017.

The big picture: The Post said that these types of action from the DOJ is “rare” and require approval from the attorney general.

• “The letters do not say precisely when the reporters’ records were taken and reviewed, but a department spokesman said the decision to do so came in 2020, during the Trump administration,” the Post writes. At the time, William Barr was attorney general.
• The phone records include the numbers of the calls and how long each call lasted, but do not include what was said.
• The letters do not specifically mention why the phone records were obtained, but during the three-month period the reporters wrote a story on how in 2016 former Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) had discussed Trump’s campaign with Sergey Kislyak, a Russian ambassador.

What they’re saying: “We are deeply troubled by this use of government power to seek access to the communications of journalists. The Department of Justice should immediately make clear its reasons for this intrusion into the activities of reporters doing their jobs, an activity protected under the First Amendment,” Washington Post executive editor Cameron Barr said.

The other side: A DOJ spokesperson told the Post the department’s decision to subpoena the reporters’ phone records was an investigative step needed to see who were the individuals providing the newspaper with “national defense information.”

Source: https://www.axios.com/washington-post-trump-justice-phone-records-debded75-67c3-41e2-9877-ae8ddd5de81f.html
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Justice Department, FBI debating whether to charge all those involved in Capitol riots: WaPo

Justice Department and FBI officials are reportedly discussing whether or not everyone who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 should be charged, with some arguing that charges should not be filed for those who did not en…

Source: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/535545-justice-department-fbi-debate-whether-to-charge-all-those-involved
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Lindsey Graham praises Merrick Garland as ‘sound choice’ to serve as attorney general

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who in 2016 supported a decision to block D.C. Circuit Court Judge Merrick Garland from getting a hearing to serve on the Supreme Court, on Wednesday praised him as a “sound choice” to serve…

Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/532924-lindsey-graham-praises-merrick-garland-as-sound-choice-to-serve-as-attorney
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Alexander Bolton

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Attorney General William Barr to step down

Attorney General William Barr is leaving his position, a decision that follows months of complaints from President Donald Trump about the administration’s top lawyer.

Trump and Barr made a show of cordiality with the announcement, with Trump tweeting: “Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job!“

The attorney general’s last day will be Dec. 23.

Trump had been frustrated with Barr’s handling of the Justice Department investigation into Hunter Biden’s finances, along with his lack of engagement in the president’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Barr’s departure upends the leadership of the Justice Department at a sensitive moment in the transition of power to President-elect Joe Biden’s administration, a further indication of Trump’s attempt to erode its independence in the waning weeks of his term.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/14/attorney-general-william-barr-steps-down-445269
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Matthew Choi

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