Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson restored on Wednesday the Justice Department policy of holding back on election probes that could disrupt the certification process. The policy was weakened by a shady memo from Attorney General Bill Barr in the days after the election, in which Barr said probes involving election irregularities need not wait for the results to be finalized before moving forward.
“Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson restored on Wednesday the Justice Department policy of holding back on election probes that could disrupt the certification process. The policy was weakened by a shady memo from Attorney General Bill Barr in the days after the election, in which Barr said probes involving election irregularities need not wait for the results to be finalized before moving forward.”
Umm…no. Barr broke the policy to conduct precisely those investigations, and now they are simply trying to seal it back up before Dems move into DoJ.
The second one:
“On the day before Barr left the Department, he issued a second, more under-the-radar memo — rescinded Wednesday — that sought to limit what the Justice Department could do to enforce voting rights laws when state or local jurisdictions made it harder to vote.”
makes the headline a little more accurate, in that, the DoJ never got to actually implement this policy.
What’s needed is a new voting rights act that lays out requirements for all national elections, including mail-in voting, absentee voting, vote-tallying methods, the whole megillah. And if any State wants to change its procedures, it needs to get DOJ blessing - don’t try to restrict it to States that had problems in the past (which was the undoing of the current VRA).
Now that they’re operating under the principle that officials no longer in office are still subject to impeachment, the House needs to impeach Barr. Make it clear that no future AG can ever be allowed to act as the personal attorney for a criminal president.
To be clear, DOJ should investigate claims of election fraud AND claims of voter suppression that rise to the level of being considered a Federal crime but they should do so in accordance with their policy that they don’t announce or respond to inquires about such investigations until they have actual evidence that criminal acts occurred that are significant enough to warrant indictments.
Alternatively, investigate charging Barr criminal acts he committed while AG. That would send a stronger message to future AGs than time-consuming impeachment by the House and trial by the Senate that would be unlikely to convict.
Federal investigations did reportedly move forward in states were Trump and his allies were contesting the results…
Politically motivated right there.
More importantly, the biased investigation still found nothing. So, Donald Trump tried other means to push his lie.
Trump was not engaged in hardball politics, like his blind followers want to claim. When his agencies investigation found nothing, Trump embarked on treason.
We said, that first happy Saturday when our pent-up emotions overflowed with joy and relief, that it would be just for a day, because there was a lot of work in front of all of us. Every day since has shown us how painfully true that is. But boy, when the people we elected to take care of it just roll up their sleeves and get right to work, it gives you hope.
