January, 16 2020, 11:00pm EDT
Democracy 21 Files Complaint Against Attorney General Barr for Repeated Failures to Comply with DOJ Norms, Rules and Standards of Conduct
Complaint cites pattern of bias by Barr to protect President Trump at expense of carrying out DOJ mission to "ensure fair and impartial administration of justice."
WASHINGTON
Democracy 21 filed a complaint today with the Department of Justice requesting an investigation and remedial action against Attorney General William Barr for his repeated failures to comply with DOJ norms, rules and standards of conduct. The complaint was filed with DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility and Departmental Ethics Office.
According to the Democracy 21 complaint:
The improper actions by Attorney General Barr cover a wide range of his statements and activities but all result from a single overriding impropriety: the Attorney General has eschewed the core mission of the Department of Justice "to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans."
Attorney General Barr has instead repeatedly demonstrated bias in acting to protect the personal and political interests of President Trump, as opposed to protecting the interests of the American people. He has done this to the detriment of the country and in derogation of the mission and integrity of the Department he heads.
According to Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer:
Attorney General Barr has repeatedly abused his office to provide cover for President Trump. The Attorney General has acted in biased ways and violated Justice Department norms, standards and rules to protect President Trump at the expense of fulfilling his responsibilities to provide fair and impartial administration of justice.
Attorney General Barr has made improper attacks on the investigations of DOJ Special Counsel Mueller and DOJ Inspector General Horowitz, has made unjustified and unsubstantiated claims to protect President Trump and failed to recuse himself from the Ukraine whistleblower matter involving the President in which Barr was directly implicated by Trump.
Attorney General Barr is doing enormous damage to the integrity and credibility of the Justice Department he leads. It is the responsibility of the Office of Professional Responsibility and the Departmental Ethics Office to hold Barr accountable for his repeated improper actions.
The complaint forwarded a letter also raising concerns about Barr that was sent by the New York City Bar Association to the congressional leaders. The complaint stated:
We enclose for your information a letter sent by the New York City Bar Association to the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate which expresses "serious concerns about the propriety of Barr's recent actions and statements." The letter urges Congress "to commence formal inquiries into a pattern of conduct by Attorney General William P. Barr that threatens public confidence in the fair and impartial administration of justice."
According to the Democracy 21 complaint:
As we discuss below, Attorney General Barr has directly contradicted, misrepresented or undermined the independent, non-partisan and credible work of both the Department's Inspector General and its Special Counsel, in order to blunt conclusions by these officials which were contrary to the views and interests of President Trump. He has publicly echoed the President's inflammatory rhetoric about "spying" and "collusion" without providing any adequate legal basis for using these terms. And he has refused to recuse himself from sensitive Department decisions about the handling of a whistleblower complaint alleging a gross abuse of power by President Trump and in which the Attorney General himself is directly and personally implicated.
The complaint continued:
It is the clear duty of the Attorney General always to maintain fidelity to the Constitution and to the nation's legal system, and never to abdicate these responsibilities to protect the President's personal or political interests at the expense of the impartial administration of justice.
Attorney General Barr has repeatedly failed meet this critical obligation to the American people. Therefore, as the Justice Department officials who have the responsibility to safeguard the norms, standards and rules that protect the Department's integrity and credibility, it falls to you to investigate and take appropriate remedial action to address the Attorney General's improper conduct.
According to the complaint, Attorney General Barr and U.S Attorney Durham publicly challenged and criticized the findings of the DOJ Inspector General that the Justice Department had sufficient basis to open the Russia investigation in 2016 and that the FBI and Justice Department had acted without political bias or impropriety in conducting the investigation.
The complaint stated:
Most importantly, DOJ rules prohibit Department officials from publicly commenting on open criminal investigations. These rules state that Department personnel may not "confirm the existence of or otherwise comment about ongoing investigations" and may not comment on "the nature or progress" of an "ongoing investigation." USAM SS 1-7.400 (April 2018).
In general, this provision forbids Department officials, including the Attorney General, from engaging in any discussion about active criminal investigations, except in limited, specific circumstances that are not applicable here.
The statements issued by both Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney Durham disagreeing with the key conclusions of the Inspector General report were clearly based on their views about the findings of the parallel criminal investigation they are conducting into the same matter that was investigated by the Inspector General. Thus, Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney Durham chose to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation in order to attack the findings of the Inspector General and thereby improperly provided cover for President Trump's obsessive attacks on the 2016 Russia/Trump investigation opened by the Justice Department and the FBI.
Democracy 21 believes these statements were in violation of DOJ rules prohibiting Department officials from commenting on open criminal investigations.
The complaint continued:
By publicly attacking the Inspector General report immediately upon its issuance, by specifically disagreeing with its central conclusion, and by having U.S. Attorney Durham follow with his challenge to the report, Attorney General Barr undermined his own Inspector General and attacked his own Department. Barr demonstrated his bias and fealty to President Trump, contravening the Department's mission of promoting "fair and impartial justice for all Americans," in favor of echoing President Trump's irresponsible attacks on the Justice Department itself.
The complaint then detailed the following actions Barr has taken since becoming Attorney General:
- Barr testified before Congress, without any substantiation, that FBI and Justice Department officials engaged in "spying" on the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.
- Barr sent a letter to Congress mischaracterizing the Mueller report ahead of its release, leaving it as the only information available to the public about the report for almost a month. Barr then refused Special Counsel Mueller's request to release the summaries included in the report and held a press conference hours before the release of the full report where he continued to mischaracterize it.
- Barr failed to recuse himself from overseeing matters being consideration by DOJ and related to the whistleblower complaint about President Trump's call with the Ukrainian President, in which Trump mentioned Barr by name five times.
The complaint concluded:
This pattern of biased behavior by Barr is in stark conflict with his duty to ensure the "impartial administration of justice on behalf of all Americans." It is contrary to the mission, the norms, the rules, and the standards of conduct of the Justice Department and it seriously undermines the integrity and credibility of the Justice Department in the eyes of the American people.
Because you are responsible for safeguarding the institutional integrity of the Justice Department and the standards of behavior that govern its officials, Attorney General Barr's pattern of improper behavior warrants investigation and appropriate remedial action by your offices. Democracy 21 strongly calls on you to fulfill that responsibility.
Read the full complaint here.
Democracy 21 is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to making democracy work for all Americans. Democracy 21, and its education arm, Democracy 21 Education Fund, work to eliminate the undue influence of big money in American politics, prevent government corruption, empower citizens in the political process and ensure the integrity and fairness of government decisions and elections. The organization promotes campaign finance reform and other related political reforms to accomplish these goals.
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UN Report Finds Israel Has Met Threshold for Genocide
"Israel's genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure."
Mar 25, 2024
The United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday published a draft report that found "reasonable grounds to believe" that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a move that came on the same day as the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in the ongoing war.
The advance unedited version of the report—entitled Anatomy of a Genocide—concludes that Israel's far-right government and military "have intentionally distorted jus in bello principles, subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people."
"The overwhelming nature and scale of Israel's assault on Gaza and the destructive conditions of life it has inflicted reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group," the draft report states, enumerating Israeli actions that violate Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: "Killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to group members; and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."
"Israel has de facto treated an entire protected group and its life-sustaining infrastructure as 'terrorist' or 'terrorist-supporting,' thus transforming everything and everyone into either a target or collateral damage, hence killable or destroyable," the paper continues. "In this way, no Palestinian in Gaza is safe by definition. This has had devastating, intentional effects, costing the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians, destroying the fabric of life in Gaza, and causing irreparable harm to its entire population."
Israel
rejected the report as "an obscene inversion of reality."
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"Israel's genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a long-standing settler-colonial process of erasure," the draft report asserts. "For over seven decades this process has suffocated the Palestinian people as a group—demographically, culturally, economically, and politically—seeking to displace it and expropriate and control its land and resources."
Referring to the flight and ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the foundation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, the paper contends that "the ongoing Nakba must be stopped and remedied once and for all. This is an imperative owed to the victims of this highly preventable tragedy, and to future generations in that land."
"The ongoing Nakba must be stopped and remedied once and for all."
The draft report urges U.N. member states to "enforce the prohibition of genocide in accordance with their... obligations" under international law. In January, the U.N.'s International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Israel was "plausibly" perpetrating genocide in Gaza and ordered the country's government to "take all measures within its power" to prevent genocidal acts. Human rights defenders say Israel has ignored the order.
"Israel and those states that have been complicit in what can be reasonably concluded to constitute genocide must be held accountable and deliver reparations commensurate with the destruction, death, and harm inflicted on the Palestinian people," the publication argues.
The draft report recommends measures including:
- Immediate implementation of an arms embargo on Israel, as it appears to have failed to comply with the binding measures ordered by the ICJ;
- Immediate referral of the situation in Palestine to the International Criminal Court in support of its ongoing investigation;
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- Ensuring that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is properly funded to enable it to meet the increased needs of Palestinians in Gaza.
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While welcoming a "modest uptick" in corporate prosecutions by the U.S. Department of Justice last year, the watchdog Public Citizen on Monday called for the "bold ramp-up Biden DOJ leadership promised early in the administration."
Federal prosecutions of corporations over the past 25 years peaked in 2000, at 304, according to the organization's analysis of various datasets. After the turn of the century, figures trended down, with a low of 90 in 2021, the year that President Joe Biden was sworn in. Since then, the numbers have started to climb again—hitting 99 in 2022 and 113 in 2023.
However, the impact isn't felt equally across the corporate world. Last year, "about 76% of the corporations DOJ prosecuted had only 50 employees or less, while only about 12% had 1,000 employees or more," the report states. "This is the continuation of a long-standing trend—about 70% of the 4,946 corporations the federal government prosecuted between 1992 and 2021 were small businesses with fewer than 50 employees. Only about 6% employed 1,000 or more."
"Prosecutions remain far too few, and the ongoing overuse of leniency deals for big corporations that break the law continues to undermine deterrence."
Still, "the increase in corporate prosecutions is a welcome shift from the previous decline, and the new policy of rewarding corporate crime whistleblowers could go further toward restoring enforcement," said Rick Claypool, a Public Citizen research director who authored the report, in a statement Monday.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced the "DOJ-run whistleblower rewards program," through which an individual who helps the department discover "significant corporate or financial misconduct" could receive some of the forfeiture, in a speech to the American Bar Association's 39th National Institute on White Collar Crime earlier this month.
Although Claypool applauded the progress, he also emphasized that "prosecutions remain far too few, and the ongoing overuse of leniency deals for big corporations that break the law continues to undermine deterrence."
The report explains that "prosecutors use DOJ leniency agreements—deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) and nonprosecution agreements (NPAs)—to avoid filing criminal charges against corporate defendants. Originally developed to offer nonviolent first-time individual offenders a second chance, such agreements now help the most powerful businesses in the world dodge the legal consequences of their criminal misconduct."
Previous Public Citizen research shows that "about 15% of the agreements historically involve repeat offenders, casting doubt on their deterrent effect," the report notes. "Most corporate repeat offenders that receive leniency agreements from the Department of Justice are large multinationals. Of the 14 corporations that received leniency deals in 2023, the majority (10, or 71%) had at least 5,000 employees or more."
Of those who took deals last year, the watchdog highlighted "generic pharmaceutical companies Teva and Glenmark, multinational tobacco corporation British American Tobacco, the Illinois subsidiary of telecommunications corporation AT&T, and the Swiss multinational technology firm ABB."
While calling out the DOJ for creating "the appearance that some businesses are 'too big to jail'" with its leniency agreements, Public Citizen also lauded Monaco's recent remarks about "delivering consequences for corporate recidivists."
"A history of misconduct matters," she said during the early March address. "After all, penalties exist, in part, to deter future misconduct. They're not the cost of doing business. So when a company breaks the law again—and it's clear the message wasn't received—we need to ratchet up the sanctions."
As the report details:
The first example Monaco provides of the Justice Department holding corporate repeat offenders accountable is Ericsson. Ericsson breached its 2019 leniency agreement with the DOJ to resolve allegations of criminal violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in Djibouti, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Kuwait. Following the breach—failing to meet cooperation and disclosure requirements—the DOJ subsequently prosecuted the corporation for its misconduct.
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In a February letter to DOJ leaders including Monaco and Attorney General Merrick Garland, Weissman wrote that "if the DOJ finds that Boeing again violated the law, Boeing should be prosecuted both for its original and its subsequent misconduct."
As Common Dreamsreported earlier Monday, Boeing announced that its commercial airplanes division leader will leave immediately, the chairman of the board will resign after the annual meeting in May, and the CEO will step down at the end of this year.
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Embroiled once again in an alarming quality control and safety scandal, the aircraft manufacturing giant Boeing on Monday announced a management shake-up that will see CEO Dave Calhoun step down at the end of the year, the head of the company's commercial airplanes division resign immediately, and the chairman of the board depart after Boeing's annual meeting in May.
Calhoun, who said he decided on his own to resign, took charge at Boeing in the midst of the company's previous high-profile crisis—the grounding of the 737 MAX jet following a pair of crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed more than 340 people.
Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in response to the news of Calhoun's coming departure that "if Boeing had been held criminally accountable after the... 737 MAX disasters, the more recent quality debacles quite likely could have been averted."
Earlier this year, a door plug of a Boeing 737 MAX 9 flew off the aircraft as it ascended, causing minor injuries and forcing the pilots to conduct an emergency landing. More than MAX 9s were subsequently grounded to undergo inspections.
The incident prompted federal regulators, airlines, and journalists to—once again—closely scrutinize Boeing's manufacturing process, cost-cutting efforts, lobbying against safety regulations, and executive and shareholder payouts.
The Leverreported days after the January 5 incident that "less than a month before a catastrophic aircraft failure prompted the grounding of more than 150 of Boeing's commercial aircraft, documents were filed in federal court alleging that former employees at the company's subcontractor repeatedly warned corporate officials about safety problems and were told to falsify records."
The outlet also found that "operators of Boeing's troubled 737 MAX planes have filed more than 1,800 service difficulty reports—more than one per day—warning government regulators about safety problems with the aircraft since the fleet was allowed to resume flying after two fatal crashes."
Alaska Airlines, the operator of the January 5 flight, said in late January that it found loose bolts on "many" of Boeing's 737 MAX 9s.
"The FAA identified noncompliance issues in Boeing's manufacturing process control, parts handling and storage, and product control."
In an update published on March 4, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said its six-week audit of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems—a major Boeing contractor—uncovered "multiple instances where the companies allegedly failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements."
"The FAA identified noncompliance issues in Boeing's manufacturing process control, parts handling and storage, and product control," the agency said. "To hold Boeing accountable for its production quality issues, the FAA has halted production expansion of the Boeing 737 MAX, is exploring the use of a third party to conduct independent reviews of quality systems, and will continue its increased onsite presence at Boeing's facility in Renton, Washington, and Spirit AeroSystems' facility in Wichita, Kansas."
Earlier this month, days after the FAA update was published, a Boeing whistleblower who raised concerns about the company's quality control practices was found dead of what local officials said appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Weissman of Public Citizen said Monday that "of course CEO Dave Calhoun should be dismissed" over the company's latest safety crisis.
"But for real and lasting change to occur," he argued, "Boeing must now be held criminally accountable both for the recent safety failures and the... crashes that took 346 lives."
In 2021, Boeing entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to avoid a criminal charge over an alleged conspiracy to defraud the FAA in the wake of the 2018 and 2019 crashes.
Public Citizen noted in a report published Monday that "such agreements now help the most powerful businesses in the world dodge the legal consequences of their criminal misconduct."
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