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Watchdogs Vow Accountability for Trump Crimes Despite Presidential Win
Public Citizen said it would "mobilize Americans to resist Trump's agenda of cruelty and corruption."
Nov 06, 2024
Government watchdogs on Wednesday said they are "not going anywhere" and will continue pushing for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to face accountability for his 34 felony counts and other alleged crimes, even as the Republican and his allies threatened the special counsel who has been prosecuting him.
"Trump will still be sentenced for the 34 felony counts on which he has been convicted, and other pending legal proceedings must
also move forward,"
said Robert Weissman and Lisa Gilbert, co-presidents of consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, which spent Trump's first term exposing corruption and unethical profiteering in his administration.
The group pledged to "mobilize Americans to resist Trump's agenda of cruelty and corruption" as it was reported that Special Counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Trump's alleged mishandling of classified documents and his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, was in talks with the DOJ to wind down the federal prosecutions.
Under DOJ policy, a sitting president cannot face prosecution while in office.
Smith filed charges against Trump over the allegations, but the cases were thrown into uncertainty by the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in July that held presidents have legal immunity for "official acts" while in office.
In legal filings that were unsealed last month, Smith argued Trump should not be entitled to immunity from prosecution because he "resorted to crimes" when he attempted to overturn the 2020 election results.
Trump said in recent weeks that he would fire Smith "within two seconds" if he won the presidency.
His allies, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), have also demanded an end to what they call "lawfare" against Trump, with Scalise
saying Wednesday that the election results proved American voters want federal and state officials in to "immediately terminate the politically motivated prosecutions of President Donald Trump."
Graham wrote on the social media platform X on Wednesday, addressing Smith and his team, that "it is time to look forward to a new chapter in your legal careers as these politically motivated charges against President Trump hit a wall."
Trump was convicted of 34 state felony counts in New York for falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. He is currently scheduled to be sentenced on November 26, but his lawyers are likely to ask for an indefinite delay.
There's also state case in Georgia stemming from Trump's attempts to reverse his 2020 loss.
The work of ensuring Trump is "not about the law," said Weissman and Gilbert, "will continue in earnest [and] will be more important in 2025 than ever before."
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said Trump's victory "is making the urgency of accountability and checks on the presidency clearer than ever before."
"We're going to keep standing up against corruption and authoritarianism," said CREW, "as we have been for years."
Public Citizen was among more than 200 groups that announced a virtual event called "Making Meaning of the Moment," planned for November 7 at 8:00 pm. More than 20,000 people had registered as of Wednesday evening.
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Israel's Use of Human Shields in Gaza Sparks Calls for US Probe
"The State Department and the Department of Justice must investigate these credible charges of widespread and systematic human rights abuses," the head of one Muslim American advocacy group said.
Oct 21, 2024
The Israel Defense Forces' use of Palestinians—who are often handcuffed and forced to wear IDF uniforms—as human shields prompted the leading U.S. Muslim advocacy group on Monday to call on the Biden administration to investigate what experts say is a war crime by the No. 1 recipient of American military aid.
International law prohibits the use of combatants or civilians as human shields. However, numerous reports have emerged during Israel's yearlong assault on Gaza—which has left more than 152,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing and is the subject of an International Criminal Court genocide case led by South Africa—of IDF troops forcing captured Palestinians, including children, to protect Israeli forces in life-threatening situations.
"The State Department and the Department of Justice must investigate these credible charges of widespread and systematic human rights abuses by military forces that receive weapons paid for by American taxpayers and used against a civilian population," Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement.
"These abuses, and the obvious and open ethnic cleansing of Gaza, violate our nation's laws," Awad added. "The Biden administration's complicity with this genocide stains our national reputation and will haunt our diplomats for generations to come when they are told to 'remember Gaza' whenever they bring up the subject of human rights."
International media outlets including Al Jazeera, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Britain's The Guardian, and The New York Times have reported how Israel uses abducted Palestinian militants and civilians to proceed ahead of IDF troops in underground tunnels and buildings in order to protect their captors during life-threatening missions.
In May, a report published by Defense for Children International-Palestine revealed that Palestinian minors are forced to walk ahead of IDF soldiers during dangerous raids. Subsequent Al Jazeera reports of a Palestinian strapped to the hood of an Israeli combat vehicle to deter attack and Gazans being sent into buildings and tunnels to ensure the locations weren't rigged with explosives sparked international outrage and initial IDF denials.
"It's hard to recognize them. They're usually wearing Israeli army uniforms, many of them are in their 20s, and they're always with Israeli soldiers of various ranks," Haaretzreported in August. But upon closer examination, "you see that most of them are wearing sneakers, not army boots. And their hands are cuffed behind their backs and their faces are full of fear."
According to an Al Jazeeraarticle published Sunday:
By dressing Palestinian civilians in Israeli military uniforms and casting them as combatants the Israeli military purposefully conceals their vulnerability. It deploys them as shields not to deter Palestinian fighters from striking Israeli soldiers, but rather to draw their fire and thus reveal their location, allowing the Israeli troops to launch a counterattack and kill the fighters. The moment these human shields, masked as soldiers, are sent into the tunnels, they are transformed from vulnerable civilians into fodder.
One 35-year-old Palestinian man, who declined to be identified by his real name for fear of his life, told The Guardian that "the Israeli soldiers put a GPS tracker on my hand and told me: 'If you try to run away, we will shoot you. We will know where you are.'"
"I was asked to go to knock on the doors of four houses and two schools and ask people to leave—women and children first and then the men," he added. "At one of the schools, the situation was very dangerous. I shouted to everyone in the school to leave quietly, but at that moment there was heavy shooting by the Israeli army and I thought I was going to die."
Former IDF soldiers told The New York Times that IDF commanders instructed them that "the lives of terrorists were worth less than those of Israelis—even though officers often concluded their detainees did not belong to terrorist groups and later released them without charge."
Israel denies it uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, despite video evidence of IDF troops doing so in both Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank.
"The orders and directives of the IDF prohibit the use of Gazan civilians captured in the field for military missions that endanger them," the IDF said in August. "The protocols and orders have been clarified to the troops on the ground."
However, IDF troops have confirmed the practice.
"From what we understand it was a very widely used protocol, meaning there are hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza who have been used as human shields," former IDF sniper Nadav Weiman, who is now a director at Breaking the Silence, an Israeli veterans' group that exposes war crimes, toldThe Guardian.
"Palestinians are being grabbed from humanitarian corridors inside Gaza... and then they're being brought to different units inside Gaza—regular infantry units, not special forces," Weiman said. "And then those Palestinians are being used as human shields to sweep tunnels and also houses. In some cases, they have a GoPro camera on their chest or on their head and in almost all of the cases, they are cuffed before they are taken into a tunnel or house to sweep and they are dressed in IDF uniform."
The Biden administration provides Israel with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and shields its ally from international accountability by wielding its United Nations Security Council veto power to block cease-fire resolutions. Administration spokespeople have deflected questions about the IDF's use of human shields by deferring to Israeli investigations in which perpetrators are rarely punished.
In 2002, the Israeli High Court of Justice issued a temporary injunction prohibiting the use of human shields in operations to quash the Second Intifada, or general uprising. Some IDF soldiers ignored the injunction, according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.
In 2010, two staff sergeants in the Givati Brigade were convicted of forcing a 9-year-old Palestinian boy to open bags they thought might contain explosives during the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead invasion of Gaza. The staff sergeants were slapped on the wrists with suspended sentences and demotions. Neither went to prison.
Michael Schmitt, a professor of international humanitarian law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, toldThe New York Times last week that "in most cases," what Israel is accused of "constitutes a war crime."
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Federal Judge Blocks Alabama's Election Eve Voter Purge
"This ruling strengthens our democracy by safeguarding access to the ballot for all eligible voters including naturalized citizens who were unfairly targeted and removed from the rolls," said one case litigant.
Oct 16, 2024
Citing a U.S. law prohibiting states from removing people from their registered voter lists within 90 days of an election, a U.S. federal judge on Wednesday ordered Alabama officials to pause a controversial voter roll purge until after next month's contest.
U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco—an appointee of former President Donald Trump, the 2024 Republican nominee—wrote in her preliminary injunction that GOP Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen violated the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) by launching a campaign purportedly targeting "noncitizens registered to vote."
"Allen blew the [NVRA] deadline when he announced a purge program to begin 84 days before the 2024 general election," Manasco said, adding that the secretary of state "later admitted that his purge list included thousands of United States citizens (in addition to far fewer noncitizens, who are ineligible to vote), and in any event, referred everyone on the purge list to the Alabama attorney general for criminal investigation."
The Biden administration's Department of Justice, along with civil and voting rights groups, last month sued Allen and the state of Alabama over the policy's timing. Individual Alabama voters also filed suit claiming the purge targeted naturalized U.S. citizens.
Allen's program removed more than 3,000 people from Alabama's voter rolls and referred them for criminal prosecution. However, more than 2,000 targeted individuals have since been deemed eligible to vote. Manasco's ruling gave Alabama officials three days to restore the active status of all wrongfully purged voters.
Responding to the decision, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said that "this action sends a clear message that the Justice Department will work to ensure that the rights of eligible voters are protected."
"The National Voter Registration Act's 90-day 'quiet period provision' is an important safeguard to prevent erroneous eleventh-hour efforts that stand to disenfranchise eligible voters," Clarke added. "The Justice Department remains steadfast in our resolve to protect voters from unlawful removal from the registration rolls and to ensure that states comply with the mandate of federal law."
Litigants in the challenge to Allen's voter removal program also welcomed Wednesday's ruling.
"We are pleased with the court's swift action to protect Alabama voters from an unlawful purge and ensure they can fully participate in the upcoming elections," League of Women Voters of Alabama president Kathy Jones said in a statement following Manasco's decision. "This ruling strengthens our democracy by safeguarding access to the ballot for all eligible voters including naturalized citizens who were unfairly targeted and removed from the rolls."
Campaign Legal Center senior legal counsel Kate Huddleston said: "No U.S. citizen should be afraid to vote, and we are proud to have defended Alabamians ahead of the upcoming election. Today's court decision helps protect Alabama citizens' freedom to register and vote without concerns about government interference or intimidation."
Janette McCarthy Wallace, general counsel at the NAACP, noted that "for over 115 years, the NAACP has been fighting for the right to vote," and while "the suppression tactics may look different... the intent remains the same—silencing Black and other vulnerable voices."
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