Trump’s plan to turn the Justice Department into his personal vendetta machine Is it time to revive Senator Sam Ervin’s proposal for insulating the Department from politics? ROBERT REICH JUN 19 Friends, Last week, Trump said that if reelected, he’d appoint a “real special prosecutor” to “go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.” In other words, if Trump is reelected, you can kiss nonpartisan criminal justice goodbye. His remark made me think back almost a half century ago, to when I was a rookie lawyer in the Justice Department. The department was in shambles, discredited by Nixon’s and Attorney General John Mitchell’s political abuse and corruption. To restore trust in the Justice Department, President Gerald Ford appointed Edward Levi to be attorney general. In naming Levi, who had been president of the University of Chicago and the former dean of its law school, Ford found someone whose reputation for integrity was impeccable. As Levi said at his swearing in, “Nothing can more weaken the quality of life or more imperil the realization of the goals we all hold dear than our failure to make clear by words and deed that our law is not an instrument of partisan purpose.” Levi set out to insulate the Justice Department from politics, instituting rules limiting White House involvement in law enforcement decisions. The Senate Watergate Committee chairman, Senator Sam Ervin, didn’t think Levi’s rules went far enough to protect the department from an unscrupulous future president. Ervin wanted to make the Justice Department an independent agency with an attorney general appointed by the president every six years and removable only for neglect. At the time, I thought Ervin’s proposal too extreme. I assumed America had learned its lesson from Watergate and would never again elect a president as repugnant as Nixon, willing to sacrifice the institutions of government to his own political ambition. Yet there was some precedent for Ervin’s view. The attorney general was originally viewed as having an independent, semi-judicial role — analogous to that of judges. Congress established the office of the attorney general in the Judiciary Act of 1789 — the same act that created the federal court system, as distinct from acts establishing executive departments. In the original draft, attorneys general would be appointed by the Supreme Court, not the president. Congress changed this so that attorneys general would be appointed exactly like federal judges. When George Washington appointed the nation’s first attorney general in 1789, Thomas Jefferson referred to him as “the Attorney General for the Supreme Court.” Early attorneys general shared offices with the court. Their budgets were line items under the federal judiciary, not the executive. Originally, the attorney general was not even in line to succeed to the presidency. Even after the attorney general became a key part of the executive branch and the Department of Justice was established in 1870, presidents continued to respect the need for prosecutorial independence. Until Richard Nixon and his scurrilous Attorney General John Mitchell. But surely, I said to myself at the time, Nixon and Mitchell were the extremes. Edward Levi’s reforms were adequate. Then came the worst offender of all. During his presidency, Donald Trump viewed the Justice Department as an extension of his own will — even claiming, “I have an absolute right to do what I want to with the Justice Department.” Trump interfered in the department’s prosecutions of Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating possible collusion between Russia and Trump associates, and demanded that the department reopen a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton. John Dean, former White House counsel to Nixon, described Trump’s efforts to use the Justice Department for personal gain as “Nixon on stilts and steroids.” Now, Trump threatens that if reelected he’ll turn the Justice Department into his own personal vendetta machine. If there weren’t already enough reason to fear a second Trump presidency, this would be it. Public trust in our governing institutions has already sunk to a new low — due in large part to Trump’s first term, his subsequent Big Lie that the 2020 election was “stolen,” and now his second Big Lie that Biden is orchestrating a “witch hunt” against him. Even if Biden is reelected, it will be necessary to deal with the damage Trump and his Republican enablers have wrought. Perhaps Sam Ervin’s proposal for an independent Justice Department should be given more serious consideration. What do you think?

CC Newsletter 21 Feb - Hindus for Human Rights to lobby US Congress and Gov against Hindutva hate campaign against Muslims

Dear Friend,

In a forceful and passionate interview, where both her anger and anguish are clearly visible, the Executive Director of Hindus for Human Rights, a US-based civil society organisation, says that her organization will “certainly intensify and escalate” efforts to lobby the US Congress and Biden Administration to speak out against Hindutva and India’s treatment of minorities and muslims in particular

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Editor

Countercurrents.org

Hindus for Human Rights to lobby US Congress and Government against Hindutva hate campaign against Muslims

Press Release

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/hindus-for-human-rights-to-lobby-us-government-against-hindutva-hate-campaign-against-muslims/

In a forceful and passionate interview, where both her anger and anguish are clearly visible, the Executive Director of Hindus for Human Rights, a US-based civil society organisation, says that her organization will “certainly intensify and escalate” efforts to lobby the US Congress and Biden Administration to speak out against Hindutva and India’s treatment of minorities and muslims in particular

Paralysing Afghanistan: Washington’s Regime Change Agenda

by Dr Binoy Kampmark

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/paralysing-afghanistan-washingtons-regime-change-agenda/

Nothing is more counter-intuitive than the effort to isolate, cripple and strangulate the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.  For all the talk about terrorism and concerns about failing regimes, the Biden Administration is doing every bit to make this regime fail and encourage the

outcome it decries. Along the way, a humanitarian catastrophe is in the making.

Esoteric neutrinos and People’s concerns: The Indian Neutrino Observatory

by S G Vombatkere

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/esoteric-neutrinos-and-peoples-concerns-the-indian-neutrino-observatory/

Tamil Nadu has reportedly made clear to the Supreme Court that it does not want the Indian Neutrino Observatory (INO) to be set up in a sensitive ecological zone in the Western Ghats at great cost to wildlife, biodiversity, and by ignoring the local opposition and public agitations to the project.

Public Trust as a Non-negotiable Duty of the Indian State

by Akanksha

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/public-trust-as-a-non-negotiable-duty-of-the-indian-state/

Proposed electoral reforms not only evokes a procedural and constitutional debate, but has deeper implications for India’s engagement on the idea of public trust

Assault on the idea of education

by Sandeep Pandey

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/assault-on-the-idea-of-education/

Now when the schools and colleges have reopened, girls are not only being prevented from entering campuses but are being suspended and a lecturer had to resign not on the ground of any academic laxity but for putting on hijab. When non-academic issues dominate the academic ones on campuses then we know that education no longer remains a process of enlightenment.

Disturbing increase in child labour during Covid

by Madhav Sharma

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/disturbing-increase-in-child-labour-during-covid/

There has been a steep increase in child labour in the country during the Covid pandemic period that shows severe economic distress among large sections of the population.

UNHRC is duty bound to find justice to the oppressed Tamils in Sri Lanka

by Kumarathasan Rasingam

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/unhrc-is-duty-bound-to-find-justice-to-the-oppressed-tamils-in-sri-lanka/

The United

Nations, UN Human Rights Council and the International Community will now understand Sri Lanka’s policy of non-compliance of any recommendations of the UN or UNHRC.

Peoples Welfare Democracy Conference at Barnala

by Harsh Thakor

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/peoples-welfare-democracy-conference-at-barnala/

“Confide in struggles not in elections” called the Peoples Welfare Rally. of the Bharatiya Kisan Union Ekta(Ugrahan).On February 17th farmers, farm-labourers, women, youth, industrial labourers, contractual labourers and toiling people flooded Barnala grain market. Scene resembled a festival of the masses. Revolutionary democratic spirit was elevated to a height rarely transcended or scaled in Punjab or even India, with an attendance of around 70000 people.

How the Indian community has been crushed by Governments and Markets

by Sonit Surana

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/how-the-indian-community-has-been-crushed-by-governments-and-markets/

It seems

people in power are annihilating us on all fronts of life, from economic to political. This dystopia in which we are suffocating can never be forgotten; the images from walking workers to dying patients gasping for breath should always remind us that democracy cannot be taken for granted

Where is India Headed? And where lies the Inspiration for Change?

by Atul Sood

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/where-is-india-headed-and-where-lies-the-inspiration-for-change/

Book Review: Where is India Headed? An Historical Critique by  Dr Vinod Mubayi