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Trump DOJ Adopts Policy Permitting Journalist Arrests

April 28, 2025 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. , , , , ,
United States Attorney General Pam Bondi ended a Justice Department (DOJ) policy that explicitly discouraged federal prosecutors from forcing journalists to reveal their sources and other sensitive information, including information obtained from potential leaks. With new guidelines, members of the news media who refuse to cooperate with prosecutors could be arrested for contempt. If accused of contempt, they could be fined or jailed. The move by Bondi comes as Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has “referred” three alleged “intelligence leakers” to the DOJ for criminal prosecution.

Trump Department Of Justice To Seek Death Penalty For Luigi Mangione

April 2, 2025 Eloise Goldsmith, Scheer Post. , , ,
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Tuesday that she is directing federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in the case of Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December. Federal prosecutors in New York City filed murder charges against Mangione in mid-December after Mangione was arrested in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, five days after Thompson was gunned down in front of a hotel in midtown Manhattan on December 4. UnitedHealthcare is the largest health insurer in the country, though the company has said Mangione was never insured by them.

Top Prosecutor Resigns After Ordered To Investigate Biden Climate Funding

February 20, 2025 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , ,
Denise Cheung, the top criminal prosecutor with the United States Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC, resigned on Tuesday after she declined to follow an order from a Trump-appointed superior at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to start a grand jury investigation, people with knowledge of the matter said, as CNN reported. Acting U.S. Attorney General Emil Bove initially gave the instruction to Ed Martin — a Donald Trump nominee for U.S. Attorney in DC. — for Cheung to direct an investigation of a Biden EPA funding decision, then freeze the funding.

Biden’s Record And What That Means For The Next Administration

December 30, 2024 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , , , , ,
As the Biden presidency comes to a close, Clearing the FOG speaks with author and journalist Kevin Gosztola about his current series on Biden's legacy. Gosztola reports in The Dissenter on Biden's failure to fulfill his campaign promises when it comes to government transparency, accountability and press freedom, as well as how these have eroded through successive presidencies this century. Gosztola describes how it has become more difficult to access information about what the government is doing and the abuse of the state secrets privilege to hide crimes being committed by entities such as the CIA. He also discusses what we can expect from the incoming Trump administration.

Report: Assange In Plea Deal Talks

March 21, 2024 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. , , ,
Lawyers for Julian Assange and officials of the U.S. Justice Department are engaged in talks for a possible plea deal that could see Assange walk out of Belmarsh Prison in London as a free man, according to a report Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper said the DOJ was considering whether to allow Assange to “plead guilty to a reduced charge of mishandling classified information,” which is a misdemeanor. He is currently charged with felonies for allegedly violating the U.S. Espionage Act and for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, charges that carry as much as 175 years in prison.

US Government Treats Use Of Privacy Tools As Criminal Activity

February 2, 2024 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. , , , , ,
In Espionage Act prosecutions involving leaks, attorneys at the United States (DOJ) consistently treat the use of privacy tools as evidence of criminality. This tendency should alarm journalists and news media organizations that rely on such tools for newsgathering. A jury convicted former CIA programmer Joshua Schulte of disclosing CIA cyber warfare materials to WikiLeaks in July 2022. Schulte is scheduled to be sentenced in the U.S. Southern District Court of New York on February 1. The U.S. government’s sentencing memo [PDF] asserted that “between April 18 and May 5, 2016, Schulte took a number of steps to transmit the stolen CIA files to WikiLeaks.

Australian Parliamentarians Speak Outside DOJ After Assange Talks

September 21, 2023 Consortium News. , , , , ,
Six members of the Australian parliament landed in Washington D.C. on Tuesday armed with a bi-partisan agenda and the backing of an entire nation as they try to convince Congressmen and State and Justice Department officials that the American pursuit of Australian publisher Julian Assange is wrong and must be stopped. The cross-party delegation is spending two days in the U.S. capital arguing Assange’s case ahead of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s state visit to the White House at the end of October, where it is expected that Assange will be brought up (as well as Australia being used to test U.S. hypersonic missiles).

Randy Credico Leads Blockade Of DOJ Entrance For Julian Assange

August 17, 2023 Ford Fischer, News2Share. , , , ,
Randy Credico attempted a civil disobedience rally/blockade Wednesday of the Department of Justice in Washington DC along along with Kathy Boylan of Dorothy Day Catholic Worker demanding a meeting to request the release of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Kathy Boylan, protesting in front of the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building in DC, was wearing a Kennedy 2024 shirt. She tells News2Share that "when he is elected, Robert Kennedy Jr has promised to free Julian Assange, truth-tellers, and whistleblowers." Ultimately, Credico allowed people past his blockade, and police didn't arrest him, instead waiting it out.

Biden Is Preparing To Crush A Historic Climate Change Lawsuit

August 16, 2023 Julia Rock, The Lever. , , ,
Any day now, a federal district court is expected to deliver a ruling that would allow a historic climate change lawsuit to proceed to trial. If and when the case moves forward, however, it faces a major obstacle: President Joe Biden’s Justice Department. The lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, was brought by 21 young plaintiffs in 2015 and seeks to establish a federal, constitutional right to a livable planet. If the case is successful, any federal policies that enable more fossil fuel development could be challenged as unconstitutional. But the Obama and Trump administrations both vehemently fought the lawsuit, and now those close to the case say that Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has indicated it will also use every procedural tool at its disposal to prevent the lawsuit from ever getting a trial.

Caroline Kennedy Says United States Is Open To Assange Plea Deal

August 14, 2023 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. , , , ,
The U.S. ambassador to Australia believes a plea bargain could free imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, allowing him to serve a shortened sentence for a lesser crime in his home country. Caroline Kennedy told The Sydney Morning Herald in a front-page interview published Monday that the decision on a plea deal was up to the U.S. Justice Department. “So it’s not really a diplomatic issue, but I think that there absolutely could be a resolution,” she told the newspaper. Kennedy noted the firm comments by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on July 31 in Brisbane.

Whatever Happened To That Plane?

May 18, 2023 Teri Mattson, WtF is Going on in Latin America and the Caribbean. , , ,
On May 3, 2023, the Argentinian press reported a US prosecutor requested the US Justice Department to order the definitive execution of the seizure order of Emtrasur's Boeing 747-300. The plane arrived in Argentina in June 2022 in what was supposedly a routine cargo flight. Nonetheless, the airplane, its cargo and its crew raised the alarms across Argentina, and it was seized by local authorities. Shortly after, US authorities got involved claiming the sale of the aircraft by the Iranian state carrier Mahan Air to Venezuela's Conviasa was a clear violation of the US Export Control Laws. Almost a year has passed; the crew has been released, but the plane remains grounded in Buenos Aires.

The DOJ Is Using ‘Foreign Agents’ Accusations To Repress Black Liberation Organizers

April 28, 2023 Collin P. Poirot, The Real News Network. , , , ,
On July 29, 2022, Omali Yeshitela and his wife, Ona Zene, awoke at 5 o’clock in the morning to the sound of flash grenades and drones, as heavily armed FBI agents stormed into their home searching for evidence of organizational ties to the Russian government. Yeshitela is the 80-year-old chair of the African People’s Socialist Party, a Pan-Africanist political party founded in 1972 and headquartered in Florida. His wife is the deputy chair. Last week, nine months after the raid, the Department of Justice unsealed new grand jury indictments against Yeshitela, as well as Jesse Nevel, Penny Hess, and Gazi Kodzo—national chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, chair of the African People’s Solidarity Committee, and cofounder of the Black Hammer Party, respectively—naming them as co-conspirators in an alleged plot to promote the political interests of Russia within the United States.

Two Barrels Aim At African People’s Socialist Party

December 30, 2022 Don Fitz, Popular Resistance. , , ,
With new FBI and Department of “Justice” (DOJ) attacks expected in early January, a defense, mobilization and information session attracted hundreds of allies of the African People's Socialist Party (APSP).  On Friday, December 23 they zoomed into the “Emergency Mass Meeting: Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa!”  The APSP told its supporters that it expects indictments in early January 2023 and possibly sooner.  Indictments could include many more than the four names listed as “unindicted co-conspirators” during raids of July 29, 2022: Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Party Director of Agitation and Propaganda Akilé Anai, African People’s Solidarity Committee Chair Penny Hess and Uhuru Solidarity Movement Chair Jesse Nevel. 

Justice Department Investigates NYPD’s Special Victims Division

July 4, 2022 Meg O'Connor, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
The U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday that it has opened an investigation into the New York City Police Department’s sex crimes unit. “Over the last several months, we have learned concerning information from a variety of sources of historical issues about the way the Special Victims Division has conducted its investigations for many years,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York in a Justice Department statement announcing the probe. The investigation will assess whether the Special Victims Division (SVD) engages in a “pattern or practice of gender-biased policing.”

A Guide To The US Government’s Appeal In The Assange Extradition Case

October 26, 2021 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. , , ,
London - On October 27, the High Court of Justice in the United Kingdom will hear the Crown Prosecution Service argue on behalf of the United States government that a lower court improperly blocked the U.S. from extraditing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The proceedings in London are expected to last two days and will involve five grounds for appeal that were previously approved by the High Court of Justice. (Two were reinstated by the court after a hearing on August 11.) District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled on January 4 that Assange’s mental health was such that it would be “oppressive to extradite him” to the U.S. But two days later, she accepted the U.S. government’s objections and ordered him to remain in jail while her decision was appealed.
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