Washington Extra – ‘Wild ride’ ends
The sharpest debater in the 2012 field of Republican presidential candidates exited the race touting a hodgepodge of initiatives that made his failed race so colorful.
“Suspending the campaign does not mean suspending citizenship,” Newt Gingrich warned in his long-awaited announcement that he was quitting. He then ticked off the vision of America he will continue to pursue as a private citizen:
His fabled U.S. colony on the Moon, holograms in houses, cures for diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, not to mention a national energy policy/balanced budget that would free the United States from “radical Islam, Saudi kings and Chinese bondholders.”
The bombastic former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives brought an element of unpredictability to the Republican presidential nominating contest. His come-from-behind victory in South Carolina in January briefly led some to wonder whether Mitt Romney really could be knocked off.
Not so. As primary defeats began to pile up, Gingrich’s campaign became less about his big ideas and more about the St. Louis zoo penguin who had the nerve to peck at the hand of this notorious animal lover.
“It was a truly wild ride,” a tired-looking Gingrich said as he bowed out, refusing to answer reporters’ questions.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Attorney General Holder says he plans to stick around for a while
Eric Holder, President Barack Obama’s attorney general, has been castigated by liberals and conservatives for his decisions about prosecuting terrorism suspects in criminal courts, defending a law that effectively bans gay marriages and then dropping it, and efforts to go after fraud in the financial markets that have resulted in few senior corporate executives going to jail.
Despite all of that, he still professes a love for the job at the Justice Department and made it clear to reporters on Tuesday that he has no intention of going anywhere, at the very least until his wife says otherwise.
“I’m happy. I’m content. My wife says that I’ve got some more time and as long as she’s in the same place, I’ll be around,” Holder said during his first pen and pad briefing with reporters in over a year. “I like this job. This is my last swing through this great department and a lot of ways is a bittersweet experience.”
“I started here back in 1976 with little experience and lot more hair, actually a lot more hair, the styles were fundamentally different — and don’t anybody come up with a picture, that would really be unfair,” he said.
We dug up this photo (right) from the Reuters archives from 1997 when he was deputy attorney general. But we’ll leave it to others to find one from the 1970s when he served as an attorney in the public corruption section.
Holder acknowledged that not every day as attorney general has been great, which was obvious earlier this month when he finally caved in to demands that the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, be prosecuted by a military commission instead of in a criminal court.
That decision was a reversal of one of his defining moments, announcing with great fanfare in 2009 that Mohammed and his four alleged co-conspirators would be prosecuted in federal court just blocks from where the World Trade Center twin towers once stood.
Shake-up strikes House Republican legal team for gay marriage ban
After a week of questions and criticism, the legal team hired by Republicans in the House of Representatives to defend a law banning gay marriage suffered a shake-up of sorts on Monday when the law firm dropped the case and the lawyer who was going to lead the effort resigned from the firm.
Just a week ago Paul Clement, U.S. solicitor general during the Bush administration, and his firm King & Spalding signed up to work for Republicans trying to overturn a court ruling that found the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that defined marriage as between a man and a woman unconstitutional.
After criticism mounted from gay rights advocates, King & Spalding Chairman Robert Hays said the firm was dropping the case because of “vetting” issues.
“In reviewing this assignment further, I determined that the process used for vetting this engagement was inadequate,” Hays said in a statement. “Ultimately I am responsible for any mistakes that occurred and apologize for the challenges this may have created.”
Clement quickly fired off his resignation letter to the firm, saying that if vetting was the problem, they should fix that rather than nix the client.
“I resign out of the firmly-held belief that a representation should not be abandoned because the client’s legal position is extremely unpopular in certain quarters,” Clement said in the letter. “Defending unpopular positions is what lawyers do.”
Clement immediately joined Bancroft PLLC as partner, a firm that was founded by Viet Dinh, the former assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush and who was one of the main architects of the Patriot Act. He also agreed to continue representing the House Republicans.
Former Bush lawyer hired to defend gay marriage ban
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has hired Paul Clement, the former solicitor general during George W. Bush’s presidency, to pick up the ball and defend the law that defined marriage as between a man and woman.
The Obama administration decided in February to drop its defense of the 15-year-old law, which was hailed by gay rights advocates but widely panned by many senior Republicans infuriated that the Justice Department would no longer defend the law in court and called it a political move.
In one case in Boston, a federal judge struck down the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act banning gay marriages as unconstitutional.
But the Obama administration had initially appealed those rulings, saying it typically defends lawyers on the books. Now the Justice Department says it agreed with the judge’s ruling.
House Republican Speaker John Boehner has sought funds from the Justice Department’s budget to pay for the defense, but Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has demanded details about the expected cost, including details about the contract retaining Clement.
Clement is now a private practicing attorney at the firm King & Spalding in Washington after working as the solicitor general from June 2005 to June 2008 in which he served as the government’s primary lawyer to argue cases at the Supreme Court. A spokesman for the firm said Clement had been hired, but declined further comment.
The hot-button issue of same-sex marriage has been the focus of many judicial and political battles across the country. Gay marriage has only been legalized in the District of Columbia and a handful of the 50 states including Connecticut, Massachusetts, Iowa, New Hampshire and Vermont.
Whether you believe in freedom of marriage or the sanctity of old marriage values, you might agree that the battle for the legalization of same sex marriage has some political motivations behind it.
20th Abramoff scandal conviction, over World Series trip
One of the last remaining cases from the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal that rocked the U.S. capital resulted in another conviction, this one over an all-expenses paid trip to New York City for the first game of the 2003 World Series.
The Justice Department said it brought to 20 the number of lobbyists, lawmakers, congressional aides or federal government officials convicted as part of the influence-peddling scandal that helped Republicans lose control of Congress in 2006.
A jury convicted Fraser Verrusio, a former U.S. House of Representatives staff member, for conspiring and accepting an illegal gratuity and making false statements by failing to report his receipt of gifts from a lobbyist and the lobbyist’s client on his 2003 financial disclosure statement.
According to evidence and testimony at trial, Verrusio and another staff member accepted the trip to attend the baseball game from a lobbyist for an equipment rental company interested in adding amendments into the Federal Highway Bill.
Evidence showed one of the lobbyists who helped arrange for the trip worked with Abramoff and that the equipment rental company was a client at Abramoff’s lobbying firm.
At sentencing scheduled in May, Verrusio faces a maximum sentence of up to 12 years in prison.
Photo Credit: REUTERS/Carlos Barria (Ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff leaves the courthouse in Miami in this Aug. 18, 2005 file photo)
Feds unlikely to launch campaign finance probe anytime soon
For weeks, leading Democrats have castigated pro-Republican special interest groups involved in the current election campaign for what they describe as secretive fundraising practices.
In an effort to call further attention to the activities of groups like American Crossroads GPS, a political fundraising committee which GOP guru Karl Rove helped to set up, some prominent Democrats and non-partisan election watchdogs have written law enforcement agencies demanding official investigations.
But there is little indication that any relevant agency is going to launch an in-depth probe anytime soon.
In early October, the liberal activist group MoveOn.org sent a letter to the Justice Department demanding that it investigate allegations that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had received election-related funds from unspecified foreign sources — something the Chamber emphatically denies. A similar request for an investigation was sent by Senator Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat, to the Federal Election Commission.
Around the same time, two political finance watchdog groups, the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21, sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service requesting an investigation into whether Crossroads GPS is violating its status as a tax-exempt organization by spending too much of its time and resources on electioneering.
Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, also sent a letter to the IRS requesting that it conduct a broad “survey” of such tax exempt groups to see if they are following the rules or merit further inquiry.
Groups targeted by pro-Democrat and liberal activists for such complaints, including the Chamber of Commerce and Crossroads GPS, insist they are operating entirely within the law and vigorously deny any wrongdoing.
GASP! Russia spying on the United States
There’s gambling in Vegas (sharp intake of breath)… Tea grows in China (eyes widen)… Russia spies on the United States (hand over heart stagger backward).
SHOCKING, SHOCKING, SHOCKING! (Get out the hanky and smelling salts).
Well, hold on a minute… it’s not exactly Robert Hanssen is it? The former FBI agent was charged with selling U.S. secrets to the former Soviet Union and then Russia and is now serving a life prison sentence in what was seen as a huge intelligence disaster – Russia penetrated the FBI.
In this spy story, a multi-year U.S. investigation into the “illegals” program nabbed 10 “alleged secret agents” in the United States and charged them with conspiring to act as unlawful agents of Russia. A charge that carries a 5-year prison sentence.
Covert Russian agents assumed false identities living in the United States on long-term, deep-cover assignments, to gather information on the United States and recruit sources to infiltrate U.S. policy-making circles. There was a drop site under a bridge, a newspaper hiding $5000, and code words like “Excuse me, but haven’t we met in California last summer?”
The information the FBI says the Russians were seeking – U.S. policy on Internet use by terrorists, U.S. policies on Central Asia, U.S. position on Iran’s nuclear program. Doesn’t sound like heavy lifting. The suspects were also accused of gathering information on high-penetration nuclear warhead research programs and background on CIA job applicants.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, said U.S. police were “out of control.”
Well it should certainly come as no surprise to anyone.
It should never be forgotten that Russia has always regarded us as an enemy and does everything they can to make our objectives more costly, including directly providing material aid, advice, and intel to our enemies in the current Middle East conflicts. This particular (rather amateurish) attempt at espionage may be laughable, but it’s only part of a much larger, ongoing effort that has some very unfunny consequences for us.
The Liberals always used to mock us conservatives for our “paranoia” in seeing Russian spies everywhere. Whenever a case like this comes to light, all they can manage to do is mumble some inane, vacuous sophistry like “everybody spies on everybody”.
Whatever current mask their government has on, with their lip sevice to democratic ideals and their phoney ‘elections’, Russia remains the same imperialist aggressor they have always been- and their anti-US policy remains unchanged.
Same old Russia.
A long slog gives way to a ‘good week’ for U.S. Justice Department
After months of trying times, U.S. Justice Department officials are walking with a little spring in their step, describing it as a “good week” after the terrorism suspect accused of trying to detonate a car bomb in the heart of New York’s busy Times Square was nabbed only two days after the failed attack.
The department has been under fire since last fall over issues ranging from Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to prosecute the accused plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks in the heart of Manhattan to closing the military prison at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
And when a Nigerian man was able to sneak a bomb hidden in his underwear aboard a U.S. commercial jet, the dull roar of anger became white hot rage by both Republicans and President Barack Obama’s fellow Democrats about how the administration handled the situation.
A presidential investigation was undertaken, intelligence agencies admitted they missed some clear warnings about a pending attack and who might try to carry it out, and scores of congressional hearings were called to delve into how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab got on the plane and the response.
Republicans slammed the White House and Justice Department when details about Abdulmutallab’s interrogation leaked out — that it lasted about 50 minutes before he was wheeled into surgery and then later read his Miranda rights entitling him to remain silent and to a lawyer. He later began cooperating with authorities again.
Republicans and some Democrats argued that foreigners should not be afforded full U.S. constitutional rights and should also be tried in special military commissions if facing terrorism-related charges. They also argued that intelligence was lost because he was given Miranda rights and stopped talking. Further, they used it to also seize on the plan to prosecute the 9/11 suspects in New York and tried to block funding to bring them to the heart of New York City — for trial.
That all left the White House scrambling to decide where to prosecute the Sept. 11 cases. They have apparently backed off the idea of going through traditional criminal courts and may move the trials to the special military commissions, though a final decision has not been made.
Nobel award to Obama required lengthy U.S. Constitution check
When President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize last October it caught most by surprise and sent his lawyers scurrying to quietly make sure that the president could receive the prestigious award without running afoul with the U.S. Constitution or federal law.
A provision in the Constitution, known as the Emoluments Clause, bars the receipt of any present, emolument, office or title of any kind from a “King, Prince or foreign State”. When the Nobel prize was established more than a century ago, Alfred Nobel’s will specified that the recipient of the peace award was to be chosen by a committee of five people elected by the Norwegian parliament known as the Storting.
However, Justice Department lawyers told the White House in a 13-page legal memorandum — sent to the White House counsel last December and released late Thursday — that the U.S. Constitution and federal law did not bar Obama from receiving the prize.
The memo went through various legal arguments, such as whether congressional approval was needed — no was the answer — and the level of involvement by the Norwegian government in the selection process. The lawyers determined that the Storting had “no meaningful role” in selecting the prize recipients or funding the $1.4 million award.
Plus, the Justice Department lawyers added to their reasoning past precedent — noting that two previous sitting presidents (Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson) had won the Peace Prize as well as a sitting vice president, Secretary of State, and a U.S. Senator.
It applied similar reasoning to determine that Obama could accept the award under a federal law that limited circumstances under which he could receive certain gifts and decorations.
Always good to check.
4 years later, ex-House aide faces sentencing in Abramoff scandal
More than four years after agreeing to plead guilty in the Abramoff political lobbying scandal that rocked Washington, D.C., the press secretary for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will learn late this summer how much time in prison he will face.
Michael Scanlon, who left DeLay to work with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, pleaded guilty in November 2005 to one count of conspiracy in defrauding Indian tribes of millions of dollars and lavishing gifts upon a member of the U.S. Congress.
He could be required to pay as much as $19.7 million in restitution to the tribes, a $250,000 fine and could face up to five years in prison.
Scanlon’s sentencing has been repeatedly put off while he cooperated with investigators and prosecutors as they probed the wide-ranging activities of Abramoff and others. Abramoff was sentenced in 2008 to four years in prison for the corruption scandal and was already serving six years in prison for unrelated charges.
In court papers filed on Tuesday, the Justice Department and Scanlon asked the court to set his sentencing date for August 2010 after the Supreme Court is expected to rule on challenges to the so-called honest services laws that underpinned the case against him.
“Mr. Scanlon believes that how the Supreme Court decides the honest-services fraud cases might impact calculation of both the loss amount to be determined under the sentencing guidelines and the restitution amount to be ordered by this court,” a joint filing with the court said. The Justice Department will file in the coming months its sentencing recommendation.
