Free Republic

Operation “Choke Point” is not new. It began as an outgrowth of the President’s Financial Fraud Task Force in 2009. Choke Point never acquired congressional authority to begin operations though it was started by the DOJ, FDIC, and the newly formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in 2009. It is called “Choke Point” because its main purpose is to choke off lending to industries which are out of favor with the Obama Administration. In essence, if businesses can’t process payments, they can’t survive. Choke Point operations were first begun against payday lenders in New York by the NY Financial Services...

Operation “Choke Point” is not new. It began as an outgrowth of the President’s Financial Fraud Task Force in 2009. Choke Point never acquired congressional authority to begin operations though it was started by the DOJ, FDIC, and the newly formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in 2009. It is called “Choke Point” because its main purpose is to choke off lending to industries which are out of favor with the Obama Administration. In essence, if businesses can’t process payments, they can’t survive. Choke Point operations were first begun against payday lenders in New York by the NY Financial Services...

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) has launched an investigation into alleged quid pro quo hiring and misuse of federal asset forfeiture funds at the US Marshals Service. In a letter sent to the U.S. Marshals Service Thursday, Grassley requested records in response to whistleblower allegations that senior officials in the service’s Asset Forfeiture Division (AFD) engaged in improper hiring practices.

This phrase became a rallying cry for Ferguson residents, who took to the streets to protest the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old by a white police officer, Darren Wilson. Witness accounts spread after the shooting that Brown had his hands raised in surrender, mouthing the words “Don’t shoot” as his last words before being shot execution-style. The gesture of raised hands became a symbol of outrage over mistreatment of unarmed black youth by police. That narrative was called into question when a St. Louis County grand jury could not confirm those testimonies. And a recently released Department of Justice...

The Senate had two things to do this week — pass a bill cracking down on sex slavery, and vote on the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be attorney general — and it did neither of them. So barring an eleventh-hour weekend compromise, Lynch, who would become the first black woman to serve as attorney general, will wait until at least mid-April before a confirmation vote is held, extending an unusually long wait that Democrats have tried to turn to their political advantage by portraying the delay as tied to Lynch’s race and gender.

Former Attorney General John Aschcroft said that President Obama appeals to ethnic politics while ignoring the law.“The president believes that the democracy speaks to him not through Congress but through opinion polls” and advisers, Ashcroft said Friday in a speech before a group of Republican lawyers at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.Ashcroft weighed in on the controversies surrounding Obama’s immigration executive order and the racial powder keg in Ferguson, Missouri. The Bush Department of Justice chief spoke about the police officers shot in his home state and the two officers tragically executed in New York City since the beginning...

President Obama is accusing Congress of playing politics with law enforcement and national security by holding hostage attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch in exchange for leverage on legislation. Mr. Obama blasted Republicans for preventing the female federal prosecutor from New York from succeeding Attorney General Eric Holder during his weekly address to the country to Sunday. But lawmakers have delayed the nomination of Ms. Lynch by more than 130 days over concerns surrounding Mr. Obama’s executive action on immigration, which would provide temporary legal status to millions of illegal immigrants and reprieve from deportation. Now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,...

President Barack Obama called on congressional Republicans to confirm Loretta Lynch as attorney general, saying that the GOP was holding her nomination “hostage” for political reasons. In an interview with the Huffington Post on Friday, Mr. Obama said that Ms. Lynch’s confirmation vote shouldn’t fall victim to congressional horse-trading. “You don’t hold attorney general nominees hostage for other issues,” Mr. Obama said. Ms. Lynch’s confirmation has been delayed by a fight over a human trafficking bill in Congress. Democrats object to the bill’s abortion provisions, while Republicans say Democrats are playing politics with victims of sex trafficking.

The Justice Department is defending former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from a motion to subpoena her private emails under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). “Such action is unnecessary and inappropriate under FOIA,” DOJ officials wrote in a legal briefing filed Thursday. Officials were responding to a case launched by Larry Klayman, the founder of the conservative watchdog group Freedom Watch. Klayman is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., to subpoena Clinton’s computer server where she housed the private email address she used while serving in the State Department. Clinton has turned over 55,000 pages of...

UPDATE: ATF has officially confirmed Jones' departure without stating a specific reason for his resignation.  B. Todd Jones to depart @ATFHQ. http://t.co/ZMoplVltRK— ATF HQ (@ATFHQ) March 20, 2015 “ATF employees are hard-working, dedicated individuals who serve the public to make our nation safer every day,” said Jones. “I have seen firsthand their extraordinary commitment to combatting violent crime, ridding the streets of criminals, and leveraging all available resources to keep our communities safe," Jones said in a statement. “I will truly miss leading and working side-by-side with these men and women in their pursuit of ATF’s unique law enforcement and regulatory...

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin has a lot of nerve to accuse Republicans of racism for delaying President Obama’s nominee for Attorney General considering he’s the only sitting senator who actually opposed a candidate specifically because of race. In fact, the veteran lawmaker referred to the judicial nominee as “especially dangerous” for, among other things, being “Latino.” Additionally, Durbin has voted against several Republican presidential nominees who also happened to be ethnic minorities—Janice Rogers Brown, an African-American on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the first African-American female Secretary of...

Don’t Confirm Loretta Lynch by RICH LOWRY March 20, 2015 An unanswerable question hangs over the nomination of Loretta Lynch for attorney general: Is Republican opposition to her more racist or sexist? As an African-American woman, Lynch represents a gloriously double-barreled opportunity to accuse Republicans of sub-rosa hatreds. The political benefit of what feminists call intersectionality — membership in two or more historically oppressed groups — is not having to choose which accusation of bias to make. Illinois Senator Dick Durbin went to the Senate floor to effectively accuse Republicans of racism in the nomination fight, even though Hillary Clinton...

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — The U.S. Government lied to a federal judge, misrepresented facts and illegally gave 100,081 illegal aliens immigration status despite a pending lawsuit and an injunction. That is the argument that attorneys representing Texas and more than two dozen other states made. During the heated court hearing Andrew Hanen, a U.S. District Court Judge, said that the apparent violation had made him look like an idiot since he initially believed the U.S. Government. In a heated court hearing Angela Colmonero from the Texas Attorney General’s office stated that Texas had acted promptly in November 2014 upon learning of...

A federal whistleblower claims a division of the Department of Justice is using money from asset forfeitures to pay for custom wallpaper, artwork, crown moldings and chair rails in its offices. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has asked U.S. Marshals Service Director Stacia A. Hylton to answer claims about how the Asset Forfeiture Division spent forfeited money, including a report that more than $10,000 was used to purchase a single conference room table. "If so, what was the cost and why was a less expensive table not considered?"

A federal judge who has blocked President Barack Obama's immigration executive action suggested on Thursday that he could order sanctions against the Justice Department if he rules it mislead him about when exactly the administration began implementing one of the measures. During a sometimes testy court hearing, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen went back and forth with the Justice Department over whether it had mislead him into believing that a key part of Obama's program would not be implemented before he made a ruling on a request for a preliminary injunction. In fact, federal officials had given more than 108,000...

Democrats are up in arms over the GOP’s handling of Loretta Lynch’s nomination to be attorney general, arguing that Republicans are engaged in unconscionable delays over a history-making choice to head the Justice Department. Republicans are not breaking a sweat. “Zero,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said when asked how much pressure his party is feeling to confirm her to the Justice Department position. Why not? “Because there’s zero,” he reiterated. Lynch, who was nominated by President Barack Obama to replace Eric Holder at the Justice Department in November, has been stalled in recent days because of an unrelated...

Gun rights groups are making a vigorous push to stop the Senate from confirming Loretta Lynch as President Obama’s next attorney general. Advocates are organizing petitions, drawing up letters and hitting the phones to urge Senate Republicans to oppose Lynch in a floor vote that could take place as early as next week. The National Rifle Association (NRA) has sent an alert to its members warning that Obama’s nominee would put gun rights at risk. "As the nation's top law enforcement officer, Lynch would almost certainly have an impact on our Second Amendment rights,” the NRA’s lobbying arm said in...

Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia appointed by President Obama and set to step down next month, has not acted on a contempt of Congress charge for former IRS official Lois Lerner. Machen, who announced at the beginning of the week he'd step down April 1 to return to private practice, has not referred Lerner's case to a grand jury. Her contempt citation for not testifying at two hearings has been in Machen's hands since May 2014. During Machen's five-year tenure as a top prosecutor, the largest U.S. Attorney's Office was dominated by cases related to...

The prosecutor that U.S. Attorney for Oregon Amanda Marshall is accused of stalking was at the time under 24-hour-a-day armed protective guard because of a contract Mexican drug dealers placed on his life. That news adds a bizarre turn in a situation that appears to have cost Marshall, the top federal prosecutor in Oregon, her job.

The most recent news from Ferguson concerns what Eric Holder has rightly called the “ambush shooting” of two police officers outside the city’s police department. This incident occurred in the wake of two detailed reports released by the Department of Justice. The first report deals in depth with the shooting of Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. The report recommended that the case against him be closed. The second DOJ report contained a scathing indictment of the sad state of affairs within the entire criminal justice system of Ferguson. The combined effect of these two reports is likely...