Posted on 03/16/2022 6:36:47 PM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Wednesday ordered the Justice Department to provide former President Donald Trump's adviser Steve Bannon access to certain sensitive internal legal opinions or other related records that could potentially help bolster his defense against criminal contempt of Congress charges.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols told prosecutors they must produce "statements or writings reflecting official DOJ policy," including nonpublic opinions, that relate to "the department's policy on prosecuting or not prosecuting government or former government officials raising executive privilege claims or defenses of immunity.".....
As part of his reasoning, Costello cited a number of prior legal opinions published publicly by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which found that current and former executive branch officials were immune from congressional subpoenas.
During a roughly two-hour hearing on Wednesday, Nichols asked prosecutors skeptical questions about how they were able to rationalize charging Bannon with contempt, given the department had still never withdrawn its public OLC opinions.
"How are those consistent positions?," Nichols asked. "In other words, how can the department ... simultaneously say someone in that position has absolute immunity from showing up and can be prosecuted for failing to show up?"
Amanda Vaughan, one of the prosecutors in the case, said the department's prior OLC opinions are not relevant or analogous to the judge's example.
Although Nichols agreed to grant Bannon's team access to some internal DOJ records, he said he would deny its other requests to access sensitive materials such as testimony that the government provided to the grand jury.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
I’ll bet that they have been lost.
This could get INTERESTING.
They want the receipts.
Yes. Oops, a computer glitch resulted in their complete deletion. All backup copies were deleted by this same glitch. We are unable to locate any hard copies of the documents in question.
Heavily redacted, no doubt .
Files are in Warehouse 13, retrievable in 75 years.
This is getting very interesting...
“...he said he would deny its other requests to access sensitive materials such as testimony that the government provided to the grand jury...”
Sounds non-transparent...
Uh oh. DOJ leftists caught with their legal dicks hanging out.
This is gonna be good. OLC opinions and directives ARE policy until something major and/or legal changes them. Don’t think that just a change in Administration meets that criteria.
I’m sure they’ll get right on that.
Yes...and instead of following the judges order they will spike everything and the case will quietly be dropped. Thank God the corrupt government is incompetent! No one will be fired!
He worked for Trump………..
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