Crime
September 16, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
President Trump may be disillusioned with Jeff Sessions, but the Attorney General is doing an outstanding job. Perhaps his most significant accomplishment is returning the DOJ to the rule of law by reinstituting guidelines that require prosecutors to charge the most serious offenses and ask for the lengthiest prison sentences. One indication of the significance of this accomplishment is the howling from Team Leniency, including two former Obama-appointed prosecutors —
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September 12, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
We haven’t written yet about the Equifax data breach. It is one of the worst, if not the worst, security breach of our personal information in history, the personal information of most U.S. adults having been obtained by cyber criminals. However, I had nothing of note to say about it. Stuff happens, I thought, and very bad stuff can happen in our digital age. My view changed when I read
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August 25, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
President Trump today issued a pardon to the man he calls “Sheriff Joe” — Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. Arpaio was convicted of failing to follow a court order to end the practice of detaining people based on the suspicion that they lack legal status and turning them over to the border patrol. The White House provided this explanation of the pardon: Arpaio’s life and career,
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August 22, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Andrew McCarthy’s most recent NRO column on the case of the Awans is “The very strange indictment of Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s IT scammers.” Paul wrote about it last night here. The sagacious Mr. McCarthy concludes with the observation: “There is something very strange going on here.” If you haven’t done so yet, please read Andy’s column. A little birdie draws attention to the attorney representing Imran Awan. The attorney’s name
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August 21, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
We have been writing about the Awan scandal. It involves former House IT staffers with ties to Pakistan who are accused of stealing equipment from members’ offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network. It also involves alleged bank fraud on the part of Imran Awan and his wife. It may also involve the transmission of sensitive intelligence information to foreigners. Finally, it
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August 7, 2017 — Scott Johnson
The new (Summer) issue of the Claremont Review of Books is in the mail. Thanks to our friends at the Claremont Institute, I have read the new issue in galley to select three pieces to be submitted for the consideration of Power Line readers. As always, wanting to do right by the magazine and by our readers, I had a hard time choosing. You, however, can do your own choosing
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August 6, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post reports, with mixed emotion, that the governor of Missouri has dispatched some members of the Missouri Highway Patrol to St. Louis in response to a surge in shootings and assaults in that city. (St. Louis is on pace for its most homicides in more than two decades). Similarly, last month, after 25 people were shot in a nightclub not far from the governor’s mansion in Little Rock,
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August 6, 2017 — John Hinderaker
This morning on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about the administration’s determination to stop leaks, including criminal leaks that damage national security. The key question here is whether DOJ is willing to go after reporters who publish classified information in violation of the Espionage Act. As Scott has written, there is no obstacle under current law to prosecuting reporters and editors. But Rosenstein seemed
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July 29, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Sara Carter reports that the FBI’s top lawyer, James A. Baker, is said to be under investigation for leaking classified material that disclosed a top-secret U.S. surveillance program built by Yahoo Inc. The leaked information formed the basis for a story in Reuters. The Reuters story described how the the software program developed by Yahoo for the U.S. government allowed the intelligence community to search Yahoo emails containing specific characters
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July 5, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Alexander Bonds, an ex-con with a long rap sheet, shot and killed New York City police officer Miosotis Familia, a mother of three, as she sat in a patrol car in the Bronx. The attack was unprovoked. It was an assassination. According to the New York Times: Around 12:30 a.m., as Officer Familia neared the end of her shift, Mr. Bonds walked up to the vehicle and fired a single
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June 14, 2017 — John Hinderaker
James T. Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois has been identified as the man who shot Majority Whip Steve Scalise and others this morning. Hodgkinson is described by a friend: “He was this union tradesman, pretty stocky, and we stayed up talking politics,” he said. “He was more on the really progressive side of things.” As has been widely reported, Hodgkinson is a rabid Bernie Sanders supporter. He considers Hillary Clinton to
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June 14, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was wounded in a shooting spree targeting Republican House members who were practicing for a congressional baseball game. According to reports, he was shot in the hip. Though the injury is serious, President Trump has tweeted that Scalise is expected to recover fully. Sen. Jeff Flake, who was with Scalise in the hospital, reported that his colleague was awake and coherent throughout. However, it is
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June 14, 2017 — Scott Johnson
A man with a rifle went on a shooting spree targeting Republicans practicing in Alexandria for the upcoming Congressional Baseball Game. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was wounded in the attack. He is at last report in surgery. Members of Rep. Scalise’s security detail were apparently also shot, as well as others including a staffer. Both Politico and CNN have reports with quotes from congressmen on the scene. Below is
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June 10, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
“James Comey is a ‘leaker’ — but that doesn’t make him a criminal.” That’s the headline of a Washington Post story by Matt Zapotosky. The Post’s story tries to create the impression that, in fact, Comey is not a criminal. But Zapatosky undertakes no analysis of the law. Instead, he cites “legal analysts.” However, none of the analysts in question addresses the question of whether Comey committed a crime. The
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June 6, 2017 — Steven Hayward
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has published a study based on the content analysis of body cam footage from Oakland police that shows racial disparities in the “respect” and “formality” police officers show to citizens they interact with. Hoo boy—you can guess right away where this is heading. Here’s the abstract of the study, “Language from police body camera footage shows racial disparities in officer respect”:
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May 23, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
According to Trey Yingst of One America News Network, Team Trump has identified three sources of the leaks flowing so liberally from the White House. He also reports that “multiple people” will be fired when President Trump returns from his trip abroad. Why haven’t the leakers already been fired? Yingst says it’s because their names are “being run by the Office of Government Ethics.” (What that means, and for what
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May 13, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is committed to reversing the lax law enforcement policies of his predecessors, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch. Yesterday, he took a significant step in that direction with an order to federal prosecutors regarding the way criminal defendants are to be charged. Sessions instructed: [I]t is a core principle that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense. This policy affirms our responsibility to
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