New Report Highlights Corruption at DOJ That Began With Obama

The Department of Justice (DOJ) logo is pictured on a wall in New York on Dec. 5, 2013. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

Commentary

The House Judiciary minority on Nov. 4 released a new report, FBI Whistleblowers: What Their Disclosures Indicate About the Politicization of the FBI And Justice Department (DOJ), “detailing a rampant culture of unaccountability, manipulation, and abuse at the highest level.” The Report details many of the issues that The Epoch Times has reported on over the years.

As the House Judiciary notes, “The thousand-page report builds on various whistleblower disclosures describing the FBI’s Washington hierarchy as ‘rotted at its core’ with a ’systemic culture of unaccountability.'”

The report “also highlights how the FBI has weaponized the federal government against its political opponents, illustrates how FBI leadership shows a political bias against conservatives, and enumerates instances where senior officials have pressured agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism to fit a political narrative.”

Some of the key findings highlighted in the report are as follows:

1. The FBI leadership abused its law-enforcement authority for political reasons.
2. The FBI artificially inflates and manipulates domestic violent extremism statistics for political purposes.
3. The FBI downplayed and reduced the spread of the serious allegations of wrongdoing leveled against Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.
4. The DOJ and FBI used counterterrorism resources to target parents resisting a far-left educational curriculum.
5. The FBI abused its foreign surveillance authorities.
6. The DOJ and FBI conducted an unprecedented raid on a former president’s home.
7. The FBI was stalking a Republican congressman on a family vacation to seize his personal cell phone.
8. The DOJ and the FBI continue to allow attacks on pro-life facilities and churches to go unabated, while pushing an anti-life agenda.
9. The FBI conducted an “intelligence” assessment of a conservative charity under the guise of investigating unrelated alleged crimes.
10. The FBI purged employees who refused to align themselves with the leadership’s political ideology.
11. The FBI helped Big Tech censor Americans’ political speech.

Under President Barack Obama, the DOJ was fundamentally pushed to the left by Attorney General Eric Holder and then by his successor, Loretta Lynch. Sally Yates rounded out the Obama-appointed DOJ leadership with her famously short stint as acting Attorney General before being fired by President Donald Trump.

In 2012, Holder became the first Attorney General to be held in Contempt of Congress on both civil and criminal grounds. The vote was 255–67 with 17 Democrats breaking rank to side with the contempt vote.

It was Holder who came up with the process for doling out settlements from the 2008 financial crisis to activist groups. Holder also presided over the unlawful investigation of certain members of the media. Under Holder’s command, the DOJ secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press.

The DOJ also monitored the personal email and phone of Fox News reporter James Rosen. And it was Holder who refused to prosecute anyone in the IRS targeting of 426 conservative groups during the Obama administration. Holder ultimately resigned but was not prosecuted by the DOJ.

There was the foot-dragging and sometimes outright refusals by the DOJ to release Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails in the face of not only Freedom of Information requests but actual court orders.

Then there was the 2016 meeting between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton aboard a private plane on a tarmac in Phoenix—just days before the FBI announced its decision on its investigation of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The head of the DOJ meets privately aboard a jet on the tarmac with the husband of the party being investigated (and the man who gave Lynch her start in federal politics) just days before the FBI releases its decision, and we are supposed to accept that they talked—for 30 minutes—about grandchildren?

Bill Clinton steadfastly refused to make any comment on the meeting. Lynch said she would accept whatever ruling the FBI made—in effect recusing herself. The media—for the most part—said she should not have had that meeting. Almost none called for her resignation. Then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi termed the Lynch-Clinton meeting a “social encounter” and a “serendipitous [meeting] to discuss their grandchildren.”

Holder’s influence on the DOJ can be traced back to The Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, created in 2012 by none other than Holder. The Working Group was created within the Justice Department in 2012 as a means of prosecution and punishment for those perceived to be responsible for the financial crisis of 2008. At its formation, Holder made the following statement:

“Over the past three years, we have been aggressively investigating the causes of the financial crisis. And we have learned that much of the conduct that led to the crisis was unethical, and, in many instances, extremely reckless. We also have learned that behavior that is unethical or reckless may not necessarily be criminal. When we find evidence of criminal wrongdoing, we bring criminal prosecutions. When we don’t, we endeavor to use other tools available to us.”

These “other tools” are usually civil sanctions and charges that generally result in large fines being paid by firms, often without a statement of true wrongdoing. With the full weight of the DOJ behind it, the Working Group reached multi-billion settlements with virtually every major bank in America. In total, $110 billion was collected in fines. So where did all this money go? According to a Wall Street Journal report, the money breaks down as follows:

• $49 billion went to the Department of Treasury—some directly, but most funneled to the Treasury through settlements with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Spending of proceeds has not been specified.
• $45 billion was for Consumer Relief—a vaguely defined category that includes borrowers and “housing-related community groups.” Breakdowns are not fully known.
• $10 billion went to “other recipients”—most appear to be federal in nature.
• $5.3 billion went to states to spend as they wanted.
• $450 million went to the Department of Justice. Spending of proceeds has not been specified.

The lack of transparency is disturbing.

According to a Congressional Committee Report—Stop Settlement Slush Funds Act of 2016: “A year-long Committee investigation has revealed that the DOJ is pushing and even requiring settling defendants to donate money to non-victim third-parties. Donations can earn up to double credit against defendants’ overall payment obligations, while credit for direct relief to consumers is merely dollar-for-dollar. What is more, documents show that groups that stood to gain from these mandatory donations lobbied the DOJ to include them in settlements. The DOJ has funneled third-party groups as much as $880 million dollars. These payments occurred entirely outside of the Congressional appropriations and grant oversight process. What’s worse, in some cases, DOJ-mandated donations restored funding that Congress specifically cut.”

On June 22, the FBI conducted yet another pre-dawn raid against a former Trump official—in this case, Jeffrey Clark, a former DOJ official. Clark’s supposed crime? Proposing the sending of a draft letter to lawmakers in Georgia suggesting the convening of a special session to hear evidence of potential voter fraud in that state before the results of the 2020 presidential election were certified in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. Not only was Clark’s proposal allowed under the Constitution—and seemingly reasonable in light of allegations coming out of Georgia—the proposed letter was never even sent.

According to reports, the raid was “part of the Biden DOJ’s probe into the ‘alternate electors’ slated in various states in the aftermath of the 2020 election .... The investigation is reportedly being run by US Attorneys out of Main Justice at the DOJ, and a grand jury has supposedly been empaneled.”

The real purpose behind the raid appears to have been to allow Clark to be targeted by the January 6 Committee as Democrats continue their quest to smear and intimidate any who dare question the many irregularities of the 2020 election. The DOJ not only is allowing these tactics to be employed, but is an active part of the ongoing effort.

In addition to Clark, FBI Agents “conducted court-authorized law enforcement activity” at the home of Brad Carver, a Georgia lawyer who allegedly signed a document claiming to be a Trump elector, and the Virginia home of Thomas Lane, who worked on the Trump campaign’s efforts in Arizona and New Mexico. David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, who served as a Trump elector in Georgia, also received a subpoena.

FBI agents also served search warrants for the GOP chairman in Nevada, Michael McDonald, and James DeGraffenreid, GOP party secretary for Nevada, for creating an “unofficial” slate of electors during that state’s recount process.

On the same day as the FBI raids, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an arbitrary and restrictive gun licensing law in New York. Justice Clarence Thomas summed up the court’s decision succinctly: “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.”

Biden’s DOJ, apparently not satisfied with the completion of targeted, pre-dawn raids on their political opponents, stunned constitutional legal scholars by issuing a formal statement disagreeing with the Supreme Court ruling. This unprecedented stance from the DOJ was a direct violation of our Constitution’s separation of powers—a shocking display from an institution whose supposed job is to uphold the Constitution—and any Supreme Court rulings.

Biden’s DOJ, now apparently intent on shredding our Constitution, doubled down on its attacks on our nation’s highest court just two days later, on June 24. In a long-awaited move, the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, pushing the decision on abortion back to the States, where it rightly belongs. Almost immediately, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued another formal statement saying that “The Justice Department strongly disagrees with the Court’s decision.”

The actions from the DOJ over recent years have demonstrated its willingness to be used as a powerful weapon—to be deployed against political opponents of the sitting administration—so much so that the DOJ now represents an actual threat to the rule of law and separation of powers.

All of our federal agencies have been corrupted—but none more so than the DOJ. And in some respects, it is the most dangerous of all. It has the ability—and the willingness—to target and prosecute whomever it is directed to do so.

To watch the full episode of Truth Over News watch on Thursday, Nov. 10.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.