The Indian Panorama

Tag: Merrick Garland

  • Attorney General Merrick Garland says Justice Department ‘will not bend’ to political pressure

    Attorney General Merrick Garland says Justice Department ‘will not bend’ to political pressure

    WASHINGTON, D.C. (TIP): Attorney General Merrick Garland slammed efforts to turn the Justice Department into a “political weapon” during a fiery speech Thursday to department staff and US attorneys from across the country amid attacks from former President Donald Trump and his allies, CNN says. Garland decried the “escalation of attacks” against its career staff in years through “conspiracy theories, dangerous falsehoods, efforts to bully and intimidate career public servants by repeatedly and publicly singling them out, and threats of actual violence.” “It is dangerous to target and intimidate individual employees of this Department simply for doing their jobs,” he said from the DOJ headquarters in Washington. “And it is outrageous that you have to face these unfounded attacks because you are doing what is right and upholding the rule of law.”

    Detroit election workers work on counting absentee ballots at the TCF Center in Detroit, Michigan, on November 4. The attorney general’s comments come as Trump has claimed that the Justice Department has been weaponized against him amid his criminal prosecutions and suggested that he would politicize the department should he return to the Oval Office.

    Neither Trump nor his allies were mentioned by name.

    “There is not one rule for friends and another for foes, one rule for the powerful and another for the powerless, one rule for the rich and another for the poor, one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, or different rules depending on one’s race or ethnicity,” the attorney general said.

    “Our norms are a promise that we will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as an apparatus of politics,” Garland added to applause.

    Trump and his associates have publicly discussed plans to dismantle the department and its law enforcement components like the FBI, or to prosecute his political enemies.

    Trump has repeatedly attacked the Justice Department under Biden, claiming without evidence that the president has used the department to criminally pursue him and his allies for political purposes. During Tuesday’s presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump pushed those claims again, falsely claiming that Biden and his administration were behind the state-level election subversion case brought against him by local prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, and the criminal fraud case brought against him in New York.

    “They weaponized the Justice Department. Every one of those cases was involved with the DOJ, from Atlanta and Fani Willis to the attorney general of New York and the DA in New York. Every one of those cases,” Trump claimed. “And then they say, ‘Oh, he’s a criminal.’ They’re the ones that made them go after me.”

    During his speech, Garland noted he was tapped to lead the Justice Department in 2021 and had a goal to “fiercely protect the independence of this department from political interference in our criminal investigations.”

    The department took steps to achieve that goal, Garland said, including reinstituting policies that regulate contacts that department personnel have with the White House and Congress, clarifying guidelines for sensitive FBI investigations and updating protections that reporters have from law enforcement investigations. Garland also thanked the prosecutors and Justice Department staff for refusing to “bend to politics” and “break under pressure.”

    “You deserve better,” he said.

  • U.S. issues moratorium on death penalty at federal level

    U.S. issues moratorium on death penalty at federal level

    WASHINGTON (TIP): The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has issued a moratorium on federal executions while it reviews policies and procedures, the Department said in a statement. U.S. President Joe Biden had said on his campaign website that he would legislate the end of capital punishment at the federal level and incentivize states to follow suit.

    “The Department of Justice must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States but is also treated fairly and humanely. That obligation has special force in capital cases.” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement released on Thursday, July 1.

    Apart from the moral case against the death penalty, the data show that in its application, it is biased against racial minorities especially African Americans.

    Under Donald Trump, the federal government carried out 13 executions. This is the highest number of executions under any presidency since the 19th Century, Reuters reported.

    The review ordered by Mr Garland will include an assessment of the “risk of pain and suffering” caused by pentobarbital – a lethal injection drug. The Trump administration’s DoJ, under Attorney General Bill Barr, had adopted a single drug, instead of a three drug protocol. The review will also look into a November 2020 expansion of federal execution methods beyond lethal injection and policy changes from last December and January to expedite executions.

    (Agencies)

  • Today We Are All Asian

    By Wallace Ford

     Yesterday (March 16), another member of the Tribe of Armed and Angry White Men decided that it would be a good thing to kill as many Asians as he could find in massage spas in and around Atlanta. He managed to kill eight people, six of whom were Asian. The other two just happened to discover that their Sell By date was yesterday. In other words, the other two were just collateral damage in the continued hate war being waged by the Tribe of Armed and Angry White Men. And in that war, anyone and everyone stands the risk of being collateral damage. In that sense, we are all Asian. Just as we are all Black. We are all Latino. We are all Muslims. We are all Indigenous people. We are all LGBTQI members. We are all Jews. Because in hating and targeting all of the above, the Tribe of Armed and Angry White Men doesn’t care who gets in the way. And they certainly don’t care who dies. Yesterday it was six Asian women who committed the capital crime of Being Asian and Working. About a year ago it was Armaud Arberry who committed the capital crime of Jogging While Black in an Atlanta suburb. In August 2019 it was 23 Latinos in El Paso who committed the capital crime of Being Latino in A Public Place. And in 2017 it was Heather Heyer who committed the capital crime of Demonstrating for Justice with Black People in Charlottesville. And in 2018 it was 11 Jews worshiping in a synagogue who committed the capital crime of Being Jews.

    Of course, the behavior which cost these men and women their lives are only capital crimes in the twisted universe of white supremacist domestic terrorists. These men (and women) have been letting us know who they are for years and the response of the public and law enforcement has been tepid at best. All of the referenced atrocities are considered isolated events and not part of the obvious pattern of white extremist violence which is committed to maintaining white minority rule in this nation, no matter the human or institutional cost.

    We saw the savage combination of white supremacy and white privilege on January 6, 2020 when a mob that would have warmed the heart of the Ku Klux Klan in days gone past, stormed the capital – ostensibly to keep 45 as president – but…there were Confederate flags and Nazi paraphernalia present — clear signs that white supremacy was coursing through the veins of these so-called “good people”.

    History shows quite clearly how this country responds when it perceives a domestic threat. Look at what happened to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Paul Robeson among thousands of others accused of being part of some Russian conspiracy to overthrow the government.

    Look at what happened to the Black Panther Party when its members asserted the constitutional right of Black people to exercise their Second Amendment rights (the irony is apparent). And look what happened to Martin Luther King, Jr. when the Federal Bureau of Investigation considered him to be “the greatest domestic threat” in the country.

    A Black man preaching nonviolence in the quest for justice is a domestic threat. A tribe of white supremacist domestic terrorists are considered to be either misunderstood or misguided, but certainly not a national threat.

    Attorney General Merrick Garland has stated that he considers domestic terrorism to be a national threat. But he needs to be more specific – it is white supremacist domestic terrorism that is a true national threat. And unless and until this nation confronts this danger from within, every American citizen is in danger of being in the cross hairs of this renegade tribe.

     

    And that is why today we are all Asian.