GOP Attacks on DOJ Are About Ensuring the Rule of Republicans, Not Rule of Law

For months now, Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG) has been denouncing what she sees as the weaponization of the Department of Justice because of its prosecutions of leaders of the January 6 insurrection and the multiple indictments of Donald Trump. She has labeled Special Counsel Jack Smith’s letter to Trump “absolute bullshit,” and described Smith as a “weak little bitch for the Democrats” — a crude insult similar to that which she recently hurled at her fellow far right provocateur, Lauren Boebert, whom Greene labeled a “nasty little bitch.”

Justice Department Opens Criminal Investigation of Uber

A week after Portland city officials announced plans to subpoena Uber, the Justice Department has reportedly opened a criminal probe against the company after it was revealed that the ride-sharing app utilized deceptive software to avoid authorities in Uber-restricted cities, according to the Washington Post.

The report states that the DOJ will attempt to determine the illegality of the app's actions and whether criminal charges are warranted.

The Seven Most Vitriolic Passages in DOJ’s Response to Apple

In case there was ever any doubt, the Justice Department declared war on Apple on Thursday.

Prosecutors demanded that a federal judge force Apple to unlock San Bernardino killer Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone in a brief that bristled with so much venom that Apple’s top lawyer, Bruce Sewell, said it “reads like an indictment.”

DOJ Sends Request For Exxon Probe To The FBI

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Justice has asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to evaluate whether ExxonMobil violated federal laws by publicly denying climate change for years.

Reps. Ted Lieu and Mark DeSaulnier, both Democrats from California, asked the DOJ to investigate Exxon last fall, after reporting from Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times indicated that Exxon's experts knew about the dangers of burning fossil fuels, and still publicly worked to undermine climate science. In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch in October, the congressmen asked the department to look into whether Exxon violated federal laws such as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, Act by "organizing a sustained deception campaign disputing climate science and failing to disclose truthful information to investors and the public."

Judge Denies DOJ's 'Deeply Troubling' Request To Close Gitmo Force-Feeding Hearing

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Thursday denied the federal government's request to seal the courtroom for a hearing on the force-feeding of a detainee on hunger strike at the U.S. military detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled Thursday that the public should be allowed to witness arguments in the case, specifically pointing out that Justice Department attorneys waited "less than two weeks prior to the start of the long-scheduled hearing" to make their request.

DOJ Won't Penalize Banks In Swaps Investigation: WSJ

Dec 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department is not planning any penalties on a civil probe relating to allegations that large banks tried preventing competition in the credit default swaps market, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The Justice Department pored over trading data, messages, emails and documents about credit default swaps (CDS) as part of the probe for the past four years, which is drawing to a close, the people told the paper.

DOJ Spent Millions On Drones Despite 'Uncoordinated' Policy

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Department of Justice spent millions of dollars purchasing small unarmed drones for domestic use over the last decade, but the department lacks a comprehensive policy for the unmanned aircraft -- despite growing concern about their use.

In a report released Thursday, the DOJ's inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, said the department's agencies had an "uncoordinated approach" to their use of drones.

DOJ to Texas: Voter Suppression Will Not Stand

In one week last August, federal courts found that Texas’ voter ID law and redistricting maps were discriminatory and violated the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court’s recent decision invalidating Section 4 of the VRA, which previously covered Texas, tragically wiped away those rulings. Now the Department of Justice is once again stepping in to fight for voting rights in the Lone Star State.

The DOJ announced today that it is objecting to Texas’ voter ID law under Section 2 of the VRA and will also seek to join a similar lawsuit against the state’s redistricting maps. Last month, DOJ asked a court in Texas to force the state to approve its voting changes with the federal government for a period of time under another provision of the VRA, Section 3, based on a finding of intentional discrimination in the restricting case. The federal courts found last year that Texas’ new maps for Congress and the state house were “enacted with discriminatory purpose.”

The Justice Department’s “War” on Wall Street: Still No Criminal Charges

It took them a while, but the Feds are finally going after some of the country’s biggest banks for alleged wrongdoing during the great housing and credit bubble. In the past few days, the Department of Justice has sued Bank of America for willfully understating the risks attached to hundreds of millions of mortgage-backed securities it sold in 2007, and J. P. Morgan Chase has revealed that two different U.S. attorneys’ offices, one in California and one in Philadelphia, are investigating whether it broke securities laws and duped investors with some of the mortgage deals it put together.

JPMorgan: We're Being Investigated By DOJ Over Mortgages

JPMorgan Chase said Wednesday it's under federal criminal investigation over its sale of mortgage securities, potentially making the biggest U.S. bank by assets the first large financial institution to face criminal sanctions over securitization practices that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis.

White House: Prosecution Not Always The Best Way To Address Leaks

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama, who has overseen a record number of leak prosecutions during his time in office, has directed his team to look into alternative ways to crack down on leaks without bringing criminal charges, a White House spokesman told The Huffington Post Friday.

After the Justice Department issued a new report on Friday laying out guidelines for investigating leaks to the media, White House spokesman Matt Lehrich said the administration believes that pursuing a criminal investigation and prosecution is “not always the most efficient and effective way to address leaks of classified information. He suggested withdrawing security clearances and imposing other administrative sanctions could suffice in certain cases.

Voting Rights Act Ruling Forces Justice Department Reassignments

WASHINGTON -- In striking down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act last week, members of the Supreme Court didn’t just neuter a major component of landmark civil rights law. The justices also eliminated the workload of several dozen federal employees.

Until the Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County v. Holder on June 25, a few dozen of the 100 or so employees of the Voting Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division had been assigned to review the 14,000 to 20,000 voting changes submitted each year by jurisdictions that needed DOJ permission before implementing new rules or, say, changing the location of a polling place.

Justice Department Fights Release of Secret Court Opinion Finding Unconstitutional Surveillance

In the midst of revelations that the government has conducted extensive top-secret surveillance operations to collect domestic phone records and internet communications, the Justice Department was due to file a court motion Friday in its effort to keep secret an 86-page court opinion that determined that the government had violated the spirit of federal surveillance laws and engaged in unconstitutional spying.

This Week in Poverty: Homeowners Take the Foreclosure Fight to the DOJ

Gisele Mata of Whittier, California, never considered herself a political activist. Other than making some calls on behalf of President Obama during the 2012 campaign, her focus was on her work, family, church and volunteering as a Girl Scout troop leader.

But on Monday morning at Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, she was ready to march to the Department of Justice, where she would risk arrest in order to save her family’s home and stand up for other people facing foreclosure.

DOJ Seized Fox News, White House Phone Records

WASHINGTON –- The Justice Department seized phone records for numbers associated with Fox News and the White House as part of a leak investigation, according to an October 2011 court filing.

The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza first reported Tuesday that U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald C. Machen, Jr. seized records for more than 30 phone numbers in the case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a former State Department contractor accused of providing classified information to Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen for a June 2009 article about North Korea's nuclear program.

AP Scandal: Plurality Disapprove Of DOJ's Actions, Poll Finds

The Justice Department's secret investigation of the Associated Press horrified the journalism world and received intensive news coverage. Yet, according to a new study, Americans aren't very interested, though most of them disapprove of the Justice Department's actions.

DOJ Targeting Of Fox News Reporter James Rosen Risks Criminalizing Journalism

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration’s Justice Department has moved beyond investigating and prosecuting leaks at an unprecedented level to claiming in court documents that committing a standard act of journalism may itself be criminal.

In 2010, FBI agent Reginald Reyes described a reporter, recently identified as Fox News' chief Washington correspondent James Rosen, as possibly being an “aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator” in the leaking of classified information. Reyes made that argument in his request for a warrant for Rosen’s personal email account as part of a leak investigation.

Associated Press CEO Gary Pruitt: DOJ's Seizure Of Phone Records Was 'Unconstitutional'

WASHINGTON — The president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press on Sunday called the government's secret seizure of two months of reporters' phone records "unconstitutional" and said the news cooperative had not ruled out legal action against the Justice Department.

Gary Pruitt, in his first television interviews since it was revealed the Justice Department subpoenaed phone records of AP reporters and editors, said the move already has had a chilling effect on journalism. Pruitt said the seizure has made sources less willing to talk to AP journalists and, in the long term, could limit Americans' information from all news outlets.

What's at Stake When the Department of Justice Seizes AP Phone Records

This week, it was revealed that the Department of Justice secretly seized two months' worth of private phone records from Associated Press reporters and editors. As this decision comes under increasing scrutiny, press freedom advocates say it's just part of a larger battle for control of information – one that they've been trying to sound an alarm on for a long time.

"I've been saying for years that this is a backdoor way to go after journalists," says Jesselyn Radack, a former DOJ employee and whistleblower who is now director of national security and human rights at the Government Accountability Project.

Jay Carney On DOJ's AP Records Scandal: 'Wholly Inappropriate' To Comment

Jay Carney endured an unrelenting grilling on Tuesday about what media watchdogs have called unprecedented actions by the Department of Justice to secretly obtain months of Associated Press phone records.

Journalists have been outraged since the AP revealed that it had been subjected to the secret probe, which saw the DOJ look at the records for at least 20 of its phone lines and at least six of its individual journalists over a period of at least two months. Carney was asked right away about the White House's view of the situation.