JEFF SESSIONS IS OUT AS DOJ CHIEF; WHO IS MATTHEW WHITAKER?

JEFF SESSIONS IS OUT AS DOJ CHIEF; WHO IS MATTHEW WHITAKER?

TRUMP vs SESSIONS BATTLE FINALLY COMES TO AN END.


Post Sources: ABC News, Youtube


***** What we know about Matthew Whitaker, man who replaces Jeff Sessions


Matthew Whitaker, tapped by President Donald Trump as acting U.S. Attorney General, once made a key reception in a Rose Bowl football game, ran as a conservative Republican for the U.S. Senate in Iowa, and wrote an opinion piece arguing that special counsel Robert Mueller was "going too far" in his investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Whitaker, 49, was named the acting head of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) after Jeff Sessions resigned Wednesday after being asked to do so by Trump, according to a letter Sessions sent to the president.

Trump has long been angered by Sessions' decision to recuse himself in March 2017 from the Russia investigation headed by Mueller.

Whitaker had been Sessions' chief of staff.

"We are pleased to announce that Matthew G. Whitaker, Chief of Staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the Department of Justice, will become our new Acting Attorney General of the United States. He will serve our Country well....," Trump tweeted after accepting Sessions resignation.

Whitaker's appointment was met almost immediately with calls from the Democratic leadership for him to recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller probe.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi slammed the appointment as an attempt to quash the Russia probe.

"It is impossible to read Attorney General Sessions’ firing as anything other than another blatant attempt by @realDonaldTrump to undermine & end Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation," Pelosi tweeted.

"Given his record of threats to undermine & weaken the Russia investigation, Matthew Whitaker should recuse himself from any involvement in Mueller’s investigation. Congress must take immediate action to protect the rule of law and integrity of the investigation. #FollowTheFacts."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also called on Whitaker to recuse himself from the probe.

"Given his previous comments advocating defunding and imposing limitations on the Mueller investigation, Mr. Whitaker should recuse himself from its oversight for the duration of his time as acting attorney general," Schumer said in a statement.

Schumer later tweeted that: "Clearly, the President has something to hide."

Whitaker, a lawyer from Iowa, joined the Department of Justice in August 2017. It was his second stint at the DOJ, where he was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa in June 2004 by then-President George W. Bush. He resigned from the DOJ in 2009 after Barack Obama became president.

In his first tenure at the DOJ, Whitaker served on the Controlled Substances and Asset Forfeiture Subcommittee for the Attorney General's Advisory Committee and also served on the agency's White Collar Crime and Violent and Organized Crime subcommittees.

A month before joining the DOJ for the second time, Whitaker penned an opinion piece for CNN.com criticizing Mueller's Russia investigation.

"Last month, when President Donald Trump was asked by The New York Times if special counsel Robert Mueller would be crossing a line if he started investigating the finances of Trump and his family, the President said, 'I think that's a violation. Look, this is about Russia," Whitaker, then a CNN legal commentator, wrote in the August 2016 piece.

"The President is absolutely correct. Mueller has come up to a red line in the Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation that he is dangerously close to crossing."

Whitaker wrote that he found the possibility of Mueller digging into Trump's finances as part of the Russian probe "deeply concerning to me."

"He [Mueller] is only authorized to investigate matters that involved any potential links to and coordination between two entities -- the Trump campaign and the Russian government," Whitaker wrote. "People are wrongly pointing to, and taking out of context, the phrase 'any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation' to characterize special counsel's authority as broad."

He also defended Donald Trump Jr. in a CNN interview for taking a controversial meeting in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer claiming to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton, then-candidate Trump's opponent for the White House.

"Anybody would have taken that meeting," Whitaker said in the July 2017 CNN interview.

Whitaker earned a master of business administration and a law degree at the University of Iowa. He also played tight end for the University of Iowa Hawkeyes football team that lost to the University of Washington Huskies in the 1991 Rose Bowl game in Pasadena, California.

"One of the greatest experiences I ever had as a Hawkeye was playing in that Rose Bowl game and having a catch," Whitaker said in the 2015 article in the Hawkeye Nation, a website for University of Iowa sports fans. "To this day I can brag to anyone who will listen that I had a catch in the Rose Bowl."

In 2014, Whitaker ran for the Republican nomination to fill the Senate seat vacated by Democrat Tom Harkin. He finished fourth in the Republican primary won by Joni Ernst, who went on to win the general election.

Following his foray into politics, Whitaker went back to practicing law, becoming managing partner of Des Moines-based law firm, Whitaker Hagenow & Gustoff LLP.

From 2014 to 2017, he served as the executive director of FACT, The Foundation for Accountability & Civic Trust.

Whitaker has also been a member of the University of Iowa Political Science Department Advisory Board and the National Association of Former U.S. Attorneys.

DACA ENDS TEMPORARILY; TRUMP PUNTS PROGRAM TO CONGRESS TO FIX IN 6 MOS

#DACA

DACA ENDS TEMPORARILY; TRUMP PUNTS PROGRAM TO CONGRESS TO FIX IN 6 MOS:

ILLEGAL ENTRY INTO THE USA IS STILL A CRIME JUST AS ILLEGAL ENTRY IS STILL A CRIME IN OTHER COUNTRIES.

ILLEGALS COST MORE TO EDUCATE, SUCK UP JOBS, DON'T PAY TAXES AND DRIVE DOWN AMERICAN WAGES.

DREAMERS ARE NOT ANIMALS NEITHER ARE THOUSANDS OF BLACK MEN INCARCERATED AND KILLED BY POLICE THE LAST 8 YRS WHILE OBAMA WAS IN OFFICE.

FIXING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION WILL CLOSE THE GAP OF DIVISION BETWEEN BLACKS AND HISPANICS.

PERHAPS THAT IS WHY CONGRESS DOESN'T WANT TO FIX IT.


Sources: CNBC, CBS News, CNN, Youtube


***** Trump administration is ending DACA immigration program, AG Sessions says


President Donald Trump is ending the Obama-era program that protects hundreds of thousands of people who entered the United States illegally as children, with a six-month delay intended to allow Congress to act.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who announced the Trump administration decision on Tuesday, argued that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals was an unlawful overreach by President Barack Obama and said he could not defend it.

It sets up a potential rush for lawmakers to pass a bill protecting so-called dreamers before the Trump administration's deadline. It is unclear if the GOP-held Congress, which has failed to pass similar legislation in the past, can do so in the near future as it faces multiple crucial deadlines to approve legislation.

Public opposition to rescinding the program had mounted recently amid protests around the country. Top Republican lawmakers like House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, as well as technology sector leaders, had pushed Trump not to scrap DACA.

Trump allies like Sessions urged him to end the program, arguing it will be difficult to defend in court. Critics have said that Obama exceeded his authority with the policy.

"Simply put if we are to further our goal of strengthening the constitutional order and rule of law in America the Department of Justice cannot defend this overreach," Sessions said Tuesday.

Scrapping DACA, which started in 2012 under Obama, could affect roughly 800,000 young people registered under the program.

It gives the immigrants a two-year period of protection from deportation and permit to work in the United States.

Here's what the Trump administration will do, according to the Department of Homeland Security:

Acting DHS Secretary Elaine Duke has issued a memo formally rescinding DACA and starting what the administration calls an "orderly wind down."

The government will not process any new applications or requests for DACA protection.

People currently protected will not be affected before March 5, 2018, "so Congress can have time to deliver on appropriate legislative solutions," according to Duke.

In a tweet Tuesday, the president said Congress needs to "get ready to do your job" on DACA. Trump did not signal what, specifically, what action he wants Congress to take in relation to the program.

Republican state officials had threatened to sue the Trump administration over DACA if had not been rescinded by Tuesday.

As a candidate, Trump pledged to end the program, but later softened his stance, saying he wanted to treat the immigrants with "heart."

On Friday, Trump said he had a "great feeling for DACA."

"We love the dreamers," Trump said, using the name for the people protected under DACA. "We love everybody."

The decision could drag on American GDP.
In a statement Tuesday, Ryan criticized the Obama executive order but called for Congress to act to protect dreamers.

"It is my hope that the House and Senate, with the president's leadership, will be able to find consensus on a permanent legislative solution that includes ensuring that those who have done nothing wrong can still contribute as a valued part of this great country," the Wisconsin Republican said.

In an open letter Thursday, nearly 400 U.S. executives, including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos, urged Trump to retain the protections.

BALTIMORE TO LOSE FEDERAL $$$ AS A SANCTUARY CITY (MS-13 GANGS)

BALTIMORE TO LOSE FEDERAL $$$ AS A SANCTUARY CITY (MS-13 GANGS):

DOJ TOP CHIEF JEFF SESSIONS REMINDS MUNICIPALITY LEADERS THEY ARE NOT ABOVE FEDERAL LAW IN HARBORING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.

SANCTUARY CITY LEADERS ENDORSE IMPRISONING BLACK MEN WHILE PROTECTING ILLEGAL LATINO MEN.

IT SHOULDN'T BE ABOUT RACE, ONLY ABOUT NATIONAL SECURITY.


Sources: Fox News, Youtube


**** DOJ threatens to withhold crime-fighting funds from four sanctuary cities


Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reinforcing threats to go after sanctuary cities, warning the administration may withhold federal crime-fighting funds for four places struggling with gun violence.

It is the latest threat made by Sessions in his public campaign to force cooperation between local authorities and federal immigration officials.

The Justice Department sent letters to police departments in Baltimore, Md., Albuquerque, N.M., Stockton and San Bernardino, Calif. telling them if they wanted federal help to root out drug trafficking and gang crime, they’d have to work with federal immigration authorities.

Among other things, the Justice Department said they must give the authorities access to jails and provide advance notice before releasing someone in custody who is wanted on immigration violations.

The four cities targeted had all expressed interest in the DOJ’s new Public Safety Partnership, which enlists federal agents, analysts and technology to help communities find solutions to crime.

“Based on our review, we have concluded that your jurisdiction has levels of violence that exceed the national average, that your jurisdiction is ready to receive the intensive assistance the Department is prepared to provide, and that your jurisdiction is taking steps to reduce its violent crime,” the Aug. 3 letter said.

The letter sent by the DOJ to the four prospective cities’ police departments also asks them for proof of their compliance to step up efforts to help detain and deport people in the United States illegally. The deadline is Aug. 18.

Separately last week, Sessions told jurisdictions they need to meet the same conditions or lose out on millions of dollars from a separate program that aims to send grant money to support law enforcement.

The attorney general rolled out the rules as part of his promised crackdown on sanctuary cities.

His threat didn’t sit well with some – prompting a defiant pushback on the request.

Under old rules, cities seeking grant money needed only to show that they weren't prohibiting local law enforcement from communicating with immigration authorities.

Police use the money for everything from bulletproof vests to body cameras.

Sessions unveiled the policy amid speculation about whether he would retain his job following President Trump's blistering public criticism for his recusal from the Russia probe. The terse warning from the president seems, for now, to have subsided.

MS-13 GANG VIOLENCE INCREASED UNDER OBAMA LIKE ISIL (BORDER PATROL)

MS-13 GANG VIOLENCE INCREASED UNDER OBAMA LIKE ISIL:

MS-13 GANG MEMBERS CONSIST MAINLY OF LATINO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.

UNDER OBAMA MEDIA ONLY FOCUSED ON BLACK GANG VIOLENCE.

US TROOPS SHOULD PATROL TEXAS-MEXICO BORDERS.

TIME FOR GOP & DEMS TO UNITE AGAINST ALL GANG VIOLENCE.


Sources: Fox News, CBS, Business Insider, YouTube


***** How MS-13, One of America’s Most Dangerous Gangs, is Funded


President Donald Trump is ready to crack down on the infamous, money-making MS-13 gang, after a violent quadruple homicide in Long Island, N.Y. last week left four teenagers dead and badly beaten. Trump is promising to remove the gang from U.S. streets “fast.”


MS-13, a group that was started by Central American immigrants in Los Angeles in the 1980s, is known for its ruthless and violent tactics. Most of the founding members were from El Salvador and fled to the U.S. during the country’s civil war that lasted 12 years, from 1980-92. Since then the gang’s membership has ballooned to at least 10,000 members in the United States and more than 30,000 worldwide, according to the FBI and Treasury Department.

“[MS-13] is one of the most dangerous and rapidly expanding criminal gangs in the world today,” Philip Holloway, a legal analyst and former police officer, told FOX Business. “MS-13’s mottos is ‘Mata, roba, viola, controla’ (Kill, steal, rape, control),” he noted.

The gang has managed to expand its business tentacles into a variety of illegal activities, despite sanctions levied against the group by the U.S Treasury Department under the Obama administration. “They are involved in multiple crimes including murder, racketeering, drug trafficking, sex trafficking and human trafficking including prostitution,” Holloway said.

MS-13 also uses violence as a means for extortion, which constitutes much of its income, University of Houston sociology professor Luis Salinas told FOX Business.

“A lot of the violence is part of the extortion … and prostitution. Once they get here they get these individuals and extort money from their families. They’re also into extortion for protection of this neighborhood or that neighborhood,” Salinas said.

In 2015 the U.S. Treasury Department froze the assets of three members of the gang who were funneling funds back to higher-ups in El Salvador from prison. These actions were an attempt “disrupt” MS-13’s financial network by cutting off profits from illegal activities in the United States, the Treasury Department said. In 2012 the Obama administration designated MS-13 a transnational crime organization and implemented sanctions against six members in 2013.

While the U.S. government attempts to target MS-13’s earnings, targeting its culture is proving more difficult. The fierce loyalty among members is unique, Ron Hosko, former assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, told FOX Business.

“They're very cohesive and often directed by imprisoned bosses in El Salvador to recruit and expand in American communities. That tends to mean there's an aggressive internal enforcement mechanism which equates to internal discipline involving physical violence and murder for disrespect or betrayal,” he said.

Membership in street gangs showed no signs of decreasing, according to the FBI’s 2015 National Gang Report, and MS-13 was identified as one of the top gangs involved in cross-border crimes. Recently, law enforcement has taken a tougher stance on making arrests; a move spurred by Attorney General Jeff Session’s focus on illegal immigrant crime, Hosko said.

“MS is a clear example [of illegal immigrant crime]. Affiliates would cross the border and make their way to American enclaves where they found friends and relatives living here already,” he said. “Citizenship is a combination of American born (many to illegals) and illegal immigrants.”

Salinas said about 60-70 percent of current U.S. members in MS-13 are immigrants, the majority of which could be illegal.

On Tuesday during an interview on Fox News, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he believes the gang “could qualify” as a terrorist group. In El Salvador, MS-13 has already been designated as a terrorist organization.

Hosko said President Trump’s administration is changing the narrative quickly for both gang members and law enforcement in the United States.

“[The FBI] believed that claiming of ‘credible fear’ of persecution, gang retaliation, other bad acts in their homeland to immigration authorities likely resulted in widespread release of bad actors into the U.S. as their claims were being evaluated. With Obama, that was acceptable risk. I think that's changing fast.”

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SANCTUARY CITIES WORSE THAN OBAMACARE (RACISM & CRIME)

***** SANCTUARY CITIES WORSE THAN OBAMACARE:

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS SHOULD BECOME LEGAL CITIZENS VIA APPLICATION PROCESS

SANCTUARY CITIES PRACTICE RACISM BASED ON WHERE IMMIGRANTS ARE FROM.

WHY ARE DEMOCRATS FIGHTING AGAINST LEGALIZING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS?


Sanctuary cities practice racism and division based on where immigrants are from.

Since legalizing illegal immigrants makes it legal for them to remain on American soil without fear of being deported, why are Democrats fighting against the US Constitution and the Trump admin on this hotbed political issue?

Is it because most illegal immigrants vote DEMOCRAT in general elections??


Sources: Breitbart, Fox News, Washington Post, YouTube


****** Robert Barnes: Can Trump Legally Stop Sanctuary Cities?
Yes. Remember Brown v. Board of Education


Over 100 jurisdictions, from Manhattanto Malibu, refuse to assist federal law enforcement in their immigration law enforcement duties, especially as to criminal aliens arrested for crimes here in the United States but released before federal law enforcement can detain and deport.

These governments labeled themselves “sanctuary” cities, but a better label would be secessionist cities.

Two means of redress and remedy exist: first, the current path, of defunding sanctuary cities, a path much more legally perilous, but well-founded in the same doctrine that integrated American society; and second, an alternative, complimentary path of funding law-abiding cities with aid to enforce immigration law, an indubitably and indisputably legal remedy.

The legal argument the “sanctuary” cities rely upon bears merit, but they misuse and abuse the doctrine behind it. The “anti-commandeering” doctrine found one of its most articulate voices in Justice Scalia.

The doctrine best distilled is this: “even where Congress has the authority under the Constitution to pass laws requiring or prohibiting certain acts, it lacks the power directly to compel the States to require or prohibit those acts.” The feds cannot shift enforcement to local government. That same doctrine makes the current path of defunding sanctuary cities a legally rocky road, especially in the current judiciary environment.

The Supreme Court made clear in two prior precedents the federal government cannot coerce states into acting as conscripted agents of federal law enforcement. When properly used, this anti-conscription doctrine is mostly a good thing, foreclosing the federalization of local life and municipal governments. When abused, it invites secessionist thinking. That is where a seminal precedent from the Second Circuit gives direction to support Sessions and Trump against the secessionist cities.

The seminal case supporting Sessions and Trump arises from the Second Circuit in enforcing comparable provisions of federal law passed by Clinton and Gingrich. Federal law then prohibited state and local governmental entities or officials from directly restricting the voluntary exchange of immigration information between local and federal officials. The statute Sessions cited and Trump relied upon for his executive order confers the same power: it only prohibits state and local governments from precluding voluntary participation in immigration enforcement, an area uniquely vested in the federal branches of power.

As the statute states:

"Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”

Where did the Second Circuit look for precluding lawless, secessionist minded municipal government going rogue against appropriate federal law and respect of federal elections?

Brown v. Board of Education, the most famous and celebrated case in Supreme Court history.

As the Second Circuit properly summarized: the sanctuary city argument “asks us to turn the Tenth Amendment’s shield against the federal government’s using state and local government to enact and administer federal programs into a sword allowing states and localities to engage in passive resistance that frustrate federal programs,” including those programs of unique federal provenance and priority, such as immigration.

Such actions could cause federal programs to “fail or fall short of their goals,” force the federal government to “restore to legal processes in every routine or trivial matter,” and invite “a refusal by local government to cooperate until a court order to do so.”

As the Second Circuit further noted:

"A system of dual sovereignties cannot work without informed, extensive and cooperative interaction of a voluntary nature between sovereign systems for the mutual benefit of each system. The operation of dual sovereigns thus involves mutual dependencies” that can hardly survive as separate, antagonistic sovereigns.

“Without the Constitution, each sovereign could, to a free, hold the other hostage by selectively withholding voluntary cooperations as to a particular program.” That is why the Supremacy Clause “bars states from taking actions that frustrate federal laws” in those areas of law the Constitution empowers the federal branches of government, like immigration.

As the Second Circuit concluded almost two decades ago in undisturbed law:

"states do not retain under the Tenth Amendment an untrammeled right to forbid all voluntary cooperation by state or local officials with particular federal programs.”

This opens the door to a complimentary, alternative option: formally funding cities, counties, and states that assist with enforcement of immigration laws against criminal and potentially dangerous aliens, a power all courts recognize Congress and the President enjoy.

This parallel strategy employs the carrot rather than the stick, but avoids the traps of the deep state allies and their secessionist city friends in the federal courts, much as federal funding of integrated schools acted as a deterrent to less-funded segregated classrooms.

Let liberty ring?

Let the laws be enforced to safeguard those whose liberty the law protects in the first place: the citizens of the United States.