Thank goodness we’ve ended all that politicization of the Department of Justice!
Nearly one year ago, on August 15, Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, sent the U.S. Department of Justice the first of two criminal referral letters about Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
On August 25, President Trump announced he had removed Cook from her position because of the criminal referral. She refused to leave her position, contending the president did not have the authority to remove him.
You may have noticed that Cook has not been indicted by federal prosecutors. Apparently, the evidence in Pulte’s criminal referral wasn’t quite as compelling as he thought it was.
On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the president’s attempt to remove Cook was “invalid because the president did not provide her notice of the reason for removal and an opportunity to be heard, which is required by the Federal Reserve Act. As the court explained, Governor Cook was ‘entitled to some explanation of the evidence at issue, some avenue for a response, and a deadline by which a response would be due.’”
Last week, the White House notified Cook via a letter that the president was considering removing her from her role on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and demanded that she respond to the allegations within three weeks.
In other news about presidential grudges:
White House officials have asked the Justice Department to consider a new prosecution of a man accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, according to people familiar with the discussions, as President Trump fumes over U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s decision to drop the case.
A new prosecution of the defendant, Olympic canoeist David Hearn, would be highly unusual, especially after Pirro told a judge in surprising detail that the government’s decision to indict him on a felony charge was ill-informed. Pirro said a botched renovation, not vandalism, was responsible for the reflecting pool’s problems.
If the U.S. Department of Justice does attempt to prosecute Hearn again, he and his defense lawyers will have the unusual advantage of having the U.S. government having previously declared in court, “Had [the Department of the Interior] been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment… It is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt.”
What’s more, President Trump himself wrote on Truth Social, “there was substantial other damage to the Reflecting Pool, also but, unfortunately, there is no video or proof, other than the damage, itself.”
First, thank goodness we’ve ended all that politicization of the Department of Justice!
Second, I don’t know how much time, effort, and manpower at DOJ is expended on these presidential vendettas. But I do know that time, effort, and manpower could be better spent elsewhere.