jeannie garrard served as deputy attorney general at the department of justice from 1994 to 1997. before coming to the department she served as general counsel at the department of defense . she's also served as a member of the bipartisan 9/11 commission. a graduate of harvard law school she chairs as a partner inthe law firm wilmer and hale . stephen engle stir as the assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel at the department of justice from 20 17th to 2021. he served as a deputy assistant attorney general in that same office from 2006 to 2009 and a previously declared supreme court justice anthonykennedy . by a graduate of yale law school he served as a partner at the deckard law firm. bob bauer served as white house counsel from 2009 2011. before serving in the white house it was general counsel of the 2008 obama presidential campaign. he recently published a book after trump, reconstructing the presidency which was co-authored by jack goldsmith. a graduate of the university of virginia law school she was a professor at the us university school of law . so i've

department because of, you know, this is what the justice department does and he was -- and i thought he was going to pop out of his chair, but anyway, this one is -- it just always comes up, and it does -- it does have a danger of opinion shopping. that is, the white house could go to one or the other and say that it has gotten the opinion that it -- that it needs. indeed this, has happened so that's not hypothetical. two other comments i would make. one is doj is the arbiter of the position of the united states in the courts as steve said. it's doj that has to stand there and -- and defend an administrative action, for example, but there are often disagreements among agencies when one agency taken. and in our administration, seth waxman was spending a ton of time with those agencies trying to get to a common view and sometimes that didn't happen and in the end his opinion prevailed that didn't mean that people didn't go to the white house to say this is wrong. so that does happen. and there are occasions, which is why bob needs to speak la

very cooperative because they will want to clear the name and clear the reputation of the department of justice. i would like, i would be hopeful, they would be cooperative. there may be issues with respect to presidential privilege if we're talking about direct conversations between the attorney general and the president of the united states. so these are all going to be issues that if not litigated, there's certainly going to be a lot of discussion about the sharing of information and what they feel comfortable with disclosing to congress. >> one of the things that cnn is reporting today and they have discovered is under jeff sessions, the doj launched this collection project and didn't find any tie to leaks, which was what they were supposedly looking for. and then when bill barr became the attorney general, he sent them back and said keep looking. does that sound like a fishing expedition? >> that's a very damning piece of information, if, in fact true. you would typically rely upon prosecutors to give their best recommendation if there's a crime that's been committed they can successfully

to trust our system of justice again and to get the people within the department of justice to trustustice without fear of favor. he has a really tough job, as did edward levy. the two were picked for the same reasons. they are very credible people. >> ari, barr fascinates me. it fascinates me when he chose to resign. i understand jill's point. i think barr might argue, he is the executive. he can call the shots here. does barr think that anything he did was illegal? that in the -- going back to barr's theory of executive power here, trump ultimately is the justice department. >> yeah, i think that's a fair question. i think you are giving it its maximal intellectual benefit of the doubt. >> generous there, i admit. >> as devil's advocate. i do agree with what you are gesturing at. between a general counsel who decides to just become a criminal, which is worse given their deep knowledge of where the lines are, with regard to their intent, and someone who can continues to skirt up to the end, even if critics and many doj veterans say he debuted him as going over the line and should be

it's not trump's department of justice or biden's or anyone else's, it's the people's department of justice. >> there's more in the reporting here in terms of the scale and the scope, and one of the things that makes it shocking -- i made this point with andrew, but not in context of everything that happened. the number of times that sessions and then bill barr were told we don't know why you're having us do this, and things that happened that made it pointless and were ignored are just as shocking as who they went after. please, andrew, norm, i'll buy you dinner. stay with us, we'll keep this up because this is a very important story for people to understand about how our government was being abused. stay with us. >> announcer: one on one is brought to you by appleby's. carside, to go and delivery. ♪that you laughed about♪ ♪well, the names have all changed♪ ♪since you hung around♪ welcome back, america. it sure is good to see you. this past year has felt like a long, long norwegian winter. but eventually, with spring comes rebirth. everything begins anew. and many of us realize a fundament

of played by the rules. he didn't really run the department very aggressively. he had an assistant who was a longtime department of justicewho kind of guided the attorney general who knew nothing about washington or the department of justice. i actually worked at the department before i went to the white house, so i was familiar with the operations there. today it's a very different department. barr was a micromanager. typically the deputy attorney general often runs the department. par barr tran department. he was a former deputy, former attorney general. he knew which strings to pull to make different reactions throughout the entire department. >> now, of course i wish i had more time, because the question is what kind of a department is it now under a.g. garland. stay here on cnn, everyone. anderson cooper "360" special, barack obama on fatherhood, leadership, and legacy airs after this show. >>> next, the gop didn't quit trump ten bombshells ago. any chance they ever will? it's an important time to save. with priceline, you can get up to 60% off amazing hotels. and when you get a big deal... you feel like a big deal.

as part of its mission to protect the right to vote, the justice department will do everything in its power to prevent election fraud and, if found, to vigorously prosecute it. but many of the justifications proper -- proffered in support of these postelection audits and restrictions on voting have relied on assertions of material fraud in the 2020 election that have been refuted by law enforcement and intelligence agencies of both this and restriction and the previous one. as well as by every court, federal and state, that has consider them. moreover, many of the changes are not even calibrated to address the kinds of voter fraud that are alleged as our justification. to meet the challenge of the current moment, we must rededicate the resources of the department of justice to a critical part of its original mission. enforcing federal law to protect the franchise for all voters. in 1961, attorney general robert kennedy crawled into his office, the newly appointed attorney general, assistant attorney general, and john doerr. at that time, before the 1965 act with its preclearance provi

but i suggest you reassure the public that the department of justice does not seek to undermine a coequal branch's ability to check an abuse of power. and i, humbly, suggest you ensure that no one is above the law. even within the department, whose job it is to enforce the law. because the stakes are too high to play cutesy or have words like the department of justice come down to semantics. >> i want to bring in cnn white house correspondent, john harwood. glad to see you, on a night like this, john. and so much to get to with you. in particular, john, you covered the trump white house. i mean, we knew, based on trump's twitter feed and his rallies, exactly, who he thought his enemies were. so -- and now, it appears that the doj was weaponized to go after those enemies. i am talking about democratic lawmakers, and their aides, their -- their families, and media organizations. i mean, he was very public about his enemies list. and now, here we are. and yet, it's just so unprecedented, even with all of those tells, is it not? >> laura, the remarkable thing about president trump and his adm

justice? so those of us who work in the department of justice, i find it infuriating, even though they're already gone. i can't almost compose myself, i'm so angry. that the head of the department of justice is still lying to us. >> maybe we should make a witness list of sorts for the upcoming and potentially very interesting investigations. whether they be at congress or elsewhere. there is going to be an ig investigation looking into this. who would make the decision like this within the department of justice? other than bill barr, whose desk does this come across? >> it comes across the head of the public integrity division. it comes across the assistant united states attorney, who's brought in from you new jersey, to be bars guy on this. who had no experience a national security issues. he was a health care fraud a usa, he was brought in to handle this. he certainly on top of the witness list. the united states attorney from new jersey who with such good friends with barr that he recommended this guy. and he's the guy that barr tried to get into the southern district of new york in that faile

it's not trump's department of justice or biden's or anyone else's, it's the people's department of justice. and it looks like it was taken pretty far off the rails. >> let's do this. let me take a break there is a lot more in the reporting here in terms of the scale of the scope, and one of the things that makes this most shocking, again, i've made this point with andrew, but not in context of everything that happened. the number of times that sessions and then bill barr were told we don't know why you're having us do this, and things that happened that made it pointless and were ignored are just as shocking as who they went after. please, andrew, norm, i'll buy you dinner. i'm sure you're missing invitations right now. stay with us, we'll keep this up because this is a very important story for people to understand about how our government was being abused. stay with us. >> announcer: one on one is >> announcer: one on one is brought to you by appleby's. kaur carside to go and delivery. ♪ ♪ and they're always glad you came ♪ welcome back, america. hi guys! check out itthis side right here.

chief, with the president's chief of staff at the time, mark meadows trying to orchestrate a department of justiceconsidering everything now that we don't know that was happening at this trump department of justice, this feels like an investigation that's much bigger than simply an inspector general investigation. is it? >> well, i think the inspector general investigation is a good start. certainly a lot of pieces that a lot of threads to pull here and whether they're all connected remains to be seen. undoubtedly as we already have heard congress is going to be investigating this potentially issuing subpoenas to hear from the former attorney generals, both of them, as well as the former deputy attorney general and then looking for any possible connections. >> walk me through how the department of justice is brought in whenever a leak investigation, when a leak is alleged, right, and a call for an investigation, you know, whether it's the sitting president or the white house counsel, they go to the justice department and say, here, walk me through how justice gets brought in to a leak investigatio

justice department. i think that this case highlights something that we often sort of miss about the justice department. that is, that while there are a lot of political appointees who obviously run the place put there by the president there are these career prosecutors that are dedicated to these cases and that aggressively go after them. same prosecutors working on the cases worked on similar ones that involved colleagues in years past. so obviously those people, career people are still there. but on a larger level, i think that one of the questions that i would be interested to see if the ig answers is how much did the garland folks know about this. for example in the case of seeking email information from my email and three of my colleagues, that started in january of 2021. and it was only last friday that "the times" was lifted in a gag order and the justice department said they had given up the effort to get our records so that's a very long period of time into the garland justice department. >> andrew weissman, pick up where mike schmidt led us. what is a deputy attorney general like lisa monaco's

it was the use of the department of justice to advance a quirkily political aim of the president and so what is horrifying here, it's good the inspector general will do his work and operate inside the department of justice. what we're talking about here, of course, is yet another flagrant constitutional abuse and we learned about it by reading it, at least i learned about it by reading it in the newspaper. what other elements were compromised? the irs used as a political tool for donald trump? the cia used as a political tool for donald trump? unless we have something bigger than an inspector general, unless we have -- i'm thinking back to the church committee of the 1970s, unless we have something truly all of government, we may never know the answers to that question and that leaves us profoundly vulnerable to the next donald trump, the smarter donald trump doing this all over again. >> you're asking for a select or special committee or special prosecutor? >> well, you know, we've spent the last two months talking about a commission around january 6th. i was there on january 6t

very obvious violation of longstanding justice department policy. for justice department officials to be even having that kind of a conversation with the white house chief of staff at all, let alone entertaining multiple requests for him to open these investigations? that is a serious violation of seriously important justice department policies. now, it is being investigated in the senate. the judiciary committee under senator dick durbin is reportedly investigating what went wrong there inside the trump justice department that they were involved in this kind of stuff and fielding these requests, which they never should have been fielding. but under merrick garland and the justice department itself, apparently they're not investigating this. apparently, they're just letting that slide, not looking into it. just, i guess, planning to do better and not make those same mistakes again, hope that the trump era behavior that happened inside the justice department, what? just hope that it gets forgotten and doesn't get cited as precedent before some future

i think the department of homeland security and the department of justice, which are the two principal departments for this purpose are lashed up now. we have joint departments. the national security council have been -- counsel has engaged both of us in the assessmen. t -- assessment. there will always be problems. i am reasonably confident we will not have a problem like that again. with respect to the capitol police and our relationship with them, i do not know enough to know about that. this has certainly raised that issue. i will go back again and speak with the fbi director on how that has been done. i think there is no excuse at this point for that kind of clear connection not to be made. sen. manchin: you know how many people have been arrested today? gen. garland: off the top of my head, within some margin of error, it is about 456. sen. manchin: -- gen. garland: there will be more. i was about to say many. i don't want to say that. we have a very good method of finding additional people who were inside the capital. thanks to the omnipresent videos everybody took and even priv

and we may have had the department of justice work in the opposite direction of expanding voter rightst's go back to the '60s where the same thing had to happen. the attorney general, the department of justice can investigate these things and make some rules to see some everyone's being treated fairly but it really is up to congress to legislate, make things like going on in texas can't happen across the country. >> yes, ali. thanks for having me, and you're exactly right. that was actually part of the big purpose of the 1965 voting rights act to begin with, particularly section 5 which was eventually gutted several years ago. but part of the purpose was to avoid exactly what you're seeing, avoiding states would be able to take away our rights or localities would take away our rights and we'd have to fight it state by state, county by county. part of the purpose of the voting rights act was to give that preclearance power so that before these changes could even be made they'd have to get cleared by the justice department. that was taken away. in fact, we're coming up on the anniversary

i think the department of homeland security and the department of justice, which are the two principalepartments for this purpose, are very well latched up now. we have joint task forces along this whole area. and the national security council has engaged both of us in the involvement in the assessment of the domestic violent extremist threat. so there will always be problems, but i'm reasonably confident that we won't have a problem like that again. now, with respect to the capitol police and our relationship with them, to be honest, i don't know enough to know about that. this has certainly raised that issue. and i will go back again and speak with the fbi director on exactly how that's been done. but i think there's no excuse at this point for that kind of clear connection not to be made. >> do you know how many people have been arrested to date? >> do i know how many? >> do you have a figure on that? >> like off the top of my head within some margin of error, it's about 456, something like that. >> and -- >> there will be more. i was about to say many, i don't want to say that. we

justice. so those of us who work in the department of justice, i find this infuriating, even though they're alreadye. i can't almost even compose myself i'm so angry that the head of the department of justice is still lying, too. >> so maybe we should make a witness list of sorts for the upcoming and potentially very interesting investigations, whether they be in congress or elsewhere. there is going to be an ig investigation looking into this. who would make the decision like this within the department of justice? other than bill barr, whose desk does this come across? >> well, it comes across the head of the public integrity division. it comes across the assistant united states attorney who was brought in from new jersey to be barr's guy on this who had no -- no experience in national security issues and he was like a health care fraud asa. he was brought in to handle this. he's certainly on top of the witness list. the united states attorney from new jersey who was such good friends with barr that he recommended this guy and he's the guy that barr tried to get into the southern district of new y

the justice department will let the department of justice be the department of justice. osecuted. they're not my lawyers. they're not my personal lawyers. you're turning this into a vehicle for your own law firm. you don't own that justice department, you pick the best people you can and you hope that what they're going to do is enforce the law as they see it. but can you remember any republican president going out there for former democratic president go find that guy for us. remember that? by the way, i'm being sued because a woman accused me of rape. represent me. represent me. personally represent me and the state of new york on my not allowing my tax returns. what's that all about? what is that about? >> yeah what was that all about? that was candidate joe biden last fall criticizing president trump for you turning the department into his own personal law firm, including the justice department telling the court, telling the federal court that trump was engaged in his official duties as president of the united states when he said about a woman who accused him of rape

department tried to silence the publication of the pentagon papers. president bush justice department after the reporters without -- about to expose the wireless surveillance programs. president obama's justice department went so far as to charge a reporter as a co-conspirator in violation of the espionage act. president trump's justice department appears to target reporters and members were focused on investigating russia's interference in the 2016 election. and now we know that president biden's justice department sought to renew at least some of the secrecy orders associated with these cases. in each of these cases the department took advantage -- of outdated policies that make secrecy the norm, not the exception to the rule. in fact, these cases appear to have targeted journalist, democratic members of the house of congress and the former white house counsel. we have no immediate way of knowing how big the problem is because each of these cases is accompanied by a doj request judge imposed gag order that prevents anybody from talking about them for years. now we asked t

in some ways, the department of justice is paying catchup and has to play whac-a-mole with these instanceswhere the states can enact all of these efforts to deny and dilute the rights of african-americans and other voters of color and the department of justice is now in a position of trying to seek them out and seek out the injustices. it's costly, time-consuming, and relies on witnesses to bring information forward. that's why it's so important that these federal bills be enacted, this that we see h.r. 1 pass, we see hr 4 passed. because although the john lewis voting rights advancement act would look back and look at the states' histories of discrimination and see where there were efforts to deny the right to vote, and then require those states to submit their voting changes for preclearance, h.r. 1 set standards that would hope to prevent and would apply to the types of voter suppression efforts that we're seeing in the states today. efforts to roll back early voting, efforts to eliminate absentee balloting, deny standards for national voter registration. so, yes the department of justi

the norms eroded by the department of justice i think two of them where the independentsent sort of taking orders from the white house directly, and secondly, abandoning continuity and how departments did it's just business and the continuity in the position it took and the cases it took. we want to restore those norms, so we're gonna be independent and not let the white house tell us what to do, and we're gonna go back to more continuity, we're gonna take the same positions at the trump justice department on the carolinas shoot etc, but that itself is the problem, it seems to me. >> that is exactly right, chris. i am upright alumnus of the department of justice, and i respect the attorney generals institutional commitments. but, when he was running and he said the trump administration was the most corrupt and modern history. biden's justice department has not responded by fighting for transparency and accountability, and i understand merrick garland's wish to look forward and all back work and not to substitute trump's ways with biden's ways but looking backwards, not lo

. >> obviously deeply suspicious of what the justice department was doing. more than that, this looks like a patent abuse of the department, yet another example of the president politicizing, using the department of justice as a cudgel to go after his enemies. >> more that in a moment, but any moment attorney general merrick garland is expected to announce new actions by the doj to protect voting rights in this country. as legislatures attempt to restrict the vote with donald trump's lie about the stolen election. it must go through congress, but with little or no gop support and opposition from democrats, that's looking increasingly unlikely. so what will the attorney general do? we'll bring you those comments from garland as soon as they begin. we start this hour with reporter shannon pettypiece, garrett haake. we also have the brennan center for justice at the university school of law, that's wendy wiser, and carol anderson. she's also the author of "one person, no vote: how voter suppression is destroying our democracy." shannon, we'll start with you. wha

department of justice announced a lawsuit over the matter. nge to a wave of voting laws that republicans are pushing in several states. attorney general merrick garland says the move is about preventing discrimination at the ballot box. >> our complaint alleges that recent changes to georgia's elections laws were enacted with the purpose of denying or abridging the right of black georgians to vote on a account of their race or color in violation of section 2 of the voting rights act. jon: joining us now is chris carr. he is the attorney general for the state of georgia. general carr, we just heard the, we just heard merrick garland, the chief law enforcement officer really in the u.s. justice department say that you're trying to abridge the voting rights of blacks in georgia. how do you respond? >> absolutely not, jon. thanks for having me on. let's be clear, this is not a lawsuit. this is a campaign flyer. the united states department of justice is playing politics. they're not trying to uphold the law. this action that they filed, this blata

to meet the challenge of the current moment we must rededicate the resources of the department of justice to a critical part of its original mission and enforcing federal law to protect the franchise for all voters. in 1961 attorney general robert kennedy crawled into his office, the newly appointed general assistant attorney general for civil rights and marshals now first assistant, john doerr. at that time before the 1965 act with its preclearance provision was enacted the only way to guarantee the right black americans to vote was to bring individual actions in each county and that discriminated against them. kennedy told his of assistance that that is what he wanted to do. well, general marshall replied if you want that then you got to have a lot more lawyers. well, today we are again without a preclearance provision so again, the civil rights division will need more lawyers. accordingly today i am announcing that within the next 30 days we will double the divisions enforcement for protecting the right to vote. we will use all existing provisions in the voting rights act, the national

but what is so significant here is that typically when the department of justice is going after members of congress, it is because of some sort of public corruption investigation. or other types of crimes. it's rare to see the department of justice simply go after a president's political enemies for the sole purpose of he didn't like the leaks that were coming out of what he thought was the house intelligence committee. so this -- the subpoena was extraordinarily broad. shocking that you would go after members of congress and then further you would go after the person connections, family members and even more startling is this dragnet swept up data from a child, a minor was involved in this in some capacity. we know it's just the metadat yachlt we don't know the contents of the communications. it is really shocking. it follows a pattern we've seen. we have a full screen up to bring this would be into clearer view. because here is who doj had gone after. house intelligence democrats, cnn reporter barbara starr and new york post reporters and twitter. this is the group that trump administ

at least four members in leadership rol who were at the department of justice when all this happened in 2017 are still with the department. meaning that the biden administration should be well aware of this anti-democratic situation and when it could and should be made public. even if it wasn't for the free press, it appears we wouldn't know about it at all. in recent weeks the department of justice disclosed other trump era subpoenas from records from reporters at the "washington post" and the "new york times." the times reports that the former administration's investigations into trump's leakers were renewed with a new zest and urgency under william barr, once he became the attorney general. following the news of the doj's inspector general's investigation and the "new york times" reporting that another unnamed internet service provider was also subpoenaed for records of someone associated with the house intel committee, microsoft released a statement revealing that it, too, was subpoenaed for data and it, too, was issued a gag order. senate majority leader chuck schumer and dick du

our department of justice should be able to do in the interest of public safety. but this first amendment thing is not agile. this is really serious. this sends a chill, particularly john through the journalistic merchant community that the report is that mansion. >> that's exactly right, ali. i think we with reporters there is explicit first amendment protection of the press, with reporters i think it's an easier case. don't go after reporters records. that is not an investigative tool when you're looking at the reach of national security information. you can come up with a case, let's imagine that a member of congress -- i don't think this is ever happened. let's just imagine a member of congress decides to sell for the american nuclear codes for 1 million dollars. okay. but this is not that. this is not. that adam schiff, eric swalwell, what do they have? they were probably the most vocal democrats in opposition to donald trump. what do we know? that there was nothing there. so, again, this is 1 million miles away from legitimate prosecution. which is why it's

we expected that he would address this issue, to talk maybe more about what the department of justice is doing in light of the revelations of these secret subpoenas. in his about half hour of remarks on voting rights, either during it, before or after, merrick garland made no mention of all of these revelations. but what we do know is a list of investigations are being lined up so the justice department's inspector general announcing they will look into these subpoenas used to obtain records from not only members of congress, but also members of the media we previously reported had their phone and email records obtained, including our own grubauer correspondent, barbara starr. so, this ig investigation will dig into these issues about whether doj under attorney general sessions or attorney general barr whether it complied with its own policy and procedures. there's that on the doj side. that on the other side, in congress, chuck schumer and dick durbin are announcing jeff sessions and bill barr to testify under oath. they issued this statement. former attorneys barr and sessions and o

lester holt and here on msnbc. >>> coming up next, it seemed we were entering the dawn of a new department of justiceable decisions has been the department of justice at odds with the biden white house. that's next when "velshi" returns. ♪ ♪ you don't always set out to be a rock star. but when the spotlight finds you. you become one anyway. ♪ ♪ there's interest you accrue, you become one anyway. and interests you pursue. plans for the long term, and plans for a long weekend. at thrivent, we believe money is a tool, not a goal. to learn more, text thrive to 444555, or visit thrivent.com. gillette proglide. five blades and a pivoting flexball designed to get virtually every hair on the first stroke. so you're ready for the day with a fresh face for a fresh start. for a limited time get a 5th cartridge free. [sizzling] i may not be able to tell time, but i know what time it is. [whispering] it's grilled cheese o'clock. paul loves food. but his diabetes made food a mystery. everything felt like a “no.” but then paul went from no to know. with freestyle libre 14 day, now he knows how food affects his gluc

of break in the news here. sorry but the -- >> -- justice department. >> well speaking of justice department, the office of inspectoras you and i were talking. initiated a review of the use of subpoenas and other legal authorities to obtain communications records from members of congress. so that is -- the department of justice inspector general michael horowitz announcing this. so it looks like you're going to get your investigation. do you think that congress should investigate this as well? >> i do. i don't think -- i think we've learned that congress has to protect itself at some point in time. and i've heard that the senate is going to be looking into this and that is i think appropriate. i think it is probably best that others do it and not the intel committee, just because it's us. so i think it's a bit of a problem if we try to be involved with an investigation in which this committee was targeted. but i do think there are others in congress that could do this and that is part of it. but to my earlier point, i can't stress enough, this was a presidency that was willing to use the justice department as its la

mark: you would think the department of justice has the goods on all these people and if the departmentis conducting itself in a righteous manner that they fear all the books open and we know everything about everything and yet everything is secret from the police officer to the conditions in the jails and i might say it must be a lonely experience for you because nobody else is writing about nobody else is writing about obsession has many names. this is ours. the lexus is. all in on the sport sedan. lease the 2021 is 300 for $379 a month for 36 months. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. what can i du with less asthma? with dupixent, i can du more....beginners' yoga. $379 a month for 36 months. namaste... ...surprise parties. aww, you guys. dupixent helps prevent asthma attacks... ...for 3!... ...so i can du more of the things i love. dupixent is not for sudden breathing problems. it's an add-on-treatment for specific types of moderate-to-severe asthma that can improve lung function for better breathing in as little as two weeks. and can reduce, or even eliminate, oral steroids. a

arguably, next to the military, the most powerful thing that the federal government has, the department of justice. it was the use of the department of justice to advance a quirky-political aim of the president. and so, what's horrifying here is it's -- it's -- it's good that the inspector general is going to do his work. but that inspector general is going to operate inside the department of justice. what we're talking about here, of course, is, yet another, flagrant constitutional abuse. and -- and -- and we learned about it by reading -- at least i learned about it and many people learned about it by reading it in the newspaper. what other elements of the government were compromised? was the irs used as a political tool for donald trump? was the cia used as a political tool for donald trump? unless we have something bigger than an inspector general. unless we have -- i -- i'm thinking back to, you know, the church committee of the 1970s. unless we have something truly all of government, we may never know the answers to that question and that leaves us profoundly vulnerable to the next-donald tr

this goes way beyond department of justice policy. it is not illegal because they used the means of getting a subpoena through a grand jury. so it wasn't illegal but it is a violation of department of justice policy. and i am very happy to hear the inspector general is going to do an investigation and get to the bottom of this. it also looks like political, abuse of power, because so far all we know is that only democrats were subpoenaed, their records. it didn't go to any republicans. there was an unsuccessful and now barr is saying i never knew about those subpoenas. well, shame on him if he didn't. he's running the department. that is something he had to know about under doj policy. so it is ridiculous and it doesn't pass the red face test for him to say i didn't know about it. >> yeah. matthew, there is a lot of frustration on the hill right now. you know, you've had now this interesting sort of new information that's come out and this is, you know, just reporting that we have internally a former justice department official who ton

now we have the department of justice as you talked about earlier. it is very much projecting what they were complaining about in other contexts now happening. this is part of the attack on the free press. they're trying to identify in part the sources to figure out who the leaks were. it doesn't appear to be it right now. it was because they thought there was some violation of the law. instead, that there was a violation of being able to disclose information they did not want to get out. they didn't have the national security implication. we're waiting to find that out, of course. but here we're only learning now that it concluded back in may. we have no idea how many different iterations of the investigation took place. what else might come out. the investigation is crucial for transparency. but again, you're also talking about what will attorney general merrick garland do now? he has largely inherited all of these dilemmas. what he does moving forward will be the clear distinction between what happened under barr and trump and what will happen to t

s. department of justice says it sees control of 33 websites linked to iran, citing violations of american sanctions. this is the message reaching, anyone trying to look at iran, english language, prestige, the site, or the arabic alarm channel. the u. s. s. accused media outlets connected to iran's revolution regard of spreading misinformation like canada has moved from washington d. c. the justice department says that the iranian television and radio union had been designated a special entity back in october last year because of what it alleged was election interference. this requires all of its bodies to get special permission to operate in the united states, which the justice department said it did not do so. as a result, some 33 entities have been shut down. all the websites have been shut down by the department of justice. and now that is the situation that us senate republicans have blocked the key voting rights bill, backed by democrats. democrats say the election reform package contained measures to counteract laws passed and republican lead states, which restrict voting access. b

need more information from his department of justice. susan page on the significance of this. look, top officials at doj under the trump administration claiming we didn't know about this. given the credibility issues, given the fact you have the sitting president publicly and privately saying he wanted doj to investigation his political adversaries, it adds a new layer to this, right? >> pamela, which is more alarming, that the attorneys general knew they were going after the records of sitting members of congress or that the department of justice was going after records and the attorney general didn't know about them. i'm not sure that is reassuring if it turns out to be the case that the attorneys general were. members of congress can be investigated for criminal conduct and corruption, but there's a respect between co-equal branches of government for separation of powers. that's one reason it raises alarms. was the trump department weaponizing legal authority to go after critics like adam schiff and adam swalwell, to do aggressive investigations of the news media and report

new reaction to news from the new york times that his department of justice subpoena the communications records of lawmakers and their families, including minor. today, illinois congressman raja krishnamoorthi called for attorney general merrick garland clean house. >> as a little disappointed. quite frankly that we learned about this secret subpoenas and intelligence from apple and not from merrick garland's justice department. they need to also show that they are cleaning house and that the come clean with any other secret subpoenas or investigations. or inappropriate targets. the justice department's internal watchdog is now launching an investigation into federal prosecutors use of secret subpoenas to obtain records from apple. concerning to california lawmakers on the house intelligence committee. those lawmakers were then ranking member, now current house intel chair adam schiff, as well as congressman eric swalwell. both democrats. the new york times reports the doj, while under the leader of leadership of jeff sessions, was hunting for the sources behind news media reports about

which didn't begin under trump, we should note but in the first six months of 2018 when the department of justice after schiff and swalwell apple had requests for 2,400 of its accounts and in apple's last report it's the meta data that the department of justice is going after which is not the content of the e-mails or the content of the phone calls or voice mails but who was talking to who and when and where. what is bart for a making such a request because i would think and i may be wrong that it could be kind of high but it sound like it isn't all that hoy. >> it should be very high. as people have been saying, the fact that they are going after the democrats isn't in and of itself a problem if there's proof of a crime, if there's some kind of leak coming from the congressman -- >> would they need to need that first? congressman smith, okay works they need to say we have evidence congressman smith talked to this reporter two days before this broke. therefore, let search for his meta data or is it more of a fishing expedition i.hate congressman smith, let's search his meta data. >> the thing abo

our focus, as members of the department of justice a“ and as a federal government a“ is to our focus,mbers of the department of justice and as a federal government is to prevent, disrupt, and deter unlawful acts of violence, whatever their motive. as the national strategy makes clear, there is no place for violence as a means of resolving political differences in our democracy. the second principle is that we need, not only a whole of government, but also a whole of society approach to domestic terrorism. implementation of the national strategy will therefore occur across the federal government and beyond. the state department will focus on the transnational aspects of domestic terrorism, including mapping links between foreign and domestic terrorists. and, with the department of the treasury, it will assess whether foreign organizations and individuals linked to domestic terrorism can be designated as terrorists under existing authorities. the department of homeland security is expanding its intelligence analysis, production, and sharing. it is prioritizing relevant grant funding to

the department of justice will continue to evolve as the threat evolves. why one of the first acts i took after returning to the department was to launch a strategic cyber review, that is why federal prosecutors now report ransomware incidents in the same way that they report critical threats to our national security and that is why we will continue to work with our public and private partners both here and globally to bring our collective authorities together to confront emerging threats. there is no higher priority for the department of justice than using all available tools to protect our nation, that includes from ransomware and other digital threats. thank you and now i'll turn the podium over to deputy director paul abate. >> thank you. good afternoon, everyone. today the fbi successfully seized criminal proceeds from a bitcoin wallet that darkside ransomware actors used to collect a ransomware payment from a victim. since last year we've been pursuing an investigation into darkside, a russia-based cyber crime group. the dark side ransomware variant o