A little more than a year ago, President Donald Trump publicly demanded that Pam Bondi, then the attorney general, find a crime to pin on former FBI Director James Comey. Trump's underlings have repeatedly tried to do that, first charging Comey with lying to Congress and then accusing him of threatening to assassinate the president. But the first indictment was dismissed because Trump had illegally appointed the prosecutor who obtained it, and the second was doomed right out of the gate because it aimed to punish constitutionally protected political speech.

The Justice Department's latest attempt to follow Trump's marching orders was revealed on Monday, when U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden unsealed a "criminal information" that claims Comey illegally shared classified information with The New York Times on October 5, 2016. In an attempt to meet the statutory deadline for that charge, prosecutors filed it exactly 10 years after the alleged disclosure. But Comey's lawyers argue that federal law required the government to obtain a grand jury indictment within 10 years of the alleged offense, which it failed to do.

Whatever you make of that dispute, the president has made it clear that he wants to imprison Comey, a longtime nemesis because of his role in the "Russiagate hoax" during Trump's first term, and does not much care about exactly how that happens. Justice Department officials, meanwhile, are keen to pursue Trump's personal vendetta by using their prosecutorial powers as an instrument of his revenge.

The new case "would almost be funny if it weren't such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice," Comey said in an online video on Monday. "I'm still innocent. I'm still not afraid of these people, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary."

In the New York Times story at the center of the case, Charlie Savage and Nicole Perloth reported that Yahoo had adapted "a system intended to scan emails for child pornography" to comply with a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order seeking "messages containing a computer 'signature' tied to the communications of a state-sponsored terrorist organization." Savage and Perloth cited "two government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity."

Dustin Farahnak, a special U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, says that story included "first-time disclosures of classified information not intended for the public domain." According to Farahnak, the government has evidence that Comey "directed staff" to discuss "specific accuracy concerns" about a prior Reuters report on the same subject with Savage. In the process of doing that, Farahnak says, those FBI officials "illegally transferred classified information."

Comey's attempt to set the record straight, according to Trump's henchmen, was a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison under 18 USC 793(d), an Espionage Act provision that applies to an official who "willfully" shares "information relating to the national defense" with an unauthorized recipient when he "has reason to believe" it "could be used to the injury of the United States." Comey also faces a charge of conspiring to violate Section 793, which likewise carries a maximum 10-year sentence.

If Comey's alleged disclosure was such a grave crime, you might wonder, why did it take a decade to charge him? Because two prior investigations of the same incident concluded that criminal charges were not warranted.

Beginning in March 2017, John Durham, the U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut, looked into the genesis of the Times article. The investigation found that James Baker, then the FBI's general counsel, was one of the anonymous sources. Baker said he had acted under instructions from FBI Chief of Staff James Rybacki, whom he understood to be conveying Comey's wishes. Durham's investigation included interviews, emails, phone records, and consideration of the relevant statutes. In December 2018, Comey's lawyers note, Durham "wrote a classified memorandum outlining the investigation and recommending 'NO prosecution for Baker or anyone else.'"

The following month, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia "opened an investigation into the same subject matter," Comey's lawyers say. That investigation "was closed without any charges in February 2020" after the office "declined to prosecute."

Given the outcomes of those two investigations, the decision to charge Comey now stinks of desperation to slake Trump's thirst for revenge. According to Comey's lawyers, the tardiness of the charges also fatally undermines the case.

Federal law generally requires that prosecutors file charges within five years of the alleged crime. But the Internal Security Act of 1950 made an exception for Section 793, saying "an indictment for any violation" of that provision "may be found at any time within ten years next after such violation shall have been committed."

The charges against Comey "should be dismissed as time barred," his lawyers argue: "Section 19 of the Internal Security Act gives the government an extended ten-year limitations period in which to charge Section 793 offenses. But as Section 19 unambiguously states, the government may invoke that extended period only by obtaining a grand jury indictment. A criminal information—which the government can issue unilaterally without grand jury involvement—does not suffice. Because the default five-year statute of limitations for federal felonies has long since elapsed on the alleged offenses, and the government's information does not meet the express statutory requirement for an extended ten-year limitations period, the information is untimely and must be dismissed."

Whichever side prevails on that issue, no one should have any illusions that the Justice Department is pursuing the mission suggested by its name. "It remains unclear what [McFadden] will do with the matter and whether DOJ will even be able to secure an indictment—as required by the Constitution," Cato Institute legal fellow Mike Fox says in an emailed press release. "Should the matter proceed, it is unequivocally clear that this case is a vindictive prosecution—a classic case of lawfare by a weaponized Justice Department."

The post The Justice Department's 3rd Attempt To Imprison James Comey Stinks of Trump's Desperation for Revenge appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Alaska’s Democratic Senate nominee, Mary Peltola, asked a federal judge to dismiss the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit over her state’s Senate election, prompting a judge to expedite the case. The lawsuit filed by the department last week claimed that the presence of a candidate with the same name as incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R)…

The Trump administration is attempting to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey for what it calls disclosing classified information, employing the unusual maneuver of bypassing a grand jury.

Alaska's U.S. Senate race features four candidates. Two are named Dan Sullivan: the Republican incumbent, and a political neophyte.

Republicans say the presence of two Dan Sullivans on the ballot is an illegal act of election interference. The federal government is now suing to keep Alaska from certifying the election results, but only if their guy loses.

"One of the biggest election scandals in history has been the Democrats' installation of a fake Dan Sullivan (not the US Senator) to deceive voters in Alaska," White House advisor Stephen Miller wrote on X. President Donald Trump called it "a disgrace."

"Democrats pulled a dirty trick by enlisting a decoy, Daniel J. Sullivan, to run against Republican Alaska Sen. Dan S. Sullivan," The Wall Street Journal editorialized. "Please spare us the lectures about election interference."

Last week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued the state of Alaska and its election authorities.

"Should Alaska certify any electoral results tainted by the inclusion on the
ballot of Daniel J. Sullivan," the filing warns, "the State and its officers will fail in its obligation to protect the integrity of its election. The United States accordingly brings this lawsuit to protect the integrity of the 2026 Senate election in Alaska."

Alaska uses a ranked choice ballot, in which voters are given four candidates and rank each one in order of preference. Along with the Sullivans, the candidates are Mary Peltola, a Democrat who is polling narrowly ahead, and Gerald Heikes.

The Justice Department lawsuit says Republican voters would be too confused by the presence of two Dan Sullivans to properly fill out their ballot: "Some supporters of Senator Sullivan likely will inadvertently vote for Daniel J. Sullivan. Other supporters of Senator Sullivan likely will be confused as to how to rank the three Republican candidates as to defeat Peltola."

Given this, "there is a substantial likelihood that a certification of the election will reflect an electoral process that lacked integrity," the lawsuit proclaims. "To guard against this danger, it is vital that [Alaska] not certify any election result" in which "(1) Senator Sullivan does not win the election; and (2) had all votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan been cast instead for Senator Sullivan and Alaska's rank-choice process played out accordingly, Senator Sullivan would have won the election."

In other words, the state of Alaska should only certify the election if Sullivan wins; if Peltola wins, but it's close, then that could suggest it "lacked integrity," and the state must instead conduct "an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan."

The lawsuit has a number of problems. First and foremost, it's completely inappropriate to treat an election as fair only if your candidate wins, even if it is what Trump believes.

It's also too late to bring an action of this kind: The state elections division decided in June to bar Daniel J. Sullivan from the ballot, but a state superior court reversed and the Alaska Supreme Court upheld the reversal before the end of that month.

And yet the feds waited until less than two weeks before Election Day—when ballots have been printed and tens of thousands of Alaskans have already voted—to bring this suit.

If the Justice Department was truly concerned about voter confusion, it should have brought a lawsuit months ago. But even then, it's not clear what it could have done: "DOJ has no power to decide which candidates can appear on the ballot," writes UCLA School of Law professor Richard L. Hasen.

Besides, it's not illegal to mislead or even outright lie to voters. "If 'voter confusion' were a legitimate reason to overturn election results, that would imperil a great many election winners, as voter ignorance—and exploitation thereof by candidates—is a widespread and longstanding problem," writes George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin.

It does seem more likely than not that Daniel J. Sullivan is indeed running just to pull votes from the senator with the same name.

But as I pointed out earlier this month, the ranked-choice ballot itself can take care of this problem: Republican voters who wish to reelect Sullivan can simply rank both Dan Sullivans first and second; if and when Daniel J. Sullivan fails to capture more than 50 percent of all votes, he will be eliminated, and his votes will transfer to all their second choices.

The ballot itself makes it clear which Sullivan is which: The sitting senator is labeled as both Registered Republican and incumbent.

Despite Miller's claim that letting two Dan Sullivans on the ballot "reveals pure contempt for voters," it's the objecting Republicans who appear to lack faith in their voters.

"People are totally confused," Trump told reporters. "A lot of people don't know what 'incumbent' means."

When CNN's Dana Bash asked Attorney General Todd Blanche what crime is being alleged, he replied that "it depends." He elaborated: "There could be a crime, but the real wrong here is that Alaskans are going to be confused and will not have their vote heard."

This isn't even Alaska's most complicated election in recent memory. In 2010, after Sen. Lisa Murkowski lost the Republican primary to Joe Miller, she announced that she would still run as a write-in candidate—requiring voters to not just know about her ahead of time but to add her name by hand.

Improbably, Murkowski prevailed, defeating Miller by more than 10,000 votes.

If Trump, Blanche, Miller, and others are truly concerned that the ballot will be too confusing for Alaska Republicans, they could expend some energy showing them how to use the ranked choice ballot.

In fact, Sullivan has done just that, posting a video on X explaining how to rank all candidates except Peltola.

What they can't do is force a state to reject the results if their guy loses.

"Alaskans don't need any help voting for their preferred candidates, and the State of Alaska has already handled this by clearly distinguishing the candidates on this year's ballot," Murkowski wrote on X. "The Department of Justice should never have filed this lawsuit."

"I believe that this lawsuit is abusive in its intentions and borders on frivolous in its arguments, and that it is destined for defeat in the courts should it reach the merits," Cato Institute senior fellow Walter Olson noted in a statement. "This lawsuit is an assault on the constitutional design by which states, not the federal government, run elections. The issue in question is one for the Alaska Supreme Court to decide under Alaska law, and the Alaska court did just that."

The post Justice Department Targets Alaska Senate Election appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Blanche told CNN's "State of the Union" that President Donald Trump, who said Friday that he was "the one that said do it," is not trying to overturn state election results "in any way, shape or form" on the cusp of the Nov. 3 election.

Nonprofit watchdog group Common Cause, represented by attorneys from American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), has filed a motion to intervene in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit over Alaska’s Senate election. The DOJ filed a lawsuit Thursday claiming the presence of a candidate with the same name as incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) could give…

The letters are the latest escalation in a legal battle between California and President Donald Trump's Department of Justice, which has recently focused on the state in its efforts to root out noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday sent letters to election officials in every California county asking that they identify potential noncitizens on their voter rolls, according to several reports.  The letter warned local officials would “risk significant federal scrutiny” if they failed to comply with this request, The New York Times reported, citing a…

The agency regularly monitors polling places. But this year's effort on Nov. 3 will more than double the number of federal monitors deployed during the 2022 midterms.

Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) said Friday he plans to introduce a resolution to expel Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) if a federal investigation finds she broke the law. The Florida Republican is a conservative firebrand sometimes known for his controversial comments, including describing Omar as a “terrorist” in 2025, a comment House Democrats condemned as racist. …

The lawsuit invokes voter confusion over two candidates named Dan Sullivan, but its narrow conditions raise questions about the administration’s broader intentions

Minnesota officials said the Department of Justice (DOJ) has stopped sharing evidence related to the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by immigration officers earlier this year.  Minnesota officials said in a court filing reviewed by The Associated Press that the federal government stopped sharing evidence related to the two shooting deaths during President…

The lawsuit centers on one of the president's longstanding complaints in the Senate race — the presence of a second candidate named Dan Sullivan who Republicans fear could siphon away votes from the incumbent in what's likely to be a photo-finish contest with Democrat Mary Peltola.

With the midterm elections less than two weeks away, a new legal battle is raising questions about the federal government's role in policing who is eligible to vote. A federal judge in California has blocked a Department of Homeland Security effort to identify noncitizens on voter rolls. White House correspondent Liz Landers reports.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Monday that it will investigate living conditions inside the Washington, D.C. Jail following years of reports of filth, medical neglect, and brutality. 

The D.C. Jail, which holds all pretrial detainees and misdemeanor offenders in the District of Columbia, was the subject of an unflattering 2016 Reason cover story, "How Not to Build a Jail," describing how wretched conditions had persisted there for more than a century. Lawsuits, audits, and media investigations have all documented persistent civil rights problems. The jail gained additional infamy for holding pretrial detainees and convicted defendants who were prosecuted for their role in the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol Building. 

The Justice Department received numerous allegations of excessive force, inadequate medical care, unsanitary living conditions, and malnutrition inside the jail, according to a department press release. The investigation will determine if D.C.'s Department of Corrections has a pattern or practice of violating prisoners' constitutional rights.

"The Constitution protects the rights of every incarcerated American, including those held in custody in our nation's capital," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a DOJ press release. "We are committed to upholding our federal civil rights laws so that no inmate is confined in unconstitutional conditions or subject to unconstitutional mistreatment at the District of Columbia Department of Corrections."

Last week, six current and former D.C. Jail inmates filed a class-action lawsuit alleging they found dead mice and cockroaches in their food.

Five different D.C. Jail inmates filed another lawsuit in September alleging guards failed to stop or adequately respond to a man in the jail's mental health unit from starting an electrical fire.

In 2021, the U.S. Marshals Service transferred roughly 400 inmates out of the D.C. Jail after a surprise inspection reported unacceptable living conditions, including guards withholding water and food from inmates as punishment.

A week before that inspection, a federal judge held the D.C. Department of Corrections in contempt for repeatedly failing to turn over the medical records of a January 6 defendant who had been waiting for months for a scheduled wrist surgery. 

The antiquated jail, opened in the 1970s, has numerous structural problems, but plans to replace it have stalled. In the meantime, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division will write a report to add to the top of the pile.

The post Justice Department Will Investigate Conditions at D.C. Jail After Years of Reports of Filth and Neglect appeared first on Reason Magazine.