The charges intensified the administration’s efforts to go after the law enforcement and intelligence personnel who cast doubt on unsubstantiated claims that Joseph R. Biden Jr. engaged in corrupt dealings in Ukraine.

© Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Election officials say they worry the administration could use its own unsubstantiated claims to contest the vote in November.

© Doug Mills/The New York Times

Virginia Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas is generally known to national audiences as the Democratic leader who spearheaded a redistricting effort in the commonwealth. This week, however, she made headlines for a very different reason. The Associated Press reported:

Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, one of the state’s most powerful Democrats, was charged on Thursday in connection with what federal authorities alleged was a role leading a criminal enterprise that acquired and distributed large quantities of marijuana and laundered the proceeds.

An indictment unsealed on Thursday charged Lucas and six other defendants, including several of her relatives, the Department of Justice said in a statement ahead of a scheduled news conference. Lucas surrendered, a Justice Department spokesperson said.

The charges come roughly five months after the FBI searched Lucas’ office and a cannabis shop in which she invested.

“I grew up under Jim Crow,” Lucas said in a statement. “I’ve seen what happens when people in power try to silence those who stand up to them. I spent my life fighting back, and I’m not stopping now.”

Time will tell what, if anything, comes of this case. What’s more, I’ll concede that it is entirely possible that investigators have worked in good faith as part of a responsible law enforcement operation, and that there’s no reason to question the legitimacy of the probe or the motivations of those behind it. But while I don’t know whether the case against Lucas has merit, I do know that the hyperpartisan leaders of the Justice Department and the FBI have failed to earn the benefit of the doubt.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but this is why we don’t politicize federal law enforcement. Because even if the underlying case is legitimate, it’s impossible to avoid the larger context and the degree to which this looks like a retaliatory investigation against a Democrat, launched by a weaponized department known for its retaliatory investigations against Democrats, with less than two weeks remaining in a critical election cycle.

There have simply been too many abuses, launched too frequently, against too many Trump targets, even as other corruption cases against White House allies have been cast aside.

That Fox News, an outlet aligned with Republican politics, apparently received a heads-up about the FBI’s operation in May and was able to air live footage of the search further reinforces concerns that this case is political.

But perhaps most notable of all is the timing. “While federal officials have historically avoided taking public steps in politically fraught cases ahead of elections,” a Washington Post report added, “the case against Lucas is the second prominent action the administration has taken against a Democratic critic of Trump in the past 10 days.”

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Trump’s DOJ prosecutes key Virginia Democrat, generating difficult questions appeared first on MS NOW.

For nearly two years, Donald Trump’s Justice Department has been unusually aggressive in pursuing the White House’s political opponents. Now, however, it appears that a presidential ally is the one facing scrutiny from federal law enforcement.

MS NOW has confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general has sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department over allegations that Corey Lewandowski profited from his role at DHS.

A Lewandowski spokesperson issued a statement Thursday saying that the former DHS official hadn’t been contacted by the Justice Department, adding that Lewandowski “denies any wrongdoing when he was proudly serving his country in a voluntary capacity.”

For those who would benefit from a refresher on Lewandowski, around this time 10 years ago, it appeared that his role as a member of Trump’s team had run its course. The Republican operative was Trump’s campaign manager for several months in 2016, but after clashing with his colleagues and facing a criminal charge after a confrontation with a reporter, the future president ousted Lewandowski from his political operation.

Although it seemed implausible, the operative gradually worked his way back into Trump’s good graces, and when the president returned to power after the 2024 election, Lewandowski received a striking reward: Trump tapped him to serve as a “special government employee” to help run the Department of Homeland Security alongside then-Secretary Kristi Noem.

Predictably, Lewandowski’s tenure proved controversial — in part because of the policy agenda he championed; in part because he wanted to carry a gun (for reasons that were never fully explained), to the alarm of DHS officials; and in part because of the nature of his close relationship with Noem.

But it’s the corruption allegations that are of particular and ongoing significance.

In July, for example, The Wall Street Journal reported that federal investigators found evidence that Lewandowski “may have been involved in improperly awarding government contracts” during his time at DHS. Last month, the Journal published a separate report, alleging that the operative used his role in the department to pursue side deals for himself with officials in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. (Lewandowski slammed the reporting as “fiction.”)

Time will tell what, if anything, comes of the inquiry, though if it reaches a more serious stage, it will create a difficult test for the president and his political operation.

Indeed, if Trump’s former campaign manager faces a possible federal criminal indictment, it’s an open question as to whether the president will intervene and derail the case, or whether he’ll add Lewandowski to his list of close allies whom he pretends not to know.

Complicating matters further, it was just last week when Trump sat down with Newsmax for a lengthy interview, and when the discussion turned to pardons, the Republican said, “I can tell you this, I don’t want to see my people go through — because these people are lunatics on the, on the left — I don’t want to see people that work for me go through years of nonsense, hire lawyers and everything else, all for nothing.”

This came a few weeks after Trump also told Time magazine that he’s prepared to issue pardons to members of his administration. Watch this space.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Corey Lewandowski faces Justice Department inquiry, creating key test for Team Trump appeared first on MS NOW.