The Narrow Scope of Republican Justice

Trump's name is removed from a Panama hotel after
his company was accused of mismanagement  

Increasingly, it seems clear that the scope of "justice" as defined by the Republican Party that now controls both the White House and both chambers of Congress, is remarkably limited to targeting those seen by some conservatives as "others".

The traditional role of the Department of Justice, as the nation's top independent legal authority, has been usurped to function as a de facto enforcer of the right-wing ideology that defines the Trump administration.

While former top White House adviser Steve Bannon was over in Paris on Saturday extolling members of France's far right political party the National Front to embrace their racism and xenophobic views, here in the U.S., rampant violations of protocol, ethics, laws and morality by the White House go all but ignored by the racist perjurer masquerading as attorney general, Jeff Sessions.

Despite a court ruling in Panama last week in favor of a majority investor in the Trump Panama City hotel named Orestes Fintiklis, who filed suit to oust the Trump Organization because of serious lapses in management of the property, you won't find Sessions directing Department of Justice resources towards investigating any of Trump's numerous violations of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution - which expressly forbids those holding office from receiving "profit", "benefit" or "advantage of any kind" from the title of his or her elected office.

After directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to launch Operation Keep Safe, yet another round of crack-of-dawn anti-immigrant arrests in northern California two weeks ago, last Wednesday Sessions announced the DOJ was suing the state of California over three state laws intended to protect immigrant's rights.

As NBC News justice correspondent Pete Williams reported last Tuesday, Sessions' lawsuit targets SB-54, AB-450 and AB-103, three laws recently passed by the California legislature intended to put into place protections that would limit the federal government's ability to arrest undocumented immigrants at their place of employment, or target them in court or upon release from jail.
   

Part of California's Adelanto Detention Facility
owned and run by the GEO Group 

According to Williams, Sessions is even going after state law AB-103, "which requires the state to inspect detention facilities where federal authorities are holding immigrants who face deportation." 
 
Just consider that last one for a moment.

Jeff Sessions is suing California for passing a law that would mandate state inspections of federal facilities where deportees are being held.

Facilities like the Adelanto Detention Facility (pictured above), a privately-operated facility located in a remote desert region of San Bernardino County, California 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles with a capacity of about 2,000 male and female detainees.

As journalist Paloma Esquivel reported in an LA Times article in August, 2017, the Adelanto facility,  has gained notoriety for a series of suicides, hunger strikes and deaths of detainees while in custody since it first opened in 2011.

Deaths like that of Raul Ernesto Morales-Ramos back in 2015.

As Esquivel's LA Times piece notes, in the months leading up to his death, in one of the two written  complaints Ramos submitted to Adelanto officials, he told them:

"To who receives this, I am letting you know that I am very sick and they don't want to care for me. The nurse gave me ibuprofen, and that only alleviates me for a few hours. Let me know if you can help me, I only need medial attention."

GEO Group CEO George Foley

A medical report released after Ramos' death in detention noted that he had an abdominal mass which had been present for months - as Esquivel observed, a doctor who examined him wrote that it was "the largest she has ever seen in her practice."

As journalist Mirren Gidda reported in an article for Newsweek, two days after then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced that Department of Justice would begin scaling back federal use of private for-profit prisons on August 17, 2016, a subsidiary of the GEO Group donated $100,000 to Rebuilding America Now - a pro-Trump Political Action Committee.

A month later GEO gave $200,000 to another Republican PAC (the Senate Leadership Fund) and on November 1st, just days before the 2016 presidential election, GEO gave another $125,000 to the pro-Trump PAC.

So it's not surprising why Attorney General Jeff Sessions is suing California for passing a law mandating state inspections of federal facilities like Adelanto - shedding light on GEO Group's controversial record of management of juvenile and adult prison facilities across the U.S. is certainly not in the interest of the Trump administration.

Especially considering that as a U.S. Senator Sessions was not only one of the leading anti-immigration advocates on Capitol Hill, he also opposed bipartisan legislation to reduce mass incarceration in American prisons.

And as Trump's attorney general he's advocated ramping up the incarceration of undocumented immigrants as well as non-violent drug offenders since day one.

Given the fallout from media coverage of the rampant ongoing chaos of the White House following the recent resignations of Communications Director Hope Hicks and Economic Adviser Gary Cohn, it hardly comes as a surprise that Sessions would initiate a lawsuit against the state of California for its efforts to protect the rights of undocumented immigrants.

Republicans spent most of former President Obama's two terms in office whining about overreach by "Big Government", so the idea of a Republican attorney general expanding federal authority to try and trample individual state efforts to protect their immigrant populations represents a pretty remarkable change of government philosophy for both Sessions and the Republican Party.

In fact it's a total 180 degree turn that reveals that Republicans like Big Government when it suits their own ideological or financial needs and wants.

Spencer Hogue and Evelyn and Albert Turner, also
known as "The Marion Three"

Historically, when it came to the Republican Party using race as a wedge issue to expand its support among white working-class voters in the 60's, 70's and 80's, "States Rights" was the clarion call-codeword  used to champion the rights of individual states to oppose federally-mandated laws on school desegregation, voting rights and the enforcement of civil rights.

The Confederacy rallied behind "States Rights" as the right of southern states to keep the institution of slavery intact.

While Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (named after Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard) was born and raised in a rabidly pro-States Rights segregated Alabama, he demonstrated a willingness to use the power of the federal government to reflect his own racist ideology early in his professional career.

When he was serving as the U.S. attorney for the Office of the Southern District of Alabama in 1985, Sessions decided to try and prosecute three well-known and respected local civil rights activists, Albert Turner, his wife Evelyn Turner and Spencer Hogue, Jr. (pictured above) for voter fraud.

The Turners and Hogue, who became known as the "The Marion Three", had worked doggedly to help poor African-Americans in rural Perry County, Alabama register to vote and participate in the voting process in a county in which blacks were the numerical majority.

As Scott Zamost, Drew Griffin and Curt Devine reported in an article for CNN.com, Albert Turner had worked as an aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and marched alongside the civil rights icon in the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965 in support of voting rights.

Turner formed the Perry County Civic League to help consolidate and expand black representation in local politics, and Sessions tried to prosecute him, his wife and Hogue on 29 separate charges of tampering with voting ballots during the 1984 Democratic presidential primary.

Then-U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions during 1986 Senate
hearings for his failed nomination to the federal bench

While a grand jury indicted The Marion Three, they were eventually found not guilty and acquitted of all charges in a highly-publicized case that was widely seen as "racially motivated."

Especially considering the institutional segregation and voter oppression which had left blacks in Perry County marginalized in terms of political representation and county services for years.

The Marion Three case exposed Sessions' views on race and eventually helped to sink his nomination to be a federal judge.

His highly-publicized Senate hearings in 1986 included testimony from four different lawyers who'd worked with Sessions in the Office of the Southern District of Alabama - all four testified about a variety of different comments Sessions had made in DOJ offices that were seen as racist and demonstrated his personal contempt for civil rights and organizations like the NAACP.

Coretta Scott King famously penned an open letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee urging Sessions's nomination to the federal bench be denied because of his having used the power of his office to "intimidate and frighten elderly black voters."

While he eventually withdrew his nomination to be a federal judge, he was later elected State Attorney General of Alabama in 1995 where he championed a state school funding model that disproportionally underfunded majority-African-American schools - a model which was later found to be unconstitutional.

Anyway that's who Jeff Sessions is.

ICE agents escorting an immigrant to plane

His announcement of a lawsuit against the state of California last week to try and attack legitimate efforts to protect immigrants within their borders is simply a reflection of the overt racial bias he demonstrated in his attempts to prosecute The Marion Three for voter fraud back in 1984.

As much as Trump demeans him publicly, including referring to him as "Mr. Magoo" recently, Jeff Sessions is exactly what the Trump administration ordered.

An attorney general whose archaic views on immigrants, people of color and mass incarceration are informed by his own personal bigotry.

One who is willing to use the power of the Department of Justice as a tool to enforce the "otherism" that lies at the heart of chaotic right-wing ideology of the Trump administration - and twist the DOJ's mission to enable it to function like a quasi-Gestapo where immigrants are concerned.

It's a reflection of the narrow scope of justice as interpreted by the Trump administration and the Republican politicians on Capitol Hill who remain silent - content to savor their precious tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, while chaos reigns in the White House.

And inside the immigrant communities they vilify.

The AG Hustle

Jeff Sessions addressing the National Organization
of Black Law Enforcement Executives in Atlanta

Now obviously a lot of people in this country, myself included, have taken Attorney General Jeff Sessions to task over the troubling allegations of racism that have dogged him ever since President Ronald Reagan nominated him to be a federal judge back in 1986.

So it was somewhat unusual to see Sessions delivering opening remarks at the annual awards luncheon of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) in Atlanta on Tuesday.

As reporter Dave Huddleston reported for local Atlanta station WSB-TV, Sessions seemed nervous.


According to Huddleston, Sessions stumbled over and mispronounced words at times, I watched a few minutes of the full address on Youtube last night, and while Sessions is not known as a particularly engaging public speaker in the style of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, his opening remarks and attempts at a bit of levity fell pretty flat.

And from a writer's standpoint it was a pretty poorly-written speech overall.

The assembled crowd of African-American law enforcement executives was visibly polite, but clearly subdued and Sessions was obviously uncomfortable - and understandably so.

Those executives were keenly aware of Trump's appearance in Long Island last Friday in front of members of the Suffolk County Police Department where he encouraged cops to hurt suspects being taken into custody like some kind of Third World authoritarian nitwit.

As their Website states, NOBLE represents more than 3,000 black law enforcement executives in the U.S. and around the world, "that represent chief executive officers and command-level law enforcement officials from federal, state, county, municipal law enforcement agencies, and criminal justice practitioners".

Statement issued by Suffolk County PD shortly
after Trump's comments last Friday

So the men and women in that room understand better than most that the implications of a sitting president of the United States endorsing the physical abuse of suspects in custody is tantamount to endorsing the unjustified use of excessive force against people of color.

And they were waiting for Jeff Sessions to address those comments and provide a measure of leadership from the Department of Justice.


But he side-stepped the issue like a ninny and it didn't sit well with that crowd.

In an interview after the event, Perry Tarrant, the National President of NOBLE, made clear where the members of NOBLE stand on Trump's deplorable comments, "We are not thugs, we are professionals." - echoing statements from a number of law enforcement agencies around the country including the Suffolk County PD.

So in his first high-profile appearance in front of a prominent group of African-American professionals, Sessions did almost nothing to counteract the widely-held perception of him as a right-wing bigot loyal to the ideals of the Old South in which he was raised.

This is after all, the same Attorney General who famously began his tenure earlier this year by announcing that under his oversight, the Department of Justice would drastically scale back its role as a watchdog of police departments where racially-biased policing and unnecessary use of deadly force against racial minorities was found to be rampant.

Remember, in a memorandum he issued back in April, Sessions ordered a federal review of scores of consent decrees signed between the DOJ and various local police departments that had been found to have been engaged in consistent patterns of biased policing based on race and ethnicity.

On the very same day of Session's appearance at the NOBLE award luncheon yesterday, Charlie Savage of the New York Times reported on an internal DOJ document indicating a new initiative focused on "investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions".

Do college completion statistics support the existence of
widespread discrimination against white students?  

Meaning that under the Trump administration the Sessions-run DOJ will now shift resources within the Division of Civil Rights towards the investigation of widespread discrimination against white students in college admissions.

Are there cases of white students facing unintended discrimination in college admissions as a result of quotas intended to ensure diverse student bodies in higher education reflective of the broader society?

Of course there are.

But to many observers, such a radical shift in the mission of the DOJ seems based less on fact and sound educational policy than on reactionary conservative ideology.

Especially given the results of a 2016 Pew Research study of college completion rates along racial and ethnic lines showing that "Whites and Asian students completed their programs at similar rates - 63% and 63.2%, respectively - while Hispanic and black students graduated at rates of 45.8% and 38%, respectively".  

And that doesn't mean that it's right or fair to the qualified individual whose college application is denied due to a policy intended to bring a measure of balance to an institution of higher learning after decades of systematic discrimination to qualified students of other races or ethnicities.

But to get back to the issue at hand, it's clear that Sessions, who'd just returned from El Salvador to meet with that nation's Attorney General on ways to combat the notorious MS-13 gang before addressing members of NOBLE on Tuesday, is using his position as the head of the Department of Justice to help jump start Trump's rocky anti-immigration efforts.

Trump's boogeymen? MS-13 gang members

Evidently Trump's recent series of bizarre tweets criticizing his own Attorney General as "weak" and "beleaguered" prodded Sessions to remember that the liar-in-chief expects the Department of Justice to function as an enforcement arm.

Not of the law, but as an enforcer of the right-wing conservative ideology that now defines White House domestic policy.

Is MS-13 is a particularly violent street gang with a nationwide membership?


Sure they are, and many individuals in communities like Long Island have fallen victim to its criminal activities, but as research by FactCheck.org shows, Trump's attempt to paint MS-13 as some kind of existential threat to national security are widely overblown.

But having seen how quickly Trump fired former-FBI Director James Comey, and more recently former Press Secretary Sean Spicer and never-actual Director of Communications Anthony Scaramucci, Sessions has been quick to start dancing in tune to White House efforts to play up the threat of MS-13 as a symbolic boogeyman.

Not for the safety of American communities (if that was the case they'd be advocating for sensible restrictions on firearms and mandatory federal background checks on all firearms purchases.)

Instead they use MS-13 to try and justify Orwellian anti-immigration laws and garner support for Trump's beloved wall - which is looking more and more like just another one of the slew of empty bogus campaign promises he used to motivate his disenfranchised base of voters.

That's really why Sessions was speaking in Atlanta in front of NOBLE on Tuesday, but his message was overshadowed by the invisible tension present in the room; which, again, stems from his legacy as a federal prosecutor, and it wasn't lost on the audience.

Spencer Hogue & Evelyn and Albert Turner

As an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama in 1985, Sessions famously filed 29 counts of voter fraud against three African-American grass roots community organizers, Albert Turner, his wife Evelyn and Spencer Hogue, Jr. - who came to be known as "The Marion Three".

In the 1960's Albert Turner had been a field organizer in rural Perry County, Alabama for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Turner marched with him in the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965 in support of voting rights - a pivotal event in the Civil Rights movement that helped lead to the passage of the Voter Rights Act of 1965.

As Evelyn Turner recalled in an interview with CNN back in January, she and her husband and associate Spencer Hogue, Jr. had been helping poor rural blacks in Marion, Alabama to register to vote for years when Session sought a grand jury indictment in federal court over 14 ballots that he claimed they had altered.

The jury found them not guilty but the case painted Sessions as a racist who had tried to use his power as a federal prosecutor to intimidate blacks at the voting booth - a dark legacy of the south that continues to this day under the guise of "voter integrity" laws passed by Republican-majority state legislators around the country.

I'd argue that his tenure as Attorney General thus far shows Sessions is really the same man today; albeit with far more reaching power.

Ever since the inauguration back in January, it's been difficult keeping up with the various categories of fallout from the White House because of the constant chaos, rampant ineptitude and jaw-dropping lack of professionalism and ethical standards.

Sessions is not a stupid man by any measure, and he could have used his speech in front of NOBLE yesterday to distance himself from Trump's endorsement of police violence against suspects in custody - but he didn't.

At the age of 71, I doubt this particular leopard has any intention, or desire to change his spots.

And any offense Sessions might have taken from Trump's dim-witted Twitter comments demeaning his tenure as Attorney General were probably just less important than the ideology he's supported all his life.

That's why he's doing the AG Hustle - he believes in the message of the music.