At the DOJ You Got to Pay the Man
Everything...EVERYTHING is a Pay Off. This is Not What Transparency in Government is About
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This ain’t justice.
It’s “Pay the Man.”
Before you leave this world you gotta pay the man - That’s what David Lindley told us. “Everybody in the whole wide world gotta pay the man.”
“Of the senators in the fancy houses
He’s a friend of Babylon
Got a wife and a dog and a cadillac
And people on the run
Got his ways and means and all he needs
To keep him satisfied
But before he leaves this world
He’s got to pay the man”
Now, apparently, to get any amount of justice, you gotta put $50,000 in a paper bag and pay the DOJ. I guess Tom Homan is running short of cash.
In order to find out what the FBI found at Mar-a-Lago in that infamous search where Trump said he had no records. Then said the FBI planted them. Then said whatever was there was no longer classified because of his Vulcan mind meld capabilities…
Along with the James Madison Project, I filed suit against the government to get the information Trump said wasn’t classified. I want the information to present to the public.
But today we learned the DOJ is urging the James Madison Project and me to come up with $50,000 if a court decides to accelerate the lawsuit we’ve brought against the government to release the information stored at Mar-a-Lago.
The DOJ lawyers’ request for the $50,000 bond came in a Washington federal court filing. The bond could even be forfeited if a higher court decides our request for expedited service should be denied.
So, it’s quite simply nothing but a pay-to-play move. It’s government by Gambino.
“If I am bigger than you, stronger than you, I’ll eat you…or I’ll f*k you and then eat you” - Conrad Harrigan, “Mobland”
As Mark Zaid of the James Madison Project explained:
Never in over thirty years of law practice have I seen the government so blatantly seek to intimidate FOIA requesters by threatening tens of thousands of dollars of fees, merely because we sought our statutory legal rights to expedite processing of documents.
This case seeks production of the documents retrieved by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago that were said to be classified but President Trump, and his allies say are not. One must question what threat we pose by simply requesting expedited processing of these records.
Could it be they are actually classified and President Trump did violate the law?
The justice-stifling request comes from an executive memorandum Trump issued in March, directing DOJ to ask judges to require financial bonds from those who sue the government to seek relief at the early stages of a case.
Hell, all we want is the information Trump says isn’t classified and doesn’t amount to much.
“This is nothing short of a $50,000 shakedown demand merely to expedite release of the ‘definitely not classified’ records that Mr. Trump concealed from the Government at Mar-a-Lago,” attorney Brad Moss said.
“This is not 1920s Chicago and Mr. Trump is not Al Capone. We will not accede to this demand and we will contest it vigorously in court.”
U.S. District Judge Loren Alikhan, a Biden appointee, will consider whether to expedite disclosure of the Mar-a-Lago files and how much money, if any, we’ll have to come up with to speed up the request for information.
As of now, Trump hasn’t released anything, but late Friday afternoon he did say he wanted to release all the files on…no, not Jeffrey Epstein, are you, kidding??
Well, we can rest easy, I suppose. I’m sure Mar-a-Lago and the Jeffrey Epstein files are next.
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Trump has probably watched the Godfather movies and the Sopranos far too often and thinks he has to behave like the mob bosses in these roles as president. It fits in well with his history as a con artist and also with his belief that political corruption and pay to play should be normal features of government.