Great article explains how DOJ attny Pilger who 'resigned' had been a gatekeeper preventing cases from going forward for years re election fraud.
Pay No Attention to the Drama Queen at DOJ who Resigned After AG Barr Authorized Fraud Investigations
On Monday afternoon the Department of Justice put out a statement confirming that Attorney General William Barr had authorized federal prosecutors and investigators to initiate federal criminal investigations into “substantial allegations” of vote fraud in the Presidential election.
The whinging and hand-wringing on the left began immediately, with claims that Barr was again using the Justice Department as a weapon against President Trump’s political opponents, and there is no evidence of vote fraud that warrants any federal investigations.
Then, to cap things off, late in the day on Monday the left-wing press — led by the NYT I believe — shrieked that the Director of the DOJ’s Election Crimes Branch had resigned in protest following the announcement by AG Barr. That individual’s name is Richard Pilger, who is a “career” official with the Department of Justice.
But let’s draw back the curtain a bit more so everyone can understand what is happening here behind the scenes.
“Federal prosecutor” is a generic term that covers two groups of DOJ lawyers — Assistant United States Attorneys who work in 94 US Attorneys’ Offices around the country, and DOJ Trial Attorneys who work out of DOJ Headquarters in Washington, D.C., in the DOJ Criminal Division. Within the Criminal Division, there is the “Public Integrity Section” which handles most cases involving public office holders or other government officials. Within the Public Integrity Section is the Election Crimes Branch.
The DOJ Trial Attorneys view themselves as “subject matter specialists” — experts on specific areas of law within the jurisdiction of their specific section. Among the Sections, Public Integrity was far and away the leader in the “This is our subject matter specialty so stay the hell out of what we do” attitude. It was neck-and-neck between them and Civil Rights, but Civil Rights trial attorneys were a source of amusement for AUSAs because they were clueless about how to actually try a case in a courtroom. Public Integrity was better — at least a little bit better.
Someone in the Public Integrity Election Crimes Branch got the brilliant idea in 2006 that they should write a manual on investigating and prosecuting various types of election-related crimes.
What they produced was a 345-page monstrosity, the most useful function of which was as a doorstop.
When Richard Pilger took over as Director of the Branch, he decided that the manual needed updating. So under his guidance it was updated and edited down some in 2017 — now it’s only 296 pages long.
I’ve never brought myself to read the thing, but in merely “perusing” it, I noticed that about 900 times in the course of 300 pages the Election Crimes Branch tells the AUSAs that they must consult with and obtain approval from Election Crimes Branch before an AUSA or FBI Agent can do anything operationally in response to an allegation that an election-related crime might have taken place. Without their approval, there would be no investigation.
What happened today, and what prompted Pilger to “quit” was that AG Barr said to US Attorneys – “If you have substantial allegations of election fraud in your district, you have authority to investigate that.” Basically, Barr cut Pilger and Election Crimes Branch out of the picture as “gatekeepers” to starting investigations in places like Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Atlanta.
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