New Virginia AG Jason Miyares Fires Two Virginia University Lawyers, One of Them Currently Serving as... Head Investigator of the January 6 Committee

Updates:

68 This guy's awesome.

Heard him a week or two ago on Glenn Beck's radio show; he's also eliminating and banning any state contracts that involve Blackrock as well as any financial institutions that employ those ESG (Environmental, Social, Governmental) initiatives -- the Marxist West's version of Chinese Social Credit scoring and control ... but mostly control.
Posted by: ShainS -- A faculty lounge, if you can keep it.

Christopher F. Rufo @realchrisrufo

BREAKING: Glenn Youngkin has opened an anonymous tip line for parents to report schools for teaching critical race theory in violation of his executive order. Email: helpeducation@governor.virginia.gov.

This guy's clearing house.

Now this isn't as bold as it seems. Apparently the in-house counsel at the state's universities is appointed by the AG, and as the previous ones were appointed by leftwing blackface enthusiast Mark Herring, of course Miyares can, and should, replace them with counsel he prefers.

I do like getting rid of this very political operator Tim Heaphy first.

Virginia's new Republican attorney general has fired lawyers for two large public universities, his office said, marking more significant changes by Jason Miyares while ascending to his new job.

Tim Heaphy, counsel for the University of Virginia, and George Mason University counsel Brian Walther have been let go, Miyares spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita told The Washington Post. School counsel within Virginia's public colleges and universities are appointed by the attorney general.

Heaphy, who with UVA also confirmed his removal, worked at the school for about three years. He was on leave from the job to work as the top investigator for the U.S. House of Representatives panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, the newspaper said.

This is the Washington Times, but they're picking up an article from the AP. Still, they should have edited the AP's stupid Media Faction insistence on calling the January 6th incident the "insurrection."

The media is all rotten.

LaCivita said Heaphy's firing had nothing to do with that investigative role. Rather, she said in a statement, Heaphy was a "controversial" hire and Miyares' Democratic predecessor, Mark Herring, had "excluded many qualified internal candidates when he brought in this particular university counsel."

"Our decision was made after reviewing the legal decisions made over the last couple of years," LaCivita said. "The Attorney General wants the university counsel to return to giving legal advice based on law, and not the philosophy of a university. We plan to look internally first for the next lead counsel."

I don't know what "the philosophy of the university" means. I imagine it has something to do with CRT, free expression, or affirmative action admissions -- some issues where the law suggest the university must not do something, but where the "philosophy of the university" says that they want to anyway, and Heaphy has been just telling them "Then go with your heart!"

LaCivita didn't say if Miyares would continue firing all of the Democrat lawyers. One hopes.

By the way, Heaphy had previously conducted an "indepedent investigation" of the "Unite the Right" rally, apparently for the City of Charlottesville.

Heaphy made this announcement when he signed on to be Adam Schiff's shyster:

"Like all Americans, I watched the events of Jan. 6 at the Capitol with surprise and disappointment," he said in a statement. "My role as Chief Investigative Counsel to the Select Committee gives me an opportunity to help find out what led to those events and what we need to do to ensure they do not recur. I thank Attorney General Mark Herring and President Jim Ryan for giving me the opportunity to take a leave of absence from my current role as University Counsel to assume this responsibility. I am fortunate that I can take on this temporary assignment with the assurance of a return to a job and a place that I love."

Herring granted the leave of absence but Miyares didn't. So... bye.

Speaking of that lawless January 6 investigation, Glenn Greenwald writes:

In its ongoing attempt to investigate and gather information about private U.S. citizens, the Congressional 1/6 Committee is claiming virtually absolute powers that not even the FBI or other law enforcement agencies enjoy. Indeed, lawyers for the committee have been explicitly arguing that nothing proscribes or limits their authority to obtain data regarding whichever citizens they target and, even more radically, that the checks imposed on the FBI (such as the requirement to obtain judicial authorization for secret subpoenas) do not apply to the committee.

As we have previously reported and as civil liberties groups have warned, there are serious constitutional doubts about the existence of the committee itself. Under the Constitution and McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases interpreting it, the power to investigate crimes lies with the executive branch, supervised by the judiciary, and not with Congress. Congress does have the power to conduct investigations, but that power is limited to two narrow categories: 1) when doing so is designed to assist in its law-making duties (e.g., directing executives of oil companies to testify when considering new environmental laws) and 2) in order to exert oversight over the executive branch.

What Congress is barred from doing, as two McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases ruled, is exactly what the 1/6 committee is now doing: conducting a separate, parallel criminal investigation in order to uncover political crimes committed by private citizens. Such powers are dangerous precisely because Congress's investigative powers are not subject to the same safeguards as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. And just as was true of the 1950s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that prompted those Supreme Court rulings, the 1/6 committee is not confining its invasive investigative activities to executive branch officials or even citizens who engaged in violence or other illegality on January 6, but instead is investigating anyone and everyone who exercised their Constitutional rights to express views about and organize protests over their belief that the 2020 presidential election contained fraud. Indeed, the committee's initial targets appear to be taken from the list of those who applied for protest permits in Washington: a perfectly legal, indeed constitutionally protected, act.

This abuse of power is not merely abstract. The Congressional 1/6 Committee has been secretly obtaining private information about American citizens en masse: telephone records, email logs, internet and browsing history, and banking transactions. And it has done so without any limitations or safeguards: no judicial oversight, no need for warrants, no legal limitations of any kind.

Although I agree with the spirit of Greenwald's rhetoric here, I have to say that he's mostly writing about what he wishes the law were than what it actually is.

Congress' power to investigate is nowhere named in the Constitution, but it is thought (or claimed) to exist because it would be needed to carry out two functions that are noted, its power to create laws, and its powers to provide oversight to the executive branch of government. As he says, then, its power to investigate -- assuming it exists in the first place -- must be confined to those two objects. It has no general right to investigate. It is not a Legislative Grand Jury.

But, that said, as a practical matter, Congress can frame any abusive investigation by claiming that maybe their probe will turn up information that may assist it in writing a new law. Courts have been very deferential to Congress in these matters. See this link for a general digest.

Courts have been particularly deferential to Congress' implied power to investigate in cases of... claims of sedition.

Although Sinclair and McGrain involved inquiries into the activities and dealings of private persons, these activities and dealings were in connection with property belonging to the United States Government, so that it could hardly be said that the inquiries concerned the merely personal or private affairs of any individual. But, where the business, and the conduct of individuals are subject to congressional regulation, there exists the power of inquiry, and in practice the areas of any individual's life immune from inquiry are probably fairly limited. "In the decade following World War II, there appeared a new kind of congressional inquiry unknown in prior periods of American history. Principally this was the result of the various investigations into the threat of subversion of the United States Government, but other subjects of congressional interest also contributed to the changed scene. This new phase of legislative inquiry involved a broad-scale intrusion into the lives and affairs of private citizens." Because Congress clearly has the power to legislate to protect the nation and its citizens from subversion, espionage, and sedition, it also has the power to inquire into the existence of the dangers of domestic or foreign-based subversive activities in many areas of American life, including education, labor and industry, and political activity.

...

It is difficult in fact to conceive of areas into which congressional inquiry might not be carried, which is not the same, of course, as saying that the exercise of the power is unlimited.

One limitation on the power of inquiry that the cases have discussed concerns the contention that congressional investigations often have no legislative purpose but rather are aimed at achieving results through "exposure" of disapproved persons and activities: "We have no doubt," wrote Chief Justice Warren, "that there is no congressional power to expose for the sake of exposure."

That's kind of saying "We assume there's an outer edge to the universe. Somewhere. Maybe."

Although some Justices, always in dissent, have attempted to assert limitations in practice based upon this concept, the majority of Justices have adhered to the traditional precept that courts will not inquire into legislators' motives but will look only to the question of power. "So long as Congress acts in pursuance of its constitutional power, the Judiciary lacks authority to intervene on the basis of the motives which spurred the exercise of that power."

Ah, I agree with him that we're using McCarthy-era commie-hunting precedents -- which I bet no leftwinger would claim are still valid in any other context -- to uphold the validity of this kangaroo court, and that sure seems like it should be out-of-bounds, but I don't think it would be found to be such.

I also have observed the behavior of judges ruling on the political prisoners of January 6, and they seem, to a man -- including the Republican appointees -- to be acting as the Praetors of the Deep State, ruthlessly meting out cruel and unusual punishments to any possible challengers to the order that signs their checks.

They all seem to be showing signs of serious, personal conflict of interest, where the conflict of interest is "I'm afraid that someone is going to disrupt my phony-baloney job, and I'm eager to destroy these people to make sure no one else ever even thinks about protesting near me again."

Exit Question: Muh, muh, muh...

MUH NORMZZZZ....!

posted by Ace at 03:39 PM

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