Harmeet Dillon: Officials Who Weaponized the Government Against Political Enemies May Face Indictments

This seems like a broadening of the scope of the criminal investigation. She's not just talking about Brennan, she's talking about going after the officials who weaponized the DOJ to prosecute MAGA supporters.

A top Justice Department lawyer is warning that federal agents and intelligence officers who weaponized their government powers for political purposes could face criminal charges under civil rights laws created to fight injustices during the Jim Crow era more than a half-century ago.

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon cautioned in an interview with Just the News that she could not discuss any specific investigations or potential suspect.

But she said recent reports that one or more grand juries were probing the weaponization of government powers against President Trump and his associates or followers might have given good reason for current and former FBI and CIA officials to hire lawyers.

"This, again, goes back to those Reconstruction Era statutes that sought to remedy the vestiges of racism, and we had some terrible incidents in our country's history of law enforcement officials conspiring to deprive African Americans of their civil rights," she said in a wide-ranging interview with the "Just the News, No Noise" television show. "And that is where some of these laws stem from."

"But they're broader than that, and so it can be a crime for government officials, either together or in conspiring with non-government officials, to violate people's civil rights," she explained. "That's also a civil violation. I've actually sued over that in California for pro-life activists. And you know, we have long-standing cases involving these issues, and so I think, you know, government officials may think, because nobody ever bothers to enforce these statutes, that they're immune, and they can do whatever they want."

"Not so, and I think that's why you're seeing some people tongue-in-cheek saying that in DC, every lawyer is being retained .... as these investigations have begun to hit the newswires," she added.

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The laws were seldom successfully used against police officers during the 1960's, but have been more commonly used against police misconduct over the last three decades, starting most notably with the infamous 1993 Rodney King case where four LAPD officers involved were captured on videotape beating King.

Remember when the DOJ made very controversial cash-money payments to Hillary Clinton's Inside Operators Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, allegedly for "invasion of privacy"?

Would it surprise you to learn that the man who authorized this $2 million in payments to Hillary's operatives is a "left-wing activist"?

EXCLUSIVE: DOJ Official Who Approved $2 Million Payout To Disgraced Russia Hoaxers Identified As Left-Wing Activist Brian Netter

Netter now works for a group chaired by Marc Elias, who helped run the Russia collusion hoax.

The Department of Justice official who signed off on $2 million in taxpayer-funded payments to disgraced Russia collusion hoax participants left the Department of Justice to help lead the "legal resistance" to President Donald Trump and other duly-elected Republicans, new records reviewed exclusively by The Federalist reveal.

FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, sued the Department of Justice over the release of messages detailing their role in pushing the Clinton campaign's Russia collusion hoax. They said the release of the messages that were written using government resources violated their privacy. The Biden administration rewarded the duo with lucrative payouts. Strozk received $1.2 million in taxpayer funds while Page received an $800,000 settlement.

"[W]e have identified Brian Netter, Deputy Assistant Attorney General as the individual that approved the settlement agreements," a DOJ official told the Center to Advance Security in America, which had filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2024, when the payouts were publicly announced. Netter was the deputy assistant attorney general for the Federal Programs Branch during the term of President Joe Biden.

Netter currently serves as the legal director at Democracy Forward, a Democrat Party-affiliated group launched in 2017 to fight President Trump with lawfare. The group brags that it took Trump to court more than 100 times in his first term in office. It has continued its use of the courts to win political battles into his second term in office. "Liberal Legal Group Positions Itself as a Top Trump Administration Foe," touted The New York Times last November.

So the perpetrators of weaponization get paid off big-time and their victims get nothing but hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars in legal bills?

Christian Adams of PJMedia calls for the DOJ to make restitution to citizens illegally targeted by a weaponized government.

There are real victims of Biden's weaponized Justice Department, and it is time to make them whole. The fix is quick, easy, and immune to judicial meddling.

Consider the outrageous prosecution of Douglass Mackey. The Biden Justice Department went after him for tweeting a joke that Hillary supporters could vote by text in 2016. It was telling that he was indicted four years after the tweet, just days after Joe Biden's inauguration in 2021. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed his ridiculous conviction this year because "no rational jury" could have found him guilty.

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James Smith, Erik D. Paulsen, F. Turner Buford, and William J. Gullotta, check your email.

Despite his exoneration, Mackey still had hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney fees.

He is not alone. Across America, innocent bystanders were forced to respond to Justice Department subpoenas investigating the Russia collusion hoax and the January 6 investigation.

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The Judgment Fund is a pot of money sitting at the Treasury Department used to pay "judicially and administratively ordered monetary awards against the United States." The federal regulation that governs the fund, 31 CFR § 256.1, says it can be used to pay "amounts owed under compromise agreements negotiated by the U.S. Department of Justice in settlement of claims" against the government.

The Judgment Fund is a "permanent, indefinite appropriation" that pays out millions of dollars for mistakes, errors, and violations of federal law committed by federal agencies and federal employees. The "permanent, indefinite appropriation" language means that the money just magically shows up for Treasury and the Justice Department to use without needing a specific appropriation from Congress.

Side-benefit: People claiming such restitution will also wind up making a case against the government officials that targeted them, creating a paper trail to justify their firing.

posted by Ace at 01:30 PM

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