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DOJ to Give Leftist Groups Cut of B of A Settlement

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Photo Credit: Forbes

Photo Credit: Forbes

The Department of Justice (DOJ) keeps giving radical leftist groups that support President Obama huge amounts of cash collected from big banks to settle discrimination and mortgage abuse lawsuits filed by the government.

Judicial Watch first reported the scheme two years ago when Countrywide Financial Corporation doled out $335 million to settle its discrimination lawsuit with the feds. The money was supposed to be distributed to more than 200,000 minority victims who supposedly were charged higher interest rates and fees than white borrowers based on their race not their credit. Instead, a chunk of the money went to Democrat-tied groups not connected to the lawsuit, including the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the open-borders National Council of La Raza (NCLR).

Now many of the same groups will get more money from a record $16.65 billion settlement with Bank of America. It’s a “historic resolution,” according to Attorney General Eric Holder, and the money will help make amends to borrowers and communities that were negatively affected by the bank’s conduct. Besides settling civil penalties at the state and federal level, the billions will bring relief to struggling homeowners and communities by, among other things, offering new loans and providing financing for affordable rental housing. Delinquent borrowers in Democrat strongholds like Chicago, Oakland and Detroit will also benefit from debt forgiveness.

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DOJ Investigates Nebraska Parade Float Critical of Obama

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Photo Credit: AP / NORFOLK DAILY NEWS / Darin Epperly

Photo Credit: AP / NORFOLK DAILY NEWS / Darin Epperly

By Jessica Chasmar.

The U.S. Department of Justice has sent a member of its Community Relations Service team to investigate a Nebraska parade float that criticized President Obama.

A Fourth of July parade float featured at the annual Independence Day parade in Norfolk sparked criticism when it depicted a zombie-like figure resembling Mr. Obama standing outside an outhouse, which was labeled the “Obama Presidential Library.”

The Nebraska Democratic Party called the float one of the “worst shows of racism and disrespect for the office of the presidency that Nebraska has ever seen.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Holder sees ‘racial animus’ in opposition

By Justin Sink.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Sunday he and President Obama have been targets of “a racial animus” by some of the administration’s political opponents.

“There’s a certain level of vehemence, it seems to me, that’s directed at me [and] directed at the president,” Holder told ABC. “You know, people talking about taking their country back. … There’s a certain racial component to this for some people. I don’t think this is the thing that is a main driver, but for some there’s a racial animus.”

Holder said the nation is in “a fundamentally better place than we were 50 years ago.”

“We’ve made lots of progress,” he said. “I sit here as the first African-American attorney general, serving the first African-American president of the United States. And that has to show that we have made a great deal of progress.

“But there’s still more we have to travel along this road so we get to the place that is consistent with our founding ideals,” he said.

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DOJ: We Heard About IRS Missing Emails On The News

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Gary Cameron

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Gary Cameron

James Cole, deputy attorney general in the Department of Justice, testified Thursday that the DOJ heard about the destruction of IRS officials’ emails in the news, even though DOJ has formally been investigating the IRS for more than a year.

“I think we learned about it after that, from press accounts,” Cole told House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan at a hearing Thursday on the DOJ’s response to the wave of computer crashes at the IRS that wiped out seven different employees’ hard drives. (RELATED: Meet The Seven IRS Employees Whose Computer Crashed). DOJ has allegedly been conducting a widely-mocked investigation into the IRS conservative targeting scandal for more than a year, and recently announced that a new investigation is underway into the IRS missing emails.

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DOJ Files Lawsuit Against North Carolina’s 'Discriminatory' Voter ID Law (+video)

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Photo Credit: TownHallAre voter ID laws inherently racist? Do they curtail voting rights? Those are questions a North Carolina judge will ultimately determine sometime next July.

To recap, the North Carolina state legislature passed a law in 2013 that, among other things, abolished same-day voter registration and instituted a voter ID provision. Naturally, it has been pilloried by both civil rights groups and activists as discriminatory.

Such provisions limit access to the right to vote, they argue, and therefore must be struck down to preserve the integrity of elections held in the state:

A North Carolina law passed last year that requires voters to present photo identification and eliminates same-day voter registration has been called one of the farthest-reaching overhauls to election rules in the country. Now a judge will decide whether it will stay that way.

Lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice, the North Carolina NAACP, the League of Women Voters and the American Civil Liberties Union will argue the case against state lawyers over the law in U.S. District Court in Winston-Salem on Monday. U.S. attorneys and civil rights groups are asking a judge for a preliminary injunction to temporarily delay implementation of parts of the law. The hearing is a prelude to a trial scheduled for July 2015 where a judge will determine whether to uphold or strike down the law.

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Operation Choke Point: Congressman Proposes Cutting Off Funding For DOJ Program Targeting Gun Dealers

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller A Missouri congressman hopes to give the Department of Justice a taste of its own medicine with an amendment to halt an initiative that he says uses “intimidation tactics” and forces banks to sever relationships with legitimate businesses.

Blaine Luetkemeyer wants to choke off funding for “Operation Choke Point.”

“What it does is goes after an entire industry whether it’s obeying the law or not. And that’s just wrong,” Luetkemeyer said of the initiative in an interview with The Daily Caller.

The Republican lawmaker’s amendment was successfully attached to the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill which passed a vote in the House late Thursday.

The amendment comes on the heels of a staff report issued Thursday by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The report claims that “Operation Choke Point has forced banks to terminate relationships with a wide variety of entirely lawful and legitimate merchants.”

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DOJ Brings First-Ever Cyber-Espionage Case Against Chinese Officials

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Photo Credit: APAttorney General Eric Holder on Monday announced a first-of-its-kind criminal cyber-espionage case against Chinese military officials the Justice Department charges hacked into major U.S. companies to steal trade secrets — though Holder could not say whether the five defendants stand a chance of ever seeing the inside of a U.S. courtroom.

Holder, in announcing the indictment against five Shanghai-based officials, acknowledged that the defendants have never set foot in the United States.

Pressed on whether there’s any hope the Chinese government would hand over the officials, Holder said only the “intention” is for the defendants to face the charges in a U.S. court, and he hopes to have Chinese government cooperation.

But the Chinese government immediately signaled it would not cooperate, claiming the accusations were made up and warning the case would damage U.S.-China relations.

According to Reuters, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang urged “immediate rectification.”

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Eric Holder: No Plans at DOJ to Investigate Secret Waiting Lists and Veteran Deaths at VA Hospitals

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that the Department of Justice doesn’t have any plans to investigate allegations that veterans placed on secret waiting lists at VA hospitals died while waiting for care.

“Well, obviously these reports if they’re true are unacceptable, and the allegations are being taken very seriously by the administration. But I don’t have any announcements at this time with regard to anything that the Justice Department is doing,” Holder told reporters at a press conference.

“This is something on our radar screen at this point, but there is an investigation being done by the [VA] inspector general, and we’ll see what happens as a result of that inquiry and other information that comes to light in some form or fashion,” Holder added.

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Big Chill: Feds Want to Scour Net, Media for ‘Hate Speech’

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

If two Democratic lawmakers have their way, Barack Obama’s Justice Department will submit a report for action against any Internet sites, broadcast, cable television or radio shows determined to be advocating or encouraging “violent acts.”

This according to the text of a new bill from Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.

The Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014 “would create an updated comprehensive report examining the role of the Internet and other telecommunications in encouraging hate crimes based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation and create recommendations to address such crimes,” stated a news release from Markey’s office.

The one-page bill, reviewed by WND, calls for the Justice Department and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to “analyze information on the use of telecommunications, including the Internet, broadcast television and radio, cable television, public access television, commercial mobile services, and other electronic media, to advocate and encourage violent acts and the commission of crimes of hate.”

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DOJ To Flood Streets With Felons

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Photo Credit: Western Journalism

Photo Credit: Western Journalism

Eric Holder’s Justice Department has come under fire multiple times in recent months for embracing policies that many feel provide undue leniency toward violent felons. Under Holder’s leadership, the agency has publicly supported giving felons the right to vote, rewarding them with free phone service and transportation, and even commuting the sentences of some prisoners.

According to a new initiative announced Wednesday, a huge number of criminals currently in prison are about to receive a get-out-of-jail pass from the DOJ based on the fact that they have already served at least 10 years of their sentence.

These criminals, all convicted of drug offenses, will be able to apply for release under the policy, provided they might have gotten a lighter sentence had they committed their crime more recently.

“Older, stringent punishments that are out of line with sentences imposed under today’s laws erode people’s confidence in our criminal justice system,” said Deputy Attorney General James Cole. “I am confident that this initiative will go far to promote the most fundamental of American ideals – equal justice under the law.”

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Oversight Member on Lois Lerner Coordination with DOJ: ‘Now I See Why IRS is Scared to Give Up Emails’

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Yuri Gripas

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Yuri Gripas

By Patrick Howley.

Key members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform expressed outrage at revelations made in newly released emails showing ex-IRS official Lois Lerner coordinating with the Department of Justice on prosecuting nonprofit groups.

One committee member said the emails prove why the IRS is “scared to give up the rest of Lois Lerner’s emails.” IRS commissioner John Koskinen was recently threatened with contempt for stonewalling the committee’s investigation. Koskinen claimed in a hearing that it could take years to provide the documents requested by Oversight.

“The release of new documents underscores the political nature of IRS Tea Party targeting and the extent to which supposed apolitical officials took direction from elected Democrats,” Oversight chairman Rep. Darrell Issa said in a statement. “These e-mails are part of an overwhelming body of evidence that political pressure from prominent Democrats led to the targeting of Americans for their political beliefs.”

“Now I see why the IRS is scared to give up the rest of Lois Lerner’s emails,” said Oversight Economic Growth subcommittee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP / Getty Images

Photo Credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP / Getty Images

Lerner was in contact with DOJ about prosecuting tax-exempt groups

By Caroline May.

Former head of the IRS tax-exempt division Lois Lerner communicated with the Justice Department about the possibility of criminally prosecuting certain tax-exempt groups, new documents reveal.

According to the conservative government accountability group Judicial Watch, email exchanges between Lerner and Nikole C. Flax, the Chief of Staff to then-Acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller, reveal there were discussions about possible prosecution of tax-exempt groups that were believed to have “lied” about political activities.

May 8, 2013: Lerner to Flax

I got a call today from Richard Pilger Director Elections Crimes Branch at DOJ … He wanted to know who at IRS the DOJ folks could talk to about [Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon] Whitehouse idea at the hearing that DOJ could piece together false statement cases about applicants who “lied” on their 1024s — saying they weren’t planning on doing political activity, and then turning around and making large visible political expenditures. DOJ is feeling like it needs to respond, but want to talk to the right folks at IRS to see whether there are impediments from our side and what, if any damage this might do to IRS programs. I told him that sounded like we might need several folks from IRS …

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