Justice Department

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    The Government Now Needs a Reference Check

    ByHugh Jass

    I have spent years exhuming documents, and the Justice Department has now submitted one that appears to be a résumé with the references section torn off. The department wants judges to presume that government officials acted properly—a legal shortcut known as the presumption of regularity—while judges increasingly seem to be asking whether anyone checked the paperwork before it left the building.

    ProPublica’s review of hundreds of cases found more than 40 in which judges explicitly questioned that presumption. The review described court records involving inaccurate dates, ignored facts, nonexistent case law, disputed subpoenas, and alleged violations of court orders. That is not every filing, every lawyer, or every employee. It is, however, a pattern substantial enough to make the institutional honor system cough into its sleeve.

    The contradiction is beautifully bureaucratic: the government asks for automatic credibility at the same moment its work is being treated as something requiring adult supervision. A private citizen who supplied the wrong date, cited a case that does not exist, and ignored relevant facts would not receive a solemn judicial presumption that everything was probably fine. They would receive a follow-up email with the emotional temperature of a locked records room.

    Instead, the department’s position can sound like this: “Please assume our officials followed the rules unless you discover evidence suggesting otherwise.” The courts’ emerging response is less ceremonial: “We have discovered some evidence suggesting otherwise.” Every new filing arrives wearing a tie and carrying a folder marked OFFICIAL, while the judge reaches for a highlighter, a calendar, and possibly a second opinion from the laws of arithmetic.

    Public power cannot operate on permanent reference-free trust. Judges are supposed to examine claims, and citizens should expect the same basic discipline from institutions acting in their name. The ProPublica reporting does not establish that every DOJ filing is unreliable; it establishes why credibility cannot be treated as government-issued stationery. At this point, each filing should include the line: “References available upon request.” The court, naturally, has already requested them.

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    Congress Builds a Fifth Amendment Escape Room for Fauci

    ByMike Rotch

    Sen. Rand Paul and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee appear to want Anthony Fauci to prove he has nothing to hide while leaving the prosecution-shaped trapdoor open beneath him. That is not oversight so much as a government-funded escape room where every door is labeled “Tell the truth” and every wall carries a threat of prosecution. The constitutional question is complicated; the committee’s political theater is not.

    At the July 29 hearing, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times. AP and Axios reported that his lawyer pointed to public discussion of possible prosecution, including a dispute involving pardon-related legal questions, as part of the reason for those refusals. The Fifth Amendment does not automatically settle a contempt question, and Fauci has not been exonerated by invoking it. But treating every refusal as a smoking gun while publicly discussing prosecution is a remarkable way to make constitutional self-protection look like the offense.

    Then, on August 6, the committee voted along party lines to hold Fauci in contempt and referred the matter for Justice Department review. That is a referral, not a conviction, and the department’s review is not a final legal decision. Still, taxpayers received the traditional congressional package: a contested witness dispute, a partisan vote, and enough cable-news foam to fill the reflecting pool.

    Real oversight follows evidence wherever it leads. This hearing looked more like a confession scene designed first and justified afterward, with the witness expected to answer questions while lawmakers kept reminding him that answers might become evidence against him. The people paying for the furniture are left watching officials argue that the Constitution is essential right up until somebody uses it.

    Congress did not uncover the clean confession it seemed determined to stage. It assembled an escape room with a contempt referral as the exit ticket, then acted surprised that the Constitution included an exit door. Somewhere, a committee chair is demanding accountability from the only document in the room that remembered to bring a lawyer.

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    The Watchdog Found the Locked Filing Cabinet

    ByHugh Jass

    The law was supposed to open the filing cabinet, but now the Justice Department inspector general is reviewing how Epstein-related records were identified, handled, redacted, and released, which is how daylight becomes a hallway with one flickering bulb and a compliance binder breathing in the corner.

    I am not here to declare a bombshell hiding behind every black bar. That is amateur séance work. The official absurdity is enough: the public asked for records and got a process about the process, a custody trail about the custody trail, and administrative fog so dense the document coughed. In the end, the smoking gun has been replaced by a sweating folder labeled PROCEDURE, and Exhibit A had a pulse.

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