https://twitter.com/HoarseWisperer/status/1131159474171981825

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has put up just 1.7 miles of fencing with the $1.57 billion that Congress appropriated last year for President Donald Trump’s wall along the Mexican border, a federal judge was told.

A lawyer for the U.S. House of Representatives provided the information Tuesday to the judge in Oakland, California, who is weighing requests from 20 state attorneys general and the the Sierra Club to block Trump from using funds not authorized by Congress to build the wall.

"The administration recently provided updated information to Congress on the status of its efforts as of April 30, 2019," the attorney, Douglas Letter, said in a court filing. "Based on that updated information, it appears that CBP has now constructed 1.7 miles of fencing with its fiscal year 2018 funding."

That was 3/4 of a mile more than the administration reported at the end of February, Letter said.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-21/federal-wall-funding-of-1-57-billion-yields-1-7-miles-of-fence?srnd=premium
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1131175375478898688
https://twitter.com/HoarseWisperer/status/1131188150586499072

BREAKING: The D.C. Circuit just called for a response to the petition for rehearing en banc in the McKeever case about grand jury disclosures.






https://twitter.com/BrianneGorod/status/1130986136875225088
https://twitter.com/BrianneGorod/status/1130986627403264005
https://twitter.com/BrianneGorod/status/1130991261899513856


For more on why this matters, read my latest in
https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2019/05/14/inherent-authority-to-inform-our-democracy/?slreturn=20190421203505

Congress has good arguments that it should be able to get the Mueller grand jury materials pursuant to that exception, but some commentators have argued that McKeever prevents Congress from getting these materials until there’s a formal impeachment proceeding. And even if those commentators are wrong, McKeever’s implications extend far beyond the big-ticket investigations of presidents and other federal officials who might be impeached. There are many cases where the public would benefit from disclosure of grand jury information—for example, in an environmental or discrimination case, or in a case of historic significance. Prior to McKeever, district court judges had authority to disclose such materials; now, in the D.C. Circuit, they do not.

Fortunately, McKeever may not be around for long. McKeever filed a petition last week asking the full D.C. Circuit to hear the case and overturn the panel decision. This is the quintessential case where such review by a full court of appeals is appropriate because the panel’s decision not only conflicts with its prior decision in the Watergate case, but also because it conflicts with the decisions of other courts of appeals. That means that whether a district court can disclose grand jury material will turn, in part, on where in the country it sits. There’s no reason that the answer to such an important question should turn on geographic happenstance, which is why the existence of a conflict with other circuits is a prime reason why courts grant petitions like the one McKeever filed.

As McKeever said in his filing with the court, “the question presented in this case is important” because grand jury “disclosures can vindicate important public value values of transparency and historical understanding, and they advance public confidence in the judicial system;” it’s particularly important now. Hopefully, the full D.C. Circuit will take this opportunity to correct the three-judge panel’s mistake.

Thousands of immigrants forced into solitary confinement by ICE

Watch NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez join Chris Jansing with his exclusive report about the thousands of immigrants that have been forced into solitary confinement by ICE – not for breaking any rules, but for being physically disabled or gay.


VIDEO (after ad)
https://www.msnbc.com/stephanie-ruhle/watch/thousands-of-immigrants-forced-into-solitary-confinement-by-ice-60040261961?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma

The Justice Department on Tuesday said it would provide the House Intelligence Committee with some materials related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as long as the panel dropped its threat to pursue an “enforcement action” against Attorney General William Barr.

The department made the offer in a three-page letter to Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) one day before the committee is slated to vote on what he has described as an “enforcement action” against Barr. Schiff has not said what shape the action would take.


The Justice Department has said it would allow the full committee to review a less redacted version of the first volume of the report — the section discussing Russian interference in which Schiff’s panel is primarily interested — and identify an initial tranche of materials the committee is demanding that it would prioritize for review and disclosure to the committee.

On Tuesday, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd said the department is willing to “expedite” access to foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information identified by the committee as a priority if the panel confirms that it will not move forward on a vote on an enforcement action.




https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/444833-doj-offers-house-intel-some-mueller-materials-if-schiff-drops-barr

NEWS: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team has expressed reticence to him testifying publicly in front of the House Judiciary Committee, according to sources familiar with the matter. His team has expressed that he does not want to appear political. w/@LauraAJarrett @jeremyherb



https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1130867182445977605





I am hoping that "Mueller's team" is a single DOJ rat, not Mueller himself, but perhaps hope is a passing fancy of mine, kp

VIDEO:
https://twitter.com/Kris_Sacrebleu/status/1130626616520921089

In one message, a campaign worker posted an image of a ballot and joked that it had been stolen. In another text, someone took a photo of a ballot and wrote "Byebye." In a third message, someone instructed a campaign worker to "tear up the ballot good."

.............

A source with knowledge of the thread said the people involved, who are in most cases identified only by phone numbers, had been gathered by a local campaign consultant to canvass District 5, which stretches across Spanish-speaking parts of mainland Miami and onto Miami Beach. Like Diaz de la Portilla, multiple people in the text-thread did not answer phone calls. New Times also asked the Miami-Dade State Attorney's office whether prosecutors are looking into the leaked images, but did not receive a response.

On May 11, 2018, someone posted an image of a ballot that had been sent to an address on NW First Street. The worker then wrote in Spanish: "Stolen, hahahaa. I did not give it to the lady but what do we do if she voted for Zoraida????"

New Times reached a woman at that phone number. When the woman was asked about the text-thread, she immediately hung up.



WAY WAY WAY MORE:
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/alex-diaz-de-la-portilla-campaign-discussed-ballot-tampering-whatsapp-transcript-shows-11177865
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1130618707573661696

NEW: That was fast.

Counsel for the House Committees informed the SDNY judge that Trump just lost his similar challenge in the District of D.C.

Oral arguments in the Trump v. Deutsche case coming to NYC on Wednesday. @CourthouseNews

https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1130594889538953225

Mehta goes on to conclude that “Congress’s motives are off limits,” so long as the focus of the probe stays within the body’s broad remit to investigate. “It is not the court’s role to decipher whether Congress’s true purpose in pursuing an investigation is to aid legislation or something more sinister such as exacting political retribution,”


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wcOqhrV6_3hCJMhpWQ-qeSjaiZJaUGVJ/view (p 19 of 41)
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/judge-trump-mazars-subpoena
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/20/judge-upholds-dem-subpoena-for-trump-financial-records-1335370