{"id":29402,"date":"2020-10-09T10:19:48","date_gmt":"2020-10-09T15:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=29402"},"modified":"2020-10-09T10:20:08","modified_gmt":"2020-10-09T15:20:08","slug":"if-a-u-s-attorneys-office-suspects-election-fraud-involving-postal-or-military-employees-the-doj-is-allowed-to-take-investigative-steps-before-polls-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2020\/10\/09\/if-a-u-s-attorneys-office-suspects-election-fraud-involving-postal-or-military-employees-the-doj-is-allowed-to-take-investigative-steps-before-polls-close\/","title":{"rendered":"If A U.S. Attorney’s Office Suspects Election Fraud Involving Postal or Military Employees The DOJ Is Allowed to Take Investigative Steps Before Polls Close"},"content":{"rendered":"

From GovExec<\/a><\/p>\n

The Department of Justice has weakened its long-standing prohibition against interfering in elections, according to two department officials.<\/p>\n

Avoiding election interference is the\u00a0overarching principle\u00a0of DOJ policy on voting-related crimes. In place since at least 1980, the policy generally bars prosecutors not only from making any announcement about ongoing investigations close to an election but also from taking public steps \u2014 such as an arrest or a raid \u2014 before a vote is finalized because the publicity could tip the balance of a race.<\/p>\n

But according to an email sent Friday by an official in the Public Integrity Section in Washington, now if a U.S. attorney\u2019s office suspects election fraud that involves postal workers or military employees, federal investigators will be allowed to take public investigative steps before the polls close, even if those actions risk affecting the outcome of the election.<\/p>\n

The email announced \u201can exception to the general non-interference with elections policy.\u201d The new exemption, the email stated, applied to instances in which \u201cthe integrity of any component of the federal government is implicated by election offenses within the scope of the policy including but not limited to misconduct by federal officials or employees administering an aspect of the voting process through the United States Postal Service, the Department of Defense or any other federal department or agency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Specifically citing postal workers and military employees is noteworthy, former DOJ officials said. But the exception is written so broadly that it could cover other types of investigations as well, they said. More at GovExec.com<\/a><\/p>\n

From ProPublica.org<\/a><\/p>\n

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ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive\u00a0our biggest stories<\/a>\u00a0as soon as they\u2019re published.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

When the Justice Department recently publicized an ongoing investigation into potentially improperly discarded Trump ballots, critics accused it of violating long-standing agency policy against interfering in an election.<\/p>\n

But the unusual decision to publicly detail the Pennsylvania case may also have run afoul of guidelines that Attorney General William Barr himself issued to federal prosecutors this year, according to a memo obtained by ProPublica.<\/p>\n

In May,\u00a0Barr wrote a directive<\/a>\u00a0to all Justice Department employees imploring them to be \u201cparticularly sensitive to safeguarding the Department\u2019s reputation for fairness, neutrality, and non-partisanship\u201d when it comes to election-related crimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cPartisan politics,\u201d he wrote, \u201cmust play no role in the decisions of federal investigators or prosecutors regarding any investigations or criminal charges. Law enforcement officers and prosecutors may never select the timing of public statements (attributed or not), investigative steps, criminal charges, or any other action in any matter or case for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, last month Barr\u2019s Justice Department issued\u00a0a press release<\/a>\u00a0announcing an investigation into whether local elections officials illegally discarded nine mail-in military ballots in Pennsylvania. The announcement of an open investigation was highly unusual. Even more abnormal was that the press release specified that at least seven of those ballots were for President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

While the motivation of the Pennsylvania press release is unclear, Barr had personally briefed Trump on the matter before the announcement, The Washington Post subsequently\u00a0reported<\/a>, citing an anonymous source. The president raised it in a media interview and then DOJ\u2019s Pennsylvania office announced the investigation.<\/p>\n

Then, the Trump campaign quickly jumped on the Pennsylvania case to bolster those claims.<\/p>\n

\u201cBREAKING: FBI finds military mail-in ballots discarded in Pennsylvania. 100% of them were cast for President Trump. Democrats are trying to steal the election,\u201d a campaign official tweeted.<\/p>\n

Justin Levitt, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ\u2019s civil rights division, said the Pennsylvania press release was \u201cflatly inconsistent\u201d with Barr\u2019s memo \u201cand shamefully so.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s absolutely no legitimate law enforcement reason I know of to mention who the ballots were cast for: They were either dealt with properly or not properly,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd if there\u2019s no good reason, it leaves only the most likely bad reason: that the identity of the candidate was revealed for partisan political purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some experts did not agree . Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor at Duke Law School, said Barr could argue that \u201cany public announcement about a ballot investigation complies with [the memo] because the language is so broad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barr, he said, could say the \u201cpurpose\u201d of the Pennsylvania announcement was not to affect the outcome of the election or support a particular candidate, but some other non-prohibited motivation like \u201cprotecting the vote.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Barr memo\u00a0closely<\/a>\u00a0mirrored<\/a>\u00a0election-year guidance that previous attorneys general sent out under both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. Barr\u00a0himself said<\/a>\u00a0at his Senate confirmation hearings last year that the election policies were in place because the incumbent party has \u201ctheir hands on the levers of the law enforcement apparatus of the country, and you do not want it used against the opposing political party.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked whether the Pennsylvania announcement ran afoul of the agency\u2019s election policies, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec responded: \u201cNo.\u201d She declined to elaborate.<\/p>\n

The U.S. attorney overseeing the case is David Freed, a former Republican nominee for Pennsylvania state attorney general who was nominated for his current role by Trump in 2017. In a publicly released letter<\/a>, Freed said he was detailing initial findings despite an ongoing investigation \u201cbased on the limited amount of time before the general election and the vital public importance of these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

A second memo<\/a>\u00a0obtained by ProPublica, issued in August by Corey Amundson, chief of the DOJ\u2019s Public Integrity Section, was even more explicit.<\/p>\n

In it, Amundson reiterated the Justice Department\u2019s long-standing policy in election fraud cases: \u201cOvert criminal investigative measures should not ordinarily be taken in matters involving alleged fraud in the manner in which votes were cast or counted until the election in question has been concluded.\u201d<\/p>\n

The memo was addressed to the Attorney General Advisory Committee, a\u00a0group<\/a>\u00a0of U.S. attorneys that advise the attorney general.<\/p>\n

The policy Amundson cites appears to make an exception for extraordinary cases. But it seems unlikely that would apply to the case in Pennsylvania. That involved only nine ballots, which appear to have been discarded by a sole contract employee. The motivation may have been an innocuous attempt to follow Pennsylvania rules barring ballots sent back without the proper envelope.<\/p>\n

Current and former Justice Department officials told ProPublica that, even without the memos from top agency officials including Barr, the Pennsylvania press release violated long-standing department policy. They explained that prosecutors not only should not announce that they are investigating, but that they should be slow even to start an election-sensitive investigation during the campaign. Such an investigation is so sensitive, an opposing candidate could use it to smear his or her opponent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what they drill into us: the policy of non-interference and never, ever, ever announcing an investigation,\u201d one official said. \u201cThat\u2019s why the thing in Pennsylvania is bonkers, completely bonkers.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for Freed declined to comment.<\/p>\n

Barr has amplified Trump\u2019s attempt to discredit mail-in voting before, claiming falsely that there is widespread fraud.<\/p>\n

Please see PEN’s article Mail-in Balloting \u2013 Dumped Mail \u2013 No Problem Here\u2026Yeah right<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From GovExec The Department of Justice has weakened its long-standing prohibition against interfering in elections, according to two department officials. Avoiding election interference is the\u00a0overarching principle\u00a0of DOJ policy on voting-related crimes. In place since at least 1980, the policy generally bars prosecutors not only from making any announcement about ongoing investigations close to an election […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29402"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29404,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29402\/revisions\/29404"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}