Annals Of Government Medicine, Venezuela Edition

November 6th, 2013 MacAoidh

Annals Of Government Medicine, Venezuela Edition – Power Line

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Hoping for a fresh start with the incoming Trump Administration, I had not planned to return to the topic of corruption in the Biden Administration. However, news of a concerning circumstance—with a direct connection to Louisiana—came to my attention and prompted me to address it once again. This past week, former Louisiana U.S. Rep Bob Livingston penned a letter in the Wall Street Journal that highlights the corruption of the Biden Administration. The events he recounts in his letter are disconcerting and much more befitting a third world country or a banana republic than the United States of America. I first met Mr. Livingston years ago when I was working in D.C. for his fellow Louisiana Representative in the U.S. House of Representatives, the late Clyde C. Holloway. I was quite proud of, and grateful for, the opportunity to work for Congressman Holloway. Both men exemplified the "service" part of public service. When Mr. Livingston left Congress, he founded the Livingston Group and has represented a wide range of interests over the years before the U.S. Congress. Many of the individuals I knew on his congressional staff joined him in his new firm. Mr. Livingston and Mr. Holloway were conservative Republicans. As such, it is unsurprising that Mr. Livingston would have supported President Trump when he sought the presidency and that is the basis of his letter. The Livingston letter is entitled "A Letter to Merrick Garland." Salient portions of the letter include this excerpt from Mr. Livingston to Attorney General Garland: "Your time in office won't run out a moment too soon. You will be remembered as a tool in the Democratic Party's strategy of misusing the Justice Department to visit injustice on innocent people with differing political views. I am a victim of your dysfunctional leadership but, unlike many of your targets, I have survived unscathed." (WSJ, 1-15-2025). WOW. The Livingston letter continues: "In 2022 two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents came to my home in New Orleans and questioned me about incidents involving our representation of an international client. Having nothing to hide, I spoke with them for about 2.5 hours ... I was given to believe that they were looking only for background information." However, the letter continues, I soon learned that the meeting "was neither benign nor simply for background ... I soon learned I was a target." (Emphasis added). Mr. Livingston then points out something about which I have no doubt: "In all my years as a lobbyist, I have bent over backward to comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) ... I have repeatedly told my clients that we must comply with FARA to avoid any possibility of transgressing the law ... and our company has employed a full-time officer to assure compliance." Nevertheless, Justice Department prosecutors "said on several occasions that I was the target of felony charges. Every day and night for 20 months, I lived with the possibility that the hammer could drop at any moment. Everything I worked for would be tarnished. My firm would collapse, my employees would lose their jobs, all of us would be ruined in the press, and I could go to prison." Can any of us imagine living under such a cloud of uncertainty? Tragically, one of Mr. Livingston's employees—the firm's very compliance officer—could not. "David Lonnie was interviewed and harassed. He was told that if he knew what was good for him he would talk. He went to bed on December 31, 2023, and didn't wake the next day. His family is devastated." While his company was innocent of all charges, Livingston states, we were forced "to spend incredible amounts of money on legal counsel ... and while our 88-page brief backed prosecutors down ... I am convinced that the department's actions were political and malicious, targeting me for having supported Donald Trump and being critical of President Biden." We are painfully familiar with the lawfare and weaponization suffered by President Trump himself, most of the J6ers, as well as the "investigations" into picketers at abortion clinics and parents at school board meetings who were characterized as “domestic terrorists." This is to say nothing of the FBI "investigation" into Catholic churches across the country to “monitor and report” on their parishioners. However, the Livingston letter reflects as egregious an example as any I have seen. This simply cannot be allowed to occur in America.

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