US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

> Tim Rieser, former senior aide to Senator Leahy who wrote the 2011 amendment mandating information gathering, told the BBC the gateway's removal meant the State Department was "clearly ignoring the law".

We're in a really bad place... with a servile congress, it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch. When everything relies on "independent IGs" for law enforcement inside executive branch departments, and the President can fire them all without consequence or oversight, then it turns out there is no law.

When a different side takes control of the justice department they may choose to go after all those who broke the law by order of this president. The president might be protected from consequences according to the supreme court, but those answering to the president are not.

This administration has set the standard that the justice department can be weaponized against political enemies. The ratchet only goes one way in American politics, presidents never relinquish the powers claimed by their predecessors.

As someone not from the US and looking from the outside: it seems there is a _significant_ difference between the two administrations in this regard?

Escalation always happens.

The classified documents thing with Trump was a manufactured scandal, for example. Everyone in our government is mishandling classified documents because we have a massive over-classification problem, as seen by the lesser reported and covered subsequent finding of Biden having documents.

Only one of those events was associated with a televised raid (which the press was notified of beforehand so they could be sure to film it).

It was all theater.

It's the same with Trump's prosecution in NY, that case was ridiculous. One deed expanded into 37 misdemeanors that were escalated to a felony because they were committed in an effort to cover up an alleged felony. I say alleged because he was never convicted of the original crime but, conveniently, that's not a requirement of that escalation in NY law.

Ironically, both of those cases only increased Trump's support among non-Democrats (Republicans and, importantly, independents) because it was transparent.

Here's a quote for the NY AG that sued Trump.

> "We will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well," [0]

That sounds an awful lot like she went looking for crimes of a person rather than finding who's responsible for crimes. And threatening his family as well.

[0]https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/incoming-new-y... as well,"

> The classified documents thing with Trump was a manufactured scandal, for example.

It was not. Trump was asked for months to return the documents.

He purposefully had staff to move documents onto his private jet and moved them around his various properties. He stored boxes and boxes, not just a few file folders, in random bathrooms.

Yes, plenty of folks may mishandle stuff, but many folks try to fix their errors when they're pointed out. Trump ignored the requests and continued doing things consciously even when notified.

So the televised raid? Is that normal operating procedure for the DOJ? Did that happen with Biden's classified docs?

> So the televised raid? Is that normal operating procedure for the DOJ? Did that happen with Biden's classified docs?

It is normal for news trucks to show up once a news event has been learned of.

And yes, the same thing happened with Biden: news broke, and footage was recorded:

* https://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/fbi-search-biden-vacation-h...

This is not a serious response. The raid was intentionally leaked in order to maximize news coverage.