The Dark Ages of Jeff Sessions

By Roger Stone

It’s bad enough that Trump Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions has recused himself on both the question of Russian collusion as well as an investigation into Uranium One or the skullduggery of the Obama Justice Department in the ever greedy Clintons. Sessions has also failed to bring any prosecutions despite the largest illegal expansion of unconstitutional surveillance in the history of the US government which took place under Obama’s NSA and was documented by the super-secret FISA court.

Despite President Donald Trump’s very clear inconsistent support for states’ rights on the matter of legalizing marijuana Sessions has lobbied the Congress to remove restrictions against his waging a crackdown on state legalized cannabis.

This despite the fact that opioid death, opioid-related crimes, and opioid-related incidents have all drop dramatically in the states where marijuana has been legalized. Dinosaurs like Sessions refuse to admit that all the war on drugs has yielded is destroyed lives in families cut in the multibillion-dollar bill for the trial and incarceration of millions of Americans for the nonviolent crime of drug possession none of which has had any effect in slowing drug abuse and drug-related crime. By any measure, the war on drugs is an ignominious failure.

Sessions is reversing years of progress by drafting and signing a “new” drug sentencing policy reinstating draconian mandatory minimum guidelines.

In this memo, Sessions states “the goal of achieving just and consistent results.”  This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Mandatory federal drug sentencing is unforgiving. A person with one prior drug felony who is charged with possession with intent to distribute faces 20 years to life.  With two priors — no matter how long ago they occurred — the penalty is life without parole.

According to The Washington Post, mandatory minimum sentencing harms “the 5 million children who have or have had a parent in prison — including one in nine black children.  And they wreak economic devastation on poor communities. Studies have found, for example, that formerly incarcerated employees make 10 to 40 percent less money than similar workers with no history of incarceration and that the probability of a family being in poverty increases by almost 40 percent when a father is imprisoned.”

Federal mandatory minimum sentencing started in 1984 and has proven a failed concept.    The cost of this mass incarceration costs taxpayers around $300 billion in addition to the $51 billion spent on the “war” itself.  I could think of better ways to spend our hard-earned money.  Jeff Sessions has just reinstated the failed “war on drugs” policy by throwing the book at nonviolent drug offenders.  He must be out of his mind.  When the rest of the country and public opinion has moved towards a legalization policy for marijuana, Sessions wants tougher penalties for marijuana offenders and does not believe in legalization in any form.  He wants to shut down state legalization in 29 states.

The New Yorker writes “Sessions has rewritten major criminal-justice norms in ways that diverge sharply from prevailing sentiments in America, and in much of his own party. In his first six months in office, Sessions has reversed one policy phasing out federal private prisons and another seeking to combat draconian federal-prison sentences. He’s called for an inquiry into the link between marijuana and violent crime and compared the drug’s “life-wrecking” harms to those of heroin. And last month, falling further out of step with many Republicans’ slow retreat from the war on drugs, Sessions reclaimed one of that war’s most disquieting weapons: civil-asset forfeiture.”

Criminal forfeiture allows law enforcement to seize cash, cars, and goods with provable ties to crime.  Civil forfeiture doesn’t require a conviction and the burden of proof falls on the owner who in most cases doesn’t have the resources to fight the system for the return of his property.  In other words, they can take your stuff without a crime actually having been committed.  This has long been used by corrupt enforcement to enrich their coffers.  The Nazi-like storm- trooping police have a “bash and carry” policy, much like “shoot first and ask questions later.”

While Sessions busies himself with unjust practices of incarceration and forfeiture, he won’t prosecute some real major criminals.  I’m talking about the “god-mother” of crime, Hillary Clinton.  Jason Chaffetz the former chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform said that Attorney General Jeff Sessions told him, in a personal meeting, that he would not pursue any of the major cases against Hillary Clinton.

Chaffetz said he visited “with Attorney General Sessions and it was one of the most frustrating discussions I had because whether it was the IRS, Fast and Furious, the email scandal that we went through, I did not see the Attorney General willing to just let Lady Justice administer justice and then follow through.

“He basically let me know he wasn’t going to pursue anything on the major cases,” Chaffetz said.  Chaffetz added, concerning Hillary’s email scandal: “We had Bryan Pagliano. I issued a subpoena for him to appear before the Committee and he said “No”. He didn’t even show up. We issued another subpoena. The US Marshals served it. And you know in my world, if you’re in court, I guarantee you that a subpoena is not an optional activity. We wanted the Attorney General to prosecute him and he said ‘No’,” Chaffetz said.  We cannot accept “no” as an answer from the Attorney General of the Trump Administration.

He also won’t be looking into prosecuting Loretta Lynch or Lois Lerner.

Back in January, during Sessions’ confirmation hearing he said this, “This country doesn’t punish its political enemies.”  If that’s true then why has Trump been so unfairly targeted and punished?  Sessions is a madman and is completely removed from rational thinking.  When progressive change takes so long, he’s destroying decades of enlightened policies.  Sessions is giving birth to a dark age and he must be removed.

It’s time for Mr. Sessions to go.

Sources:

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/04/23/cea-report-economic-perspectives-incarceration-and-criminal-justice

http://www.leaderandtimes.com/~www.highplainsleader.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=30387:why-wont-sessions-prosecute-hillary&catid=29:opinion&Itemid=58

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/jeff-sessions-and-the-resurgence-of-civil-asset-forfeiture

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/05/15/mandatory-minimum-sentences-are-cruel-and-ineffective-sessions-wants-them-back/?utm_term=.c5eb890b56e7

from
https://stonecoldtruth.com/the-dark-ages-of-jeff-sessions/