Tag Archives: Department of Justice

The corruption goes deep; Biden family business deals starting to get attention

Ecclesiastes 5:8 If you see the extortion[a] of the poor, or the perversion[b] of justice and fairness in the government, [c] do not be astonished by the matter. For the high official is watched by a higher official, [d] and there are higher ones over them![e]

Important Takeaways:

  • Biden family ‘got $1 MILLION from ROMANIA’ while Joe vowed to clean up corruption: GOP ‘influence-peddling’ probe into $10M in foreign cash reveals Hunter set up 15 companies AFTER his dad became VP and lay out how money came from China
  • Republicans are digging in on over $10 million received by Biden family members from foreign actors, including previously undisclosed $1 million in Romanian-linked payments, and a ‘web’ of 20 companies created while President Joe Biden was vice president and pushing anti-corruption efforts abroad.
  • On Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Republicans led by Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., released a ‘Second Records Memorandum’ that expands on information it received from subpoena returns as the committee continues its investigation into the Biden family’s business practices.
  • The memo specifically outlines the Biden family’s ties to Romanian ‘influence peddling’ and a web of LLCs created while Biden was vice president. It also accuses President Biden for a ‘lack of transparency’ regarding his family’s receipt of funds from China, which he has said are ‘not true.’
  • It details the efforts by the family to hide, conceal and confuse sources of money – including more China money, according to a committee aide.
  • ‘The White House refuses to correct the president’s statement. The president is now using the federal government to run interference for his family and his own role in these schemes,’ said Comer during a press conference announcing the memo Wednesday.
  • During Biden’s time as vice president, there were 20 companies affiliated with certain Biden family members created intentionally with a ‘complicated corporate structure’ the memo states.
  • Hunter Biden and his associates, including Rob Walker, formed ‘at least 15’ of those companies, after Biden took the office of the vice president in 2009.
  • Several of those entities including Owasco P.C. – which Hunter owned – Hudson West III, LLC, Robinson Walker, LLC, and Rosemont Seneca Bohai, LLC, accepted funds from foreign companies ranging from $5,000 to $3 million, the committee says.
  • The Biden family corruption and influence peddling has benefitted at least 12 family members, Comer has said – and includes wires to some of Biden’s grandchildren, he confirmed Wednesday.
  • Hunter Biden is facing federal tax and firearm charges out of a four-years-long probe by the Department of Justice.
  • Byron Donalds, R-N.Y., questioned how the department’s probe is being conducted during the press conference.
  • “It’s interesting that the Department of Justice has been investigating Hunter Biden for quite some time. And we seem to just never really get anywhere. And so I think that’s also interesting as well. I wonder what’s going on in the Department of Justice,’ said Donalds.
  • Nancy Mace, R-S.C., added: “DOJ needs to get off its ass and investigate. We’ve done the work for them so they can’t screw it up now.”

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Another Cyberattack Warning from U.S. Department of Justice

Important Takeaways:

  • Kansas nuclear plant was hacking target of Russian spies, Department of Justice says
  • A nuclear power plant in eastern Kansas was one target of computer hackers organized by Russia’s spy agency as part of a large-scale international operation to seize control over critical infrastructure assets in the U.S., the Department of Justice alleged in an indictment unsealed Thursday.
  • The agents are accused of computer fraud, wire fraud, identity theft and causing damage to the property of an energy facility.
  • The Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, based in Burlington, is named in the indictment as one of hundreds of U.S. energy sector operations targeted by Russian intelligence.
  • Through their efforts, the agents allegedly used a spearphishing method to compromise the company’s computer systems in which they sent emails while posing as employees.
  • Between 2012 and 2017, the three Russian agents were allegedly part of a military unit that intruded computers and attacked supply chains.

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Lawmakers ask U.S. Justice Department to stop seeking death penalty

By Jonathan Allen

(Reuters) – Four members of the U.S. Congress working to abolish capital punishment wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday to ask that he order Department of Justice attorneys to stop seeking the death penalty.

Garland has already ordered a pause on scheduling execution dates for any of the 46 men on federal death row, saying in his July announcement a moratorium was necessary while his department reviewed whether the government’s protocols for capital punishment were fair and humane.

The four Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives say he and his department’s attorneys should go further and “halt all participation in the capital punishment system.”

“In conjunction with the moratorium on executions, Department of Justice prosecutors must stop seeking the death penalty,” Adriano Espaillat, Ayanna Pressley, Jerrold Nadler and Cori Bush wrote in their letter. “The inconsistent logic of halting executions while, at the same time, advocating for its use has grave consequences.”

Espaillat and Pressley have sponsored separate bills that would abolish the federal death penalty.

U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, took office in January as the first president to promise to end capital punishment, but has not yet issued any orders related to the practice. Most other countries have outlawed capital punishment, as have a majority of U.S. states.

The Justice Department previously had a de facto moratorium on carrying out executions during the administration of Barack Obama, but capital punishment prosecutions continued and the federal death row grew larger.

Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, revived the use of capital punishment in an extraordinary spree of 13 executions over his final months in office – 12 men and one woman all convicted of murders and sentenced to death in federal courts. Prior to Trump, a Republican, the U.S. government had executed only three prisoners since 1963.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

In recent months, the department has directed attorneys to withdraw capital punishment requests before federal courts in seven prosecutions, the New York Times reported.

The lawmakers ask in their letter why those cases were chosen, and whether any broader policy exists.

The department has not withdrawn efforts to seek capital punishment in other cases, including that of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of bombing the Boston Marathon in 2013, killing three people and wounding hundreds. Department attorneys are preparing to argue before the Supreme Court later this year that it should reinstate Tsarnaev’s death sentence, which was overturned by a lower court.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

U.S. charges three North Koreans in $1.3 billion hacking spree

By Sarah N. Lynch, Raphael Satter and Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States has charged three North Korean computer programmers with a massive hacking spree aimed at stealing more than $1.3 billion in money and cryptocurrency, affecting companies from banks to Hollywood movie studios, the Department of Justice said on Wednesday.

The indictment alleges that Jon Chang Hyok, 31, Kim Il, 27, and Park Jin Hyok, 36, stole money while working for North Korea’s military intelligence services. Park had previously been charged in a complaint unsealed in 2018.

The Justice Department said the hackers were responsible for a wide range of criminal activity and high-profile intrusions, including a retaliatory 2014 attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment for producing “The Interview” movie, which depicted the assassination of North Korea’s leader.

The group is alleged to have targeted staff of AMC Theaters and broken into computers belonging to Mammoth Screen, a U.K. film company that was working on a drama series about North Korea.

The Justice Department also alleged that the trio participated in the creation of the destructive WannaCry 2.0 ransomware – which hit Britain’s National Health Service hard when it was set loose in 2017.

The indictment pins the blame on the hackers for breaking into banks across South and Southeast Asia, Mexico, and Africa by penetrating the financial institutions’ networks and abusing the SWIFT protocol to steal money. They’re also alleged to have deployed malicious applications from March 2018 through September 2020 to target cryptocurrency users.

The overall amount of money stolen by the hackers is not clear because in some cases the thefts were either halted or reversed. But the figures are significant. In one 2016 heist alone – at the Bangladesh Bank – the hackers are alleged to have made off with $81 million.

“North Korea’s operatives, using keyboards rather than guns, stealing digital wallets of cryptocurrency instead of sacks of cash, are the world’s leading 21st century nation-state bank robbers,” U.S. Assistant Attorney General John Demers told a news briefing.

Kristi Johnson, the FBI assistant director in charge for the Los Angeles Field Office, told reporters that the three alleged hackers were believed to be in North Korea. Officials alleged they had been stationed at times in various other countries, including China and Russia.

The North Korean mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to requests for comment and contact details for the trio could not immediately be found. The Chinese and Russian embassies in Washington also did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Overall, North Korea has generated an estimated $2 billion using “widespread and increasingly sophisticated” digital intrusions at banks and cryptocurrency exchanges, according to a U.N. report in 2019 by independent experts monitoring international sanctions on Pyongyang.

“According to one member state, the DPRK total theft of virtual assets, from 2019 to November 2020” was approximately $316.4 million, the report said.

Officials said on Wednesday that Ghaleb Alaumary, a Canadian-American citizen, has separately pleaded guilty to laundering some of the alleged hackers’ money. Requests for comment sent to Alaumary’s lawyers were not immediately returned.

Alaumary is slated to be sentenced in June in a federal court in Georgia.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Raphael Satter and Mark Hosenball; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Trump declines to say if he still has confidence in Attorney General Barr

By Jeff Mason and Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday declined to say whether he still had confidence in U.S. Attorney General William Barr after the Department of Justice chief this week said there was no sign of major fraud in last month’s presidential election.

Barr told the Associated Press in an interview on Tuesday the department found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. But Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, said Barr had not searched for any evidence.

“Well he hasn’t done anything. So, he hasn’t looked,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “They haven’t looked very hard, which is a disappointment to be honest with you, because it’s massive fraud.”

Trump’s legal team has accused Barr of failing to conduct a proper inquiry or audit voting machines, a task that does not fall to the Justice Department during an election.

Barr told the AP there had been confusion over the department’s role in U.S. elections, and that civil lawsuits like those being pursued by Trump’s campaign were the appropriate legal venue.

Asked if he still had confidence in Barr, Trump said: “Ask me that in a number of weeks from now. They should be looking at all of this fraud. This is not civil, he thought it was civil. This is not civil, this is criminal stuff. This is very bad criminal stuff.”

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the president’s remarks.

“We found far more votes than we need in almost all of these states. And I think I can say in all of these states, far more votes than we need to win every one of them,” Trump said.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Sarah N. Lynch; additional reporting by Steve Holland and Susan Heavey; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Biden’s possible attorney general pick has moderate track record: progressive critics

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to end the federal death penalty and eliminate mandatory minimum sentences, but some progressives say a potential pick for attorney general to carry out those reforms may not be the one to enact bold changes.

Sally Yates, 60, is a leading candidate for the job, according to sources. The Atlanta native is perhaps best known for being fired from her position as acting attorney general by Republican President Donald Trump in his first month in office when she refused to enforce his first attempt at banning travelers from Muslim-majority nations.

Her history at the Department of Justice (DOJ) – where Democratic President Barack Obama appointed her as deputy attorney general in 2015, and before that as Atlanta’s top federal prosecutor for about five years – make the adviser to the Biden transition team a safe pick for a role subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate, which may still be under Republican control next year.

Asked for comment, a Yates spokeswoman provided a lengthy list of opinion articles, testimony and other records she said demonstrate Yates’ strong commitment to criminal justice reform.

A Biden transition team spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Yates has expressed a measured approach on some criminal justice reforms, including previously voicing some support for the mandatory minimum sentences Biden wants to end – a position some progressives worry may not go far enough at a time of reckoning for the criminal justice system.

“She has done courageous things, but she is a career prosecutor,” said Rachel Barkow, a New York University law professor who previously served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which sets federal sentencing guidelines.

“The question will be, if Sally Yates comes in a second time, does she do a better job reading the moment or is she still coming with that DOJ insider lens?”

The United States was rocked by a fresh wave of street protests this year over the killings of Black men and women by police, including George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.

CONFRONTING RACIAL INJUSTICE

That has led Democrats, including Biden to rethink policies, including mandatory minimum sentences, that have led to the disproportionate incarceration of African-American men. Biden has also expressed support for approving more clemency petitions from nonviolent offenders.

Yates, during her 2015 confirmation hearing for deputy attorney general, called mandatory minimum sentences “an important tool for prosecutors,” which could nevertheless be used more judiciously due to the “fiscal reality” facing U.S. prisons.

While she was U.S. attorney in Atlanta, her office also sought the death penalty in some cases, and she testified on the Justice Department’s behalf to urge the U.S. Sentencing Commission to narrowly limit who could qualify to apply retroactively for a drug sentence reduction.

She was also involved in a controversy surrounding a 2014 clemency project, after Pardon Attorney Deborah Leff resigned in protest due to a backlog of 1,000 recommendations sitting in Yates’ office, 100 of which were urging clemency be granted.

In her January 2016 resignation letter, Leff said Yates had blocked her access to the White House, including on cases where Yates had reversed Leff’s clemency determinations. Yates’ defenders say she was passionate about clemency, and personally reviewed every petition herself.

Some former colleagues say Yates deserves credit for important work that began during the Obama administration, much of which has since largely been undone during Trump’s term.

Yates spearheaded efforts to scale back the federal government’s use of private prisons, revamped the Bureau of Prisons’ education program to better prepare inmates for release and urged limits on solitary confinement.

She also persuaded Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder to expand on his new policy scaling back the use of mandatory minimums and later publicly rebuked Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, after he reversed these policies in 2017.

“Somebody like Sally is very attuned to what has been happening in the country after George Floyd’s murder,” said Vanita Gupta, who headed the DOJ’s civil rights division during Yates’ tenure and now heads the Leadership Conference on Civil & Human rights. “She is very personally committed to civil rights and criminal justice reform, and I would fully expect that commitment would actually only deepen.”

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)

Judge rules U.S. government’s lethal injections break law, halts execution

By Jonathan Allen and Peter Szekely

(Reuters) – A U.S. District Court judge in Washington ruled on Thursday that the Justice Department’s new lethal injection protocol violated drug safety laws and ordered a planned execution for Friday to be halted.

Since resuming federal executions after a 17-year hiatus in July, the Department of Justice has been injecting condemned inmates with lethal doses of pentobarbital, a highly regulated barbiturate. The department executed three murderers in July and a fourth on Thursday and had planned to execute Keith Nelson on Friday.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that the department was breaking the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) by administering the pentobarbital without a medical practitioner’s prescription, agreeing with death row inmates who sued the government.

“Where the government argues that a lethal injection drug is legally and constitutionally permissible because it will ensure a ‘humane’ death, it cannot then disclaim a responsibility to comply with federal statutes enacted to ensure that the drugs operate humanely,” Chutkan wrote in a 13-page opinion.

Because pharmaceutical companies refuse to sell pentobarbital for use in executions, the Justice Department has said it is instead paying a pharmacist in secret to mix up small batches of the drug.

Chutkan ruled that this also violated the FDCA, which forbids pharmacists from making copies of drugs already available on the market after having received safety approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

Justice Department lawyers immediately asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to overturn Chutkan’s ruling.

That court has previously ruled that execution drugs are at least partly governed by drug safety laws. In 2013, it upheld an order, which continues to bind the FDA, that stopped imports of sodium thiopental that were headed to state execution chambers.

Prior to July, there had been only three federal executions since 1963, all between 2001 and 2003, all using sodium thiopental. As supplies of that drug vanished, Texas, Missouri and other states that use capital punishment switched to using pentobarbital, and the Justice Department announced last year it would follow suit.

Chutkan ruled that Nelson’s execution by lethal injection could proceed if the Justice Department avoided copying FDA-approved drugs and had a physician-issued prescription in the condemned prisoner’s name. The American Medical Association and other clinicians’ groups have said enabling an execution is against medical ethics.

The Justice Department has said it is necessary to promise secrecy to its pentobarbital suppliers. Soon after President Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017, the department spent two years building a small network of companies to make and test the drug, a Reuters investigation found.

Nelson, convicted of raping and murdering 10-year-old Pamela Butler in Kansas in 1999, is one of 16 inmates on federal death row who sued the Justice Department over its lethal injection protocol.

Chutkan issued orders blocking the inmates’ executions while the litigation continued, which were swiftly overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year, and three of the plaintiffs have since been executed by the defendants.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely; Editing by Toby Chopra and Bernadette Baum)

New York coroner ‘confident’ Epstein’s death was suicide: New York Times

An exterior view of the Metropolitan Correctional Center jail where financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was found dead in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., August 10, 2019. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon

(Reuters) – New York City’s chief medical examiner is confident Jeffrey Epstein died by hanging himself in the jail cell where he was being held without bail on sex-trafficking charges, but is awaiting more information before releasing her determination, the New York Times reported on Sunday, citing a city official.

An autopsy was performed earlier in the day on the disgraced financier found unresponsive on Saturday in a New York City jail, chief medical examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson said. A private pathologist observed the autopsy on behalf of Epstein’s representatives, which she called “routine practice.”

A determination on the cause of death “is pending further information at this time,” Sampson said in a statement.

The suspicion in Epstein’s death was hanging, said a city official not authorized to speak on the record.

The Times did not say why it could not identify the source of information on the medical examiner’s likely determination of the cause of death.

Epstein, 66, was not on suicide watch at the time in his cell in the Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), a source said.

Epstein, a well-connected money manager, was found hanging by his neck, according to the source, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

The wealthy financier, who once counted Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic former President Bill Clinton as friends, was arrested on July 6 and pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking involving dozens of underage girls as young as 14, from at least 2002 to 2005.

The FBI and the Department of Justice’s Inspector General opened investigations into his suicide while he was in federal custody.

Last month, Epstein was found unconscious on the floor of his jail cell with marks on his neck, and officials were investigating that incident as a possible suicide or assault.

Despite that incident, Epstein was not on suicide watch at the time of his death, and he was alone in a cell in the unit of the correctional center used to isolate vulnerable prisoners when his body was found.

It was not immediately clear why Epstein was taken off suicide watch, a special set of procedures for inmates who are deemed to be at risk of taking their own lives.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which operates the MCC, provided no explanation beyond its terse statement that Epstein was found dead in an apparent suicide.

His death touched off outrage from Attorney General William Barr, politicians and many of Epstein’s alleged victims, who fear that they may lose their day in court now that Epstein is dead.

That investigation into conduct described in the indictment, including the conspiracy count, will continue despite Epstein’s death, Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, said on Saturday.

The indictment – which accused Epstein of knowingly recruiting underage women to engage in sex acts, sometimes over a period of years – came more than a decade after he pleaded guilty in Florida to state charges of solicitation of prostitution from a minor in a deal with prosecutors that has been widely criticized as too lenient.

(Reporting by Letitia Stein in Tampa, Florida; Editing by Frank McGurty and Bill Rigby)

Trump calls Smollett case ’embarrassment,’ announces review

FILE PHOTO: Actor Jussie Smollett leaves court after charges against him were dropped by state prosecutors in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Kamil Krzaczynski

(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the Department of Justice will “review” the case of actor Jussie Smollett, who was charged with staging a fake hate crime in Chicago before prosecutors abruptly dropped the case this week.

In an early morning tweet announcing the review, Trump said the case had embarrassed the nation.

Smollett, who is black and gay, said two men attacked him at night in January, making homophobic and racist remarks and putting a noose around his neck while shouting support for Trump.

Investigators later charged Smollett with paying the two men to pretend to attack him in order to garner public sympathy for himself. Prosecutors dropped the charges on Tuesday, saying they stood by the accusation but that an agreement by Smollett to forfeit his $10,000 bond was a just outcome.

The county prosecutors’ decision stunned the city’s police chief, prompted the police union to demand a federal investigation and enraged Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat, who called it a “whitewash” that made a fool of the city.

Trump, a Republican, echoed those remarks early on Thursday.

“FBI & DOJ to review the outrageous Jussie Smollett case in Chicago,” Trump wrote on Twitter, referring to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice. “It is an embarrassment to our Nation!”

Smollett, 36, says he is innocent and did not stage the attack. His spokeswoman and his lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday. The Department of Justice declined to comment.

The FBI has already had some involvement in the case, with agents investigating a threatening letter Smollett said he received prior to the attack, according to the Chicago Police Department.

The initial reports of two Trump supporters attacking a gay, black celebrity drew widespread sympathy for Smollett, particularly from Democrats. That faded quickly after the actor’s arrest, and the case was seized on by some as an example of what Trump likes to deride as “fake news.”

Smollett is best known for playing a gay musician on the Fox drama “Empire.” His lawyers said he hopes to move on with his acting career, but it remains unclear whether he will return to “Empire” after being written out of the last two episodes of the most recent season.

Chicago’s chief prosecutor, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, has defended her office’s decision as proportionate to what she described as relatively minor charges, saying that even if Smollett had been convicted he would likely not have faced prison time.

Foxx recused herself from the case after acknowledging she had discussed it with a relative of Smollett.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

U.S. attorney general issues order to speed up immigrant deportations

Women from the Dominican Republic are apprehended by the border patrol for illegally crossing into the U.S. border from Mexico in Los Ebanos, Texas, U.S., August 15, 2018. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday sought to speed up the deportation of illegal immigrants, telling immigration judges they should only postpone cases in removal proceedings “for good cause shown.”

Sessions, in an interim order that was criticized by some lawyers, said the “good-cause” standard “limits the discretion of immigration judges and prohibits them from granting continuances for any reason or no reason at all.”

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions takes part in a Federal Commission on School Safety meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 16, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions takes part in a Federal Commission on School Safety meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 16, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis

Unlike the federal judiciary system, U.S. immigration courts fall under the Department of Justice and the attorney general can intervene. Sessions, a Republican former U.S. Senator appointed by President Donald Trump, has been unusually active in this practice compared to his predecessors.

Sessions has led efforts by the Trump administration to crack down on illegal immigration, including a “zero tolerance” policy that separated immigrant parents from their children while they were in U.S. detention. Trump abandoned the separation policy in June under political pressure.

Critical in showing “good cause” is whether a person is likely to succeed in efforts to remain in the United States, either by appealing for asylum or receiving some form of visa or work permit, Sessions said on Thursday.

Stephen Kang, an attorney with the ACLU immigrants rights project, described Sessions’ order as “troubling” and one of a series that “has moved in the direction of restricting due process rights for individuals who are in removal proceedings.”

Kang said Sessions seemed to portray immigrants seeking more time to prepare their cases as trying to “game the system and avoid deportation.”

Kang said removal proceedings were complex and people needed time “both to get lawyers to ensure that their due process rights are protected and time just to make sure their cases get a fair hearing.”

The Justice Department has been struggling to reduce a backlog of deportation cases. An analysis by the Government Accountability Office last year found the number of cases that drag on from one year to the next more than doubled between 2006 and 2015, mainly because fewer cases are completed per year.

Department spokesman Devin O’Malley said more immigration judges had been hired, but “unnecessary and improper continuances … continue to plague the immigration court system and contribute to the backlog.”

Sessions said on Thursday that the “use of continuances as a dilatory tactic is particularly pernicious in the immigration context” because people in the country illegally who want to remain have an incentive to delay their deportation as long as possible.

Granting continuances solely for good cause would be an “important check on immigration judges’ authority” and demonstrate public interest in “expeditious enforcement of the immigration laws,” Sessions said.

(Reporting by David Alexander; editing by Leslie Adler and Grant McCool)