Tag: Jordan

Eric Adams attacked for subway safety approach after killing of Jordan Neely

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The killing of 30-year-old Jordan Neely on the subway earlier this week, however, put the mayor in a difficult position as progressive lawmakers led a growing chorus of outrage and launched a renewed attack on Adams’ approach to public safety.
The stakes are high. Subway crime was a driving force behind a groundswell of support for GOP candidates last year, which lifted a Republican gubernatorial candidate to within six points of winning the general election and helped the right flip several Congressional seats to take over the House. New York Republicans continue hammering Democrats on crime ahead of the upcoming congressional races that include several competitive seats. How New Yorkers ultimately view Neely’s killing and the government’s response could also alter the city’s strategy toward mental health and public safety.
On Monday, Neely was acting erratically aboard an F train when he was placed into a chokehold by a 24-year-old passenger and later died. On Wednesday, the city’s medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. Several reports have noted Neely, who did impersonations of Michael Jackson in years’ past, struggled with mental health issues.
Adams has said that the incident demonstrates why his policies have been needed all along.
“This is what highlights what I’ve been saying throughout my administration,” Adams said Thursday during an unrelated press conference, echoing comments he made the night before on national television. “People who are dealing with mental health illness should get the help they need and not live on the train. And I’m going to continue to push on that.”
Prominent progressives, however, have laced into the mayor’s response to the incident and re-upped long standing criticisms of Adams’ approach to mental health and safety.
“This is the inevitable outcome of the dangerous rhetoric of stigmatizing mental health issues, stigmatizing poverty and the continued bloated investment in the carceral system at the expense of funding access to housing, food and health,” Tiffany Cabán, a progressive New York City Council member, said in an interview.
So far, the mayor appears outnumbered by a growing cadre of elected officials who have weighed in. While Adams has characterized the incident as tragic, he has also said he will wait until Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg completes his investigation before making any assessment — a view that is not shared even by those politically aligned with the mayor.

“Racism that continues to permeate throughout our society allows for a level of dehumanization that denies Black people from being recognized as victims when subjected to acts of violence,” New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said in a statement, later adding that “the initial response by our legal system to this killing is disturbing and puts on display for the world the double standards that Black people and other people of color continue to face.”
And Maurice Mitchell, head of the national Working Families Party, noted Adams’ policies were in full effect Monday but did not stop Neely from dying.
“Even with hundreds of police in our subways, they failed to prevent this—or even apprehend the killer,” he said in a statement.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

May 6, 2023
In Bragg v. Jordan, a familiar legal strategy emerges

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The lawsuit echoes legal arguments advanced in 2016 and 2017 in another subpoena fight on a hot-button issue. At the time, New York’s attorney general, Democrat Eric Schneiderman, was investigating whether Exxon Mobil misled investors about the risks of climate change. A GOP-controlled House panel accused Schneiderman of having a political agenda and served subpoenas seeking documents from the probe. Bragg was a senior official in Schneiderman’s office, as was Leslie Dubeck, who was then counsel to the attorney general and is now Bragg’s general counsel.
Congressional interference with state and local prosecutors is unusual and raises delicate questions about the balance of power between Congress and the states. So Schneiderman’s office resisted.
Dubeck was the architect of Schneiderman’s approach. She led the attorney general’s refusal to comply, and she prepared to either sue the House committee or defend the attorney general’s office if the committee took the matter to court. The panel’s investigation, she wrote at the time, “oversteps the boundaries imposed by federalism” and violates New York’s sovereignty.
The conflict ultimately fizzled when the subpoenas lapsed, but Bragg and Dubeck have now revived the strategy.
“They know the cards that the House Republicans have to play in this situation,” Eric Soufer, who was a spokesman for Schneiderman during the Exxon case, said of Bragg and Dubeck.
Bragg’s lawsuit replicates many of the arguments that Dubeck made in the Exxon matter. The lawsuit says the Pomerantz subpoena violates “basic principles of federalism and common sense” and accuses the House GOP of infringing on Bragg’s authority and New York’s sovereign interests.
Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, a Trump appointee, declined on Tuesday to issue an immediate order blocking the subpoena, and she scheduled an initial hearing for next Wednesday.
The House GOP’s probe of Bragg’s investigation is led by Jordan (R-Ohio), Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and Administration Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.). The Pomerantz subpoena is the first one they have issued.

Though Bragg’s colleagues have said the first-term Democrat doesn’t have much of a taste for political warfare, his effort to combat the House inquiry received a warm reception from those interested in seeing the district attorney defend the institution.
“The office should not capitulate to people with special interests,” said Joan Vollero, who handled communications and intergovernmental affairs for Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr. “I think, ironically, the House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are playing the same game of politics that they’ve accused the office of playing.”
Congressional Republicans have criticized Bragg’s investigation of the former president as evidence of his political bias, arguing that the district attorney’s pursuit of Trump stands in contrast to his liberal-leaning criminal justice policies for minor offenses. In advance of Trump’s indictment, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy warned that charges against the former president would be “an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump.”
Another irony in the case is that Bragg is borrowing some of the same arguments that Trump himself often used to resist congressional subpoenas when he was president. Trump frequently argued that Democrats’ probes into his finances were meant to harass him for political gain rather than promote a legitimate legislative purpose.
Bragg is now taking a similar position about the House GOP inquiry. His lawsuit repeatedly cites a Supreme Court decision in a Trump subpoena fight, Trump v. Mazars, which suggested that congressional subpoenas against another branch of government can violate the separation of powers if they have an improper purpose.
From an optics perspective, Soufer said, it is wise of Bragg to counterpunch. “If you let them politicize it the way they want to,” he said, “you’re going to lose in the court of public opinion.”
Both sides are launching increasingly aggressive public appeals. On Monday, Jordan’s committee is planning to hold a “field hearing” in Manhattan on Bragg’s “pro-crime, anti-victim policies.” A spokeswoman for Bragg has called the event “a political stunt” and has highlighted crime statistics showing a decline in murders, shootings, burglaries and robberies.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 13, 2023
Jordan fires off first subpoenas against Biden admin

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Garland and the FBI have strenuously rejected the GOP accusation — which fact checkers have also deemed false — saying their focus was on protecting school board members amid sharply escalating threats of violence, with no emphasis on parents or those raising policy concerns about Covid restrictions.
The subpoenas primarily seek communications between top FBI and Justice Department officials and outside advocates and the Department of Education. Despite the March 1 deadline, subpoenas typically give way to further negotiation that results in shifting due dates and a narrower scope of document production.
Jordan’s quick-trigger finger on the subpoenas underscores the intensely adversarial posture that is likely to define the GOP’s investigations of the Biden administration. It also illustrates Jordan’s effort to maximize his leverage ahead of a potential brawl with the administration over access to sensitive documents.
On the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, it’s the first test of the Biden administration’s willingness to cooperate with some of the red-meat Republican-led House investigations that Democrats largely regard as rooted in conspiracy theories and grievance politics. The administration has repeatedly insisted that it will take the GOP House’s oversight requests seriously and attempt to negotiate document production when possible — for example, the Justice Department, in a Jan. 20 letter obtained by POLITICO, offered “staff-level meetings” to Jordan. But those promises often belie deep distrust and resistance between the branches.
Previewing the fierce political battle to come, Democrats and the White House immediately hit back at Jordan — saying he was marshaling his powerful gavel in pursuit of right-wing conspiracy theories that had largely been debunked.
“Republicans do not want to be bothered by this inconvenient truth,” said Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.), the top Democrat on the Jordan-led panel probing claims of government politicization, in a statement. Plaskett also made a dig at Jordan’s defiance of a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee last year.
Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House, added that the subpoenas “make crystal clear that extreme House Republicans have no interest in working together with the Biden Administration on behalf of the American people — and every interest in staging political stunts.”
The information Jordan is requesting largely reflects a months-long push by the Ohio Republican. The White House previously warned him and Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) that they would have to re-submit any requests they made while they were still in the minority.

Among the broad swath of records Jordan is requesting from Garland is any documents or communications between DOJ employees and the National School Boards Association, any guidance that stemmed from Garland’s memorandum on threats against school officials and documents and communications from the task force the Justice Department announced in October that was supposed to discuss potential prosecution of any crimes. A DOJ official confirmed the receipt of the subpoena on Friday.
Jordan, in his subpoena to Wray, asked for documents and communications related to the task force, or the bureau’s role, and documents and communications related to a tag the FBI used to track threats against school officials. The committee also conducted a voluntary transcribed interview earlier this week with former FBI official Jill Sanborn as part of its broad investigation into the FBI and DOJ.
The FBI confirmed that it received the subpoena and pushed back on the central claim of Jordan’s investigation.
“As Director Wray and other FBI officials have stated clearly on numerous occasions before Congress and elsewhere, the FBI has never been in the business of investigating speech or policing speech at school board meetings or anywhere else, and we never will be. Our focus is and always will be on protecting people from violence and threats of violence,” the bureau said.
And in the subpoena for Cardona, Jordan is asking for any documents or communications between the Justice Department and Department of Education employees that refers or relates to Garland’s memo or the National School Boards Association’s letter to President Joe Biden about the rise in threats and asking for input from the FBI, among other entities. The National School Boards Association subsequently apologized for the letter.
The Department of Education had responded to Jordan’s January letter on Thursday, according to a copy of the letter obtained by POLITICO. In it, Gwen Graham, an assistant secretary for legislation and congressional affairs, noted that “as the Department has repeatedly made clear … the Secretary did not request, direct any action, or play any role in the development of the September 29, 2021, letter from the NSBA to President Biden.” That, Graham noted, was also “confirmed by an independent review by outside counsel retained” by the National School Boards Association.
Jordan had signaled in his January letters to Wray, Garland and Cardona, among others, that he would use subpoenas if they didn’t comply with his requests for records.
“Accordingly, for the final time, we reiterate our outstanding requests … and ask that you provide this material immediately. The Committee is prepared to resort to compulsory process, if necessary, to obtain this material,” he wrote in each of the letters.
Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 4, 2023
Jordan: Legislation alone wouldn’t have stopped Nichols beating

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“What strikes me is just a lack of respect for human life, so I don’t know that any law, any training, any reform is going to change — you know, this man was handcuffed, they continued to beat him,” Jordan said.
But Jordan did tout a bill introduced in 2020 by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who has worked with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to get a package of policing measures through Congress. The legislation would have offered financial incentives to states that implemented certain types of reforms in use of force, without mandating the changes.
The extent of potential reform — as well as questions of individual moral responsibility and systemic faults — has been a focus of lawmakers’ debate over policing, particularly since the protests following Minneapolis police’s murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in 2020. Few Democrats on the Hill have called to lower funding to police, but Republicans have still argued that Democratic proposals are a bridge too far when it comes to public safety.
Lawmakers, as well as Nichols family attorney Ben Crump, have called for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to be passed since Nichols’ death. That bill, which passed in the House in 2021, would prohibit racial profiling by law enforcement and ban chokeholds at the federal level, among other measures.
President Joe Biden has said he was “outraged” watching the surveillance footage of Nichols’ death.
The five Memphis officers shown beating Nichols have been charged with murder and other crimes related to his death, and they were all fired from the police department.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 29, 2023