Attorney General Jeff Sessions Once Again Shows His Contempt for Transparency
UPDATE (7/14/2017): The ACLU today filed with the Alabama State Bar's Disciplinary Committee another amendment to our bar ethics complaint against Attorney General Sessions, who is licensed to practice law in Alabama. The amendment gives the Alabama Disciplinary Committee a copy of a national security clearance application, showing Sessions's false answer. Today's filing also provides more information related to our initial bar complaint against Sessions for lying under oath to Congress about whether he met with Russian officials as well as our earlier amendment that provided background on media reports of additional meetings between Sessions and Russian officials. We have alleged that Mr. Sessions violated the Alabama Rules of Professional Conduct.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the nation’s top law enforcement officer, is once again playing fast and loose with the law.
In addition to investigating Sessions for allegedly perjuring himself during his Senate confirmation hearing and possibly having a role in obstructing justice in the firing of FBI Director James Comey, special counsel Robert Mueller will also have to investigate Sessions for any crimes in making a false statement in his security clearance application.
On June 12, a judge ordered Sessions’s Justice Department to release a security clearance form that detailed his contacts with the Russian government within 30 days to a watchdog group, . The group under the Freedom of Information Act in April for the information. The deadline for releasing the part of the form, known as an SF-86, was yesterday, July 12.
Initially, NPR reported that the Justice Department was refusing to release the form in defiance of the judge. This morning, the agency did release the relevant portion of the SF-86 form, heavily redacted, but still clearly showing that Sessions checked “no” to the question:
"Have you or any of your immediate family in the past seven (7) years had any contact with a foreign government, its establishment (such as embassy, consulate, agency, military service, intelligence or security service, etc.) or its representatives, whether inside or outside the U.S.?"
Sessions’s answer in the SF-86 form repeats the false statement that he has made again and again about his contacts with Russian officials. During his confirmation hearing in January, Sessions the Senate Judiciary Committee — in sworn testimony — that he “did not have communications with the Russians.” Soon after, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) followed up with a letter to Sessions that again asked him if he had contact with Russian officials before the election. He wrote back a one-word response to the question: “.”
Both answers were false. Before the November election, Sessions spoke to Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States, at least twice, including once in his Senate office last September. When caught in that deception, Sessions tried to minimize the meeting, that he and Kislyak did not discuss the election.
The redacted SF-86 form, combined with his false testimony before the Senate, makes it clear the attorney general is lying to the American people. Knowing whether the nation’s top law enforcement officer had inappropriate communications with a foreign government, which the U.S. intelligence community interfered with the election, is absolutely critical to maintaining the integrity of not only the federal justice system but the government itself.
On Wednesday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House’s deputy press secretary, that the administration’s goal “is to be as transparent as humanly possible.” Such a statement is laughable considering President Trump’s refusal to disclose his tax returns or for firing FBI Director Jim Comey. If the White House wanted to make even a small gesture toward transparency, it could release the unredacted portion of Sessions’s SF-86 form as well as the SF-86 forms for all other former Trump campaign and advisors who are now serving in the Trump administration.
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Free Speech
National Security
ACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok BanACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Religious Liberty
ACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter IslamophobiaACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter Islamophobia
WASHINGTON – The Biden administration today released the first-ever national strategy to counter Islamophobia and related forms of bias and discrimination, including hate against Arab, Sikh, and South Asian Americans. In advance of the strategy, American Civil Liberties Union and its partners had urged the administration to overhaul government programs that reflect anti-Muslim discrimination. In particular, we have called for urgent action to constrain governmental agencies from continuing to exercise their authorities and technology to wrongly surveil and investigate, watchlist, and question and detain Muslims at the border, as well as deny immigration benefits to people from Muslim-majority countries. While the White House raised expectations that many of these issues would be addressed, the final strategy ended up falling far short. The following is a statement from Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project: “While this strategy acknowledges discrimination and its harms, it does little to end them and is a squandered opportunity. For decades, American officials have invoked national security to pass laws and implement programs that disproportionately harm Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim. A serious anti-discrimination strategy would concretely address multiple bias-infused government practices that deny our communities equal participation in civic life and our democracy, like federal watchlisting, surveillance, and investigation. We’re profoundly frustrated that the administration didn’t take even the basic, overdue step of recognizing that anti-Muslim discrimination is uniquely normalized and embedded in government policies.” -
VirginiaDec 2024
National Security
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Our client, Nizar Trabelsi, is in the United States against his will. The federal government brought him here from Belgium more than a decade ago and charged him with terrorism-related crimes. At trial, the government’s case failed: a federal jury found Mr. Trabelsi not guilty. But instead of allowing Mr. Trabelsi to return to Belgium after his acquittal, the United States placed him in highly restrictive immigration detention and began an ongoing effort to force him to Tunisia, where he was born and where he will very likely be tortured. Mr. Trabelsi’s detention violates the Constitution, immigration law, and the extradition treaty between the United States and Belgium. Through this lawsuit, he seeks to return to Belgium, and he demands an immediate improvement of his detention conditions. -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Immigrants' Rights
Federal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is UnlawfulFederal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is Unlawful
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — This week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the court does not have jurisdiction to decide whether the government can continue to detain Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian national who was brought to the United States against his will for prosecution and was cleared of all charges last year. The ruling means the United States will be able to continue to detain Mr. Trabelsi while it attempts to deport him to Tunisia, where he was born and where, as an immigration judge ruled earlier this year, he will likely face torture. The court also concluded that even if it did have jurisdiction over Mr. Trabelsi’s case, his claims challenging the government’s detention of him would fail. “Reviewing claims that the government is holding someone unlawfully is at the core of the judicial function, and we’re heartbroken for our client that the court got this so wrong,” said Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Center for Democracy. “The government’s arguments in defense of Mr. Trabelsi’s detention makes a hash of the Constitution, immigration laws, and its own extradition treaty.” In 2013, the United States forcibly extradited Mr. Trabelsi from Belgium to face criminal charges in the United States. In July 2023, after almost 10 years of highly restrictive pretrial detention, a federal jury cleared Mr. Trabelsi of all charges. But instead of releasing Mr. Trabelsi or returning him to Belgium, the U.S. transferred him to immigration detention, wrongly treating him as an applicant for admission and placing him in the deportation process. Over the years, the Belgian government has issued multiple formal diplomatic requests asking the U.S. to facilitate his return, but the U.S. has refused to send him back. Mr. Trabelsi filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to detain him. He also sought immediate improvements to his detention conditions. Those claims were not part of the court’s ruling today, and will continue to be litigated on a separate track. “Mr. Trabelsi only wants to return to Belgium after being illegally extradited to the United States, held for ten years, and then acquitted by a jury of any crimes,” said Nicole Hallett, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. “He cannot be held indefinitely and we will continue to fight to make sure that justice ultimately prevails.” Mr. Trabelsi is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the University of Chicago Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, the ACLU of Virginia, and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School. The complaint in Trabelsi v. Crawford was filed against Jeffrey Crawford, warden of the Farmville Detention Center where Mr. Trabelsi is being held; Liana Castano, ICE field office director for the Washington Field Office; Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general.