| the current US president’s DOJ (under Jeff Sessions) reinstated civil asset forfeiture in 2017, during Trump’s first term. https://www.npr.org/2017/07/19/538148867/justice-department-... It had been briefly paused by Barack Obama’s DOJ. But that’s a mixed situation because there was an astonishing amount of these seizures under Obama, and it was only in his last year in office - and after extensive coverage and reporting on this by Wapo and others in 2014 - that the DOJ paused it. Sessions and Trump brought it right back. While it was (at the end of the day) Obama’s DOJ, the decision to withdraw the practice was probably done independently by his DOJ, so I’m not going as far as crediting or blaming him personally. Trump , on the other hand, went as far as appearing on TV with a bunch of deputies to talk about how wonderful asset forfeiture was and how good it was to have it back. Then took it one further and openly threatened a lawmaker who was opposed to it on CSPAN on the same visit. I don’t have the first clip im referring to, it’s insanely bad optics but, the second one is on CSPAN and wapo covered it. (Paywalled): https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/07/trump... |