Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

Robert Mueller’s team wants Paul Manafort to remain behind bars. Manafort’s lawyers want him released so he can help better prepare for trial, CNN reports.

Prosecutors argue that Manafort’s attempts to contact potential witnesses in his case and influence their testimony are dangerous, the prosecutors argued.

Scott Schools (Linkedin photo)

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

Another key figure in the Department of Justice is leaving.

Scott Schools, the senior-most career attorney and a top aide to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, will step down to take a job in the private sector, the department announced this week, according to Business Insider.

Schools is Rosenstein’s main adviser. Before Rosenstein, he was an aide to former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. Schools is regularly briefed on the Mueller probe.

The article doesn’t provide a reason for the departure beyond taking a job in the private sector.

But it can’t be easy working in today’s Justice Department under the Trump administration.

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Sanctuary city concept and illegal immigration law government enforcement policies as a highway sign directing to welcoming immigrants with no legal status as a 3D illustration.

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

The Trump administration has been continually fighting the concept of sanctuary cities. But the judiciary has not always been helpful in that battle.

The latest: A federal judge on Thursday mostly rejected a bid by the Justice Department to block California’s “sanctuary state” laws, which enact policies friendly to undocumented immigrants, the Washington Post reports, adding:

In a 60-page ruling, U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez said most of the laws, which limit how state businesses and law enforcement agencies can work with federal immigration authorities, are “permissible exercises of California’s sovereign power.”

The judge said California was within its rights to allow state authorities to inspect immigrant detention facilities, and to bar state law enforcement agencies from providing release dates or other personal information to federal immigration authorities. He blocked portions of one law which imposed heavy fines on businesses that gave immigration authorities access to their facilities and records without a court order.