counterpunch | Crimes without criminals was not a subject for study when I was in
law school. The two were seen as part of the same illegal package. That
was before notorious corporate lawyers and a cash register Congress
combined to separate economic, health and safety crimes from corporate
accountability, incarceration and deterrence.
Lawlessness is now so rampant that a group of realistic law
professors, led by Professor Mihailis E. Diamantis of the University of
Iowa Law School, claim there is no corporate criminal law. I say
“realistic” because their assertion that corporate criminal law, does
not in fact, exist is not widely acknowledged by their peers.
Most Americans know that none of the executives on Wall Street who
are responsible for the lies, deception, and phony investments they sold
to millions of trusting investors were prosecuted and sent to jail.
“They got away with it,” was the common refrain during the 2008-2009
meltdown of Wall Street that took our economy down and into a deep
recession that resulted in massive job loss and the looting of savings
of tens of millions of Americans.
Not only did the Wall Street Barons escape the Sheriff but they got
an obedient Congress, White House and Federal Reserve to guarantee
trillions of dollars to bail them out, implicitly warning that the big
banks, brokerage firms and other giant financial corporations were
simply “too big to fail.” They had the economy by the throat and
taxpayer dollars in their pockets. Moreover, Wall Streeters made out
like bandits while people on Main Street suffered.
All this and much more made up a rare symposium organized by Professor Diamantis last year at Georgetown Law School. (See: https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/imagining-a-world-without-corporate-criminal-law-symposium/).
He wrote that the “economic impact of corporate crime is at least
twenty times greater than all other criminal offenses combined,” quoting
conservative estimates by the FBI. It’s not just economic, he
continued: “Scholars, prosecutors and courts increasingly recognize that
brand name corporations also commit a broad range of ‘street crimes’:
homicide, arson, drug trafficking, dumping and sex offenses.”
The litany of corporate wrongdoing ranges from polluting the air and
drinking water, dumping microplastics that end up inside human beings,
promoting lethal opioids that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths,
providing millions of accounts or products to customers under false
pretenses or without consent, often by creating false records or
misusing customers’ identities, (Wells Fargo), manufacturing defective
motor vehicles, producing contaminated food, allowing software failures
resulting in crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX’s with 346 deaths. (See, Why Not Jail? By Rena Steinzor).
People don’t need law professors to see what’s happening to them and
their children. People laugh when they hear politicians solemnly declare
that “no one is above the law,” extol “the rule of law” and “equal
justice under the law.”
By far the greatest toll in preventable fatalities and serious
injuries in the U.S. flows from either deliberate, negligent or
corner-cutting corporate crime under the direct control and management
of CEOs and company presidents, many of whom make over $10,000 an hour over a 40-hour week.
That memo hasresurfaced
at a time when Holder, now U.S. attorney general, faces increasing
criticism for the Department of Justice's reluctance to bring charges
against white-collar criminals.
“There’s all kinds
of problems with the applications of this policy which began with the
Holder memo and got more formalized,” said John Coffee, a law professor
at Columbia University and an expert in white-collar crime. “You are
going to send a message that we don’t really care significantly about
misconduct within those institutions.”
Although
it brought only a modest change in the way prosecutors evaluate whether
to bring criminal charges against corporations, Holder's memo laid the groundwork for subsequent policies that allowed for more leeway when going after large firms, Coffee said.
Adora
Andy Jenkins, a Justice Department spokeswoman, wrote in an email to
The Huffington Post that under Holder's leadership, "this Justice
Department has stood firm in our approach that no person and no
corporation is above the law."
In 1999, Holder highlighted the possibility of deferred prosecution
-- an arrangement now common in the wake of the financial crisis --
whereby prosecutors essentially give defendants amnesty in exchange for
paying a fine, enacting reforms and cooperating with investigators. But
later officials published further memos, turning the option into more of
a recommendation, Coffee said.
He said the policy was strengthened in response to the Arthur Andersen scandal of the early 2000s. After the government brought criminal charges against the consulting firm, the company failed, causing 28,000 workers -- many of whom likely had no role in any wrongdoing -- to lose their jobs. A court later overturned the charges.
Holder told the Wall Street Journal in 2006
that he drafted the memo in response to complaints that there seemed to
be no uniform rules for deciding whether to bring charges in corporate
cases.
"[I] didn’t
expect these issues would become as big as they were," Holder told the
WSJ at the time. Indeed, they've only grown larger in the seven years
since that interview, as the financial crisis wreaked havoc on the U.S.
economy.
The
government has yet to prosecute any big banks or major executives for
their role in the meltdown, and critics have derided Holder and his
Justice Department for using the collateral damage argument as an excuse
for not doing enough to hold those institutions accountable. The DOJ
came under fire last year after declining to prosecute HSBC for years of money laundering violations, saying that to do so would bring too much damage to the global economy.
“The
government just backed down,” Coffee said of that case. “There were
reasons in 2008 to say maybe we shouldn’t indict any bank we can because
it will just add to the systemic risk. But we were in 2012 to 2013 with
HSBC -- that risk wasn’t there and we weren’t dealing with something
that was relating to the activities that produced the 2008 crisis.”
americansforprosperity | What happens when the federal government blatantly violates a court
order and takes the property of citizens who are not under criminal
suspicion?
Why should innocent property owners have to prove their innocence in order to get their property back from the government?
These
are a few of the questions that have come into play when law
enforcement agencies seized private property through the most recent
horror story involving civil asset forfeiture.
In
this ongoing case in California, federal agents exceeded their
authority, took property from citizens not even under criminal
suspicion, and are refusing to give it back unless they can successfully
navigate the government’s demands.
The stories of these
people are unfortunately not the first example of the government
violating our rights in this manner, but they are certainly not any less
shocking.
The raid on U.S. Private Vaults
On March 22,
2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Agency
acted under a warrant to shut down a Beverly Hills, California business
called U.S. Private Vaults.
USPV provided bank-style safety deposit boxes to customers who wanted anonymity.
Through biometric identifiers, or a nondescript key, boxholders could
store valuables without ever having to identify themselves by name.
Prosecutors say it was a criminal business however, and a grand jury indicted the company on charges of conspiracies to launder money, distribute controlled substances, and structure transactions.
The
warrant authorizing the raid allowed investigators to seize a list of
items, including deposit box keys, money counters, biometric scanners,
security cameras, and computers.
There’s no public
indication however, that law enforcement had specific information about
criminal suspects with boxes there or had identified boxes that held
ill-gotten gains from specific crimes. And the warrant specifically prohibited law enforcement from seizing the contents of the more than 800 privately held safe deposit boxes at the business:
This
warrant does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents
of safety deposit boxes … in accordance with their written policies,
agents shall inspect the contents of the boxes in an effort to identify
their owners in order to notify them so that they can claim their
property.
That restriction was ignored. Prosecutors seized the contents of the boxes, intentionally casting a wide net that took in all customers, innocent or otherwise. The FBI now says it intends to hold onto $85 million in cash, and an unspecified haul of gold, silver, and precious metals.
On
June 22, U.S. District Judge Gary Klausner found that the FBI “provides
no factual basis for the seizure of Plaintiffs’ property,” and issued a temporary injunction against the seizures.
The thing to remember about ANY/EVERY single person who leaves Azovstal previously, presently or in the future is this:
1. The Russians are not stupid or sloppy.
2. First they are taken under guard to a processing place. Wounded are
under guard during treatment until fit for normal processing.
3. They are scrupulously checked for real identity by their papers and
every civil database the Russians have access to. Local Mariupol LDPR
investigators are also there to use their local knowledge to verify all
claims of civilian neutrality.
4. They are stripped to look for any fascist sympathetic tattoos, men
and women alike, it has been reported by one woman evacuee.
5. They are FINGERPRINTED AND PHOTOGRAPHED and their future intended
residential address documented as they may be called as witnesses to war
crimes in future criminal trials. The LDPR and Russians are fkn serious
about legal retributions for the 8 year war and about making sure that
not a single nazi sympathiser ever gets back into social circulation.
6. They are interrogated about all personal matters and all knowledge
about what is going in inside Azovstal. Obviously, anyone NOT completely
forthcoming is held for future interrogation.
7. Only after all the above tests, they are sorted into:
* free civilians to go home, their choice of Uk or LD or RF territory or to refugee camps;
* harmless Ukrainian Regular soldiers who go to LDPR POW camps awaiting
exchange for Regular Russian POWs as per Geneva Convention;
* foreign low level mercenary fighters who go to LDPR POW camps awaiting criminal prosecution;
* high level foreigner (eg NATO staff), who most probably go to FSB
Headquarters in Moscow for future intel and political purposes;
* Azov fighters who will all get kept as non-swapable POWs to be
prosecuted by the LDPF for war crimes. The LDPR Public Prosecutors have
publically clearly stated their guilty punishments may be as high as the
death penalty.
So that's the strict filtering regime. So have no fear that any of
the "Rats of Azovstal" will escape their rightful fates. Even after
another 1000-2000 surrenders, the exact same processing will be done to
each and every one. The LDPR and Russian military jails are gunna be
real full, real soon.
Guardian | Now that the British former socialite Ghislaine Maxwell has been convicted in her sex-trafficking trial,
speculation is growing that she may try to cut a deal and become a
government witness in any broader investigation into the elite social
circle of her ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein.
Maxwell would be aiming for a reduced sentence by
naming powerful names when it comes to others who may be involved in
Epstein’s crimes.
But defense lawyers and
sexual-crimes prosecutors have cast doubt on the government’s appetite
to strike a bargain. They question whether Maxwell has any vital
information the government does not already have, and whether it
represents a strategy Maxwell has previously attempted that has failed.
“It
all depends on who she would be cooperating against, and what she has
to offer,” said Jeffrey Lichtman, the defense attorney who represented
the Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán at trial two years
ago. “I would not be surprised if she had already tried to cooperate
and it had failed.”
Maxwell, who is expected to
appeal her conviction, was found guilty on five of six charges for her
involvement in Epstein’s sexual abuse of teenage girls. Prosecutors said
Maxwell “preyed on vulnerable young girls, manipulated them and served
them up to be sexually abused”. She is expected to receive a significant
prison term.
According to Lichtman, there are
defendants who, in the eyes of the government, are so bad that it does
not want to strike a deal in exchange for testimony. “They don’t want to
take the hand of someone involved a criminal operation and let them
cooperate against people who are well below them.”
“That may be the case here – they just feel that she’s so bad they won’t allow her to cooperate,” Lichtman said.
But
that does not preclude Maxwell and her lawyers from making an offer.
“There’s a tremendous amount of information she has on some very
important people. Now that she’s been convicted she may be more eager to
discuss. She certainly should, in my mind, because a lot of people
skated here, while she bore the brunt of the government’s full wrath,”
Lichtman said.
slate | “It’s
all connected,” one woman would say, repeatedly, to no one in
particular. “It’s the cabal.” She at one point told me that she
suspected it was a Maxwell lookalike sitting at the defense table, while
the actual Maxwell was off freely gallivanting somewhere. The
fifth-floor types spoke frequently of links between Jeffrey Epstein, the
CIA, and Mossad, expecting anyone in earshot to understand the
significance without further explanation.
Among
the conspiracists, there seemed to be a belief that this trial would
unlock the secrets of the universe—that it would lay bare a web touching
every rich person in the world, every celebrity, every government
agency, implicating them all in some sort of horrific global plot. In
the end, of course, it did nothing of the sort.
The
prosecution’s case was narrowly focused on the harm done to four
teenage girls. It was built on the testimony of those four accusers, now
women, who alleged that Maxwell aided, and sometimes participated in,
Epstein’s efforts to sexually abuse them. When Epstein’s “little black book” came into evidence,
it wasn’t because it included contact information for prominent
politicians and businesspeople—it was because the book had phone numbers
for those underage girls.
After
testimony came to a close, I didn’t think the question of Maxwell’s
guilt was much of a question at all. The accusers were, to my eyes and
ears, extremely credible. Corroborating evidence affirmed their stories.
The prosecutors were polished and effective in their presentation,
while defense attorneys often stumbled and looked overmatched. When the
defense team got a chance to put on its case, it turned out to be
shockingly flimsy. The defense’s lead character witness—Maxwell’s
onetime executive assistant—barely even managed to say anything nice
about Maxwell. There was zero doubt, in my mind, that Maxwell committed
the crimes she was charged with. But this was a jury trial, and with a
jury, you just never, ever know.
Day
after day, the deliberations went on without a verdict. The jurors
requested transcripts of testimony from about a third of the
witnesses—just reams of words—which made it seem like maybe they were
attempting to rerun the entire trial in their chambers. As time dragged
on, and they kept asking for more transcripts, I wondered if they were
simply overwhelmed by the case, lost at sea, unable to make heads or
tails of what they’d seen and heard in the courtroom. Some trial
watchers had earlier complained that the prosecution’s case was too
narrow, and that more accusers should have been called to testify, but
the jury’s behavior during deliberations suggested that the case was
confusing enough as it was. When the jurors requested a whiteboard,
highlighters, and colored Post-it notes, I wondered if one among them
was attempting to patiently explain to the rest, in a clear and visual
way, what actually happened.
miamiherald | Maxwell was once a fixture on the New York social scene who possessed a Rolodex of names and direct phone numbers to former presidents, world leaders, billionaires and celebrities. She was also for years Epstein’s girlfriend and, according to testimony, managed his household in Palm Beach and other locales where the multimillionaire maintained estates.
At least two women have claimed that they were trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell to powerful and wealthy men, including Prince Andrew, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Federal prosecutors purposefully seemed to steer the case around the potential minefield of identifying figures they referred to as “third parties” who were in Epstein’s orbit. All the men have denied the allegations.
David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor, said the verdict shows that prosecutors were right not to focus on these other figures. “The government’s decision to streamline their case was the right choice,” he said.
Like Epstein, Maxwell hired a team of defense lawyers who filed a flurry of legal motions focused on undermining the credibility of the accusers and portraying them as prostitutes. “Depending on the age of the accusers during the time frame of the conspiracy, consent may be an appropriate and viable defense,’’ Maxwell’s attorneys said in one motion, noting that in Florida at the time the crimes were allegedly committed, “individuals under the age of 18 could be charged with commission of the crime of prostitution.”
Michael Reiter, the former Palm Beach police chief who oversaw the earlier 2005-08 case against Epstein, said the verdict should send a message to everyone in the criminal justice system.
“In 2005, early in our investigation, the Palm Beach Police Department recognized the importance of stopping Jeffrey Epstein and bringing him to justice. The department never bent to the power and influence brought to bear against us.,” Reiter said.
“Now that the courts have spoken, I hope and pray that the professionals in our justice system learn from this case. Law school professors should teach this case in legal ethics courses as an example of how not to treat victims of sex crimes and as a forewarning to prosecutors on how they can be influenced to fail in their duties to both victims and the public.”
Maxwell’s verdict comes three years after the publication of “Perversion of Justice,” a Miami Herald investigation that told in vivid detail how Epstein and his team of high-profile attorneys manipulated the criminal justice system more than a decade earlier allowing him to escape federal prosecution. It told the stories of the girls, now women, and how they were coping years after their encounters with Epstein. Despite the fact that the FBI had evidence he sexually abused at least 34 girls, Epstein served just 13 months in the Palm Beach county jail on charges that he solicited one minor.
CNN | The American chief executive of Barclays(BCS), Jes Staley, is stepping down with immediate effect following an investigation by British regulators into his relationship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, the bank said on Monday.
The
investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Bank of
England's Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) was disclosed by
Barclays in early 2020 and focused on how Staley had characterized the
relationship to his employer.
Barclays
and Staley were made aware on Friday evening by the FCA and the PRA of
the preliminary conclusions of their investigation.
"In
view of those conclusions, and Mr Staley's intention to contest them,
the board [of Barclays] and Mr Staley have agreed that he will step down
from his role as group chief executive and as a director of Barclays,"
Barclays said in its statement on Monday.
"It
should be noted that the investigation makes no findings that Mr Staley
saw, or was aware of, any of Mr Epstein's alleged crimes, which was the
central question underpinning Barclays' support for Mr Staley following
the arrest of Mr Epstein in the summer of 2019," the bank added, saying
it was not appropriate for it to comment further.
A
spokesperson for the FCA and PRA said the regulators "do not comment on
ongoing investigations or regulatory proceedings" beyond confirming the
actions detailed in the statement from Barclays.
Staley had been running Barclays since late 2015. Prior to that he worked for more than 30 years at JPMorgan(JPM),
where he served as head of its investment banking division. His
relationship with Epstein dated back to 2000, when he became head of
JPMorgan's private bank.
"He
was already a client. The relationship was maintained during my time at
JPMorgan, but as I left Morgan it tapered off quite significantly,"
Staley told reporters on a call in February 2020.
Asked then whether he regretted his relationship with Epstein, Staley
said: "Obviously I thought I knew him well and I didn't. And for sure
with hindsight of what we all know now I deeply regret having had any
relationship with Jeffrey Epstein."
politico | Jeffrey Epstein has become a
near-universal villain in the public eye. Dozens of women, some of whom
were as young as 14 at the time, have accused him of molesting them over
two decades, primarily in the 1990s and 2000s, in Florida, New York and
New Mexico, as well as on his private Caribbean island. A number of
powerful men, from Britain’s Prince Andrew to lawyer Alan Dershowitz, have been accused in courtdocuments of having sex with a young woman Epstein introduced them to, allegations both men deny. One male associate of Epstein’s has been charged
in France. Other influential men were friends with Epstein or accepted
his money. Yet after reporting on Epstein for months and speaking to
associates like Oh, I came to a realization: Beyond these men exists a
group of women, possibly even larger,who helped keep Epstein’s massive sex-trafficking operation running for more than 20 years.
Dozens of these women worked for
Epstein, formally or informally. If you think of this group as a
pyramid, at the top sits Maxwell, a longtime Epstein employee and
confidante who now stands accused of recruiting minors for Epstein and sex-trafficking
a 14-year-old girl, charges she denies. Below her were women Epstein
employed as assistants, who allegedly scheduled and managed dozens of
minors for Epstein to abuse. There were also women like Oh who brought
friends to meet Epstein and received gifts or access to his wealth.
These women aren’t household names,
even for people following Epstein’s story. But his victims say they were
key to grooming and deceiving them and allowing Epstein to operate with
impunity. In fact, most of Epstein’s victims were introduced to him
through other women, according to the 12 victims I’ve spoken with over
the past year and a half, as well as dozens of allegations in court and
in the media. Often, victims say, it was the women around Epstein who
tried to make them feel comfortable, as if what they were experiencing
was normal or harmless.
Once Epstein began to face legal
scrutiny, other women made it easier for him to rehabilitate himself and
reemerge with his power and social cachet largely intact. Two women
served as the lead prosecutors on his case when he first faced charges,
in 2006, and were closely involved in crafting his federal
non-prosecution agreement, plea deal and lenient sentence. For those
without deep knowledge of the case, Epstein’s short incarceration of 13 months in a county jail
could be read as a signal that, whatever crime he had committed, it
wasn’t that bad. After his release, a number of female socialites and
professionals helped to welcomeEpstein, by then a registered sex offender, back into elite circles. His abuse then continued, court documents assert.
To point this out is not to excuse any of the men or prestigious institutions—universities, banks, funds—that
also helped to protect Epstein, nor is it meant to hold women to a
higher standard. But as a woman myself, I have been struck by the sheer
number of women around Epstein, and many of the victims I’ve spoken with
say they feel especially betrayed by those who violated the unspoken
rule that women protect other women, especially minors.
miamiherald | The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has cleared Palm Beach
state prosecutors and the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office of any wrongdoing
in connection with the lenient criminal prosecution and liberal jail
privileges received by sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
FDLE
investigators found no evidence that Barry Krischer, who was the Palm
Beach state attorney when the case was investigated in 2005-2006, or his
assistant state attorney on the case, Lanna Belohlavek, committed any
crimes, accepted any bribes or gifts, or did anything improper in their
handling of the case, according to a 24-page summary of the state probe
into their actions obtained Monday by the Miami Herald.
FDLE’s criminal investigation was ordered by Gov. Ron DeSantis following a series of stories
in the Miami Herald, beginning in 2018. The series detailed how Epstein
received unprecedented federal immunity and served a short jail
sentence in 2008. After the series, Epstein was indicted in New York in
2019 on new sex trafficking charges, but died a month later behind bars
while awaiting trial. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging.
The state’s probe was two-fold: focusing on Krischer’s initial
decision not to prosecute Epstein, a wealthy New York financier accused
of molesting and raping more than a dozen middle and high school girls
at his Palm Beach mansion; and on Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw’s
role, if any, in Epstein’s unusual accommodations while he was in
custody in the Palm Beach county jail.
In 2007, Epstein’s
criminal case was taken over by the Miami U.S. Attorney’s Office, which
compiled enough evidence to charge him in a 53-page sex crime
indictment. However, Miami’s U.S. attorney at the time, Alexander
Acosta, approved a non-prosecution agreement giving Epstein and an
untold number of other conspirators immunity in exchange for Epstein
agreeing to plead guilty to relatively minor state charges and serve
what turned out to be a 13-month sentence in the Palm Beach county jail.
FDLE released three summaries of its investigation Monday — an
examination of the state attorney’s office’s handling of the case; a
look at allegations that Epstein sexually abused two women while he was
on work release in Palm Beach; and an inquiry into whether anyone in the
Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office committed any crimes or received any
benefits for giving Epstein special privileges while he was
incarcerated.
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article251285139.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article251285139.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article251285139.html#storylink=cpy
nbcnews | The only time I was ever in Atlanta, where six Asian women were shot dead
on Tuesday, a young white man shouted "Me so horny" to me at the
airport. And as the only Asian woman in the space, I knew he was talking
to me. I locked eyes with him for a second and then rushed off to catch
my flight back to Los Angeles. I was in Atlanta to attend the annual
meeting of the Association of Asian American Studies, presenting a paper
there for the first time. It was a big deal for me professionally. But
what I remember most about that trip were a white man's racist, sexist
words.
Tuesday's killings
occurred at three spas in the Atlanta area. Two other victims, a white
man and a white woman, were also killed. Investigators said the white male suspect told them that he has a "sex addiction" and targeted the spas to "take out that temptation."
"He
was fed up, at the end of his rope," Cherokee County sheriff's Capt.
Jay Baker said. "He had a bad day, and this is what he did."
Asian women, along with Black and Indigenous women and other women of
color, endure racism and sexism in intersectional ways constantly, and
they have throughout history. As lawyer Jaemin Kim
argued in 2009, prosecutors and police may be even less likely to add
"hate crime" charges in cases of rapes and sexual assaults targeting
Asian women.
In 1875, Chinese women were targeted by a federal immigration law called the Page Act.
This law effectively banned the immigration of Chinese women to the
United States based on a morals clause that considered all of them
prostitutes at the time. There were apparently specific racist and sexist concerns
that Chinese "prostitutes" would bring in "especially virulent strains
of venereal diseases ... and entice young white boys to a life of sin."
Sound familiar?
nypost | A federal judge ripped into Jeffrey Epstein cohort Ghislaine Maxwell
for misleading the court on her marriage and wealth in a scathing
decision denying her release on a $28.5 bail package.
“The defendant now argues that her newly revealed relationship with
her spouse signals her deep affective ties in the country, but at the
time she was arrested, she was not living with him and claimed to be
getting divorced,” wrote US District Judge Alison Nathan of Maxwell’s
mysterious marriage to tech CEO Scott Borgerson in newly unsealed court
papers.
After Maxwell’s July bust, she was denied release to home confinement on a $5 million bond and had refused to disclose the name of her secret husband.
But in the 58-year-olds’s renewed motion for bail, her attorneys
argued that the couple had lived an idyllic and devoted life in an
oceanfront mansion in Manchester, Mass., supporting her claim of strong
family ties to the country.
Prosecutors countered that she told pretrial services that she and Borgerson, 43, planned to split up.
The judge pointed out in the new papers that at the time of Maxwell’s arrest, she was hiding out on a sprawling compound in New Hampshire — not holed up with her hubby. Nathan’s denial of Maxwell’s bail proposal was disclosed Monday but the full 22-page ruling wasn’t unsealed until Wednesday.
Further, Nathan said, were Maxwell to be released, the British
socialite proposed living with a friend, not Borgerson “undercutting her
argument that that relationship would create an insurmountable burden
to her fleeing.”
In another blow to Maxwell’s bid for freedom, the judge called her
out for a “pattern of providing incomplete or erroneous information to
the court or to pretrial services.”
The accused child abuser claimed at the time of her arrest she was
worth just $.3.5 million — leaving out Borgerson’s assets and those that
had been transferred to a trust. In her latest financial disclosures,
she admitted that she and Borgerson’s net worth was about $22.5 million.
The vast disparity between the two figures “makes it unlikely that
the misrepresentation was the result of the defendant’s misestimation
rather than misdirection,” Nathan wrote.
“That lack of candor raises significant concerns as to whether the
court has now been provided a full and accurate picture of her
finances.”
WaPo | The
First Amendment prevents law enforcement from surveilling or
investigating Americans based solely on their political views, even if
the views are racist or anti-government. While the law makes it a crime
to provide “material support” to specially designated foreign terrorist
organizations, there is no parallel for domestic groups that harbor
extreme positions. There is not even a particular criminal charge for
domestic terrorism, though the concept is defined in federal law.
Some
analysts have suggested that the United States could try to pass a law
that criminalizes support of certain domestic organizations. Doing so,
though, would probably draw legal challenges. And many far-right
organizations that have demonstrated a propensity for violence are so
loosely organized that they might not meet the criteria for an official
designation.
“We
really do want to be very careful about criminalizing ideologies, no
matter how poisonous and awful,” said David Kris, a former senior
Justice Department official and the founder of Culper Partners, a
consulting firm. “You’re entitled to have an opinion and entitled to
express that opinion no matter how noxious. But when you cross the line
from having or expressing an ideology to acting on it in ways that are
violent, you’ve crossed the line.”
Neumann
said the government should formally study the issue, and focus on
public education to help dispel debunked claims — like those promulgated
by QAnon, an extremist ideology that the FBI has deemed a domestic
terrorism threat — that have enthralled Trump supporters. Charging and
publicly describing the evidence against those who participated in the
riot will help, Neumann said, but she asserted that Republicans must
take responsibility for their role in stoking the attack.
“We
can’t even agree to what happened on Jan. 6, and you have people
sitting in the Senate, sitting in the House, who helped it happen,”
Neumann said. “I would hope if they take the right step, and acknowledge
the wrong done, apologize to their constituents for being complicit in
the lie, then that creates space for unity. But if you skip the step of
accountability, if you skip the step of being introspective and
acknowledging your role in the deception, your role in not standing up
to Trump before now, then I don’t know that the people in the center and
on the left are that interested in fake unity.”
McCord,
the former Justice Department official, said she favors passing a law
that specifically makes domestic terrorism a crime, which could allow
the FBI to open more investigations and prosecutors to push for more
significant sentences.
But,
McCord noted, the FBI already can initiate investigations of suspected
domestic terrorists — including using wiretaps and other strong
surveillance measures — whenever they threaten violence or another
crime. And many domestic extremists, she said, are doing so in public
and online.
“Plotting
acts of violence is not First Amendment protected, and once any
criminal activity — even if it’s not violence — is discussed, that’s a
predicate for investigation,” McCord said.
CNN | One week after the deadly insurrection at the Capitol, there are still more questions than answers on whether any lawmakers or police assisted the pro-Trump rioters.
The
idea of an insurrection is unheard of in modern US history, and the
possibility that lawmakers or allies inside the Capitol were helping
only contributes to the uncertainty and worry about the event and what's
to come.
At
least one protest organizer said he coordinated with three House
Republicans. There are unverified accusations of a "reconnaissance"
mission one day before the attack. And more than a dozen US Capitol
Police officers are under internal investigation for allegedly helping rioters.
While
President Donald Trump's role in inciting the violence is clear, there
are some early indications and accusations that other insiders may have
more actively aided the mob.
House Republicans under scrutiny
Ali Alexander, a right-wing conspiracy theorist who led one of the "Stop The Steal" groups, claimed in a livestream video that
he planned the rally that preceded the riot with three GOP lawmakers:
Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Rep. Mo Brooks of
Alabama.
Brooks spoke at the rally before Trump took the stage, and urged the crowd to "start taking down names and kicking ass." In a 2,800-word statement about
his involvement, Brooks said he was only telling the crowd to fight
back at the ballot box. (Brooks also revealed that a White House
official called him one day earlier and invited him to speak at the
rally.)
CNN
previously reported that Gosar associated himself with Alexander's
group in recent months. A spokesman for Biggs told CNN that he hasn't
ever met or worked with Alexander.
Alexander
said he hoped his "mob" would pressure lawmakers to block
President-elect Joe Biden's victory through the Electoral College. After
the riot was quelled, the three lawmakers voted to throw out Biden's
electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania. Their effort failed.
"Those
three members of Congress are going to need to lawyer up, very fast,"
former GOP Rep. Charlie Dent, a CNN contributor, told CNN's Erin Burnett
on Wednesday, adding that he thinks the lawmakers will face scrutiny
from federal prosecutors and the House Ethics Committee.
palmbeachpost | After the arrests, prosecutors and several
law-enforcement agencies said they believed the spas may be linked to
human trafficking. To date, no one has been charged with human
trafficking in relation to these cases, according to court records.
Once the case was brought to court, the recordings were challenged by lawyers and barred by judges from
being used as evidence because of the controversial means in which law
enforcement obtained the video, known as "sneak-and-peek" warrants.
"The type of law enforcement surveillance utilized in these cases is extreme," the 23-page opinion read.
Florida's
Attorney General Ashley Moody said she wouldn't take an appeal to the
Florida Supreme Court, so the prostitution solicitation charges were
dropped in September.
Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said he and his office were forced to drop the charges after the rulings.
"Without
these videos, we cannot move forward with our prosecutions, and thus we
are ethically compelled to drop the cases against all the defendants,"
he said in September.
When asked why the charges against the women were
not dropped, Aronberg said there was still enough evidence without the
recordings to prosecute them.
"Orchids of Asia Day Spa was a notorious brothel in a family shopping center," Aronberg said.
"Rich
guys from a local country club lined up to receive sex acts throughout
the day until the place closed around midnight," Aronberg said.
AP | In an interview with The Associated Press, Barr said U.S. attorneys and
FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and
information they’ve received, but they’ve uncovered no evidence that
would change the outcome of the election.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the AP.
The
comments are especially direct coming from Barr, who has been one of
the president’s most ardent allies. Before the election, he had repeatedly raised the notion
that mail-in voter fraud could be especially vulnerable to fraud during
the coronavirus pandemic as Americans feared going to polls and instead
chose to vote by mail.
Last month, Barr issued a directive to U.S. attorneys across the country
allowing them to pursue any “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities,
if they existed, before the 2020 presidential election was certified,
despite no evidence at that time of widespread fraud. That memorandum
gave prosecutors the ability to go around longstanding Justice
Department policy that normally would prohibit such overt actions before
the election was certified. Soon after it was issued, the department’s
top elections crime official announced he would step aside from that
position because of the memo.
The Trump campaign team led by Rudy Giuliani has been alleging a widespread conspiracy
by Democrats to dump millions of illegal votes into the system with no
evidence. They have filed multiple lawsuits in battleground states
alleging that partisan poll watchers didn’t have a clear enough view at
polling sites in some locations and therefore something illegal must
have happened. The claims have been repeatedly dismissed including by
Republican judges who have ruled the suits lacked evidence. Local
Republicans in some battleground states have followed Trump in making
similar unsupported claims.
politico | While Trump praised
the new hire on Twitter, calling Powell a “GREAT LAWYER,” legal
observers scratched their heads. Powell, who is in her 60s (she would
not confirm her exact age), had shared content from social media accounts associated with QAnon, the wide-ranging conspiracy movement holding in part
that Trump is doing battle with demonic, pedophile-loving Democrats and
members of the deep state. The timing was also odd. Flynn’s sentencing
had been delayed at that point because of procedural issues, but it was
expected soon. And Mueller had recommended
that Flynn receive no prison time because of the “substantial
assistance” he provided in the special counsel investigation. (Flynn,
under Powell’s advisement, is not speaking to the media.)
It was clear soon enough that Powell was taking a different tack. In August, she moved
to have Flynn’s case dismissed for what she called “pernicious”
prosecutorial misconduct, and requested that Emmet Sullivan, the
presiding District Court judge, hold prosecutors in contempt for
allegedly hiding FBI documents and communications that she said proved
Flynn was pressured to plead guilty. In a court brief filed
in October, she asserted that Flynn had been “deliberately targeted for
destruction” by the intelligence community. The government countered
that it had already relinquished any relevant material and that Powell
was advancing “conspiracy theories” to fish for evidence that did not
exist.
This week, Flynn officially sought to withdraw
his guilty plea “because of the government’s bad faith, vindictiveness,
and breach of the plea agreement,” as Powell wrote in a court brief. Sullivan pushed back the sentencing by another month to consider the unusual request. But, says Barbara McQuade,
a University of Michigan law professor and former U.S. attorney
specializing in national security matters, “The scorched-earth strategy
that Powell is using is rarely effective with judges.”
That Powell was seemingly blind to
this likely outcome speaks to her full embrace of the Trumpian ethos of
grievance and “alternative facts.” Which wasn’t always her M.O.: A
federal prosecutor herself for a decade, Powell turned on her own ilk
and spent years making a forceful case against prosecutorial overreach—a
legitimate issue. It was when her cause came to align with Trump’s and
Flynn’s plight as targets of Mueller’s probe that she worked her way
intoa deep state-hating, MAGA-loving network that landed her a high-profile client.
But the MAGA echo chamber, it seems,
doesn’t always benefit its residents once they’re outside that bubble.
While a strategy of denial and attacking the enemy might have worked for
Trump during the Mueller investigation (and might yet work for him in
his impeachment trial), Michael Flynn is not the president. If her
client ends up in prison, it might be because of the Trumpian strategy
Sidney Powell embraced.
“Crackpot conspiracy theories get easy
traction on the internet,” says John Schindler, a former NSA analyst
who has been critical of Flynn, but also of Hillary Clinton and the FBI. “They’re less likely to do well in federal court.”
mexiconewsdaily | It is said that a “brotherhood” within the army called “El Sindicato”
(The Syndicate) can in fact take the credit for Cienfuegos’ return as a
free man.
Emeequis said that it was told by army sources that just a
few hours after news broke of the former army chief’s arrest, a
representative of El Sindicato – mainly made up of active and retired
four-star generals – knocked on the door of the office of current
Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval.
The representative, according to the sources, was a general who has
experience combating drug cartels in the north of Mexico and a
longstanding friendship with Sandoval.
One source told Emeequis that the message to the defense
minister was: “The high-ranking commanders of the army were not going to
remain with their arms crossed while a foreign government tore their
credibility to shreds.”
The general told Sandoval to pass the message on to President López
Obrador, making it clear that the high-ranking members of El Sindicato
were not happy about the federal government not going to bat for their
former colleague.
Emeequis said that in addition to generals, lieutenants and
colonels began complaining that López Obrador appeared to be siding more
with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) than the
powerful “brotherhood,” which according to the report “pulls strings” on
crucial issues for the federal government, such as the deployment of
the National Guard, the construction of the new Santa Lucía airport and
the construction of the new refinery on the Tabasco coast.
When Cienfuegos was transferred to a prison in New York from Los
Angeles, even the most patient army officials – people who had been
calling for the president to be given more time to negotiate with U.S.
authorities – were infuriated, the report said.
El Sindicato consequently increased its pressure on the government.
Several more representatives of the organization visited Sandoval or
spoke to him over the telephone to tell him to tell López Obrador that
there was a risk that the discontent in the army could cause problems
for the government.
The president then reportedly ordered Foreign Minister Ebrard to
harden his tone in complaining to the United States about arresting
Cienfuegos without informing the Mexican government, and told him to
insist on having the former defense minister returned to Mexico given
that he allegedly committed crimes here rather than in the U.S.
To support their demand that the former defense minister be sent back
to Mexico, the FGR and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the United
States that the federal government would reevaluate its future
collaboration with the DEA, Emeequis said.
The Washington Post reported that prosecutors in the U.S.
attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York attributed the
decision to drop charges against Cienfuegos to the Mexican government’s
threats to limit the role of the DEA in Mexico.
jacobin | In addition to police brutality, the state moved in to curtail the
movement with mass arrests of thousands, judicial harassment, and
illegal tactics. Simpere speaks of “very repressive laws that allow
almost anyone, including peaceful demonstrators, to be arrested, often
‘preventatively.'” More specifically, she points out the use of two
vaguely defined laws that she considers contrary to international law:
one punishing the “preparation of group violence,” under which many
people with protective gear like goggles have faced judicial
persecution; and one forbidding “contempt toward police forces,” used
more than twenty thousand times in 2019 alone. She cites the case of
protesters in Narbonne prosecuted for this offense, simply because they
had a banner denouncing the severe injuries caused by flash-balls.
In early December 2018, the authorities started to widely
disregard their own laws. Alimi calls it “state illegality,” a concept
he plans to elaborate in an upcoming book: “The state itself becomes
criminal,” he explains, “as its representatives decide to deliberately
violate the law to prevent the expression of civil liberties.” In
addition to mass preventive arrests and illegal searches, he names the
case of a state prosecutor calling on his substitutes to keep people in
custody for the maximum length in order to prevent them from
demonstrating, despite having no evidence against them. “France shifted
from a justice system that punishes actions to a justice system that
punishes intentions,” he says.
This judicial repression has led to unprecedented numbers of arrests,
with more than eleven thousand detained and more than three thousand
convicted. “The courts were working like a production line,” recalls
Gassiot, “with speedy trials on Mondays for those arrested on
Saturdays.” Alimi counts about seven hundred to eight hundred gilets jaunes
currently in jail — and he has himself defended many of those arrested.
“They have been victims of an incomparable judicial violence and
discrimination; they’ve been treated like animals,” he says. Unusually
for France, even people with no criminal records were sentenced to jail
time. “They were lower-middle-class people endangered by poverty; they
were simply trying to keep their head above water, but they were pushed
down — and drowned.”
his swift and merciless justice against the gilets jaunes
contrasted with the lack of judicial reaction to police brutality.
Despite the thousands of acts of violence against protesters — many of
them proven by solid video evidence — the available information reveals
that only seven police officers have been convicted. All of them
received suspended sentences, with no discharge. Simpere describes the
cases as “largely symbolic,” expressing her “serious doubt that there
will be sentences corresponding to the seriousness of injuries.” Alimi
is less diplomatic, calling the few convictions “crumbs thrown to the
people to calm popular anger.”
During the first months of the crisis, as blood was being spilled
every week, the government maintained a hard line in denying the
existence of police violence, even refusing to use the word. Challenged
on the issue by a citizen during a debate in March 2019, President
Emmanuel Macron snapped back: “Do not talk about repression and police
violence — those words are unacceptable in a state with the rule of
law!” According to widely respected French daily Le Monde,
citing insider sources, this unshakable political support for
repression came from a genuine fear in December 2018 that rank-and-file
police might abandon their post — and let the uprising prevail.
While the climate of police impunity might be linked to the high
political stakes, my interviewees note that this lack of accountability
has been pervasive for decades. The “police of the police” — the
infamous Inspection Générale de la Police Nationale (IGPN) — is widely
derided as a “whitewashing machine,” systematically clearing up on
behalf of its colleagues. Simpere points out that “there is a clear
conflict of interests when police officers have to monitor other police
officers, and also when magistrates who are working in close
collaboration with the police are the ones who are supposed to lead
investigations against the police.”
Alimi goes further, stressing the whole systemic structure enabling
police impunity in France. He says it starts with police officers and
their hierarchy “who never acknowledge any act of violence and put into
place a set of dissimulation measures every time there is any violence,
including the systematic faking of official reports.” He then goes on to
point out the lack of judicial independence in France, where
“prosecutors are under the authority of the Justice Ministry, and see
themselves as protecting public order, which leads them to protect the
police.” This translates into prosecutors lying and blocking inquiries,
among other things, by reacting more than thirty days after events, once
footage from public cameras has already been erased.
Despite facing this “judicial wall,” Alimi says that amateur videos
are changing the game. His team has imported techniques from groups like
Black Lives Matter, making online calls for videos and witnesses.
“Those videos have shattered the administration’s lies and have revealed
dissimulation techniques.” As for judges, Alimi also points out that
some are starting to recognize the need for real investigations into
police work, but he says that it is too early to make an honest
appraisal of investigations into police violence against the gilets jaunes.
“We will know in two to three years,” he says, “then we can make a
final assessment of those investigations, and maybe even talk about a
transformation of the approach to police violence.”
turcopolier | There are a lot of Trump supporters who are very frustrated, even angry,
with the silence of Attorney General Bill Barr in the wake of last
Tuesday’s attempted Democrat heist of the Presidential election. But
there are indications that Barr, who understands what it takes to fight
the entrenched bureaucracy that is aligned with a conspiracy that
involves the media, tech companies and computer software companies
supplying voting machines, is preparing to move in a dramatic, far
reaching strike to expose this fraud.
I have a dear friend who knows Barr very well. Rarely does he show
this kind of visceral anger. I find it difficult to believe that in the
ensuing two months, Barr has decided to curl up into a fetal position
and allow the Republic to be eviscerated.
Now look at the actions on Monday. Barr, following DOJ protocol,
sent a letter authorizing federal prosecutors across the U.S. to pursue
“substantial allegations” of voting irregularities. That same day, the
DOJ official in charge of voter fraud investigations, Richard Pilger, resigned.
Pilger is a compromised deep stater. I believe his resignation was, at a minimum, encouraged by Barr.
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