With the profligate racism of the Chumph Cartel, I don’t imagine any of them convicted and jailed is going to do too much better than your run of the mill white wing child molester…
Alex van der Zwaan had admitted to lying to investigators.
Special counsel Robert Mueller obtained the first sentence in his high-profile investigation Tuesday, as a Dutch attorney who admitted to lying to investigators was ordered into federal custody for 30 days.
Former Skadden Arps associate Alex van der Zwaan, 33, pleaded guilty in February to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with former Trump campaign official Rick Gates and Konstantin Kilimnik, a suspected Russian intelligence operative who worked closely with Gates and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Lawyers for van der Zwaan had asked U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson to give him a fine and pleaded with the court to let him return to his London home by August, when his wife is due to give birth.
However, the judge said some time in jail was appropriate given his offense and the fact that he is an attorney.
“We’re not talking about a traffic ticket,” she said. “This was lying to a federal officer in the course of a criminal investigation.”
In addition to the 30-day sentence, Jackson also gave van der Zwaan a $20,000 fine and two months of probation, but she said she would permit him to reclaim his passport and leave the country as soon as his month in custody is completed. It’s not immediately clear where or in what type of facility he will serve the 30 days.
Van der Zwaan was drawn into the saga in 2012 as his law firm prepared to release a report commissioned by Manafort and Gates for Ukraine’s Justice Ministry in a bid to defend then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who had jailed one of his most prominent political opponents, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
Manafort and Gates’ work on behalf of Yanukovych’s political party has drawn Mueller’s scrutiny. Gates has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, and Manafort is awaiting trial.
OK…So here is the situation. The Law has caught you5 miles on the US side of the Border with 4 kilos of coke in your backpack. Your first attempt at ”splaining” your way out of jail involves declaring with your best straight face that “you didn’t know the coke was in there” falls on deaf ears shortly after they find your passport tucked in a pocket inside the bag…Next to the coke.
As the prosecutor sits down with your lawyer to discuss whether the sentence will “only” be 20 years, or the possibility you may ever again see daylight unfiltered by steel bars, you start considering which of you recently “no good friends” to flip on…
Except if you happen t be a wealth, white, Trump related “semi” millionaire, who owes half of the GDP of Columbia of coke money to banks through various under the table loans, and money laundering deals…
You sue not only the prosecutor but the Cops for having the temerity to arrest you for such “trivial crimes” in the first place!
Because, unlike in the real world, you have better lawyers than even your Mob Boss, the Chumph.
Uhhhhhhh…”Manny”…Good Luck with that. Because unless you can prove a Federal Prosecutor acted illegally an/or for some illicit financial gain, and not just doing his job…
President Trump’s former 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is suing Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, according to a complaint filed Wednesday in federal court.
Manafort argues that Rosenstein didn’t have authority to appoint Mueller as special counsel, which occurred after Mr. Trump fired James Comey as FBI director. The complaint claims that the appointment was an “abuse of discretion” and therefore, he says that anything resulting from Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election should be deemed null and void. The complaint then says that Mueller’s investigation and the indictment against Manafort goes beyond the scope of his authority, and demands that Mueller “should be enjoined from further investigating any alleged conduct by Mr. Manafort that is unrelated to and predates his involvement with the Trump campaign…” It goes on to say that Manafort should be awarded injunctive relief.
Manafort and Rick Gates, Manafort’s former business associate, were indicted by a federal grand jury in the investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. election in October. And another Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty the same day to making false statements to the FBI. Toward the end of 2017, Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was just heating up. Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI.
Manafort joined Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign in March 2016 and served in that role until August 2016. The FBI raided his home last summer, even picking the lock while he was at home asleep.
Rosenstein had the authority to appoint Mueller as special counsel because of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the Russia probe. Rosenstein also gave Mueller broad discretion in his investigation.
A spokesman for the Department of Justice said, “The lawsuit is frivolous but the defendant is entitled to file whatever he wants.” The Special Counsel declined comment.
After being charged with lying to the FBI, the former national security adviser said he would cooperate with Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia probe.
Michael Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to the charge he misled FBI agents during a January 2017 interview after being asked about conversations with the Russia’s ambassador to the United States.
The next step: working with special counsel Robert Mueller’s office to go after his onetime confederates in Team Trump.
“My guilty plea and agreement and agreement to cooperate with the Special Counsel’s office reflect a decision I made in the best interests of my family and our country,” said the disgraced retired three-star Army general in a statement after he left a District of Columbia courtroom. “I accept full responsibility for my actions.”
The cooperation of such a senior White House official with a criminal probe raises the stakes substantially for Trump, who has raged against an investigation he has insisted is baseless. And the next shoe to drop, legally, could fall on his son-in-law Jared Kushner, whom Mueller has reportedly interviewed this month.
While he served as President Trump’s national security adviser, Flynn denied asking Ambassador Sergey Kislyak for Russia to “refrain from escalating in response to [American] sanctions” the Obama administration had imposed on Moscow for meddling in the 2016 presidential election and that he asked Kislyak to delay a United Nations Security Council vote on Israeli settlements.
If you can spare a few seconds, please sign the Change.Org -“impeach the Chump” petition. They ask for a donation of $3, but you can refuse and distribute the petition to friends and family.
The target is to reach 2 million signatures. I think we can do a little better than that.
Should Republicans stop blocking the Chumph Impeachment, or the 2018 Election, whichever comes first – there appear to be at least 4 Cases, if not 5 upon which the Chumph will be prosecuted.
The easiest one of those to make as a primary cause and case for impeachment, is Obstruction of Justice. The other crimes are hidden behind requiring information which is still classified, information from grand jury testimony, and information not available to the public gathered by Robert Mueller’s prosecutors.
There appears to be evidence upon which to charge the Chumph with these crimes –
Money Laundering,
Criminal Conspiracy
Treason
Obstruction of Justice
and possibly, a number of cases of Malfeasance in Office
It is unknown at this point what evidence, or what charges (if any) Mueller will pursue. But the case for impeachment, based on obstruction of justice has been laid out just using publically available information. The guys who did this are heavyweights –
Barry H. Berke is co-chair of the litigation department at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP
(Kramer Levin) and a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He has represented
public officials, professionals and other clients in matters involving all aspects of white-collar
crime, including obstruction of justice. Noah Bookbinder is the Executive Director of Citizens
for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Previously, Noah has served as Chief
Counsel for Criminal Justice for the United States Senate Judiciary Committee and as a
corruption prosecutor in the United States Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section.
Ambassador (ret.) Norman L. Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, was the chief
White House ethics lawyer from 2009 to 2011 and before that, defended obstruction and other
criminal cases for almost two decades in a D.C. law firm specializing in white-collar matters. He
is the chair and co-founder of CREW.
From their introduction of a case developed for Brookings Institute –
There are significant questions as to whether President Trump obstructed justice. We do not yet know all the relevant facts, and any final determination must await further investigation, including by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. But the public record contains substantial evidence that President Trump attempted to impede the investigations of Michael Flynn and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, including by firing FBI Director James Comey. There is also a question as to whether President Trump conspired to obstruct justice with senior members of his administration although the public facts regarding conspiracy are less well developed.Attempts to stop an investigation represent a common form of obstruction. Demanding the loyalty of an individual involved in an investigation, requesting that individual’s help to end the investigation, and then ultimately firing that person to accomplish that goal are the type of acts that have frequently resulted in obstruction convictions, as we detail. In addition, to the extent conduct could be characterized as threatening, intimidating, or corruptly persuading witnesses, that too
may provide additional grounds for obstruction charges. While those defending the president may claim that expressing a “hope” that an investigation will end is too vague to constitute obstruction, we show that such language is sufficient to do so. In that regard, it is material that former FBI Director James Comey interpreted the president’s “hope” that he would drop the investigation into Flynn as an instruction to drop the case. That Comey ignored that instruction is beside the point under applicable law. We also note that potentially misleading conduct and possible cover-up attempts could serve as further evidence of obstruction. Here, such actions may include fabricating an initial justification for firing Comey, directing Donald Trump Jr.’s inaccurate statements about the purpose of his meeting with a Russian lawyer during the president’s campaign, tweeting that Comey “better hope there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations,” despite having
“no idea” whether such tapes existed, and repeatedly denouncing the validity of the investigations…
John Edgar Rust has been arrested making racially-motivated threats against students at the historically-black Howard University in Washington, DC.
According to WUSA-TV, the 26-year-old Rust, who was convicted in 2012 of “indecent liberties with a child by custodian and aggravated sexual battery,” made threats against the lives of Howard students on the infamous 4chan message boards in 2015.
“I left MU yesterday because I couldn’t put up with it anymore,” Rust wrote in his Facebook post. “I go home to Maryland and what do I see? The same old s***. Turn on the news and it’s always the n***** causing trouble everywhere. So I’ve decided. Any n***** left at Howard University after 10 tomorrow will be the first to go. And any of those cheapskate n***** who try to get out using the metro will regret that choice real fast.”
Rust also claimed that “it’s not murder if they’re black.”
Because he made the post from a Panera Bread in Alexandria, Virginia, Rust was charged with “transmission in interstate commerce of a communication containing threats to injure the person of another” due to the location of Howard. He could be sentenced to up to five years in prison.
By the Constitution, a President’s pardoning power only extends to Federal Crimes…Not State crimes.
The Chumpshit’s veiled threat to pardon co-conspirators and criminal family members just got checked. Meaning the treasonous criminal Chumphshit can’t bribe his accomplices to keep their mouths shut in exchange for a pardon from him.
The initial charges that will bring down the Chumphshit will be filed in State Courts – specifically New York. Meaning the only legal escape for Manafort and other Chumphshit Cartel members will be through their legal defense. The New York AG who sucessflly prosecuted the Chumphshit in a Civil Case on his “Trump University” scam adds to an already powerful and skilled investigation team which now includes the top IRS people on financial fraud. Not to mention that there are likely some Patriotic volunteers who specialize in tracking down corporate criminals like the Chumphshit through international financial channels who can open doors the Feds normally can’t…
It appears Mueller is tightening the noose first by taking down the collaborators.
Federal rules and Justice Department policy clearly provide for such cooperation and would even allow Mueller to share confidential grand jury information with Schneiderman’s office with court approval. Beyond that, there is always a great deal of information not covered by grand jury secrecy that could be freely shared. But although certainly not unheard of, federal and state prosecutors cooperating in an investigation is relatively unusual, at least in a white-collar case.
It’s unlikely that Mueller needs Schneiderman to charge crimes that Mueller otherwise couldn’t reach. Given the breadth of federal white-collar statutes, if Manafort’s financial dealings violated New York state law, they almost certainly could be charged under federal law as well. Federal charges such as mail and wire fraud, money laundering and RICO allow federal prosecutors to reach even transactions that took place entirely within one state.
The New York attorney general’s office is very highly regarded and has a history of bringing complex financial crime cases. It has been reported that Schneiderman’s office was already investigating Manafort for possible crimes related to his business dealings in New York. But the bottom line is that anything state prosecutors might be looking at, Mueller could also investigate on his own if he chose to do so. So why would Mueller join forces with Schneiderman?
One obvious reason is to pool resources. If Schneiderman’s office has already done work relevant to Mueller’s investigation, it makes sense to share that information rather than unearth it a second time. It’s also important for Mueller’s office to have access to things such as witness statements and testimony that the New York investigators may have already obtained.
But as others have noted, the second possible reason also explains why this news is so significant: It cuts the legs out from under any possible attempt by President Trump to use his pardon power to thwart the investigation.
Trump’s recent pardon of former Maricopa County (Ariz.) sheriff Joe Arpaio raised concerns that it might be seen as a signal to potential witnesses against him. They could refuse to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation and feel confident that Trump would pardon them if they ran into any legal trouble.
But the presidential pardon power extends only to federal crimes. Trump can’t do anything about New York state charges, and he can’t fire Schneiderman. The possibility of serious state charges gives Mueller’s team critical potential leverage that the pardon power threatened to take away…
Felix Sater, one of Donald Trump’s shadiest former business partners, is reportedly preparing for prison time — and he says the president will be joining him behind bars.
Sources told The Spectator‘s Paul Wood that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s deep dive into Trump’s business practices may be yielding results.
Trump recently made remarks that could point to a money laundering scheme, Wood reported.
“I mean, it’s possible there’s a condo or something, so, you know, I sell a lot of condo units, and somebody from Russia buys a condo, who knows?” the president said.
Sater, who has a long history of legal troubles and is cooperating with law enforcement, was one of the major players responsible for selling Trump’s condos to the Russians.
And according to Wood’s sources, Sater may have already flipped and given prosecutors the evidence they need to make a case against Trump.
For several weeks there have been rumours that Sater is ready to rat again, agreeing to help Mueller. ‘He has told family and friends he knows he and POTUS are going to prison,’ someone talking to Mueller’s investigators informed me.
Sater hinted in an interview earlier this month that he may be cooperating with both Mueller’s investigation and congressional probes of Trump.
“In about the next 30 to 35 days, I will be the most colourful character you have ever talked about,” Sater told New York Magazine. “Unfortunately, I can’t talk about it now, before it happens. And believe me, it ain’t anything as small as whether or not they’re gonna call me to the Senate committee.”
Sater is not the only one rumored confidante to have turned against Trump. An attack on former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort by the National Enquirer — a friendly outlet for the president — suggests that he may have already turned over damaging evidence to authorities.
The New Jim Crow in many Republican dominated states is not only to incarcerate drug offenders but to incarcerate people (particularly minorities and black folks) for being poor.
The legal system is already massively tilted towards the rich. The Chumph would often stiff his small contractors on work they did for him, confident in the knowledge that as small businesses they could not afford to go to court and pay the lawyers.
Florida’s legal system is rigged so that in a Civil suit you must have a lawyer to submit any documents to the court. A lot of scumbag companies “court shop” specifically for legal systems in states which have rules making it too expensive for their victims to defend themselves.
In Mississippi this legal Jim Crow went to locking people p for up to a year because they couldn’t afford lawyers to defend themselves. You would be right in guessing most of these folks were black.
The New Jim Crow – Just as bad as the Old Jim Crow, with the same racist goals.
A U.S. federal judge has ordered four central Mississippi counties to appoint public defenders for arrestees when they are detained instead of jailing them for months without providing legal counsel, civil rights groups said on Wednesday.
The order accompanies the settlement of a federal class action lawsuit challenging one county’s practice of detaining people who cannot afford a lawyer for as long as a year without formal charges and appointment of counsel, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center said in a statement.
The settlement and court order require Scott, Neshoba, Newton and Leake counties to hire a chief public defender, a rarity in rural Mississippi, to ensure that defense lawyers no longer serve at judges’ whims, the statement said. The chief public defender, not judges, would supervise all public defenders, the statement said.
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Jim Hood, whose office handled the case, did not respond to a request for comment.
The ACLU and MacArthur Center sued Scott County in 2014 on behalf of Josh Bassett and Octavious Burks, who were detained there for eight and 10 months, respectively, without being indicted or being appointed a lawyer.
Unlike in federal courts and most other states, Mississippi places no limit on how long a person can be held in jail before prosecutors get an indictment. Obtaining an indictment in the four counties often takes up to a year, the statement said.
The order, issued this week by U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate, mandates that the four counties, which make up Mississippi’s Eighth Circuit Court district, appoint public defenders at the time people are arrested.
Mark Duncan, who was sued while district attorney for the four counties and is now a circuit judge, said by telephone that he was unaware of the settlement.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Steve Orlofsky)
According to the Miami Herald, a police officer in Jacksonville, Florida incorrectly cited a law requiring identification for drivers when giving a ticket to a black man for jaywalking and for not having an ID on him, as shown in a viral video the man in question posted on social media.
The video posted by 21-year-old Devonte Shipman on June 20 shows Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Officer J.S. Bolen confronting Shipman for jaywalking.
“Miami Beach, 1962?” the Herald report asked. “No, Jacksonville, 2017.”
When Shipman asked the officer what he’d done wrong, the cop told him that he was fining him for jaywalking, which costs $65. Bolen then asked the young man for his ID, and when he told the officer he didn’t have it, Bolen “snapped.”
“That’s another infraction,” Bolen said. “In the state of Florida, you have to have an ID card on you identifying who you are or I can detain you for seven hours until I figure out who you are.”
According to the Herald, however, the officer got the law wrong — Florida Statute 322.15 requires licensed drivers to always have their licenses when driving and can incur a $136 fine if they do not, but no such law exists for walking without a license.
“Bolen also gave Shipman a citation for failing to obey a pedestrian control signal, another $62.50 fine,” the Herald noted.
Soon to be seen in the ever stylish Orange Jumpsuit.
Jerry DeLemus, a prominent right-wing activist who co-chaired the New Hampshire Veterans for Trump coalition, was sentenced to seven years in federal prison for his role in the 2014 Bundy standoff in Nevada.
The Boston Globe reports Chief US District Judge Gloria Navarro called DeLus a “bully vigilante” while handing down a sentence one year longer than prosecutors had requested.
The Globe spoke to former New Hampshire Republican Party chair Jack Kimball, who said a pardon from President Donald Trump is being pursued for the Trump supporter. US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has also been asked to intervene in an attempt to prevent the Republican activist from serving his prison sentence.
Susan DeLemus, wife of the convicted, is a former two-term Republican state representative in New Hampshire and like her husband was a Trump delegate to the Republican National Convention.
Former Representative DeLemus claims her husband signed his guilty plea to “take the fall” for his fellow conspirators.
A “Morning Joe” panel hinted that Mike Flynn was behind the revelation of several bombshell reports Wednesday that showed the transition team was aware of his foreign contacts and hired him anyway as national security adviser.
Once named to that position, Flynn reportedly killed a planned military action against ISIS at the behest of Turkey and discussed with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak setting up a back-channel network for President Donald Trump to communicate with Vladimir Putin.
Host Joe Scarborough said Vice President Mike Pence, who had been head of the transition team, should have been aware of Flynn’s problems and certainly knew the president had decided to fire the FBI director for probing his ties to Russia.
Karen Tumulty, a Washington Post political correspondent, also pointed out Pence had been present in the Oval Office just before Trump asked James Comey to drop the investigation of Flynn.
“This is a bad story for Pence, either way,” said John Heilemann, managing editor of Bloomberg Politics and MSNBC political analyst. “Either he knew and is lying or he did not know and was wildly incompetent. Either way, not a great story for him. By the way, it seems to me the import of this story is that Michael Flynn’s lawyer came out a couple of months ago and said that Mike Flynn had a story to tell — he’s now starting to tell that story.”
Heilemann suggested that Flynn was leaking the reports in hopes of getting the immunity he had sought.
“If this is the thing that he’s leaking, and there are other things that he’s still holding to offer in exchange for immunity, that means this isn’t even the worst of it — that means he’s got more things to say,” Heilemann added.
Sam Stein, the senior politics editor for Huffington Post, said the Trump transition team had ignored a series of obvious red flags to name Flynn national security adviser, and both Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski agreed that’s because the president felt comfortable around him.
“I can tell you first-hand, everybody on that transition team spoke of Michael Flynn as if he were Dwight Eisenhower on June 6, 1944,” Scarborough said. “He was the greatest guy, he was a calming influence — that was the one selection that Donald Trump and Jared Kushner would never be moved off of.”
Brzezinksi said the transition team was warned against Flynn, but they ignored those warnings and placed him in charge of national security.
“Scores of people saying, ‘Mr. President, do not appoint this man,’” Scarborough said. “‘It’s the most important position, he’s wildly unstable, it would be a terrible mistake.’ He and Jared Kushner heard that repeatedly every day and didn’t give a damn.”
Wonder if they will give the boy an orange cowboy hat to go with his new uniform?
Sheriff David Clarke, who is really the supervisor of the jail in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin is in serious trouble. At least four deaths have occurred in his jails under questionable circumstances. There appears to be a pattern of prisoner abuse and brutality at the jail, including an incident where a pregnant prisoner was chained to a bed during childbirth. In a case resulting in a Federal Lawsuit, a woman was confined to solitary, without medical attention. She was 8 1/ months pregnant, was denied medical care, and her baby, born alive, died soon after.
DA Begins Official Inquest Before Considering Charges
Prosecutors say Milwaukee County Jail officers cut off an inmate’s water for seven consecutive days before the man died of dehydration.
Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Kurt Bentley told jurors at an inquest Monday that the inmate, Terrill Thomas, was mentally unstable and unable to ask for help before he died in his cell in April 2016.
The DA’s office is asking a jury for advice on whether there’s probable cause that a crime was committed in Thomas’ death. The medical examiner has already ruled Thomas died because of dehydration.
Testimony and documents at the inquest revealed Thomas was moved to a solitary disciplinary unit where his water was cut off after he used a mattress to flood his cell in another jail unit.
Separately, Thomas’ children have filed a federal civil suit, saying their father’s treatment by Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and his staff amounts to torture.
Attorney Walter Stern represents three of Thomas’ children. As he left the courtroom Monday afternoon, Stern said it was an interesting day.
“There was a police report indicating that this man was asking for, or begging for water,” Stern said. “Put it all together and it looks like there was profound dehydration.”
Thomas’ death was one of four at the Milwaukee County Jail last year, but Clarke won’t be a witness in the inquest. Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm said don’t read anything into that.
“I don’t think anybody should draw any conclusions. This is really a fact-based investigation,and so, what you try to do is limit yourself to people who have direct knowledge of the incident itself,” Chisholm said.
The inquest may last all week. The prosecutor’s office will then decide whether to file charges.
Terill Thomas, a mentally ill man was placed in solitary, and denied water for 7 days. He died of severe dehydration.
Kristina Fiebrink died on August 28th after she was arrested and booked on August 24th. The lawsuit says “despite exhibiting signs and symptoms of acute heroin and alcohol intoxication, Fiebrink was never placed on preventative detoxification protocol, seen by a doctor, provided withdrawal medication or placed on a heightened observation level.”
Michael Madden died on October 28th. The lawsuit says he was suffering from a heart condition which he had had since birth, as well as a heroin addiction. The lawsuit says he “received little to no health care while in the Justice Facility.” He suffered a seizure, rendering him unconscious, and passed away.
Sade Swazer, a pregnant, mentally ill woman confined to solitary. No medical care was provided – her baby dies soon after birth in the cell.
John Edgar Rust has been arrested making racially-motivated threats against students at the historically-black Howard University in Washington, DC.
Felix Sater, one of Donald Trump’s shadiest former business partners, is reportedly preparing for prison time — and he says the president will be joining him behind bars.
Btx3's Blog 