10 Commandments Alabama Judge/Republican Senate Candidate Roy Moore Accused of Child Rape

Major Chumph supporter. Love it how these white-wing religious hypocrites who try and shove their religion down everyone else’s throats frequently wind up getting caught having violated at least half of the Ten Commandments they try and stick on the Courthouse lawn.

Trump: Roy Moore ‘sounds like a really great guy’ | TheHill

Donald Trump: Roy Moore Will Help Make America Great Again

Yet another in a long, long line of far right thugs caught diddling children.

Woman says Roy Moore initiated sexual encounter when she was 14, he was 32

Leigh Corfman, left, in a photo from 1979, when she was about 14. At right, from top, Wendy Miller at around age 16, Debbie Wesson Gibson at around age 17 and Gloria Thacker Deason at around age 18.

Leigh Corfman says she was 14 years old when an older man approached her outside a courtroom in Etowah County, Ala. She was sitting on a wooden bench with her mother, they both recall, when the man introduced himself as Roy Moore.

It was early 1979 and Moore — now the Republican nominee in Alabama for a U.S. Senate seat — was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. He struck up a conversation, Corfman and her mother say, and offered to watch the girl while her mother went inside for a child custody hearing.

“He said, ‘Oh, you don’t want her to go in there and hear all that. I’ll stay out here with her,’ ” says Corfman’s mother, Nancy Wells, 71. “I thought, how nice for him to want to take care of my little girl.”

Alone with Corfman, Moore chatted with her and asked for her phone number, she says. Days later, she says, he picked her up around the corner from her house in Gadsden, drove her about 30 minutes to his home in the woods, told her how pretty she was and kissed her. On a second visit, she says, he took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants, she says, and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.

“I wanted it over with — I wanted out,” she remembers thinking. “Please just get this over with. Whatever this is, just get it over.” Corfman says she asked Moore to take her home, and he did.

Two of Corfman’s childhood friends say she told them at the time that she was seeing an older man, and one says Corfman identified the man as Moore. Wells says her daughter told her about the encounter more than a decade later, as Moore was becoming more prominent as a local judge.

Aside from Corfman, three other women interviewed by The Washington Post in recent weeks say Moore pursued them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18 and he was in his early 30s, episodes they say they found flattering at the time, but troubling as they got older. None of the women say that Moore forced them into any sort of relationship or sexual contact.

Wendy Miller says she was 14 and working as a Santa’s helper at the Gadsden Mall when Moore first approached her, and 16 when he asked her on dates, which her mother forbade. Debbie Wesson Gibson says she was 17 when Moore spoke to her high school civics class and asked her out on the first of several dates that did not progress beyond kissing. Gloria Thacker Deason says she was an 18-year-old cheerleader when Moore began taking her on dates that included bottles of Mateus Rosé wine. The legal drinking age in Alabama was 19.

Of the four women, the youngest at the time was Corfman, who is the only one who says she had sexual contact with Moore that went beyond kissing. She says they did not have intercourse.

In a written statement, Moore denied the allegations.

“These allegations are completely false and are a desperate political attack by the National Democrat Party and the Washington Post on this campaign,” Moore, now 70, said.

The campaign said in a subsequent statement that if the allegations were true they would have surfaced during his previous campaigns, adding “this garbage is the very definition of fake news.”

None of the women have donated to or worked for Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, or his rivals in the Republican primary, Luther Strange, according to campaign reports.

Corfman, 53, who works as a customer service representative at a payday loan business, says she has voted for Republicans in the past three presidential elections, including for Donald Trump in 2016. She says she thought of confronting Moore personally for years, and almost came forward publicly during his first campaign for state Supreme Court in 2000, but decided against it. Her two children were still in school then and she worried about how it would affect them. She also was concerned that her background — three divorces and a messy financial history — might undermine her credibility.

“There is no one here that doesn’t know that I’m not an angel,” Corfman says, referring to her home town of Gadsden.

Corfman described her story consistently in six interviews with The Post. The Post confirmed that her mother attended a hearing at the courthouse in February 1979 through divorce records. Moore’s office was down the hall from the courtroom.

Neither Corfman nor any of the other women sought out The Post. While reporting a story in Alabama about supporters of Moore’s Senate campaign, a Post reporter heard that Moore allegedly had sought relationships with teenage girls. Over the ensuing three weeks, two Post reporters contacted and interviewed the four women. All were initially reluctant to speak publicly but chose to do so after multiple interviews, saying they thought it was important for people to know about their interactions with Moore. The women say they don’t know one another.

“I have prayed over this,” Corfman says, explaining why she decided to tell her story now. “All I know is that I can’t sit back and let this continue, let him continue without the mask being removed.”

This account is based on interviews with more than 30 people who said they knew Moore between 1977 and 1982, when he served as an assistant district attorney for Etowah County in northern Alabama, where he grew up.

 

Why Right Wingers Don’t Belong In Positions of Responsibility

It is a simple fact that you can’t punish your way out of a social,  or criminal situation.

If you could, there would be no crime in the world at all.

We have a situation in America where right wing types have reinstituted Debtors Prisons, and as the FBI Report on Ferguson, Missouri lays out, where the Judicial System is corrupted as a tool to drive racial punishment against the poor.

There are clowns like this Judge appointed every single day by the Chumph to our Federal Courts. This racist assh*le is probably on the Chumph’s short list.

“As a Mississippian with deep roots in this state that I love, I am deeply troubled by the many ways in which poor Mississippians, especially African Americans, are victimized by Mississippi’s legal system,” Johnson said. “We have litigated matters involving excessive bail, illegal jailing of misdemeanor offenders for unpaid fines and the refusal to provide poor criminal defendants with counsel, and now we see that not even the right to raise one’s children is beyond the reach of the injustice that befalls poor Mississippians.”

Mississippi judge resigns after barring mother from seeing her baby for 14 months over unpaid court fees

A Mississippi judge who barred a mother from seeing her newborn baby for 14 months because she hadn’t paid court-imposed fees has stepped down.

The Clarion-Ledger reports that Pearl Youth Court Judge John Shirley has resigned under pressure from local activists who decried his decision to impose a no-contact order on a resident of Jackson, Miss., who is identified in court documents only as “Mother A.”

The judge first issued the order after the woman and a friend, who were driving through the city of Pearl looking for work, were pulled over by a police officer who discovered both women had outstanding warrants for routine misdemeanor offenses. The police officer who made the arrest told the Mississippi Department of Human Services that the child who was in the car with the two women was “abandoned,” despite the fact that it was the officer’s own arrest that forced the child to be separated from the mother.

Judge Shirley awarded custody to the baby’s grandmother, while also blocking the mother from coming into contact with the child until she paid off court-imposed fees.

The Clarion-Ledger’s report does not say how much money the mother owed in court fees, however local legal justice advocates say that unpaid fees do not justify separating a mother from a four-month-old child for 14 months.

“As a civil rights lawyer in Mississippi, I am no stranger to injustice, but for a judge to prohibit an impoverished mother from having any contact with her baby until monetary payments are made is shocking and repugnant,” said Cliff Johnson, the director of the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi School of Law. “Such orders are tantamount to judicial kidnapping.”

 

And You Thought “Pharma-Bro” Was an Idiot

The amazing part to me here – Is WHO is supplying this guy investment money? I mean …Usually investors avoid walking lawsuits like thei like the plague.

Somebody also needs to look into the judge who let this dude go.

‘N**ger, n**ger, n**ger’: Tech bro CEO insulted employees and beat multiple women, says lawsuit

A new lawsuit alleges that Silicon Valley CEO Gurbaksh Chahal routinely used racial slurs when speaking to subordinates, physically attacked two women and fired a male employee who tried to prevent him from striking a third woman.

The Daily Beast reported Sunday that Chahal is the subject of a lawsuit which alleges that he called workers his “n**gers” and took out his violent rages on employees. Two other pending lawsuits against Chahal accuse him of misleading investors, hiring women based on their looks and making death threats against one employee of his multiple tech companies.

In 2013, Chahal briefly stepped down as CEO of his ad tech company RadiumOne after a vicious attack on his then girlfriend in a San Francisco penthouse.

Police examined surveillance video and determined that during the attack, Chahal punched and kicked the woman he was dating 117 times. He then tried to smother her with a pillow for 20 seconds. Court records show that microphones caught Chahal telling the woman “I’m going to kill you” four times as he beat her.

Nonetheless, he resumed his position at RadiumOne after he was able to get the 47 felony counts against him dropped by a judge who ruled that the video was inadmissible as evidence. Chahal crowed online that he was innocent and accused his former partner of having sex with other men for money.

The RadiumOne board ousted Chahal, but he formed a new company called Gravity4 and has continued to helm new ventures including trying to raise $100 billion to start a new Bitcoin-like crypto-currency, the Daily Beast’s Kelly Weill wrote. Former reality TV star and hotel heiress Paris Hilton has given her imprimatur to the project.

“He’s the biggest liar I’ve ever met in my life,” said one former employee to the Daily Beast.

Gravity4 chief of staff Ali Al-Ansari filed a new suit alleging that Chahal is shockingly sexist, detailing a series of remarks he made against women’s rights and equal pay for men and women.

Other pending lawsuits accuse Chahal of forcing alcohol on women, attacking another girlfriend and then pressuring an employee to help him evade charges, as well as asking male coworkers if women job applicants’ breasts were attractive enough to hire.

Al-Ansari alleges that Chahal described to him in lurid detail how he wanted to further harm the two women he’d attacked, who he saw as trying to “ruin his life.”

The final straw for Al-Ansari came in a Miami apartment when Chahal attempted to attack a woman and Al-Ansari physically prevented the assault.

According to the lawsuit, “Al-Ansari was forced to interpose himself between the woman and Chahal and physically intervened to defend this woman to block Chahal from hitting her. Chahal nonetheless managed to hit this woman. Al-Ansari repeatedly told Chahal ‘don’t touch her!’”

When Al-Ansari took out his phone and began to record the altercation, Chahal reportedly fired him on the spot. The lawsuit further alleges that after the firing, Chahal tried to illegally access Al-Ansari’s personal laptop and destroy incriminating data.

Chahal was freely racist and open about his contempt for black people, the lawsuit says. He used the “N-word” frequently and was resentful and defiant when called out about it.

“I’m not going to stop the n-word,” Chahal said in a discussion transcribed in the suit. “Dude, do you want me to go ahead and say n**ger, n**ger, n**ger? I don’t give a fuck. Martin Luther King might not like that, but he’s a n**ger, too.”

 

 

Another Black Man Murdering Cop Gets Away in St Louis

Murder most foul as the state’s legal system declares war on black men.

This sort of thing is going to make police stops real dangerous – as the Cops in Missouri, backed by a racist justice system are no better than thugs,

Ex-St. Louis policeman acquitted of murdering black motorist

 

Stockley and the gun he planted on his victim shows clear premedititon

A Missouri judge on Friday found a white former St. Louis police officer not guilty of murder in the shooting death of a black man after a car chase in 2011, prosecutors said.

Officials feared the verdict could set off violent protests, as have similar deadly cases involving police and minorities around the United States in recent years.

Jason Stockley, 36, had been charged with first-degree murder, accused of intentionally killing Anthony Lamar Smith, 24, and planting a gun in his car. Stockley, who was arrested in May 2016, testified he acted in self-defense.

Judge Timothy Wilson’s highly anticipated ruling was announced Friday, more than five weeks after the bench trial ended.

“This court, as a trier of fact, is simply not firmly convinced of defendant’s guilt,” the judge wrote in his ruling.

Wilson said prosecutors also asked the court to consider a lesser degree of homicide but they did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Stockley’s use of deadly force was not justified in self defense.

“A judge shall not be swayed by partisan interests, public clamor or fear of criticism,” the judge said, quoting the Code of Judicial Conduct.

Prosecutor Kimberly Gardner said in a statement she was disappointed with the verdict and believed she had presented proof that Stockley intended to kill Smith.

“However, in this case it was the judge’s duty to evaluate the evidence and deliver his findings,” she said. “That’s how our system works.”

Killings of unarmed black people by U.S. police in recent years triggered widespread protests and activists promised disruptive demonstrations if Stockley was acquitted.

St. Louis and state officials were braced for violent protests and racial tensions like those that followed the 2014 fatal shooting by police of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, near St. Louis.

‘SAD, HURT, MAD’

Activists were angry and disappointed by the verdict.

“I’m sad, I’m hurt, I’m mad,” the Reverend Clinton Stancil of the Wayman AME Church in St. Louis said by telephone. “But this was expected. We haven’t made any progress since Ferguson, that’s clear. Cops can still kill us with impunity.”

In recent years grand juries have declined to charge officers involved in the shooting of Brown and the choking death of Eric Garner, 43, in New York. Baltimore police officers also were not convicted in the death of Freddie Gray, who died from a broken neck suffered in a police van in 2015.

Jeffrey Mittman, executive director of the ACLU of Missouri, in a statement listed the names of several black people who have been fatally shot by police in different cities and said little has changed.

“Police officer Jason Stockley’s acquittal today does not change the facts: Anthony Lamar Smith died unnecessarily, another casualty of excessive and deadly force by police against people of color,” Mittman said.

“In 2016, black males between 15 and 34 years old were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by law enforcement officers,” he said. “It is past time for Missouri and the country to say in one voice: ‘This cannot continue.’”

Missouri Governor Eric Greitens on Thursday put the National Guard on standby. Some schools called off classes and some events were postponed, according to local media.

Christina Wilson, Smith’s fiancée, pleaded at a news conference on Thursday evening for protesters to avoid violence if they demonstrate.

The verdict in St. Louis follows high-profile mistrials or acquittals of police officers charged in shootings in Ohio and Minnesota this year.

Authorities say Smith tried to flee from Stockley on Dec. 20, 2011, reportedly after Smith was involved in a drug deal. During a pursuit, Stockley could be heard saying on an internal police car video that he was going to kill Smith, prosecutors said.

Stockley, riding in the passenger seat of a patrol vehicle with his personal AK-47 in one hand and department-issued weapon in the other, shot at Smith’s car, according to St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Susan Ryan and charging documents. Stockley and his partner chased Smith at speeds exceeding 80 miles per hour (129 kph), the documents said.

At Stockley’s direction, the driver of the police car slammed into Smith’s vehicle and they came to a stop. Stockley then approached Smith’s car and shot him five times, court documents said.

Stockley’s lawyers said he fired in self-defense because he believed Smith was reaching for a gun but prosecutors said the only gun recovered from the scene had only Stockley’s DNA on it.

 

Mississippi Judge Remove State Confederate Flag From Courtroom

About time!

 

Getting Freaky in the Courtroom

A judge ordering drugs from the bench?

A Texas judge is suspended after admitting she sexted her bailiff and used him to buy drugs

A Texas judge has been suspended amid accusations that she sexted in the courtroom, used her bailiff to buy drugs, hired prostitutes and once brought home marijuana seized from a defendant.

Hilary H. Green’s lawyer called the ruling by the state Supreme Court “frustrating and surprising.” He pointed out that many of the accusations had long been public, and yet voters overwhelmingly reelected Green as a Harris County justice of the peace.

“She’s very popular in the precinct,” Chip Babcock told The Washington Post. “Lots of communication in the community is about how horrible this is.”

Green, who has not been charged with a crime, was immediately suspended Friday from the Houston court where she oversaw misdemeanors, traffic cases and small civil suits since 2007.

She was once married to one of Houston’s most powerful officials, City Controller Ronald C. Green, with whom she has a child.

Their divorce battle gave rise to allegations that ultimately led to her suspension.

Accusations of threesomes, drugs and black market cough syrup

The Greens accused each other of various misdeeds in their filings, the Houston Chronicle reported in 2015.

While the judge claimed her husband had cheated on her and concealed assets, according to the paper, Ronald Green called his wife a drug addict who “operates daily with impaired judgment as evidenced by her presiding over cases in which she has ongoing sexual relationships with litigants and witnesses.”

As the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct would later explain, those accusations prompted it to file a formal complaint against the judge — the first of several that informed its 316-page recommendation to suspend her this year.

More allegations came from Claude Barnes, whom Green acknowledged as her ex-lover — though she denied his testimony that they had hired prostitutes for threesomes.

When he appeared before the commission early last year, Barnes recalled an alleged rendezvous in a Crowne Plaza hotel room.

An escort walked in, Barnes said. “Well, she’s cute,” the judge remarked, according to his testimony.

“The three of us sat,” Barnes testified. “We smoked marijuana. We had a couple drinks and then three of us had sex.”

The couple did ecstasy on other occasions, Barnes said.

And, he added, he repeatedly helped Green buy prescription cough syrup on the black market.

One time, Barnes alleged, the judge came to his house with a bag of marijuana and “told me they took it off a kid in her courtroom … one of the bailiffs gave this to me.”

The commission said it obtained hundreds of texts between Green and a bailiff. (Green’s lawyer would later argue that her husband broke into her phone and stole texts.)

Many of the messages excerpted in court records are explicitly sexual — “That sounds like a very good dream/fantasy,” Green admitted writing to her bailiff. “You know I’m all about oral.”

At least one text appears to describe a drug purchase by the two court officials, according to court records.

“Had to marry some folks outside yesterday,” Green wrote to the bailiff in 2013. “On another note, did you hear back from ‘lover boy?’”

In a letter to the commission, Green acknowledged sending the text and clarified that “lover boy” was a supplier of cough medicine, which she said she later gave the bailiff $500 to buy.

While she denied hiring prostitutes, Green admitted to abusing drugs “almost every night” for several years, according to court records.

Once she paid her bailiff to get them, she wrote; sometimes she went herself — sometimes to “a gas station on the southwest side of Houston.”

The commission briefly questioned Green in person in February.

“I’m just thinking that you’re the judge and here you are abusing drugs,” an interrogator told her. “Judging these people for the crimes that they have committed, and yet you were committing that same crime.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the judge replied….

 

ANOTHER Chumph Smackdown! Federal Judge Rules Executive Order Unconstitutional

I can imagine the Chumph can’t wait to get his stooges on the benches across America so he can twist and destroy the Constitution…

But right now he is stuck with those that are in place.

On the Chumph “Executive Order” on Sanctuary Cities, withdrawing all Federal funding...

“Although the Government’s new interpretation of the Order  is not legally plausible, ineffect it appears to put the parties in general agreement regarding the Order’s constitutional

limitations. The Constitution vests the spending powers in Congress, not the President, so the Order cannot constitutionally place new conditions on federal funds. Further, the Tenth Amendment requires that conditions on federal funds be unambiguous and timely made; that they bear some relation to the funds at issue; and that the total financial incentive not be coercive.Federal funding that bears no meaningful relationship to immigration enforcement cannot be threatened merely because a jurisdiction chooses an immigration enforcement strategy of which the President disapproves.”

Suggest the Chumph have his wife move to the White House and read this to him

 

Even Republicans Are Tired of North Carolina Legislature Fascism

There come a time in everyone’s life when you see something, and recognize “This ain’t right”…

And respond to it.

It may be something as small as standing up for someone, or some idea being unfairly treated.

Sometimes its a big thing, putting your person in physical or legal danger.

The difference between American Patriots and the white-wing scum who have taken over the Republican Party is simply this…

Patriots believe in putting the values andd laws of our country over their Party.

Republican North Carolina judge resigns — and slams the GOP on the way out

In a dramatic response to a power-grab by Republicans in the North Carolina legislature, a Republican judge resigned today to circumvent efforts to strip power from the Democratic governor.

The Charlotte Observer reports that following today’s surprise resignation by Republican Judge J. Douglas McCullough, Democrat John Arrowood was sworn in. Judge McCullough worked as a staffer for Senator Harrison Schmitt (R-NM) before being appointed by President Ronald Reagan as United States Attorney in the eastern district of North Carolina.

Since Democrat Roy Cooper was elected Governor of North Carolina last fall, the Republican Legislature has gone to great lengths to strip his office of power. Yet with a three-sentence resignation letter this morning, Judge McCullough has proven that not all Republicans are willing to go along with shenanigans by legislative Republicans.

North Carolina has a mandatory retirement age for judges. To prevent the Democratic Party governor from appointing replacements for Court of Appeals judges nearing forced retirement, the Republican Legislature passed a bill to shrink the size of the court from 15 to 12 judges — thereby denying the Democrat of three scheduled appointments.

The legislation was vetoed on Friday, but a successful veto override was expected later tonight.

However, before the legislature could vote to override Governor Cooper’s veto of House Bill 239, Judge McCullough resigned 36 days prior to his forced retirement. This allowed the appointment of Judge Arrowood at 9:45 a.m. this morning.

“I did not want my legacy to be the elimination of a seat and the impairment of a court that I have served on,” Judge McCullough explained.

Newly sworn-in Judge John Arrowood is the first openly gay member of the North Carolina Court of Appeals.

 

Second Black Judge Found Dead…Ethnic Cleansing of the Courts?

Two black Judges found dead in two days. The second under mysterious circumstances.

To tell the truth, after the sleazebags went to extremes to  force the illegitimate Gorsuch on the Courts, and with the appointment of Sessions as AG…

I really don’t doubt the possibility of their murdering Judges to whiten the Courts.

 

Cook County Associate Judge Raymond Myles

Chicago Police Arrest Suspect in Fatal Shooting of Judge, Others Sought

Chicago police have arrested a man in connection with the shooting death of a Cook county judge in what police described as a “targeted robbery.”

Joshua Smith, 37, turned himself in to answer detectives’ questions Wednesday and was later charged with first-degree murder and other charges in the death of Associate Judge Raymond Myles, who was shot multiple times outside his home at around 5 a.m. on Monday.

Ballistics evidence matched a gun used in a January robbery where a victim was shot and wounded, and surveillance video captured the license plate of a vehicle seen leaving the scene, Chicago Police Chief of Detectives Melissa Staples said at a press conference.

“The motive of this crime is robbery, which we do not believe is random — nor do we believe Smith acted alone,” she said.

A female friend who worked out with Myles had first encountered the gunman on Monday morning. Words were exchanged and she was shot in the leg, police said. Myles was coming to her aid when he was fatally shot, although he was not the target of the robbery, NBC Chicago reported, citing police.

Smith was convicted of armed robbery with a firearm in 2003 and served six years in prison, Staples said.

Staples at Wednesday’s press conference would not say who the target of the robbery was or how many other people may have been involved, citing the ongoing investigation. She said more details could emerge at a bond hearing scheduled for Thursday.

First African-American Female Judge On New York’s Top Court Found Dead

Associate Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam, the first African-American woman to be appointed to New York’s Court of Appeals, was found dead on Wednesday in the Hudson River.

She had been reported missing from her home in Harlem.

The New York Times reports:

“Officers with the New York Police Department’s Harbor Unit responded about 1:45 p.m. to a report of a person floating by the shore near West 132nd Street in Upper Manhattan.

“Judge Abdus-Salaam, 65, was taken to a pier on the Hudson River and was pronounced dead by paramedics shortly after 2 p.m.

“The police were investigating how she ended up in the river, and it was not clear how long Judge Abdus-Salaam, who lived nearby in Harlem, had been missing.

“There were no signs of trauma on her body, the police said. She was fully clothed.

“A law enforcement official said investigators had found no signs of criminality. Her husband identified her body.”

Abdus-Salaam became the first female Muslim to serve as a U.S. judge when she joined the New York State Supreme Court in 1994, according to Zakiyyah Muhammad, the founding director of the Institute of Muslim American Studies, as quoted in The Times.

In 2013, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., appointed her to the state’s highest court, known as the Court of Appeals.

In a statement, Cuomo said Judge Abdus-Salaam was a pioneer with an “unshakable moral compass.”

Her nomination was part of a push by Cuomo to diversify the court.

When Judge Rowan Wilson joined the court this year, it was the first time the state’s highest court had two African-American judges serving on it.

In a statement, Chief Judge Janet DiFiore said Abdus-Salaam’s “personal warmth, uncompromising sense of fairness and bright legal mind were an inspiration to all of us who had the good fortune to know her.”

The Court of Appeals has been on recess since the end of last month. The court is due back in session in less than two weeks.

 

The Chumph Twit Wiretap Claims

The Chumph was at it again last night on Twitter, claiming President Obama has his Campaign Headquarters in Chumph Hovel wiretapped during the election.

Couple of problems with that. First off, the President can’t just order wiretaps of American citizens. A wiretap has to be done though a FISA Court, based on existing evidence that a person has, or is in the process of committing a crime. The process is specifically  outlined in two laws,  CALEA and the Patriot Act. Ergo, the DOJ has to have evidence to present to the court that there is a crime being committed. The reason for the wiretap typically is to identify all the criminals in the criminal enterprise, including those who the DOJ does not have evidence yet to convict. This is how the FBI typically goes after the Mafia. They have enough evidence to charge and likely convict a mobster, but want to gather evidence to charge those further up the line. Getting not only the guy who committed the murder, but the guy(s) who ordered it.

A FISA Court denied the FBI’s request for a warrant to monitor four members of the Trump campaign team over the summer, according to The Guardian. That means the FBI suspected criminal activity, but didn’t quite have enough evidence to convince the Judge at that time. That the Chumph campaign staff was involved in a conspiracy, isn’t at question. When you have now 5 high level people caught communicating frequently with the Russian “KGB”, it’s difficult to ‘splain how all of this “just happened” with no direction or collusion.

The president typically does not order surveillance, and there is no evidence that the Obama administration wiretapped Trump’s phones. The FBI, which is part of the Department of Justice, must request a warrant for a wiretap, and the DOJ prides itself on operating independently from the White House. The president ordering surveillance on an American would be a huge violation of that independence.

We don’t know at this point if any subsequent requests to the FISA Court were granted based on incontrovertible evidence.

The NSA and CIA aren’t subject to FISA, because they only can deal with offshore connections. Ergo, they can only look at and act on communications which reach outside our borders. If you are a Foreign Diplomat, or non-citizen communicating with the spy agencies of a foreign government – you are not a citizen, and have no FISA protections. So, if Flynn called the Chumph, the FBI would have had to get a Court Order to tap that (the NSA and CIA could not, under law listen in), If Flynn called the Russian Ambassador or someone in the “KGB”, the NSA was fully within legal rights to tap and record those conversations. The NSA can operate under the “warrentless wiretapping” provision of the Patriot Act – but there are limitations to that as defined by the Supreme Court. There is another agency which can conduct international surveillance which you’ve never heard of – but for this exercise, keep it simple.

So…It wan’t Obama who wiretapped the Chumph. If he did so outside the government through private resources, it would be inadmissible both in Court, as well as in regards to the Intelligence Agencies.

The ONLY way the Chumph’s campaign hovel could have been wiretapped is that the FBI had discovered criminal activity, and applied through a FISA Court for permission to wiretap by providing significant evidence of that criminal activity.

And that means there was provable, and chargeable criminal activity going on in the Chumph campaign.

So…The Chumph saying Obama tapped his phones…Is an admission of guilt.

‘You’re in deep sh*t’: Lawmaker alerts Trump if phones were ‘tapped’ a judge found ‘probable cause of crime’

A California Congressman took to Twitter on Saturday morning to warn President Donald Trump that — if he is correct that his Trump Tower phones were tapped — he is “in deep sh*t.”

Early Saturday morning, Trump set the political world ablaze by accusing former President Barack Obama of having his phones tapped prior to the 2016 election.

Also see: ‘Outright personality breakdown in public view’: Internet blasts Trump for ‘tapped phones’ Twitter meltdown

“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” Trump tweeted  before adding, “Is it legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!”

It has been speculated that Trump’s wild accusations followed the president being alerted to aBreitbart article accusing Obama of orchestrating a “silent coup” against the administration. The article asserts that the Justice Department made two Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) requests in 2016 requesting Trump communications and data on a computer server in Trump Tower be monitored for connections to Russian banks or contacts.

Although Trump provided no information that he may have been monitored, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) stated that the president may want to lawyer up.

“Mr. President: If there was a wiretap at Trump Tower, that means a fed judge found probable cause of crime which means you are in deep shit,” Lieu wrote. After providing a link to a Washington Post article on Trump’s tweets and the fallout, Lieu took it a step further.

“Either @realDonaldTrump is paranoid like Nixon, or judge found probable cause of crime for #wiretap. Either way our President is in trouble,” he wrote.

 

 

Really Stupid Guy’s Mouth Earns Him a Year in Jail

This guy not only gets a year in jail for running his mouth…He gets a beat down from the Judge!

A lot of crazy white folks in the news today…Is it something in the Kale Salad?

‘You got a bad attitude’: Agitated judge tears off robe, tackles man in courtroom, video shows

The robe came off.

A Michigan judge, growing increasingly frustrated with a defendant who was talking back to him, stormed down from his bench and rushed to help subdue the man as he resisted being handcuffed.

Jackson County Circuit Court Judge John McBain (Jackson County Government)

Though the incident took place in December, video footage of the scuffle was published this week onMlive.com. It showed a rare instance of a judge physically intervening in a courtroom situation — something that at least one of the Michigan judge’s colleagues said was justified in this case.

The four-minute, profanity-laced video showed the defendant, Jacob Larson, accusing Jackson County Circuit Court Judge John McBain of being “buddy-buddy” with a woman Larson had been accused of stalking for about a year, Mlive reported.

The hearing was about Larson’s alleged violation of a personal protection order against the woman, who in the video is seated at a table next to Larson but whose face is blurred.

The video shows that the hearing began calmly but escalated quickly as McBain questioned Larson about his persistent Facebook messages to the woman, despite a personal protection order against him.

“It’s like ‘Fatal Attraction’ kind of stuff that I warned you about last time,” McBain said, referring to the 1987 film in which Glenn Close plays an obsessive stalker. “I told you to just leave her alone. She was a classmate of yours. She apparently has no interest in — ”

“I want her to tell me to leave me alone,” Larson said, motioning toward the woman as he interrupted the judge.

That seemed to irritate McBain, whose voice became noticeably sharper as he responded: “You know what? I told you to leave her alone. And apparently that didn’t get through loud and clear. So today, you’re going to jail for three days.”

What followed was an escalating exchange in which Larson accused the judge of being “buddy-buddy” with the woman and McBain declaring that the defendant has “a bad attitude.”

As Larson continued interrupting the judge, McBain upped his jail sentence.

“Forty-five days … 93 days in the county jail,” McBain told Larson. “You want to go for a year? Try it right now.”

A court officer seen in the video told Mlive.com that as he tried to take Larson into custody, the defendant “tensed up” and tried to fight him. Larson and the officer, identified by Mlive.com as Jared Schultz, struggled as Larson continued to point and talk to the woman.

“Tell me to leave you alone!” he said. “Tell him right now!”

 

White Boy Justice

Imagine if this was a black kid? Hell, black kids spend more time in jail than this for getting caught smoking a joint. The public has a right to be outraged.

WATCH: Fox host loses patience after defense attorney touts Stanford rapist’s ‘good character’

Defense attorney Randy Zelin told both CBS News and Fox News on Tuesday that Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky had handed down a “fair” sentence by sending convicted rapist Brock Allen Turner to jail for only six months.

In an appearance on CBSN, Zelin insisted that “there is no right, there is no wrong” when it came to the sentencing of rapists.

“The victim is always considered,” he insisted. “The thrust of the entire system was put on this young man’s shoulders. So, yes, she was considered.”

According to Zelin, claims that Turner benefited from “white privilege” was “nothing more than a soundbite.”

“What I know about this young man’s family, they are a hardworking middle class family,” the defense attorney insisted. “He’s not necessarily a young man of privilege. He went to Stanford University. For all we know, he’s there on a scholarship. He had aspirations to be an Olympic swimmer. He could be a very, very smart young man and be there on an academic scholarship. So, let’s throw that out.”

Zelin said that outrage at Turner’s father for describing the rape as “20 minutes of action” was simply “political incorrectness.”

“It is the father of a son, the father of a child who before this happened woke up every day thinking, ‘My son is going to be a star,’” he opined. “‘He can go to the Olympics, he can become an orthopedic surgeon. I have devoted my life to giving my son the chance to be great and that opportunity is forever lost.’”

Zelin later told Fox News host Martha MacCallum that the defendant should not be penalized for not showing remorse.

“Six months in jail, if you’ve never spent a second in jail, that is a lifetime,” Zelin remarked. “The collateral consequences of this conviction, a lifetime of being a sex offender, forget about getting a job, forget about the Olympics. Don’t tell me that he got off with a slap on the wrist. That’s simply not the case.”

“The judge got letters from friends and family all attesting to this young man’s good character,” he later added. “The judge looked at the defendant’s past, his present and he also looked at his future. And this young man is still going to jail.”

By the end of the interview, it was clear that MacCallum had enough of Zelin’s lack of concern for the victim.

“You’re obviously very focused on this young man,” the Fox News host quipped. “And less so on this young woman whose account I would urge people to read.”

 

Donald Trump and that “Mexican” Judge

Usually a good idea to pick your fights. A 150 lb guy should probably stay away from smacking 300 lb NFL Linemen – don’t car if your name is Jackie Chan or Bruce Lee – guys who use railroad boxcars as free weights are folks to avoid physical confrontation with. The proverbial 300 lb Lineman in the Courts system is the Judge. Arguing a legal point is one thing – going after the Judge because of his race or ethnicity, as Trump has…

Can lead to painful consequences.

Wee-weenie types like Trump try and hide their male inadequacies with aggression. In the Drumph’s case that means lots of lawyers and litigation, because heaven forbid that 150 lb guy shows up on his doorstep. Trump’s shady, fraudulent business deals are now coming to light. Taking a swing at the Judge was a really dumb move.

An no, Chicken Drumph – there is no precedent for recusing a Judge due to race.

Judge acknowledges Donald Trump’s attacks, unseals files in Trump U suit

A federal judge blasted by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump Friday has taken note of the fact that Trump isn’t happy with the way the judge is handling lawsuits over alleged fraud by the Trump University real estate seminar program.

Just hours after Trump used a campaign speech at a San Diego convention center to unleash a remarkable verbal fusillade against U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the judge — who also happens to be based in the same Southern California city — acknowledged in a much more measured fashion the criticism Trump has aimed at the court.

“Defendant became the front-runner for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential race, and has placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue,” Curiel said in an order unsealing a series of internal Trump University documents that Trump’s lawyers asked be kept from the public.

The judge’s order didn’t make reference to Trump’s 12-minute tirade Friday afternoon in which the all-but-certain Republican nominee called Curiel a “hater” and again invoked his Latino heritage. However, the judge cited a series of news stories from earlier in the campaign, including an NBC story which noted Trump called Curiel “extremely unfair” and an Associated Press story titled, “Trump: Judge’s ethnicity matters in Trump University suit.”

“I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He’s a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel … I think Judge Curiel should be ashamed of himself,” Trump said at Friday’s rally, echoing many of the same points he made in speeches a few months ago. “I’m telling you, this court system, judges in this court system, federal court, they ought to look into Judge Curiel. Because what Judge Curiel is doing is a total disgrace, OK?”

Curiel said in his order Friday that Trump’s presidential campaign and his criticism of the court were reasons to overrule his objections to the release of so-called “Playbooks” describing Trump University’s operations. The judge also noted that one version was published by POLITICO in March. “The entire 2010 Playbook has been posted online by Politico,” Curiel wrote.

It’s unclear whether the judge knew of Trump’s latest volley of attacks when the judge issued the order Friday afternoon, but it seems possible. Curiously, the Republican candidate laid into the judge at about the same time the judge was holding a hearing less than a mile away on a motion by the Washington Post seeking unsealing of the Trump University-related files. The judge’s order was released a couple hours after the hearing.

Trump suggested Friday, as he has before, that he might move to recuse Curiel from the suits. However, the real estate mogul’s lawyers have never brought such a motion.

 

 

 

Second Officer Gets Off in Freddy Gray Death

On the surface, at least – it seems to be the same old story. I thought the “unlawful arrest” part would have won a conviction, at least for that. Which would have led to an administrative penalty. Don’t see the evidence that this guy was any more than the arresting officer.

Officer in Freddie Gray case found not guilty on all counts

Officer Edward Nero of the Baltimore police department was found not guilty Monday on all counts over the arrest and subsequent death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man.

Nero had faced assault, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment charges. Prosecutors said the 30-year-old unlawfully arrested Gray without probable cause and was negligent when he didn’t buckle the prisoner into a seat belt.

Nero opted for a bench trial rather than a jury trial.

After the verdict was read, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake released a statement saying that Nero is still expected to face an administrative review by the city’s police department. The mayor seemed to once again refer back to and warn against the violent unrest the gripped the city immediately following Gray’s death.

“We once again ask the citizens to be patient and to allow the entire process to come to a conclusion,” Rawlings-Blake said. “In the case of any disturbance in the city, we are prepared to respond. We will protect our neighborhoods, our businesses and the people of our city.”

Gray died April 19, 2015, a week after his neck was broken in the back of a police transport van while he was handcuffed and shackled but left unrestrained by a seat belt.

His death set off more than a week of protests followed by looting, rioting and arson that prompted a citywide curfew. His name became a rallying cry in the growing national conversation about the treatment of black men by police officers.

Shortly after Gray’s death, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby charged six officers. Three of them are black; Nero and two others are white.

Nero’s attorney argued that his client didn’t arrest Gray and that it is the police van driver’s responsibility to buckle in detainees. The defense argued that the officers who responded that day acted responsibly, and called witnesses to bolster their argument that any reasonable officer in Nero’s position would have made the same decisions.

The defense also sought to convince the judge that the department’s order requiring that all inmates be strapped in is more suggestion than rule because officers are expected to act with discretion based on the circumstances of each situation.

Nero is the second officer to stand trial. Officer William Porter’s manslaughter trial ended with a hung jury.

 

Stand and Murder Law, Again in South Carolina

Guy was doing a Hannibal Lecter routine…

And gets out on bail!

I guess it was OK in SC, because one of the men was brown.

SC man who shot and ’slow-cooked’ two men out on bail thanks to ‘stand your ground’ law

Using the “stand your ground” defense, a Goose Creek man was granted bail on Monday in the shooting death of two men whose bodies he burned after he killed them, the Post Courier is reporting.

James Edward Loftis, 39, is facing murder charges in the deaths of taxi driver Guma Oz Dubar, 46, and his friend James Cody Newland, 32, on March 5 after they demanded he pay his fare following a ride home from a strip club.

While Loftis has given police varying accounts of what happened that evening — once saying he invited the men in, while another time saying they barged into his home —  several facts are not in dispute.

Loftis admitted that he shot both men before dragging their bodies outside his house, where he placed them in a shallow grave and set them on fire along with his bloody clothes before burying them.

“They were essentially just slow-cooked inside the grave site,” Deputy Solicitor Bryan Alfaro said during the bail hearing.

Conceding that what Loftis did was “heinous,” his attorney defended his client saying he was within his rights to defend himself in his own home under the state’s “stand your ground” laws.

“He’s a human being,” Stephen Harris said. “He freaked out and thought he was going to prison, so he tried to hide the bodies. Nobody knows how you’re going to react when you kill two people.”

Circuit Judge Markley Dennis agreed to allow Loftis to post $250,000 bail, saying his choice of the defense makes him less of a flight risk.

“The only way he will ever be able to resolve that is to … have his day in court,” Dennis explained.

The S.C. Protection of Persons and Property Act — also known as the “stand your ground” law — gives homeowners the right in many circumstances to use deadly force against people breaking into their houses.