The erosion of free speech in Russia under Vladimir Putin has been an unfolding tragedy for Russia. As is often the case, the loss of freedom of speech often goes hand-in-hand with the loss of academic freedom. However, the arrest of a Russian historian, Yuri Dmitriev, 61, is particularly chilling and raises legitimate comparisons with the Stalinist period. That is fitting given the fact that Dmitriev is being forced into psychiatric testing after writing about the discovery of thousands of bodies from the 1930s — victims of Joe Stalin. Putin has ordered a revisionist history on Stalin to glorify his reign and downplay the millions killed by the bloodsoaked dictator.
Category: Criminal law
Below is my column in the Hill newspaper on the filing by Paul Manafort challenging the scope of the Special Counsel investigation. Manafort’s filing of a civil action is quite telling in this circumstance. As a criminal defendant, he can challenge the basis for the charges. This seems like an effort to make a public case with little likelihood of legal success. However, the public tends not to be particularly sympathetic with accused felons complaining that they were arrested by the wrong cop. It is true that Manafort would likely not have been charged absent the Special Counsel investigation. However, that is like complaining about the weather in Washington.
Here is the column:
Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is back in the news and it could not be more bizarre. This week Spitzer was accused of allegedly threatening to stab a restaurant patron’s crotch for stating that he respected Spitzer’s nemesis, Home Depot founder Kenneth Langone. Jamie Antolini says that Spitzer yelled “I’ll get a f**king knife and stab you right in your f**king cock!” Spitzer resigned as Attorney General after disclosure of his patronage of high-end prostitutes.
Adam Hettig, 32, may not have thought out his latest crime with very far. Hettig is accused of robbing a Subway in North Chili, New York while wearing his ankle monitor from the parole office.
Continue reading “New York Man Allegedly Robs Restaurant While Wearing Ankle Monitor”
Another major case has been thrown out due to prosecutorial abuse by the United States Department of Justice. We have previously discussed cases where federal prosecutors have withheld evidence and filed false or misleading statements to the court. Now, U.S. District Court Judge Gloria Navarro has issued a dismissal with prejudice against the Justice Department in the case against Cliven Bundy and his sons due to what Navarro describes as flagrant and knowing violations of professional ethics and federal law by the Justice Department. In past cases, the Justice Department has shown little commitment to discipline, let alone terminate, anyone for the violations (or the waste of millions of dollars). In this case, however, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has called for a review of the case.
We have been discussing how Germany has led the West in the criminalization of speech, an anti-free speech trend that is now raging in England, France, Canada and other Western nations. Germany has continued its plunge into censorship and criminalization despite the failure of its speech laws to curtail extremism. The most recent case involves a 32-year-old German neo-Nazi who has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for incitement after posting picture of a miniature of the Auschwitz death camp on Facebook with an offensive caption.
Tosten Walsh Lommen, 30, was looking at a serious series of charges after driving drunk and taking South Dakota police on a high-speed chase. However, it became far, far worse when the arresting officers opened his trunk and found a dead woman wrapped in a blanket. The initial charges included a charge that may not be familiar to many on the blog: aggravated eluding.
Continue reading “South Dakota Police Declare Dead Body Found In Car Trunk “Suspicious””
The New York Times is reporting that Special counsel Robert Mueller has confirmed that President Donald Trump took the extraordinary step of ordering White House counsel Don McGahn to Attorney general Jeff Sessions to prevent him from recusing himself in the Russian investigation. I was one of the earliest voices calling for Sessions to recuse himself and continue to believe that he made the right decision not only for himself and the Justice Department but Trump. The account in the Times states that Trump was irate at hearing that Sessions would follow the advice of his ethics advisors and recuse himself. He allegedly asked why he does not have an Eric Holder or Roy Cohen to protect his interests. If true, it was a grossly inappropriate decision and an even more worrisome analogy. I have been a long critic of Holder and his highly political tenure at the Justice Department. As for Roy Cohen, he is one of the most reviled and disreputable figures in history. It would be akin to a CEO asking where is his Bernie Madoff to protect profits. The accounts is based on two sources that are anonymous and we have not heard from the President. Obviously, McGahn could also deny the truth of the story but we have not heard from either McGahn or Trump’s personal counsel.
Continue reading “NYT: Trump Tried To Stop Sessions From Recusal”
I have previously expressed my skepticism over the claims of James Comey that he had a right to remove memos from the FBI and leak them to the media through a friend. As I have previously written, Comey was in clear violation of FBI rules and may have knowingly removed classified material. According to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, there is growing evidence to suggest that Comey not only violated FBI guidelines (which is clear) but that he violated federal law in the removal and disclosure of classified material. Indeed, it may come down to simple math. Four of the memos that Comey removed are now believed to be classified. He reportedly gave four memos to his friend to leak to the media. That would suggest that at least one memo given to Columbia University Professor Daniel Richman was classified.
This may be the single most challenging defense that I have seen in years. Counsel for Edwin Greco Wylie-Biggs argued that the police had failed to prove that drugs seized in the state prison at Fayette, Pennsylvania belonged to Wylie-Biggs. The problem is that the drugs were found in his rectum.
Continue reading “Defendant Loses Appeal In Contesting Possession Of Drugs Found In His Rectum”
The founders of Fusion GPS (which compiled the Trump dossier with money from Hillary Clinton and the DNC) has caused a stir with an op-ed in The New York Times calling for Congress to release transcripts of their testimony last summer. I favor such a release to give greater transparency on the facts underlying the allegations over both the Trump and Clinton campaigns. I have criticized both parties for managing the information and pushing investigations on one side while obstructing investigations on the other side. However, six words in the op-ed raise a far more interesting prospect: they say that there may have been an insider cooperating with the FBI during the campaign. That would be a highly significant development if the source was a true cooperative witness funneling information to the Bureau during the presidential campaign.Continue reading “Did the FBI Have A Source In The Trump Campaign?”
Sherwin Shayegan, 34, may be one of the truly creepiest individuals to make it on a police blotter, if New Jersey prosecutors are correct. Shayegan gave a 14-year-old boy a spontaneous massage at the Newark International Airport last Friday as he sat near a luggage carousel. He then gave the boy a note with a $10 bill. It turns out that Shayegan has a long, bizarre, and deeply disturbing history.
Pudit Kittithradilok, 34, was found guilty to running a Ponzi scheme based on investors artificially high financial returns. A defendant would normally be delighted by a fifty percent reduction in his sentence, but Kittithradilok was sentenced to more than 13,000 years in prison. His reduction left him with a hefty remainder of 6,637 years and six months. Even with regular workouts in the prison yard, it would seem difficult to serve that time.
Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the status of the Russian investigation and a look back at the various crimes alleged over the year. A brief search of mainstream media found roughly 5000 stories referring to “bombshell” developments. However, the status has changed little over the year. That could, of course, change. We do not know what Special Counsel Robert Mueller had in terms of new evidence. That did not stop many from declaring conclusive evidence supporting charges over the year despite the paucity of evidence. While we have had four indictments or pleas, but the charges are been notably removed from the core purpose of the Russian collusion investigation. The point of the column is not that new charges are unlikely but that there is little public evidence supporting such charges at the end of 2017. CNN reported yet another “bombshell” discovery this week: George Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat that Russia had “political dirt” on Hillary Clinton in May of last year. However, there has to be more than knowledge of such hacking (or even a desire to use the results of hacking) to support even a collateral criminal charge. We could certainly reach that point in 2018 but the evidence remains sketchy on specific criminal acts tied to Trump or his closest aides related to Russia.
Here is the column:
Continue reading “A Year Later, An Investigation In Search Of A Crime”
Ever wonder who is behind those email messages from Nigerian princes promising millions if you could just send some money to help him release his fortune? Well, meet Michale Neu, allegedly a 67-year-old “Nigerian Prince” from Slidell, Louisiana. Neu was arrested and charged with 269 counts of wire fraud and money laundering by the Slidell Police Department’s Financial Crimes Division after a long investigation into an Internet scam.