Dec. 17: Another NJ Acquittal Shames Gov. Christie, DOJ
A Newark federal jury acquitted a former New Jersey assemblyman on all charges of official corruption Dec. 16, thereby underscoring the abusive Justice Department prosecution methods of former U.S. attorney Chris Christie and his successors under the Obama administration.
Democrat L. Harvey Smith put his head on a courtroom table and wept after the judge acquitted him of all six counts of involving claims he took $15,000 in bribes from a federal informant last year. Smith, who turns 62 Sunday, had testified he accepted money only as a campaign donation.
The 46-defendant prosecution had been initiated by the Republican Christie, who went on to win his state's governorship in part because of his image as a crime fighter.
Christie's successors failed to call informant Solomon Dwek after his credibility was destroyed in the previous trial in the case, in which Ridgefield's mayor was acquitted.
Dwek committed a $50 million bank fraud and ran a brothel before authorities recruited him and provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to help win convictions against New Jersey politicians (nearly all Democrats), rabbis and others. The Justice Integrity Project has attacked the fairness of the prosecution and the vast waste of taxpayer money repeatedly thsi fall in such articles as "Christie's Corruption Case Shows Horrid Legacy of 'Loyal Bushies,' Cover-ups," published Dec. 3 by OpEd News.
Dec. 16 News: The Media Gets It Wrong on WikiLeaks
Editor's Note: Below is a selection of significant blogs and news articles on legal reform and related political, security and media dimensions. The articles contain a sample of news, with the full article viewable by clicking the link.
In The New York Times this morning, Charlie Savage describes the latest thinking from the DOJ about how to criminally prosecute WikiLeaks and Julian Assange…. [T]he Obama administration faces what it perceives a serious dilemma: it is -- as Savage writes -- "under intense pressure to make an example of [Assange] as a deterrent to further mass leaking)," but nothing Assange or WikiLeaks has done actually violates the law. Moreover, as these Columbia Journalism School professors explain in opposing prosecutions, it is impossible to invent theories to indict them without simultaneously criminalizing much of investigative journalism.
Huffington Post, The Media Gets It Wrong on WikiLeaks: It's About Broken Trust, Not Broken Condoms, Arianna Huffington. Dec. 15, 2010.
The first important aspect of the revelations is... the revelations. Too much of the coverage has been meta -- focusing on questions about whether the leaks were justified, while too little has dealt with the details of what has actually been revealed and what those revelations say about the wisdom of our ongoing effort in Afghanistan. There's a reason why the administration is so upset about these leaks.
Editor's Note: Below is a selection of significant blogs and news articles on legal reform and related political, security and media dimensions. The articles contain a sample of news, with the full article viewable by clicking the link.
Huffington Post, Obama's Judges Blocked At Historic Rate, Ryan Grim, Dec. 14, 2010.
As the first congressional session of Obama's presidency draws to a close, what began as a slow process of confirmation has ballooned into a full-blown judicial crisis. The Senate has overseen the slowest pace of judicial staffing in at least a generation, with a paltry 39.8 percent of Obama's judges having been confirmed, according to numbers compiled by Senate Democrats. Of the 103 district and circuit court nominees, only 41 have been confirmed. By this time in George W. Bush's presidency, the Senate had confirmed 76 percent of his nominees. President Clinton was working at a rate of 89 percent at this point in his tenure.
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Dec. 13 News: USA Today Continues Revelations on DOJ
By Andrew Kreig / JIP Director's Blog
USA Today continued last week with its important investigative series about how the Justice Department poorly monitors misconduct by its personnel. Meanwhile, significant developments occurred in the New Jersey and Connecticut cases that our Justice Integrity Project has probed. Listed below are links to this and other articles of recent days, with excerpts.
USA Today, Misconduct at the Justice Department, Kevin McCoy and Brad Heath, USA TODAY, Dec. 11, 2010. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Kent unexpectedly found himself in the legal cross hairs in 2003…."The so-called ethics police violated the same rules they falsely accused me of violating," says Kent, now 66 and retired. "They created false evidence and hid exonerating evidence. How can that system be trusted?" The case spotlights questions about the Office of Professional Responsibility, the Justice Department watchdog agency that can save or ruin a federal prosecutor's career as it enforces legal and ethics rules. For full USA Today series begun on Sept. 23, 2010, see Index
Jesse Ventura Takes BP Gulf Oil Questions To National TV
By Andrew Kreig
TruTV host Jesse Ventura has been raising important and rarely answered questions recently on his show. On Dec. 10, for example, the former Minnesota governor, Navy SEAL and professional wrestler explored on Conspiracy Theory, "Gulf Oil Disaster Planned?"
Dec. 10 News: Feds Rarely Lose Jobs Over Misconduct
Editor's Note: Below is a selection of significant blogs and news articles on legal reform and related political, security and media dimensions. The articles contain a sample of news, with the full article viewable by clicking the link.
ABA/USA Today, Federal Prosecutors Rarely Lose Their Jobs, Despite Misconduct Findings,Debra Cassens Weiss, Dec. 9, 2010
Justice Department investigations of prosecutor misconduct rarely result in serious sanctions for wrongdoing, according to a newspaper investigation. “Prosecutors have little reason to fear losing their jobs, even if they violate laws or constitutional safeguards designed to ensure the justice system is fair,” USA Today reports. Most violations result in reprimands, suspensions or agreements that allow lawyers to leave their jobs “with their reputations intact and their records unblemished,” the newspaper says.
The U.S. Justice Department refused USA Today’s request for a list of disciplinary actions taken against prosecutors, so the newspaper sifted through a decade of annual reports that summarize some of the cases investigated. The documents revealed just one termination. A Department of Justice lawyer was fired because she had been unlicensed for more than five years after she was suspended for failing to comply with legal education requirements, according to the 2009 report. The department’s Office of Professional Responsibility had recommended the firing of four other lawyers, but they either resigned or retired. According to the reports, OPR has investigated 756 complaints from 2000 to 2009 and found misconduct in 196 cases. Justice officials say they can’t release investigation details because of privacy laws.
New York Times, Live Updates: GRAND JURY VOTES TO INDICT TRUMP, Ben Protess, Jonah E. Bromwich and William K. Rashbaum, March 30, 2023. Unprecedented Case Will Have Wide-Ranging Implications. A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Donald Trump for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to five people with knowledge of the matter; The development will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark Mr. Trump as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges.
Former President Trump faces varied legal and political threats, including an escalating New York criminal investigation into purported campaign finance crimes involving payments in 2016 to hide his alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, shown above left on the cover of her memoir "Full Disclosure."
A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Donald J. Trump on Thursday for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to five people with knowledge of the matter, a historic development that will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark him as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges.
An indictment will likely be announced in the coming days. By then, prosecutors working for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, left, will have asked Mr. Trump to surrender and to face arraignment on charges that remain unknown for now.
Mr. Trump has for decades avoided criminal charges despite persistent scrutiny and repeated investigations, creating an aura of legal invincibility that the vote to indict now threatens to puncture.
His actions surrounding his 2020 electoral defeat are now the focus of a separate federal investigation, and a Georgia prosecutor is in the final stages of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election results in that state.
But unlike the investigations that arose from his time in the White House, this case is built around a tawdry episode that predates Mr. Trump’s presidency. The reality star turned presidential candidate who shocked the political establishment by winning the White House now faces a reckoning for a hush money payment that buried a sex scandal in the final days of the 2016 campaign.
On Thursday, the three lead prosecutors on the Trump investigation walked into the building where the grand jury was sitting in the minutes before the panel was scheduled to meet at 2 p.m. One of them carried a copy of the penal law — with Post-it notes visible — which was likely used to read the criminal statutes to the grand jurors before they voted. About three hours later, the prosecutors walked into the court clerk’s office through a back door to begin the process of filing the indictment.
Mr. Trump has consistently denied all wrongdoing and attacked Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, accusing him of leading a politically motivated prosecution. He has also denied any affair with the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who had been looking to sell her story of a tryst with Mr. Trump during the campaign.
Here’s what else you need to know:
Mr. Bragg and his lawyers will likely attempt to negotiate Mr. Trump’s surrender. If he agrees, it will raise the prospect of a former president, with the Secret Service in tow, being photographed and fingerprinted in the bowels of a New York State courthouse.
The prosecution’s star witness is Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer who paid the $130,000 to keep Ms. Daniels quiet. Mr. Cohen has said that Mr. Trump directed him to buy Ms. Daniels’s silence, and that Mr. Trump and his family business, the Trump Organization, helped cover the whole thing up. The company’s internal records falsely identified the reimbursements as legal expenses, which helped conceal the purpose of the payments.
Although the specific charges remain unknown, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors have zeroed in on that hush money payment and the false records created by Mr. Trump’s company. A conviction is not a sure thing: An attempt to combine a charge relating to the false records with an election violation relating to the payment to Ms. Daniels would be based on a legal theory that has yet to be evaluated by judges, raising the possibility that a court could throw out or limit the charges.
The vote to indict, the product of a nearly five-year investigation, kicks off a new and volatile phase in Mr. Trump’s post-presidential life as he makes a third run for the White House. And it could throw the race for the Republican nomination — which he leads in most polls — into uncharted territory.
Mr. Bragg is the first prosecutor to lead an indictment of Mr. Trump. He is now likely to become a national figure enduring a harsh political spotlight.
HuffPost, Trump Denies Wrongdoing In Statement On Grand Jury Indictment, Sara Boboltz, March 30, 2023. The former president called himself a "completely innocent person" after news broke that he was being criminally charged — or, in his words, "INDICATED."
Former President Donald Trump reacted angrily on Thursday to news that he had been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on unknown charges linked to a hush money payment made to an adult film actor. The 2024 candidate is now the first U.S. president in history to be criminally charged.
“These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just INDICATED the 45th President of the United States of America,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, seemingly misspelling “indicted.” Advertisement
He went on: “THIS IS AN ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE. IT IS LIKEWISE A CONTINUING ATTACK ON OUR ONCE FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. THE USA IS NOW A THIRD WORLD NATION, A NATION IN SERIOUS DECLINE. SO SAD!”
Trump also released a more even-keeled statement minutes prior, calling the development “Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”
“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable — indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference,” his statement read.
It concluded: “I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on [President] Joe Biden. The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. So our Movement, and our Party - united and strong - will first defeat [Manhattan District Attorney] Alvin Bragg, and then we will defeat Joe Biden, and we are going to throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Palmer Report, Opinion: Michael Cohen reacts to the news that Donald Trump has been criminally indicted in Manhattan, Bill Palmer, right, March 30, 2023 (6:07 p.m.). Moments ago the news broke that a Manhattan grand jury has voted to criminally indict Donald Trump on at least one felony charge. Even as we all attempt to put this into perspective, key witness Michael Cohen, above left, called in to MSNBC and shared some thoughts.
Cohen can be very direct when he thinks it’s needed. But on this occasion Cohen was mostly reserved, declining to state whether or not he knows what the specific charges are, and saying that “It’s better for the indictment to speak for itself.”
Cohen did add that “Accountability matters” and that he stands by his grand jury testimony. Given that the Manhattan DA went ahead and asked the grand jury to indict, it gives vindication to the credulity of Cohen’s testimony.
Cohen added that “I always believed that this day was going to come.” He also added this: “I wish that people would have taken a few moments and not jumped the gun the way that we’ve been watching the media, many of the talking heads worrying about what’s happening a month from now.”
In any case, the contrast is now fascinating. Donald Trump has been criminally indicted and is now going to be placed under arrest, arraigned in front of a judge, and tried in front of a jury. Meanwhile Michael Cohen is now a respected public figure and a two-time bestselling author.
Washington Post, Analysis: Trump is indicted in N.Y. Here’s what it means and what happens next, Perry Stein
Wall Street Journal, Indictment Could Boost GOP Primary Bid but Hurt a Rematch With Bide
Washington Post, Analysis: Trump indictment follows 50 years of investigation on many fronts, Marc Fisher
Broadcast and lecture audiences can count on the Project's director to deliver blunt, entertaining and cutting-edge commentary about public affairs, with practical tips for the millions of Americans caught up in unfair litigation or regulation.
Based in Washington, DC, Andrew Kreig is an accomplished fighter for the public interest. Learn from his decades of reporting, analysis and advocacy:
• Shocking tales of recent corruption, deception and cover-up by both parties in communities ranging from small towns to world capitals; and • Practical how-to tips for reformers on action that brings real-world results.
Salon/Unclaimed Territory
New York Times, 
An indictment will likely be announced in the coming days. By then, prosecutors working for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, left, will have asked Mr. Trump to surrender and to face arraignment on charges that remain unknown for now.
innocent person" after news broke that he was being criminally charged — or, in his words, "INDICATED."
Moments ago the news broke that a Manhattan grand jury has voted to criminally indict Donald Trump on at least one felony charge. Even as we all attempt to put this into perspective, key witness Michael Cohen, above left, called in to MSNBC and shared some thoughts.
Cohen can be very direct when he thinks it’s needed. But on this occasion Cohen was mostly reserved, declining to state whether or not he knows what the specific charges are, and saying that “It’s better for the indictment to speak for itself.”
Washington Post, 
Washington Post, 
