Category: Justice

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen!

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It turns out that the DHS no fly list is basically based on hunches with a pseudo-scientific gloss:

The Obama administration’s no-fly lists and broader watchlisting system is based on predicting crimes rather than relying on records of demonstrated offenses, the government has been forced to admit in court.

In a little-noticed filing before an Oregon federal judge, the US Justice Department and the FBI conceded that stopping US and other citizens from travelling on airplanes is a matter of “predictive assessments about potential threats”, the government asserted in May.

“By its very nature, identifying individuals who ‘may be a threat to civil aviation or national security’ is a predictive judgment intended to prevent future acts of terrorism in an uncertain context,” Justice Department officials Benjamin C Mizer and Anthony J Coppolino told the court on 28 May.

“Judgments concerning such potential threats to aviation and national security call upon the unique prerogatives of the Executive in assessing such threats.”

It is believed to be the government’s most direct acknowledgement to date that people are not allowed to fly because of what the government believes they might do and not what they have already done.

………

On Friday, the ACLU asked Judge Anna Brown to conduct her own review of the error rate in the government’s predictions modeling – a process the ACLU likens to the “pre-crime” of Philip K Dick’s science fiction.

“I believe this is the first case in which a court is being asked to review the basis for the government’s predictive model for blacklisting people who have never even been charged, let alone convicted, of a violent crime,” said ACLU attorney Hina Shamsi.

In March, as a result of the lawsuit, the Department of Homeland Security began informing people of their inclusion on a flight blacklist and permitting them to file a “redress inquiry”. The resulting non-adversarial process has the government perform “careful consideration” of its reasons for blacklisting, with the Transportation Security Agency director as final arbiter. The ACLU considers the new process insufficient.

But the Obama administration is seeking to block the release of further information about how the predictions are made, for the same reason it opposes providing greater information for challenging watchlist inclusion: damage to national security.

………

In April 2014, five people, all of whom are Muslim, claimed that they were suddenly forbidden from flying after declining FBI pressure to become informants or in order to place pressure upon them to do so. Informants, along with social media postings, have become a driving factor in the FBI’s uptick in arrests of people suspected of ties to al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

In July 2014, the Intercept published an internal watchlisting guidance indicating that nominations to government watchlists were growing, with few rejections. Social media posts were among acceptable criteria, and acquittals in court did not necessarily lead to removals from the list, the Intercept’s document showed.

We are living in an era where the state security apparatus, and the executive that is supposed to ensure that they work in accordance with our interests and our values are thoroughly corrupted by power and fear.

Obama’s message is to tell us not to worry, because he is a good and trustworthy man.

The whole point of our system, with its separation of powers, is that we are not supposed to rely on the the good nature of our leaders.

Obama has taken the worst excesses of the Bush administration, and normalized them.

This will Obama’s most important legacy, and it is not a positive one.

Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever!™

Can We Please Given Texas Back to Mexico?

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Some cracker judge in the Lone Star State just sentenced a man to marry his girlfriend and write down bible verses:

A Texas man was sentenced to marry his 19-year-old girlfriend, write down Bible verses and attend counseling by a judge as punishment for punching another man in the jaw, according to local television station KLTV.

The court case stemmed from a February altercation between Josten Bundy, 20, and the ex-partner of his girlfriend, Elizabeth Jaynes. He told the TV station he hit the man twice.

During his sentencing, Judge Randall Rogers told Bundy he would have to marry his girlfriend within 30 days as a condition of his probation. Bundy said that Rogers gave him the option to sit behind bars for 15 days.

Bundy asked if he could call his employers to tell them he was going to jail, but the judge declined. Bundy and Jaynes said they feared Bundy would lose his job, so they applied for their marriage license and scheduled a date with the justice of the peace.

In a state where the body politic was not congenitally insane, this judge would be suspended pending a judicial review, a state bar review, and a 24-hour psychological evaluation.

What Does a Cop Have to Do to Get Fired?

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A police officer in Alabama proposed murdering a black resident and creating bogus evidence to suggest the killing was in self-defence, the Guardian has learned.

Officer Troy Middlebrooks kept his job and continues to patrol Alexander City after authorities there paid the man $35,000 to avoid being publicly sued over the incident. Middlebrooks, a veteran of the US marines, said the man “needs a god damn bullet” and allegedly referred to him as “that nigger”, after becoming frustrated that the man was not punished more harshly over a prior run-in.

The payment was made to the black resident, Vincent Bias, after a secret recording of Middlebrooks’s remarks was played to the city’s police chiefs and the mayor. Elected city councillors said they were not consulted. A copy of the recording was obtained by the Guardian.

………

“This town is ridiculous,” Bias, 49, said in an interview. “The police here feel they can do what they want, and often they do.” Alexander City police chief Willie Robinson defended Middlebrooks. “He was just talking. He didn’t really mean that,” he said in an interview.

………

Middlebrooks, 33, made the threatening comments to Bias’s brother-in-law during a May 2013 encounter at his home, which Bias was visiting. Police came to the home after they discovered an unleashed dog.

A lawsuit from Bias that the city paid to settle before it reached court stated that while Bias remained inside the house and out of earshot, the officer remarked to Bias’s brother-in-law, who is white, that he was tired of “that nigger” being released from jail.

………

The officer did say he had been cleared by a state inquiry into the incident and referred the Guardian to the state bureau of investigation (SBI) and Larkin Radney, the city attorney for Alexander City. A spokesman for the SBI, however, said: “We have no record of us investigating this case.” Radney said: “I really don’t know what he’s talking about.”


During the interview at his office, Robinson said Middlebrooks “was disciplined” when the recording came to light, but declined to elaborate. Asked if the officer was ever suspended from patrols, Robinson repeated: “He got disciplined.” When it was put to him that some agencies might have terminated the officer’s job, the police chief said: “I don’t know what other departments do, but I made that call, and I’m going to live with that.”

Robinson tried to stress that Middlebrooks was in fact proposing that the brother-in-law carry out the killing. “He wasn’t saying that he was going to do that,” said the police chief. “He was talking about the man doing it himself.”

So a criminal conspiracy to commit murder under the color of law is not a grounds to fire this thug?

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen!

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In Denver, a man started handing out fliers to people entering the courthouse explaining their rights as a juror.

It turns out that, even though a judge will not allow it to be argued in court, that jurors are free to vote their own conscience, invalidating unjust laws and ignoring judge’s instructions.* (See here)

Prosecutors just charged him with 7 felony counts of jury tampering:

A Denver man has been charged with multiple felonies after he was caught distributing fliers to educate potential jurors about the practice of “jury nullification.”

The Denver Post reported that 56-year-old Mark Iannicelli set up a small booth with a sign reading “Juror Info” outside the Lindsay-Flanigan Courthouse in Denver last week. The Denver District Attorney’s Office charged Iannicelli with seven counts of jury tampering after members of the jury pool were found to be in possession of fliers describing jury nullification.

Jury nullification allows juries to acquit a defendant who they may believe is guilty if they also believe that the law is unjust. The practice has been used by juries in the United States since the 1800s to nullify anti-free speech laws and laws punishing northerners for helping runaway slaves. It has most recently been used in drug cases when juries have viewed laws as discriminatory.

A copy of the criminal complaint obtained by Kirsten Tynan of the Fully Informed Jury Association says that Iannicelli “unlawfully and feloniously attempted directly and indirectly to communicate with” seven jurors.

A probable cause statement added that Iannicelli was accused of “handing out information to potential jurors.”

Tynan pointed out that the complaint “does not accuse Mr. Iannicelli of advocating for or against any case in progress” and “it does not accuse Mr. Iannicelli even of targeting individuals for sharing information with them.”

This is complete bullsh%$, and an abuse of prosecutorial discretion.

Any Colorado lawyers out there who wants to throw a complaint to the Bar Association?

*See the John Peter Zenger libel case from 1735, where the jury ignored the law and said that the truth is an absolute defense against libel, and William Penn’s acquittal for unlawful assembly (even though the judge threatened the jury when they refused to acquit).

This Almost Makes Me Wish That I Was German

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Please note the modifier here, “Almost”.

Living in an America where pretty much every FBI anti-terrorism operation involves paying an informant to entrap some loser, it is heartening that a German prosecutor has been given the sack over investigating journalists for treason:

Netzpolitik.org, the website at the centre of the treason scandal in Germany, is the real winner in the whole furore as a senior German official was forcibly retired over the scandal, editor Markus Beckedahl told el Reg this morning.

Last night, Germany’s chief federal prosecutor Harald Range was given the boot by German Justice Minister Heiko Maas over his handling of the affair. Technically, Range resigned, but it was his decision to pursue Beckedahl and fellow journalist Andrew Meister for treason that led to his downfall.

The journalists, meanwhile, have seen donations to their website come flooding in. The pair were under investigation for treason for supposedly betraying state secrets after they published leaked documents relating to plans to monitor Twitter and Facebook chats, as well as a €2.75m project to process massive online data sets.

This sort of law enforcement and prosecutorial overreach gets promotions in the US.

It’s nice to see that there are countries where this bullsh%$ is not tolerated.

Bummer of a Birth Mark, Rand

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The Department of Justice has just unsealed a criminal indictment naming three close Rand Paul aides conspiracy for fraud and bribery relating to the 2012 Republican primary:

Two top allies of presidential candidate and US Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) were charged with violating campaign finance laws during the 2012 presidential campaign, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

Jesse Benton, who worked on the presidential bid of Paul’s father, Ron, was named as one of three political operatives in the alleged scheme to conceal payments to an Iowa state senator.

According to a National Journal report last April, Benton was tapped to run a Paul-sanctioned super PAC, America’s Liberty PAC, supporting the senator’s 2016 presidential bid.

John Tate, who is listed as the group’s founder and president, was also named in the charges. The other operative named was Dimitrios Kesari, a former deputy campaign manager on Ron Paul’s campaign.

The indictment was based on six counts, including conspiracy, filing false records, false statements, and obstruction of justice.

Though the indictment did not name which 2012 presidential candidate Benton, Tate, and Kesari worked on, there is little doubt that it is referring to former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), Rand Paul’s father.

Note that one of these people, Jesse Benton, is married to Rand Paul’s niece, so it is all in the family.

At the rate that this is going, the Republicans are going to nominate Donald Trump.

Judge to Idaho “Ag Gag” Law: Drop Dead

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The law, which criminalizes whistleblowing on farm and the agriculture industry has been overturned on free speech grounds:

A federal judge has lifted a controversial ban on undercover surveillance inside Idaho’s factory farms, delivering a significant victory to animal rights’ activists.

Judge B Lynn Winmill ruled on Monday that the state’s so-called “ag gag” law violated the constitutional right to free speech.

“An agricultural facility’s operations that affect food and worker safety are not exclusively a private matter,” said the judge. “Food and worker safety are matters of public concern.”

The agriculture industry’s political allies passed the law last year after an undercover investigator with the advocacy group Mercy for Animals used a hidden camera to expose cruelty and neglect at Bettencourt Dairies, Idaho’s largest dairy factory farm.

The 2012 exposé documented workers beating, kicking and shocking cows, twisting their tails and dragging them with chains attached to their necks.

………

The state’s $2.5bn dairy industry said the sting was an attempt to hurt businesses and rallied legislators in the state capitol to pass a law making it a crime to film inside agricultural facilities. Governor CL “Butch” Otter signed it.

………

Judge Winmill agreed. He said the law violated the first amendment and the equal protection clause because it was motivated in substantial part by animus towards animal welfare groups.

“The effect of the statute will be to suppress speech by undercover investigators and whistleblowers concerning topics of great public importance: the safety of the public food supply, the safety of agricultural workers, the treatment and health of farm animals, and the impact of business activities on the environment.”

Existing laws against trespass, fraud, theft and defamation sufficed to protect the dairy industry from wrongful intrusion, he said. “These types of laws serve the property and privacy interests … but without infringing on free speech rights.”

A well deserved smack-down, but I would also argue that the law violated the constitutional injunction against bills of attainder, as well as the 14ᵗʰ amendment’s injunction against unequal treatment under the law, and this law is specifically formulated to favor just one business activity.

Of course, judges, real ones, not folks like Scalia, Alito and Thomas, try to keep their rulings as narrow as possible, so I understand why the opinion was written that way.

Of course, my opinion is offered with the caveat that I am an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit!*

*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!

Your Evening Schadenfreude

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This is the skeeviest mugshot that I’ve seen in a Long time

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been indicted on multiple counts of fraud and financial shenanigans, some of which carry the possibility of life in prison:

Facing three felony counts of securities law violations, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was arrested, fingerprinted and photographed Monday morning for alleged violations that took place when he was a state legislator.

 Indicted by a Collin County grand jury last week, Paxton surrendered at the county jail in his hometown of McKinney, avoiding assembled reporters by entering through a side door.

 ………

 The grand jury indictments against Paxton, unsealed shortly after noon, revealed that two first-degree fraud charges were based on Paxton’s efforts in July 2011 — when he was a member of the Texas House — to sell stock on behalf of Servergy Inc., a privately held, McKinney-based tech company.

 According to the indictments, Paxton failed to tell stock buyers — including state Rep. Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, and Florida businessman Joel Hochberg, who each purchased more than $100,000 in Servergy stock and were listed as complainants on the fraud charges — that he had been compensated with 100,000 shares of Servergy. Paxton also said he was an investor in Servergy when he had not invested his own money in the company, the charges indicated.

 ………

 Paxton encouraged investors to put more than $600,000 into Servergy, special prosecutor Kent Schaffer told The New York Times last week. Paxton’s role was discovered as part of a Texas Rangers investigation, Schaffer said.

 First-degree felonies can be punished by up to life in prison.

Paxton is a wingnut’s wingnut, even by the standards of Texas, which is saying a lot.


Pass the popcorn

The fact that he has been caught red-handed defrauding fellow Republican members of the state legislature makes this whole affair quite ……… entertaining.

I am amused.

Finally, a White Prosecutor Indicts a Cop for Murder under the Color of Law

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Warning: This is a video of a police officer shooting a man in the head without provocation

University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing has been indicted for felony murder:

A white police officer who gunned down an unarmed black man in Cincinnati, Ohio, has been indicted for murder by a grand jury, as the county prosecutor described the shooting as the “most asinine act” he had ever seen committed by a police officer.

Samuel DuBose, 43, was killed on 19 July by a single shot to the head fired by University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing during a routine traffic stop, in which DuBose was pulled over for not having a front license plate.

Tensing had maintained he was “dragged” by Dubose’s vehicle after the two entered into a physical altercation and was forced to shoot, but Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph Deters said body-camera evidence completely contradicted this account.

In a frank assessment of the officer’s conduct, Deters said Tensing had “purposely killed” DuBose and that he “should never have been a police officer”.

………

Deters, who was visibly angered at points during the press conference, continued: “He [Tensing] wasn’t dealing with someone who was wanted for murder, OK? He was dealing with someone who didn’t have a front license plate. This is, in the vernacular, a pretty chicken-crap stop, all right? And – I could use harsher words.

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” he added. “This is the most asinine act I’ve ever seen a police officer make, totally unwarranted.” Deters also said the death reflected poorly on the university police department and had advised Cincinnati police chief Jeffrey Blackwell that the force be disbanded and replaced with a new city police precinct on campus.

If the university police department, it would be a good thing, because it’s not just this guy, two of his fellow officers obstructed justice to protect him:

Police officers in Cincinnati appear to have corroborated a false account of the fatal shooting of Samuel DuBose in the immediate aftermath of the incident, a detailed analysis of body-camera video released on Wednesday shows.

………

A Guardian analysis of the nearly 28 minutes worth of Tensing’s body-camera footage released by the prosecutor’s office also shows the aftermath of the shooting and reveals that on three occasions, two other police officers repeat Tensing’s account that he was dragged by DuBose, and one of these officers claims to have witnessed it occurring.

Tensing repeats, multiple times throughout the footage, the claim that he was dragged by DuBose’s vehicle. But at five minutes and 44 seconds into the video, he states: “I think I’m OK. He was just dragging me.”

To which a second officer, who stands out of the frame, replies: “Yeah, I saw that.”

Tensing continues: “I thought I was going to get run over. I was trying to stop him.”

Then, at six minutes and 54 seconds into the footage, while Tensing is seemingly conversing with the same officer, he states: “He was dragging me, man.”

The officer replies, “Yeah.” To which Tensing continues: “I got my hand and my arm caught inside.” The officer then replies, “Yeah, I saw that.”

………

The Hamilton County prosecutor’s office did not reply to a question from the Guardian after Deter’s press conference over whether any other officers were being investigated in relation the incident.

The officers engaged in felony conspiracy, indict them as well.

We need to go zero-tolerance/broken window on this sh%$.

Why Alabama is a Punch Line

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Alabama is seeking to terminate the parental rights of a woman incarcerated in Lauderdale County, Alabama so has to force her to carry a child to term that she wants to abort:

Alabama officials are currently seeking to prevent a pregnant prison inmate from obtaining a legal abortion by stripping her of her parental rights, in a case where a lawyer has been appointed to represent the interests of her fetus.

An unnamed woman, who is referred to in court documents only as Jane Doe, is asking for permission to travel to Huntsville to end her pregnancy. She says she was unable to get an abortion before she was taken into custody and is now feeling desperate. “I am very distraught, and do not want to be forced to carry this pregnancy to term,” she wrote.

Jane Doe — who has to get permission from the court to be transported to the nearest clinic because prison officials consider abortion to be a non-emergency procedure — is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, which argues that it would be “cruel and unusual punishment” for the state of Alabama to deny her constitutional right to abortion.

Now, as Lauderdale County District Attorney Chris Connolly prepares to argue against this request, he is asking the court to strip Doe of her parental rights so that she will no longer have the right to end her pregnancy. In a hearing to determine the outcome of the case, which is expected to be decided by Friday, the state court appointed an attorney — known as a “guardian ad litem” — to serve on behalf of Doe’s fetus.

“It appears to me that what the state is attempting to do is turn Jane Doe into a vessel, and control every aspect of her life, forcing her to give birth to a baby, which she has decided she does not want to do,” Randall Marshall, one of Doe’s attorneys, told the Huffington Post. “The case has certainly moved to this new dimension, but welcome to Alabama.”

Yeah, welcome to Alabama.

The kind of gleeful evil doing by the District Attorney here is of biblical proportions.  We are talking Amalek and Sodom and Gemorra here.

This ratf%$# is trying to destroy a helpless (she is pregnant and in jail) woman to inflict his warped morality.

Why doesn’t DA Connolly go to Syria and fight for ISIS, they are clearly his ideological bedfellows.

Eric Arthur Blair Has to Be Spinning in His Grave over This………

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Eric Arthur Blair
Aka George Orwell

It appears that while the Department of Justice saw no need to call Dylan Roof, who targeted a black church with the explicit goal of keeping black people down, is not a terrorist, while animal rights activists who leg minks out of cages are terrorists:

The FBI on Friday announced the arrests in Oakland of two animal rights activists, Joseph Buddenberg and Nicole Kissane, and accused the pair of engaging in “domestic terrorism.” This comes less than a month after the FBI director said he does not consider Charleston Church murderer Dylann Roof a “terrorist.” The activists’ alleged crimes: “They released thousands of minks from farms around the country and vandalized various properties.” That’s it. Now they’re being prosecuted and explicitly vilified as “terrorists,” facing 10-year prison terms.

To call this “Orwellian” is an understatement, and I am coming from the perspective of being hostile to most of the goals of the PETA and its ilk.

These folks, are assholes, and they should be charged, but charging them with terrorism is nucking futs.

Good. Now How About Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon Too?

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In response to his knowingly shipping Salmonella tainted peanut butter, prosecutors are asking for a life sentence for former president and CEO of Peanut Corporation of America:

Stewart Parnell–the former Peanut Corporation of America owner that was convicted last year for knowingly shipping Salmonella-contaminated peanut butter from his Georgia plant–may be sentenced to life in prison if prosecutors have their way. The U.S. Probation Office concluded that the scope of Parnell’s crimes–including conspiracy, obstruction of justice and wire fraud– “results in a life sentence Guidelines range.”

 After a two month trial, Parnell was found guilty of knowingly shipping the contaminated products to food processors across the U.S. This is reportedly the first federal felony conviction of its kind in relation to food safety, making it an unprecedented case.

In 2008 and 2009, the peanut butter outbreak spread throughout 46 states, ultimately leading the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to announce one of the largest food recalls in U.S. history. Nine people died and more than 700 fell ill. Parnell nor any co-defendants were ever charged in relation to any consumer illnesses or deaths resulting from the tainted peanut butter.

 ………

 Parnell–age 61–is scheduled to be sentenced on September 21 by a federal judge in Albany, GA. Although prosecutors are recommending a life sentence, the judge is free to impose a lighter sentence.

 A 17 to 21 year sentence was recommended for brother Michael Parnell. Mary Wilkerson–the plant quality control manager–may get 8 to 10 years in prison based on prosecutors’ recommendation.

Here is a suggestion for the judge: Imagine that Mr. Parnell is a black man caught dealing crack, and that he had 3 priors, all of them non-violent drug offenses.

 That should be good for about 60 years.

Or, perhaps you could imagine that he is a black man accused of selling loose cigarettes in New York City. 

That carries the death penalty these days.

The Latest in Patent Abuse

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Colgate just filed a patent on Indian herbal recipes that have existed for thousands of years:

India has successfully blocked two patent claims of US consumer goods major Colgate-Palmolive, which wanted intellectual property right (IPR) cover on two oral compositions made from Indian spices and other herbs.

One patent battle took almost seven years, after the New York-based company filed a claim at the European Patent Register on September 29, 2008, for a composition containing botanical extracts from three herbs, including cinnamon, a common kitchen spice across India, known here as “dalchini”.

India opposed the claim using the traditional knowledge digital library (TKDL) database, created in the last decade to fight biopiracy.

The database, maintained by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), submitted its plea in May 2011, and the European patent office ruled in India’s favour last month.

Two years after filing the first patent claim, Colgate-Palmolive moved another application in 2010 before the European patent office, seeking protection for another oral composition containing nutmeg, ginger, “Bakul” tree, camphor, cinnamon, turmeric, Indian banyan, black pepper, long pepper, Neem and clove. The solution is for treating oral cavity diseases.

………

The digital database, containing Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha formulations, and known medicinal properties of Indian herbs, was created following India’s successful IPR battles on haldi (turmeric), neem and Basmati rice.

The Union Commerce Ministry spent Rs 7.61 crore in 2000 as legal fee to reverse a patent examiner’s decision on basmati rice. “Going by that standard, the TKDL has saved upwards of Rs 500 crore so far, and more to come. In the next step, the government should not only add many more ancient books to the TKDL database but also incorporate knowledge from manuscripts,” said Gupta, who retired in 2013.

There needs to be some sort penalty when firms file fraudulent, because this sort of crap is endemic.

The Question Is Not If Sheldon Silver Flips on Andrew Cuomo, but When

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Marcello Trebitsch, the son-in-law of former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has just pled guilty to running a multi-year Ponzi scheme:

A son-in-law of former New York state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver pleaded guilty to securities fraud Monday, admitting to cheating investors out of nearly $6 million in a Ponzi scheme.

 Marcello Trebitsch, 37, of Brooklyn, entered the plea in Manhattan federal court in a written deal with prosecutors that recommended a prison sentence of four to five years. Sentencing was set for Nov. 2.

 “I am sorry for what I have done and I apologize to the court and my family,” Trebitsch told Judge Vernon Broderick.

 Prosecutors said Trebitsch, who is married to Silver’s daughter, solicited more than $8 million from four investors from 2007 to 2014 based on false and misleading representations.

 Silver, a Democrat who resigned from his leadership position after his January arrest on corruption charges, has pleaded not guilty and said he will be vindicated. Prosecutors say Silver took nearly $4 million in payoffs and kickbacks.

 Prosecutors said Trebitsch told investors they would secure double-digit gains with minimal risk of loss, but then Trebitsch mainly used the investors’ money for his own benefit and to repay other investors after suffering enormous trading losses on the portion of investors’ money that he did invest.

 ………

 In a release, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said Trebitsche “ran a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, defrauding investors who put their faith in him and entrusted him with their hard-earned savings. He returned their faith with deceit and self-dealing, lying about his trading losses and using investor money on himself.”

Note that his wife, Michelle Trebitsch (née Silver), is a co-owner of the firm, Allese Capital, as well as being the certified public accountant who did the firm’s books, so it is likely that they will extract some sort of plea, or at least an admission, out of her.

Additionally, it is likely that  and a whole lot of their assets are going to be forfeited.

I’ve got to imagine that US Attorney Bharara would be eager to have Andrew Cuomo in the dock. It would be a major feather in is cap.

Right now, he has the sentence of Silver’s son in law, the possible prosecution of his daughter, and the potential for leaving his grand children penniless as well as parentless for a few years would be powerful  inducements for former speaker Silver to cooperate.

Silver will talk, and only question is whether he gets Cuomo, or he gets one of his closest associates, because Cuomo managed to create a level of plausible deniability in his dealings by using proxies.

Given that Cuomo is a former prosecutor, my guess is that it will be the latter, but I am hoping for the former.

Looks Like the Congressional Delegation in Florida Will Be Changing

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The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that at least 8 Congressional districts must be redrawn:

The Florida Supreme Court took a wrecking ball to Florida’s political landscape Thursday, throwing out the state’s carefully crafted congressional districts drawn by the GOP-led Legislature and ordering a new map within 100 days.

In the historic 5-2 ruling, the court not only ruled the maps were the product of an unconstitutional political gerrymandering, it signaled its deep distrust of lawmakers and provided detailed instructions on how to repair the flawed map in time for the 2016 election.

“This is a complete victory for the people of Florida who passed the Fair District amendment and sought fair representation where the Legislature didn’t pick their voters,” said David King, lead attorney for the League of Women Voters and the coalition of voter groups which brought the challenge. “The Supreme Court accepted every challenge we made and ordered the Legislature to do it over.”

The new maps are likely to reconfigure nearly all of the state’s 27 congressional districts, open the door to new candidates, and threaten incumbents, who will now face a new set of boundary lines and constituents close to the 2016 election.

………

But the justices reversed the trial court’s order approving the Legislature’s revised redistricting plan “because we conclude that, as a result of legal errors, the trial court failed to give the proper effect to its finding of unconstitutional intent, which mandated a more meaningful remedy commensurate with the constitutional violations it found.”

The court concluded however, that the plantiffs didn’t show enough evidence to support revisions to the whole map but ordered changes to eight districts “and other districts affected by the redrawing.”

The court also ordered the Legislature to turn over all documents related to the redrawn maps and urged lawmakers to refrain from conducting secret meetings and “consider making all decisions on the redrawn map in public view.”

In siding with a coalition of Democrat-backed voter groups, the court majority concluded that lawmakers violated the Fair District amendments to the Florida Constitution. The amendments were approved in 2010 by more than 63 percent of voters — over the objections of the Republican-controlled Legislature — to prohibit lawmakers from intentionally drawing districts that favor incumbents or political parties.

The court gave the Legislature 100 days to meet in special session to complete a new map, and ordered the trial court to issue an order that opens the door for it to review the final product. House and Senate leaders have not responded to the ruling.

It’s only 8 out of 27 seats, necessarily, some of the other districts will have to change because of the facts of simple geometry.

It won’t be enough to flip the house, but I could see the Dems go from the current 10 to 12-13seats in Congress, particularly since 2016 is a Presidential year.

Least Surprising News of the Day

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At The Intercept, Lee Fang notes that Eric Holder has returns to his former law firm, which lobbies for corporate criminals on Wall Street.

Notwithstanding Einstein’s laws, the revolving door is spinning faster than the speed of light:

Eric Holder Returns as Hero to Law Firm That Lobbies for Big Banks

After failing to criminally prosecute any of the financial firms responsible for the market collapse in 2008, former Attorney General Eric Holder is returning to Covington & Burling, a corporate law firm known for serving Wall Street clients.

 The move completes one of the more troubling trips through the revolving door for a cabinet secretary. Holder worked at Covington from 2001 right up to being sworn in as attorney general in Feburary 2009. And Covington literally kept an office empty for him, awaiting his return.

 The Covington & Burling client list has included four of the largest banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Lobbying records show that Wells Fargo is still a client of Covington. Covington recently represented Citigroup over a civil lawsuit relating to the bank’s role in Libor manipulation.

 Covington was also deeply involved with a company known as MERS, which was later responsible for falsifying mortgage documents on an industrial scale. “Court records show that Covington, in the late 1990s, provided legal opinion letters needed to create MERS on behalf of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and several other large banks,” according to an investigation by Reuters.

 The Department of Justice under Holder not only failed to pursue criminal prosecutions of the banks responsible for the mortage meltdown, but in fact de-prioritized investigations of mortgage fraud, making it the “lowest-ranked criminal threat,” according to an inspector general report.

For insiders, the Holder decision to return to Covington was never a mystery. Timothy Hester, the chairman of Covington, told the National Law Journal that Holder’s return to the firm had been “a project” of his ever since Holder left to the join the administration in 2009. When the firm moved to a new building last year, it kept an 11th-story corner office reserved for Holder.

Well, now we know why the Obama DoJ prosecuted fewer financial wrongdoers than did the Bush DoJ.

It’s why I have always called him “Place” Holder.

After 6 Years of Prosecutorial Excess on Behalf of the Vampire Squid, We Finally See Aleynikov’s Total Exoneration

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After multiple prosecutions, by multiple prosecutors, at the behest of Goldman Sachs, Sergey Aleynikov is a free man, for a while, at least:

Kevin H. Marino pumped his fist in the air in celebration. Then Mr. Marino, a New Jersey lawyer with a linebacker’s build, turned to his longtime client, Sergey Aleynikov, and gave Mr. Aleynikov, a former Goldman Sachs programmer, a bear hug and a hearty pat on the back.

Just moments earlier, a clerk in State Supreme Court in Manhattan had given Mr. Marino a copy of the judicial ruling that overturned Mr. Aleynikov’s conviction on a charge that he stole confidential computer code for Goldman Sachs’s high-speed trading business.

The clerk, saving Mr. Marino from having to thumb through the 72 pages to learn what Justice Daniel P. Conviser had ruled, simply whispered congratulations to the lawyer. For Mr. Aleynikov, 45, and Mr. Marino, it appeared to be the end of a six-year legal odyssey through the federal and state court systems in New York.

But the celebration may not last long. State prosecutors in Manhattan have already indicated they may appeal the decision issued Monday, which threw out a jury’s verdict.

Once before, Mr. Aleynikov had believed he was in the clear, when a federal appeals court overturned his conviction under a federal corporate espionage law in 2012. The appellate court ruled that federal prosecutors in Manhattan had misapplied the law, and it ordered Mr. Aleynikov to be immediately released from a federal prison.

Less than a year later, however, Mr. Aleynikov was back in court defending himself, after state prosecutors in Manhattan charged him with violating state computer-theft-related laws.

Now Justice Conviser — much like the federal appellate court before him — ruled that the decades-old state law that Mr. Aleynikov was convicted of violating did not apply to the accusations against him.

………

But Mr. Marino was at no loss for words in criticizing Goldman.

“Goldman Sachs is powerful enough to provoke two failed criminal prosecutions to settle a private score,” Mr. Marino said. “Goldman Sachs has also spent millions in shareholder dollars to evade their obligation to pay Mr. Aleynikov’s legal fees for winning two criminal cases.”

I rather expect Vance to appeal, since the Manhattan district attorney is clearly bought and paid for by Wall Street.

At the time, I was hoping that this would turn over the rock that is the illegal front running high frequency trading conducting by the biggest brokerage firms, but the prosecutors were determined to keep that covered up, and to continue to avoid prosecutions that might bot reveal Goldman’s skullduggery, and follow up with prosecutions grounded in bizarre legal theories.

Background here.