Tag: Schadenfreude

Finally, a Conviction

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He was convicted of racketeering.

I think that the  Billy Ray Valentine principle, “You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people,” should apply.

He’s been convicted, so there is a crime.

Now seize is assets, which are ineluctably intertwined with his fortune, so take it all.

Make him poor:

John Kapoor, the former billionaire and founder of fentanyl-spray manufacturer Insys Therapeutics was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison Thursday afternoon in a Boston courtroom for his role in a conspiracy to bribe doctors to prescribe his company’s potent fentanyl painkiller to patients who didn’t need it.

………

Last May after a weeks-long trial, a jury found Kapoor and four other executives guilty of a racketeering conspiracy. At the time, U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said that those convictions were “the first successful prosecution of top pharmaceutical executives for crimes related to the illicit marketing and prescribing of opioids.” The jury found that between 2012 and 2015 Kapoor and the other executives had conspired to bribe doctors and other medical practitioners to prescribe Insys’ pain drug unnecessarily and to also lie to health insurers to have the medication covered. But in November the federal judge on the case overturned part of the jury’s verdict.

………

The Chandler, Arizona-based Insys made and sold a powerful fentanyl spray called Subsys that was Food & Drug Administration-approved only for use by patients with cancer-related pain. At its peak in 2015, the firm’s annual Subsys sales hit $329 million. Last June Insys reached a $225 million settlement with the Department of Justice and admitted to having illegally marketed and paid kickbacks to medical practitioners in exchange for prescribing Subsys. Days later the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

In October 2016 Kapoor was profiled by Forbes. The story chronicled Kapoor’s habit of founding companies and letting them push ethical and legal boundaries. During an interview for the story, Kapoor told Forbes of his involvement with Insys: “My involvement is I am an investor.” He said, “As an investor I’m on a board. As a board member and an investor you are involved, but you are not involved in day-to-day operations, and that’s where the problems come in.”

This is the language of “Disruption”.  It’s also the language of a drug pusher.

There is a reason why they the same words, because there is very little difference.

I Feel a Great Disturbance in the Force, as If Dozens of Ammosexuals Suddenly Cried out in Butt Hurt, and Were Suddenly Silenced

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The Ammosexual community has been planning a massive (probably not so massive) demonstration at the Virginia state capitol.

In response to what Governor Northam calls, “Credible Intelligence,” of violence at the rally,  guns will be banned at the demonstration:

A Circuit Court judge upheld Gov. Ralph Northam’s temporary ban on firearms in Capitol Square ahead of Monday’s gun rights rally, which is expected to draw thousands of armed activists from across the country.

From Friday night until Tuesday, weapons of any kind will be prohibited on the grounds of the Capitol under a state of emergency. Northam (D) said the precaution was necessary because of “credible intelligence” that militias and gun rights advocates are threatening violence at the rally.

“This is the right decision,” Northam said in a statement about Richmond Chief Judge Joi Jeter Taylor’s ruling Thursday afternoon. “These threats are real — as evidenced by reports of neo-Nazis arrested this morning after discussing plans to head to Richmond with firearms.”

Gun rights groups filed an appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday evening.

Awww, they’ll have to leave their manhood at home, the poor babies.

Pass the Pop Corn

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The House of Representatives have just released a treasure trove of documents incriminating Trump:

House Democrats just unveiled a trove of fresh impeachment evidence against President Trump in a surprise move that came just days before his impeachment trial is set to kick off in the Senate.

The files include a copy of a letter from Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani addressed to the President of Ukraine that casts Trump as fully aware of Giuliani’s actions in Ukraine — at a moment when Giuliani was publicly calling for the country to investigate Trump’s Democratic 2020 challenger, former vice president Joe Biden.

That letter, which requests a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, directly links Trump to a trip Giuliani described at the time as “meddling in an investigation.”

“In my capacity as personal counsel to President Trump and with his knowledge and consent, I request a meeting with you on this upcoming Monday, May 13th or Tuesday, May 14th,” Giuliani wrote.

Republicans have repeatedly defended the president by arguing that the evidence and testimony in the impeachment hearings haven’t linked him closely enough to efforts by those around him, like Giuliani, to get Ukraine to announce an investigation into Biden. But the letter says explicitly that Giuliani had Trump’s full backing and consent, at a time when Giuliani told The New York Times: “I’m asking them to do an investigation.”

The disclosures deliver a large new pile of hard evidence to Democrats on the eve of their Wednesday vote to send articles of impeachment to the Senate for a trial. In December, the House voted to impeach Trump for abusing his office by pressuring Ukraine to announce an investigation of Biden and for obstructing the Congressional investigation into what happened.

Giuliani’s letter and other documents released Tuesday were recently delivered to House Democrats by an embattled associate of his named Lev Parnas, a Ukranian-born businessman who helped Giuliani navigate the country and seek damaging information about Biden.

………

The new records include an apparent memo, written by Parnas, about getting Zelensky to announce an investigation of Biden. It’s a rare hardcopy piece of evidence suggesting what the whole scheme was about.

“Get Zalensky [sic] to Annonce [sic] that the Biden case will Be Investigated,” the note reads.

This is getting good.

Pass the Popcorn

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The anarchist daughter of a Republican voter suppression specialist has released the files from her late father’s hard drives to the public:

More than a year after his death, a cache of computer files saved on the hard drives of Thomas Hofeller, a prominent Republican redistricting strategist, is becoming public.

Republican state lawmakers in North Carolina fought in court to keep copies of these maps, spreadsheets and other documents from entering the public record. But some files have already come to light in recent months through court filings and news reports.

They have been cited as evidence of gerrymandering that got political maps thrown out in North Carolina, and they have raised questions about Hofeller’s role in the Trump administration’s failed push for a census citizenship question.

Now more of the files are available online through a website called The Hofeller Files, where Hofeller’s daughter, Stephanie Hofeller, published a link to her copy of the files on Sunday after first announcing her plans in a tweet last month.

“These are matters that concern the people and their franchise and their access to resources. This is, therefore, the property of the people,” Hofeller told NPR. “I won’t be satisfied that we the people have found everything until we the people have had a look at it in its entirety.”

………

Stephanie then reconnected with her mother, Kathleen, and visited her parents’ apartment in North Carolina, where she found four external hard drives and a clear plastic bag containing 18 USB thumb drives in her father’s room. Stephanie says her mother encouraged her to take the devices.

………

It turned out they were filled with photos of Stephanie with her children and other personal items — as well as files from her father’s work as a redistricting consultant for Republicans.

While looking for an attorney to represent her mother in 2018, Stephanie says she connected with the North Carolina chapter of Common Cause, an advocacy group that had brought a lawsuit against Republican state officials to overturn political maps Thomas Hofeller helped draw. After mentioning the hard drives to Common Cause, Stephanie received a court order to turn them over as potential evidence for the lawsuit. She did so in March after making a copy of some of the files for herself.

Since then, the Hofeller files have led to bombshell developments in two major legal battles in the political world.

In September, Common Cause won its legal challenge to political maps in North Carolina, where a state court cited some of the files as evidence of gerrymandering designed to unfairly give Republicans an advantage in winning elections and maintaining control of the state legislature.

………

For her part, Stephanie says she’s committed to transparency with the public in case she gets access to any more of her father’s files.

“If I were to find something,” she says, “I would most certainly share it.”

There is a whole lot of slime found underneath those rocks.

The Cats Movie Has a Positive Social Value

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Because while the movie has generally been reviewed as an unalloyed disaster, it has produced outraged reviews with lines like, “Cats always feels like it’s two seconds away from turning into a furry orgy in a dumpster.”

I enjoy reading outraged negative reviews, so it’s all good.

I wait with baited breath for Rex Reed’s review, because no one does a catty negative review like he does.

Not Enough Bullets

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Literally the Least Tufts Could Do

The Sackler family, are having major butt-hurt because Tufts University is pulling their names from their buildings.

Let’s see, you created a dangerous product, aggressively and dishonestly marketed it across the nation, when caught you looted your company in advance of your bankruptcy, and your non-bankrupt foreign company is STILL trying to hook people on your poison.

Why wouldn’t an institution best known for its medical program want to have anything with you?

The Sackler family is pushing back after Tufts University removed the family name from its buildings and programs due to the family’s link to the ongoing opioid epidemic, according to a report in The New York Times.

In a letter to Tufts’ president, a lawyer for the family wrote that the removal was “contrary to basic notions of fairness” and “a breach of the many binding commitments made by the University dating back to 1980 in order to secure the family’s support, including millions of dollars in donations for facilities and critical medical research.”

Tufts made the decision to remove the family name after getting the results of an independent review of the university’s relationship with the Sacklers and OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma, which the Sacklers own. Both the family and the company have been accused of helping to spark the crisis by aggressively marketing the powerful painkiller and misleading doctors, patients, and regulators about its addictiveness.

………

The review found that Purdue did intend to use the relationship to advance its interests. And, according to the report, in some cases, it was successful in influencing the academic institution. “Moreover, we conclude that there was an appearance of too close a relationship between Purdue, the Sacklers, and Tufts,” the report said.

The letter from the Sackler family lawyer hinted at the possibility of legal action.

………

Although, not all of the Sackler family is involved with OxyContin. Of the original three Sackler brothers involved in Purdue, one of them—Arthur—died before the painkiller was introduced, and his brothers bought out his stake in the company. Arthur’s widow, Jillian Sackler, released a statement saying in part, “It deeply saddens me to witness Arthur being blamed for actions taken by his brothers and other OxySacklers.”

OxySacklers.  Heh.

Bye Felicia

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And by Felicia, I mean Kamala Harris, who has ended her presidential campaign:

Sen. Kamala D. Harris, proud of being one of the only presidential candidates to spend Thanksgiving in Iowa and not at home, invited reporters into her temporary residence in Des Moines on the holiday to show off her turkey preparation skills.

What she didn’t say at the time was that she was also having intensive conversations with her husband, her sister Maya Harris and Maya’s family as the tightknit group grappled with whether there was any path forward for her campaign.

The talks extended into late Monday night, as Kamala Harris stayed up until 2 a.m. futilely trying to find a way to push on. But Tuesday around 12:45, she called her staffers to tell them it was all over.

It was a sobering finish to a once-dazzling campaign. Harris (D-Calif.) proved an uneven campaigner and was ultimately engulfed by low polling numbers, internal turmoil and a sense that she was unable to provide a clear message amid the roiling, impassioned politics of the moment.

I can’t say that I’m upset that she is out of the race.

Her campaign was equal parts misrepresentation of her records, pandering to rich donors, and empty platitudes.

I’m never going to vote for Tulsi Gabbard, but I am grateful for her making Harris’ actual record as a prosecutor an issue in the debates.

It’s what took her out of contention.

Leaving Congress to Spend More Time with His Parole Officer

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I am referring, of course, to Duncan Hunter, Jr., who will plead guilty to embezzling campaign funds and resign from Congress.

Given that his district is pretty safely Republican, I believe that the Douglas Adams rule applies, and that he will be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable:

After years of denials and claims that he was the target of a political witch hunt, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine) is scheduled to appear in federal court Tuesday morning to plead guilty in a sweeping campaign finance investigation.

The announcement was posted on the U.S. District Court docket Monday morning, then KUSI aired an interview with Hunter in which he said he would plead guilty to one of the 60 criminal charges against him. He suggested that he is likely to spend time in custody.

“The plea I accepted is misuse of my own campaign funds, of which I pled guilty to only one count,” Hunter told the station. “I think it’s important that people know that I did make mistakes. I did not properly monitor or account for my campaign money. I justify my plea with the understanding that I am responsible for my own campaign and my own campaign money.”

The reversal comes nearly six months after Hunter’s wife and former campaign manager, Margaret Hunter, admitted to her role in a widespread scheme that saw the couple allegedly spend more than $200,000 in campaign donations on family expenses like vacations, gas, groceries, school lunches and oral surgery. Such spending is prohibited to prevent undue influence by contributors.

No analysis here, I’m just gloating.

They’ve Got Tapes. They’ve Always Got Tapes

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It looks like indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas has tapes of both Rudolph Giuliani’s and Donald Trump’s efforts to extract an investigation of Hunter Biden from Kiev, and he has turned them over to the House Intelligence Committee for the impeachment investigation:

The House Intelligence Committee is in possession of audio and video recordings and photographs provided to the committee by Lev Parnas, an associate of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who reportedly played a key role in assisting him in his efforts to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and Ukraine, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

The material submitted to the committee includes audio, video and photos that include Giuliani and Trump. It was unclear what the content depicts and the committees only began accessing the material last week.

“We have subpoenaed Mr. Parnas and Mr. [Igor] Fruman for their records. We would like them to fully comply with those subpoenas,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told CNN Sunday, with a committee spokesperson adding they would not elaborate beyond the chairman’s comments.

An attorney for Parnas, Joseph A. Bondy, also declined to comment, directing ABC News to a statement released earlier in the day Sunday reading in part, “Mr. Parnas has vociferously and publicly asserted his wish to comply with his previously issued subpoena and to provide the House Intelligence Committee with truthful and important information that is in furtherance of justice, not to obstruct it.”

………

However, some of the material sought by congressional investigators is already in possession of federal investigators within the Southern District of New York and thus held up from being turned over, according to sources familiar with the matter.

………

Giuliani’s relationship with Parnas and Fruman is the subject of a criminal investigation in the Southern District of New York, according to sources. That case will have its next court date early next month.

I rather imagine whatever the SDNY has in their grubby mitts will not be getting to the impeachment inquiry in the near term, since Barr has made it clear that his first, and perhaps only, priority, is to obstruct the Congressional investigation.

Still, the mention of tapes does create a sense of nostalgia in this political child of the Watergate era.

Schadenfreude Alert!!!!

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It appears The House of Saud’s IPO for Aramco is going about as well as WeWork’s:

Some of the world’s top investment bankers gathered at a Riyadh palace on Saturday to deliver their final recommendations on a project that had consumed the government of Saudi Arabia for the past few years: the initial public offering of Saudi Aramco.

The financiers were there to meet Yasir al-Rumayyan, the state oil company’s chairman and the head of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, along with cabinet ministers and the company’s leadership.

Their message would disappoint the hosts: international investors were unwilling to buy shares in Saudi Aramco anywhere near the $2tn valuation long sought by the kingdom’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. No amount of sweeteners — from promises of higher dividends to bonus shares for local retail investors — had managed to change that reality.

It could not happen to evern

Another Uber Setback

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Now that governments are no longer terrified of Uber, much of the regulatory forbearance that has been essential to the success of their business is ending.

Case in point, New Jersey is now demanding back taxes and fines in the amount of $650,000,000.00:

Uber Technologies Inc. has been hit with an almost $650 million bill in unpaid employment taxes and fines from New Jersey, marking another setback for the ride-sharing firm as it struggles to prevent its drivers from being classified as employees.

Earlier this week, the state’s Department of Labor and Workforce Development demanded Uber and a subsidiary, Rasier LLC, hand over the amount for failing to pay employment taxes by, the state argues, misclassifying drivers as independent contractors.

The Labor Department said in letters sent to the firms that they owe $523 million in unemployment and disability insurance taxes for 2014 through 2018. The state added $119 million in penalties and interest.

………

New Jersey officials say that misclassifying employees isn’t fair to workers. They also estimate that misclassification across the workforce costs the state’s almost 250,000 employers an additional $300 per employee because of insufficient funding of the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund.

This is a company whose business plan was dependent on impunity for law breaking for their success, and now that regulators are no longer looking the other way, they are in a world of well-deserved hurt.

Took Long Enough

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After a half century of rat-f%$#ery and malice, Roger Stone has finally been convicted of lying to Congress.

Given the volume and intensity of his lies over the years, there is a certain symmetry to this:

For decades, Roger J. Stone Jr. played politics as a kind of performance art, starring himself as a professional lord of mischief, as a friend once called him. He tossed bombs and spun tales from the political periphery with no real reckoning, burnishing a reputation as a dirty trickster.

On Friday morning, a reckoning arrived, the consequence of his efforts to sabotage a congressional investigation that threatened his longtime friend President Trump.

Mr. Stone, 67, was convicted in federal court of seven felonies for obstructing the congressional inquiry, lying to investigators under oath and trying to block the testimony of a witness whose account would have exposed his lies. Jurors deliberated for a little over seven hours before convicting him on all counts. Together, the charges carry a maximum prison term of 50 years.

In a last-minute bid for salvation, prosecutors said, Mr. Stone appealed to Mr. Trump for a pardon on Thursday, using a right-wing conspiracy theorist who runs the website Infowars as his proxy. Mr. Trump attacked the guilty verdict against Mr. Stone in a tweet on Friday but made no mention of a pardon.

………

Mr. Stone joins a notable list of former Trump aides who either pleaded guilty or were convicted of federal crimes in cases stemming from Mr. Mueller’s work. It includes Mr. Gates; Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser; Michael D. Cohen, the president’s longtime fixer; George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign aide; and Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman and Mr. Stone’s onetime partner in a political consulting firm.

This is a guy who literally has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back, and now he is going to suffer the fate of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell.

I ♥ New York

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Also, I ♠️ my cats, but this is not about proper care of one’s pets, this is about how the good people of the Big Apple heckled the sh%$ out of Donald Trump yesterday:

President Trump returned to his hometown on Monday to kick off the 100th annual New York City Veterans Day Parade, his second visit to the city since he announced he was making Florida his primary home.

In an 18-minute speech, Mr. Trump expressed his gratitude to American veterans, but also used his remarks to pay tribute to the city, where he remains deeply unpopular.

“Since the earliest days of our nation, New York has exemplified the American spirit and has been at the heart of our nation’s story of daring and defiance,” Mr. Trump said.

Defiance, in particular, was on display throughout Mr. Trump’s speech, at Madison Square Park in Manhattan, just two miles down Fifth Avenue from Trump Tower, which had been Mr. Trump’s primary residence since 1983, until he filed to switch it to Florida in late September.

Even before the president arrived, protesters had gathered along the streets, a number of them from an anti-Trump group, Rise and Resist. They carried signs calling for Mr. Trump’s impeachment and repeatedly shouted, “Shame!”

In the windows of a nearby glass tower overlooking the dais where Mr. Trump spoke, large signs placed in the windows spelled the word “impeach.” A few floors higher, letters spelling “convict” were placed in another set of windows.

………

But raucous boos and chants jeering Mr. Trump could also be heard throughout the president’s remarks. A chorus of people shouted “lock him up!” and “traitor” and blew whistles as he spoke, causing some veterans to complain that the din was drowning out the president’s speech.

Drowning him out is kind of the point.

Yeah, His Demeanor Screams Client from Hell

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Rudolph Giuliani is under investigation in the Ukraine affair, and so needed a lawyer, but no one wanted him as their client:

President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said on Wednesday that he had assembled a legal team to represent him in the criminal investigation into his activities related to Ukraine, an announcement that came after weeks of sputtered attempts to find a lawyer willing to take him on as a client.

Mr. Giuliani said on Twitter that he would be represented by three lawyers, including his longtime friend, Robert J. Costello. The hires show how seriously Mr. Giuliani is treating the inquiry by federal prosectors in Manhattan, who are investigating whether he violated lobbying laws in his efforts to dig up damaging information about Mr. Trump’s rivals.

………

The hires came after a weekslong search to find a lawyer who would represent Mr. Giuliani, who rose to prominence as the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, the same office that is now investigating him. He has a wide range of close associates — including former prosecutors and judges — who could have taken him on as a client.

But at least four prominent attorneys declined for various reasons, according to people familiar with the matter. They included Mary Jo White, who also once led the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District, as well as Theodore V. Wells Jr., a trial lawyer at Paul, Weiss, according to people familiar with those discussions.

Another was Daniel L. Stein, a former senior prosecutor who recently held top posts in the Southern District, where he oversaw the prosecutions of public officials including Sheldon Silver, the former speaker of the New York State Assembly, and Dean Skelos, the State Senate majority leader.

………

Big law firms are, for the most part, conservative institutions that often represent a wide range of clients with varying business interests, many of whom tend to shy away from controversy, regardless of their politics. Mr. Giuliani’s connection to Mr. Trump, his unpredictability and his recent history of outbursts in his frequent television appearances could make him a challenging client.

Lawyers who are solo practitioners were concerned that Mr. Giuliani, who is known to have difficulty delegating, would try to manage his own case, according to a person close to Mr. Giuliani.

So basically, Rudy is a complete asshole, and there is not enough money for most white-shoe lawyers to be willing to work with him.

Hoocoodanode?

I Don’t Care About the World Series, But ………

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I am Amused

The fact that Donald Trump showed up to game 5 of the world series, and the crowd booed and started chanting, “Lock him up,” is something that I find intensely amusing:

Donald Trump once claimed he was courted by several major league baseball clubs in his youth but turned them down because they couldn’t offer him enough money. On Sunday, baseball got its revenge.

The President attended Game 5 of the World Series between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros at Nationals Park, a short journey from the White House. When Trump was shown on the video screens in the stadium he was loudly booed by fans. That, perhaps, was predictable: Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and both Bushes were all booed while attending baseball games as President. What came shortly afterwards was a little more personal in a city that is heavily Democratic as cries of “Lock him up!” rang out, a reference to the chants about Hillary Clinton used at Trump’s rallies in the run-up to the 2016 presidential elections.

I wish that I could have seen his face when this happened.

Oh, wait, I can:

The World’s Smallest Violin Playing Just for You

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The court ruling on the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality was a mixed bag.

On one hand, it approved the appeal, but on the other hand it noted that because the FCC’s repeal was predicated on reclassifying ISPs as an Information service, the FCC lacked the authority to preempt state regulation, which means that the net neutrality regulations passed in California and a dozen other states will go into effect,

So Ajit Pai has a major case of butt-hurt, and I am amused:

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai may have belatedly concluded that federal regulation of broadband would be better for businesses than letting all 50 US states regulate Internet access.

Speaking at the WSJ Tech Live conference yesterday, Pai said that “a uniform, well-established set of regulations” is preferable to states regulating broadband individually. “[Pai] said allowing states and local governments to pass their own laws regulating Internet services, which inherently cross state lines, creates market uncertainty,” according to CNET.

………

But Pai’s FCC overstepped its authority when it issued that blanket order to preempt any and all current and future state regulation of net neutrality, a panel of judges at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled this month. The judges’ reasoning was simple: Pai’s FCC lost the power to stop all state laws when it abandoned its own regulatory authority.

“[I]n any area where the Commission lacks the authority to regulate, it equally lacks the power to preempt state law,” the judges’ ruling said.

The only thing that would make this better would be to see Pai frog marched out of the FCC offices in handcuffs.

A Well Deserved Take-Down

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Following Blizzard banning a gamer and taking his prize money after he made pro-Hong King protests, they have been flooded by GDPR requests by customers who find their kowtowing to China unacceptable.

Complying with these demands are both extremely expensive and opens them up to massive fines:

Being a global multinational sure is hard! Yesterday, World of Warcraft maker Blizzard faced global criticism after it disqualified a high-stakes tournament winner over his statement of solidarity with the Hong Kong protests — Blizzard depends on mainland China for a massive share of its revenue and it can’t afford to offend the Chinese state.

Today, outraged games on Reddit’s /r/hearthstone forum are scheming a plan to flood Blizzard with punishing, expensive personal information requests under the EU’s expansive General Data Privacy Regulation — Blizzard depends on the EU for another massive share of its revenue and it can’t afford the enormous fines it would face if it failed to comply with these requests, which take a lot of money and resource to fulfill.

I really hope that this protest goes forward.

Blizzard is hoping that this will blow over in a few months, but if people put in requests now, they need to comply in the next 30 days or face massive fines, and that ain’t cheap.

Cue Nelson Muntz.

Make it So

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After ignoring a judge’s order on forgiving loans for students of he failed Corinthian Colleges,  the judge is strongly implying that he will send Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to jail for contempt:

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been threatened with the possibility of jail after a judge deemed she was violating a court order for continuing to collect student debts on a now-defunct school.

That ruling, handed down in June of 2018, was made by U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim and prevented DeVos and her Department of Education for going after former students at the bankrupt Corinthian Colleges Inc.

However, Kim said she was “astounded” to discover that DeVos was violating the court order at a hearing in San Francisco on Monday after a filing by the Education Department earlier disclosed that more than 16,000 former students at Corinthian College “were incorrectly informed at one time or another … that they had payments due on their federal student loans.”

At least 1,800 people reportedly lost wages or tax refunds according to the filing.

“At best it is gross negligence, at worst it’s an intentional flouting of my order,” Kim said, reported Bloomberg.

“I’m not sure if this is contempt or sanctions,” she added. “I’m not sending anyone to jail yet but it’s good to know I have that ability.”

Please send her to jail.

Pretty please?

Pass the Popcorn

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A federal judge has ruled that Donald Trump must turn over his tax returns to the Manhattan District Attorney for their investigation into Trump’s hush money payments in 2015.

In particular, the judge was unamused at the argument that Trump could not be prosecuted as President:

A federal judge on Monday dismissed President Trump’s lawsuit seeking to block the Manhattan district attorney from obtaining the president’s tax returns as part of an investigation into hush-money payments during the 2016 campaign.

 That decision does not mean Trump’s tax returns will be handed over immediately. Trump appealed within minutes, and an appeals court put the case on hold until it can hear the president’s challenge.

 But Monday’s ruling by U.S. Judge Victor Marrero was still a broad rejection of Trump’s precedent-shattering argument in this case.

 The president argued that, as long as he is president, he cannot be investigated by any prosecutor, anywhere, for any reason.

 Marrero said that was “repugnant” to an American ideal as old as the Constitution: that no man, even a president, is above the law.

 “The Court cannot square a vision of presidential immunity that would place the President above the law with the text of the Constitution, the historical record, the relevant case law” or any other authority, Marrero wrote.

“This Court cannot endorse such a categorical and limitless assertion of presidential immunity from judicial process,” he wrote in another section of his 75-page ruling.
It’s not often that you find the term “Repugnant” in a judge’s opinion.

………

The Justice Department has previously declared that presidents cannot be indicted by federal prosecutors, relying on a series of legal memos from White House lawyers going back to the 1970s.

In this case, Trump had sought to turn those protections into a more far-reaching legal shield. Citing those memos, he asserted he should have immunity not just from indictment but also any sort of investigation — and not just from federal prosecutors, but local prosecutors like Vance, too.

Additionally, there is no immunity under law for the President.  At best, there is a Justice Department policy, something that only applies to the DoJ, on this, and it has no force on local or state prosecutors.

Finally, Vance is not (yet) prosecuting a case against Donald Trump at this time, so even Trump’s assertion of immunity for prosecution do not apply.

I rather imagine that the court of appeals will rule similarly, but if the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, all bets are off.