Tyson CFO pleads guilty to public intoxication and criminal trespass

Geofence Surveillance: First, They Spied On Protesters. Then Churches. You're Next... Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute, “I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.” - Senator Frank Church on Meet The Press, 1975 If you give the government an inch, it will always take a mile. This is how the slippery slope to all-out persecution starts. Martin Niemöller’s warning about the widening net that ensnares us all, a warning issued in response to the threat posed by Nazi Germany’s fascist regime, still applies. “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” This particular slippery slope has to do with the government’s use of geofence technology, which uses cell phone location data to identify people who are in a particular area at any given time. First, police began using geofence warrants to carry out dragnet sweeps of individuals near a crime scene. Then the FBI used geofence warrants to identify individuals who were in the vicinity of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It wasn’t long before government officials in California used cell phone and geofence data to track the number and movements of churchgoers on church grounds during the COVID-19 lockdowns. If we’ve already reached the point where people praying and gathering on church grounds merits this level of government scrutiny and sanctions, we’re not too far from free-falling into a total surveillance state. Dragnet geofence surveillance sweeps can and eventually will be used to target as a suspect every person in any given place at any given time and sweep them up into a never-ending virtual line-up in the hopes of matching a criminal to every crime. There really can be no overstating the danger. The government’s efforts to round up those who took part in the Jan. 6 Capitol protests provided a glimpse of exactly how vulnerable we all are to the menace of a surveillance state that aspires to a God-like awareness of our lives. Relying on selfies, social media posts, location data, geotagged photos, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing, government agents compiled a massive data trove on anyone and everyone who may have been anywhere in the vicinity of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Included in that data roundup were individuals who may have had nothing to do with the protests but whose cell phone location data identified them as being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You didn’t even have to be involved in the Capitol protests to qualify for a visit from the FBI: investigators reportedly tracked—and questioned—anyone whose cell phones connected to wi-fi or pinged cell phone towers near the Capitol. One man, who had gone out for a walk with his daughters only to end up stranded near the Capitol crowds, actually had FBI agents show up at his door days later. Using Google Maps, agents were able to pinpoint exactly where they were standing and for how long. The massive amount of surveillance data available to the government is staggering. As investigative journalists Charlie Warzel and Stuart A. Thompson explain, “This [surveillance] data…provide[s] an intimate record of people whether they were visiting drug treatment centers, strip clubs, casinos, abortion clinics or places of worship.” In such a surveillance ecosystem, we’re all suspects and databits to be tracked, catalogued and targeted. Forget about being innocent until proven guilty. Although the Constitution requires the government to provide solid proof of criminal activity before it can deprive a citizen of life or liberty, the government has turned that fundamental assurance of due process on its head. Now, thanks to the digital trails and digital footprints we all leave behind, you start off guilty and have to prove your innocence. In an age of overcriminalization, when the average American unknowingly commits at least three crimes a day, there is no one who would be spared. The ramifications of empowering the government to sidestep fundamental due process safeguards are so chilling and so far-reaching as to put a target on the back of anyone who happens to be in the same place where a crime takes place. As Warzel and Thompson warn: “To think that the information will be used against individuals only if they’ve broken the law is naïve; such data is collected and remains vulnerable to use and abuse whether people gather in support of an insurrection or they justly protest police violence… This collection will only grow more sophisticated… It gets easier by the day… it does not discriminate. It harvests from the phones of MAGA rioters, police officers, lawmakers and passers-by. There is no evidence, from the past or current day, that the power this data collection offers will be used only to good ends. There is no evidence that if we allow it to continue to happen, the country will be safer or fairer.” Saint or sinner, it doesn’t matter because we’re all being swept up into a massive digital data dragnet that does not distinguish between those who are innocent of wrongdoing, suspects, or criminals. Case in point: consider what happened to Calvary Chapel during COVID-19. Government officials in Santa Clara County, Calif., issued a shelter-in-place order in March 2020, dictating whom residents could see, where they could go, what they could do, and under what circumstances. County officials imposed even harsher restrictions on churches, accompanied by the threat of crippling fines for those that did not comply with the lockdown orders. Then Santa Clara officials reportedly used geofence surveillance technology to monitor the concentrations of congregants at Calvary Chapel during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, using their findings to justify levying nearly $3 million in public health fines against the church for violating the county’s strict pandemic restrictions. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that similar restrictions unconstitutionally singled out houses of worship for especially harsh treatment and “struck “at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty,” county officials have sought to collect millions of dollars in fines levied against churches, including Calvary Chapel, for violating the county’s mandates. At a minimum, the use of geofence surveillance to monitor church attendees constitutes an egregious violation of the churchgoers’ Fourth Amendment rights and an attempt to undermine protected First Amendment activities relating to the freedom of speech, the free exercise of religion, and the right of the people peaceably to assemble. Still, the government’s use of geofence surveillance goes way beyond its impact on church members and anyone in the vicinity of the Jan. 6 protests. The ramifications for all of us are far-reaching. Mass surveillance has been shown to chill lawful First Amendment activities, and historically has been used to stifle dissent, persecute activists, and harass marginalized communities. A study conducted by Roger Clarke, the famed Australian specialist in data surveillance and privacy, indicates that the costs resulting from the erosion of personal privacy are so significant that they essentially threaten the very foundation of a democratic society. Some of the most serious harms include: A prevailing climate of suspicion and adversarial relationships Inequitable application of the law Stultification of originality Weakening of society’s moral fiber and cohesion Repressive potential for a totalitarian government Blacklisting Ex-ante discrimination and guilt prediction Inversion of the onus of proof. In other words, the chilling effects of pervasive surveillance give rise to a constant, justifiable fear in even the most compliant, law-abiding citizen. Of course, that’s the point. The government wants us muzzled, complacent and compliant. So far, it’s working. Americans are increasingly self-censoring and marching in lockstep with the government’s (and corporate America’s) dictates, whether out of fear or indoctrination, or a combination. In the meantime, the use of geofence warrants continues to be debated in the legislatures and challenged in the courts. For instance, while a California court found that a broad geofence search warrant violated the Fourth Amendment, a federal district judge for the District of Columbia upheld the use of geofence warrants by police in connection with the events of Jan. 6. No matter how the courts rule, however, one thing is clear: these dragnet geofence searches are well on their way to becoming the eyes and ears of a police state that views each and every one of us as a potential suspect, terrorist and lawbreaker. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is how technologies purportedly adopted to rout out dangerous criminals in our midst are used to conquer a free people. Tyler Durden Wed, 03/15/2023 - 21:00.....»»

If Donald Trump is criminally indicted in New York, he'll have a mugshot taken and be swabbed for DNA. Secret Service will never leave his side. Former President Donald Trump is facing a looming indictment in New York.Insider If Trump is indicted in New York, he'll be treated like any defendant, but with key exceptions. Trump would be fingerprinted, swabbed for the state DNA database, and photographed for his mugshot. But he likely won't be 'perp walked' before the cameras, and handcuffs are also unlikely. Don't count on handcuffs.Don't expect a dramatic, flash-bulb-dappled perp walk. But yes, there will be a mugshot, and fingerprinting, and a mandatory DNA cheek-swabbing — and a "not guilty" plea, though not necessarily in open court.If Donald Trump is indicted in New York, as looks increasingly likely, it will be over his strident denials of wrongdoing. This week he "Truthed" that the prosecution is a  "Scam, Injustice, Mockery, and a Complete and Total Weaponization of Law Enforcement in order to affect a Presidential Election!"He'll be treated like any defendant, but with many key exceptions.Here are predictions for how this historic event would roll out, courtesy of some of Manhattan's top defense lawyers, former high-ranking prosecutors, and a retired Secret Service special agent.At what precise millisecond is Trump, officially, a perp?Trump would be officially indicted in the instant that the grand jury foreperson signs his indictment, a document listing the charges the former president is alleged to have committed.This could happen immediately, right after the grand jury votes to indict."That's called 'rocking it through,'" explains Diana Florence, a former white-collar crime prosecutor for the Manhattan district attorney's office.But that foreperson signature could also come days after the vote, Florence said. "Prosecutors can say, we don't have the draft indictment ready," Florence said, especially if the grand jury votes "yes" for some counts and "no" for others."They can tell the foreperson come back two weeks from Wednesday, or something," to sign the revised indictment, Florence said. However long that signature takes, it's only at that crucial moment — foreperson's pen to paper  — that Trump would become the first former president in history to face criminal charges. So what'll it say? The consensus among experts, Trump's defense team, and a trail of breadcrumbs left for hungry reporters by star witness Michael Cohen, is this: if there is an indictment, it will likely list multiple counts of falsifying business documents.Those low-level felony charges will likely relate to the 2016 election-eve hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels. They carry a potential maximum sentence of four years in prison. But a judge could also set a sentence of as little as zero jail plus probation.Can we see it? Can we? Please? Not so fast. The indictment starts out as a sealed document. Ink still wet, it's handed back to the prosecutor, then delivered under seal to the central clerk, whose office manages the paperwork for Manhattan felonies. There, the indictment is assigned an identifying docket number, stuffed into a wide, otherwise empty folder called an indictment jacket, and then tucked away in a locked file where not even Trump or his lawyers can get to it.In those early hours and days, only the grand jurors, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and a select few prosecutors who actually worked the case would know what's inside this yawning, hypothetical indictment jacket.There can always be a leak, of course, somewhere between indictment and arraignment, which is the court proceeding where Trump would plead not guilty.And the DA could always ask the judge to unseal the case early, according to veteran Manhattan defense lawyer Ron Kuby, "given the public interest in the case." But typically, only in a courtroom, during arraignment, will the physical indictment — in stapled, hard copy form — be handed to the defense team.Whenever the judge unseals it — either at the arraignment, or earlier on Bragg's request — the district attorney's office will probably quickly release PDF copies to the press and post it on the district attorney's website. At which point the historic document will blow up Twitter feeds worldwide.Who gives Trump the news? That would be his lawyers."As a matter of course, you, the prosecutor, call the defense attorney, and say, 'Okay, he's been indicted, and the indictment has been filed,'" said Florence."The prosecutor will say, 'We're looking at, you know, March 27,' or something like that. 'How does that work for you?' And then you negotiate the date for them to surrender themselves."It's once that surrender date is agreed on that "everybody finds out" Trump has been indicted, even if the charges themselves remain a secret, predicts Kuby."Half the DA's office and their husbands and wives will know once they set a surrender date. All of Trumpville will know," Kuby said. "Between the two, it'll be out in two hours."Then Trump turns himself in?That's what typically happens in white-collar indictments, said Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a former chief assistant with the Manhattan district attorney's office.The defendant surrenders at the DA's headquarters in Lower Manhattan at a set time on the agreed-upon date and is immediately handed over to the custody of DA investigators — armed peace officers who are often former NYPD cops.At that point, Trump, if this is how it plays out, would be "under arrest" Friedman Agnifilo explained.He would be escorted by elevator to the seventh or ninth floor to be booked. DA investigators would take his prints and mugshot. They'd swab his cheek to get a mandatory sample for New York's DNA database. They'd take his "pedigree" information."That's where you lie about your height, lie about your weight," cracked Kuby. "'I'm six-three and 205 pounds.' Sure you are. Color of hair? 'Orange.'" A small Secret Service detail would accompany Trump every step of the way — as he arrives, as he's booked, and as he waits for his prints to come back clean, meaning no outstanding warrants, from the FBI database.They'd be there as he is then escorted to the arraignment courtroom, through the arraignment itself, and as he leaves."The Service won't abandon its mission," says Bill Pickle, the former special agent in charge of Al Gore's vice presidential detail.Pickle predicts that given the long, excellent relationship between Secret Service and New York City law enforcement — in the one city presidents visit most often — all those details will be easily worked out."They will never leave him, no," Pickle said of Trump's detail.Once his prints come back, Trump, if he were any other high-profile white-collar perp, would be walked in handcuffs by DA investigators down a courthouse hallway — with the press shouting and filming from behind barricades — to the courtroom.There, he'd see the hard copy indictment for the first time, and plead not guilty, or his lawyers would enter that not-guilty plea on his behalf.So that's how it'll go?It's a very possible scenario.Bragg, the district attorney, could well decide he's doing this one by the book, with no preferential treatment, and Trump would move from surrender to booking to arraignment just like any other white-collar defendant.But nothing about this surrender, booking, and arraignment will be typical, experts predict. But they gotta arrest him, right? If he's indicted? Calm down. Not necessarily.Trump could be arraigned without ever spending a moment in custody, according to a former top prosecutor in the office of the previous Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance."My strong bet, and it's what I would do, is that they not arrest him," said the ex-prosecutor, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to comment on the case."Instead, the court could issue him a criminal summons," an order directing him to appear for arraignment, they said. "He would appear in court and then get printed before or after. No cuffs." Would they do that? "Who knows," they said. "But logistically, it's the only thing that makes sense. Some would criticize that he's being treated differently. OK. He is different. And this is unprecedented. I would not arrest him, or, at worst, I would have it done in the back of the courtroom."So, he'd still have to come to court? Again, not necessarily."It is possible they could schedule a virtual arraignment, and go through the booking procedure later, which is not typical, but they could do that," Kuby said."The judge would have to agree, the defense and prosecution would have to agree, and there would have to be some follow-up," to get Trump printed, mugshot, swabbed, Kuby said."But there's no legal reason why a defendant cannot appear for their arraignment virtually."Arraign him virtually? What?I know. The biggest courtroom drama in the history of the US presidency could quite possibly be broadcast on Zoom. Trump could conceivably do it all from Mar-a-Lago, in a suit and pajama bottoms.No handcuffs? No perp walk?All of this would ultimately be Bragg's call. But even if Trump does need to surrender in person, Secret Service would likely give the perp walk a hard pass."That walk is not going to happen," said Pickle, the former Secret Service special agent. "You're not going to expose him to people who could cause him harm.""My guess," he added, "is this is going to be a much more sedate event than you envision."As for letting Trump be seen in handcuffs, even left-leaning defense lawyers believe that would expose Bragg, a Democrat, to accusations of election meddling, and of political bias. An image of Trump in handcuffs could also enrage Trump's base.It would be a bad look all around, said Kuby."I mean the man is beloved by 20 percent of the American population. Admittedly they're fascist psychos," Kuby deadpanned."But still. Why contribute to a perception of unfairness?" Would Trump stay out on bail? Yep. It's pretty much a certainty that Trump would remain free, and likely without any bail set at all.Under New York's recently-reformed, progressive bail laws, defendants can only be ordered held on bail if the judge finds they are a flight risk. "Happily, under the current bail laws, you cannot consider whether he constitutes a danger to the community," quipped Kuby, an avowed liberal. "I think nine out of ten jurists would find that Donald Trump constitutes a clear and present danger, but those woke liberals prevented that from happening with New York's bail laws," he added."Oh, if only they could consider future dangerousness, and the likelihood of committing another crime, like in the old days," he joked.  Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

EA leaders said they were deceived by the disgraced billionaire. But the red flags around Bankman-Fried were well known as early as 2018—and sources say the movement's brain trust downplayed the warnings and took his money anyway Leaders of the Effective Altruism movement were repeatedly warned beginning in 2018 that Sam Bankman-Fried was unethical, duplicitous, and negligent in his role as CEO of Alameda Research, the crypto trading firm that went on to play a critical role in what federal prosecutors now say was among the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history. They apparently dismissed those warnings, sources say, before taking tens of millions of dollars from Bankman-Fried’s charitable fund for effective altruist causes. When Alameda and Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange FTX imploded in late 2022, these same effective altruist (EA) leaders professed outrage and ignorance. “I don’t know which emotion is stronger: my utter rage at Sam (and others?) for causing such harm to so many people, or my sadness and self-hatred for falling for this deception,” tweeted Will MacAskill, the Oxford moral philosopher and intellectual figurehead of EA, who co-founded the Centre for Effective Altruism. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Yet MacAskill had long been aware of concerns around Bankman-Fried. He was personally cautioned about Bankman-Fried by at least three different people in a series of conversations in 2018 and 2019, according to interviews with four people familiar with those discussions and emails reviewed by TIME. He wasn’t alone. Multiple EA leaders knew about the red flags surrounding Bankman-Fried by 2019, according to a TIME investigation based on contemporaneous documents and interviews with seven people familiar with the matter. Among the EA brain trust personally notified about Bankman-Fried’s questionable behavior and business ethics were Nick Beckstead, a moral philosopher who went on to lead Bankman-Fried’s philanthropic arm, the FTX Future Fund, and Holden Karnofsky, co-CEO of OpenPhilanthropy, a nonprofit organization that makes grants supporting EA causes. Some of the warnings were serious: sources say that MacAskill and Beckstead were repeatedly told that Bankman-Fried was untrustworthy, had inappropriate sexual relationships with subordinates, refused to implement standard business practices, and had been caught lying during his first months running Alameda, a crypto firm that was seeded by EA investors, staffed by EAs, and dedicating to making money that could be donated to EA causes. These repeated warnings to EA leaders, which have not been previously reported, represented a crossroads—for the budding crypto billionaire; for EA, a social movement dedicated to using reason to do the most good in the world; and for businesses and investors drawn into Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire, which imploded in Nov. 2022, vaporizing more than $8 billion in customer funds. Many of the emerging issues at Alameda that were reported to EA leaders beginning in 2018—including pervasive dishonesty, sloppy accounting, and rejection of corporate controls—presaged the scandal that unfolded at FTX four years later, according to sources who were granted anonymity to avoid professional retribution or becoming entangled in Bankman-Fried’s ongoing legal drama. “I was shocked at how much of what came out about FTX rhymed with the concerns we raised in the early days,” says one person who spoke directly with MacAskill and others about Bankman-Fried in 2018. “It was the same thing. All of the same problems.” It’s not entirely clear how EA leaders reacted to the warnings. Sources familiar with the discussions told TIME that the concerns were downplayed, rationalized as typical startup squabbles, or dismissed as “he said-she said,” as two people put it. EA leaders declined or did not respond to multiple requests from TIME to explain their reaction to these warnings and what they did in response. But by the end of 2018, Bankman-Fried’s behavior was such an open secret that EA leaders were debating Bankman-Fried’s presence on the board of the Centre for Effective Altruism. In emails among senior EA leaders, which TIME reviewed, one person wrote that they had raised worries about Bankman-Fried’s trustworthiness directly with MacAskill, and that MacAskill had dismissed the concerns as “rumor.” In 2019, Bankman-Fried left CEA’s board. MacAskill declined to answer a list of detailed questions from TIME for this story. “An independent investigation has been commissioned to look into these issues; I don’t want to front-run or undermine that process by discussing my own recollections publicly,” he wrote in an email. “I look forward to the results of the investigation and hope to be able to respond more fully after then.” Citing the same investigation, Beckstead also declined to answer detailed questions. Karnofsky did not respond to a list of questions from TIME. Through a lawyer, Bankman-Fried also declined to respond to a list of detailed written questions. The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) did not reply to multiple requests to explain why Bankman-Fried left the board in 2019. A spokesperson for Effective Ventures, the parent organization of CEA, cited the independent investigation, launched in Dec. 2022, and declined to comment while it was ongoing. No one has alleged criminal behavior on the part of top EA figures. None of the people who raised concerns about Bankman-Fried to EA leaders in 2018 and 2019 say they warned about specific criminal activity, nor did they foresee the size and scope of the alleged fraud at the heart of the FTX collapse. In charging documents, federal prosecutors identify the start of Bankman-Fried’s alleged fraud as 2019. Why did the braintrust of a social movement dedicated to virtuous impact apparently fail to heed repeated warnings about one of their own, while continuing to promote him publicly as a force for good? For a group of philosophers who had spent their lives contemplating moral tradeoffs and weighing existential risks, the warnings about Bankman-Fried may have presented a choice between embracing a big donor with questionable ethics or foregoing millions of dollars they believed could boost their nascent movement to help save the future of humanity. In a span of less than nine months in 2022, Bankman-Fried’s FTX Future Fund—helmed by Beckstead—gave more than $160 million to effective altruist causes, including more than $33 million to organizations connected to MacAskill. “If [Bankman-Fried] wasn’t super wealthy, nobody would have given him another chance,” says one person who worked closely with MacAskill at an EA organization. “It’s greed for access to a bunch of money, but with a philosopher twist.” Sam Bankman-Fried and Will MacAskill weren’t just philosophical allies. They were old friends. The two met in 2013, when Bankman-Fried was still an undergrad at MIT. MacAskill convinced the young utilitarian math geek that he could maximize his impact by taking a high-paying finance job and giving his money away. Effective Altruists call this “earning to give.” Alameda was “earning to give” on crypto steroids. Launched in the fall of 2017 by Bankman-Fried, who had most recently worked at a quantitative trading firm called Jane Street Capital, and Tara Mac Aulay, who had been the CEO of the Centre for Effective Altruism, it was explicitly an EA project from the start, linked to the relatively new idea that more money could lead to more impact for effective altruist causes. “Almost everyone who came on in those early days was an EA. They were there for EA reasons,” says Naia Bouscal, a former software engineer at Alameda. “That was the pitch we gave people: this is an EA thing.” Mac Aulay and Bankman-Fried originally planned to donate 50% of company profits to EA causes, and many of the executives also planned to donate most of their salaries. The initial funding for Alameda came from two influential EA donors: Luke Ding, a former currency trader who invested $6 million, and Jaan Tallinn, who loaned the firm $110 million worth of Ether, according to Semafor. Sources say that without the help of EA donors, it would have taken months to get anywhere near that amount of money, and never on such favorable terms. But within months, the good karma of the venture dissipated in a series of internal clashes, many details of which have not been previously reported. Some of the issues were personal. Bankman-Fried could be “dictatorial,” according to one former colleague. Three former Alameda employees told TIME he had inappropriate romantic relationships with his subordinates. Early Alameda executives also believed he had reneged on an equity arrangement that would have left Bankman-Fried with 40% control of the firm, according to a document reviewed by TIME. Instead, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, he had registered himself as sole owner of Alameda. Read More: Effective Altruism Promises To Do Good Better. These Women Say It Has a Toxic Culture Of Sexual Harassment and Abuse. Bankman-Fried’s approach to managing the business was an even bigger problem. “As we started to implement some of the really basic, standard corporate controls, we found more and more cases where I thought Sam had taken dangerous and egregious shortcuts,” says one person who later raised concerns about Bankman-Fried to EA leaders. “And in many cases [he] had concealed the fact that he had done that.” “We didn’t know how much money we actually had. We didn’t have a clear accounting record of all the trades we’d done,” Bouscal says. “Sam continued pushing us more and more in this direction of doing a huge number of trades, a huge number of transfers, and we couldn’t account for that.” At the same time, she adds, Bankman-Fried was spending enormous amounts of money because “he didn’t have a distinction between firm capital and trading capital. It was all one pool.” Colleagues concluded Bankman-Fried had to go, and prepared an attempt to push him out. In early April 2018, four Alameda executives summoned Bankman-Fried to a conference room in the firm’s new Berkeley, Calif., offices for what one participant describes as an “intervention-style confrontation.” In a planning document prepared for that confrontation and reviewed exclusively by TIME, they accuse him of “gross negligence,” “willful and wanton conduct that is reasonably considered to cause injury,” and “willful and knowing violations of agreements or obligations, particularly with regards to creditors”—all language that echoes the U.S. criminal code. The document, which has not been previously reported, accuses Bankman-Fried of dismissing calls for stronger accounting and inflating the expected value of adding new exchanges, and said a majority of employees thought he was “negligent” and “unethical.” It also alleges he was “misreporting numbers” and “failing to update investors on poor performance.” The team “didn’t trust Sam to be in investor meetings alone,” colleagues wrote. “Sam will lie, and distort the truth for his own gain,” the document says. The meeting was short. Mac Aulay and the management team offered Bankman-Fried a buyout in exchange for his resignation as CEO, and threatened to quit if he refused. Bankman-Fried sat there silently, according to two people present, then got up and left. The next day, he came back with his answer: he would not step down. Instead, the other four members of the management team resigned, along with roughly half of Alameda’s 30 employees. Mac Aulay, an Australian citizen, was forced to leave the country shortly afterward, because her work visa was tied to Alameda. In the weeks leading up to that April 2018 confrontation with Bankman-Fried and in the months that followed, Mac Aulay and others warned MacAskill, Beckstead and Karnofsky about her co-founder’s alleged duplicity and unscrupulous business ethics, according to four people with knowledge of those discussions. Mac Aulay specifically flagged her concerns about Bankman-Fried’s honesty and trustworthiness, his maneuvering to control 100% of the company despite promising otherwise, his pattern of unethical behavior, and his inappropriate relationships with subordinates, sources say. Bouscal recalled speaking to Mac Aulay immediately after one of Mac Aulay’s conversations with MacAskill in late 2018. “Will basically took Sam’s side,” said Bouscal, who recalls waiting with Mac Aulay in the Stockholm airport while she was on the phone. (Bouscal and Mac Aulay had once dated; though no longer romantically involved, they remain close friends.) “Will basically threatened Tara,” Bouscal recalls. “I remember my impression being that Will was taking a pretty hostile stance here and that he was just believing Sam’s side of the story, which made no sense to me.” “He was treating it like a ‘he said-she said,’ even though every other long-time EA involved had left because of the same concerns,” Bouscal adds. Another early Alameda employee, who witnessed Bankman-Fried’s behavior but didn’t speak up, says that Bankman-Fried’s clout within EA, bolstered by his close relationship to MacAskill, discouraged people from speaking out against him, particularly if they wanted to work in EA organizations in the future. But one of the people who did warn others about Bankman-Fried says that he openly wielded this power when challenged. “It was like, ‘I could destroy you,’” this person says. “Will and Holden would believe me over you. No one is going to believe you.” Andrew Kelly—Reuters/AlamyFormer FTX Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried, who faces fraud charges over the collapse of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, leaves following a hearing at Manhattan federal court on Jan. 3. The blowup at Alameda rippled through the EA movement. The mutiny—and its causes—would have been hard for the movement’s leaders to miss, according to three people at EA organizations who heard about the implosion and the allegations that surrounded it. “It’s very implausible that a bunch of the leaders didn’t know quite a lot of details about what happened internally, because it was such a major thing in the EA community,” says the person who worked with MacAskill at an EA organization. Mac Aulay, who had perhaps raised the loudest concerns about Bankman-Fried, was distrusted by some EA leaders because of internal politics during her time at the Centre for Effective Altruism, according to a senior member of the EA community who heard about the warnings after the fact. Still, this person says, “both Will and Nick had significant amounts of evidence that Sam was not ethically good. That puts you in really murky territory: what are you supposed to do with that information?” In the aftermath, Mac Aulay receded from the movement. Bankman-Fried moved to Hong Kong and rebuilt the firm with a small cohort of close allies, including Caroline Ellison, who later became Alameda’s CEO. In the spring of 2019, while still running Alameda, Bankman-Fried started FTX. The crossroads had come and gone. Sometime that year, the Centre for Effective Altruism did an internal investigation relating to CEA and Alameda, according to one person who was contacted during the investigation, and who said it was was conducted in part by MacAskill. Bankman-Fried left the board of the organization in 2019. The Centre for Effective Altruism did not respond to repeated requests from TIME to discuss the circumstances leading to his departure; MacAskill and others declined multiple opportunities to answer questions about those events. Even after Bankman-Fried left the board of CEA, he retained MacAskill’s support, both in public and private. In a 2022 interview on the 80,000 Hours podcast, MacAskill describes himself as “remarkably aligned with Sam,” and said the FTX Future Fund could be a “an enormous inflection point for EA.” FTX advertisements used the language of effective altruism. “I’m on crypto because I want to make the biggest global impact for good,” read one FTX ad, which featured a photo of Bankman-Fried. When Elon Musk was buying Twitter in 2022, MacAskill texted Musk to offer to introduce him to Bankman-Fried, according to text messages released during a lawsuit surrounding Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. MacAskill referred to the FTX founder as “my collaborator,” who had expressed interest in buying Twitter “and making it better for the world.” “You vouch for him?” Musk asked MacAskill. “Very much so!” MacAskill replied. “Very dedicated to making the long-term future of humanity go well.” Read More: Want To Do More Good? This Movement Might Have the Answer. By that time, EA’s bet on Bankman-Fried seemed to be paying off handsomely. In 2022, Bankman-Fried started a charitable arm of FTX to fund EA causes, led by Beckstead, one of the philosopher leaders of EA who had been warned in 2018 by Bankman-Fried’s colleagues. In its brief existence, the Fund gave roughly $33 million to organizations connected to MacAskill: $13.9 million to CEA; $17.9 million to Longview Philanthropy, where he sits on the advisory board; and $1.2 million to the Global Priorities Institute, where he is advisory board chair. In the meantime, Bankman-Fried was at the helm of what prosecutors have cast as one of the biggest financial scandals in American history. “Never in my career have I seen such an utter failure of corporate controls at every level of an organization,” John Ray, who was brought in to manage FTX’s bankruptcy after the company imploded, testified to Congress. The SEC complaint alleges that there “was no meaningful distinction between FTX customer funds and Alameda’s own funds,” and that Bankman-Fried used Alameda as his “personal piggy bank.” Federal prosecutors allege that from 2019 onwards, Bankman-Fried spent billions of dollars of customer money to finance Alameda trading, Bankman-Fried’s investments, and bankroll straw political donations. Among other things, prosecutors say, the money was used to “make charitable contributions.” Bankman-Fried is facing 12 criminal charges; he has pleaded not guilty. Tom Williams—CQ Roll Call/APRep. Van Taylor, R-Texas, reacts to the statement of John J. Ray III, CEO of FTX Group, that FTX used QuickBooks for accounting, during the House Financial Services Committee hearing titled “Investigating the Collapse of FTX, Part I,” on Dec. 13, 2022. Ray took over after the resignation of Sam Bankman-Fried. None of the early Alameda employees who witnessed Bankman-Fried’s behavior years earlier say they anticipated this level of alleged criminal fraud. There was no “smoking gun,” as one put it, that revealed specific examples of lawbreaking. Even if they knew Bankman-Fried was dishonest and unethical, they say, none of them could have foreseen a fraud of this scope. After FTX collapsed, MacAskill conveyed his dismay in a series of tweets expressing surprise. “I cannot in words convey how strongly I condemn what they did,” MacAskill tweeted. “I had put my trust in Sam, and if he lied and misused customer funds he betrayed me, just as he betrayed his customers, his employees, his investors, & the communities he was a part of.” It was quite a turnaround for the visionary leader of the futurist movement. Just months earlier, in Aug. 2022, MacAskill published his second book, What We Owe the Future, about the moral duty to confront existential risks to humanity. “History is littered with people doing bad things while believing they were doing good,” MacAskill writes in the book. “We should do our utmost to avoid being one of them.” To celebrate its publication, the moral philosopher invited a group of luminaries to a dinner at Eleven Madison Park, the ultra-luxurious vegan restaurant where the tasting menu runs $438 per person with tip, before tax. The event, MacAskill wrote in an email invitation, “is hosted by my friend, Sam Bankman-Fried.”.....»»

Trump can lie on 'Untruth Social,' but not to a grand jury, Cohen said Friday before starting a 'long' meeting with Manhattan prosecutors. Michael Cohen (left) and Donald Trump.Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images; Brandon Bell/Getty Images Cohen took a shot at 'liar' Trump before meeting Friday with Manhattan 'hush-money' prosecutors. Trump's ex-lawyer is the key witness linking Trump to the $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors will decide 'soon' on seeking a grand jury vote to indict Trump on the 2016 payment, he said. Donald Trump's fixer-turned-nemesis said Friday that the former president is too much of a "liar" to ever agree to testify in his own defense before a state grand jury now hearing evidence in the Manhattan district attorney's hush-money probe.—Laura Italiano (@Italiano_Laura) March 10, 2023 "I have to applaud District Attorney Alvin Bragg for giving Donald the opportunity to come in and to tell his story," Michael Cohen said, responding to a New York Times report that Bragg had invited Trump to testify before the grand jury next week, as a decision on a possible indictment looms."Now knowing Donald as well as I do, understand that he doesn't tell the truth," Cohen, the hush-money probe's key witness, told reporters.He has predicted that Trump will be indicted "soon."Trump would face anywhere from probation to four years in New York State prison if convictedof what former Manhattan financial crimes prosecutors have called the most likely charge, first degree falsifying business records, a low-level felony under the state criminal code. "It's one thing to lie on your 'Untruth Social," Cohen added, taking a shot at his former boss's social media company before stepping inside the DA's office for what he called a "long" meeting with prosecutors working the hush-money case."It's another thing to turn around and lie before a grand jury," Cohen said. "So I don't suspect that he's going to be coming."The grand jury has since January been hearing evidence that could link Trump to the 2016  payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, according to published reports and independent reporting by Insider.Cohen was the payment's admitted "bag man," admitting in federal court in 2018 that he arranged for Daniels to get $130,000 just weeks before the 2016 election.Cohen was sentenced to three years prison for what federal prosecutors called an illegal campaign expenditure, for lying to Congress about plans to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow, and for a series of financial crimes.The $130,000 was paid in exchange for Daniels' agreement to not go public with an affair she alleged she'd had with Trump in 2006, and was an illegal campaign expenditure because it was meant to keep voters in the dark about the salacious allegations, Cohen admitted and federal prosecutors alleged at the time.Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels and has contested that the money was a campaign expenditure.Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, who was accompanying Cohen on his visit to the DA's office Friday, said the timing of Trump's invitation shows that Bragg's decision on whether to ask the grand jury to vote on an indictment is close. —Laura Italiano (@Italiano_Laura) March 10, 2023 "You don't ask a former president of the United States, after all this time of criminal investigation, to come in to testify, unless you're ready to move forward," with a possible indictment, Davis said."Donald Trump, as a private citizen, right before the election, directed Michael Cohen to pay hush money that Michael Cohen went to prison for," Davis said."Now there's no dispute that it was Donald Trump's Justice Department that wrote that in a sentencing memo and in their information filed against Michael Cohen," Davis said."So if he directed Michael Cohen to do a crime, according to his Justice Department — go look it up it's a public document — then how is it possible that he's not guilty, if he directed Michael Cohen to pay the hush money." Lawyers for Trump have not responded to Insider's requests for comment on the story. The Manhattan DA's office has not commented on the ongoing probe and grand jury.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Turley: Did The 'QAnon Shaman' Get Shafted On Sentencing? New Footage Raises Questions Over The Chansley Case Authored by Jonathan Turley, If there is one image from Jan. 6th that will remain indelible with the day, it is the “QAnon Shaman.” Bare chested and wearing an animal headdress, horns and red-white-and-blue face paint, Jake Angeli Chansley is to the Capitol riot what Rosie the Riveter was to World War II. Howling and “chanting an unintelligible mantra” on the Senate floor, he is the embodiment of the unhinged rage that led to one of the most disgraceful attacks on our constitutional process in history. However, the newly released Fox footage from that day raises serious questions over the prosecution and punishment of Chansley. The videotapes aired on Tucker Carlson this week show Chansley being escorted by officers through the Capitol. Two officers appear to not only guide him to the floor but actually appear to be trying to open locked doors for him. At one point, Chansley is shown walking unimpeded through a large number of armed officers with his four-foot flag-draped spear and horned Viking helmet on his way to the Senate floor. It is otherworldly footage. While I admit that I approach these stories from the perspective of a long-standing criminal defense attorney, I would be outraged if I was unable to see such evidence before a plea or sentencing. At no point in the videotapes does Chansley appear violent or threatening. Indeed, he appears to thank the officers for their guidance and assistance. On the Senate floor, Chansley actually gave a prayer to thank the officers agreed “to allow us into the building.” Before addressing the legal implications of this footage, one thing should be clear. The public should have been given access to this footage long ago and the Jan. 6th Committee withheld important evidence on what occurred inside the Capitol on that day. While it is understandable that many would object to Carlson being given an exclusive in the initial release, many in the media are denouncing the release of the footage to the public at all. The press and pundits are now opposing greater transparency in resisting any contradiction of the narrative put forward by the Jan. 6th Committee. Indeed, MSNBC’s Jason Johnson angrily objected that this is “federal evidence” — ignoring that it is evidence that was denied to criminal defendants. This is not just material that the public should be able to see, it was potential evidence in criminal cases like that of the QAnon Shaman. When the footage aired, I wrote a column raising the question of whether this evidence was known to or shared with Chansley’s defense. After all, he was portrayed as a violent offender by the Justice Department at his sentencing. It now appears that the answer is no. I spoke with Chansley’s new counsel, Bill Shipley, and confirmed that defense counsel did not have this material. In the hearing, federal prosecutor Kimberly Paschall played videos showing Chansley yelling along with the crowd and insisted “that is not peaceful.” That portrayal of Chansley would have been more difficult to maintain if the Court was allowed to see images of Chansley casually walking through a door of the Capitol with hundreds of other protesters and then being escorted by officers through the Capitol. At no point is he violent and at no point is he shown destroying evidence. Instead, he dutifully follows the officers who facilitate his going eventually to the unoccupied Senate floor. We all knew that Chansley was treated more harshly because of his visibility. It was his costume, not his conduct, that seemed to drive the sentencing. In the hearing, Judge Royce Lamberth noted, “He made himself the image of the riot, didn’t he? For good or bad, he made himself the very image of this whole event.” Lamberth hit Chansley with a heavy 41-month sentence for “obstructing a federal proceeding.” However, the QAnon Shaman was led through the Capitol by officers. Defense counsel could have noted that his “obstruction” in going to an unoccupied Senate floor was facilitated by officers. While the police were clearly trying to deescalate the situation after the Capitol was breached, this is evidence of how Chansley came to the Senate. Indeed, his interaction with officers could have impacted how he viewed the gravity of his conduct. It certainly would have been material to the court in sentencing the conduct. In his rambling sentencing statement to the court, Chansley apologized for “a lot of bad juju that I never meant to create.” I have great respect for Judge Lamberth, who has always shown an admirable resistance to public pressure in high profile cases. I cannot imagine that Lamberth would not have found this footage material and frankly alarming. At first blush, this would appear a clear “Brady violation” when a prosecutor fails to provide a defendant with any evidence that is favorable or exculpatory to his case. Like most things in Chansley’s life, it is a bit more complex than it would seem. First, Chansley quickly pleaded guilty to the charge. This may have been due in part to the draconian treatment that he received by the Justice Department, which insisted on keeping him in solitary confinement with no apparent justification. The result is that he moved rapidly to sentencing without significant discovery in his case. Second, the footage was in the possession of the legislative branch so the Justice Department could claim that it was not required to produce it. Indeed, the prosecution may have been entirely unaware of the footage. Third, Chansley waived an appeal of the plea agreement and is now weeks away from release. The case is practically closed. It is not clear, however, if Judge Lamberth will find the failure to disclose this evidence troubling and worthy of inquiry. None of this means that Chansley should not have been given jail time. Indeed, it is appropriate to sentence rioters to greater than average time due to the assault on our constitutional process. Yet, it is hard to believe that Judge Lamberth would have given 41 months to a nonviolent, first offender who was led through the Capitol by police officers to the floor. This was a Navy veteran who pleaded guilty to the crime. The role of Congress in withholding this footage is disgraceful and wrong. The Congress and the January 6th Committee knew of this footage and its relevance to a pending criminal case. Yet, they refused to make it public. Instead, the January 6th Committee hired a former ABC producer to put on a made-for-television production of highly edited images for public consumption. Countervailing evidence or images were consistently excluded and witnesses appeared as virtual props to support high-quality video packages. Even The New York Times admitted the narrative was meant to “recast the midterm message” and “give [Democrats] a platform for making a broader case about why they deserve to stay in power.” The image of the QAnon Shaman being escorted through the Capitol by police officers is hardly the image that they wanted to show the public. So Committee members and counsel buried footage that was clearly relevant to literally hundreds of people facing criminal sentencing across the country. They did this while repeatedly referencing those cases in hearings as upholding the rule of law. I hold little sympathy for Chansley or the others arrested on that day. I was highly critical of President Donald Trump’s remarks before the riot. However, it is hard to see this withheld evidence and not conclude that the Qanon Shaman got the shaft on his sentencing. Tyler Durden Fri, 03/10/2023 - 10:52.....»»

Jeffrey Epstein's victims — and his brother — are still waiting for answers from the DOJ inspector general, more than three years later. The Justice Department's Office of Inspector General launched an investigation after Jeffrey Epstein was found dead. But more than three years later, the office still hasn't released its report.New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, File; Rebecca Zisser/Insider Jeffrey Epstein's death in a federal jail was seen as a shocking Justice Department failure. Over three years later, the DOJ inspector general hasn't released the results of its investigation. Epstein's accusers — and his brother — still want answers. On October 28, 2019, two months after his brother's death, Mark Epstein was summoned to the US Attorney's office in downtown Manhattan.Jeffrey Epstein died in the custody of a federal jail just one building over, and officials at the Justice Department said they had an update for Mark on their investigation into his death. Mark showed up with a lawyer and Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist he hired to examine Jeffrey's body. Baden believed Jeffrey Epstein died by homicide.  The group was met with a "nice little panel" of Justice Department officials, Mark Epstein recalled.The officials said Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide. Pressed for more detail, they just repeated themselves."They didn't give me any information other than 'After a thorough investigation, we determined it was a suicide,'" Mark Epstein said. "It was like I was talking to a fucking robot."The meeting was the only time Mark got any answers from the DOJ about his brother's death. Three years later, he still doesn't know exactly how Epstein died and why it's taken the government that long to share its answer to that question.Mark Epstein told Insider that even though he's Jeffrey's next of kin, he hasn't been able to obtain certain medical records, including the care reports filled out by EMTs who evaluated his brother's corpse.The public hasn't gotten answers either. Epstein flew at the heights of power, consorting with presidents and princes while at the same time abusing scores of girls. His death in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons represents one of the most shocking failures of federal law enforcement in history. How could the Justice Department let him just slip away?The Justice Department's Office of Inspector General launched an investigation after he was found dead. But more than three years later, the office still hasn't released its report into the circumstances of Epstein's death.In the information vacuum, conspiracy theories have proliferated about whether Epstein was killed to cover up for his powerful friends — Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Prince Andrew among them.Epstein's victims and at least one US senator are still demanding answers from the DOJ.  "For many people, the death was suspicious, to say the least," said Gloria Allred, an attorney who represents 20 of Epstein's victims. "Others have their own conclusions about what happened to Mr. Epstein. But the speculation needs to be replaced by facts and evidence."Mark Epstein remains puzzled by the holdup. He's convinced his brother didn't kill himself and stands by the conclusions of Baden, who personally observed the four-hour autopsy of Jeffrey Epstein's body."We all took it by surprise," Mark Epstein told Insider. "Nobody thought he was gonna kill himself. Nobody."After 3 years, it's not clear what's holding up DOJ's reportWhen Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell, on August 10, 2019, then-Attorney General Bill Barr's first reaction was disbelief, he later wrote in his memoir."No one's gonna believe it was a suicide," Barr recalled saying. "There'll be conspiracy theories all over the place."Epstein had been arrested two months earlier on charges that he trafficked girls for sex. He was investigated by Manhattan federal prosecutors following a series of articles by the Miami Herald journalist Julie K. Brown, who detailed how he secured a secret, lenient plea deal with Florida prosecutors in 2007, even after law enforcement concluded he sexually abused more than 30 girls. A compensation program his estate formed after his death concluded he sexually abused at least 136 people overall.Until his arrest in 2019, Epstein continued living a lavish lifestyle, splitting time between his Palm Beach home, his Manhattan mansion, an island in the US Virgin Islands, and an apartment in Paris.After losing all that, it was possible he found the prospect of life behind bars unappealing, Mark Epstein said. "When I first heard that my brother was dead, and found dead from suicide, I just figured, 'OK, he decided to take himself out,'" he told Insider.Barr tasked the Justice Department's inspector general, Michael Horowitz, and the FBI with investigating "the circumstances of Mr. Epstein's death."There were two major unanswered questions: How, exactly, did he die? And — whether it was a suicide or homicide — how did the Bureau of Prisons allow it to happen?Within those questions are a number of smaller mysteries, still unresolved. Why was Epstein's body moved after his death, in violation of jail protocol? If his body was found hours after he already died, why did paramedics try to push air into his lungs? If he hanged himself, why does Baden believe the bone fractures in his neck were more consistent with strangling? Why would he tear strips of bedsheets to make a noose instead of using the cord of his sleep-apnea machine? Why weren't the cameras watching his cellblock working the day he died? Who else was incarcerated in the same block, and did they see anything?Epstein claimed he had dirt on powerful people and, after his 2007 guilty plea, still appeared to consort with the likes of Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, Elon Musk, and Steve Bannon. Were any of Epstein's acquaintances capable of planning an assassination? An Insider poll taken later that fall found nearly half of Americans believed Epstein was murdered.The Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General is uniquely suited to answer these questions. Equipped with subpoena power and statutory independence, the office is one of the rare institutions in Washington, DC, carefully designed to stand apart from partisan forces and political winds.It also had a significant measure of independence from Barr, whose own father may have given Epstein a job that he leveraged into a career in finance.More than three years later, it's not clear why the inspector general's investigation is taking so long.Horowitz's other high-profile investigations concluded far more quickly. An investigation into the flow of US arms to Mexican drug cartels took a year. A 568-page report about how the Justice Department dealt with Hillary Clinton's email server and a 478-page report about the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation into Trump's links with Russia were each released about a year and a half after they were initiated.Glenn Fine, who served as the Justice Department's inspector general between 2000 and 2011, told Insider the office is likely taking extraordinary care to make sure it gets all the details right."The OIG is probably taking the position: We want to make sure we get it right, and we want to make sure we are thorough and that the report is so convincing that the people who think that Epstein was murdered will be persuaded by all the evidence once it's out there," Fine said.There are four possible reasons the report hasn't yet been released, Fine said. The inspector general's office could still be investigating; it's holding a report so as not to interfere with any pending criminal cases; it's writing the report; or it's waiting for feedback from the Bureau of Prisons. A representative for the Bureau of Prisons said it was cooperating with the Justice Department and referred Insider to the Office of Inspector General for further questions. A spokesperson for the inspector general's office declined to comment on this story.The only public criminal cases linked to the inspector general's investigation were charges brought against Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, the two jail security guards who were tasked with watching Epstein and other inmates housed near him. That case stemmed from investigations by the FBI and the US attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, which is parallel to but independent from the inspector general investigation, run out of Washington, DC.In a November 2019 indictment, Manhattan prosecutors said Noel and Thomas skipped their required rounds the night of Epstein's death but falsified records to hide that fact.Prosecutors used court documents in the case to give the public a glimpse of what they had discovered. Video footage indicated no one entered the area outside Epstein's cellblock between 7:49 p.m. on August 9, when he was escorted to his cell, until 6:33 a.m. on August 10, when Noel and Thomas were serving breakfast and found him dead."Epstein was alone in his cell and not responsive, with a noose around his neck," the indictment said.Noel and Thomas entered deferred prosecution agreements in May 2021, agreeing to be interviewed by the OIG's investigators. They sat for those interviews in June that year, according to a person familiar with the investigation who spoke to Insider on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.Prosecutors formally dropped the criminal charges against Noel and Thomas in December 2021. Once that case was over, it looked like the path was clear for the inspector general's office to release the report.But it's been more than a year, and the report is still under wraps.Even members of Congress appear to have lost interest in Epstein's fate.Back in December 2019, four members of the Senate Judiciary Committee — Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee — wrote an open letter urging Horowitz to complete his investigation."These events have ignited a crisis of public trust in the Department and exacerbated the erosion of trust that the American people have in our institutions of republican self-government more broadly," they wrote.Representatives for Cruz and Blackburn didn't respond to Insider's request for comment on this story. Sasse, who sent a follow-up letter to Horowitz in 2020 and who's now the president of the University of Florida, didn't respond to Insider's request for comment, either.Only Blumenthal responded to Insider's request for comment. He urged Horowitz to release his report soon."I continue to believe the public deserves to be made aware of the results of the Department of Justice's investigation into the death of Jeffrey Epstein," Blumenthal said.Fine believes Horowitz is in a tough spot with the investigation, likely weighing the importance of informing the public against doing a thorough job."I believe that it's important to be timely, particularly in matters of significant public concern," Fine, now a Governance Studies fellow at The Brookings Institution and law professor at Georgetown University, told Insider. "Having said that, it's most important to get it right, and to be thorough and persuasive."Epstein's death highlighted bigger problems in federal jails It remains unclear how much of the inspector general's investigation has encompassed failures at the jail where Epstein was housed.After Noel and Thomas were charged with falsifying records, their lawyers argued they were scapegoats for the Bureau of Prisons as a whole, which left the Metropolitan Correctional Center chronically understaffed, forced employees to work extraordinarily long hours, and allowed the facility to deteriorate. Only 18 employees were guarding the MCC's roughly 750 inmates the night Epstein died, records show.Records obtained by The New York Times demonstrate that jail staffers bungled routine details. An intake form described Epstein as a Black male and indicated he had no prior sex-offense convictions. Numerous phone calls he made while in custody weren't logged.Martin Weinberg, one of Epstein's criminal defense attorneys in his New York case, told Insider that he hopes the inspector general's investigation will shed more light on the dire conditions of the MCC."His conditions of confinement were medieval," Weinberg said. The inspector general's office has made passing mentions of Epstein a handful of times in broader reports about the Justice Department. In 2019, it mentioned the deaths of Epstein and Whitey Bulger as examples of why the Bureau of Prisons needed better monitoring for incarcerated people. A 2020 report said the indictment against the two jail guards, Noel and Thomas, promoted "accountability."In a 2022 report about the Justice Department's challenges, the inspector general's office called Epstein's death a suicide and said it had "numerous ongoing investigations" into whether Bureau of Prisons employees did their job well and how deaths like Epstein's "impair the public's trust in the Department."The Bureau of Prisons shut down the MCC entirely in August 2021 and transferred its inmates to other facilities. It remains closed.Despite the Justice Department's policy of not commenting on ongoing investigations, Barr has happily gabbed about how the MCC was to blame for Epstein's death.Just two days after Epstein's death, Barr suggested in a speech to police-union members that the investigation would focus on "serious irregularities" at the jail.In an interview with the Associated Press in November 2019, Barr said he concluded Epstein killed himself and that "a perfect storm of screwups" at the MCC allowed it to happen. In his memoir, the former attorney general wrote that correctional staff failed to do their job of checking on Epstein every 30 minutes, and that he was not housed in the same cell as "a trusted inmate," as he was supposed to be, as a result of "an unintentional oversight."Mark Epstein doesn't believe his brother killed himselfWhen Mark Epstein saw Barr dismiss the possibility of a murder based on his review of security footage outside Jeffrey Epstein's cell tier, he wasn't remotely satisfied. "What I thought was, this is either a cover-up, or he's the dumbest fuck on the planet," Mark Epstein said.To Mark, Barr's version of events suggests he came to the conclusion that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself and then backfilled evidence from there. Barr seemed to consider only the possibility that a murderer would have been someone who snuck into the jail. Mark told Insider he was gobsmacked that Barr didn't seem to consider the possibility that someone else in Jeffrey Epstein's block of cells killed him.Since there were eight cells in the tier, there would have been between seven and 14 people other than Epstein in the block, depending on how many had cellmates. The Justice Department has not made the names of those incarcerated people public.Mark Epstein told Insider that he spoke to his brother about once a month in the years before his death. The two caught up over the phone while Jeffrey Epstein was in Paris, the night before he flew to New Jersey and was arrested after his private jet landed.Jeffrey Epstein had reasons to stay alive, Mark said. He didn't leave a suicide note — or at least none that has been reported — and reportedly deposited money into other inmates' commissary accounts in return for protection. People who spoke with him in the weeks leading up to his death believed he was optimistic about getting the charges dismissed.After he was arrested, in early August 2019, Epstein and attorney David Schoen had a five-hour meeting to discuss criminal-defense strategies. Schoen told Insider that Epstein appeared optimistic that he'd be protected by the controversial and unusual non-prosecution agreement he signed with Alexander Acosta, the US Attorney in Florida he cut a deal with in 2007. Bill Cosby had his sexual-assault conviction overturned in 2021 for similar reasons, Mark Epstein pointed out. Epstein's Florida agreement had been repeatedly upheld by federal courts.Mark Epstein told Insider he built his wealth independently from his brother, founding a silk-screening business before pivoting to real estate with Ossa Properties, which at one point reportedly owned hundreds of apartments in New York City.At least one of Mark Epstein's Upper East Side buildings, however, includes multiple links to his brother. Mark has said he purchased it from the business magnate Leslie Wexner, his brother's longtime patron. Jeffrey Epstein owned about a dozen apartments in the building, which he used to house at least one of his sex-trafficking victims as well as his private pilots while they were staying in New York, according to testimony at Ghislaine Maxwell's trial. Right before Epstein died, his lawyers were preparing to appeal a judge's decision to deny him bail. They had prepared a bond package valued at $100 million.Mark Epstein agreed to guarantee the whole thing, he told Insider, meaning he'd lose that amount of money if his brother tried to flee authorities."If you get bail, you're gonna be home for a year — under house arrest, with an ankle bracelet, armed guards, video cameras, whatever the conditions were — but he'll be in his house," Mark Epstein said. "So why kill yourself then?"There are still unanswered questions about Epstein's bodyIt's not clear to what extent the inspector general's office has tried to retrace Jeffrey Epstein's last days.Michael Baden — the forensic pathologist, who sits on a commission that reviews all inmate deaths in New York state-controlled prisons and jails — told Insider that investigators haven't interviewed him.Mark Epstein, Weinberg, and Schoen (who said he has full confidence in Horowitz) all spoke to Jeffrey Epstein not long before his death and said they haven't been interviewed by the inspector general's office either.A person close to Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence, said the inspector general's office never requested an interview with her about the investigation into Epstein's death.Baden still has lingering questions about the state of Epstein's body.Kristin Roman, the New York City medical examiner who conducted the autopsy, couldn't come to a conclusion and listed the manner of death as "pending further study." Baden claims Roman told him at the time that she wanted to learn more about the circumstances of Epstein's death before making a final determination."It wasn't clear yet what the findings were at the scene, because he was brought out of the cell many hours after he died, when nobody had seen him," Baden said. "We didn't know at the time, and we still don't know, how the two guards found him — whether he was hanging, whether he had a ligature around his neck — because nobody else saw the scene."New York City's chief medical examiner at the time, Barbara Sampson, sidestepped Roman and ruled the death a suicide a few days later, after saying she reviewed additional evidence. She didn't disclose what that additional evidence was, but CBS News reported that one element was Epstein's prior suicide attempt. Roman didn't respond to Insider's request for comment.According to Baden, certain features of Epstein's dead body lined up more with homicide than suicide. His neck bones were fractured in three different places in a way you'd expect from strangling, he said. There weren't hemorrhages in his eyes, as you'd expect with a suicide, according to Baden. And the ligature marks on Epstein's neck didn't look like they'd come from the bedsheet found in his cell, Baden said."The ligatures on the ground do not match the mark on the neck," Baden said. "A smooth sheet leaves a smooth mark on the neck. This one has a pattern. There's a pattern on the skin."A good forensic pathologist, Baden said, would take into account everything about the circumstances of a subject's death. But the public is still missing key details, such as whether inmates could move freely between their cells within the tier and how the cells were locked. Epstein's body was also moved after he was found dead.Baden said he still wants to make a final determination about Epstein's death."As I sit here, I still don't know what position he was found in," Baden told Insider.Epstein's accusers want answers from the DOJThe silence from the DOJ has disappointed Epstein's victims, many of whom believe his death is yet another example of how the federal government failed them in holding the serial child rapist to account.Attorneys who have collectively represented more than 80 of Epstein's accusers told Insider they were disappointed and puzzled by the lack of transparency.Lisa Bloom, an attorney who represented eight of Epstein's accusers, told Insider that the silence only leads to distrust among accusers."In 2019, he was allowed to take his own life to escape justice — maybe that's what happened," she said. "And now, more than three years later, victims do not even get the simple courtesy of a final report. This breeds resentment and distrust. What is the government hiding?""It is remarkable that now, literally years later, the Justice Department has yet to release its report," Paul Cassell, an attorney who sought to invalidate Epstein's non-prosecution agreement, told Insider. "This blatant lack of transparency will only lead to further speculation about exactly how Epstein died."Some of the attorneys said the secrecy may lead to victims of abuse thinking twice before going to authorities."There is no good reason the investigation has taken this long," Brad Edwards, who represented more than 50 of Epstein's accusers, said. "The victims and the public were made strong promises that with pure motive were easy to uphold. The lack of transparency raises suspicions about who is protecting whom or what."Adam Horowitz, an attorney who represented eight of Epstein's accusers and has no relation to Michael Horowitz, told Insider the lack of information "will deter other suffering crime victims from coming forward."Mark Epstein wanted to file a wrongful-death lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons but said he was blocked by the executors of Jeffrey Epstein's estate. He believes a lawsuit would be a "slam-dunk case" that might have generated answers.An attorney for the estate executors didn't respond to Insider's request for comment.Fine told Insider the inspector general's office may be taking a long time because it's being extraordinarily thorough."I would think the OIG would be assessing the entire situation," Fine said. "Whether it was just a suicide and, if so, how did it happen? I would expect there to be a full report on this, and maybe that's why it's taking a long time."Allred said the inspector general's office should, at the very least, give accusers a time frame for the results of the investigation and be told whether it will be made public."They were denied their day in court to confront Jeffrey Epstein because of his death," she said. "They should not be denied the results of the investigation by the inspector general."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Chicago Dad Who Spoke Out Against Porn In Schools Faces Extra Security Screening En Route To CPAC Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), A Chicago dad who found himself on a watchlist after opposing pornographic content in his kids’ school says he faced further harassment this weekend from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on the way to and from the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference in Maryland. Terry Newsome, a Chicago dad who found himself placed on a watch list by federal law enforcement, speaks during Turning Point USA's AmericaFest 2022. (Courtesy of Terry Newsome) Terry Newsome of Chicago, found out in December 2022 that he had been placed on a terror watch list when he tried to fly from O’Hare Airport to Phoenix. On March 1, Newsome attempted to fly to Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport and learned that, despite positive signs to the contrary, his name remained on the watch list. Though he is still permitted to fly, having his name on the list—which federal law enforcement agencies have not explained—means invasive and embarrassing extra screening for Newsome. In spite of his efforts to have his name removed from the list, Newsome continues to wrangle with the labyrinthian bureaucracies of the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and TSA. Ongoing Battle With Cancer Since learning that he had been placed on the list, Newsome has worked incessantly to restore his good name even as he was undergoing “brutal” radiation therapy for stage four cancer. “A week and a half ago, I finished like seven weeks of intense radiation five days a week,” Newsome told the Epoch Times in an interview. The treatment left his immune system weakened and left him fatigued, he said, adding that he was worried about flying with his immune system so compromised by the radiation therapy. “I really shouldn’t have went anywhere because my immune system is pummeled from the radiation, right?” Newsome said. Despite his usual opposition to masks—quipping “I’m a Republican” to explain—Newsome said he took precautions and wore a mask on the plane to protect his health. Though the journey made him nervous, Newsome said he felt he had to go to CPAC as part of his ongoing mission to clear his name. Thus, despite his weakened state—and defying his family’s wishes that he not go—Newsome boarded a plane to Washington last week to attend CPAC, where he hoped to find more assistance with his TSA problem. Invasive Screening On his arrival at Chicago’s O’Hare on March 1, Newsome learned that his ticket still carried the “quad-S” (SSSS) designation, despite his being a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) pre-check-approved flier for over a decade before. Earlier, the TSA had responded to a query by Newsome, indicating at the time that he would go through “standard screening protocol” moving forward. In addition to much more rigorous screening of bags, SSSS fliers are typically on the receiving end of a full-body pat down. They also have their hands (and sometimes, according to some reports) their feet swabbed to check for explosives. A photo of Terry Newsome’s boarding pass, marked with the “quad-S” classification, as he tried to board his flight out of Washington on March 4. (Photo courtesy of Terry Newsome) Just how invasive this search can be depends on circumstances, but fliers with the SSSS designation can also expect to be prodded on questions like whether they packed their own bag, where they’re headed, why they’re going there, and so on. Newsome said that the specifics of SSSS screening are minor on their own, but that the inconveniences add up. On Feb. 28, 24 hours before his flight was due to take off, Newsome attempted to check in for his flight on the American Airlines app. As an American Platinum Flier, Newsome is entitled to several cushy benefits, including the chance for his seat to be bumped up to first class depending on availability. When he tried to check in, however, Newsome realized he couldn’t—the first indication that his flight status had not been resolved. Upon arriving at the airport on March 1, Newsome found that he was still having trouble printing his ticket. As it happened in December, he was required to get federal approval before the airline could print his ticket. “For me, it’s not like I’m just an enhanced security whatever else it is,” Newsome said. “I can’t even—not only can I not enhance [my ticket], I can’t even get a boarding pass until there’s somebody from the government to give American Airlines the approval to print the ticket.” Realizing that he was still on the list, Newsome decided simply to check his bag in order to avoid the embarrassment of having all his clothing, medicines, and personal items taken out of his bag in front of everyone. After checking his bag and receiving his ticket, Newsome proceeded to the TSA checkpoint. When TSA agents began going through the line examining other fliers’ boarding passes, Newsome knew they were looking for him and told the TSA agents as much. At that point, he was pulled from the line and brought to an empty line for enhanced screening. Newsome described his experience, citing how embarrassing the extra screening was even knowing he had done nothing wrong. “They stopped the whole line,” Newsome said. “They actually made everybody get out … And they had supervisors come and took me through the enhanced screening. All these people were watching.” Newsome and his bag were brought through a metal detector and X-ray scanner, as is the norm for most fliers. However, they required much more of Newsome: “I had to take off my shoes. Then they take my bags and everything else and I stand there while they go through everything.” Newsome also had his crotch area patted down in view of other fliers. Newsome added later, “They swabbed everything for bombs.” Just 30 minutes later, a similar scene played out as Newsome was trying to board his flight. The TSA announced over a loudspeaker near his gate that they would be checking everyone’s passports, IDs, and boarding passes before they could get on the plane. At the same moment, several TSA agents, joined by what appeared to be an undercover agent wearing sunglasses and coordinating security procedures with the TSA agents, began screening all boarders’ documents. Several TSA agents crowd around Terry Newsome’s gate as he tries to board a flight at O’Hare International Airport on March 1. (Photo courtesy of Terry Newsome) “I just knew it was for me,” Newsome said. Thus, he drew attention to himself, telling a TSA agent, “It’s me, I’m the quad-S.” Newsome was pulled out of line at this point for further screening. Depriving him of yet another American Airline Platinum Flier benefit, Newsome was the last person to board; his ticket entitled him to be in the second group of boarders. Newsome said this was even more embarrassing for him than the first screening, as that could have been written off as a standard random search. ‘Anti-Porn, Not Anti-Gay’ Earlier, Newsome had been politically active in his school district after learning about sexually explicit images in a book at his children’s school library—activities which Newsome believes may be responsible for his placement on the list in the first place. Newsome had never been involved in school board meetings or politics until mid-2021, when he attended a district school board meeting after his then-eighth-grade son came home and said his teacher had told him that “there is no American dream.” Newsome, a descendant of Italian immigrants who himself had lived the American dream, was shocked to hear that. He called his children’s principal to discuss the issue, and suspected that these issues would only get worse when his kids, fraternal twins, got to high school. In July 2021, Newsome attended his first school board meeting at Downers Grove’s Community High School. Terry Newsome, dressed in Downers Grove South High School spirit wear, sits in the school auditorium where he spoke up about the book “Gender Queer” on Dec. 13, 2021. (Cara Ding/The Epoch Times) Newsome immediately began a crusade on several hot-button topics, ranging from mask mandates to critical race theory, becoming the unofficial spokesman for several concerned mothers who were more hesitant to speak out. “The moms are so happy to have an aggressive, type-A-personality father to join them. They had mostly fought this battle alone, against the giant system of public schools,” Newsome told The Epoch Times. Newsome’s most controversial activism came with his opposition to the book “Gender Queer” by Mia Kobabe, a book containing sexually explicit images that teaches children about oral sex and controversial notions of gender identity. Selections from the book show a biological female adolescent struggling over her “gender identity.” The girl is also depicted wearing a device known as a “binder,” a tight-fitting brassiere-like garment meant to reduce breast size. At some points in the book, the girl is shown engaging in oral sex with another biological female identifying as male. Newsome’s opposition to the book led to his receiving a litany of ad hominem attacks from left-wing agitators in the Chicago area. However, he has insisted throughout his activist work that he and other parents are “anti-porn, not anti-gay or homophobic.” Newsome has coordinated events in his area with Gays Against Groomers, an organization made up of homosexual and transsexual people who have been outspoken against inundating minors with gender ideology. After Newsome began speaking out against the book and the left-wing ideology that had inundated his children’s schools, he began facing attacks from all corners, ranging from threats by Antifa to opposition by Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.). Two days after the publication of an Epoch Times article about his activism, Newsome found threatening messages against him on a locally run Twitter account called Antifascist Rumor Mill. “Action items announced soon in regard to Terry Newsome—time to Drop Pops and his hateful agenda,” the tweet read, referencing Newsome’s nickname “Pops.” “Terry trying to make a name for himself, look at his stupid face in the Epoch Times, the extreme #disinformation rag that echoed all the lies, the Big Lie, the ‘Plandemic’ lie, etc.,” said another tweet from the account. Newsome told The Epoch Times that many of those who have spoken against him and threatened him, including members of the school board, are in league with Casten. “The school board and the superintendent are all controlled by radical, radical leftists … that are very vocal in the Downers Grove Community and all supportive of Sean Casten,” Newsome said. “So anybody that speaks out with a different opinion is brutally attacked on social media and called racist, homophobic, and so forth, no matter the truth.” “To make a point, I’ve said it from the very beginning, through now: Me and the other parents are not anti-gay or homophobic—we’re anti-porn,” Newsome said. Judith Rose, communications director for the group “Gays Against Groomers,” told the Epoch Times that opposing gender ideology being imposed on children is not homophobic or bigoted. A Gays Against Groomers van parked is for an event in Anaheim, California. (Courtesy of Gays Against Groomers) Rose explained that the goal of the organization, a group made up of gay and transgender people, is to protect children from sexual content. “Our goals involve getting legislation put in place to make education more appropriate for children to keep adult material away from children [and] to classify drag shows like a burlesque or strip club type situation where they have to be away from children,” Rose explained. Asked about Newsome’s situation, Rose called it “heartbreaking.” “I think it’s really heartbreaking, that there’s this wedge being formed between parents and schools,” she said. “And I just think it’s awful what’s happening, trying to classify parents as terrorists for standing up for how they want their kids to be raised or educated. Sometimes it’s not always an option to homeschool your kids.” Rose argued that the gender push on children was also bad for LGBT adults, saying “it creates an even bigger wedge between our community and people who don’t necessarily approve of us,” Rose said. “I respect their beliefs; I understand. “However, I really wish that more people could see that it’s time to put our differences aside for the children—Gays Against Groomers represents a part of the LGBT community that understands not everyone is going to accept us or wants to accept us. They have their religious beliefs, whatever it is. We respect that,” she said. Rose continued, “We don’t want kids to be raised in an environment where they’re heavily saturated with ‘queer ideology’ or ‘queer culture.’ And every parent deserves the right to know what’s going on with their children.” “We have people on the far left and people on the far right who don’t like us. We’re trying to find that middle ground—that’s really all we want to do,” she stated. “At the end of the day, it’s about the kids: it’s not about us, or our feelings or our identities even. It’s about making a safe environment for children.” Jan. 6 Rally Some of Newsome’s critics have in the past pointed out that he was present at the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally. Newsome candidly admits that he attended the rally, but said he had no bad intentions and broke no laws that day. “I went to January 6, with my friend, a retired police officer,” Newsome said. According to Newsome, the FBI previously investigated his friend who attended the event, a retired Cook County police officer, and had cleared him of any wrongdoing. The officer, who asked that his name be excluded from the story, has been Newsome’s friend for decades. Asked whether he had observed Newsome committing any act that could be construed as a crime, he quickly said he had not, and that the two were together “100 percent of the time” in DC. Additionally, Newsome was undergoing immunotherapy for cancer at the time, leaving him in a weakened state. The day before, Newsome noted, “I had been on the IV for my cancer.” While, at the time, Newsome was undergoing immunotherapy rather than radiation treatments, he was nevertheless weakened by the treatments. He said at one point he felt so exhausted he had to lie down on the sidewalk for a few minutes before he could continue to the rally. Newsome and his friend said their only reason for attending the rally was to hear President Donald Trump speak and to ensure people were safe. “We went down there for two things, one to see our president speak. Two, because we’re both still big guys even though we’re older,” Newsome said. “We saw in November, December, families, parents overly attacked by Antifa [and] BLM in front of their hotels.” Newsome said he had left by the time order broke down at the rally. As proof, he provided time-stamped photos. Newsome’s companion backed up his story: “When the alleged insurrection happened we were already gone,” he said. “We were halfway to our hotel, which was approximately three quarters to a mile away. Halfway during the course of our walk, we saw a bunch of squad cars, lights and sirens on, going in the direction of the Capitol.” It was not until after the two men returned to their hotel that they learned about the Capitol breach, they said. Newsome’s photos and time stamps from that day show that he did not trespass on Capitol grounds and was gone before the breach ensued. Newsome said that he and his friend would not have attended the rally if they had known about the bad intentions some had that day. “It’s not a crime to have been in DC on Jan. 6, whatever the Nancy Pelosis and Liz Cheneys would like you to believe,” Ed Martin, a top attorney for Jan. 6 defendants, told the Epoch Times. “The American people are so disgusted by this stuff.” “If anyone that was there in Washington on Jan. 6 committed a crime in so doing, that’s a mockery of what America’s about. That’s not the standard and that’s not America.” Ambivalent Replies Newsome has gotten lukewarm or ambivalent replies, or none, from the federal agencies with which he has discussed the issue. Following his experience in December, Newsome sent a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request to the FBI, seeking more information about his newly discovered status as an alleged terror risk. The FBI refused to discuss details with Newsome. The FBI letter Newsome received in response to his request, says in part: “The U.S. Government can neither confirm nor deny whether a particular person is on any terrorist watch list. Maintaining the confidentiality of government watch lists is necessary to achieve the objectives of the U.S. Government, as well as to protect the privacy of individuals who may be on a watch list for a limited time and later removed. If the U.S. Government revealed who was listed on any government watch list, terrorists would be able to take actions to avoid detection by government authorities. Thus, the FBI neither confirms nor denies the existence of your subject’s name on any watch lists pursuant to FOIA exemption.” Because the federal government refuses to so much as acknowledge that Newsome has been placed on a list, it is unclear why Newsome’s name was flagged for enhanced screening. Newsome told the Epoch Times that he thinks the addition of his name to the list may be in response to his past political activities. In their response to an Epoch Times inquiry about Newsome, the FBI’s press office insisted that the agency does not open investigations solely on the grounds of protected First Amendment activity. “The FBI can never open an investigation based solely on protected First Amendment activity,” the agency wrote. Told about this reply, Martin immediately pointed out the key word in that reply: “solely.” “The wiggle word is ‘solely,’ so that means they have to say something else,” Martin explained. “So it’s not solely because you asked about the pornography, it’s because you got a speeding ticket when you were 18 that wasn’t resolved, or because you were in January 6. “So it’s not ‘solely’—[the FBI is saying they] would never do it solely on constitutionally-protected grounds,” Martin said, adding that the FBI had effectively named itself “the judge of what adds up to something dramatic.” The FBI reply continued: “We cannot and do not investigate ideology. We focus on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security.” After hearing this reply, Martin made another observation of what he called a “wiggle” phrase: “intend to commit.” “[The FBI is] saying here that they’re gonna read minds, and they’re gonna tell us who is intending to commit a crime,” Martin said. “They didn’t say ‘a propensity for crime.’ At least with a ‘propensity’ you can look at some factors—if you have a previous conviction, if you have were arrested multiple times, and others—so with the word ‘propensity’ you can at least make an argument. “They’re gonna be the mind readers? They’re gonna read the minds of the American people? That’s insanity,” Martin ruled. The spokesperson expressly refused to answer questions relating to the process of placing someone on a watch list, including questions about oversight of the FBI’s ability to place Americans on flight watch lists. “It’s just stupid, ya know?” Newsome said of the reply. “Clearly I already know I’m on the list, that’s why I’m writing to you.” Additionally, Newsome also reached out to the TSA. In his query, Newsome requested information and tried to get back on the TSA pre-check list. In its reply, the TSA said he was no longer eligible for its pre-check list, but suggested that Newsome would no longer be subject to enhanced screening. Newsome thought after receiving the letter that he had been removed from the list before his most recent flight. “As a result of recurrent checks and based on a comprehensive background check, TSA was unable to determine that you pose a sufficiently low risk to transportation and national security to continue to be eligible for expedited airport security screening through the TSA Pre-[Check] Application Program,” the reply said. “As a result, TSA has determined that you are no longer eligible to participate in the TSA Pre-[Check] Application Program. “This eligibility determination for the TSA Pre-[Check] Application Program is within the sole discretion of TSA,” the letter added. “Although you have been found ineligible to continue your participation in the TSA Pre-[Check] Application Program, you will continue to be screened at airport security checkpoints according to TSA standard screening protocols.” Told about these replies, Martin sighed, “The bureaucrats will all say ‘It’s not me, it’s not me.’ At this point do we even know who has the oversight for this? Part of the problem with this government is now, when an official says ‘I’m not in charge of that,’ we can’t believe it.” Newsome has been in contact with other legal and political figures as well, and remains committed to clearing his name. Tyler Durden Tue, 03/07/2023 - 22:45.....»»

'Geofence' Warrants Threaten Every Phone User’s Privacy Authored by Reilly Stephens via RealClear Wire, The last time your phone asked you to allow this or that app access to your location data, you may have had some trepidation about how much Apple or Google know about you. You may have worried about what might come of that, or read about China’s use of the data to track anti-lockdown protesters. What you probably didn’t realize is Google has already searched your data on behalf of the federal government to see if you were involved with January 6th. But last month, the federal district court in DC issued an opinion in the case of one of the many defendants who stands accused of sacking the Capitol in the wake of the 2020 election. And with it, Judge Rudolph Contreras became the first federal district judge to approve a “Geofence” warrant, endorsing a recent police innovation: searching the cell phone history of every American to check who happened to be in the area of some potential crime. The “Geofence” in this context refers to cell phone location data collected by Google from users of its Android operating system, as well as iPhone users who use apps such as Google Maps. Location tracking can be turned off, but most users allow it for the convenience of getting directions, tracking their daily jog, or finding the nearest Chipotle. The Government’s warrant demanded location history for every Google account holder within a range of longitude and latitude roughly corresponding to the Capitol building on the afternoon of January 6, 2021, along with similar data from that morning and evening (to filter out Hill staff and security guards). It’s not clear this information was even needed: This defendant was apprehended within the building that day, carrying knives and pepper spray, and features on various security cameras — his whereabouts are not in question. Many of his coreligionists were considerate enough to live stream their antics themselves. While tracking down every participant in what was dubbed the Beer Belly Putsch is impractical, prosecutors have not lacked for defendants, or for evidence against them. But the government nonetheless decided to resort to a level of mass surveillance without precedent in history or criminal law. This is only the second federal district judge to rule on such a warrant, and the first, in the Eastern District of Virginia, found it “invalid for lack of particularized probable cause” (though that judge declined to suppress the evidence on the basis of other Fourth Amendment loopholes created by the Supreme Court). That particular requirement comes from the Fourth Amendment itself, which calls for every warrant to “particularly describ[e] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” This means that, for instance, the warrant issued last year for former President Trump’s Florida residence did not simply say “search the house,” but detailed specific rooms to be searched for specific things (boxes of documents). The cops can’t — or at least are not supposed to — dump out your underwear drawer based on a tip that you’re hiding cocaine in your basement. It's difficult to imagine how a Geofence warrant could ever be particularized in the sense the Fourth Amendment is supposed to require. Traditionally, the government would identify a list of suspects, and then ask the phone company for records specific to them. Geofencing reverses the order of operations: Now the government demands the data of everyone, and only decides which of us is guilty or innocent after invading the privacy of both. In order to find the phones within the Geofence, Google must search their entire repository — if you have a google account, you were searched alongside the perpetrators. It’s difficult to distinguish this approach from the practice that inspired the Fourth Amendment in the first place: the English “general warrants,” which allowed customs officers broad latitude to search any home they liked for smuggled goods. One might cut Judge Contreras some slack on the basis that the existing Fourth Amendment law he is obliged to apply comes from the era of pay phones and radio transmitters. Traditional doctrine turns on a citizen’s “expectation of privacy,” and holds that there is little such expectation in one’s public movements. This struck a perhaps reasonable balance between privacy and the needs of law enforcement in an era where, if the police wanted to track you, they had to dedicate scarce manpower to maintaining a tail — resource constraints typically restricted surveillance to those reasonably under suspicion. Over the past decade, the Supreme Court has attempted to grapple with how to apply these principles to modern technology. In Riley v. California, the Court held that unlike pockets and purses, the police cannot automatically search the smartphone of anyone they arrest. The opinion turned on the sheer breadth of material available on our personal devices: one might keep a bit of personal information in one’s purse or wallet, but nothing like what’s a few clicks away on any iPhone: texts, emails, calendars, intimate photos, bank accounts, how many calories the owner has eaten that day and which friends they’ve paid money to in recent weeks for which reasons. The Court held that this new reality required new rules for law enforcement. A few years later, in Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court addressed the use of Cell Site Location Information, the phone company’s record of which cell towers you phone connects to. This data provides a rough approximation of your whereabouts, but without the precision of Google’s location data — a given cell tower narrows your location down to a couple blocks, whereas Google’s estimated margin of error averages closer to 100 meters. The Supreme Court said that Cell Site data requires a warrant, a break from existing law which held one could not expect privacy in one’s public whereabouts. And the cops in Carpenter had identified a specific phone belonging to their suspect and match its locations to a string of robberies — they hadn’t asked Verizon to track every phone in Michigan and Ohio. One need not have sympathy for the QAnon shamans and oath-breakers to judge that this sort of digital dragnet empowers law enforcement in new and often frightening ways. The Fourth Amendment protects the rights of the accused in criminal prosecutions, and denying those protections to the guilty will ultimately harm the innocent. Police could demand location data for every phone brought to a BlackLivesMatter rally, or an NRA convention; they could identify every woman who visits an abortion clinic, or attends the March for Life. Federal criminal law has metastasized to the point where the average person probably commits multiple federal crimes on the average day — which of us is prosecuted depends mostly on the priorities and caprice of law enforcement. If you want a vision of the future, imagine your phone ratting you out to the cops, forever. Reilly Stephens is a Staff Attorney at Liberty Justice Center. Tyler Durden Tue, 03/07/2023 - 12:30.....»»

Hedges: Lynching The Deplorables Authored by Chris Hedges via The Chris Hedges Report, There is little that unites me with those who occupied the Capitol building on Jan. 6. Their vision for America, Christian nationalism, white supremacy, blind support for Trump and embrace of reactionary fact-free conspiracy theories leaves a very wide chasm between their beliefs and mine. But that does not mean I support the judicial lynching against many of those who participated in the Jan. 6 events, a lynching that is mandating years in pretrial detention and prison for misdemeanors. Once rights become privileges, none of us are safe.  Image: Executing the Law - by Mr. Fish The U.S. legal system has a very sordid history. It was used to enforce segregation and legitimize the reign of terror against Black people. It was the hammer that broke the back of militant union movements. It persecuted radicals and reformers in the name of anti-communism. After 9/11, it relentlessly went after Muslim leaders and activists with Special Administrative Measures (SAMs). SAMs, established by the Clinton administration, originally only applied to people who ordered murders from prison or were convicted of mass murder, but are now used to isolate all manner of detainees before and during trial. They severely restrict a prisoner’s communication with the outside world; prohibiting calls, letters and visits with anyone except attorneys and sharply limit contact with family members. The solitary confinement like conditions associated with SAMs undermine any meaningful right to a fair trial according to analysis by groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights and can amount to torture according to the United Nations. Julian Assange faces SAMs or similar conditions should he be extradited to the U.S. The Classified Information Procedures Act, or CIPA, begun under the Reagan administration, also allows evidence in a trial to be classified and withheld from defendants. The courts, throughout American history, have abjectly served the interests of big business and the billionaire class. The current Supreme Court is one of the most retrograde in decades, rolling back legal protections for vulnerable groups and denying workers protection from predatory corporate abuse. At least 1,003 people have been arrested and charged so far for participation in events on Jan. 6, with 476 pleading guilty, in what has been the largest single criminal investigation in U.S. history, according to analysis by Business Insider. The charges and sentences vary, with many receiving misdemeanor sentences such as fines, probation, a few months in prison or a combination of the three. Of the 394 federal defendants who have had their cases adjudicated and sentenced as of Feb. 6, approximately 220 “have been sentenced to periods of incarceration” with a further 100 defendants “sentenced to a period of home detention, including approximately 15 who also were sentenced to a period of incarceration,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. There are six convictions and four guilty pleas on charges of “seditious conspiracy.” This offense is so widely defined that it includes conspiring to levy war against the government on the one hand and delaying the execution of any law on the other. Those charged and convicted of “seditious conspiracy” were accused of collaborating to oppose “the lawful transfer of presidential power by force” by preventing or delaying the Certification of the Electoral College vote. While a few of the organizers of the Jan. 6 protest such as Stewart Rhodes, who founded Oath Keepers, may conceivably be guilty of sedition, and even this is in doubt, the vast majority of those caught up in the incursion of the Capitol did not commit serious crimes, engage in violence or know what they would do in Washington other than protest the election results.  Joseph D. McBride went to law school because his brother was serving a 15-year sentence for a crime he did not commit. He provided free legal advice as a law school student to those encamped in Zuccotti Park in New York City during the Occupy movement. Following law school, he worked as a public defender and in the Legal Aid Society. He represents several of those charged in the Jan. 6 incursion, including Richard Barnett. Barnett was photographed in Nancy Pelosi’s office with his leg propped up on her desk. Barnett was convicted by a federal jury, which deliberated for two hours, on eight counts, including disorderly conduct in the Capitol building. He faces up to 47 years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on May 3. “The post 9/11 model is being applied to American citizens,” McBride told me when I reached him by phone. “That model is the 19 hijackers. Everyone who is a religious Muslim is a suspect for the next 20 years. They should be waterboarded. They should be put in fucking jail and left in Guantanamo Bay. Lock them up. Throw away the key. Because they are psychopath extremists who believe in Allah and we don’t have time for that. They’re a threat based on who they are, what they look like, what they believe in. When the truth is, the vast majority of these guys don’t do drugs, don’t drink alcohol, they have five kids and they live pretty good lives. But because of the label of ‘terrorism’ and ‘Osama Bin Laden’ and ‘al-Qaeda’, everybody who is a Muslim is now a target. If we get on a plane next to one of these people, we get nervous about it because that’s how much it’s ingrained in us. The same thing is happening, except it’s being applied to a new group of people, primarily white Christians, Trump supporters, for now.”  “Power is going to change hands,” he warned. “The Democrats are not going to be in power forever. When power changes hands, that precedent is going to travel with it. If somebody else from the other side gets in and starts to target the people who are in power now, their families, their businesses, their lives, their freedom, then it’s over. America goes from being a free democracy to a tribalist partisan state. Maybe there’s not ethnic-cleansing in the streets, but people are cleansing each other from the workplace, from social media, from the banking system and they’re putting people in jail. That’s where we’re headed. I don’t know why people can't see what’s on the horizon.” The Jan. 6 protestors were not the first to occupy Congressional offices, including Nancy Pelosi’s office. Young environmental activists from the Sunrise Movement, anti-war activists from Code Pink and even congressional staffers have engaged in numerous occupations of congressional offices and interrupted congressional hearings. What will happen to groups such as Code Pink if they occupy congressional offices with Republicans in control of the White House, the Congress and the courts? Will they be held for years in pretrial detention? Will they be given lengthy prison terms based on dubious interpretations of the law? Will they be considered domestic terrorists? Will protests and civil disobedience become impossible? McBride said those who walked to the Capitol were not aware that the Department of Justice had created arbitrary markers, what McBride called an “imaginary red line that they draw around the Capitol grounds.” Anyone who crossed that invisible line was charged with violating Capitol grounds. He railed against the negative portrayal of the protestors in the media, the White House and Democratic Party leadership, as well as a tainted jury pool in Washington composed of people who have close links to the federal government. He said Change of Venue motions filed by the defense lawyers have been denied. “The D.C. jury pool is poisoned beyond repair,” McBride said. “When you just look at what the January 6  Committee did alone, never mind President Biden’s speeches about ‘insurrectionists,’ ‘MAGA Republican extremists’ and all this stuff, and if you just consider the fact that D.C. is very small, that people who work in the Federal Government are all by definition, kind of victims of January 6 and what happened that day, their institutions and colleagues were ‘under attack.’ How can anybody from that town serve on a jury pool? They can’t. The bias is astounding.” Jacob Chansley, the so-called “QAnon shaman” who was adorned on Jan. 6 in red, white and blue face paint, carried an American flag on a spear-tipped pole and wore a coyote-fur and horned headdress, pleaded guilty to obstruction. He was sentenced to more than three years in prison. Chansley, who says he is a practitioner of ahimsa, an ancient Indian principle of non-violence toward all living beings, was not accused of assaulting anyone. He was diagnosed in prison with transient schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety.  Guy Wesley Reffitt, who did not enter the Capitol building, nevertheless was sentenced after three hours of deliberations to seven years and three months in prison on five charges, including “two counts of civil disorder, and one count each of obstruction of an official proceeding, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a firearm, and obstruction of justice.” His obstruction of justice charge came from “threatening” his two teenage children to prevent them from reporting him to law enforcement. Daniel Ray Caldwell, a Marine Corps veteran, who sprayed a chemical irritant at a group of police officers outside the Capitol and entered through the Senate Wing doors where he remained inside for approximately two minutes, was sentenced to more than five years in prison. He spent, like many who have been charged, nearly two years in pretrial detention. Even the charges against Rhodes, who faces 20 years in prison, and other militia leaders of groups such as the Proud Boys are problematic. The New York Times reported that, “despite the vast amount of evidence the government collected in the case — including more than 500,000 encrypted text messages — investigators never found a smoking gun that conclusively showed the Proud Boys plotted to help President Donald J. Trump remain in office.” The government has relied on the testimony of a former Proud Boy, Jeremy Bertino, who is cooperating with prosecutors to build an “inferential case” against Enrique Tarrio, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola, the five defendants in the current Proud Boy case. Bertino, on cross-examination, admitted that in previous interviews with the government, he repeatedly told investigators that the Proud Boys did not have an explicit plan to halt the election certification and that he did not anticipate acts of violence on Jan. 6. The FBI had as many as eight informants in the Proud Boys that included its leader, Enrique Tarrio, during the storming of the Capitol, raising the very real possibility of entrapment. “They’re changing the laws,” McBride said. “Look at the 1512 charge, the obstruction charge. That was used for document shredding in Enron. It has no applicability to Jan. 6 whatsoever. They took it. They repurposed it. They weaponised it against these people and made it impossible for them to defend themselves. When you look at the civil disorder charge, they are saying that if January 6 was one big civil disorder, and if you had any type of interaction with a police officer that day that may or may not have caused the police officer to step away from his duties for a moment, you can go down with civil disorder and get five years in jail.” Ryan Nichols, a Marine Corps veteran, is living under house arrest in Texas after nearly two years in pretrial detention, much of it in solitary confinement, in Washington, D.C and Virginia jails. He faces five felony and three misdemeanor charges. Prosecutors say Nichols assaulted officers and obstructed an official proceeding. He has been ordered to “stay away from Washington, D.C.” except for business related to his case, according to court documents. He has had to submit to “location monitoring technology” and is denied access to the internet and his phone except to perform functions related to his case. He cannot have contact with anyone involved in the Jan. 6 events, including co-defendants. Nichols must remain in his home 24 hours a day except for medical and court appointments. He is permitted to attend Sunday church services at Mobberly Baptist Church in Longview, Texas. He is facing 20 years in prison. He is scheduled to go to trial on March 27. I spoke with Bonnie Nichols, Ryan’s wife, by phone from their home in Longview, Texas.  Ryan was arrested on Jan. 18, 2020. The FBI surrounded their house at 5:30 am in armored vehicles. They unscrewed the bulbs from flood lights and cut the wires to the couple’s security cameras before kicking in the front door. The couple and their two children, then aged 4 and 6, were at Bonnie’s parents house during the raid. The FBI confiscated their weapons, electronics and documents, including Social Security cards.  “We wanted to cooperate,” she said. “We didn’t know anything was wrong. They asked Ryan to come in for questioning. Ryan went and turned himself in. They arrested him and I didn’t see him again for over a year and a half.” Ryan, who had no criminal record, ran a nonprofit called Rescue the Universe where he carried out search-and-rescue operations after natural disasters. He was denied bail. He was sent to a holding facility in Grady County Oklahoma for two months before being flown to Washington, D.C. where he was met by some two dozen U.S. Marshals. His feet were shackled. His arms were shackled to a chain around his waist. He was placed in long term solitary confinement and denied video calls or visitation from his family, including his children. He was denied access to his trial documents for nearly a year and prohibited from attending religious services in the jail. Ryan, whose most serious offense appears to be incendiary rhetoric calling for a “second American revolution,” spent nearly 22 months in solitary confinement. Depressed, struggling to cope with the physical and psychological strain of prolonged isolation, he was eventually placed on suicide watch. He was strapped to a bench in a room where a light was never turned off. Guards would periodically shout through a window “Do you feel like killing yourself?” Those on suicide watch who said  “yes” remained strapped to the bench. Those who said “no” were sent back to their cells. Ryan was often prohibited from having nail clippers — the guards told him he could chew his toenails down — or getting a haircut unless he agreed to be vaccinated for COVID-19. When Ryan appeared before Judge Thomas Hogan, who finally released him on Nov. 23, 2022, he told Ryan, with his long unkempt hair and fingernails, that he looked like Tom Hanks in the film Cast Away. Every night, for the two years Ryan was held in solitary confinement, Bonnie and her two small boys would say prayers that Ryan would one day come home. She said she and her family have received numerous death threats. “Ryan deals with insomnia,” Bonnie said of her husband. “He deals with extreme anxiety, depression and paranoia. He will not even go outside of his backyard because he’s scared that if he goes outside, that they’re going to take him back to jail. He has liver issues from the food that he ate because they fed him baloney sandwiches and trash while he was in D.C. He’s having a lot of medical issues. He also has lower testosterone than a 60-year-old man because he wasn’t able to have any sunlight. His vitamin D levels are low. The list goes on and on. This man does not sleep at night. He has nightmares. He whimpers at night in his sleep because he has dreams that he's back in D.C. I mean, he’s a mess. This is the result of what has happened to him. He has vision loss. He doesn’t see as good as he used to.” Ryan’s family, like many families of those charged, are struggling financially. Bonnie said their savings are gone. She and Ryan are heavily in debt. She has set up a fundraising page here. “We are God-loving patriots,” she said. “Who’s going to be next? It’s not about Republican or Democrat or white or Black, Christian, or Muslim. We are all children of God. We are all U.S. American citizens. We are all entitled to our constitutional rights and freedom of speech. We can all come together and agree on that, right?” The cheerleading, or at best indifference, by Democratic Party supporters and much of the left to these show trials will come back to haunt them. We are exacerbating the growing tribalism and political antagonisms that will increasingly express themselves through violence. We are complicit, once again, of using the courts to carry out vendettas. We are corroding democratic institutions. We are hardening the ideology and rage of the far-right. We are turning those being hounded to prison into political prisoners and martyrs. We are moving ever closer towards tyranny. The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Tyler Durden Mon, 03/06/2023 - 22:20.....»»

Victor Davis Hanson: Life Among The Ruins Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com, American society is facing three existential crises not unlike those that overcame the late Roman, and a millennium later, terminal Byzantine, empires. Premodern Barbarism We are suffering an epidemic of premodern barbarism. The signs unfortunately appear everywhere. Over half a million homeless people crowd our big-city downtowns. Most know the result of such Medieval street living is unhealthy, violent, and lethal for all concerned. Yet no one knows—or even seems to worry about—how to stop it. So public defecation, urination, fornication, and injection continue unabated. Progressive urban pedestrians pass by holding their noses, averting their gazes, and accelerating the pace of their walking. The greenest generation in history allows its sidewalks to become pre-civilizational sewers. In a very brief time, we all but have destroyed the downtowns of our major cities—which will increasingly become vacant in a manner like the 6th-century A.D. Roman forum. All accept that defunding the police, no-cash bail, Soros-funded district attorneys, and radical changes in jurisprudence have destroyed deterrence. The only dividend is the unleashing of a criminal class to smash-and-grab, carjack, steal, burglarize, execute, and assault—with de facto immunity. Instead we are sometimes lectured that looting is not a crime, but lengthy incarceration is criminally immoral. We have redefined felonies as misdemeanors warranting no punishment. Misdemeanors are now infractions that are not criminal. Infractions we treat as lifestyle choices. Normality, not criminality, is deemed criminal. We all know this will not work, but still wonder why it continues. Many among the middle classes of our cities who can flee or move, do so—like 5th-century equestrians who left Rome for rural fortified farms before the onslaught of the Ostrogoths and Visigoths. For most of our lives we were lectured that the old southern states—Florida, Tennessee, Texas—were backward and uninviting. Now even liberals often flee to them, leaving behind supposedly cosmopolitan Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, and New York. The more people leave the blue states, the more those states praise themselves as utopian. The less well-off, without the means to leave, hope that their environs have hit bottom so things can only improve. The elite who caused this premodern catastrophe assumes they will always have the money and wherewithal to ensure that themselves and their own can navigate around or even profit from the barbarism they unleashed. For them the critic, not the target of criticism, is the greater threat. The hard urban work of the 1990s and early 2000s—cleaner, safer subways, secure nightlife downtown, clean sidewalks, low vacancy rates, little vagrancy, and litter-free streets—so often has been undone, deliberately so. We are descending to the late 1960s and 1970s wild streets—if we are lucky the mayhem does not devolve even further. A mere 10 years ago, if an American learned that a man was arrested for clubbing, robbing, or shooting innocents, and yet would be released from custody that day of his crime, he would have thought it an obscenity. Now he fears that often the criminal will not even be arrested. A once secure border no longer exists. Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas simply demolished it and allowed 6-7 million foreign nationals to cross illegally into the United States without audits—to the delight of their apparent constituent, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. What would shame a Biden or Mayorkas? What would change their minds? Billions of dollars spent on social services for the lawbreaking at the expense of the American poor? Would 100,000 annual lethal overdoses—12 times more than those who died over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined—from drugs that flow across the open border sway them? Or would it take 200,000, or 300,000 deaths before Joe Biden relented and ceased his chuckling? What does a people do when its highest officials simply renounce their oaths of office and refuse to enforce laws they don’t like? Everyone knows the border will eventually have to become secure, but none have any idea whether it will take another 20, 30, or 50 million illegal entrants and 1 million more fentanyl deaths to close it. Polls show race relations have hit historic lows. Much of the ecumenicalism of the post-Civil Rights movement seems squandered—almost deliberately so. The Left now rarely mentions Martin Luther King, Jr. or even the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. Perhaps it knows it has violated the spirit and legacy of both. Today, our identity politics leaders believe that the color of our skin, not the content of our character, certainly matters more. The practitioners of the new tribalism in some sense fear outlawing segregation and discrimination by race. They know to do so would end racially restricted houses and safe spaces, racially exclusive graduations, and race-based admissions, hiring, and promotion on campus. Read Professor Ibram X. Kendi and his message is implicit. For him, the problem with a Jim Crow-like system was not segregation or racial chauvinism per se, but merely who was doing the victimizing and who were the victims: so the original racism was bad; but racism in reverse is good. We abhor violence, racism, and misogyny—in the abstract. Yet the entire hip-hop industry would find no audience—or so we are told by its appeasers—if rappers refrained from “ho” misogyny, brags of violence against law enforcement, and self-described proprietary use of the N-word. Most know that young black males under 30 commit violent crimes at well over 10 times their 3-4 percent demographic of the population—so often victimizing the nonwhite. All know that reality must remain unmentionable even as its causes need to be debated and discussed if lives are to be saved. Yet the greater crime seems not the crime itself, but even mentioning crime. Postmodern Abyss Postmodernism in our age is deadlier even than premodernism. Sexually explicit drag shows that allow the attendance of children 20 years ago would have been outlawed—by liberals worried over the trauma of the young watching performance-art simulated sex. Now the children come last and the performers first—as ratified by the same liberals. But to fathom the new transitioning, simply learn from ancient transitioning and gender dysphoria, an unhappy classical theme from Catullus’ Attis poem (stimulatus ibi furenti rabie, vagus/ devolsit ili acuto sibi pondera silice/ itaque ut relicta sensit sibi membra sine viro) to Giton in Petronius’ Satyricon. Current “science” is now synonymous with ideology, religion, or superstition. Lockdowns, mRNA vaccinations, masking, transgenderism, “climate change,” and green power brook no dissent. They are declared scientifically correct in the manner that the sun used to revolve around the earth, and any dissenting Galileo or Copernicus is cancel-cultured, doxxed, and deplatformed. It is now verboten to cite the causes of the current upswing. We must remain silent about the classical exegeses that cults, pornography, and constructed sexual identities, when not biological, were the manifestations of a bored culture’s affluence (luxus), leisure (otium), and decadence (licentia/dissolutio). The classical analyses of an elite collapse focus on a falling birth rate, a scarce labor force, ubiquitous abortion, an undermanned military, and a shrinking population. We suffer all that and perhaps more still. Millions of young men are detached and ensconced in solitude, their indebted 20s too often consumed with video-gaming, internet surfing, or consumption of porn. Many  suffer from prolonged adolescence. Many assume that they are immune from criticism, given that the alternative of getting married, having children, finding a full-time job, and buying a house is society’s new abnormal. Rarely has an elite society become so Victorian and yet so raunchy. A slip with an anachronistic “Gal” or “Honey” can get one fired. Meanwhile, grabbing one’s genitals while pregnant on stage before 120 million viewers is considered a successful Super Bowl extravaganza. Our army is short of its annual recruitment by 25 percent. We all suspect but do not say out loud the cause. The stereotyping of poor and middle-class white males as both raging and biased, and yet expected yet to fight and die in misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, has finally convinced the parents of these 18-year-olds to say, “no more.” Need we say anything about the lack of efficacy or morality of the Department of Justice, FBI, or CIA? Or rather is there anything the FBI will not do? Doctor court evidence? Hire Twitter to suppress the news? Monitor parents at school board meetings? Allow directors to lie under oath or “misremember” before Congress? Swiping clean subpoenaed phones? Hiring fakers to compile dirt on a presidential candidate—and then using that known smear to hoodwink a judge to allow spying on Americans? Suppressing evidence on a laptop to warp an election? Raiding an ex-president’s home with a SWAT-like team? Spying on Catholics in mass? Storming a home full of children of a man accused of a politically incorrect misdemeanor? The more the military has been stalemated in Iraq, humiliated in Afghanistan, and dreading what China will soon do or what Iran will even sooner let off, the more it insists our priorities should be diversity, equity, and inclusion. Will that escapism ensure more lethal pilots, tank commanders, and Marine company commanders? The mindsets of too many of our new generations of command are twofold: first to be promoted by virtue signaling woke policies that they must know eventually will hamper combat readiness, and then in the future to rotate at retirement into multimillionaire status by leveraging past expertise for defense contractors. Keep that in mind and almost every publicly uttered nonsense from our highest in the Pentagon makes perfect sense. Them There is a third challenge. Our enemies—illiberal, deadly, and vengeful—have concluded we are more effective critics of ourselves than are they. They enjoy our divided nation, torn apart by racial incivility, dysfunctional cities, and woke madness. (Notice how even the communists long ago dropped deadly Maoist wokeism, or how the Russians viewed the Soviet commissariat as antithetical to their military and economic agendas.) Iran believes that this present generation of Americans would likely allow it to nuke Israel rather than stop its proliferation. China assumes that Taiwan is theirs and the only rub is how to destroy or absorb it without losing too many global markets and income. Russia  conjectures that the more we trumpet its impending defeat, the more it will destroy Eastern Ukraine and call such a desert peace. Our “friends” can be as dangerous as our enemies. A visitor from another world might conclude Mexico has done more damage to America than North Korea, Iran, and Russia combined. It has, by intent, flooded our border with 20 million illegal aliens. It has allowed cartels with Chinese help to conduct multibillion-dollar profiteering by killing 100,000 Americans per year (did the Kremlin ever match that tally in a half century of the Cold War?). Mexico drains $60 billion from its expatriates on the expectation that American subsidies will free up their cash to be sent home. The more the cartels run wild, the more money trickles down—while their top drug enforcement official Genaro García Luna was found guilty in a New York courtroom  for collusion with the cartels. How did all of this so quickly erode our great country? Our crisis was not the next generation of foreign Hitlers and Stalins. It was not earthquakes, floods, or even pandemics. It was not endemic poverty and want. It was not a meager inheritance from past generations of incompetents. Nor was it a dearth of natural resources or bounty. Instead our catastrophe arose from our most highly educated, the wealthiest and most privileged in American history with the greatest sense of self-esteem and sanctimoniousness. Sometime around the millennium, they felt their genius could change human nature and bring an end to history—if only they had enough power to force hoi polloi to follow their abstract and bankrupt theories that they had no intention of abiding by themselves. And then the few sowed the wind, and so the many now reap their whirlwind. Tyler Durden Mon, 03/06/2023 - 19:40.....»»

A Partisan Judge's Parting Rampage Authored by Julie Kelly via American Greatness, Defense lawyers call it “January 6 jurisprudence”—a unique set of rules and laws that only apply to those ensnared in the Justice Department’s unstoppable push to punish individuals who do not believe Joe Biden is the legitimately elected president of the United States. So far, nearly 1,000 Americans have been arrested and charged, mostly on low-level misdemeanors, for their involvement in the Capitol protest as the regime circles its ultimate prize: Donald Trump. The fundamental “crime” that acts as the basis of January 6 jurisprudence is not necessarily the four-hour disturbance that temporarily delayed the certification process that day. No, the real crime—to hear regime apparatchiks, the media (but I repeat myself), and Democratic Party politicians (including Biden himself) tell it—is promoting the “Big Lie,” the notion that the 2020 presidential election was rigged or stolen. Efforts to uncover election irregularities or lawfully object to the outcome are under criminal investigation resulting in the unprecedented weaponization of legal and judicial authority conducted by unaccountable prosecutors and judges. Enabling this farce in the nation’s capital is Beryl Howell, the chief judge of the D.C. District Court. A former Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill, Howell was appointed to the bench by Barack Obama in 2010 and elevated to chief judge in 2016. Since then, Howell has steered the government’s yearslong effort to put Trump in handcuffs. She managed the grand jury proceedings for Special Counsel Robert Mueller and is currently overseeing the Justice Department’s latest iteration of its “Get Trump” campaign—a sweeping investigation into alleged attempts to “overturn” the 2020 election. Her latest broadside is aimed at Representative Scott Perry (R-Pa.). FBI agents, acting at the direction of the rogue Washington Field Office, stole Perry’s cell phone on August 9, 2022, the day after the same office executed an armed raid at Mar-a-Lago. Perry was traveling with his family in New Jersey at the time when agents seized his phone, copied its contents, and returned the device.  Perry’s lawyers immediately attempted to keep the contents of the phone out of the hands of a leak-happy Justice Department, citing privacy and privilege factors, including the Constitution’s speech and debate clause, which basically protects the legislative branch from retaliatory actions by the executive branch. When Perry initially refused to waive that protection at the request of the Justice Department, the government successfully sought a second warrant a few days later to review what investigators collected from the phone. And that’s when Judge Howell stepped in. “After a determination that there was probable cause to believe that evidence of criminal activity would be found on the targeted cell phone, the government’s search warrant was approved,” Howell wrote in one motion filed in the mostly sealed case. The second search warrant was reportedly approved by Howell on August 18. Since then, Howell has wielded her power to prove herself right. A grand jury under her purview is “investigating potential federal criminal law violations stemming from efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election,” Howell wrote. According to the government, Howell noted, Perry used his phone “to communicate with individuals allegedly engaged in those efforts over critical time periods at issue in the investigation.” That’s just a sliver of the crazy talk in Howell’s 51-page motion rejecting most of Perry’s arguments about why roughly 2,200 emails and texts qualify for protection under the speech and debate clause. Perry’s motions remain under seal, but his privilege claims appear to be centered around Congress’ obligations to administer the Electoral Count Act. Following a private review in October of the records that Perry sought to protect, Howell determined only a handful met the clause’s standards. The remaining 2,055 records, including correspondence and materials exchanged between other House members and Executive Branch officials, were fair game, Howell concluded. “In the broadest possible terms, Rep. Perry believes the Clause shields all these responsive records from investigative review because they are part of his informal fact-finding efforts to understand election security issues in the 2020 election since the ECA process obligated Rep. Perry to vote on whether to confirm the electors and certify the 2020 election,” Howell wrote in December. “What is plain is that the Clause does not shield Rep. Perry’s random musings with private individuals touting an expertise in cybersecurity or political discussions with attorneys from a presidential campaign, or with state legislators concerning hearings before them about possible local election fraud.” On that point, Howell unintentionally tipped the government’s hand. Why would the Justice Department need those communications for a criminal investigation? It’s not illegal to have any of those discussions, even for the imaginary crime of attempting to overturn an election. Clearly, prosecutors want Perry’s texts and emails to leak to regime media cut-outs in an effort to embarrass him, its modus operandi since January 6. In one particularly sneering line, Howell mocked Perry’s “wide-ranging interest in bolstering his belief that the results of the 2020 election were somehow incorrect—even in the face of his own reelection.” (Howell routinely condemns January 6 defendants in her courtroom for believing the “Big Lie.” Last April, Howell asked a man pleading guilty to trespassing whether he still believed that Biden did not legitimately win the presidency. He answered no.) In a follow-up order filed on January 4, Howell raised “the public’s interest in an expedient investigation” as to why she would not halt her demand for Perry to turn over the records in question to the Justice Department. She gave Perry two days to file an appeal with the D.C. Circuit Court. And the very next day, the appellate court issued an emergency order to put Howell’s ruling on hold. A three-judge appellate court panel heard arguments in the case last week. According to Politico, at least two judges were skeptical of Howell’s—and the Justice Department’s —thinking. “‘Why wouldn’t an individual member’s fact-finding be covered?’ Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, asked a Justice Department lawyer. It could be a few months before the appellate court issues a ruling. In the meantime, investigators don’t have access to Perry’s cell phone records. (Or at least that is how it’s supposed to be.) By then, the D.C. District court will have a new chief judge; Howell’s stint ends soon. Which is one reason the Justice Department is accelerating the pace of its investigation, including subpoenaing former Vice President Mike Pence a few weeks ago.  “The frenzy of subpoenas comes as Judge Beryl Howell’s seven-year term as chief judge of the D.C. district court enters its last month,” the Wall Street Journal recently observed. “In that post, she has presided over all grand-jury matters in Washington and repeatedly ruled for the Justice Department in closed-door disputes with Mr. Trump over executive privilege.” Prosecutors undoubtedly will miss Howell’s machinations on behalf of the government. As her rulings in Perry’s case once again show, Howell is a shameless partisan willing to twist the law, and the U.S. Constitution, to advance her own political agenda. She is the queen of January 6 jurisprudence. Tyler Durden Tue, 02/28/2023 - 19:25.....»»

Nishad Singh, co-founder and former head of engineering at bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, pleaded guilty to six criminal charges, including conspiring to commit securities and commodities fraud on Tuesday, according to several media reports. Singh has also agreed to cooperate against his former boss Sam Bankman-Fried, former chief at FTX, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. “I’m unbelievably sorry for my role in all of this and the harm that it has caused,” Singh told U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in a hearing Tuesday, according to the report. Bankman-Fried, who was charged with eight criminal accounts, including securities fraud in December, and hit with four additional charges last week, remains confined to his parents’ home on a $250 million bond. Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news......»»

Nishad Singh, co-founder and former head of engineering at bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, reportedly pleaded guilty to six criminal charges......»»

This is what happened to 72 police officers after killings that gained national attention and sparked protests over police abuse. iStock; Anadolu Agency/Getty; InsiderWe checked in on the police officers behind some of the highest-profile police killings of the past 20 years. Some end up behind bars. Others get raises.The police killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee last month resulted in five officers involved being charged with murder and fired from the Memphis Police Department. Nichols's killing was notable for its apparent cruelty: Officers pepper sprayed, kicked, and punched an unarmed man to death. Footage from a nearby pole camera captured much of the assault, as well as officers standing around Nichols as he lay grievously injured. One detective took a photo and texted it to at least five others. The Nichols case was unusual for the speed at which the officers involved were fired and charged, but the incident itself shared many similarities to other instances of egregious police violence that have risen to national attention in past decades.These killings often draw intense public scrutiny, in some cases prompting departments to shut down elite "street crime" squads like Memphis's Scorpion unit or forcing lawmakers to question police budgets and tactics. The victims in these cases become nationally known and their names — George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Amadou Diallo — rallying cries against police abuses.Police officers involved in the deaths have become an intense focus of investigation, protest, and media coverage. Ultimately, though, most of those officers fall out of public consciousness.  Despite being at the heart of some of the most defining incidents in modern policing, most of the officers involved continue to live their lives under the radar.    Insider's review of 72 cops involved in two dozen of the most notorious police killings of the past 30 years shows the many different paths officers have taken. Some dwindled into obscurity after resigning or being fired. Others stayed on the force and even received promotions. A few became pro-police rallying points, while others ended up incarcerated for their crimes — an extreme rarity for police who kill people on the job. Fewer than 2% of police officers who shoot and kill people while on duty are charged with murder or manslaughter, and fewer still are convicted, according to data collected by Philip Stinson, a professor at Bowling Green State University who studies police shootings. Despite nationwide protests demanding greater police accountability, that figure hasn't changed markedly since 2005, the first year Stinson began collecting data."Every time there's a big case, we think, 'maybe this is the case where something changes,'" he said. "But it doesn't." Prosecutors in most states still face steep obstacles to building criminal cases against officers. More departments have adopted body-worn cameras, but officers often fail to use them appropriately. Officers and police unions continue to close ranks around their colleagues who have been accused of using excessive force.There's no nationwide view into what happens to officers involved in egregious incidents of violence. A 2021 bill, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, would have created a nationwide database of police misconduct, but that legislation stalled and withered in a Republican-controlled Senate.Insider attempted to contact the officers named in this article, but did not receive any replies to requests for comment. Multiple officers could also not be reached for comment.The incidents that Insider reviewed, focusing on those that rose to national media and received mention in thousands of news clips, are not representative of officer-involved killings as a whole. Instead, these cases show how officers involved in high-profile killings like the one in Memphis last month can end up anywhere from behind bars to back on the force. The cops who left the forceMany of the officers involved in high profile police killings resigned under public pressure or were fired by their departments following the incidents, but either never faced charges or were acquitted of criminal wrongdoing. These former cops are a grab bag of outcomes. Some fought unsuccessfully to be reinstated, while others drifted into different lines of work — sometimes with their past following them to their new professions.Two of the four officers who fired their weapons in the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, who was unarmed when police shot him 41 times in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building, joined the New York City Fire Department. Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy were acquitted of all charges in Diallo's death and months later successfully applied to become firefighters, prompting a wave of media coverage and criticism.    Diallo's father, along with representatives from the Islamic Society of Fire Department Personnel and the Vulcan Society fraternal order of Black firefighters all condemned the hirings."If a Black man had ever murdered somebody and went to trial for murder, no matter what the circumstances, that man would not be allowed to be a firefighter," Paul Washington, then-president of the Vulcan Society, said at the time. Two Black firefighters transferred to different firehouses after McMellon was assigned to their engine company. (The FDNY denied at the time that the transfers were related to McMellon.)McMellon is still an active member of the FDNY, the department confirmed to Insider, while Murphy is retired.People gather to protest against the police killing of Tyre Nichols at Times Square in New York on January 28, 2023.Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesMeanwhile, several officers in high-profile killings complained in the following years that they became pariahs and found it difficult to restart their lives.  Darren Wilson, the officer who in 2014 shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, claimed a year after the incident that he faced death threats, was forced to move neighborhoods and was denied rejoining the police force after his acquittal. Wilson, who became a right-wing rallying point with supporters raising almost five hundred thousand dollars for him after the incident, told The New Yorker that he had quit a retail job stocking shoes after two weeks when reporters started calling the store.A similar infamy dogged one of the officers who beat and injured Rodney King. Timothy Wind, one of the officers who repeatedly struck King, was acquitted of criminal charges but fired by the LAPD. He drew protests after being hired as an unarmed community service officer in Culver City, California in 1994. Wind eventually moved to small town Indiana to avoid scrutiny, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2012, but maintained he did nothing wrong and attended law school with the intent on pursuing a career in criminal justice. The AP reported in 2021 that he had moved to Kansas. Calls placed to numbers listed under his name didn't go through or weren't answered.Other officers have retired with pensions or quietly found other careers. Michael Oliver, one of the NYPD officers involved in the fatal shooting of Sean Bell in 2006, was forced to resign but allowed to collect $40,000 in pension benefits, according to the New York Post. He later became a salesman at a New Jersey BMW dealership. In rare cases, cops involved in these killings have tried to publicly rehabilitate their image rather than seek out anonymity. At least two officers in the cases that Insider reviewed wrote books about their experiences, most recently one of the three Louisville Metro Police officers involved in the botched raid that killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor.Jonathan Mattingly, who did not face any charges for his role in the raid, retired in 2021 and quickly wrote a tell-all book about the incident. Published through right-wing outlet The Daily Wire's imprint DW Books, Mattingly's book frames himself as a good cop unjustly vilified by "the media and the woke mob." He repeatedly blames Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker, who shot and wounded Mattingly after police broke down the door while executing a warrant late at night, for provoking officers to kill Taylor. (Attorneys for Walker in his civil suit against the Louisville Department assert the book "perpetuates a lie" that their client knew it was police officers knocking down the door.) Mattingly also devotes part of the book to his past assignments in an "alpha male" street crime unit and suggests celebrities such as LeBron James and Oprah Winfrey spread lies about the raid. In one section, he claims that defense attorneys refused to take him on as a client — something he suggests was discrimination due to his "race and profession." "I guess Oprah was wrong. My whiteness didn't give me that unfair advantage or even a fair playing field. I'm simply a white guy in a WOKE world," Mattingly writes.A Republican gubernatorial candidate canceled his appearance at a fundraiser last month after learning Mattingly would also be a speaker. The cops who stayedPolice officers back their own. Even officers accused of severe misconduct often keep working as cops – including in cases where police departments shell out millions to settle civil lawsuits."There's that thin blue line where officers are not just reluctant to, but don't report on one another. It's such a pervasive problem," said Mari Newman, a civil rights attorney in Colorado who has sued police departments. "Officers don't just stick together, but cover up each other's wrongdoing." Three officers who in 2020 placed a "spit hood" over the head of Daniel Prude, then pushed his face into the ground, suffocating him to death, were working for the Rochester, New York police department as recently as last year, city records show. The city paid $12 million to Prude's family; the officers were not charged. The two officers who shot Stephon Clark seven times in his grandmother's backyard still work for the Sacramento Police Department; that city has paid more than $4 million to Clark's family. The officers were not charged.Involvement in notorious police killings hasn't stopped some officers from receiving promotions and honors.In Seattle, the two officers who killed Charleena Lyles in her apartment in front of her children in 2017 are still on the force, according to city records. Six officers charged and acquitted in the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015 still work for the police department; one has been promoted to lieutenant. The officers who killed Lyles weren't charged. In New York City, Kenneth Boss, one of the officers who fired shots in the killing of Diallo in 1999, stayed on the force for nearly 20 more years after being acquitted of murder charges. Boss received a promotion in 2015, and one year later a New York police union named him a "Sergeant of the Year" for rescuing a couple stranded on an island in Jamaica Bay.An image of George Floyd is seen at a memorial in San Diego for Black Americans who have lost their lives due to systemic racism and racial injustice.Mario Tama/Getty Images It can also take so long to build a criminal case against police that even officers who do get prosecuted can stay on the force for years before charges are brought. Elijah McClain, 23, died in August 2019 after three police officers in Aurora, Colorado, slammed him into a wall, held him to the ground, and put him in a chokehold. Paramedics arriving on the scene diagnosed the by-then unconscious McClain with "excited delirium" and injected him with ketamine; he suffered a heart attack on the way to the hospital. An autopsy report found the cause of death to be "complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint."McClain, who had a blood circulation disorder that caused him to get cold easily, had been wearing a ski mask while walking through the Denver suburb. A resident called 911 to report a "sketchy" person.Initially, the officers were cleared of wrongdoing. The local district attorney, acting on information collected by the police department, declined to prosecute. The department's internal investigation was "cursory and summary at best," independent investigators later found.All three officers went back to work.One of them, Randy Roedema, was involved in another excessive force case the very next year. Another, Jason Rosenblatt, responded "ha ha" when a colleague texted him making fun of McClain's death; he was fired over that incident.Two years after McClain's death a state-appointed special investigator brought charges against the three officers. The new investigation had been spurred by massive racial justice protests in the summer of 2020."Make no mistake, we recognize that this case will be difficult to prosecute," Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser said in a news conference at the time. "These types of cases always are."Prosecutors who want to bring charges against officers who kill face a myriad of challenges. There is a standard requiring them to prove that the officer acted unreasonably, a high legal bar. Other officers in a department may stonewall attempts to gain information, and body camera footage from the incidents can be incomplete or nonexistent. Police unions can also be quick to defend their members against any punitive measures for their actions on the job. Even after the charges, the Aurora police union insisted that the officers "did nothing wrong" and that McClain's death was related to his decision to "violently resist arrest." "The hysterical overreaction to this case has severely damaged the police department," the union said in a statement issued at the time of the charges.Officers sometimes leave the department where the incident occurred, transferring townships or jurisdictions. The NYPD reassigned one of the other officers involved in the Diallo killing to a unit at a sleepy airfield in southern Brooklyn where the department conducts helicopter operations. Two of the three officers charged with murdering George Robinson in 2019 left the Jackson, Mississippi police department after Robinson's death, for the nearby city of Clinton's police department.  "We don't want anything to do with a bad cop and if I thought these guys were bad cops, we wouldn't have hired them," Clinton's police chief Ford Hayman told local news in 2020. Hayman and Clinton Mayor Phil Fisher attended the officers' arraignment for moral support. Fisher has implied the criminal charges may be politically motivated and called on the media to "spend as much time in the exoneration process as they have in the accusing process." One of the officers Clinton hired was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison.Police killings have sparked widespread protest movements demanding increased accountability and an end to discriminatory policing.Jon Cherry/Getty ImagesIn rare instances, officers are too politically toxic to keep on staff. After killing 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014, Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann has applied for at least two other policing jobs but withdrew his applications after his hiring sparked community furor. Loehmann was not charged in Rice's death, but was fired from the Cleveland police department in 2017 for lying on his employment application.Last year, Loehmann was briefly hired to be the sole cop in the tiny town of Tioga, Pennsylvania, before protest prompted the city to reverse its decision. Tioga's mayor told local news that Rice's death never came up in the interview process."I found it strange that someone would move here all the way from Cleveland, Ohio, for $18 an hour," mayor Dave Wilcox told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "But I heard that he wanted to get away from it all and come here to hunt and fish." The cops who were convictedIn the past 18 years, 172 police have been charged with murder or manslaughter for an on-duty shooting, according to Stinson, the professor at Bowling Green State University, and 55 of them have been convicted of some crime. That data doesn't include cases that didn't involve a gun, like the killings of George Floyd or Tyre Nichols.Out of the 72 officers that Insider researched, 16 of them were convicted or pleaded guilty.Some convicted officers received long sentences, like Derek Chauvin, who killed Floyd and is set to remain in prison until 2038. Amber Guyger, the Texas officer convicted of murdering her upstairs neighbor Botham Jean after allegedly mistaking his apartment for her own, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, though she will be eligible for parole starting in September 2024.In some cases, officers found support from police unions while awaiting trial. Gescard Insora, an NYPD detective who was the first to open fire on Sean Bell in 2006, was acquitted of criminal charges but fired and reported by the New York Post in 2013 to have gotten a job with the Detectives Endowment Association. Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago cop convicted of killing Laquan McDonald, worked as a janitor for a Chicago police union while his case was pending.Van Dyke, who was released from prison in 2022, now works in construction and still lives with his family in the Chicago area, according to his lawyer Dan Herbert. "He's doing okay," Herbert said. "It took a lot out of him."Jason Van Dyke, was convicted of killing Laquan McDonald. He served less than half of his seven year sentence and was released in 2022.Brian Jackson/Sun-Times via APOthers spend little or no time behind bars. Johannes Mehserle, a transit cop who shot Oscar Grant in Oakland, California, served 11 months in prison after he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Peter Liang, a rookie NYPD officer who fired a round into a dark stairwell that ricocheted and killed Akai Gurley, was sentenced to five years of probation.Insider couldn't find current contact information for Mehserle and a voicemail left for his father didn't receive a response. One of Liang's lawyers agreed to pass on a reporter's contact info, but no response was received.In Memphis, some hope that the indictment of the five officers who killed Tyre Nichols proves to be a break with the past. Steve Nelson, the Shelby County district attorney, took office last year after beating prosecutor Amy Weirich, who faced allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and a track record of not charging cops, according to the Huffington Post. But the outcome of any case of officer-involved killings or police abuse always carries a level of uncertainty. Policing is fragmented across nearly 18,000 jurisdictions, said Justin Nix, a criminology professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha who has studied the effect of racial justice protests on police departments. That means 18,000 different approaches to holding officers accountable for violence."For every example of accountability, it's easy to pick an example of an officer who skirted consequences for misconduct," Nix said.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The 27-year-old former exec received a $543 million loan from Alameda Research and had a 7.8% stake in FTX, per bankruptcy filings. NurPhoto/Getty Images Nishad Singh was FTX's Director of Engineering and had a 7.8% stake in the crypto exchange. The 27-year-old will plead guilty to fraud charges, according to Bloomberg. Singh received a $543 million loan from Alameda Research, per bankruptcy filings. Since FTX's downfall last November, one of the firm's key executives, Nishad Singh, has remained out of the public eye even as other top figures have ended up in the crosshairs of investigations into the exchange.The 27-year-old is the latest member of Sam Bankman-Fried's inner circle to plead guilty to US criminal charges over his role in alleged fraud that caused the firm's collapse, according to a Bloomberg report.Singh was FTX's director of engineering, and had a 7.8% stake in the company.FTX filed for bankruptcy protection in November, and investigations and charges against top executives at the firm are related to the misuse of customer funds by the firm's affiliate trading arm, Alameda Research. "FTX Group's collapse appears to stem from the absolute concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals," John Ray, FTX's new chief executive officer said during bankruptcy proceedings. While most of the attention in the media has been paid to Bankman-Fried, there were other executives involved in what prosecutors have called "one of the biggest financial frauds in American History," including Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang. Both have pleaded guilty to charges for defrauding investors and are cooperating with prosecutors. Singh was reportedly one of few people who knew that FTX was misusing customer funds, along with Bankman-Fried, Ellison, and Wang. Singh's nearly 8% stake, which also included FTX subsidiary FTX.US, was worth about $572 million in March of this year. He previously received a $543 million loan from Alameda as well, according to bankruptcy filings."Gary is scared, Nishad is ashamed and guilty," Bankman-Fried told a Vox reporter after the firm filed for bankruptcy. "It hit [Nishad] hard."Singh was a high school friend of Bankman-Fried's brother, Gabe. The former executive worked for a time as an engineer at Facebook (now Meta) before Bankman-Fried recruited him for Alameda, according to Singh's LinkedIn page, which has been taken down. "In addition to building out much of our technological infrastructure and managing most of our dev team, his treatment of employees has earned him sole membership in our Slack group 'Kings of Kindness,'" Bankman-Fried previously wrote in a blog post.Singh was likely one of the five coworkers that Bankman-Fried referenced as a billionaire, Bloomberg reported, citing an interview with the disgraced founder from earlier this year. In 2012, Singh also set the world record for fastest 100-mile run by a 16 year old, according to local newspaper The Mercury News.A year after Singh became FTX's director of engineering, he became a steady donor for the Democratic Party. He gave $8 million to federal campaigns of Democratic candidates in the 2022 election cycle, according to nonprofit OpenSecrets. "Currently, I'm sort of lucky that I can get fulfilled in many ways at this job - one of which is doing something that's probably pretty good from an effective altruist perspective," Singh previously said on a podcast.Singh could not be reached for comment.Bankman-Fried was released in December on $250 million bail and was sent to live in his parents' California home as he awaits trial.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

This is what happened to 72 police officers after killings that gained national attention and sparked protests over police abuse. iStock; Anadolu Agency/Getty; InsiderWe checked in on the police behind some of the most high-profiled police killings of the last 20 years. Some end up behind bars. Others get raises.The police killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee last month resulted in five officers involved being charged with murder and fired from the Memphis Police Department. Nichols's killing was notable for its apparent cruelty: Officers pepper sprayed, kicked, and punched an unarmed man to death. Footage from a nearby pole camera captured much of the assault, as well as officers standing around Nichols as he lay grievously injured. One detective took a photo and texted it to at least five others. The Nichols case was unusual for the speed at which the officers involved were fired and charged, but the incident itself shared many similarities to other instances of egregious police violence that have risen to national attention in past decades.These killings often draw intense public scrutiny, in some cases prompting departments to shut down elite "street crime" squads like Memphis's Scorpion unit or forcing lawmakers to question police budgets and tactics. The victims in these cases become nationally known and their names — George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Amadou Diallo — rallying cries against police abuses.Police officers involved in the deaths have become an intense focus of investigation, protest, and media coverage. Ultimately, though, most of those officers fall out of public consciousness.  Despite being at the heart of some of the most defining incidents in modern policing, most of the officers involved continue to live their lives under the radar.    Insider's review of 72 cops involved in two dozen of the most notorious police killings of the past 30 years shows the many different paths officers have taken. Some dwindled into obscurity after resigning or being fired. Others stayed on the force and even received promotions. A few became pro-police rallying points, while others ended up incarcerated for their crimes — an extreme rarity for police who kill people on the job. Fewer than 2% of police officers who shoot and kill people while on duty are charged with murder or manslaughter, and fewer still are convicted, according to data collected by Philip Stinson, a professor at Bowling Green State University who studies police shootings. Despite nationwide protests demanding greater police accountability, that figure hasn't changed markedly since 2005, the first year Stinson began collecting data."Every time there's a big case, we think, 'maybe this is the case where something changes,'" he said. "But it doesn't." Prosecutors in most states still face steep obstacles to building criminal cases against officers. More departments have adopted body-worn cameras, but officers often fail to use them appropriately. Officers and police unions continue to close ranks around their colleagues who have been accused of using excessive force.There's no nationwide view into what happens to officers involved in egregious incidents of violence. A 2021 bill, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, would have created a nationwide database of police misconduct, but that legislation stalled and withered in a Republican-controlled Senate.Insider attempted to contact the officers named in this article, but did not receive any replies to requests for comment. Multiple officers could also not be reached for comment.The incidents that Insider reviewed, focusing on those that rose to national media and received mention in thousands of news clips, are not representative of officer-involved killings as a whole. Instead, these cases show how officers involved in high-profile killings like the one in Memphis last month can end up anywhere from behind bars to back on the force. The cops who left the forceMany of the officers involved in high profile police killings resigned under public pressure or were fired by their departments following the incidents, but either never faced charges or were acquitted of criminal wrongdoing. These former cops are a grab bag of outcomes. Some fought unsuccessfully to be reinstated, while others drifted into different lines of work — sometimes with their past following them to their new professions.Two of the four officers who fired their weapons in the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, who was unarmed when police shot him 41 times in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building, joined the New York City Fire Department. Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy were acquitted of all charges in Diallo's death and months later successfully applied to become firefighters, prompting a wave of media coverage and criticism.    Diallo's father, along with representatives from the Islamic Society of Fire Department Personnel and the Vulcan Society fraternal order of Black firefighters all condemned the hirings."If a Black man had ever murdered somebody and went to trial for murder, no matter what the circumstances, that man would not be allowed to be a firefighter," Paul Washington, then-president of the Vulcan Society, said at the time. Two Black firefighters transferred to different firehouses after McMellon was assigned to their engine company. (The FDNY denied at the time that the transfers were related to McMellon.)McMellon is still an active member of the FDNY, the department confirmed to Insider, while Murphy is retired.People gather to protest against the police killing of Tyre Nichols at Times Square in New York on January 28, 2023.Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesMeanwhile, several officers in high-profile killings complained in the following years that they became pariahs and found it difficult to restart their lives.  Darren Wilson, the officer who in 2014 shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, claimed a year after the incident that he faced death threats, was forced to move neighborhoods and was denied rejoining the police force after his acquittal. Wilson, who became a right-wing rallying point with supporters raising almost five hundred thousand dollars for him after the incident, told The New Yorker that he had quit a retail job stocking shoes after two weeks when reporters started calling the store.A similar infamy dogged one of the officers who beat and injured Rodney King. Timothy Wind, one of the officers who repeatedly struck King, was acquitted of criminal charges but fired by the LAPD. He drew protests after being hired as an unarmed community service officer in Culver City, California in 1994. Wind eventually moved to small town Indiana to avoid scrutiny, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2012, but maintained he did nothing wrong and attended law school with the intent on pursuing a career in criminal justice. The AP reported in 2021 that he had moved to Kansas. Calls placed to numbers listed under his name didn't go through or weren't answered.Other officers have retired with pensions or quietly found other careers. Michael Oliver, one of the NYPD officers involved in the fatal shooting of Sean Bell in 2006, was forced to resign but allowed to collect $40,000 in pension benefits, according to the New York Post. He later became a salesman at a New Jersey BMW dealership. In rare cases, cops involved in these killings have tried to publicly rehabilitate their image rather than seek out anonymity. At least two officers in the cases that Insider reviewed wrote books about their experiences, most recently one of the three Louisville Metro Police officers involved in the botched raid that killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor.Jonathan Mattingly, who did not face any charges for his role in the raid, retired in 2021 and quickly wrote a tell-all book about the incident. Published through right-wing outlet The Daily Wire's imprint DW Books, Mattingly's book frames himself as a good cop unjustly vilified by "the media and the woke mob." He repeatedly blames Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker, who shot and wounded Mattingly after police broke down the door while executing a warrant late at night, for provoking officers to kill Taylor. (Attorneys for Walker in his civil suit against the Louisville Department assert the book "perpetuates a lie" that their client knew it was police officers knocking down the door.) Mattingly also devotes part of the book to his past assignments in an "alpha male" street crime unit and suggests celebrities such as LeBron James and Oprah Winfrey spread lies about the raid. In one section, he claims that defense attorneys refused to take him on as a client — something he suggests was discrimination due to his "race and profession." "I guess Oprah was wrong. My whiteness didn't give me that unfair advantage or even a fair playing field. I'm simply a white guy in a WOKE world," Mattingly writes.A Republican gubernatorial candidate canceled his appearance at a fundraiser last month after learning Mattingly would also be a speaker. The cops who stayedPolice officers back their own. Even officers accused of severe misconduct often keep working as cops – including in cases where police departments shell out millions to settle civil lawsuits."There's that thin blue line where officers are not just reluctant to, but don't report on one another. It's such a pervasive problem," said Mari Newman, a civil rights attorney in Colorado who has sued police departments. "Officers don't just stick together, but cover up each other's wrongdoing." Three officers who in 2020 placed a "spit hood" over the head of Daniel Prude, then pushed his face into the ground, suffocating him to death, were working for the Rochester, New York police department as recently as last year, city records show. The city paid $12 million to Prude's family; the officers were not charged. The two officers who shot Stephon Clark seven times in his grandmother's backyard still work for the Sacramento Police Department; that city has paid more than $4 million to Clark's family. The officers were not charged.Involvement in notorious police killings hasn't stopped some officers from receiving promotions and honors.In Seattle, the two officers who killed Charleena Lyles in her apartment in front of her children in 2017 are still on the force, according to city records. Six officers charged and acquitted in the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015 still work for the police department; one has been promoted to lieutenant. The officers who killed Lyles weren't charged. In New York City, Kenneth Boss, one of the officers who fired shots in the killing of Diallo in 1999, stayed on the force for nearly 20 more years after being acquitted of murder charges. Boss received a promotion in 2015, and one year later a New York police union named him a "Sergeant of the Year" for rescuing a couple stranded on an island in Jamaica Bay.An image of George Floyd is seen at a memorial in San Diego for Black Americans who have lost their lives due to systemic racism and racial injustice.Mario Tama/Getty Images It can also take so long to build a criminal case against police that even officers who do get prosecuted can stay on the force for years before charges are brought. Elijah McClain, 23, died in August 2019 after three police officers in Aurora, Colorado, slammed him into a wall, held him to the ground, and put him in a chokehold. Paramedics arriving on the scene diagnosed the by-then unconscious McClain with "excited delirium" and injected him with ketamine; he suffered a heart attack on the way to the hospital. An autopsy report found the cause of death to be "complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint."McClain, who had a blood circulation disorder that caused him to get cold easily, had been wearing a ski mask while walking through the Denver suburb. A resident called 911 to report a "sketchy" person.Initially, the officers were cleared of wrongdoing. The local district attorney, acting on information collected by the police department, declined to prosecute. The department's internal investigation was "cursory and summary at best," independent investigators later found.All three officers went back to work.One of them, Randy Roedema, was involved in another excessive force case the very next year. Another, Jason Rosenblatt, responded "ha ha" when a colleague texted him making fun of McClain's death; he was fired over that incident.Two years after McClain's death a state-appointed special investigator brought charges against the three officers. The new investigation had been spurred by massive racial justice protests in the summer of 2020."Make no mistake, we recognize that this case will be difficult to prosecute," Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser said in a news conference at the time. "These types of cases always are."Prosecutors who want to bring charges against officers who kill face a myriad of challenges. There is a standard requiring them to prove that the officer acted unreasonably, a high legal bar. Other officers in a department may stonewall attempts to gain information, and body camera footage from the incidents can be incomplete or nonexistent. Police unions can also be quick to defend their members against any punitive measures for their actions on the job. Even after the charges, the Aurora police union insisted that the officers "did nothing wrong" and that McClain's death was related to his decision to "violently resist arrest." "The hysterical overreaction to this case has severely damaged the police department," the union said in a statement issued at the time of the charges.Officers sometimes leave the department where the incident occurred, transferring townships or jurisdictions. The NYPD reassigned one of the other officers involved in the Diallo killing to a unit at a sleepy airfield in southern Brooklyn where the department conducts helicopter operations. Two of the three officers charged with murdering George Robinson in 2019 left the Jackson, Mississippi police department after Robinson's death, for the nearby city of Clinton's police department.  "We don't want anything to do with a bad cop and if I thought these guys were bad cops, we wouldn't have hired them," Clinton's police chief Ford Hayman told local news in 2020. Hayman and Clinton Mayor Phil Fisher attended the officers' arraignment for moral support. Fisher has implied the criminal charges may be politically motivated and called on the media to "spend as much time in the exoneration process as they have in the accusing process." One of the officers Clinton hired was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison.Police killings have sparked widespread protest movements demanding increased accountability and an end to discriminatory policing.Jon Cherry/Getty ImagesIn rare instances, officers are too politically toxic to keep on staff. After killing 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014, Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann has applied for at least two other policing jobs but withdrew his applications after his hiring sparked community furor. Loehmann was not charged in Rice's death, but was fired from the Cleveland police department in 2017 for lying on his employment application.Last year, Loehmann was briefly hired to be the sole cop in the tiny town of Tioga, Pennsylvania, before protest prompted the city to reverse its decision. Tioga's mayor told local news that Rice's death never came up in the interview process."I found it strange that someone would move here all the way from Cleveland, Ohio, for $18 an hour," mayor Dave Wilcox told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "But I heard that he wanted to get away from it all and come here to hunt and fish." The cops who were convictedIn the past 18 years, 172 police have been charged with murder or manslaughter for an on-duty shooting, according to Stinson, the professor at Bowling Green State University, and 55 of them have been convicted of some crime. That data doesn't include cases that didn't involve a gun, like the killings of George Floyd or Tyre Nichols.Out of the 72 officers that Insider researched, 16 of them were convicted or pleaded guilty.Some convicted officers received long sentences, like Derek Chauvin, who killed Floyd and is set to remain in prison until 2038. Amber Guyger, the Texas officer convicted of murdering her upstairs neighbor Botham Jean after allegedly mistaking his apartment for her own, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, though she will be eligible for parole starting in September 2024.In some cases, officers found support from police unions while awaiting trial. Gescard Insora, an NYPD detective who was the first to open fire on Sean Bell in 2006, was acquitted of criminal charges but fired and reported by the New York Post in 2013 to have gotten a job with the Detectives Endowment Association. Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago cop convicted of killing Laquan McDonald, worked as a janitor for a Chicago police union while his case was pending.Van Dyke, who was released from prison in 2022, now works in construction and still lives with his family in the Chicago area, according to his lawyer Dan Herbert. "He's doing okay," Herbert said. "It took a lot out of him."Jason Van Dyke, was convicted of killing Laquan McDonald. He served less than half of his seven year sentence and was released in 2022.Brian Jackson/Sun-Times via APOthers spend little or no time behind bars. Johannes Mehserle, a transit cop who shot Oscar Grant in Oakland, California, served 11 months in prison after he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Peter Liang, a rookie NYPD officer who fired a round into a dark stairwell that ricocheted and killed Akai Gurley, was sentenced to five years of probation.Insider couldn't find current contact information for Mehserle and a voicemail left for his father didn't receive a response. One of Liang's lawyers agreed to pass on a reporter's contact info, but no response was received.In Memphis, some hope that the indictment of the five officers who killed Tyre Nichols proves to be a break with the past. Steve Nelson, the Shelby County district attorney, took office last year after beating prosecutor Amy Weirich, who faced allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and a track record of not charging cops, according to the Huffington Post. But the outcome of any case of officer-involved killings or police abuse always carries a level of uncertainty. Policing is fragmented across nearly 18,000 jurisdictions, said Justin Nix, a criminology professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha who has studied the effect of racial justice protests on police departments. That means 18,000 different approaches to holding officers accountable for violence."For every example of accountability, it's easy to pick an example of an officer who skirted consequences for misconduct," Nix said.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

This is what happened to 72 police officers after killings that gained national attention and sparked protests over police abuse. iStock; Anadolu Agency/Getty; InsiderWe checked in on the police behind some of the most high-profiled police killings of the last 20 years. Some end up behind bars. Others get raises.The police killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee last month resulted in five officers involved being charged with murder and fired from the Memphis Police Department. Nichols's killing was notable for its apparent cruelty: Officers pepper sprayed, kicked, and punched an unarmed man to death. Footage from a nearby pole camera captured much of the assault, as well as officers standing around Nichols as he lay grievously injured. One detective took a photo and texted it to at least five others. The Nichols case was unusual for the speed at which the officers involved were fired and charged, but the incident itself shared many similarities to other instances of egregious police violence that have risen to national attention in past decades.These killings often draw intense public scrutiny, in some cases prompting departments to shut down elite "street crime" squads like Memphis's Scorpion unit or forcing lawmakers to question police budgets and tactics. The victims in these cases become nationally known and their names — George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Amadou Diallo — rallying cries against police abuses.Police officers involved in the deaths have become an intense focus of investigation, protest, and media coverage. Ultimately, though, most of those officers fall out of public consciousness.  Despite being at the heart of some of the most defining incidents in modern policing, most of the officers involved continue to live their lives under the radar.    Insider's review of 72 cops involved in two dozen of the most notorious police killings of the past 30 years shows the many different paths officers have taken. Some dwindled into obscurity after resigning or being fired. Others stayed on the force and even received promotions. A few became pro-police rallying points, while others ended up incarcerated for their crimes — an extreme rarity for police who kill people on the job. Fewer than 2% of police officers who shoot and kill people while on duty are charged with murder or manslaughter, and fewer still are convicted, according to data collected by Philip Stinson, a professor at Bowling Green State University who studies police shootings. Despite nationwide protests demanding greater police accountability, that figure hasn't changed markedly since 2005, the first year Stinson began collecting data."Every time there's a big case, we think, 'maybe this is the case where something changes,'" he said. "But it doesn't." Prosecutors in most states still face steep obstacles to building criminal cases against officers. More departments have adopted body-worn cameras, but officers often fail to use them appropriately. Officers and police unions continue to close ranks around their colleagues who have been accused of using excessive force.There's no nationwide view into what happens to officers involved in egregious incidents of violence. A 2021 bill, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, would have created a nationwide database of police misconduct, but that legislation stalled and withered in a Republican-controlled Senate.Insider attempted to contact the officers named in this article, but did not receive any replies to requests for comment. Multiple officers could also not be reached for comment.The incidents that Insider reviewed, focusing on those that rose to national media and received mention in thousands of news clips, are not representative of officer-involved killings as a whole. Instead, these cases show how officers involved in high-profile killings like the one in Memphis last month can end up anywhere from behind bars to back on the force. The cops who left the forceMany of the officers involved in high profile police killings resigned under public pressure or were fired by their departments following the incidents, but either never faced charges or were acquitted of criminal wrongdoing. These former cops are a grab bag of outcomes. Some fought unsuccessfully to be reinstated, while others drifted into different lines of work — sometimes with their past following them to their new professions.Two of the four officers who fired their weapons in the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, who was unarmed when police shot him 41 times in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building, joined the New York City Fire Department. Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy were acquitted of all charges in Diallo's death and months later successfully applied to become firefighters, prompting a wave of media coverage and criticism.    Diallo's father, along with representatives from the Islamic Society of Fire Department Personnel and the Vulcan Society fraternal order of Black firefighters all condemned the hirings."If a Black man had ever murdered somebody and went to trial for murder, no matter what the circumstances, that man would not be allowed to be a firefighter," Paul Washington, then-president of the Vulcan Society, said at the time. Two Black firefighters transferred to different firehouses after McMellon was assigned to their engine company. (The FDNY denied at the time that the transfers were related to McMellon.)McMellon is still an active member of the FDNY, the department confirmed to Insider, while Murphy is retired.People gather to protest against the police killing of Tyre Nichols at Times Square in New York on January 28, 2023.Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesMeanwhile, several officers in high-profile killings complained in the following years that they became pariahs and found it difficult to restart their lives.  Darren Wilson, the officer who in 2014 shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, claimed a year after the incident that he faced death threats, was forced to move neighborhoods and was denied rejoining the police force after his acquittal. Wilson, who became a right-wing rallying point with supporters raising almost five hundred thousand dollars for him after the incident, told The New Yorker that he had quit a retail job stocking shoes after two weeks when reporters started calling the store.A similar infamy dogged one of the officers who beat and injured Rodney King. Timothy Wind, one of the officers who repeatedly struck King, was acquitted of criminal charges but fired by the LAPD. He drew protests after being hired as an unarmed community service officer in Culver City, California in 1994. Wind eventually moved to small town Indiana to avoid scrutiny, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2012, but maintained he did nothing wrong and attended law school with the intent on pursuing a career in criminal justice. The AP reported in 2021 that he had moved to Kansas. Calls placed to numbers listed under his name didn't go through or weren't answered.Other officers have retired with pensions or quietly found other careers. Michael Oliver, one of the NYPD officers involved in the fatal shooting of Sean Bell in 2006, was forced to resign but allowed to collect $40,000 in pension benefits, according to the New York Post. He later became a salesman at a New Jersey BMW dealership. In rare cases, cops involved in these killings have tried to publicly rehabilitate their image rather than seek out anonymity. At least two officers in the cases that Insider reviewed wrote books about their experiences, most recently one of the three Louisville Metro Police officers involved in the botched raid that killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor.Jonathan Mattingly, who did not face any charges for his role in the raid, retired in 2021 and quickly wrote a tell-all book about the incident. Published through right-wing outlet The Daily Wire's imprint DW Books, Mattingly's book frames himself as a good cop unjustly vilified by "the media and the woke mob." He repeatedly blames Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker, who shot and wounded Mattingly after police broke down the door while executing a warrant late at night, for provoking officers to kill Taylor. (Attorneys for Walker in his civil suit against the Louisville Department assert the book "perpetuates a lie" that their client knew it was police officers knocking down the door.) Mattingly also devotes part of the book to his past assignments in an "alpha male" street crime unit and suggests celebrities such as LeBron James and Oprah Winfrey spread lies about the raid. In one section, he claims that defense attorneys refused to take him on as a client — something he suggests was discrimination due to his "race and profession." "I guess Oprah was wrong. My whiteness didn't give me that unfair advantage or even a fair playing field. I'm simply a white guy in a WOKE world," Mattingly writes.A Republican gubernatorial candidate canceled his appearance at a fundraiser last month after learning Mattingly would also be a speaker. The cops who stayedPolice officers back their own. Even officers accused of severe misconduct often keep working as cops – including in cases where police departments shell out millions to settle civil lawsuits."There's that thin blue line where officers are not just reluctant to, but don't report on one another. It's such a pervasive problem," said Mari Newman, a civil rights attorney in Colorado who has sued police departments. "Officers don't just stick together, but cover up each other's wrongdoing." Three officers who in 2020 placed a "spit hood" over the head of Daniel Prude, then pushed his face into the ground, suffocating him to death, were working for the Rochester, New York police department as recently as last year, city records show. The city paid $12 million to Prude's family; the officers were not charged. The two officers who shot Stephon Clark seven times in his grandmother's backyard still work for the Sacramento Police Department; that city has paid more than $4 million to Clark's family. The officers were not charged.Involvement in notorious police killings hasn't stopped some officers from receiving promotions and honors.In Seattle, the two officers who killed Charleena Lyles in her apartment in front of her children in 2017 are still on the force, according to city records. Six officers charged and acquitted in the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015 still work for the police department; one has been promoted to lieutenant. The officers who killed Lyles weren't charged. In New York City, Kenneth Boss, one of the officers who fired shots in the killing of Diallo in 1999, stayed on the force for nearly 20 more years after being acquitted of murder charges. Boss received a promotion in 2015, and one year later a New York police union named him a "Sergeant of the Year" for rescuing a couple stranded on an island in Jamaica Bay.An image of George Floyd is seen at a memorial in San Diego for Black Americans who have lost their lives due to systemic racism and racial injustice.Mario Tama/Getty Images It can also take so long to build a criminal case against police that even officers who do get prosecuted can stay on the force for years before charges are brought. Elijah McClain, 23, died in August 2019 after three police officers in Aurora, Colorado, slammed him into a wall, held him to the ground, and put him in a chokehold. Paramedics arriving on the scene diagnosed the by-then unconscious McClain with "excited delirium" and injected him with ketamine; he suffered a heart attack on the way to the hospital. An autopsy report found the cause of death to be "complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint."McClain, who had a blood circulation disorder that caused him to get cold easily, had been wearing a ski mask while walking through the Denver suburb. A resident called 911 to report a "sketchy" person.Initially, the officers were cleared of wrongdoing. The local district attorney, acting on information collected by the police department, declined to prosecute. The department's internal investigation was "cursory and summary at best," independent investigators later found.All three officers went back to work.One of them, Randy Roedema, was involved in another excessive force case the very next year. Another, Jason Rosenblatt, responded "ha ha" when a colleague texted him making fun of McClain's death; he was fired over that incident.Two years after McClain's death a state-appointed special investigator brought charges against the three officers. The new investigation had been spurred by massive racial justice protests in the summer of 2020."Make no mistake, we recognize that this case will be difficult to prosecute," Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser said in a news conference at the time. "These types of cases always are."Prosecutors who want to bring charges against officers who kill face a myriad of challenges. There is a standard requiring them to prove that the officer acted unreasonably, a high legal bar. Other officers in a department may stonewall attempts to gain information, and body camera footage from the incidents can be incomplete or nonexistent. Police unions can also be quick to defend their members against any punitive measures for their actions on the job. Even after the charges, the Aurora police union insisted that the officers "did nothing wrong" and that McClain's death was related to his decision to "violently resist arrest." "The hysterical overreaction to this case has severely damaged the police department," the union said in a statement issued at the time of the charges.Officers sometimes leave the department where the incident occurred, transferring townships or jurisdictions. The NYPD reassigned one of the other officers involved in the Diallo killing to a unit at a sleepy airfield in southern Brooklyn where the department conducts helicopter operations. Two of the three officers charged with murdering George Robinson in 2019 left the Jackson, Mississippi police department after Robinson's death, for the nearby city of Clinton's police department.  "We don't want anything to do with a bad cop and if I thought these guys were bad cops, we wouldn't have hired them," Clinton's police chief Ford Hayman told local news in 2020. Hayman and Clinton Mayor Phil Fisher attended the officers' arraignment for moral support. Fisher has implied the criminal charges may be politically motivated and called on the media to "spend as much time in the exoneration process as they have in the accusing process." One of the officers Clinton hired was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison.Police killings have sparked widespread protest movements demanding increased accountability and an end to discriminatory policing.Jon Cherry/Getty ImagesIn rare instances, officers are too politically toxic to keep on staff. After killing 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014, Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann has applied for at least two other policing jobs but withdrew his applications after his hiring sparked community furor. Loehmann was not charged in Rice's death, but was fired from the Cleveland police department in 2017 for lying on his employment application.Last year, Loehmann was briefly hired to be the sole cop in the tiny town of Tioga, Pennsylvania, before protest prompted the city to reverse its decision. Tioga's mayor told local news that Rice's death never came up in the interview process."I found it strange that someone would move here all the way from Cleveland, Ohio, for $18 an hour," mayor Dave Wilcox told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "But I heard that he wanted to get away from it all and come here to hunt and fish." The cops who were convictedIn the past 18 years, 172 police have been charged with murder or manslaughter for an on-duty shooting, according to Stinson, the professor at Bowling Green State University, and 55 of them have been convicted of some crime. That data doesn't include cases that didn't involve a gun, like the killings of George Floyd or Tyre Nichols.Out of the 72 officers that Insider researched, 16 of them were convicted or pleaded guilty.Some convicted officers received long sentences, like Derek Chauvin, who killed Floyd and is set to remain in prison until 2038. Amber Guyger, the Texas officer convicted of murdering her upstairs neighbor Botham Jean after allegedly mistaking his apartment for her own, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, though she will be eligible for parole starting in September 2024.In some cases, officers found support from police unions while awaiting trial. Gescard Insora, an NYPD detective who was the first to open fire on Sean Bell in 2006, was acquitted of criminal charges but fired and reported by the New York Post in 2013 to have gotten a job with the Detectives Endowment Association. Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago cop convicted of killing Laquan McDonald, worked as a janitor for a Chicago police union while his case was pending.Van Dyke, who was released from prison in 2022, now works in construction and still lives with his family in the Chicago area, according to his lawyer Dan Herbert. "He's doing okay," Herbert said. "It took a lot out of him."Jason Van Dyke, was convicted of killing Laquan McDonald. He served less than half of his seven year sentence and was released in 2022.Brian Jackson/Sun-Times via APOthers spend little or no time behind bars. Johannes Mehserle, a transit cop who shot Oscar Grant in Oakland, California, served 11 months in prison after he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Peter Liang, a rookie NYPD officer who fired a round into a dark stairwell that ricocheted and killed Akai Gurley, was sentenced to five years of probation.Insider couldn't find current contact information for Mehserle and a voicemail left for his father didn't receive a response. One of Liang's lawyers agreed to pass on a reporter's contact info, but no response was received.In Memphis, some hope that the indictment of the five officers who killed Tyre Nichols proves to be a break with the past. Steve Nelson, the Shelby County district attorney, took office last year after beating prosecutor Amy Weirich, who faced allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and a track record of not charging cops, according to the Huffington Post. But the outcome of any case of officer-involved killings or police abuse always carries a level of uncertainty. Policing is fragmented across nearly 18,000 jurisdictions, said Justin Nix, a criminology professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha who has studied the effect of racial justice protests on police departments. That means 18,000 different approaches to holding officers accountable for violence."For every example of accountability, it's easy to pick an example of an officer who skirted consequences for misconduct," Nix said.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Chicago Dad Placed On Watchlist After Opposing Pornography In Schools Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), A Chicago father has learned that he has been placed on a flight watchlist after opposing pornographic materials in his kids’ schools. Terry Newsome, a Chicago dad who found himself placed on a watchlist by federal law enforcement, speaks during Turning Point USA's AmericaFest 2022. (Courtesy of Terry Newsome) Over the summer of 2021, Terry Newsome—who described himself in comments to the Epoch Times as a “lifelong Democrat” until recently—was one of several parents in the 99th school district of Downer’s Grove, Chicago, who expressed opposition to books in his children’s library that had sexually explicit and pornographic content. In December, Newsome discovered he had been placed on a watchlist. On Dec. 16, 2022, he and his family attempted to board a plane en route to Turning Point USA’s “America Fest” convention in Phoenix, Arizona. Newsome, who travels a great deal for work, was shocked to learn that he had been placed on a watchlist and had to get substantially more screening before being allowed to board, causing him to miss his original flight. Initially, Newsome was told that he had been placed on the list by the FBI. On his return journey from Phoenix, he was informed that the classification originated from the Department of Justice (DOJ). Despite having been a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) pre-check-approved flier for over a decade, upon his family’s arrival at O’Hare International Airport, Newsome learned about the new designation. Upon arriving at the airport, Newsome’s family found that they “couldn’t check in electronically like we normally did.” Initially, Newsome and his wife just chalked it up to the fact that they had minors traveling with them that were not their children. It was only later that Newsome learned he had been given the dreaded “quad-S” designation on his ticket, an acronym standing for Secondary Security Screening Selection (SSSS). Compared to the normal security guidelines for boarding, those with boarding passes marked SSSS must get far more screening. SSSS boarding pass holders are traditionally removed from the line and brought elsewhere for additional screening. This screening is nothing if not thorough—passengers are asked to remove all items from their bags, which are then examined individually while the bag is thoroughly searched. Terry Newsome, dressed in a Downers Grove South High School spirit wear, sits in the school auditorium where he spoke up about Gender Queer last month, on Dec. 13, 2021. (Cara Ding/The Epoch Times) In addition to much stricter screening of bags, SSSS fliers are typically on the receiving end of a full-body pat down. They also have their hands (and sometimes, according to some reports) their feet swabbed to check for explosives. Just how invasive this search can be depends on circumstances, but fliers with the SSSS designation can also expect to be prodded on questions like if they packed their own bag, where they’re headed, why they’re going there, and so on. When he got to the airport, Newsome had no idea that he had been flagged with the SSSS designation. He first realized that something was amiss at the ticket desk, where he was told by the clerk that she couldn’t print his boarding pass. The issue was taking so long that Newsome told his family, who had already received their boarding passes, to go ahead without him. They did, but were pulled out of the line for additional screening. Newsome hurried over to the TSA desk when he saw this to learn what was going on. It was then that Newsome was told he had been flagged as a potential security threat. However, both he and the TSA staff, Newsome reported, assumed that the designation was an error and that the system had confused Newsome with someone else who shared his name. After the additional screening, Newsome finally got to the gate, where he was denied access to his flight because the extra screening had caused them to be late. Newsome’s family also failed to get on the flight due to the extra screening. At that point, Newsome was finally told what was going on when an airport employee told them, “Somebody put you on a list with some real bad people.” After missing their first flight, Newsome was able to find another flight for himself and his family. But before he could board, the airline had to get approval from the FBI for him to fly. The approval came through at the last moment, and Newsome’s family was finally able to start their trip to Phoenix. Newsome was the last person to board his plane. The same scene played out on the return journey, when Newsome learned he had been placed on the list by the DOJ. FBI Dismisses FOIA Request Following these experiences, Newsome sent a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request to the FBI, seeking more information about his newly discovered status as an alleged terror risk. The FBI refused to discuss details with Newsome. In the letter he received replying to his request, the FBI wrote in part: “The U.S. Government can neither confirm nor deny whether a particular person is on any terrorist watch list. Maintaining the confidentiality of government watch lists is necessary to achieve the objectives of the U.S. Government, as well as to protect the privacy of individuals who may be on a watch list for a limited time and later removed. If the U.S. Government revealed who was listed on any government watch list, terrorists would be able to take actions to avoid detection by government authorities. Thus, the FBI neither confirms nor denies the existence of your subject’s name on any watch lists pursuant to FOIA exemption.” Because the federal government refuses to so much as acknowledge that Newsome has been placed on a list, it is unclear why Newsome’s name was flagged for enhanced screening. Newsome told the Epoch Times that he thinks the addition of his name to the list is in response to his past political activities. In their response to an Epoch Times inquiry about Newsome, the FBI’s press office insisted that the agency does not open investigations solely on the grounds of protected First Amendment activity. “The FBI can never open an investigation based solely on protected First Amendment activity,” the agency wrote. “We cannot and do not investigate ideology. We focus on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security.” The spokesperson expressly refused to answer questions relating to the process of placing someone on a watchlist, including questions about oversight of the FBI’s ability to place Americans on flight watchlists. Additionally, Newsome also reached out to the TSA. In his query, Newsome requested information and attempted to be placed back on the TSA pre-check list. In its reply, the TSA said he was no longer eligible for its pre-check list, but suggested that Newsome would no longer be subject to enhanced screening. Newsome remains uncertain about his flight status. “As a result of recurrent checks and based on a comprehensive background check, TSA was unable to determine that you pose a sufficiently low risk to transportation and national security to continue to be eligible for expedited airport security screening through the TSA Pre-[Check] Application Program,” the reply said. “As a result, TSA has determined that you are no longer eligible to participate in the TSA Pre-[Check] Application Program. “This eligibility determination for the TSA Pre-[Check] Application Program is within the sole discretion of TSA,” the letter added. “Although you have been found ineligible to continue your participation in the TSA Pre-[Check] Application Program, you will continue to be screened at airport security checkpoints according to TSA standard screening protocols.” Opposition to Porn in School Library Newsome had never been involved in school board meetings or politics until mid-2021, when he attended a district school board meeting after his then-eighth-grade son came home reporting that his teacher had told him that “there is no American dream.” Newsome, a descendant of European immigrants who had lived the American dream, was shocked to hear that. He called his children’s principal to discuss the issue, and suspected that these issues would only get worse when his kids, fraternal twins, got to high school. In July 2021, Newsome attended his first school board meeting at Downers Grove’s Community High School (District 99). Newsome immediately began a crusade on several hot-button topics, ranging from mask mandates to critical race theory, becoming the unofficial spokesman for several concerned mothers who were more hesitant to speak out. “The moms are so happy to have an aggressive, type-A-personality father to join them. They had mostly fought this battle alone, against the giant system of public schools,” Newsome told The Epoch Times. Newsome’s most controversial activism came with his opposition to the book “Gender Queer” by Mia Kobabe, a book containing sexually explicit images that teaches children about oral sex and controversial notions of gender identity. After Newsome began speaking out against the book and the left-wing ideology that had inundated his children’s schools, he began facing attacks from all corners, ranging from threats by Antifa to opposition by Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.). Two days after the publication of an Epoch Times article about his activism, Newsome found threatening messages against him on a locally run Twitter account called Antifascist Rumor Mill. “Action items announced soon in regard to Terry Newsome—time to Drop Pops and his hateful agenda,” the tweet read, referencing Newsome’s nickname “Pops.” “Terry trying to make a name for himself, look at his stupid face in the Epoch Times, the extreme #disinformation rag that echoed all the lies, the Big Lie, the ‘Plandemic’ lie, etc.,” another tweet from the account said. Newsome told The Epoch Times that many of those who have spoken against him and threatened him, including members of the school board, are in close league with Rep. Casten. “The school board and the superintendent are all controlled by radical, radical leftists … that are very vocal in the Downers Grove Community and all supportive of Sean Casten,” Newsome said. “So anybody that speaks out with a different opinion is brutally attacked on social media and called racist, homophobic, and so forth, no matter the truth.” “To make a point, I’ve said it from the very beginning, through now: me and the other parents are not anti-gay or homophobic—we’re anti-porn,” Newsome said. January 6 Rally Some of Newsome’s critics have in the past pointed out that Newsome was present at the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally. Newsome candidly admits that he attended the rally, but said that he had no bad intentions and broke no laws that day. “I went to January 6, with my friend, a retired police officer,” Newsome said. According to Newsome, the FBI previously investigated his friend who attended the event, retired officer Rob Waller, and had cleared him of any wrongdoing. Aside from an old Civil War-era sword, Newsome does not possess any weapons and was unarmed at the event. Additionally, Newsome was undergoing immunotherapy for cancer at the time, leaving him in a weakened state. Newsome said his only reason for attending the rally was to hear President Donald Trump speak and to ensure people were safe. “We went down there for two things, one to see our president speak. Two, because we’re both still big guys even though we’re older,” Newsome said. “We saw in November, December, families, parents overly attacked by Antifa [and] BLM in front of their hotels.” Newsome said he had left by the time order broke down at the rally, which he vindicated by providing time-stamped photos. Newsome’s photos and time stamps from that day show that he did not trespass on Capitol grounds and was gone before the Capitol breach began. Concerns of ‘Weaponization’ Of DOJ Newsome’s story comes amid concerns over the weaponization of the DOJ. In November, House Republicans unveiled a 1,050-page report detailing whistleblower findings. Since then, the party has authorized the creation of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which held its inaugural hearing on Feb. 9. In his opening remarks, Weaponization Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) read out a litany of findings from whistleblower testimony. For instance, on Nov. 18, 2021, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee were told that the FBI had created a “threat tag” for parents voicing their concerns at school board meetings. In May 2022, another whistleblower revealed that dozens of parents designated with a “threat tag” were being investigated by the agency. The same whistleblower said that the leadership of the FBI is “rotted at its core.” Following this, that whistleblower had his security clearance revoked and was suspended from the FBI.   In April 2022, another whistleblower told Republicans that FBI agents “were being run out of the bureau” for attending conservative political events while off duty. Jordan also cited whistleblower testimony previously included in the whistleblower report that claimed that the FBI had manufactured domestic violent extremism events (DVEs) to hit “self-created performance metrics.” Additional testimony in September 2022 revealed that Jan. 6 case files had been altered to make it appear that DVEs were on the rise, as Democrats and President Joe Biden have long claimed. The agent was later suspended. In September 2022, yet another whistleblower revealed to Republicans that the FBI views the Betsy Ross flag, the original design of the American flag with 13 stars, “as a terrorist symbol.” Additional testimony found that the FBI accepts personal data on users from Facebook “without the user’s consent.” Cara Ding contributed to this report.  Tyler Durden Wed, 02/15/2023 - 17:05.....»»

The DOJ's decision was widely anticipated after career prosecutors recommended last year that the Florida congressman not be indicted. Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida on January 3, 2023.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images The DOJ will not criminally charge Rep. Matt Gaetz after a years-long sex-trafficking probe, CNN reported. The outlet said DOJ officials told at least one witness' lawyers that prosecutors won't indict Gaetz. Gaetz has been under investigation since 2020, and prosecutors were examining if he violated 3 federal laws. The Justice Department will not indict GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz following a years-long sex-trafficking investigation, CNN and the New York Times reported.CNN said that DOJ officials told at least one witness' lawyers that prosecutors will not bring charges against Gaetz.The decision was widely expected; investigators last year recommended that the department not charge the Florida congressman, and top DOJ officials typically take the advice of career prosecutors.Citing anonymous sources, The Washington Post reported at the time that prosecutors were concerned with the credibility of two key witnesses and think they'd be unlikely to secure a conviction if they indicted Gaetz.The existence of the investigation first became public in 2021, when The New York Times reported that investigators were examining if Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old in 2019 and paid for her to travel with him.One person familiar with the conversations told The Times that Gaetz told some women to say that he paid for dinners and hotel rooms as part of their dates if anyone asked about the nature of their relationships.According to NBC News, prosecutors were examining if the congressman committed three separate crimes: if he sex-trafficked a 17-year-old; if he violated the Mann Act, which prohibits the transportation of "any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose" across state lines; and if he obstructed justice.The FBI executed a search warrant in late 2020 and seized Gaetz's cell phone, as well as a phone belonging to his former girlfriend, who testified before a federal grand jury earlier this year.Gaetz has denied wrongdoing and said last year that the allegations were part of an "organized criminal extortion" scheme against him. Last month, the Florida businessman Stephen Alford was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to attempting to extort Gaetz and his father for $25 million.This story is developing. Check back for updates.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

A federal judge has unsealed the names of two people who are sponsoring Samual Bankman-Fried's $250 million bond: Larry Kramer and Andreas Paepcke. Former FTX Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried outside a Manhattan courthouse in February.REUTERS/Mike Segar Larry Kramer and Andreas Paepcke are the two previously anonymous sponsors of Samuel Bankman-Fried's $250 million bond. Both appear to have ties to Stanford University, where Bankman-Fried's parents are employed. A federal judge sided with Insider and other media organizations and made their names public. A federal judge has unsealed the names of two people who are sponsoring Sam Bankman-Fried's $250 million bond, siding with media organizations — including Insider — who argued in court that their identities should be made public.Larry Kramer, a former dean of Stanford University's law school, contributed $500,000 to the bond, according to court records unsealed Wednesday afternoon. Another person named Andreas Paepcke, who appears to be a research scientist at Stanford University, gave $200,000 for the bond, records show.Bankman-Fried's parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, who are both professors at Stanford University's law school, have also contributed to the bond. They guaranteed the value of their home in Palo Alto, California, where the FTX founder is allowed to remain ahead of a criminal trial on fraud charges.Kramer told Insider that he and his wife are friends with Bankman-Fried's parents."Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried have been close friends of my wife and I since the mid-1990s," Kramer wrote in an email. "During the past two years, while my family faced a harrowing battle with cancer, they have been the truest of friends – bringing food, providing moral support, and frequently stepping in at moment's notice to help. In turn, we have sought to support them as they face their own crisis."He also said he had no business interest in the $500,000 he contributed towards Bankman-Fried's bond."My actions are in my personal capacity, and I have no business dealings or interest in this matter other than to help our loyal and steadfast friends," Kramer wrote. "Nor do I have any comment or position regarding the substance of the legal matter itself, which is what the trial will be for."In December, federal prosecutors in Manhattan brought eight criminal counts against Samuel Bankman-Fried, alleging he "orchestrated a years-long fraud" by misleading investors and customers about FTX, his cryptocurrency exchange, and commingling funds with Alameda Research, a hedge fund he also controlled. Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to the charges.Lawyers for Bankman-Fried have spent the weeks since his arrest trying to keep the names of Paepcke and Kramer secret, arguing the two would be subject to harassment if their names were made public.But US District Judge Lewis Kaplan on January 30 sided with media organizations — including Insider — which argued that it was in the public's interest to reveal the names."Given Mr. Bankman-Fried's relationships and access to some of the most wealthy, powerful, and politically connected individuals, including elected officials, access to the identity of the bond sureties will bolster trust in the judicial process here," lawyers for the news organizations argued in a filing. The judge ruled that the public interest outweighed any privacy rights the sponsors had and that they knew what they were getting into."The non-parental bail sureties have entered voluntarily into a highly publicized criminal proceeding by signing the individual bonds," Kaplan wrote in his January 30 decision.Kaplan gave Bankman-Fried's lawyers a chance to appeal his decision. But while they filed a document indicating they intended to appeal, they failed to file a separate request asking the appeals court to pause Kaplan's order, leading to the names of Kramer and Paepke to be unsealed Wednesday.A representative for Bankman-Fried declined to comment. Paepcke and representatives for Stanford University and Stanford Law School didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.Prosecutors and Bankman-Fried's attorneys are still wrangling over the terms of his home confinement conditions. In the past week, prosecutors and the judge have raised concerns that Bankman-Fried has access to tools that allow him to auto-delete and encrypt messages, and to use a virtual private network, or VPN, that allows him to disguise his internet activity.His attorneys said in court filings that Bankman-Fried used a VPN to watch NFL playoff games and the Super Bowl.This story is developing...Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»