Minneapolis riots

The New Neo Posted on by

I feel as though I’ve written this post before. Oh, the details are different, but the phenomenon is much the same. A black person (usually a man) dies at the hands of police, either by being shot outright or in the process of some sort of strange technique supposedly used to subdue him. The police involved are suspended or fired, pending an investigation that sometimes exonerates them and sometimes implicates them. Sometimes they end up in prison themselves.

And at some point the riots and destruction begin. Sometimes the riots start as protests, and then more destructive nihilistic elements take over and use the cover of protests to go on a lawless and destructive spree. Sometimes they start as riots without the peaceful protest part. In the end, the community suffers.

At this point, quite a bit of video has surfaced in the death of George Floyd, and the police’s actions look bad. It’s mostly one officer with his knee on Floyd’s neck for many minutes; they rest stand by. The four involved have been fired. My guess is that they are guilty of, at the very least, gross negligence. But I know from previous experience that it’s always best to wait for autopsies and more information before coming to firmer conclusions. But even if Floyd died of a heart attack or something of that sort, the police can be held responsible if they were acting wrongly.

The riots are the sort of thing that we’ve come to expect under the circumstances, including the looting and burning. It’s depressing and it’s sad, and in this case the politicians and police of Minneapolis don’t seem to have done much to stop it. For further discussion, I refer you to the writers at Powerline, based in Minneapolis, such as John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson.

Video has surfaced of the moments leading up to the incident, and Floyd does not seem to have resisted arrest, contrary to early police reports. The officer kneeing Floyd’s neck had previously been the subject of a number of complaints.

And a large under-construction building that was burned down was low-income housing:

The under construction affordable housing development that burned in the widespread violence in south Minneapolis late Wednesday and early Thursday was to be a six-story rental building with 189 apartments for low-income renters, including more than three dozen for very low-income tenants.

And here’s an article describing other destruction in the community at the hands of the rioters (called “protestors” in the article):

Shattered glass, broken golf clubs and trash littered East Lake Street on Thursday morning after the destructive standoff between protesters and police, with some breaking into and setting fire to stores.

Many of these businesses, including fast-food restaurants, auto shops and banks, were ransacked by Thursday morning. The brick foundation of a Metro PCS store, the only part that remained, continued to burn as the crews dug a line in front to prevent a gas leak.

Smoke billowed from the shopping complex near Lake Street and Hiawatha Avenue, the burning smell wafting over across Lake Street. A Wendy’s restaurant smoldered; so did a building behind it, no longer recognizable…

Charles Stotts, who has owned Town Talk Diner for four years, looked at his restaurant with gentle eyes and a somber frown. Its windows were shattered, the bar ransacked. Smoke filled the dining room and water from the sprinklers flooded the floor and poured out onto the street.

“It’s worse than anything I could have ever imagined happening to our little restaurant,” he said. “What did my little building on the side of the road do?”…

[Another store owner’s wife], Gita Zeitler, later sat on the stoop in front of their shop. She said she was disappointed in a lack of security provided by the police for the businesses. “The Minneapolis police has been useless for a long time,” she said.

“Why are we targeted here?” she asked. “We know the police didn’t do the right thing. Police is hiding, policymakers are not here, and local neighborhood life is taken away by the riots.”

Minneapolis is run by Democrats, of course. But no doubt they’ll find a way to blame Republicans.

What’s going on with Judge Sullivan? [Part II]

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Here’s Part II, and the plan right now is that there will be a Part III as well, because Part II became very long and unwieldy. Part I can be found here.

ADDITION: And to clear up any misunderstandings that might arise on the following point – nothing in this post or any of the others in the series is an excuse for Judge Sullivan’s behavior, which I believe is inexcusable. These posts are an attempt to offer a description and explanation for the portion of his behavior that consisted of an emotional reaction that got out of control, which is something that should never occur with a judge. Explanations are not excuses.]

I’ve often wondered what it takes to be a judge. Not the academic or job qualifications, but the personality makeup. It seems to me that, although there’s probably a wide variation among judges, a general tendency would be the need to have faith in one’s own decisions and in one’s ability to be fair. Corrupt judges, of course, would have other characteristics, but I’m speaking generally – and let’s hope that generally in this country most judges are not corrupt.

After all, a judge makes decisions that hugely determine the course of people’s lives. Also, in his/her court, a judge is treated with remarkable deference – all that “Your Honor”-ing”, almost like a remnant of royalty. I know it’s supposed to be deference to the position and the institution of the court rather than this or that specific human flawed person who happens to be the judge, but I think it would be hard for judges not to take all that high esteem personally, especially after years and years of receiving it every day at work. Doesn’t a judge get used to thinking he or she is nearly infallible, a kind of semi-deity?

A judge dealing with criminal cases must decide a number of things and in particular sentence people, sometimes to lengthy terms in prison. In a large number of cases, the way our present legal system operates, those sentences follow guilty pleas arrived at through plea bargaining.

It would take a very naive person to believe that only guilty people plead guilty, particularly as a result of a plea bargain. Many people cling to that notion, however, because to believe otherwise – to believe that a significant number of innocent people plead guilty through fear, intimidation, ignorance, bad legal advice, or frameup – is frightening. It’s a hard thing to face, but it’s true, and it’s also true that in recent years the number of cases decided by plea bargain guilty pleas has risen to huge proportions (see this).

Do some judges actually believe that only the guilty end up pleading guilty? It’s hard to believe judges could be so naive, immersed in the system as they are. But perhaps, on a certain psychological level, they do believe it – or at least they prefer to preserve some portion of that belief in their own minds in order to go about the business of sentencing people.

Was anything like that going on with Judge Sullivan in the Flynn case? Keep in mind that many things can simultaneously be true: Sullivan can hate Flynn politically, Sullivan can be allied with powerful forces that tell him to treat Flynn harshly, Sullivan may be feeling the effects of age, and yet Sullivan can still be motivated at least in part by a belief that Flynn must be guilty if he pleads guilty – and, since Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, that Flynn is therefore an opportunistic self-serving liar, and that he became even more of a liar later when he tried to take that plea back and blame others for mistreating him.

I offer as exhibit A to defend this point of view a rather curious thing Sullivan said during the sentencing hearing on December 18, 2018, the same one in which Sullivan’s out-of-the-blue-came-from-nowhere talk of Flynn’s possible treason got a lot of publicity in the MSM (I’ve discussed some aspects of that hearing already in Part I). The December 18, 2018 proceeding was supposed to be a sentencing hearing some time after the plea colloquy – when Flynn had pleaded guilty under oath – had occurred under a different judge who’d had to recuse himself because of a previously undisclosed friendship with Strzok, of all things. But on December 18, Judge Sullivan (the new judge) said at the outset of the sentencing hearing that he considers this an “extension” of the plea colloquy.

In a later document from Flynn, he describes that announcement from Sullivan as having been something neither he nor his lawyers had prepared for, so it took them by surprise. But at the hearing, we see that Flynn’s lawyer fails to object, and so it proceeds as an “extension” of the plea colloquy.

Go to the transcript of the hearing and look at page 7 (in the following, when Judge Sullivan refers to Flynn’s “briefing,” he is referring to a memorandum Flynn’s lawyers had recently filed that stated Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI without receiving a warning and without counsel) [my emphasis]:

SULLIVAN: Mr. Flynn’s briefing concerned the Court, as he raised issues that may affect or call into question his guilty plea, and, at the very least, maybe his acceptance of responsibility. As such, the Court concludes that it must now first ask Mr. Flynn certain questions to ensure that he entered his guilty plea knowingly, voluntarily, intelligently, and with fulsome [sic] and satisfactory advice of counsel. I cannot recall any incident in which the Court has ever accepted a plea of guilty from someone who maintained that he was not guilty, and I don’t intend to start today. So I’m going to invite Mr. Flynn and his attorney or attorneys to come to the podium, and I’m going to ask the courtroom deputy to administer the oath to Mr. Flynn.

Sullivan is saying something quite curious there, in my opinion. Does he actually think that no one in his court has ever entered a false plea of guilty? Or is he just saying that no one has ever simultaneously said he/she is guilty and not guilty? But Flynn had not entered that memorandum about not having a lawyer at the interview in order to say he therefore was not guilty. He’d entered it as part of the argument for getting a lighter sentence without jail time. And yet Sullivan seems to see a contradiction between the guilty plea and the statements in the memorandum.

I think this is where Sullivan feels an element of genuine anger at his own discomfort. There is some uneasiness and/or contradiction he senses in the situation that causes him some cognitive dissonance. So to resolve that feeling, he wants to make it crystal clear in the record – and to himself – that Flynn fully intends to plead guilty. That’s when Sullivan puts Flynn under oath and asks him a series of questions that cement Flynn’s guilty plea once again.

In addition to feeling that Flynn’s admission of guilt must be reiterated, Sullivan wants to make sure the Flynn takes responsibility for this terrible thing he’s done, this lying. The memorandum from Flynn’s side that mentions Flynn’s not having been afforded warnings and a lawyer strikes Sullivan for some reason as an attempt to evade responsibility, which I think angers Sullivan as well.

Sullivan wants to see a penitent, unequivocally guilty Flynn taking full responsibility, and Sulllivan doesn’t perceive Flynn to be doing that, which makes Sullivan uneasy. So he’s going to make Flynn own up to it, by gum.

I don’t think that at that point Sullivan was aware of the specific pressures and threats brought to bear on Flynn in order to extract that guilty plea, but Sullivan must have known or should known that this is often part of the plea bargaining process. Flynn describes his own feelings in a later document (see p 10) in which he says that in the days leading up to the December 18 hearing, which was expected to be perfunctory and basically an approval of the lenient sentencing agreement negotiated by the two sets of lawyers, his own lawyers from Covington kept advising him to “follow the path” (that is, the guilty plea) to make sure nothing further would happen to his son. In paragraph 41 (they are numbered), Flynn says the fact that the hearing turned into a plea colloquy took him and his lawyers “completely by surprise” and that they were “unprepared.” He also says “the entire experience was surreal, and that day was one of the worst days of my life.” And in paragraph 42 he says he was unprepared to decide on the spot whether to withdraw his guilty plea, consult with other lawyers, or follow the advice that his then-lawyers had been hammering home to him. He also mentions that, prior to that December 18 hearing, his lawyers had told him that if he withdrew his guilty plea, he would be “giving them the rope to hang yourself.”

He was caught in a terrible dilemma and without guidance, so he “followed the path” that had been rehearsed and set out: continue to plead guilty.

I am relatively sure that when Flynn says it was a surreal and terrible day, he is referring not just to his surprise and his dilemma about the plea, but in particular to Judge Sullivan’s “treason” outburst that followed later, and which I’ve already described somewhat in Part I. What prompted the outburst from Sullivan?

First the transcript indicates that after Flynn and his lawyers had answered all of Sullivan’s questions designed to re-state the plea and its related elements, Judge Sullivan went on to what was supposed to be the sentencing phase, the original plan for the hearing (starts on p. 17). As part of that process Sullivan reviews the possible penalties, and the facts of the case to which Flynn had previously acceded, including the Kislyak phone call and Flynn’s FARA filings (the FARA issues begin to be described on p. 22). Sullivan also described the cooperation that Flynn had offered the government and agreed to offer in the future (that discussion begins on p. 25).

It was that last bit – help in the future – that apparently was the sticking point for Sullivan regarding sentencing that day. On page 26 he says “the courts are reluctant to proceed to sentence unless and until cooperation has been completed.” He indicated that he couldn’t simply approve the plea bargain and the suggested sentence (no prison) of the two sets of lawyers, because Flynn needed to offer further assistance, and that assistance should involve testifying in the trial of his business associates’ FARA case (the one I’ve described at some length in this previous post).

Prosecutor Van Grack (p. 27) tries to say that Flynn has already cooperated in that case – and mentions the fact that the accused, Rafiekian and Alptekin, had just been indicted the day before, with Flynn’s help. And at the bottom of page 27, Sullivan asks whether Flynn could have been charged, too, in that indictment, to which (p. 28) Van Grack answers “yes.”

This must have sent a shiver down Flynn’s already well-chilled spine, reminding him that if this hearing didn’t go well, there was still the possibility not only of his own indictment regarding Turkey and FARA, but of his son’s, although Sullivan doesn’t mention the latter and may not even be aware of it, since the lawyers on both sides had made sure that that part of their agreement had been (illegally) kept from the court, as I described in this post.

Sullivan and the prosecutor then discuss the substantial penalties possible for the type of FARA offense Flynn has neither been charged with nor indicted for, but supposedly could have been charged with. Then finally it seems as though Sullivan is beginning to discuss the actual sentence he will be imposing that day, and (p. 31) Sullivan says he’s not bound by the recommendations in the lawyers’ agreement.

This also must have been a shock to Flynn, who previously had been assured that it would be approved. It might also have been a surprise to both sets of lawyers. The reason Sullivan gives for his statement is that Flynn has not yet fulfilled his full end of the bargain. Sullivan also makes it clear (towards the bottom of p. 31 into p. 32) that the sentence he’s planning to give Flynn if he sentences him today probably is going to be harsher than Flynn would get after helping further with the trial of the other two men.

And then (p. 32) Sullivan says this:

This crime is very serious. As I stated, it involves false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents on the premises of the White House, in the White House in the West Wing by a high ranking security officer with, up to that point…an unblemished career of service to his country.That’s a very serious offense.

I think by then Sullivan had revved himself up to an even greater a state of outrage. At this point, I believe that he saw Flynn as a liar who had disgraced his position and his stature, and had just admitted that disgrace and those lies once again, under oath. I think Sullivan felt what may have been a satisfying rush of contempt for Flynn, one that relieved him of any lingering doubt about the fact that Flynn needed a harsh punishment – and that he, Judge Sullivan, was going to extract his full pound of fleshy cooperation from Flynn before he would lighten the sentence one iota no matter what the lawyers and even the prosecutors had recommended. He was the judge, wasn’t he?

And it was then, with hardened heart and feeling what he considered righteous anger, that Sullivan made his extraordinary and completely uncalled-for statements about treason, some of which have already been described in Part I.

[NOTE II: To be continued soon in Part III.]

The “legacy interface” – its days are numbered

The New Neo Posted on by

For my age, I do pretty well with a computer. But I’m very bad at learning something new, and I usually hate doing so. Once I’m “interfacing” with a system, it becomes almost automatic and easy.

That’s when they change it up.

It’s always in the name of progress. “Oh, this will be so much better for you,” they say. “Take your medicine, honey.” And yet it very often is much worse after they’ve made their “improvements.” Don’t get me started on every single kind of email I use, for example, and the lousy changes they keep making.

But the thing that especially bugs me is that the systems that do this pretend to give you options. But it’s only for a short while that you get to opt out of the new and use the “classic” version you prefer. And then, after a few weeks or months, down the rabbit hole that classic goes.

I’m posting about this today not because anything special has happened along those lines, but because this at Ann Althouse’s gave me a chuckle:

I’d be interested in seeing a science fiction movie called “The Legacy Interface Will Still Be Optionally Available.” You’d easily know that this would be some dystopia where normal life had been nightmarishly disrupted. In “The Matrix,” the legacy interface is optionally available. You take a pill to opt out of the new world that had become the default for all users.

And I bet towards the end of the film, the plot would entail the erasing of the legacy option entirely, and the person’s frantic efforts – successful? unsuccessful? – to find the magic wormhole to access it again.

The Left shows Tara Reade what happens to traitors to the cause

The New Neo Posted on by

Their past is raked over to find something to destroy them, if possible.

Reade may have believed the left meant it when it said believe women (which was always an absurd slogan anyway, for anyone who knows anything about women or men). But if so, she was sadly mistaken. The full slogan is “believe women who accuse a person the left either wants to destroy, or who is expendable to the left” (an example of the latter is Al Franken, who would immediately be replaced by another person from the left).

When Reade’s accusations against Joe Biden were first made public, one possibility I considered was that the powers that be on the left had decreed Biden to be a millstone around their necks, and this was a good way to get rid of him and replace him with a less foggy and more demographically correct candidate. That turns out, at least so far, to not be the case. For whatever reason, for now anyway, they’ve decided to go with Joe.

And so Tara Reade must be destroyed:

The Monterey County District Attorney’s office has launched an investigation into whether Tara Reade lied on the witness stand while acting as an expert witness.

Reade, under the name Alexandra McCabe, for years testified as an expert in domestic violence cases for the California D.A.’s office. Among the issues is whether she lied about her credentials to qualify as an expert.

“We are investigating whether Ms. McCabe gave false testimony under oath,” Monterey County Chief Assistant District Attorney Berkley Brannon told POLITICO on Tuesday.

Brannon said the office does not yet know in how many cases Reade testified as an expert.

“We have no database or search engine to use to determine in how many cases she testified,” Brannon said. “However, that effort is ongoing.”

Oh, you can bet “that effort is ongoing.”

As Beria said, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” And of course that goes for women, too.

Tara Reade may be a liar, for all I know. She may have lied when she gave her credentials as an expert witness. She may be lying about Biden’s alleged attack. As in almost cases of the sort of accusations she made, my position is that we don’t know. I do know that Reade’s accusations had a great deal more credibility because of contemporaneous corroboration that most – certainly far more than those of Christine Blasey Ford, who was nevertheless nearly canonized by the left because her target was extremely politically useful.

But none of that matters to the left. What matters is the lesson the whole thing teaches, which is that any movement and any principle is only adhered to if it helps the cause, and the cause is the left’s gaining more power.

So I underestimated how long it would take to write Part II of the Sullivan post

The New Neo Posted on by

So sue me.

I said yesterday I thought that Part II would be posted today. But I overestimated my capacity to churn that thing out. It’s such a big topic with so much information to digest. I’ve written a portion of Part II but I realize that I’ll have to try to finish it tonight, and hopefully I’ll post it tomorrow.

Sorry! But to compensate for that, there may even be a Part III.

And I’d better grind the entire thing out before June 1, which is when Judge Sullivan is supposed to respond to the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit’s order.

Release the Kraken – I mean the transcript of the Flynn/Kislyak phone call

The New Neo Posted on by

Although the transcript of the Flynn/Kislyak phone call (or calls) does exist and the FBI had it when they interrogated Flynn in order to set their perjury trap for him, neither he nor his lawyers have ever been allowed to see it. Nor have we.

Flynn was “persuaded” to plead guilty not just because of the FBI’s prosecution threats to himself and his son for supposed FARA violations, but on their say-so about the other evidence supposedly against him: that he lied to the FBI when they questioned him about the content of the Kislyak call. And I don’t think Judge Sullivan ever saw it either, nor has either set of Flynn’s attorneys.

Well, seems like we all might get to see the transcript(s) after all these years. Grennell has just declassified them on his way out, and it will be up to Ratcliffe his successor to decide whether to release them or not.

Interestingly, one of the people wanting the transcripts to be released is Adam Schiff, who must feel they bolster his case or can be successfully spun to bolster his case. Susan Rice asked for it to be done as well. And Sidney Powell, Flynn’s attorney, feels it will tend to exonerate her client. And this article says the push to release the transcripts was “bipartisan.” More information on that can be found here.

Releasing the transcript and related documents could be like opening the box in which Schrodinger’s cat languishes, either dead or alive. However, I must say that things are seldom that clear, and the MSM can spin anything, or try.

It’s not completely clear to me, either, who has actually seen any of this information up till now. I suppose Rice has, since she was Obama’s National Security Advisor at the time of the December 29, 2016 call. But who else among these players, in particular the members of Congress, has seen the documents?

[NOTE: Here’s the reference in the title of this post.]

Democrat bigwigs fear an economic upswing before November

The New Neo Posted on by

Of course they do:

…Furman laid out a detailed case for why the months preceding the November election could offer Trump the chance to brag — truthfully — about the most explosive monthly employment numbers and gross domestic product growth ever.

Since the Zoom call, Furman has been making the same case to anyone who will listen, especially the close-knit network of Democratic wonks who have traversed the Clinton and Obama administrations together, including top members of the Biden campaign.

Furman’s counterintuitive pitch has caused some Democrats, especially Obama alumni, around Washington to panic. “This is my big worry,” said a former Obama White House official who is still close to the former president. Asked about the level of concern among top party officials, he said, “It’s high — high, high, high, high.”

And top policy officials on the Biden campaign are preparing for a fall economic debate that might look very different than the one predicted at the start of the pandemic in March. “They are very much aware of this,” said an informal adviser.

Of course they’re worried, and of course they’re very aware. What goes down sometimes goes back up. Many Democratic governors are doing their best to prevent that possibility. But will it be enough to keep things down?

I don’t know. I hope not; I certainly am hoping for a recovery and hope it takes place before November. But I imagine that a lot of rank-and-file Democrats – you know, working people (or formerly working people) who are not solid leftists but who nevertheless vote Democratic – would agree with me. This is particularly true if they are out of work either temporarily or permanently.

Do the Democrat operatives realize this? Or have they written those people off already? Have they calculated they won’t need them?

More:

“In absolute terms, the economy will look historically terrible come November,” said Kenneth Baer, a Democratic strategist who worked in a senior role at the Office of Management and Budget under Obama. “But relative to the depths of April, it will be on an upswing — 12 percent unemployment, for example, is better than 20, but historically terrible. On Election Day, we Democrats need voters to ask themselves, ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’ Republicans need voters to ask themselves, ‘Are you better off than you were four months ago?’”

Actually, I would hope (and almost certainly in vain) that voters would ask both questions, and if either answer is “no,” then they’d ask themselves a follow-up: and whose fault is that? And if I lived in a blue state, the answer certainly wouldn’t be “Donald Trump’s fault.”

Obamagate: our very own army of little Berias

The New Neo Posted on by

I bring you the following documents to peruse and read at your leisure, and be sure to fortify your stomach before you do. The first is Michael Flynn’s petition to withdraw his guilty plea, which describes (in summary, anyway) what happened to Flynn at the hands of the FBI and Mueller’s goons. The second is this summary of the frameup of George Papadopoulos. Then there’s what happened to K.T. MacFarland.

Do you note a bit of a pattern here? I sure do. And it’s certainly not limited to those three victims. In a larger sense, of course, we’re all the victims. Not just potential victims; actual victims, because Americans have been subject to a vast and dangerous disinformation campaign in which falsehood masquerades as truth in order to hide truth and gain power.

[NOTE: Beria was the head of the USSR’s KGB (at the time the NKVD) under Stalin. Beria famously said: “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” He practiced what he preached.]

A little background on Flynn’s original defense lawyers’ conflict of interest, and a few other things as well

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I’m hoping to post Part II of the Sullivan piece tomorrow (Part I is here). The present post provides some background to the other posts, but it’s not primarily about Sullivan.]

There are so many issues in the Flynn case – so many ways he was dealt a lousy hand as well as mistreated – that it’s hard to recall them all. One is the conflict of interest in which his initial lawyers were embroiled.

And it’s a lulu.

One of the possible charges against Flynn involved alleged FARA violations of a somewhat complicated law that until three years ago was ordinarily met with a fine for violations if it was prosecuted at all. But rather recently things changed:

Earlier [in 2019], the Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division publicly confirmed the Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) intention to make Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”) a criminal enforcement priority. This newfound priority has resulted in surge of FARA prosecutions — including the cases against Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and Greg Craig — with no sign of slowing down.

FARA, which was originally enacted in 1938 to combat Nazi propaganda, is a disclosure statute that requires persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities. Failure to register with the DOJ can result in criminal penalties — Despite the seriousness of FARA’s penalties, it has long been an afterthought because of federal prosecutors’ hesitancy in bringing FARA prosecutions.1 DOJ brought only seven criminal FARA cases between 1966 and 2015 (securing FARA convictions in just three cases) and had not employed FARA’s civil injunctive relief since 1991. In the last three years, however, there has been a significant uptick in the number of FARA prosecutions.

Beware of laws that have been on the books but rarely enforced and then suddenly used as tools to get political enemies. It turns out that the most important conflict of interest for Flynn’s lawyers involved FARA.

Here’s an article from last January that explains:

FARA is a complex law, and people who must make filings under it often seek the assistance of counsel…If the government subsequently asserts the FARA filing…is criminally false, the attorney is potentially implicated along with the client.

The lawyer’s interest in defending his or her actions may conflict with the obligation to zealously defend the client. Furthermore, the attorney can be a key witness if the client is charged, which may also disqualify the lawyer from representing the client in the criminal case.

In Flynn’s case, the Covington lawyers would have been witnesses either for or against Flynn regarding his FARA filings [involving work of the Flynn Intel Group regarding Turkey] and any related potential criminal charge brought against him…

Thus, the Covington attorneys who helped Flynn prepare his filings could become the star defense witnesses if they said any mistake in the filings was their responsibility rather than Flynn’s. In that event, no conflict would arise between Flynn’s interest and Covington’s interest.

On the other hand, if Flynn provided incorrect information to Covington that was included in the FARA filings, a clear conflict emerges because Covington has an interest in absolving itself from any responsibility and placing the blame entirely on Flynn. If Flynn had deliberately provided false information to Covington, the Covington attorneys would become witnesses against Flynn, and no lawyer at the Covington firm could represent Flynn with respect to the FARA charge.

If, instead, Flynn innocently provided incorrect or incomplete information to Covington, the situation becomes muddier…

Flynn’s current counsel [Sidney Powell] says this last scenario is what actually happened, that Flynn innocently provided incorrect information to Covington. It is certainly implausible that Flynn would hire a reputable firm like Covington and pay it a six-figure fee to prepare FARA filings on his behalf, only to deliberately provide the attorneys false information for inclusion in those filings. Nonetheless, the government alleged this is exactly what Flynn did.

Notwithstanding the potential conflict of interest between it and Flynn, Covington represented Flynn in his plea negotiations with the government and struck an agreement whereby Flynn effectively admitted to both lying to the FBI and making a false statement in his FARA filings. Technically, Flynn pleaded guilty to only one count of making a false statement to the FBI; he did not plead guilty to making false statements in his FARA filings. The written Statement of Offense submitted to the court as part of Flynn’s plea, however, includes facts relating to both offenses. The government inserts facts about other offenses in a Statement of Offense when it wants to establish that those facts are “relevant conduct,” which the court then considers along with the offense of conviction in imposing a sentence.

Flynn now disputes whether he admitted in the Statement of Offense that he knew at the time he provided the FARA information to Covington that it was false. He says he only learned so later. To constitute a criminal false statement, the information must be false, and the defendant must know so at the time he makes the statement. If a person makes an incorrect statement he or she then believes to be true, no offense has been committed.

That ended up being important for many reasons, including that sentencing hearing on December 18, 2018 that I wrote about in Part I. One of things that happened was that one day before that sentencing hearing for Flynn, Flynn’s associate Bijan Kian (also known as Rafiekian) and another man named Alptekin (see his history here) were indicted for FARA violations and the now-familiar charge of lying to the FBI, connected with their dealings with Turkey. Both men had been picked up as part of the Mueller investigation into Flynn.

During that extraordinary sentencing hearing (see the transcript) that occurred one day after the indictment of the two men (the timing was almost certainly no coincidence), one of the reasons Sullivan gave for warning Flynn that Flynn might get prison time despite the fact that even the prosecutor wasn’t recommending it was that Flynn hadn’t yet fulfilled everything the government might want of him. Sullivan hinted that he might – might – relent and not give him prison time if Flynn cooperated fully in testifying to help them with their case against Rafiekian and Alptekin.

Flynn got the hint, and then accepted the delay in sentencing with the understanding that he would testify. Mueller obviously wasn’t through with Flynn yet, and this was a reminder to Flynn that he (and/or his son) could get more punishment for Flynn’s own supposed FARA violations if he didn’t play ball with Mueller. And no doubt Flynn’s lawyers were well aware, with all this FARA violation prosecution going on, that they could be in trouble too, if Flynn didn’t cooperate and stick to his guilty plea.

For anyone who wonders why Flynn’s sentencing was so delayed, it was because they were waiting for the other trial and his testimony against the men. However, in the meantime Flynn fired his Covington lawyers and hired Sidney Powell in late spring of 2019, and then things began to change.

Flynn recounted some of these issues he had with his Covington lawyers in this document he filed with the court in January of 2020 (I suggest you read the whole thing), asking to be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea. If you go to numbers 17, 19, and 25, you’ll see what he says about the Covington lawyers and the FARA violations (I can’t cut and paste from that document, so you’ll need to go to the link to see it).

Ultimately, Flynn didn’t testify in the trial of his former colleagues, because he refused to say that statements any of them made in the FARA findings were knowingly false. Therefore his testimony would not have been useful to the prosecutors, and was not what they had expected (you might say it wasn’t what they’d bargained for). Although a jury found Rafiekian guilty anyway, the judge threw the case out, ruling that there was no evidence of guilt and the jury had received incorrect instructions on the elements of the crime.

It’s my sense that Flynn’s coerced testimony would have been the best evidence the prosecutors had, and without that there really wasn’t much of a case at all. The whole thing was a house of cards constructed by Mueller, and it fell down when Flynn pulled out.

Just as you might expect, Flynn’s prosecutors retaliated

The government now argues [in January of 2020] that Flynn reneged on his agreement to cooperate in the Virginia case, has reversed course on accepting his criminal responsibility for the FARA filings, and thus his sentence should not be mitigated. Accordingly, it seeks a jail sentence of up to six months’ imprisonment for Flynn. In making this argument, the government relies heavily on Flynn’s plea agreement and his Statement of Offense.

So about a year later, the prosecution made good on Sullivan’s earlier threat from the sentencing hearing. They’d been waiting for his help with the other trial, and he withdrew it. And it got worse – and here’s where that conflict of interest comes in again:

In a highly unusual request by the government [prosecutors], it seeks to force Flynn to disavow those claims or else lose any sentencing credit for cooperation and accepting responsibility. Defendants have a Fifth Amendment right to be silent even at a sentencing proceeding and cannot be compelled to answer such questions. The government requesting that the court quiz Flynn to disavow positions his current counsel is raising on his behalf is extraordinary.

Flynn is now experiencing the unpleasant effects of his conflict of interest with Covington and his misinterpretation of what he was admitting to in his guilty plea. The government now wants the court to question Flynn, before he is sentenced, about his claims of innocence and his misunderstanding of the FARA issue.

Such an unusual request speaks to how the government appears to believe that the fault for the tangled sentencing situation lies entirely with Flynn and that, having “repented” his plea, he is now playing fast and loose with the truth before the court. But another distinct — and more likely — possibility is that Covington, hindered by its own conflict of interest, was not as zealous an advocate as it should have been in resisting the FARA charge and was not as clear with its client as it should have been in explaining the consequences of his guilty plea, including the FARA issue in the Statement of Offense..

Ya think?

Good grief, Flynn has been poorly served by his attorneys prior to Powell, and by the legal system so far. “Poorly served” is a euphemism, of course. He’s been screwed by it.

Oh, and one more thing. Let’s not forget what happened in April of 2020:

Former lawyers of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn say they’ve found thousands of additional documents related to his case that hadn’t been handed over to his new lawyers. In response, the judge presiding over the case has ordered the former lawyers to redo the search for everything they have related to the case…

“Covington determined that an unintentional miscommunication involving the firm’s information technology personnel” caused the firm to search not all of the Flynn-related emails, but only a subset that they prepared in response to document requests in a related case with Flynn’s former business partner Bijan Rafiekian, the filing said…

Powell said in an April 24 filing that Flynn was provided by the Department of Justice (DOJ) with new exculpatory evidence that “proves” he was “deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI.”

The evidence was filed under seal and thus isn’t available to the public; Powell has asked Sullivan to unseal it.

The documents were produced as a result of an ongoing review of the case by Jeffrey Jensen, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, who was directed in January to perform the review by Attorney General William Barr.

Jensen’s investigation precipitated an awful lot of action, didn’t it? And then of course it led to the Barr DOJ asking that the case be dropped, followed by the stunning actions by Sullivan in refusing to do so, which brings us right up to the present.

This case is nothing if not complicated, and this post isn’t even Part II yet. But in a way it’s actually quite simple: Flynn was framed, and those who framed him seem determined to make it stick.

Governor Newsom sees the opportunity in crisis

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s a liberal politician’s specialty.

The COVID pandemic and the related shutdowns are seen by the left as an opportunity to get in their idea of election “reform”:

On Sunday, the Republican National Committee (RNC), the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), and the California Republican Party sued Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) for using the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic as an excuse for a “brazen power grab” over the state’s election system…

“In a direct usurpation of the legislature’s authority, Governor Newsom issued an executive order purporting to rewrite the entire election code for the November 2020 election. This brazen power grab was not authorized by state law and violates both the Elections Clause and Electors Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Governor’s Order is invalid and must be enjoined,” the lawsuit states.

“Moreover, in his haste, the Governor created a system that will violate eligible citizens’ right to vote. By ordering that vote-by-mail ballots be automatically sent to every registered voter—including inactive voters, voters with invalid registrations, voters who have moved, voters who have died, and voters who don’t want a ballot—he has created a recipe for disaster. No State that regularly conducts statewide all-mail elections automatically mails ballots to inactive voters because it invites fraud, coercion, theft, and otherwise illegitimate voting,” the lawsuit argues.

Newsom is not alone, of course, in pushing this. And the Democrats have been uncharacteristically open in talking about the plan:

The mail-in voting battle comes after Democrats have capitalized on the coronavirus crisis to advance the vote-by-mail agenda. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi smuggled in vote-by-mail election overhauls into coronavirus relief bills in March and again in May, as Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) said the crisis was “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.” Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has called the coronavirus an “opportunity” for “structural change” on voting. Leftist foundations have dedicated millions to push mail-in ballot schemes.

They will not give up until they’ve succeeded, either. The left never rests, and it is well-funded. The only protection we have against this right now are the courts, including the federal courts and Supreme Court (that’s where Trump and the Senate come in), and the Senate (not just judicial appointments, but as a stop against the worst excesses of Pelosi and the House).

[NOTE: I refuse to put a “COVID-19” tag on this post, because these election “reforms” actually have nothing to do with the pandemic, which is an excuse. At this point, although COVID is a big problem, so far what has turned it into a bona fide crisis has been the reaction to it and the repercussions of that reaction.]

Memorial Day: If you’re reading this…

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve posted this song before, but I think it bears repeating, especially on Memorial Day.

It’s Tim McGraw’s extraordinarily moving song “If You’re Reading This“:

If you’re readin’ this
My momma’s sittin’ there
Looks like I only got a one way ticket over here.
I sure wish I could give you one more kiss
War was just a game we played when we were kids
Well I’m layin’ down my gun
I’m hanging up my boots
I’m up here with God and we’re both watchin’ over you

So lay me down
In that open field out on the edge of town
And know my soul
Is where my momma always prayed that it would go.
If you’re readin’ this I’m already home.

If you’re readin’ this
Half way around the world
I won’t be there to see the birth of our little girl
I hope she looks like you
I hope she fights like me
And stands up for the innocent and the weak
I’m layin’ down my gun,
I’m hanging up my boots
Tell dad I don’t regret that I followed in his shoes…

The first time I ever heard the song I got the chills as the lyrics unfolded and I realized what it was about, and then again and again as the heartstrings were jerked harder and harder as the song went on.

I say “the heartstrings were jerked,” which sounds as though I’m being critical and the song is manipulative. Well, it’s manipulative in the sense that it means to affect the listener emotionally, and it means to sell songs. But I see nothing wrong with that, if the emotion is sincere and deep. Most of us do, or should, feel a very strong gratitude to the men and women who sacrificed their lives to defend liberty here and abroad, and a very strong sorrow that it was necessary. On Memorial Day, we thank them.

What’s going on with Judge Sullivan? [Part I]

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Here’s my attempt to tackle the question of what may have sparked Judge Sullivan’s behavior in the Flynn case. It’s probably going to be a two-parter, of which this is the first installment.

So, what’s going on here? Let me say at the outset that I don’t know for sure although I have some hunches. Politics may indeed be part of it, because after all, Flynn has become a highly important quarry for the left. Sullivan also may be experiencing some sort of decline in his cognitive powers. And it’s quite possible he’s enjoying the limelight, as well. But I think there is a basic and more personal motive underlying it all, and that Sullivan has come to hate Michael Flynn.

Judge Emmet Sullivan has certainly gotten our attention lately, by refusing to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn even though the prosecution has backed off because the investigators violated his rights and caused his prosecution to be deeply flawed.

Sullivan came to the case late, on a random assignment after the first judge – the one who took Flynn’s original guilty plea – recused himself (or was removed) for, of all things, a friendship with Strzok that was revealed in the Strzok/Page texts. Washington DC is nothing if not involuted.

The original judge, Contreras, had accepted Flynn’s guilty plea one day before the Strzok/Page texts were revealed, and he stepped down a few days after. So the case up to that point was already compromised, because of the friendship and the fact that Contreras had initially taken the case despite the relationship.

Then almost a year later, on December 18, 2018, at what was supposed to be Flynn’s sentencing hearing based on his guilty plea plus cooperation with prosecutors – a hearing at which the prosecutors were recommending leniency for Flynn and no prison term – Judge Sullivan made it clear that he was not going to rubber stamp the deal. He had his own ideas about Flynn’s crimes, and he wasn’t shy about expressing his feelings toward Flynn. On page 33 of the transcript of the hearing, you can find this statement by Sullivan: “”I’m not hiding my disgust, my disdain for this criminal offense.”

The transcript is pretty long, but if you can take the time to read it I think you’ll find it interesting. At one point (page 36), Sullivan even outlandishly mentioned that perhaps the prosecutors could have considered Flynn’s behavior treason, a statement so bizarre that it left even Flynn’s prosecutor almost unable to think of a response. Here’s the exchange:

[SULLIVAN]: …is there an opinion about the conduct of the defendant the following days that rises to the level of treasonous activity on [Flynn’s] part?

MR.VAN GRACK [prosecutor]: The government did not consider–I shouldn’t say– I shouldn’t say did not consider, but in terms of the evidence that the government had at the time, that was not something that we were considering in terms of charging the defendant.

[SULLIVAN]: All right. Hypothetically, could he have been charged with treason?

MR.VANGRACK: Your Honor, I want to be careful what I represent.

[SULLIVAN]: Sure.

MR.VANGRACK: And not having that information in front of me and because it’s such a serious question, I’m hesitant to answer it, especially because I think it’s different than asking if he could be charged under FARA…

Lawyers aren’t usually at a loss for words, but I think (without actually hearing an audio, which would be extremely helpful) that here Van Grack was so gobsmacked he was almost unable to answer as a result.

Quite a bit more was said about other topics, then there was a recess, and after the recess Sullivan actually apologized for his remarks. Whether he had calmed down all by himself, or whether he talked to someone who advised him to do so, I have no idea. But he felt the need to add that he really wasn’t suggesting that Flynn had committed treason, even though it’s pretty clear that he was suggesting at least that possibility. Sullivan was also well aware that what went on in that courtroom that day would be heavily reported, so he had to know his “treason” remarks would be anti-Flynn ammunition for the left.

Sullivan also makes a curious statement right after his apology [pages 40-41]. I’m talking about the next-to-last sentence in the following exchange:

[SULLIVAN]:And I said early on, Don’t read too much into the questions I ask .But I’m not suggesting he committed treason. I just asked a legitimate question.

MR.VANGRACK: Yes, Your Honor. And that affords us an opportunity to clarify something on our end which is, with respect to treason, I said I wanted to make sure I had the statute in front of me. The government has no reason to believe that the defendant committed treason; not just at the time, but having proffered with the defendant and spoken with him through 19 interviews, no concerns with respect to the issue of treason.

[SULLIVAN]: Right, right, and I’ve never presided over a treasonous offense and couldn’t tell you what the elements are anyway. I just asked the question.

As I’ve said many times, I’m not conversant with the usual courtroom conversations between judges and lawyers. But this seems extraordinary. Earlier, Sullivan has come from left field and made a statement about Flynn and treason that escalates things in a way no one has foreseen, and ultimately causes even the prosecutor (after the recess) to reassure him that no such crime was ever committed by this defendant. And then Sullivan reveals that he doesn’t even know what treason is, in the legal sense.

And that’s only a small part of what happened in that courtroom that day. By now, its shocking nature has been superseded, of course, by Sullivan’s more recent behavior in refusing to dismiss the case as the DOJ has requested, and even entertaining a charge against Flynn of criminal contempt for perjury, over his guilty plea. Sullivan’s recent actions are even more shocking and unusual than his earlier ones, and he may end up in trouble for them as a result of the writ of mandamus to which he’s been told to respond. But I believe the seeds of the whole thing began during that sentencing hearing, when Sullivan’s rage against Flynn was triggered by something (to be explored in Part II).

I believe that in addition to everything else – politics and possible cognitive issues – Sullivan became convinced that Flynn is a lying, treasonous weasel, and that Sullivan has become determined that Flynn will be imprisoned for something. Flynn has become the Moby Dick to Judge Sullivan’s Captain Ahab: “To the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”