Tell It to the Judge, trumpshirts

There's a lot going on today so I may blog more than once, just letting you know.

One thing I'm waking up to is a follow-up on a thing I blogged last week, about how Attorney General Barr (trump's Roy Cohn) forced the withdrawal from Michael Flynn's plea bargain in order to force the judge overseeing the matter to end the case. In order to make it look like Flynn should never have made a plea deal in the first place, in order to make it look like Obama's Department of Justice and Mueller's investigative team entrapped Flynn without cause.

You have to remember, Flynn was a major contact between a lot of foreign players, not only Russia but also Turkey, and was getting caught in a lot of questionable plots to where the entire Intel Community was waving red flags about him. Flynn was also one of trump's inner circle handlers, which made the connections between trump and Russia a lot harder to ignore.

One of the earliest moves Mueller made during the inquiry into what and how Russia did to meddle in the 2016 election, the special prosecutor was able to get Flynn to plead down to "lying to investigators" in order to avoid jury trials over some of the more flagrant stuff Flynn - and his son - was caught doing. It was a foundation on which a lot of other cases and plea deals involving trump's people was based.

When trump was able to get Barr set up as Attorney General, Flynn changed his mind on the deal, and had been trying to wrangle his way out of it. The move Barr pulled last week was the final step - so it seemed - to let Flynn off the hook. No deal, no case, and then trump and his buddies can start claiming everything Mueller did was a conspiracy, a setup by Obama and the Deep State (the whole #Obamagate thing we've been seeing re-emerge this past week by Russian Twitter Bots) to destroy trump's God-approved destiny.

However, like a lot of trumpian schemes, this one wasn't thought out well enough. Judge Sullivan overseeing this matter had ways to keep the case going, and last night he used those steps and even opened up the availability of another weapon to hold Flynn (and Barr) accountable. To Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine:

First, earlier this week, a retired judge and two former U.S. Attorneys pointed out that this apparent legal coup does not have to end the matter. In an op-ed, the three legal eminences argued that the court has the power to bring in outside legal advisers to argue the case, even if the government has dropped its prosecution, and potentially still sentence the defendant.

Then, earlier this evening, the New York Times reported that Barr’s lawyers misled the court about the testimony of a key figure in the Flynn case. The Justice Department told the judge, Emmet Sullivan, that FBI notes indicated its agents only interviewed Flynn in order to trap him into lying. An FBI agent involved in the Flynn interview told the Department this wasn’t true, a fact the DOJ failed to include in its request to let Flynn go.

Then tonight, Judge Sullivan dropped a bomb. He announced that he would not simply rubber stamp Barr’s maneuver to free Flynn. Instead, he is bringing in a judge to review the case and provide the pushback against Flynn’s defense lawyers that is missing now that the DOJ has essentially joined in with Flynn’s legal team.

What may matter even more is the judge Sullivan picked for this job: John Gleeson, a former mob-busting prosecutor and, more to the point, one of the co-authors of the Post op-ed urging Sullivan to take this step...

I'm not there in person to witness much of this, but I get the impression that Sullivan is pissed.

I get the impression that Sullivan did not like getting lied to by Barr and the DoJ lawyers undercutting their own plea deal. That Times report that lawyers misled the judge on testimony is usually the point where said judge throws people into jail for contempt of his/her court.

I recall Sullivan is someone who, when AG Barr redacted the Mueller Report, fought to get parts of it unredacted for his review of Flynn's plea deal (The Justice Department refused). Sullivan did confront Flynn back in 2018 with the words "you sold out your own country," reportedly due to information Sullivan has on Flynn's corruption that hasn't been made public (yet).

And we're looking at the possibility that Sullivan can add charges regarding Flynn's misconduct in his courtroom. The reality that Flynn changed his testimony - at least once - while the plea deal was still on the table makes him open to a contempt of court perjury charge. Via Adam Gabbatt at The Guardian:

...Sullivan... said he had asked John Gleeson, a former federal judge in New York, to recommend whether Flynn should face a new criminal contempt charge for perjury. Gleeson has also been asked to make the case for why the DoJ’s motion to dismiss the Flynn case should be rejected...

What this does mean is that Flynn's lawyers have more work on their hands. This means Barr and his DoJ team cannot wash their hands of this and walk away. This is being done with an outsider in Gleeson who can't be pressured by Barr or trump to play their game of "loyalty or fired."

What this means is that trump, his inner circle of corrupt bastards, and his Russian cronies cannot pretend this whole thing was a manufactured Obama/Hillary trap. Sullivan seems dead set on making sure someone - Flynn - is held accountable for the sins they caused.

This puts the pressure back on trump. Sure, he could pardon Flynn, he's done that for a number of people undeserving of mercy. I do question if a pardon frees someone held on a judge's contempt order, but we'll find out. And the pardon runs the risk of Flynn being vulnerable to further testimony without Fifth Amendment protections. It also means Flynn has to admit he did (some) of the things he's being pardoned for, meaning trump can't hide the connections his 2016 campaign had with foreign powers (especially Russia).

trump and Roy Cohn Bill Barr are not going to sweep this under the rug like Putin hoped they could.

The trump Criminal Empire Threatens The Rule of Law

This is how fucked up our federal government is under the misrule of KING trump. Via Jamie Ross at Daily Beast:

The head of the Federal Judges Association has reportedly taken the unprecedented step of calling an emergency meeting to discuss President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr’s intervention in Roger Stone’s sentencing recommendation. U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, who leads the association of around 1,100 life-term federal judges, told USA Today that the issue “could not wait.” She said: “There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about... We’ll talk all this through.”

Rufe’s announcement follows an open letter signed by more than 1,000 former Justice Department employees calling on Barr to resign over the Stone case. Last week, Trump made clear that he was angry about the length of the sentence recommended for his friend Roger Stone, then Barr’s Justice Department withdrew that recommendation. Trump also attacked the judge in the Stone case, Amy Berman Jackson, with unfounded accusations of political bias. The Washington Post reported that the Federal Judges Association has never called an emergency meeting such as the one described by Rufe in the USA Today interview...

This has never happened before.

That is because we've never had a goddamned dictator-wannabe con artist asshole crook in office before. Yes, this is including the likes of Nixon and Harding and Jackson (and if you're so inclined I will include Bill Clinton in that mix).

That is because previous Presidents showed due deference to the independence of the Judiciary, whereas this President Loser of the Popular Vote trump wants every branch and every office of government bowing to him with undeserved fealty.

The amount of concern among other Republican leaders, especially the cowering ass-covering Senators who just gave trump their Stamp of Approval to break every law he wishes, will most likely rise to the level of telling Fox Not-News "Well, we'll write a strongly-worded letter to the White House as soon as we can find a typewriter that still works."

Christ.

Traditionally, the judges in our federal system try to avoid the appearance of partisanship or political bias - even as they pass rulings that have bias, thanks a lot Rehnquist Court for the Bush v. Gore monstrosity - but in this regard they can no longer avoid it. trump and his lackey AG Barr are directly attacking the independence of the third branch of our government, hacking at the checks and balances that are supposed to keep power shared and out of the hands of just one person.

But that's what trump wants, after all. trump has no respect for others unless they're rich and powerful, what he aspires to be (and what he secretly may not be, hence his refusal to ever show his tax returns). trump WANTS all that power, refuses to share it to those he views as lackeys and servants and losers. he chafes against the restrictions of dealing with Congress (even when his fellow Republicans controlled it between 2017-18, he couldn't handle sharing power with them), and he's expressed his disdain for judges before.

And now trump is unleashed. he thinks Congress can't touch him now (and with the Senate refusing to hold him accountable, he's right). The only thing standing in his way of Absolute Rule is a court system still holding his business buddies and Russian connections to count for their law-breaking before and during the 2016 elections.

Now trump wants the judges to arbitrarily give him and his buddies Stone, Flynn, Manafort and others a clean break, no more jail time for the sins they've plead out or convicted of, before trump has to resort to the obvious step of pardoning each of them anyway (trump and his lawyers have to understand the risks of pardons - if accepted, you can't claim Fifth Amendment protections from testifying later - so they want the judges to do the dirty work for them).

We are at a critical moment in our nation's history.

One branch of government - the Executive - is at war with another branch - the Judiciary - and the stakes are high. Above all the power of the Constitution itself serving as the Law of this Land.

Gods help us.

P.S. Dear judges, now would be a good time to figure out how to issue Contempt rulings on trump, Barr, Stone, and every other corrupt Republican threatening our legal system. KaiThnxBye

Just What Is Going On In the Georgia Legal System?

I'm not talking about anything like corruption or denial of basic civil liberties or stuff - although that likely is happening somewhere in the Peach State - I'm talking about the crazy-ass criminals and the judges going crazy on the bench.

Seems there was a shouting match a few months ago between a crazy-ass defendant - already in jail awaiting trial and freshly accused of committing murder while behind bars - who thought he was his own best lawyer (even Stephen King notes when you do that you "have a fool for a client") trying to throw every legal idea he'd picked up from Law & Order re-runs at the judge to see what would stick. When the presiding judge started to shoot him down, the defendant went nuclear, going off on a profane, crosses-the-line-times-infinity rant that would be epic in its own right. Except that the judge flips out over losing control of his courtroom, and sinks down into the mud pit to make things even more twisted.

While the judge did get reprimanded (the jurist did get homophobic there), the transcript of the breakdown became an Internet viral sensation, so much so that a twisted cult Adult Swim cartoon Rick And Morty (think Back to the Future but where Doc and Marty were psychotic dicks) went and made a straight-up animated version of the meltdown.

There should be an easy YouTube of it to embed here:

Good Lord. This is more disturbing than that Florida Woman who tried to warp all of reality to get out of a Georgia trial last year... Remember her?

I think Florida is starting to rub off on our neighboring states in the worst way.

Two Crazy Flavors Of Florida, One To Make You Laugh, One To Make You Cry

"Don't all the nuts roll downhill to Florida?"
- from the X-Files episode Agua Mala.

One of the things I've tracked since the beginning of this blog has been the crazy nature of my adopted home state Florida.

I haven't been the only one who noticed.  Since even before the population boom of the 1980s that brought busloads of shifting populations, Florida has been one of the crazier states out of the United States in our past 230-year history.  Florida, thanks to a mad land-scam craze in the 1920s, may have been one of the causes of the Great Depression.  Florida, source of early political conflict when it was a Spanish-held territory in the early 1800s.  Florida, just say "hanging chad" and watch half the nation cry.

FloridaMan and FloridaWoman have Twitter accounts.

TV Tropes documents the atrocities.  FARK has an entire tag devoted to Florida- the only state so honored - as a source of all the crazy stories they report.

There's a popular GIF people like to show whenever they talk about Florida:

Okay, so that's the setup to this blog article.  A couple of things happened recently that highlight how psychotic Floridians can be.

First, the story that sent half the Internet into fits of giggles.  A self-described "Floridian-American" woman filed a law suit against a Georgia judge that pretty much violated every rule of legal etiquette and crossed every line.  Per Raw Story:

... (the) sovereign citizen submitted a nine-page, profanity-laced tirade against a judge who dismissed a lawsuit she filed on behalf of her husband and son.

Tamah Jada Clark alleges that her civil rights were violated when she was arrested nearly five years ago in an armed plot to break her baby’s father out of prison.

“F*ck this court and everything it stands for,” Clark titled her April 20 filing.

“Look here, old man, when I told you I AM Justice – I meant it,” Clark notified U.S. District Court Judge Willis B. Hunt. “It took me about 1 month to study the history of the world and to learn the history and inner workings American jurisprudence, literally. I was born to do this here. Don’t you know that your FBI and CIA have been trying to recruit me since grade school? Lol. But they’re unscrupulous losers like you, so it won’t be happening.”

There aren't a lot of legal briefs that include an LOL.  There aren't a lot of legal briefs that openly insult a sitting judge.

The thing about audacity is that even in the craziest, scariest moments like this you gotta respect the willingness of the crazy person to tap-dance over the Line That Dare Not Be Crossed.

The entire brief deserves reading, much thanks to Gawker for posting screen-captures (shown here are two of the pages with some of the most no-f*cks-given epic insults you will see in your life):

"Just for the record: you are a hoe. This court is a hoe. And I will backhand you both, should you continue to waste my time." - Tamah Jada Clark's submission for quote of the year.

In all honesty, Ms. Clark is in a sh-tload of trouble.  Someone up the chain of the judicial system is going to consider her rant troubling as she mentions her gun-ownership and willingness to get violent to those she views as "hoes".  At the least, this rant falls into Contempt and defamation towards a sitting judge that could well lead to jail time.

Still, the rant itself crosses the line into a warped kind of brilliance.  It's every conspiracy nut's arrogant self-worth elevated to Everest-level heights.  Read how Clark insists she's "much too intelligent" and that the FBI and CIA have been trying to recruit her since grade school.  That she's able to read all of world history in one hour, and how she knows a complex legal system that even half our law students can barely grasp.  That she's the Most Important and Powerful Person In the World... who was easily captured running around Georgia during a half-baked prison break scheme.  /headdesk

Second, the story that outraged much of the nation.  A group of drunken fraternity brothers - so far confirmed as being from my alma mater University of Florida - were caught insulting and spitting on war veterans, as well as stealing a veteran's flag and pissing on it:

A University of Florida fraternity already on conduct probation is under investigation after being accused of disrespecting a group of disabled military veterans by spitting on them and stealing their flags at a Panama City Beach resort last weekend...

...Fraternity members from the UF and Emory University chapters of Zeta Beta Tau holding their spring formals at the Laketown Wharf Resort in Panama City Beach disrupted the Warrior Beach Retreat Friday night, witnesses said...

One letter to UF's President Fuchs described students spitting on veterans, throwing beer bottles over a balcony, ripping flags off their cars and urinating on an American flag.

“These guys were getting out of control,” Cope said. “I was just in tears. This was supposed to be a safe place.”

Cope also said the students had to have known they were insulting veterans from the Warrior Beach Retreat because these veterans were wearing caps and T-shirts.

“They knew who they were and were just getting a kick out of it,” she said. “It is heartbreaking as a mom with a son who sacrificed so much for their freedom.”

About 60 veterans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan attended the retreat, which has been held twice a year for the last six years, Cope said...

The last I ever heard about anybody spitting on war vets was from legends about the Vietnam War, something that hippies did back in the 1960s and 1970s (although the stories themselves remain apocryphal).

The problem with fraternities reach far across the nation, not just here in Florida, but this particular assault on men and women makes me reflect on the darker, dangerous aspect of the Florida Crazy.  The drunken, violent aspect.  There is nothing audacious or funny about what those fraternity men (not frat boys, which implies youthful indiscretions rather than adult criminal misdeeds) did at that hotel.  Nothing about what they did was forgivable.