Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label law and order. Show all posts
Showing posts with label law and order. Show all posts

Sunday, January 07, 2024

A Thought


There's a lot of talk (mostly from the wingnut right) about pardoning Trump, so we can "heal the nation's wounds and move on." 

Some things:
  1. No POTUS can pardon him if he's convicted for state crimes
  2. Republicans seem to be tacitly admitting he's guilty of the federal charges, and that they expect he'll be on his way to prison before the year is out, but they won't say so in public.
  3. When Republicans are willing to look the other way, or rationalize Trump's criminal actions, doesn't that mean the GOP is soft on crime?

Wednesday, September 20, 2023

Dead To Rights

Paraphrasing:
Model the right behavior, and then tell the jury, "Let's be grownups about this."


Wednesday, August 09, 2023

Trials

Somewhere deep down in his brain - like at a sub-lizard level where not even the most adventurous of theoretical psychology nerds dare to go - Trump knows he can't win. He can't win at anything anywhere anytime again anyone.

He never has.

So that sub-lizard kernel of primordial brain-like substance sends a message up the chain, telling him he has to scheme and connive his way through life, doing whatever is necessary to avoid having to go head-to-head with any opponent - because he knows he's not going to win if he stands by the rules and behaves honorably.

He "beat" Hillary in 2016, by salting the earth (amping up the efforts of House Republicans), enlisting and taking full advantage of Russian dis-information techniques on social media, accepting (IMO) illegal contributions of foreign money laundered through the NRA, and by counting on enough people to be so sure Hillary would win that they threw their votes away in one way or another.

We got a little bit hip to the tricks, which meant he lost bigger than expected in 2018, got his ass kicked in 2020, lost pretty big again in 2022 as Republicans barely eked out a House Majority and lost a seat in the Senate.

He lost 62 of 63 court challenges filed regarding the 2020 election.


He lost to E Jean Carroll - twice - and he's about to lose another one to her.

His best good buddy CPA took the fall for him, and spent time in jail for business fraud.

and
and
and

For more than 70 years, he's done whatever he's wanted to do, and never once really faced the music - while learning the art of Life In Smarmspace®.



Opinion
Trump’s far-fetched defenses aren’t actually aimed at the courtroom

You do not need a law degree to understand that conspiring with someone to commit a crime isn’t protected by the First Amendment, despite thrice-indicted former president Donald Trump and his lawyer claiming the opposite. This is only one of their many half-baked defenses and extraneous excuses.

Trump’s defenses are far-fetched. So why make them?

Let’s start with the First Amendment. As former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti tweeted,
“Many crimes involve speaking to others. Fraud is one of them. It is well-settled in the law that freedom of speech does not give you the right to commit fraud or engage in criminal conspiracies.”

Two Sunday talk show hosts made the same point when interviewing Trump lawyer John Lauro. NBC’s Chuck Todd (“You’re not allowed to use speech, though, in order to get somebody to commit a crime”) and CNN’s Dana Bash (“But you can’t break the law … like approving fake electors”) didn’t need law degrees to puncture that Lauro canard.

Moving on to Lauro’s and Trump’s professed desire to move the trial in the election case from D.C. to West Virginia (because it’s more “diverse”?!), the relevant case in the circuit that has been followed in other cases related to Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. v. Haldeman, holds that only if an impartial jury cannot be found during voir dire is the defendant “entitled to any actions necessary to assure that he receives a fair trial,” which might include a change of venue. However, in cases of such national notoriety, there is no place unaffected by pretrial publicity (which Trump constantly drives). Trump does not have a right to find a more MAGA-friendly state for his trial.

Moreover, the alleged crimes occurred in D.C. — and D.C. residents have every right to have the case decided in their backyard with their fellow residents as jurors.

We’ve also heard Trump’s usual claptrap that the judge is biased. He has smeared and insulted every judge (and prosecutor) — except U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon (who has been roundly criticized by others and whose ruling on outside review of classified documents was harshly reversed by the 11th Circuit). Disqualification, as was discussed in connection with Cannon’s assignment to the Mar-a-Lago case, is governed by a statute. Under Section 455 of Title 28 of the U.S. Code, a party must show the judge’s “impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” for example with a showing of “personal bias or prejudice.” There is zero evidence of any such bias on the part of U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan; no reasonable person could question her impartiality. Whether Lauro thinks he can make a good-faith claim for recusal, without violating his ethical obligation to forgo frivolous arguments, remains an open question.

Other excuses do not seem to meet the straight-face test. It’s no defense to say that Trump did not “order” then-Vice President Mike Pence to overthrow the election. It will be enough to prove Trump attempted to engage him in an illegal plot to overthrow the election.

Lauro’s claim that Trump’s alleged arm-twisting of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,870 votes was merely “aspirational” is a real head-scratcher. Most conspiracies are aspirational (e.g., “I’d like to rob a bank”). But, of course, Trump allegedly implicitly threatened Raffensperger if he didn’t “find” the votes: (“It is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know, what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.”) Arguing that a “technical” constitutional violation is not necessarily a criminal violation, as Lauro did, is equally perplexing. Surely, he knows some actions — such as depriving others of the right to have their vote counted — can be both criminal and constitutional violations.

Somewhat more serious, we have heard many Trump apologists raise the defense that he was simply following advice of counsel. That dog won’t hunt, either.

As a factual matter, attorneys — his White House counsel, Justice Department officials, including then-Attorney General William P. Barr, and even those conspiring with Trump — told him the plan wouldn’t fly. Paragraph 11 of the indictment documents numerous instances in which attorneys told him no fraud was detected. Even “Co-Conspirator 2” (John Eastman) wouldn’t say the plan was legal, only that it had never been tested (Paragraph 93). Moreover, the indictment says, “After that conversation, the Senior Advisor notified the Defendant that Co-Conspirator 2 had conceded that his plan was ‘not going to work.’” Yes, even the author of the phony elector plan conceded it would lose overwhelmingly at the Supreme Court.

As a legal matter, an advice of counsel claim defense fails if the lawyers are part of the illegal scheme and/or if the advice is unreasonable. The so-far unindicted co-conspirators Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro cannot shield Trump from the crime they allegedly were committing together. Given that Trump’s entire campaign staff, Justice Department and vice president knew the plan was bonkers, it’s fair to say reliance on the Eastman scheme could not have been reasonable. (Legal scholars and case law have clarified that you cannot shop around for legal advice to justify illegal conduct. If you do, you’re obviously looking to find a stooge, not independent legal advice.)

Likewise, the argument that Trump really thought he won is both wrong and irrelevant. Both the indictment and the Jan. 6 House select committee testimony underscored that at times Trump dropped the facade and acknowledged Joe Biden had won the presidency. Moreover, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth already rejected the “but he really believed it” defense in the case of another Jan. 6 defendant. He found that even if the Jan. 6 defendant “genuinely believed the election was stolen and that public officials had committed treason, that does not change the fact that he acted corruptly with consciousness of wrongdoing.” Lamberth added: “Belief that your actions are serving a greater good does not negate consciousness of wrongdoing.”

So, what is going on here? Norman L. Eisen, a co-author of a Just Security model prosecution memo, practiced at the same criminal defense firm, Zuckerman Spaeder, with Lauro. Eisen speaks highly of Lauro’s legal skills. Eisen told me, “He will have tricks up his sleeve by the time we get to trial, which I think will be as soon as the first quarter of ’24. Don’t expect to hear these cartoon versions of the defenses but something more sophisticated.”

Why, then, make these arguments? Trump’s legal strategy in all three criminal cases so far — the Mar-a-Lago documents case pending in Florida, the state-level business records case pending in Manhattan and the election case — has rested not on winning in court but on delaying and then winning the election. To do the latter, he feels compelled to give his supporters some rationale, however specious and silly, to excuse their voting for him.

Fortunately, if the election case moves briskly ahead and Trump is convicted, only the most bamboozled MAGA voters will be left to parrot his excuses.

Friday, August 04, 2023

Podcast


The indictment reads like a well-written novella, or a play in 4 acts. A crime story perfectly framed, telling the story of how a gang of criminal idiots tried to knock over a casino.
  • First they try some straight-up cheating
  • Then they dress up in phony uniforms and try to pass themselves off as having authorization to go in thru the back and steal the money
  • Then they try to convince the door man that has the authority to walk into the vault, take the money, and hand it over to the gang members
  • Then, once all their other plots didn't work, they decided to shoot their way in and blow the place up


Friday, July 21, 2023

Today's Beau

Trump can rant and rave, and stomp and stumble around the jungle. And don't think some of those robotic meatbags won't come runnin' when he says go.

Fuck 'em. Let 'em bring it. There's more than enough honorable people here, waiting for the chance to kick his ass and his little minion gang's ass too.




Monday, June 12, 2023

Listen To The Indictment


Ali Velshi reads the Trump indictment. Very interesting, and easy to understand.

Thursday, June 01, 2023

Today's Anniversary


One this day in 2004,
Terry Nichols was sentenced
to 161 consecutive life sentences
without possibility of parole
for being an accomplice
in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Monday, May 15, 2023

On The Border

I'll go way out on a limb and say Biden will get slammed from the right because, "It's a crisis of his own making and we're glad he's finally doing what we said he should do, and blah blah bullshit blah."

And he'll get slammed from the left because "he shoulda done more/better/sooner yada yada bullshit blather."

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right - here I am stuck in the middle with you.

Of course, there's about 47 other shoes to drop - because there's always another 47 shoes to drop - but it's just possible Biden's approach may be starting to show some positive returns.

And that means the Republicans will soon be up to their old tricks, trying to fuck it up again, so they'll keep the destabilizing thing going and regenerate the requisite "Blame Biden" mindset for the rubes.

We'll see what we see.

Meanwhile, Greg Abbott needs to make it look as bad as possible.


Migrant crossings drop at U.S.-Mexico border after Title 42 expires

WASHINGTON, May 14 (Reuters) - Migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border have unexpectedly fallen, not risen, since Title 42 curbs expired and reinstating criminal penalties for illegal entry is likely the biggest reason, the Biden administration said on Sunday.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said border patrol agents have seen a 50% drop in the number of migrants crossing the border since Thursday, when President Joe Biden's administration shifted to a sweeping new asylum regulation meant to deter illegal crossings.

"The numbers we have experienced in the past two days are markedly down over what they were prior to the end of Title 42," Mayorkas said on CNN's "State of the Union" program. He said there were 6,300 border encounters on Friday and 4,200 on Saturday, but cautioned it was still early in the new regime.

Mayorkas credited the criminal penalties for migrants who illegally enter the country, which resumed under existing law after Title 42's expiration, for the decrease in crossings. The COVID-era rule adopted under former President Donald Trump allowed officials to expel migrants quickly without an asylum process but did not impose penalties.

Biden, asked during a bike ride near his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, how he believed the border situation was going, responded: "Much better than you all expected."

Biden said he did not have plans to visit the border in the near term.

The Biden administration plan requires migrants to schedule an immigration appointment through an app or seek protection from countries they passed through on their way to the U.S. border. If they do not follow the process and are caught entering the U.S. illegally, they are not allowed to try again, even through legal means, for five years. There are prison terms for other violations.

"There is a lawful, safe and orderly way to arrive in United States. That is through the pathways that President Biden has expanded in an unprecedented way, and then there's a consequence if one does not use those lawful pathways," Mayorkas said.

Officials from communities along the border agreed they had not seen the large numbers of migrants that many had feared would further strain U.S. border facilities and towns.

"The amount of migrants we were expecting initially - the big flow - is not here yet," Victor Trevino, mayor of Laredo, Texas, told CBS News' "Face the Nation."

But Republicans who control the U.S. House of Representatives warned a surge could still be on the way.

Migrants stand near the Rio Bravo river after crossing the border, to request asylum in the United States, as seen from Ciudad Juarez

"I do think there are caravans going up. I think they still want to get in," Representative Michael McCaul said on ABC's "This Week" program.

Representative Mark Green, Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN: "What the secretary failed to say is, this week has seen more crossings than any time, any week, in our history."

Mayorkas defended the Biden administration policy against a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union that claims the restrictions violate U.S. laws and international agreements.

"This is not an asylum ban. We have a humanitarian obligation, as well as a matter of security, to cut the ruthless smugglers out," he told ABC.

'BROKEN' IMMIGRATION SYSTEM

With U.S. immigration policy in disarray, holding facilities, hospitals and towns have been left to struggle after tens of thousands of migrants waded through rivers and climbed walls and embankments onto U.S. territory last week in the days before Title 42 expired.

Trevino said hospitals were at or near capacity, with no pediatric intensive care unit available and an emergency declaration in effect.

El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser told CBS that the Red Cross was helping private organizations and church groups provide food and other assistance for migrants.

"The immigration process is broken. There's no ifs ands or buts about it. But we are getting the resources that we need," Leeser said.

There has been little movement toward a bipartisan agreement to address immigration in Congress.

Just before Title 42 expired on Thursday, House Republicans approved legislation that would resume construction of a border wall, expand federal law enforcement efforts and require asylum seekers to apply for U.S. protection outside the country.

The Republican bill is unlikely to be taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Thursday, March 02, 2023

Today's Life Lesson

When it seems like Garland isn't moving fast enough to keep up with your average tree stump, I try to remember that not everybody in the DOJ is in tune with the US Constitution as it stands today. There are rats and termites eating away at the structure of every foundational institution holding our little experiment in democratic self-government in an upright position.

American democracy is the oldest one on the planet, because there's strength and resiliency built into it. But that doesn't make it inviolate or invincible - the Law Of Impermanence has not been repealed. 

The guys who first put this joint together knew the whole thing was dependent on people behaving in an honorable way. They warned us about it repeatedly, especially as contained in The Federalist Papers.

There are some who would be inclined to regard the servile pliancy of the Executive to a prevailing current, either in the community or in the legislature, as its best recommendation. But such men entertain very crude notions, as well of the purposes for which government was instituted, as of the true means by which the public happiness may be promoted. The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests. It is a just observation, that the people commonly INTEND the PUBLIC GOOD. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend that they always REASON RIGHT about the MEANS of promoting it. They know from experience that they sometimes err; and the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do, beset, as they continually are, by the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it. When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection. Instances might be cited in which a conduct of this kind has saved the people from very fatal consequences of their own mistakes, and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure.


So anyway, it's possible Garland has to contend with "the enemy within" as he tries to sort through all the Trump shit.



Months of disputes between Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents over how best to try to recover classified documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and residence led to a tense showdown near the end of July last year, according to four people familiar with the discussions.

Prosecutors argued that new evidence suggested Trump was knowingly concealing secret documents at his Palm Beach, Fla., home and urged the FBI to conduct a surprise raid at the property. But two senior FBI officials who would be in charge of leading the search resisted the plan as too combative and proposed instead to seek Trump’s permission to search his property, according to the four people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive investigation.

Prosecutors ultimately prevailed in that dispute, one of several previously unreported clashes in a tense tug of war between two arms of the Justice Department over how aggressively to pursue a criminal investigation of a former president. The FBI conducted an unprecedented raid on Aug. 8, recovering more than 100 classified items, among them a document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities.

Starting in May, FBI agents in the Washington field office had sought to slow the probe, urging caution given its extraordinary sensitivity, the people said.

Some of those field agents wanted to shutter the criminal investigation altogether in early June, after Trump’s legal team asserted a diligent search had been conducted and all classified records had been turned over, according to some people with knowledge of the discussions.

The idea of closing the probe was not something that was discussed or considered by FBI leadership and would not have been approved, a senior law enforcement official said.

This account reveals for the first time the degree of tension among law enforcement officials and behind-the-scenes deliberations as they wrestled with a national security case that has potentially far-reaching political consequences.

The disagreements stemmed in large part from worries among officials that whatever steps they took in investigating a former president would face intense scrutiny and second-guessing by people inside and outside the government. However, the agents, who typically perform the bulk of the investigative work in cases, and the prosecutors, who guide agents’ work and decide on criminal charges, ultimately focused on very different pitfalls, according to people familiar with their discussions.

On one side, federal prosecutors in the department’s national security division advocated aggressive ways to secure some of the country’s most closely guarded secrets, which they feared Trump was intentionally hiding at Mar-a-Lago; on the other, FBI agents in the Washington field office urged more caution with such a high-profile matter, recommending they take a cooperative rather than confrontational approach.

Both sides were mindful of the intense scrutiny the case was drawing and felt they had to be above reproach while investigating a former president then expected to run for reelection. While trying to follow the Justice Department playbook for classified records probes, investigators on both sides braced for Trump to follow his own playbook of publicly attacking the integrity of their investigation, according to people with knowledge of their discussions.

The FBI agents’ caution also was rooted in the fact that mistakes in prior probes of Hillary Clinton and Trump had proved damaging to the FBI, and the cases subjected the bureau to sustained public attacks from partisans, the people said.

Prosecutors countered that the FBI failing to treat Trump as it had other government employees who were not truthful about classified records could threaten the nation’s security. As evidence surfaced suggesting that Trump or his team was holding back sensitive records, the prosecutors pushed for quick action to recover them, according to the people familiar with the discussions.

While the people who described these sensitive discussions disagreed on some particulars, they agreed on many aspects of the dispute.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department and the FBI declined to comment for this story. Attorney General Merrick Garland, asked about this report at a Senate hearing Wednesday, said he could not describe the investigation but added that in his experience as a prosecutor “there is often a robust discussion and it’s encouraged among investigators and prosecutors.”

It is not unusual for FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors to disagree during an investigation about how aggressively to pursue witnesses or other evidence. Often, those disagreements are temporary flare-ups that are debated, decided and resolved in due course.

While the FBI tends to have great discretion in the day-to-day conduct of investigations, it is up to prosecutors to decide whether to file criminal charges — and, like the prosecutors, the director of the FBI ultimately reports to the attorney general. The Mar-a-Lago case was unusual not just for its focus on a former president, but in the way it was closely monitored at every step by senior Justice Department officials. Garland said he “personally approved” the search of Trump’s property.

Attorney General Merrick Garland defended FBI and Justice Department employees on Aug. 11 following an FBI search at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. (Video: The Washington Post)
It’s unclear how the investigation may have been reshaped if the two sides had settled their disputes differently. Had the criminal investigation been closed in June, as some FBI field agents discussed, legal experts said it’s unlikely agents would have yet recovered the items found in the FBI’s raid of Trump’s residence.

Some inside the probe argued the infighting delayed the search by months, ultimately reducing the time prosecutors had to reach a decision on possible charges. Others contend the discussions were necessary to ensure the investigation proceeded on the surest footing, enabling officials to gather more evidence before they executed the search, people familiar with the dynamics said.

In November, before prosecutors had finished their work and decided whether to charge Trump or anyone else, he announced his campaign to retake the White House in 2024, leading Garland to appoint a special counsel, Jack Smith, to complete the investigation.

A collision course

From the moment the FBI and Justice Department received a formal referral on Feb. 7 from the National Archives and Records Administration to investigate missing classified records that could be in Trump’s possession, FBI investigators and federal prosecutors knew they were taking on a highly charged and sensitive case.

Archives officials reported that, after they had pleaded with Trump’s representatives for months, the former president had in January returned 15 boxes of government records he had stored at Mar-a-Lago since his presidency ended. Sifting through the boxes’ contents, archivists were shocked by what they found: 184 classified documents consisting of 700 pages. Archives officials said they had reason to believe Trump still had more sensitive or classified documents he took from the White House.

Prosecutors in the Justice Department’s national security division needed to answer two immediate questions: Was national security damaged by classified records being kept at Trump’s Florida club, and were any more sensitive records still in Trump’s possession?

Prosecutors and FBI agents were set on a collision course in April, when Trump through his lawyers tried to block the FBI from reviewing the classified records the Archives found. That set off alarm bells for prosecutors because it signaled he might be seeking to hide something, according to people familiar with the case. In preliminary interviews with witnesses in April and May, including Trump associates and staff, investigators were told of many more boxes of presidential records at Mar-a-Lago that could contain classified materials — similar in packaging to the boxes shipped there from the White House, and to those returned to the Archives in January, the people said.

Workers load boxes of newspapers and other items into a truck at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Jan. 14, 2021, in D.C. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The prosecutors and FBI agents began clashing in previously unreported incidents in early May, the people said. Jay Bratt, the prosecutor leading the department’s counterespionage work, advocated seeking a judge’s warrant for an unannounced search at the property to quickly recover any sensitive documents still there.

The FBI often conducts raids of properties without advance notice when investigators have reason to believe evidence is being withheld or could be destroyed. Some prosecutors saw guideposts in a related case a decade earlier, when Army Gen. David H. Petraeus lied to FBI agents about whether he had given classified information to a book author with whom he was having an affair. Agents executed a search warrant at Petraeus’s house and retrieved a cache of notebooks in which the prominent general improperly had stored extensive amounts of classified information.

But FBI agents viewed a Mar-a-Lago search in May as premature and combative, especially given that it involved raiding the home of a former president. That spring, top officials at FBI headquarters met with prosecutors to review the strength of evidence that could be used to justify a surprise search, according to two people familiar with their work.

Encountering resistance, Bratt agreed for the time being to subpoena Trump. On June 3, Bratt and a small number of FBI agents visited Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump’s lawyer and collect any classified records the Trump team had found to comply with the subpoena. That day, Trump’s lawyer, Evan Corcoran, handed over an expandable envelope containing 38 classified records and produced a letter signed by another lawyer, Christina Bobb, asserting that a diligent search had been conducted and all classified records had been turned over.

Some FBI field agents then argued to prosecutors that they were inclined to believe Trump and his team had delivered everything the government sought to protect and said the bureau should close down its criminal investigation, according to some people familiar with the discussions.

But they said national security prosecutors pushed back and instead urged FBI agents to gather more evidence by conducting follow-up interviews with witnesses and obtaining Mar-a-Lago surveillance video from the Trump Organization.

The government sought surveillance video footage by subpoena in late June. It showed someone moving boxes from the area where records had been stored, not long after Trump was put on notice to return all such records, according to people familiar with the probe. That evidence suggested it was likely more classified records remained at Mar-a-Lago, the people said, despite the claim of Trump’s lawyers. It also painted for both sides a far more worrisome picture — one that would soon build the legal justification for the August raid.

By mid-July, the prosecutors were eager for the FBI to scour the premises of Mar-a-Lago. They argued that the probable cause for a search warrant was more than solid, and the likelihood of finding classified records and evidence of obstruction was high, according to the four people.

But the prosecutors learned FBI agents were still loath to conduct a surprise search. They also heard from top FBI officials that some agents were simply afraid: They worried taking aggressive steps investigating Trump could blemish or even end their careers, according to some people with knowledge of the discussions. One official dubbed it “the hangover of Crossfire Hurricane,” a reference to the FBI investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible connections to the Trump campaign, the people said. As president, Trump repeatedly targeted some FBI officials involved in the Russia case.


A rift within the FBI

Against that backdrop, Bratt and other senior national security prosecutors, including Assistant Attorney General Matt Olsen and George Toscas, a top counterintelligence official, met about a week before the Aug. 8 raid with FBI agents on their turf, inside an FBI conference room.

The prosecutors brought with them a draft search warrant and argued that the FBI had no other choice but to search Mar-a-Lago as soon as practically possible, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. Prosecutors said the search was the only safe way to recover an untold number of sensitive government records that witnesses had said were still on the property.

Steven M. D’Antuono, then the head of the FBI Washington field office, which was running the investigation, was adamant the FBI should not do a surprise search, according to the people.

D’Antuono said he would agree to lead such a raid only if he were ordered to, according to two of the people. The two other people said D’Antuono did not refuse to do the search but argued that it should be a consensual search agreed to by Trump’s legal team. He repeatedly urged that the FBI instead seek to persuade Corcoran to agree to a consensual search of the property, said all four of the people.

Tempers ran high in the meeting. Bratt raised his voice at times and stressed to the FBI agents that the time for trusting Trump and his lawyer was over, some of the people said. He reminded them of the new footage suggesting Trump or his aides could be concealing classified records at the Florida club.

D’Antuono and some fellow FBI officials complained how bad it would look for agents with “FBI” emblazoned on their jackets to invade a former president’s home, according to some people with knowledge of the meeting. The FBI’s top counterintelligence official, Alan E. Kohler Jr., then asked the senior FBI agents to consider how bad it would look if the FBI chose not to act and government secrets were hidden at Mar-a-Lago, the people said.

D’Antuono also questioned why the search would target presidential records as well as classified records, particularly because the May subpoena had only sought the latter.

“We are not the presidential records police,” D’Antuono said, according to people familiar with the exchange.

Later, D’Antuono asked if Trump was officially the subject of the criminal investigation.

“What does that matter?” Bratt replied, according to the people. Bratt said the most important fact was that highly sensitive government records probably remained at Mar-a-Lago and could be destroyed or spirited away if the FBI did not recover them soon.

FBI agents on the case worried the prosecutors were being overly aggressive. They found it worrisome, too, that Bratt did not seem to think it mattered whether Trump was the official subject of the probe. They feared any of these features might not stand up to scrutiny if an inspector general or congressional committee chose to retrace the investigators’ steps, according to the people.

Jason Jones, the FBI’s general counsel who is considered a confidant of FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, agreed the team had sufficient probable cause to justify a search warrant. D’Antuono agreed, too, but said they should still try to persuade Corcoran to let them search without a warrant, the people said.

The disagreement over seeking Corcoran’s consent centered partly on how each side viewed Trump’s lawyer. The prosecutors — as well as some officials at FBI headquarters — were highly suspicious of him and feared that appealing to Corcoran risked that word would spread through Trump’s circle, giving the former president or his associates time to hide or destroy evidence, according to people familiar with the internal debate.

Some FBI agents, on the other hand, had more trust in Corcoran — a former federal prosecutor who had recently returned to practicing law and represented Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump adviser, against criminal contempt charges. The agents drafted a possible script they could use to pitch to Trump’s lawyer on a consensual search. D’Antuono’s team said they could keep surveillance on Mar-a-Lago and act quickly if they saw any scramble to move evidence. The prosecutors refused, saying it was too risky, the people said.

In the meeting, some attendees viewed Toscas, a Justice Department veteran who had worked with the FBI through the Crossfire Hurricane and Clinton email investigations, as a prosecutor whose words would carry special weight with the FBI agents. He told D’Antuono he had shared the agents’ skepticism, but was now “swayed” that the evidence was too strong not to get a search warrant, according to people familiar with the discussion.

“George, that’s great, but you haven’t swayed me,” D’Antuono replied.

Jones, the FBI’s general counsel, said he planned to recommend to Deputy FBI Director Paul Abbate that the FBI seek a warrant for the search, the people said. D’Antuono replied that he would recommend that they not.


The raid

But prosecutors appeared unwilling to wait and debate further, according to people familiar with the discussions. Olsen, the assistant attorney general for national security, appealed to senior officials in FBI headquarters to push their agents to conduct the raid. Abbate handed down his instructions a day later: The Washington field office led by D’Antuono would execute the surprise search.

On Aug. 5, FBI agents quietly sought and received approval from a federal magistrate judge in Florida to search Mar-a-Lago for documents. The search was planned for the following Monday, Aug. 8.

Prosecutors remained somewhat on guard until the day of the raid, as they continued to hear rumblings of dissent from the Washington field office, according to three people familiar with the case. Some of the people said prosecutors heard some FBI agents wanted to call Corcoran once they arrived at Mar-a-Lago and wait for him to fly down to join them in the search; prosecutors said that would not work.

Just days before the scheduled search, prosecutors got a request from FBI headquarters to put off the search for another day, according to people familiar with the matter. The FBI told prosecutors the bureau planned to announce big news that week — charges against an Iranian for plotting to assassinate former national security adviser John Bolton — and did not want the impact of that case to be overshadowed or complicated by media coverage of the Mar-a-Lago raid. It is common for the Justice Department and FBI to fine-tune the timing of certain actions or announcements to avoid one law enforcement priority competing with another. But prosecutors, fatigued by months of fighting with agents in the FBI’s field office, wanted no delay, no matter the reason, the people said. The search would proceed as scheduled.

FBI agents found ways to make the search less confrontational than it otherwise could have been, according to people familiar with the investigation: The search would take place when Trump was in New York and not in Palm Beach; the Secret Service would receive a heads-up a few hours before FBI agents arrived to avoid any law enforcement conflict; and agents would wear white polo shirts and khakis to cut a lower profile than if they wore their traditional blue jackets with FBI insignia.

On Aug. 8, FBI agents scoured Trump’s residence, office and storage areas, and left with more than 100 classified records, 18 of them top-secret. Prosecutors claimed vindication in the trove of bright color-coded folders that agents recovered.

Some documents were classified at such a restricted level that seasoned national security investigators lacked the proper authorization to look at them, leading to consternation on the prosecution team. They involved highly restricted “special access programs” that require Cabinet-level sign-off even for officials with top-secret clearances to review. The documents described Iran’s missile program and records related to highly sensitive intelligence aimed at China, The Washington Post previously has reported.

In late fall, Bratt and his team began sketching out the evidence that potentially pointed to Trump’s obstruction, with an expectation that the prosecutors together would soon make a recommendation on whether to charge the former president, according to people familiar with the case. Bratt’s team began to button up witness accounts and stress-test factual evidence against the law.

Meanwhile, in late October, amid news reports that Trump was looking to soon announce another bid for the presidency, Garland told aides he was seriously contemplating appointing a special counsel to take over the investigation, as well as a separate criminal probe looking at Trump and his allies’ effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election — a rare procedure designed to ensure public faith in fair investigations.

On Nov. 15, Trump took the stage in the Mar-a-Lago ballroom — at the same property where FBI agents had searched three months earlier — and announced that he would run for president again in 2024. The Justice Department’s national security division leaders who had pushed the FBI to be more aggressive pursuing Trump did not finish the investigation or reach a charging decision before a new chief took over.

On Nov. 18, Garland sent word to the prosecutors working on both of the probes to come to Justice Department headquarters for a meeting that morning. He wanted to privately inform them that he planned later that day to appoint a special counsel. Garland told them they could choose their next steps, but he hoped they would join the special counsel’s team for the good of the two investigations, people familiar with the conversation said.

Just after 2 p.m., Garland stood before cameras to announce he had appointed Smith to take over the investigations. Flanked by three of his top deputies, Garland said the Justice Department had the integrity to continue the investigations fairly but that turning them over to an outside prosecutor was “the right thing to do.”

“The extraordinary circumstances presented here demand it,” he added.



Wednesday, September 21, 2022

Crumbling Trump

More or less lost in the dust from the beating Trump took at the hands of the Special Master yesterday, was this little item passed by unanimous consent in the Senate.

There may be some hope that Republicans are starting to find their balls - although it does seem to be a rather timid search effort so far.

Dick Durbin (D-IL)


Senate Resolution 775
09-20-2022

I've been more than a little critical of the FBI (and other cops as well) on more than a few occasions. I have never advocated for taking violent action against law enforcement at any level, and I never will.

That said, of course, if it turns out the cops are actually the bad guys, and they're aggressively attacking me and mine, then parameters of the conflict have changed, and the guidance for how to respond may have to change as well.

But the FBI executing a lawful search warrant is not cause to start randomly shooting FBI guys.

We have to remember the founders set this place up after 8 years of armed and bloody conflict, with the intention never to go thru that shit again.

They gave us ways to make the changes we need to make without the need to bash each other over the head with sticks and rocks.

And if we need change, but the system seems rigged against us, we engage in civil disobedience, which requires us to follow a certain process in order to demonstrate the injustice we're protesting.

That's right - we have rules for how you go about breaking the rules. And not one of those rules says it's OK to shoot the cops.

Monday, May 09, 2022

Policing The Clitorati


If I suspect a woman has engaged in some kind of Abortion-Friendly activities - like if it's plain she's sexually active and she goes months and months without getting pregnant - or if I know she's been pregnant lately and suddenly she's un-pregnant - am I legally bound to alert the authorities of my suspicions?

BTW, "conservatives" - not that it wasn't bullshit anyway - but your whole thing about, "That violates my HIPAA rights!" when confronted about vaccinations just went in the shitter because of a SCOTUS decision that you've spent years voting for. Congratulations, you stoopid fucking fucks. You're finally getting what you say you want.

Jennifer Rubin - WaPo: (pay wall)

Opinion: Criminalizing abortion: Cue the enforcement nightmare

One reason free people do not give the government the power to interfere and control intimate decisions is because the decisions and conduct are, by definition, closely guarded information not widely available and not subject to usual enforcement measures. The effort to investigate and enforce a law criminalizing a woman’s reproductive decisions necessarily becomes an exercise in authoritarian excess.

Consider what it would take to “prove” a woman had an illegal abortion. Would a search warrant be issued for her phone and computer to see what doctors and health-care providers she sought out? Would housekeepers, relatives and friends be interrogated as to her menstrual cycle?

It’s not clear whether states would respect doctor-patient confidentiality (an abortion ban seems to imply that is a thing of the past). Does everyone from the office assistant to the doctor get grilled about the woman’s gynecological history? Maybe security cameras at offices will be reviewed to see when and if she went in and out of a health-care provider. Are we to subpoena insurance records, travel records, bank records?

Too extreme? Well, it’s not clear how states would go about enforcing the law unless they took such steps. Whenever the government has attempted to control women’s reproduction, an extraordinary degree of surveillance, intrusion and spying has been required. Whether it was Romanian Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s infamous Decree 770 in 1966 trying to gin up the country’s birthrate or China’s one-child policy and its army of snoopers, the effort to determine what women (and men) were up to in their own homes always required an assault on privacy that affected everyone.he enforcement mechanism by necessity will be intrusive. And if that is where we are heading, there won’t be a “right to privacy” (how quaint!) to prevent such intrusions into the lives of women and those around them.

And remember, Texas shows that if states offer “bounties,” the state legislature can create a ruse that individuals seeking a reward for finding abortion law violators are not themselves “state actors.” If that holds up, then the Fourth Amendment goes out the window entirely; “private” bounty hunters are not restricted by the amendment at all.

Moreover, given the impossibility of policing all pregnancies and running down every accusation, the discretion put in the hands of individual prosecutors will be enormous; it is an invitation for selective prosecution. (Do we really think the rich, White daughter of a prominent businessperson will be hauled into court?) Some prosecutors will play Inspector Javert, harassing and menacing women; others will choose to look the other way, making further mockery of a law meant to chill conduct but not to be enforced.

Ultimately, we wind up with a society of snitches, suspicion and distrust. When the Texas bounty bill was first passed, Robin Fretwell Wilson of the University of Illinois law school wrote: “The encouragement of ‘voluntary espionage’ between neighbors hints at forms of totalitarianism that most Americans would publicly rail against.” She continued, “North Korea utilizes citizens as spies to inform the government of anti-government behavior of their fellow citizens. While the penalty there is certainly much greater — potential public execution ­— the underlying mechanism is the same, promoting fear and mistrust among neighbors.”

If you think this is unnecessarily alarmist, ask yourself: How do you think cases will be proved and prosecuted — and do you trust the crowd that determined there is no “life of the mother” exception to exercise restraint in investigating doctors’ and women’s “crimes”?

Wednesday, March 09, 2022

About Those Cops


All those clear-eyed pragmatic management-by-the-numbers guys need to wake the fuck up and look at what their support for a kick-ass-and-take-names approach to law enforcement is actually getting us, compared with what it's costing us - just in terms of dollars and ROI.

WaPo: (pay wall)

The hidden billion-dollar cost of repeated police misconduct

More than $1.5 billion has been spent to settle claims of police misconduct involving thousands of officers repeatedly accused of wrongdoing. Taxpayers are often in the dark.

About 8:30 one Thursday evening in Detroit, Tony Murray was getting ready for bed ahead of his 6 a.m. shift at a potato chip factory. As he turned off the final light in the living room, he glanced out of his window and saw a half-dozen uniformed police officers with guns drawn approach his home.

As the officers banged on the door, Murray ordered Keno, his black Labrador retriever, to the basement. As Murray let the officers in, one quickly pushed him to the floor and at least two others ran to the cellar, he said. “Don’t kill my dog. He won’t bite you,” Murray pleaded. The sound of gunshots filled the house. Keno’s barking, the 56-year-old recalled, morphed into the sound of “a girl screaming.”

Officers searched Murray’s home for nearly an hour, flipping his sofa and emptying drawers. Outside, Murray approached the officers standing by their vehicles. One handed him a copy of the search warrant, which stated they were looking for illegal drugs. Murray noticed something else: The address listed wasn’t his. It was his neighbor’s.
Tony Murray, 56, sits on his porch. In 2014, police raided Murray’s house and fatally shot his dog, Keno. (Nick Hagen for The Washington Post)

Months after the 2014 raid, Murray, who was not charged with any crimes, sued Detroit police for gross negligence and civil rights violations, naming Officer Lynn Christopher Moore, who filled out the search warrant, and the other five officers who raided his home. The city eventually paid Murray $87,500 to settle his claim, but admitted no error by police.

That settlement was not the first or last time that Detroit would resolve allegations against Moore with a check: Between 2010 and 2020, the city settled 10 claims involving Moore’s police work, paying more than $665,000 to individuals who alleged the officer used excessive force, made an illegal arrest or wrongfully searched a home.

Moore is among the more than 7,600 officers — from Portland, Ore., to Milwaukee to Baltimore — whose alleged misconduct has more than once led to payouts to resolve lawsuits and claims of wrongdoing, according to a Washington Post investigation. The Post collected data on nearly 40,000 payments at 25 of the nation’s largest police and sheriff’s departments within the past decade, documenting more than $3.2 billion spent to settle claims.

The investigation for the first time identifies the officers behind the payments. Data were assembled from public records filed with the financial and police departments in each city or county and excluded payments less than $1,000. Court records were gathered for the claims that led to federal or local lawsuits. The total amounts further confirm the broad costs associated with police misconduct, as reported last year by FiveThirtyEight and the Marshall Project.

The Post found that more than 1,200 officers in the departments surveyed had been the subject of at least five payments. More than 200 had 10 or more.

The repetition is the hidden cost of alleged misconduct: Officers whose conduct was at issue in more than one payment accounted for more than $1.5 billion, or nearly half of the money spent by the departments to resolve allegations, The Post found. In some cities, officers repeatedly named in misconduct claims accounted for an even larger share. For example, in Chicago, officers who were subject to more than one paid claim accounted for more than $380 million of the nearly $528 million in payments.

The Post documented nearly 40,000 payments involving allegations of police misconduct in 25 departments, totaling over $3 billion. Departments usually deny wrongdoing when resolving claims.

Response from the police department: “We will decline to comment on civil litigations,” said Miguel Torres, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department.

The Post analysis found that the typical payout for cases involving officers with multiple claims — ranging from illegal search and seizure to use of excessive force — was $10,000 higher than those involving other officers.

Despite the repetition and cost, few cities or counties track claims by the names of the officers involved — meaning that officials may be unaware of officers whose alleged misconduct is repeatedly costing taxpayers. In 2020, the 25 departments employed 103,000 officers combined, records show.

“Transparency is what needs to be in place,” said Frank Straub, director of the National Police Foundation’s Center for Mass Violence Response Studies, adding that his organization has called for departments nationwide to publicize cases with settlements. “When you have officers who have repeated allegations … it calls for extremely close examination of both the individual cases and the totality of the cases to figure out what’s driving this behavior and these reactions and to see if there is a pattern in an officer’s behavior that triggers these cases.”

Defenders of police have a different view.

City officials and attorneys representing the police departments said settling claims is often more cost-efficient than fighting them in court. And settlements rarely involve an admission or finding of wrongdoing. Because of this there is no reason to hold officers accountable for them, said Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police labor union with more than 364,000 members.

“If there’s never been a finding of guilt or anyone’s fault, why put that in an officer’s record?” Pasco said. “That would be such a glaring omission of due process where in the legal system in the United States, a person is innocent until proven guilty.”

The Post reached out to scores of officers named in claims that led to payments. Some were no longer working for the departments. Most had no comment or, like Moore, did not return phone calls.
Lynn Christopher Moore, right, now an officer at the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department, takes notes during roll call at the Pontiac, Mich., substation in June 2020. (Clarence Tabb Jr./ Detroit News)

Two officers in Boston who had the highest number of claims settled have since retired. But both said the allegations — ranging from excessive force to wrongful arrest — did not accurately portray their work while on the force.

Paul Murphy, who was named in four lawsuits totaling about $5.2 million in payments, said he “tried to do the best he could” as an officer. But he added, “sometimes things happened.” He declined to elaborate.

Gerald Cofield was named in three lawsuits that totaled about $306,000 in payments. Cofield said he wished the city had fought the claims instead of settling because he believed city attorneys would have won, and his name and reputation would have been cleared. “We are not the bad guys these lawsuits paint us to be,” he said.

One Detroit officer said he wished the city had fought the lawsuits because he believed the cases had no credibility and those making the allegations had been armed or resisting arrest. “It’s called the Detroit lottery,” said the officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he had not received permission to speak publicly. “People have been convicted and are in prison filing lawsuits knowing they can get paid.”

Multimillion-dollar settlements regarding allegations of police misconduct often generate headlines. Minneapolis paid $27 million to the family of George Floyd, and Louisville paid $12 million to Breonna Taylor’s family.


Those cases are the exception: The median amount of the payments tracked by The Post was $17,500, and most cases were resolved with little or no publicity.

Many of the officers who had the highest number of claims against them were participating in task forces targeting gangs, drugs or guns, records show.

Pasco said he is not surprised that these officers would be the subject of multiple lawsuits, given the assignments. And given, he said, that the nation has become a “litigious society.”

“It’s the cost of policing,” he said. “That’s the reason crime, until recently, has declined.”

New York, Chicago and Los Angeles alone accounted for the bulk of the overall payments documented by The Post — more than $2.5 billion. In New York, more than 5,000 officers were named in two or more claims, accounting for 45 percent of the money the city spent on misconduct cases. In New York, four attorneys who have secured the highest number of payments for clients separately said the high rate of claims is because of poor training, questionable arrests and a legal department overwhelmed by lawsuits.

In Philadelphia, six officers in a narcotics unit generated 173 lawsuits, costing a total of $6.5 million. In 2014, those officers were federally charged with theft, wrongful arrest and other crimes but eventually acquitted at trial. Some 50 additional lawsuits are pending, many alleging misconduct dating back more than a decade, said Andrew Richman, a spokesman for the city’s legal department.

In Palm Beach County, Fla., officials paid out $25.6 million in the past decade: One-third of that was generated by 54 deputies who were the subject of repeated claims.

The data provided by cities included no demographic information about the people who filed the claims. But Chicago attorney Mark Parts, who has handled scores of lawsuits against police, said most of his clients have been Black or Hispanic.

“The folks who are aggressively policed and confronted by officers in the course of their daily lives are people of color,” Parts said. “I have found the majority of those whose rights are repeatedly violated are African Americans and Hispanics.”

In the D.C. region, more than 100 officers have been named in multiple claims that led to payments.

In Prince George’s County, Md., 47 officers had their conduct challenged more than once, resulting in at least two payments each accounting for $7.1 million out of $54 million paid within the decade. Two in five payments involved an officer named in more than one claim. The totals are skewed by a $20 million payment to the family of 43-year-old William Green, who was fatally shot while his hands were cuffed behind his back in the front seat of a police cruiser.

Cpl. Clarence Black was the subject of four settled cases, the most in the department. In 2010, the county paid $125,000 to a husband and wife who alleged Black assaulted them. In 2013, a Temple Hills family received $60,000 after alleging Black and four other officers illegally entered their home. In 2014, a woman got $10,000 after alleging Black punched her shoulder. And in 2019, a man collected $190,000 after alleging that Black illegally handcuffed him as he retrieved a bottle of water.

Black, a former officer of the year who joined the force in 2002, was indicted in August on two counts of second-degree assault and two counts of misconduct in office after being accused of assaulting a driver during a traffic stop in Temple Hills. Black’s attorney did not return calls requesting comment. He has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go to trial in July.

In the District, 65 officers have been named in repeated claims, accounting for $7.6 million of the more than $90 million in claims paid — the fifth-highest overall of the 25 cities surveyed. That total includes $54 million paid on four claims involving officers who were named in no other cases.

Officer Fredrick Onoja was the subject of five cases that led to payments from 2014 to 2019 totaling $116,000, the most of any officer on the force. Five Black men separately sued Onoja accusing him of wrongful arrests and harassment. They alleged that the 44-year-old Onoja — who has been on the force since 2011 — fabricated evidence against them in the 5th District neighborhood he patrolled.

Dustin Sternbeck, a D.C. police spokesperson, said Onoja had been “disciplined” for his actions, but declined to elaborate. Onoja, through the department, declined to comment. In a statement, Sternbeck said the department investigates allegations against officers made in lawsuits. “If the investigation sustains misconduct, the department takes appropriate action, ranging from retraining to termination, depending on the nature of the misconduct sustained,” he wrote.

In Fairfax, the county settled seven cases, totaling $6.1 million. Two of the cases involved five officers and led to $5 million in payments. Only one officer was named in more than one claim.

Officer Hyun Chang, who has been with the department since 2010, was the subject of a claim that resulted in a $750,000 settlement in 2018 with the family of a 45-year-old autistic man who died in 2016 as he was subdued by Chang and another officer. According to police, the victim, Paul A. Gianelos, of ­Annandale, Va., became combative as the officers tried to return Gianelos to his caretakers. A Virginia medical examiner determined Gianelos died as a result of a heart attack related to the restraint.

In 2014, Chang was one of a dozen officers named in a $190,000 settlement after a Hispanic woman charged the officers with excessive force, false arrest, unreasonable search of her home and racial profiling. He did not return requests for comment through a Fairfax police spokesperson.

In general, the government officials in many of the cities who were interviewed said the decisions to settle claims are made on a case-by-case basis.

In Chicago, officials “evaluate cases for potential risk and liability, and to take appropriate steps to minimize financial exposure to the city,” said Kristen Cabanban, spokesperson for the city’s Law Department.

It is often cheaper to settle a case than pay attorneys’ fees “that in many cases dwarf the actual damages award,” said Casper Hill, a spokesman for the city of Minneapolis.

Even when payments are covered by insurance claims, taxpayers ultimately still pay as those claims drive up the cost of the insurance.

The Post found that few cities publicize their payments or make it easy for the public to identify the officers involved. Of the 25 cities surveyed, four reported tracking payment information. The others declined to answer or said they were unaware of any city department that did such tracking.

Minneapolis, Palm Beach County, Fairfax County and Detroit were among the few places that recorded payments by officers’ names in the records provided to The Post. Portland organized cases by the officers’ badge numbers.

Most cities reported payments by the name of the person who filed the claim or, if the case led to a lawsuit, the number assigned in court. The Post identified the officers involved in tens of thousands of cases by reviewing individual claim summaries and court records.

There are disincentives to such tracking, legal and policing experts said.

“If an officer has multiple lawsuits, then the city is in jeopardy of negligent retention,” says Stephen Downing, a retired deputy chief with the Los Angeles Police Department and current adviser with the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a criminal justice reform group. “Few cities want to risk retaining that information to avoid being part of an even more costly lawsuit.”

Policing experts also noted that prosecutors rely on officers to testify in criminal cases; settlement tracking could be used by defense attorneys to challenge an officer’s credibility.

The $10,000 air freshener


In Portland, Officer Charles B. Asheim, 40, was the subject of three payments costing the city $40,001. The city spent more than $90,000 in legal fees fighting those three claims and $250,000 defending three other claims involving Asheim that resulted in no payments, according to Heather Hafer, a spokeswoman with the city’s Office of Management and Finance.


In 2014, Marqueeta Clark and her then-boyfriend, Jahmarciay Barr, were leaving Barr’s aunt’s house on their way to the movies in Barr’s blue 1991 Chevrolet Caprice. At the time, Clark was a 19-year-old early-childhood education major at Western Oregon University, and Barr was a 20-year-old community college student and UPS employee.

As the couple drove along the highway, they saw a police cruiser heading in the opposite direction.

Seconds later, Clark said, they noticed the cruiser make a U-turn and begin to follow them. Barr stopped at a traffic light with the cruiser behind them. When the light turned green, as they pulled away, the cruiser’s lights came on and police pulled them over.

Asheim, an officer with the gang unit, told the couple they were stopped because Barr had changed lanes without using his turn signal, Clark said. She said she disputed the claim, telling police she could hear the blinker’s ticking.

Then Asheim, she said, one of three officers at the scene, told the couple that police had pulled over the car because there was a green, pine-tree air freshener dangling from the car’s rearview mirror. The air freshener, Asheim told them, obstructed the driver’s line of sight and created a driving hazard, she said.

Barr, still seated in the car, grew angry and refused to cooperate with Asheim when the officer asked for his driver’s license and registration, she said.

Sitting in the passenger seat, Clark said she begged the officers to allow her to reach into the glove compartment to pull out Barr’s documents. But Asheim refused and continued to argue with her boyfriend, she said. “In my head, I was thinking these gang task forces are going to treat us as gang members. … I was terrified,” she said.

Asheim then pulled Barr through the driver’s side window and placed him in handcuffs, she said.

In his official report, Asheim gave a different account: He wrote that he and his colleagues unhooked the driver’s seat belt, opened the door and forced Barr to stand up outside the vehicle. Asheim added that Barr accused police of stopping him because “he was Black.” The officers, according to Asheim’s report, “calmly and simply” explained the reason for the stop, but the boyfriend “continued screaming.”

Asheim also noted that Barr was becoming more “threatening and unpredictable,” and that he threatened to “kick our f---ing ass.”

Clark denied that Barr threatened the officers. “I remember watching Asheim laughing at us. It was really humiliating, embarrassing and frustrating.”

The officers searched the car and found nothing illegal, according to the police report.

Police arrested the couple. Clark was charged with interfering with a police officer and disorderly conduct. Barr, who could not be reached for comment, was charged with failure to carry and present his license, disobeying an officer and disorderly conduct. He pleaded guilty to failure to carry and present a license and was ordered to pay $250 in fines. Prosecutors dismissed the other charges against him.

Clark chose to fight her charges. Eventually, the judge dismissed the case.

Still, Clark remained furious. She and Barr sued the city, alleging that the stop by Asheim — who is White — and his two colleagues was part of a pattern of racially discriminatory police tactics. “I really wanted people to know how the majority of the Black community was being treated by police,” she said. “It was never about the money for me.”

Growing up in Portland, Clark said being stopped by police and having guns drawn was “the norm for us.” She said that she and her boyfriend were stopped by police about a half-dozen times in a four-year period.


In 2017, the city agreed to settle their claims, eventually paying Clark and Barr $5,000 each. Officials did not apologize or admit wrongdoing.

They were among the city’s 89 payments for alleged police misconduct during the past decade. Of the more than $7.5 million spent, nearly half of it has involved officers named in more than one claim.

“What Asheim did, stopping people for having an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, was the practice of the gang enforcement team,” said Gregory Kafoury, Clark’s attorney. “These officers were driving around and obviously looking for Black faces.”

Kafoury said he has represented dozens of people in lawsuits against Portland officers, the majority of his clients people of color.

“Historically, officers who are sued are never penalized, even when the city has to pay large settlements or verdicts for their misconduct,” Kafoury said. “The officers who are the most brutal and the most dishonest tend to move up in the ranks because they are seen as trustworthy and they are admired for their physicality. And that culture gets strengthened as these types of bullies move up and control the culture of the police department.”

Sgt. Kevin Allen, a Portland police spokesman, denied Kafoury’s assertions. “Our promotions process is extremely competitive and thorough and includes a 360-review in most ranks, taking in the candidate’s discipline record, commendations, community engagement and more,” Allen said.

Asheim has been with the force for 13 years and is a detective, Allen confirmed. He declined to answer questions about Asheim or the cases that led to settlements. Allen said he forwarded The Post’s request for comment to Asheim, who has not responded.

‘I’ll never forget him’


Early one evening in March 2014, Gregory Williams, 34, was walking to buy cigarettes at a gas station on the west side of Chicago. A man rushed up behind him, hit him on the head with a gun and pushed him against a fence, Williams said. He thought he was being robbed.

The man, however, was a Chicago police officer in plain clothes.

An unmarked police car pulled up. Inside was Officer Armando Ugarte — who from 2010 through 2020 would be a subject of 16 payments totaling more than $5 million for claims that included excessive force and wrongful arrests.


That night, Ugarte and two other officers told Williams, a father of two and student at Strayer University, that they were arresting him for distributing a controlled substance: heroin. They drove Williams to a precinct called Homan Square, a former Sears and Roebuck warehouse that police used as an interrogation site.

While he was handcuffed, Williams said, Ugarte and the other officers pressed him to identify heroin dealers. When he said he could not, he alleges that they grabbed him by his neck, put him in a chokehold, threw him to the floor and punched and kicked him.

“I’ll never forget him,” Williams said about Ugarte.

In the arrest report, Ugarte wrote he had purchased drugs from Williams as part of a “controlled buy” that night while working undercover. Williams was charged with two counts of felony manufacturing or delivering a controlled substance.

At the time, Williams had been on parole for less than a year following a conviction for heroin possession. He said he believes this is why the officers targeted him to be an informant or face a return to prison.

After a year in jail, Williams went to trial. In court, Ugarte and two other officers testified that they had purchased heroin from Williams. But there were no other witnesses or evidence, according to the lawsuit. The jury acquitted Williams.

While in jail, Williams lost his personal assistant job with the Chicago Department of Human Services and dropped out of Strayer University, where he was pursuing a degree in business administration. “They took all that away from me because I wouldn’t work for them. I wouldn’t be a snitch,” he said.

In 2018, he filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that Ugarte and the five other officers and their supervisor had violated his civil rights through unlawful search and seizure, excessive force and malicious prosecution. “I don’t think they really understand how hard it is coming from that place, coming out of prison,” he said.

After more than two years of hearings and lengthy court filings, the city settled the case in 2020 for $85,000, but denied any wrongdoing.

In records provided to The Post, Chicago officials had not recorded Ugarte’s name with Williams’s settlement. The Post identified him as an officer involved in the case through Williams’s attorney, the amount and date of the payment and court records.
Williams and his attorney, Torreya L. Hamilton, outside a courthouse in Chicago in September. (Taylor Glascock for The Washington Post)

Williams’s attorney, Torreya L. Hamilton, said the case was the second one she had handled involving Ugarte. In 2017, the city paid $88,500 to a man she represented who also alleged that Ugarte wrongfully arrested him and was part of a team of officers that fatally shot a dog in front of a 12-year-old child.

“This same team of officers was busting into people’s homes and killing dogs. In front of kids,” said Hamilton, who began her career as a prosecutor and now focuses on police misconduct and whistleblower cases. In the past five years, Hamilton said 95 percent of her clients who have sued Chicago police for excessive force or wrongful arrests have been Black or Hispanic.

“Why are they still working?” Williams asked. “There’s no punishment. They can do what they want. There are no repercussions behind it.”

The Post’s analysis found Chicago had the highest rate of misconduct claims involving officers named in multiple cases. More than 70 percent of the city’s roughly 1,500 payments over the decade involved at least one officer with repeated claims.

Ugarte, 47, was “relieved of police powers” in October and reassigned to the department’s alternative response section, according to Anthony Spicuzza, a police spokesman. The division handles non-emergency calls. Spicuzza declined to answer questions about Ugarte’s work or the payments involving him. Ugarte joined the force in 2005, according to the Citizens Police Data Project, a Chicago-based nonprofit that tracks information about officers, including use of force, complaints and awards.

Ugarte did not return a Post reporter’s calls. Spicuzza did not respond to requests for a response from Ugarte. “Due to a pending investigation, we will not comment further,” Spicuzza said.

Poor communication


In Detroit, after receiving questions from The Post about the repeated payments involving Officer Moore and the raid at Murray’s home, police officials said they have begun to use the city’s claims data to monitor which officers are repeatedly named in lawsuits, to determine if they need additional training or should be reassigned or removed from the force.

Christopher Graveline, director of the professional standards unit for Detroit police, said his department as of September is working closely with the city’s legal department to identify officers with more than two lawsuits or claims and make sure they are “flagged” in the department’s risk management system.

Since The Post started asking the city about its repeat officers in September, 13 officers have been “flagged” for being sued multiple times and have been subject to “risk assessments,” according to a department spokesman.

“There wasn’t a good communication between the city law and police department. We weren’t being aware of settlements and potential judicial findings touching upon our officers,” Graveline said.

Graveline, who oversees internal affairs, said the department was often unaware of findings in civil cases, including determinations that officers had withheld evidence.

From 2010 to 2020, Detroit made 491 payments on behalf of officers, totaling nearly $48 million, records show. More than half were on behalf of officers with more than one claim.

In addition to the 10 payments on claims involving Moore in that time, The Post also documented three before 2010 and one in 2021. During Moore’s 23 years on the force, Detroit paid 14 claims arising from his police work.

Moore was part of the city’s narcotics unit, a division that conducts many search warrants, Graveline said.

Graveline declined to comment on Moore’s lawsuits but acknowledged other officers in the unit were not named in as many lawsuits. “That’s one of the reasons we are taking steps to actively identify officers with similar patterns with multiple lawsuits,” he said.

During a deposition in the lawsuit following the search of Murray’s home, Moore testified that he had always intended to raid that residence. He said the wrong address on the warrant was a typo.

Moore said an informant told him about drug dealing at Murray’s home. Moore also noted in his report that police found two tiny bags of marijuana during their search, which Murray disputes.

In a separate report, one of Moore’s colleagues wrote that he shot Murray’s Labrador because the dog charged them and was “showing teeth and growling.” Also in the report, the officer misidentified Murray’s dog as a “grey pit bull.”

“We are not just going into these houses killing people’s dogs for no reason. That would be ridiculous and absurd,” said Moore, who was in the house when his fellow officers killed Keno. “Unfortunately, I’ve killed quite a few dogs. I would say I’ve killed over 10, 15 animals in the course of my career.”
When police began banging on his door, Murray sent his dog, Keno, to the basement to stay out of the way. (Nick Hagen for The Washington Post)

In response to questions from Murray’s attorney, Kenneth Finegood, Moore testified that while he was with the drug unit, he had been the subject of internal investigations “once or twice a month.” Moore, 49, also said he had never been found guilty of the accusations, which he said happened “constantly” when he was in narcotics.

Personnel records obtained through a public records request show Moore joined the department in 1996 and has received seven awards or commendations.

The records also show that Moore was reprimanded for failing to fill out a use-of-force report during a 2010 arrest and was suspended for five days for “willful disobedience of rules or orders” during a 2015 police chase. An investigation determined that Moore failed to notify the dispatcher of the initial traffic stop and then failed to broadcast the speed of the vehicle being pursued. The suspension was later overturned in arbitration.

Moore left Detroit in 2019 and is now an officer at the nearby Oakland County Sheriff’s Department, according to Detroit police and the sheriff’s department. The sheriff’s department did not answer follow-up questions.

Since Moore’s departure from Detroit, allegations about his conduct when he was an officer have continued to cost the city financially.

Last year, Detroit officials settled a man’s claim that Moore and three other officers tackled and injured him in 2016 as he stood on his front porch. Police said they were searching for a shooter who allegedly fit his description, according to the lawsuit. The city settled for $150,000.

Detroit reached a second settlement concerning Moore in 2020 when the city paid $10,000 to resolve a claim by two men who alleged that Moore and other officers illegally handcuffed and searched them in 2016.

During the encounter, Moore and his colleagues confiscated $579 from one of the men, according to the complaint.

Moore wrote he searched the man and found six Baggies of a “leaflike substance.” Police arrested the man on drug-related charges and towed his friend’s car.

The car’s owner had to pay $350 to retrieve his vehicle from the impound lot, the suit alleged.

In addition to the drug charge — which was later dropped — Moore gave the man a citation for loitering, a misdemeanor offense. Moore wrote the man was in a “known narcotics location.”

The man, according to the lawsuit, was standing in the driveway of his home.


Cuz I write the report