Glenn Kirschner - Justice Matters
A hub-and-spoke conspiracy is a legal construct or doctrine of United States antitrust and criminal law. In such a conspiracy, several parties ("spokes") enter into an unlawful agreement with a leading party ("hub"). The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit explained the concept in these terms:
In a "hub-and-spoke conspiracy," a central mastermind, or "hub," controls numerous "spokes," or secondary co-conspirators. These co-conspirators participate in independent transactions with the individual or group of individuals at the "hub" that collectively further a single, illegal enterprise.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit explained the concept in these terms:
Such a conspiracy involves a hub, generally the dominant purchaser or supplier in the relevant market, and the spokes, made up of the distributors involved in the conspiracy. The rim of the wheel is the connecting agreements among the horizontal competitors (distributors) that form the spokes.
The antitrust cases often emphasize the importance of interdependence among the spokes and their recognition of one another. The general criminal cases, such as narcotics conspiracy prosecutions, tend to require only a more general knowledge among the spokes that there is a larger overall unlawful scheme involving other actors who are cooperating with the hub in carrying out the scheme. It is controversial, particularly in the antitrust cases, how much knowledge spoke actors must have of the conduct of other spoke actors—which is to say how much of a "rim" must be put around the "wheel" of the hub-and-spoke conspiracy for it to be a single conspiracy rather than many separate "vertical" conspiracies. There is a controversy and some uncertainty over the legal status of the "rimless" conspiracy—one with very limited interaction among the spokes.
Another note - Bill Barr's departure was abrupt and without comment. It's richly ironic, but there's more than a simple probability that the fat gutless fuck split for good ethical reasons. But of course, he was too chicken shit to tell us the story.
But hey - he's got a book coming out soon, and I'm sure he'll come clean and set the record straight... oh, who the fuck are we tryin' to kid. I've got good money says it's nothing but CYA top-to-bottom, side-to-side, and front-to-back, with just the tiniest hint of mea culpa to make the Press Poodles sit up and praise the valiant Mr Barr for having the courage of his institutionalist convictions and blah fucking blah.
So fuckin' sick of these assholes.
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