Category Archives: Courts

Flipping Witnesses

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President Donald Trump decries it.  So have I in writing about the Manafort case and the credibility of Mueller’s prosecutors’ witnesses.

What’s interesting to me and saddening, and what’s dangerous to our system of justice—which includes justice for the accused as well as the victim—is prosecutors’ response to Trump’s decrial.

Peter Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor, said that Mr Trump’s comments amount to “an absolutely outrageous statement and to any prosecutor would just be shocking to hear.”

“It’s hard to overstate how fundamental” to prosecutions cooperating witnesses are, Mr Zeidenberg said.

And Stephen Gillers, a New York University School of Law professor:

Trump’s idea would effectively demolish one of the basic and valuable tools of criminal law enforcement in the US.

It’s dangerous for our prosecutors to so blatantly and avidly rely on their ability to do the testifying by using the mouths of “witnesses” they’ve either browbeaten into testifying in a certain way or who’ve sold their testimony to the prosecutors like Thursday night hookers.

If the prosecutors can’t make their case without such witnesses, they don’t have a case to make.

The Will of the People

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The West Virginia House of Delegates has returned articles of impeachment against every one of the sitting Justices of the State’s Supreme Court.  One Justice, Robin Davis, has resigned her post, doing so before any of the impeachment cases proceed to the West Virginia Senate for trial.  In her resignation press conference, Davis complained

The majority members have ignored the will of the people who elected the justices of this court.  They have erased the lines of separation between the branches of government.

The will of the people in electing Supreme Court Justices is overruled, is it?  Certainly it has been—by the will of the people as expressed in their election of the Representatives who voted for (and against) the impeachment. Those elected Representatives will be subject to the will of the people again, and much sooner than the Justices would be—the one stands for election every two (Senators, who will conduct the trial, every four years); the other only every dozen years.

Beyond that, it’s a critical function of the Legislature to remove misbehaving people from government, including those of the other branches of government.  This is what impeachment and trial proceedings are for.

The will of the people is being well served.

Integrity Redux

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I wrote about the level of integrity in the Manafort trial a bit ago as it concerned an accountant who sold her testimony to Mueller’s prosecutors for immunity from her confessed crimes (or who was browbeaten into it with the potential charges as cudgel).  Here’s another example of the level of integrity in Mueller’s case against Manafort, this time involving Mueller’s prosecutors’ star witness, Rick Gates.

Gates, long prior to the start of the Manafort trial, pled guilty to a count of conspiracy against the United States and a count of lying to the FBI.  As part of the plea, Mueller dropped 22 other charges against Gates.  Also on the table are the sanctions ensuing from the deal: a reduction of his likely jail sentence from 100 years (!) to 5-6 years—and potentially to just probation—and a reduction of his fine from $500,000 to as little as $2,000.

Another part of the plea deal is the kicker: to get those reductions, he must cooperate with Mueller’s prosecutors in their investigation and trial of Manafort.  That cooperation, with the Manafort trial underway, clearly centers on how well he testifies to the prosecutors’ satisfaction.

Since so much of Mueller’s case against Manafort depends on witnesses who’ve sold their testimony so blatantly, or who were browbeaten into giving the testimony those prosecutors demanded, how can this case have any credibility at all?

No Need to Waste the Time

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…arguing the matter.  In an opinion piece, The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board called out “Tricky Dick Schumer” (their appellation) for his stalling effort centered on his demand for millions of pages of documents from Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s past pursuant to evaluating Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.  Schumer has said he’ll try to block any discussion of Kavanaugh’s fitness until he gets those millions of docs.  The WSJ also noted that

Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley [R, IA] is trying to work out a document deal with ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein.

This against the backdrop of

The White House has said it is willing to produce some 80,000 document pages and 200,000 email pages from Mr Kavanaugh’s time in the White House counsel’s office.

The WSJ was too mild, though.  There’s no need for the Senate to go along with the Progressive-Democrats’ hysterical obstructionism.  Grassley should accept the White House’s offer—it’s already larger than what the Progressive-Democrats demanded of then-Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch—and then he should hold the hearings, regardless of Feinstein’s attempts to stall, and hold the committee vote.  After that, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) should hold the floor vote on Kavanaugh while ignoring Schumer’s attempts to stall.

The Senate has actual work to do; it has no time for the Progressive-Democrats’ childish games or temper tantrums.

Reactionary Ideologue

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President Donald Trump has nominated Brett Kavanaugh, of the DC Circuit, to the Supreme Court, and “within seconds” Democracy for America called him a reactionary ideologue.

DfA, without correction from the Progressive-Democrats of Congress, or anyone else on the left, also has foretold Kavanaugh’s confirmation would

directly lead to the deaths of countless women with the dismantling of abortion rights.

Even taking the manufactured hysteria seriously, it’s instructive here as an aside (of no small size) to consider that the Left worries about the risks to grown, adult women who make the conscious choice to run a risk, but they care not a red sou for the deaths of countless babies who cannot speak for themselves and for whom the Left insists no one should so speak.

That the Progressive-Democrats’ opposition to the Kavanaugh nomination has nothing to do with principled disagreement with how the man might adjudicate cases and everything to do with naked politics is further illustrated by a fund-raising email House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) sent Monday.  In it she wrote that [emphasis added]

she is “determined to avenge President Obama if it’s the last thing I do” by preemptively opposing President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee….

All of this is confirmation of the Progressive-Democrats’ view of the Constitution.  That core of our nationhood is just something to be modified at will by unelected judges—so long as they’re properly selected by Progressive-Democrats.  It’s Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s “living” constitution.

Or, as a journolist put it more bluntly,

[The constitution] has no binding power on anything.  …the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago….

Never mind that there’s nothing at all reactionary in a judge upholding the Constitution.  That’s what his oath of office enjoins him to do.  On the other hand, a judge modifying the Constitution to fit a personal view of social justice is rank judicial activism—and a violation of his oath of office.