Category Archives: ethics

Foolish

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The Justice Department is clashing with career site Glassdoor Inc over the company’s refusal to identify users who posted anonymous employee reviews of a veterans health-care company under federal investigation.

That’s been fought over in civil courts, but this is a first for a potentially criminal matter.  The Federal government is the one making the demand this time because the Feds want witnesses for a grand jury investigation into Glassdoor.

Whatever the parameters of any possible criminal case involved here, there are some questions that need careful consideration.  Leave aside 1st Amendment questions regarding a right, especially but not necessarily limited to political discourse, to discourse anonymously.

Forcing a potential witness to come forward and testify in open court seems counterproductive.  How credible, indeed, how objectively accurate, would a witness be who’s forced to testify?  Might such a witness say what his government forcer wants him to say?  Might such a witness’ memory become faulty?  Might such a witness’ testimony, however well he tries for accuracy, be slanted by…fear of consequences, frustration at being forced, other factors, factors that wouldn’t be present with voluntary testimony?

How would a court tell whether impacts from these factors are large or small in a particular case?  How would a court even recognize the presence of these factors?  Given presence, how would a court control for that presence?

Leaks, Again

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Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on leaks about ongoing investigations:

Americans should exercise caution before accepting as true any stories any stories attributed to anonymous “officials,” particularly when they do not identify the country—let alone the branch or agency of government—with which the alleged sources supposedly are affiliated.

Indeed.  And here’s Peter Carr, a Robert Mueller spokesman, assuring us that Mueller’s special counsel operation

has undertaken stringent controls to prohibit unauthorized disclosures that deal severely with any member who engages in this conduct.

Then, I have to ask, why is Mueller still allowing these leaks to occur?  Why hasn’t he hailed his leakers into court, civil or criminal?

Another “Leak,” Another Rumor

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President Donald Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey is now a subject of the federal probe being headed by special counsel Robert Mueller, which has expanded to include whether the president obstructed justice, a person familiar with the matter said.

The rest of the article continued in that vein: no real-world sources cited, only this deliberately unidentified one.  The Wall Street Journal‘s article at the link also cited a Washington Post article on the same subject; that bit also only cited “sources”—five of them in WaPo‘s case—whose identities were carefully withheld.

“…a person familiar….”  “…five officials….”  The WaPo piece even said their “five officials” demanded anonymity because they were speaking without authorization.

This raises two questions and a concern. The questions are these. First, with no substantiation, how are we to know these sources even exist?  How can we do our own checking?

Second, these sources—if they exist—begin as liars: they’re speaking without authorization, and so they have broken the terms of their employment and possibly their oaths of office.  How can we believe the claims of liars? Why would WaPo or WSJ take such claims seriously?

And this, at the end of the WSJ piece, with no trace of irony on the part of the authors:

At a June 13 hearing at a House of Representatives panel, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein declined to say who asked him to write a memo justifying Mr Comey’s firing.  …  Mr Rosenstein said he wasn’t at liberty to discuss the matter.

“The reason for that is that if it is within the scope of Director Mueller’s investigation, and I’ve been a prosecutor for 27 years, we don’t want people talking publicly about the subjects of ongoing investigations,” Mr Rosenstein said.

So much for that.

The concern is this: why WaPo and especially WSJ have walked away from basic, foundational journalist standards—that allow for anonymous sources but require them to be substantiated by two or more on-the-record sources—and descended themselves to rumor-mongering.

Obstruction of Justice

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Ex-FBI Director James Comey testified earlier this week before the Senate Intelligence Committee that he was the one who orchestrated the leak of his MFR purportedly describing a one-on-one meeting with President Donald Trump.  Comey said he asked a friend (Daniel Richman, a law professor at Columbia University, and a man who should have known better himself) to leak the document and the friend subsequently read it over the phone to a New York Times writer.

Even larger than the fact that Comey leaked the thing or caused its leak are two other matters: the MFR was, and is, government property since he wrote it as a government employee; it is not, and never has been, his personal property.  Thus, the leak, having been done without government permission, was illegal.  There’s also this bit, that illustrates Comey’s dishonesty, if not directly the illegality of his leak [emphasis added]:

Two days after Comey was fired, The New York Times reported on a January conversation—allegedly sourced from those Comey told about the encounter [now known to be Richman]—in which Comey claimed Trump asked him for his loyalty. Trump has vociferously denied he made such a request and tweeted the following day: “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

Comey, in his Thursday testimony, said it was that tweet that prompted him to enlist Richman to help him leak memos….

More than that, though, is Comey’s stated motive for his leak: to trigger the appointment of a special counsel to conduct the investigation into Trump’s campaign staff’s alleged involvement with Russian intrusions into our election process and other involvements between those personnel and Russian persons.

That strikes me as obstruction of justice.  There already were investigations in progress, by the FBI and by four Congressional committees, into precisely those matters.  Comey didn’t like the way those investigations were going, and so he wanted to trigger another—which existence could only interfere with the existing investigations.

Really!?

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The CTL-Left Mayor of Portland, OR, is at it now.  He wants the Feds and organizers of a couple of Trump rallies to shut down those rallies.

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said Monday that the “alt-right demonstrations” would only fuel hatred and fear during a time of tragedy.

Never mind that these are pro-Trump rallies that have nothing to do with the NLMSM’s imaginary alt-right.

Never mind that Wheeler clearly wants to impose his concept of free speech: feel free to speak what Wheeler personally approves.  And no other word.

Wheeler is claiming

There is never a place for bigotry or hatred in our community….

My irony meter is pegged.

I have to ask: do Wheeler and guys like him ever listen to what they say, or do they just spout off with whatever happens to pop into their heads at the moment?