Category Archives: politics

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?

Free Speech According to the Progressive-Democratic Party

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Senator Chris Murphy (D, CT) wants to spread censorship about and vastly broaden it.  All in the name of democracy—Progressive-Democrat style.

Infowars is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart. These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it[.]

Censorship.  Because the only speech that should be free is that speech approved by our Betters.  Because ordinary Americans are just too grindingly stupid to be trusted with deciding for ourselves what to say, what to hear, and how to evaluate what we hear.

This is the “freedom” that the Progressive-Democratic Party will allow us.

Privacy

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Now Facebook wants to hook up with banks to collect our financial information and our shopping habits as revealed by our credit card charging history.

No. Not ever. Not with Facebook’s lack of concern for our privacy or our personal data.

Facebook said it wouldn’t use the bank data for ad-targeting purposes or share it with third parties.

Sure. I might know about some beachfront property for sale north of Santa Fe, too.

Any bank that hooks up with Facebook in any way loses my business altogether.  Full stop.

An Oxymoron

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Apple has chosen to conceal accesses to Infowars by removing links to it from Apple’s podcast facility because Apple thinks Infowars is too far right for Apple’s taste and because the site pushes bad speech.

This is rank censorship.

Eliminating easy access to Infowars podcasts marks a rare, prominent foray for Apple into an issue confronting many major internet companies: how to remove hateful or conspiratorial messages from their platforms without infringing on free speech.

This is an impossible task to achieve legitimately.  Our 1st Amendment is explicitly intended to protect unpopular or disgusting or hateful speech as well as “approved” speech.  The Amendment recognizes the ability of individual American citizens to think for themselves and to evaluate for themselves what speech they choose to hear, free from Government “advice.”

It’s true enough that the Amendment enjoins Government and not private enterprise.  However, the principle the Amendment protects is a universal one; it applies to all of us, individuals and enterprises alike.

Apple’s MFWIC, Tim Cook, clearly thinks he’s above all of this.  His attaboy for resisting the FBI’s demand that Apple destroy individuals’ ability to encrypt effectively their private communications has been used up.

Integrity

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Recall that Paul Manafort, briefly a campaign mucky-muck for then-Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, is on trial for a number of tax and bank fraud charges.

One of those charges relates to a tax return filed by Manafort that supposedly

contained inaccurate information [that] falsely reduced his tax liability by classifying millions of dollars she believed was income as loans.

The accountant who filed the return, Cindy Laporta (“she” in the above cite) testified under oath last week at Manafort’s trial that [emphasis added]

manipulating tax returns in such a way was “inappropriate” and that she knew it was wrong, but did it because Mr Manafort was a longtime client of her firm. “I prepared the tax returns and communicated with banks based on information that [Richard] Gates and Mr Manafort provided to me that I didn’t believe[.]”

This included such incidents as

Ms Laporta said she agreed to help finesse [Manafort’s] company’s income, recasting $900,000 as a loan, based on a two-page loan agreement that appeared to be from one of Mr Manafort’s clients, Telmar, that she suspected was fake.

And another:

Messrs Manafort and Gates pressed her to send to the banks what she believed were false documents purportedly forgiving the previously booked loans, after the banks had asked to see more income to provide the mortgages.

She could have refused to do these things.  She chose, instead, to be serially dishonest.

Laporta was granted immunity for this testimony.

Given her testimony that she contributed to falsifying tax documents—Federal felonies (and State felonies if these affected any State taxes)—why should any of her testimony be believed?  She’s confessed to being dishonest; how can we take any of her testimony as other than dishonest?

On the other hand, Mueller’s Manafort prosecutors traded her immunity for her testimony.  On what basis then, can we conclude she simply didn’t sell her testimony like a Thursday night hooker?  Alternatively, on what basis can we conclude she wasn’t brow-beaten, with those felonies of hers as cudgel, into testifying the way she has?  Either way, it seems clear to me that it was the Mueller prosecutors, not Laporta, who testified during Laporta’s time on the stand; they were just using her mouth to do so.