Tag Archives: ethics

Deflection, or Not Understanding?

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Last Wednesday, following the FBI’s raid on former President Donald Trump’s (R) Mar-a-Lago home, a reporter asked FBI Director Christopher Wray about the possibility of his agents planting evidence. This is, after all, the same FBI that falsified evidence in order to support FISA court warrants that would be used against Trump supporters. This also is the same FBI that refused to allow Trump’s lawyers to watch the FBI as it searched Trump’s home during that raid, even forcing those lawyers present to leave. This is the same FBI that, on the conclusion of its raid and removal of a number of boxes of…somethings…refused to leave behind a receipt for the items confiscated, or even an unsigned list.

Hence the reporter’s question [my corrections to grammar, spelling, and Close Captioning’s misunderstanding of isolated words]:

Former President Trump is raising the prospect of agents planting evidence in the FBI search of his residence in Mar-a-Lago, saying his lawyer’s team is not allowed to observe this search. Can you address that, particularly as many of Mr Trump’s supporters online vision of call to arms and threats against your agents?

Wray responded by expressing his own concern regarding the safety of his agents; however, the kicker is his response to the first part of the reporter’s question regarding evidence:

Well, as I’m sure you can appreciate, that’s not something I can talk about, so I’d refer you to the department.

Here’s the Director of the “department” directing the reporter to his department for her answer regarding his department’s behavior. Last I checked, the Director of the FBI was the head of his “department.”

Christopher Wray is a man who is, clearly, in over his head. He needs to be replaced.

“Sufficient Evidence”

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Regarding the FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s (R) Mar-a-Lago home,

some legal experts echoed Pelosi, arguing there had to be sufficient evidence to secure a federal search warrant against a former president.

Sounds nice in theory. In practice, it’s not so true. One has only to look at the falsified “evidence” the FBI used to gin up some FISA warrants applications and con FISA judges into granting them.

It’s hard to believe “some legal experts” are so naïve. In fact, I don’t believe those folks, who are so awesomely intelligent, for whom words are their stock in trade, and who are steeped in the mechanics of our legal system, are naïve. Not at all.

There’s this, too, from Attorney Paul Calli:

A prosecutor “can write anything she wishes to convince the court to sign the warrant,” he explained, “and the judge reviewing it has to assume the prosecutor is telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Sadly, that is not always the case, and thus it is really the prosecutor who secretly controls the basis on which a warrant is issued.”

Not entirely. When the judge discovers he cannot trust the agent or prosecutor who’s presenting the material in a warrant application, he doesn’t have to sign off on the warrant. An untrustworthy agent is incapable of demonstrating probable cause. Sadly, those FISA judges, even after openly saying they couldn’t trust the FBI agents, continued issuing their Star Chamber warrants.

Judges, including magistrate judges, can be just as complicit as the agents before them in issuing…unjustified…warrants.

On Governor Newsom’s Plan to Produce Insulin

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Regarding that idea, a letter writer in The Wall Street Journal‘s Tuesday Letters section offered this after suggesting that Newsom’s effort would have the salutary outcome of demonstrating the foolishness of such a move:

Targeted subsidies for at-risk populations cost a fraction of the investment needed to bring “affordable” medications to the people….

That’s true enough, could Government actually do that and, further, keep it limited to the truly at-risk. However, actual competition in the market is free, and that brings down costs for everyone. Additionally, that competition allows far better and more accurate identification of those remaining few at-risk who still can’t afford their meds and would be legitimate targets of largesse. That also would facilitate more effective use of sources of largesse, beginning in order with family and friends first, followed by church and local charity, local community, county, then state governments, with the Feds last on the list, rather than the default source.

More Government Overreach

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This time by President Joe Biden’s (D) Attorney General, Merrick Garland (D). Garland has decided to sue Idaho over that State’s abortion law because, Garland claims, that law might put doctors at hospitals that accept Medicare, and those hospitals, at risk of Federal law violation if they follow Idaho’s law.

That Federal law

requires hospitals accepting Medicare to provide emergency treatments, which can sometimes include abortion.

Idaho’s law, on the other hand,

has exceptions allowing doctors to perform abortions to save the life of a pregnant woman or in cases of rape or incest that have been reported to law enforcement.

That satisfies the Fed’s Medicare law, and the administration’s suit demonstrates the overreach—and demonstrates the Biden administration’s utter disregard for the Supreme Court.

“Call Russia’s Bluff”

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Zalmay Khalilzad has a rather fanciful op-ed in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal. Russian President Vladimir Putin is claiming to want a diplomatic solution to his invasion of Ukraine, a claim he’s making with the voice of his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the latter’s tour of Africa. Khalilzad suggested that Putin’s “bluff” should be answered with a number of steps.

First…. One step that may force Moscow to recalculate is for senior US officials to clearly convey that Russian escalation will be met by an accompanying escalation of American support for Ukraine.

Yeah, that really deterred Putin from invading Ukraine in the first place. Neither should we meet escalation with “accompanying escalation.” That just continues surrendering the initiative to the barbarian. We need to escalate faster than the barbarian can respond; we need to be well inside the barbarian’s recognition and decision loops, not the other way around.

Second, improve the chances that Ukraine’s planned offensive operations succeed by ensuring that their plans are realistic and thoroughly evaluating their assets.

Because we Know Better what the folks actually engaged need. That’s why we’re sending them deliberately stunted HIMARS, for instance—we Know Better—instead of sending them fully capable systems, in the numbers they need, and promptly so.

Third, make a better case for other countries to support Ukraine.

Certainly, but we shouldn’t wait to act while we beg for consensus, and shouldn’t act as though we’re unable to act on our own initiative. In the case of Europe, especially, Germany is a lost cause; we should simply write them off and move on. If that means NATO qua NATO doesn’t act, oh well. The member nations don’t need NATO’s permission to act on their own initiatives.

Khalilzad should know better.