Category Archives: Fifth Amendment

OPINION:

Congressional investigations dont often evolve into criminal cases, especially when misdemeanor contempt charges are concerned. In fact, former high-ranking Justice Department officials from its Office of Legal Policy have testified that the contempt of Congress statute does not apply to executive officials asserting executive privilege.

But in cases where Jan. 6 and Stephen K. Bannon are concerned, the Department of Justice seems to be making a rare exception. If the departments own guidelines and internal rulings mean anything, it is an exception that could damage the departments integrity and create a dangerous chilling effect within the criminal court system.

Last week, news broke that federal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Columbia got a court order in November to obtain the phone and email records of Robert J. Costello, an attorney representing Mr. Bannon, who is fighting two misdemeanor charges for not complying with a subpoena from the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. There are reportedly three federal prosecutors and four FBI agents assigned to the matter.

Prosecutors justified the act by insisting the move was not an attempt to breach attorney-client communications, but rather because Mr. Costellos appearance before the Jan. 6 committee on behalf of Mr. Bannon, made him fair game as a witness. This rationale is questionable however since another of Mr. Bannons attorneys, Adam Katz, who did not appear before the committee is also considered a witness.

More concerning, however, is the fact that the DOJs own guideline, 9-13.410, which touches upon issuing subpoenas related to the representation of their clients requires approval from the assistant or deputy attorney general of the criminal division at the main component of the Justice Department.

This suggests that if the subpoena was related to Mr. Bannons case, someone high up possibly even a Biden political appointee would have approved the decision. If they did not, it could mean a career prosecutor disregarded DOJ guidelines.

According to a 28-page Feb. 4 filing by Mr. Bannons legal team, one federal prosecutor told them, the Government has not taken any steps to obtain any attorney work product relating to any attorneys representation of Mr. Bannon or to obtain any confidential [attorney client] communications Federal prosecutors may sincerely believe this since the records obtained were reportedly not actual substantive content or attorney client communications, but we disagree.

The effect of the governments move creates an unfair advantage by providing prosecutors a rare glimpse into an otherwise secret realm that typically only exists between an attorney and their client. By reviewing Mr. Costellos phone and email logs, the Justice Department now knows who Mr. Bannons lawyer contacted after otherwise protected client communications took place, including potential witnesses who the prosecution can now interview, subpoena or target.

This type of information would otherwise be protected under the attorney-client privilege or work-product privilege, as it is considered a confidential under D.C. Bar Rule 1.6. Confidential material is so broad that it often includes attorney-client fee agreements and billing statements.

For avoidance of doubt, Rule 1.6 in the District of Columbia is arguably broader than other jurisdictions since it not only prohibits attorneys from revealing confidences with clients, but also their secrets. The Bar broadly defines secrets as other information gained in the professional relationship the disclosure of which would be embarrassing or likely to be detrimental, to the client. In other words, just about anything and everything.

Attorneys are also prohibited from contacting opposing parties without communicating through their legal representative. In criminal cases, this covenant falls under the Fifth Amendment. The purpose of this rule and the aforementioned are to ensure the sanctity of confidentiality and secrecy between a lawyer and their client without intrusion from the government. It creates a protected zone for a defendant facing criminal charges so the government cannot get into their head in the Orwellian fashion of the Thought Police.

The ultimate result of DOJs recent rare hardball tactics is a chilling effect in which defendants have to fear prosecutors seeking creative workarounds to the Constitution, and legal clients need to fear a flagrant lack of respect for the spirit of the rules of confidentiality enshrined in the Bar. This is most likely why the Justice Department created 9-13.410, as a guideline, so its own prosecutors do not cross this sacred line in a rogue capacity.

For the moment, it appears someone in DOJ felt crossing such a line for a misdemeanor case against one embattled journalist was worth the long-term reputational damage it could cause to DOJ. Perhaps over time, evidence will surface to justify the departments decision and demonstrate that the risk was well worth the potential cost.

For now, the appearance of overreach is troubling and should raise concerns with any lawyer, defendant or American who cherishes their civil rights.

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EDITORIAL: Is Steve Bannon giving DOJ all the rope it needs? - Washington Times

After having a catalytic converter stolen from my vehicle a couple of months ago, one sentence in a recent article about drug-related arrests (Police: Drug trafficking arrest surge a collaboration by agencies, Jan. 30) caught my eye: The drug trade is constantly evolving with many crimes inspired by or connected to it. When we talked to the Santa Fe County Sheriffs deputy who investigated this theft, he told my wife and me thefts of this nature have increased significantly across the county and city of Santa Fe over the past few months.

This is an expensive problem (more than $1,600 in our case) that has affected many people in our community, and I do believe that this whole business of drug trafficking and the fencing of catalytic converters for the precious metals they contain are part of the same underworld syndicates. Hopefully, our law enforcement agencies can expand their collaborative efforts to crack these rings.

While many may know that February is Heart Month, they might not know many people in the United States also commemorate Congenital Heart Disease Awareness Week from Feb. 7-14. And Feb. 14 is not just Valentines Day it also is Congenital Heart Disease Awareness Day. For the more than 2.5 million Americans who were born with a congenital heart defect, this day and week are a crucial time to spread awareness about the importance of congenital heard disease care throughout the entire lifespan.

As a parent of a son navigating adulthood with congenital heard disease in New Mexico and as a doctor who specializes in treating adults with congenital heard disease, we want everyone to know that heart defects are the most common type of birth defect in the United States, affecting approximately 1 in 100 births. As most children receive congenital heard disease treatment and live to adulthood, a growing population of adults with heart defects need ongoing specialized cardiac care.

While this is great news, the sobering fact is that despite the recent increase in the number of adult congenital heard disease clinics in the United States, only a fraction of patients are seen in specialized centers fewer than 10 percent of the nearly 2 million adults with congenital heard disease. The Adult Congenital Heart Association is a nonprofit whose mission is to empower the congenital heard disease community by advancing access to resources and specialized care. This month, join us and our association in spreading awareness about adults living with congenital heard disease and the specialized treatment they need to live a full life.

ACHA medical advisory board chair

The public has constitutional rights, through the Fifth Amendment and 14th Amendment due-process rights to maintain the existing locations of Galisteo Road north and south of Zia Road. The preliminary development plan from Zia Station LLC approved in April of 2021 and city Resolution 21-089 propose to donate Galisteo Road to developers to build on. They propose and approve doing this because the development requires a new location of the road to solve traffic volume increase, and the developer requires land to build high-density commercial and residential architecture to make money. I believe the city cannot move the road to serve private interests, which is exactly what they have approved doing.

One would think after two years of the coronavirus pandemic and reams of data available, the governor would be better informed and journalists more critical of her recent decision to continue the mask mandate. Only nine states remain with a mask mandate, and in the most recent seven-day average of new cases (as reported and found easily in the New York Times), they rank as follows (the lower the ranking, the higher the case counts): Washington, 14; California, 15; New Mexico, 17; Oregon, 18; Hawaii, 21; Nevada, 35; Illinois, 42; Delaware, 44; and New York, 46. If mask wearing helped, you would expect these states to be clumped in the 35-50 rank level.

I believe data suggests there is no evidence of the mitigating benefit of wearing masks. While the harm for us adults is marginal, we shouldnt ignore the negative effects on childhood development, as is now beginning to be seen. As anyone who has dined out recently knows, the Kabuki restaurant mask dance is comical and amusing but obviously not effective.

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Catalytic convertor theft is costly and increasing | Letters To Editor | santafenewmexican.com - Santa Fe New Mexican

Photo: Stewart Cook/AFP via Getty Images

John Sweeney, a 70-year-old civil-rights attorney from Los Angeles, doesnt have the name recognition of Ben Crump, who has represented the families of Trayvon Martin and George Floyd and appears, Zelig-like, seemingly whenever there is a major police shooting. Nor does Sweeney much resemble Johnnie Cochran, a mentor to the young Sweeney when they worked together at the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office in the late 1970s. He was a real peacock, Sweeney remembered recently. I mean, whats the last time you see somebody at the DAs office driving a Rolls-Royce? Sweeney who is tall, walks with a careful grace, and has freckled skin, a thin mustache, and closely cropped hairis more like the Atticus Finch of the world of police-misconduct litigation: a gentleman who is brutally effective.

Sweeney has built his career, as well as a sizable fortune, on exposing violent gangs that reside on the other side of the thin blue line within the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department.These deputy gangs, as they are known, have been accused of hunting down Black men and framing the victims as instigators. In 2020, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors estimated that legal settlements related to deputy-gang misconduct have cost taxpayers $55 million. Im not saying this in a self-aggrandizing fashion, Sweeney said in November, but $30 million of that $55 million have been my verdicts and settlements against the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department just in the last seven or eight years.

I feel that Ive accomplished what I wanted to accomplish get this out in the open, Sweeney told me. If history remembers my 40-year career, I hope its because my work began eradicating deputy gangs from the department.

The deputy gangs have long been a problem, but Sweeneys campaign was rooted in events that took place the night of August 25, 2016. A pair of deputies with the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department pulled their patrol vehicle to a stop in front of 401 North Wilmington Avenue in downtown Compton, a gray stucco building housing Flamingos Beauty Salon and Gonzlez & Luis Lawn Mower Shop & Repairs. Mizrain Orrego was at the wheel of the black-and-white unit, and Samuel Aldama was in the front passenger seat. About one month earlier, the New York Times profiled the two deputies for a piece about the perils of policing Compton, made famous by violence and gangster rap. As Aldama and Orrego approached a group of young people outside what they claimed was a hangout for the South Side Compton Crips, Orrego told the reporter, Every time you get three of these guys together, you know they have a gun somewhere. Yet while the deputies boasted that they had seized 18 guns from the streets during a nine-week period, they admitted they found no weapons when the reporter rode along with them on their shift.

On that late August night, the pair spotted Donta Taylor, a 31-year-old Black man, wearing a red hat with the letter C on the front on North Wilmington Avenue, an area controlled by the Cedar Block Piru gang. Aldama and Orrego asked Taylor if he was on probation or parole. No, Im not, Taylor said and then, according to the deputies, drew a semiautomatic, stainless-steel handgun and ran. The deputies radioed in a 417 person with a gun and gave chase on foot. Three minutes later, Aldama and Orrego cornered Taylor as he emerged from a hole in the fence that encloses a dirt path by the Compton Creek. Orrego said Taylor pointed a gun at him, and Orrego fired three shots in response. Hearing the gunshots, Aldama fired approximately ten to 12 more rounds at Taylor, who Aldama said was holding something in his chest area. Orrego fired two or three additional rounds at Taylor and saw him fall to the ground. An autopsy determined that Taylor had six gunshot wounds to his upper- and lower-right extremities and his left lateral back.

But contrary to the deputies claims, Taylor did not have a gun. There was not a gun anywhere on his person, near his body, or at the scene of his killing. And there was seemingly no purpose for the stop; Taylor was not a suspect in a crime, nor had he committed one. Taylors family said he simply encountered Aldama and Orrego as he was walking to a nearby market. Grieving and shell-shocked Taylors parents were celebrating their wedding anniversary the night he was killed the family turned to Sweeney, who held a press conference that October announcing a $50 million claim against Los Angeles County. The story the deputy sheriffs came up with is fabricated. It is a lie, and we will prove that, Sweeney said. No gun was found because there was no gun.

In April 2017, Sweeney sued the LASD on behalf of the Taylor family, claiming assault and battery, negligence, wrongful death, and civil-rights violations. An August 2017 review of the fatal shooting by thenLos Angeles County district attorney Jackie Lacey admitted that it appears that Taylor was unarmed at the end of the foot pursuit because there was no gun located in the area of the shooting and that it was evident Taylor was not armed at the time of the shooting and Orrego was mistaken. Nonetheless, the DAs office concluded that the available evidence is insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Aldama and Orrego did not act in self-defense and the defense of others. The case was closed.

Though no criminal charges would be brought against the deputies, Sweeney continued litigating Taylors civil case. Taylor, it was a hunt for an animal, Sweeney told me. It just reminded me of a hunt for an animal through the wilds of Africa. During the discovery process in the spring of 2018, Sweeney learned that Aldama and Orrego nearly killed another Black man just months before they gunned down Taylor. On January 15, 2016, Sheldon Lockett, 29, stood outside his grandmothers home in Compton when he was approached by Aldama and Orrego, who were in the area investigating a report of a drive-by shooting. The pair drew their weapons on Lockett, who fled on foot. Aldama and Orrego called out on their radios that Lockett had pulled a gun; then they cornered him in a backyard. When Lockett attempted to surrender, Aldama and Orrego allegedly beat Lockett with their fists, feet, and batons, stung him with Tasers, and called him the N-word.

In a handheld video shot by LASD investigators that I obtained the department didnt begin using body cameras until the fall of 2020 Lockett sits handcuffed in a department vehicle bruised, bloodied, and confused, repeating when questioned, I got my ass beat. Even though no gun was found on Lockett and he hadnt committed any crime, he was arrested and charged with attempted murder. Unable to afford bail, Lockett was locked up in the county jail. About one month later, Locketts mother, Michelle Davis, filed a citizen complaint against Orrego and Aldama. But the LASD didnt investigate or discipline the deputies. Instead, it executed a search warrant on Daviss home, apparently looking for the weapon the deputies claimed Lockett had when he was arrested. Although the LASDs search of the Davis home didnt produce any weapons, Lockett wasnt released from jail until August 2, 2016 an eight-month stint behind bars when the case against him was dismissed for lack of evidence.

The only reason why we got Locketts name was because his mother filed this complaint, Sweeney said. Sweeney contacted the Lockett family and, in July 2018, filed a lawsuit in federal court against Aladama, Orrego, and the LASD, claiming excessive force, false imprisonment, assault, battery, false arrest, and civil-rights violations. In a separate claim, Sweeney alleged the LASD failed to properly hire, train, instruct, monitor, supervise, evaluate, investigate, and discipline Aldama and Orrego.

But while Taylor was killed and Lockett was maimed Sweeney claimed one of the deputies purposefully and violently rammed the end of a police baton in his eye socket neither case received significant media attention. That all changed on July 10, 2018, when the Los Angeles Times published a front-page story about Sweeneys questioning of Aldama during a May 2018 deposition for Taylors case. Under oath, Aldama admitted that he bore a tattoo on his leg of a deputy gang called the Executioners. The tattoo features a skeleton holding a Kalashnikov-style rifle encircled in flames. On the weapons magazine are the Roman numerals XXVIII, which stands for the LASDs 28th substation: Compton. The letters CPT short for Compton are also part of the design. Aldama said that as many as 20 Compton deputies had the tattoo, but he denied that he was part of the gang. He said he was inked for working hard.

A clip of the deposition in which Sweeney asked Aldama, Do you have any ill feelings towards African Americans? and Aldama replied, I do, sir went viral on social media. The story was picked up by BuzzFeed and the Daily Mail. (Aldama later said he misunderstood the question and denied having ill feelings toward Black people.) The Los Angeles Times piece featured photographs of Aldamas and Orregos Executioners tattoos taken during the course of the Sweeney depositions over strenuous objections from Aldamas legal team a major victory for Sweeney.

The evidence of Deputy Mizrain Orregos Executioners tattoo was a major breakthrough for Sweeneys case. Photo: The Sweeney Firm

I asked him about tattoos, Sweeney remembers. He lied, said he had them on his arms only. And when he finished describing those, I said, What about the one near your leg? He looked like he had seen a ghost. It was, Sweeney says now, the tattoo that shook the world and broke this whole thing open. In June 2019, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a $7 million settlement to the Taylor family, one of the largest legal payouts in LASD history.

The $7 million settlement was followed by a 2020 California Supreme Court decision restoring the full $8 million judgment reversed by an appeals court to the family of Darren Burley, who was killed by Compton deputies in 2012 after they pinned him to the ground, pressed a knee against his neck, put him in a headlock, hit him multiple times with a flashlight, placed him in a hobble restraint, and Tased him. Much of the LASD narrative of the incident was disputed by witnesses including a Compton Fire Department captain who said the deputies did not call for medical help. Later, when Sweeney deposed an LASD whistleblower, he identified one of the deputies in the Burley case as an Executioners member. There is a cancer that has metastasized within the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department, Sweeney said.

Sweeney comes from a distinguished line of pastors and lawyers. His father, Paul, was an attorney and his mother, Arminta, was, in his words, a southern belle from Georgia. His grandfather Samuel was a pastor at Harlems St. Marks United Methodist Church, which counted Black luminaries such as Sugar Ray Robinson and Paul Robeson as members. My father was from an extremely I dont say that lightly an extremely prominent family in New York City, Sweeney said. A January 17, 1955, piece in the New York Times headlined Pastor Suggests Tearing Up Evil described Samuel Sweeney inveighing against injustices like school segregation.

When the Sweeney family moved to Los Angeles, they lived in Baldwin Hills, then a haven for the Black upper-middle class. Redd Foxx, Tina Turner, and Ray Charles were neighbors. You can see how I was raised, he said. And it speaks volumes about why I am where I am today. Sweeney was not the only member of his family who rose to prominence: His sister, Joanne Berger-Sweeney, is president of Trinity College in Connecticut. Thats part of the reason Ive always been able to transcend my race because of my upbringing, background, Sweeney said. I can tell stories that other Black people cant tell that neutralize race and take it out of the picture.

Sweeney graduated from the University of Southern California in 1973 and the California College of Law in 1979. After law school, Sweeney was wooed by the Los Angeles County DAs office, where Cochran became first assistant district attorney in 1978. Although it was decades before his famous turn as O.J. Simpsons lawyer, Cochran was already a mythological figure in the Los Angeles legal community. In the mid-1960s, he represented the family of Leonard Deadwyler, a 25-year-old Black man killed by an LAPD officer as he drove his pregnant wife to the hospital. Deadwylers death, which was ruled an accidental homicide by a jury, received extraordinary attention, the case being the first legal proceeding in California to be broadcast on live television.

In June 1966, Deadwylers story was the subject of a nearly 5,000-word New York Times story by Thomas Pynchon. The killing of Leonard Deadwyler has once again brought it all into sharp focus; brought back longstanding pain, reminded everybody of how very often the cop does approach you with his revolver ready, so that nothing he does with it can then really be accidental; of how, especially, at night, everything can suddenly reduce to a matter of reflexes: your life trembling in the crook of a cops finger because it is dark, and Watts, and the history of this place and these times makes it impossible for the cop to come on any different, or for you to hate him any less, Pynchon wrote.

Cochran told Sweeney they would tackle police prosecutions together there. But soon after Sweeney joined the DAs office, Cochran left to go into private practice and urged Sweeney to come with him. He said, John, will you come work for me? Sweeney remembers. I said, Bye-bye, DAs office. Because he was litigating civil cases, Cochran was freed from the legal systems high standards for prosecuting the police in criminal court, and there were huge courtroom wins and monetary awards. In 1981, Cochran represented the family of Ron Settles, a 21-year-old Black college-football star who died in the custody of the Signal Hill Police Department. An initial autopsy concluded that Settles died by suicide at the jail, but a coroners jury found that Settles died at the hands of another. Cochran sued the department, and in 1983 the lawsuit was settled for $1 million an enormous amount at the time. Sweeney sat at the feet of the master trial attorney, said Priscilla Ocen, a law professor at Loyola Law School and a member of the Sheriffs Civilian Oversight Commission.

The string of successes under Cochran inspired Sweeney to strike out on his own, and he founded the Sweeney Firm in Beverly Hills in 1985. By the early aughts, it had racked up a series of big wins in torts, civil-rights, and criminal cases. Perhaps his most significant police-misconduct case involved the June 2000 shooting of Charles Beatty, a 66-year-old Black man, by a pair of LAPD officers who were angered that Beatty pulled around them at a traffic light. In 2002, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury awarded Beatty, who was shot four times in the back and had a bullet stuck in his spine, $2 million. One of the officers pleaded no contest to a felony charge of shooting into an occupied vehicle and was sentenced to five years in prison, a rarity in police-shooting cases. Ive never seen anybody have more command of the courtroom than John, said Steve Glickman, an L.A. attorney who has served as co-counsel and expert witness for Sweeney.

It would prove to be a life-changing year for Sweeney far beyond the historic Beatty case. In 2000, the Compton City Council disbanded its police department and replaced it with an LASD contract. It was meant to be a milestone for police reform driven by high homicide rates, gang violence, and most important, rampant misconduct and corruption by the Compton police, which brought the city unwanted international attention thanks to the anti-police anthems of N.W.As Straight Outta Compton. From my understanding, they were excited about the opportunity to come into Compton, said Aja Brown, Comptons mayor from 2013 to 2021. It was one of their largest contracts that they had at the time.

But reform quickly proved illusory. At around midnight on June 26, 2001, a Compton sheriffs deputy stopped a van that was leaving the area of a burglary. A Black woman named Shanara Batiste pulled her car up to the scene, saying that the vehicle was her cousins and that he hadnt done anything wrong. Things escalated from there, and Batiste ended up being slammed onto the hood with such force that she was left with two broken teeth and a broken jaw. In 2003, Sweeney obtained a $375,000 settlement for Batiste.

On July 5, 2009, Compton deputies stopped 16-year-old Avery Cody Jr. with a group of friends outside a McDonalds. When the deputies ordered him to raise his shirt to check for weapons, Cody panicked and ran. Deputy Sergio Reyes gave chase and shot him to death. Reyes said Cody was armed and took cover behind a newspaper rack to defend himself. Codys family was skeptical of the story and hired Sweeney. Sweeney obtained surveillance video from a nearby store showing that Cody was holding a cell phone, not the revolver deputies said they recovered. Surveillance tape also showed Cody running from Reyes, not ducking behind a newspaper rack. The surveillance camera has them walking past the camera coming from McDonalds back home, Sweeney remembers. Then about, oh, a minute and a half later, you see little Avery running back past the camera, back eastbound, and angling out into the street to get away from the cops. And you can see this deputy sheriff chasing him and getting into a crouch and firing and killing him. In 2011, Los Angeles County settled the Cody case for $500,000.

After the case settled, Sweeney got a call from Avery Cody Sr., who had become an anti-police-violence activist in the wake of his sons death: I got a case for you. It involved Robert Thomas Jr., who was shot to death by Compton deputies in what was becoming a familiar set of circumstances to Sweeney. On November 8, 2010, a group of deputies spotted Thomas, 21, standing outside a party they believed was thrown by the Carver Park Compton Crips. He was not committing a crime or suspected in any crime. The deputies said he was acting suspiciously and alleged, with no clear corroboration, that he was a gang member. They went around asking people to lift up their shirts because these gang people they wear these long, pristine white T-shirts that are baggy that go down to your knee, Sweeney said. Thats very important in this whole story. And Robert Thomas Jr. had one on. One deputy asked Thomas to raise his shirt, and he complied. But when another made the same request, Thomas ran. The deputy said Thomas reached for a gun in his pocket, prompting the deputy to fire in response, killing him.

Like the Cody family, the Thomases didnt believe the law-enforcement narrative. Theyre lying, basically saying that my son pulled a gun on them. But you cant pull a gun with your back turned from them and get shot 12 times in the back, Robert Thomas Sr. said. The LASD admitted that Thomas did not fire a weapon but claimed a handgun was recovered at the scene. Thomas, Sweeney found out, was unarmed, and the gun at the scene didnt have his DNA on it. In June 2013, a Compton jury awarded $7.5 million to the Thomas family. We were the first firm to really, really challenge on these cases, Sweeney said. Because not many people were taking these because you couldnt win them. Nobody believed that the cops could lie like this.

Sweeney was establishing a pattern by Compton deputies of questionable stops, claims of a gun, fatal shootings, and framing of victims. Sweeney said he has no evidence that the deputies who killed Cody or Thomas were in a deputy gang, but after these shootings I said, Something is going on. There is a gang out here. We just dont know it. I knew that I had a gang because of the history of deputy gangs within the sheriffs department from the Little Devils and the Regulators to the Vikings to the Jump Out Boys or the Grim Reapers.It stood to reason there was a gang at the Compton station. I just had to prove it.

The strange and sadistic subculture of the deputy gang has been a part of the LASD for more than 50 years. They are often referred to by law enforcement as social clubs or subgroups that engage in proactive policing. But Roger Clark, a former high-ranking member of the LASD who joined a deputy gang called the Little Devils in 1965, wrote in a court filing in the Lockett case, I understood that they were a group of white deputies who were responsible for wreaking havoc with the aggressive policing of largely African American and Hispanic communities.

Clarks contention about the true nature of deputy gangs has been borne out repeatedly in Los Angeles history. On August 29, 1970, Los Angeles Times reporter Ruben Salazar was killed after being struck by a tear-gas canister fired by a sheriffs deputy during an antiwar protest called the National Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War. The deputy was based at the East Los Angeles station, which had adopted a Fort Apache logo featuring an image of a boot with a riot helmet and the phrase Siempre una patada en los pantalones, Spanish for Always a kick in the pants. The logo was later removed, but the East Los Angeles station has been the home of the Banditos deputy gang for decades.

In the early 1990s, a group of residents in Lynwood, a city in Los Angeles County patrolled by the LASD, filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit claiming they were subject to excessive force and warrantless arrests by deputies in the Vikings deputy gang, who engage in racially motivated, anti-black, white-supremacist hate crime activities, use racist speech, and glorify and celebrate the use of excessive force and other official misconduct by deputies. One plaintiff said he was kicked in the face, choked into unconsciousness twice, and Tased by a group of deputies who told him, Yeah n - - - - -, you aint got no rights. We are going to make sure you dont ask any more questions! A federal judge in the case referred to the Vikings as a neo-nazi, white supremacist gang. The LASD settled the case in 1996 for $7.5 million.

The Kolts Report, compiled in the aftermath of the 1992 riots over the exoneration of Rodney Kings police assailants, devoted a chapter to deputy gangs. The report said certain cliques were found particularly at stations in areas heavily populated by minorities the so-called ghetto stations and deputies at those stations recruit persons similar in attitude to themselves. But the authors stopped short of classifying them as gangs: The evidence does not conclusively demonstrate the existence of racist deputy gangs.

In the aughts, an explosion of federal lawsuits and ACLU reports came in response to brutal acts committed by deputies at the Mens Central Jail in Los Angeles County. These included the so-called 3000 Boys, who worked in the jails 3000 block, the site of a 2008 uprising by incarcerated people that was violently crushed by deputies. This is the kind of stuff you imagine seeing in Saddam Husseins Iraq, said one attorney. The victims were eventually awarded more than $5 million in attorneys fees.

In a 2012 report from a Los Angeles County commission, the 3000 Boys who have tattoos with the Roman numeral III on their calf area were described as highly resistant to supervision and involved in an unusually high number of force incidents. Because LASD deputies often start their careers at the Mens Central Jail dubbed a dungeon by the current sheriff the 3000 Boys can be an entry point into the violent world of deputy gangs. Aldama worked as a guard on the 3000 block and, according to a 2014 lawsuit, allegedly pinned a prisoner to the ground while other deputies beat, Tased, and pepper-sprayed him. (A use of force report prepared by Aldamas supervisor said Aldama simply used handcuffs and a knee in the back to bring a non-compliant prisoner under control.) In 2019, an alleged member of the 3000 Boys killed Ryan Twyman, who was shot at more than 30 times as he sat unarmed in a car with a friend.

Still, deputy gangs remained largely unknown in Los Angeles except among minority communities, their victims, and civil-rights attorneys like Sweeney.

If Sweeneys depositions of Aldama and Orrego thrust deputy gangs into the spotlight, his questioning of an LASD whistleblower, Deputy Austreberto Art Gonzalez, supercharged the story.

At about 6 p.m. on June 18, 2020, Deputies Miguel Vega and Chris Hernandez saw Andres Edgardo Guardado Pineda, 18, speaking to someone in a car blocking the entrance to an auto-body shop in Gardena, a small city south of Los Angeles. Investigators said Guardado then produced a handgun and fled, and deputies gave chase. When the deputies reached Guardado, Vega shot and killed him.

A Guardado family lawsuit filed claimed that Vega, without provocation or justification, and with willful and conscious disregard, fatally unloaded, at least six shots at Andres back.The manager of the auto shop near the site of the shooting said that the deputies shot Guardado several times in the back and that other deputies later removed several of his security cameras. An independent autopsy concluded that Guardado was shot five times in the back; Vegas attorney has said his client shot Guardado in self-defense.

That August, Sweeney deposed Gonzalez, a Marine Corps combat veteran who worked at the Compton station five and a half years, as part of the Lockett case. Gonzalez said Vega and Hernandez were Executioners prospects. Gonzalez explained that such prospects are described as chasing ink and that they get inked oftentimes after a shooting. He said deputy gangs hold 998 parties after a shooting. Some people say its to celebrate that, you know, the deputys alive, he said, and others believe its, you know, to celebrate that, you know, theyre going to be inking somebody. He said deputies radio in false reports of a weapon in order to justify use of force. We call it a ghost gun because it never existed, Gonzalez said.

I now call them a gang, he said of the Executioners. Because thats what gangs do they beat up people. Their focus is not this job. Their focus is this group.

In September 2020, Gonzalez filed a lawsuit against the LASD claiming he was retaliated against for whistleblowing. Gonzalez alleged that Compton station deputies become inked as Executioners after executing members of the public, or otherwise committing acts of violence in furtherance of the gang. Gonzalezs attorney said that when his client called a confidential tip line for internal affairs at the LASD, the call was leaked to the Executioners and graffiti was scrawled at the Compton station parking lot reading, Art Is a Rat.

Vega did not appear at the Los Angeles County coroners inquest into Guardados death in November 2020; instead, he submitted a declaration saying he would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights if called to testify. Hernandez, Vegas partner, also said he would plead the Fifth. Two homicide detectives investigating Guardados death appeared at the inquest but cited their Fifth Amendment rights and refused to answer questions.

The coroners inquest failed to provide any substantive movement in the Guardado case, but the revelations from Sweeneys depositions of Gonzalez attracted the attention of national politicians and had a radicalizing effect on Los Angeles activists.

It is outrageous that the officers involved in the killing of Andres Guardado are now refusing to testify in the coroners inquest into Guardados death, California representative Maxine Waters said in a statement. It is this type of obfuscation by the LASD that has fueled decades-long outrage and resentment among the communities who find themselves victims of police violence time and time again. LASD has a known history of serious abuses and allegations of misconduct that include racist gangs, the targeting of people of color, and shootings of civilians.

California representative Jimmy Gomez and Maryland representative Jamie Raskin wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice calling for an investigation into deputy gangs. And an activist collective called Peoples City Council Los Angeles, founded just as COVID-19 began its spread in March 2020, started an aggressive campaign to target Sheriff Alex Villanueva and raise awareness about deputy gangs. At a May 20, 2021, meeting of the Civilian Oversight Commission, Ricci Sergienko of the Peoples City Council called Villanueva the lead gang member of L.A. County.

In the fall of 2019, eight deputies at the East Los Angeles station filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court claiming that the Banditos deputy gang who sport tattoos featuring a pistol-wielding, sombrero-wearing skeleton with a bushy mustache maintain a stranglehold on the unincorporated communities east of downtown through a reign of unlawful policing, violence, and intimidation. The lawsuit alleges that one Banditos leader Rafael Big Listo Munoz is protected by Villanueva.

In August 2020, Villanueva moved to fire or suspend 26 people from the East Los Angeles station, including Munoz, who were involved in a 2018 brawl at an event space in which several deputies said they were attacked by Banditos members. We did an investigation at East Los Angeles station resulting in 26 employees either disciplined or terminated, Villanueva told CNN in September 2020. And that means were taking steps forward. But in the same interview, Villanueva insisted, There are no gangs within the department. Lets get that off the table.

In January 2021, departing California attorney general Xavier Becerra announced a civil-rights investigation into the LASD, citing allegations of excessive force, retaliation, and other misconduct as well as a number of recent reported incidents involving LASD management and personnel. A few months later, the Los Angeles County Democratic Party called on Villanueva to resign and said it stood in solidarity with the Guardado family, recognizing the systematic brutality of law enforcement that has continued to shake our county. Leadership and accountability start at the top, and while strides have been made to reform police culture in Los Angeles, its simply not enough.

In July 2021, Waters sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice demanding an independent investigation into the Executioners, citing much of Gonzalezs testimony about chasing ink and 998 parties thrown by the Compton station. But the state and federal scrutiny seems to have only hardened Villanuevas resolve: In October, he refused a subpoena to testify before a Civilian Oversight Commission hearing on deputy gangs. Villanueva has become a regular on Tucker Carlsons show, railing about everything from his refusal to enforce COVID-19-vaccine mandates to woke DAs like Los Angeles County DA George Gascn, a reformer who defeated Jackie Lacey, the Los Angeles DA from 2012 to 2020 who didnt charge a single officer for an on-duty shooting despite the fact that more than 400 people were shot by law enforcement during her tenure.

In November 2021, a judge dismissed Gonzalezs lawsuit. Villanueva celebrated the decision with a tweet reading Google this, a reference to the Peoples City CouncilsGoogle LASD Gangs social media campaign. Gonzalezs attorney said he is appealing the decision. The judge refused to permit discovery with respect to The Executioners gang, Al Romero said, which along with his ruling dismissing the case, constituted a cover-up of murders of young men of color in Compton.

A May 24 federal court trial date is set in the Lockett case. In the Taylor and Lockett cases, both Orrego and Aldama have denied that they used excessive force and claim that the force they used was reasonable. In June 2017, Orrego was terminated from the LASD after being charged with a DUI in 2015 in Orange County and allegedly making false statements about the arrest; he is currently suing the department to get his job back. Aldama remains a deputy, but in November the LASD said Aldama was suspended for 15 days for allegedly making misleading statements about Orregos DUI.

The issue of deputy gangs is dominating the 2022 sheriffs race. Villanueva faces several challengers including the Compton-raised Cecil Rhambo. In December, a Villanueva campaign manager sent a text message to Democratic Party members suggesting that Rhambo, who retired from the LASD in 2014, was a member of a deputy gang. Rhambo then sent video to a Los Angeles Times reporter showing him shirtless and without tattoos on his torso, back, and arms; months earlier, Rhambo pulled up his pant legs for local-TV reporter Kate Cagle to prove he didnt have tattoos on his calves or ankles. After I defeat Alex Villanueva as Sheriff Ill permanently end deputy gangs, Rhambo tweeted on December 12. The next day, Rhambo was endorsed by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. On February 1, Gomez and Raskin sent another letter to the U.S. Department of Justice requesting an investigation into deputy gangs.

When contacted for comment for this story, an LASD spokesperson pointed me to public statements by Villanueva about deputy gangs. The Department does not have gangs, Villanueva wrote in a November letter to the Civilian Oversight Commission.

Villanueva recently said that 43 shootings committed by his deputies are pending a letter of opinion from the Los Angeles County DAs office. Sweeney confirmed to me that one of the cases under review is Aldama and Orregos killing of Taylor in 2016. Of his recent deputy-gang-related cases, Taylors has the strongest chance at being prosecuted as a murder, Sweeney believes. The killings that are going on, nobody cared about them because they were nameless, faceless Black people over in the ghetto, he told me. Until we gave them a voice.

The one story you shouldnt miss today, selected byNew Yorks editors.

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The Man Who Cracked the Code of L.A.s Notorious Sheriff Gangs - New York Magazine

The House select committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol is borrowing techniques from federal prosecutions, employing aggressive tactics typically used against mobsters and terrorists as it seeks to break through stonewalling from former President Donald J. Trump and his allies and develop evidence that could prompt a criminal case.

In what its members see as the best opportunity to hold Mr. Trump and his team accountable, the committee which has no authority to pursue criminal charges is using what powers it has in expansive ways in hopes of pressuring Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to use the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute them.

The panels investigation is being run by a former U.S. attorney, and the top investigator brought in to focus on Mr. Trumps inner circle is also a former U.S. attorney. The panel has hired more than a dozen other former federal prosecutors.

The committee has interviewed more than 475 witnesses and issued more than 100 subpoenas, including broad ones to banks as well as telecommunications and social media companies. Some of the subpoenas have swept up the personal data of Trump family members and allies, local politicians and at least one member of Congress, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio. Though no subpoena has been issued for Mr. Jordan, his text messages and calls have shown up in communications with Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, and in a call with Mr. Trump on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.

Armed with reams of telephone records and metadata, the committee has used link analysis, a data mapping technique that former F.B.I. agents say was key to identifying terrorist networks in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks. The F.B.I. said it used a similar tactic last month to identify the seller of a gun to a man in Texas who took hostages at a synagogue.

Faced with at least 16 Trump allies who have signaled they will not fully cooperate with the committee, investigators have taken a page out of organized crime prosecutions and quietly turned at least six lower-level Trump staff members into witnesses who have provided information about their bosses activities.

The committee is also considering granting immunity to key members of Mr. Trumps inner circle who have invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as a way of pressuring them to testify.

Having lived through and being a part of every major congressional investigation over the past 50 years from Iran-contra to Whitewater to everything else, this is the mother of all investigations and a quantum leap for Congress in a way Ive never seen before, said Stanley Brand, a Democrat and the former top lawyer for the House who is now representing Dan Scavino, one of Mr. Trumps closest aides, in the investigation.

It is a development, Mr. Brand suggested, that Democrats might one day come to regret. When a frontier is pushed back, it doesnt recede, he said. They think theyre fighting for the survival of the democracy and the ends justify the means. Just wait if the Republicans take over.

The committees aggressive approach carries with it another obvious risk: that it could fail to turn up compelling new information about Mr. Trumps efforts to hold onto power after his defeat or to make a persuasive case for a Justice Department prosecution. Mr. Trump survived years of scrutiny by the special counsel in the Russia investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, and two impeachments. Despite a swirl of new investigations since he left office, the former president remains the dominant force in Republican politics.

The committee has no law enforcement role, and its stated goal is to write a comprehensive report and propose recommendations, including for legislation, to try to make sure the events of Jan. 6 are never repeated.

Nevertheless, its members have openly discussed what criminal laws Mr. Trump and his allies may have violated and how they might recommend that the Justice Department investigate him. Such a step could put considerable additional pressure on Mr. Garland, who has not given any specific public indication that the department is investigating Mr. Trump or would support prosecuting him.

As the House investigation was gaining momentum late last year, the committees vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, read from the criminal code to describe a law she believed could be used to prosecute Mr. Trump for obstructing Congress as it sought to certify the Electoral College count of his defeat.

Ms. Cheney and the other Republican on the committee, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, were censured by the Republican National Committee on Friday for their participation in the investigation.

Mr. Trumps allies have grown angry not just at the aggressiveness of the committee for example, in making subpoenas public before they have been served but also at the expansive list of people questioned, some of whom, these allies maintain, had minimal to no involvement in the events of Jan. 6.

The tactics being used by the committee were described by nearly a dozen people, including members of the committee, aides, witnesses and their lawyers, and other people familiar with the panels work. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing what the committee says is a confidential investigation.

By comparison, the House select committee that spent two and a half years investigating the 2012 Benghazi attack issued just a dozen or so subpoenas a small fraction of the number issued by the Jan. 6 committee so far and made no criminal referrals. The Jan. 6 panel has already recommended criminal contempt of Congress charges against three witnesses who refused to cooperate, and one, Stephen K. Bannon, has already been indicted by the Justice Department.

Members of the Jan. 6 committee say the obstacles thrown up by Mr. Trump and his allies and the high stakes of the investigation have left the panel with no choice but to use every tool at its disposal.

Its not a criminal investigation, but having experienced former prosecutors who know how to run complex, white-collar investigations working on a plot to overturn the presidential election is a very useful talent among your team, said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a committee member.

To lead the inquiry, the panel hired Timothy J. Heaphy, the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia. In that position, he oversaw a number of high-profile prosecutions, including one in which the drugmaker Abbott Laboratories pleaded guilty in a fraud case and paid a $1.5 billion fine.

Ms. Cheney and the committees chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, also hired John Wood, a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri and a former deputy associate attorney general in the George W. Bush administration. He is a senior investigative counsel for the committee and is focusing on Mr. Trumps inner circle. Neither Mr. Heaphy nor Mr. Wood had previously worked on a congressional investigation.

Some of the Democrats on the committee were concerned that if the panel was too aggressive, Republicans might turn the tables on the Democrats whenever they took back control of the House. But Ms. Cheney insisted that the committee be as aggressive as possible.

She said that the panel would face significant resistance from Mr. Trumps inner circle, and that the committee would be criticized no matter what it did, so there was no reason to hold back in the face of efforts to impede its work.

Mr. Trump moved to block the National Archives from handing over documents from his White House, leading to a monthslong court fight that ended with the committee receiving the documents.

At least 16 witnesses have sued to try to block the committees subpoenas. Four of the panels most sought-after targets the conservative lawyer John Eastman; Jeffrey Clark, the Justice Department lawyer deeply involved in Mr. Trumps plays to try to stay in power; the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones; and the longtime Trump adviser Roger J. Stone Jr. invoked the Fifth Amendment as a way to avoid answering questions without the threat of a contempt of Congress charge.

Three Republican members of Congress Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader; Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania; and Mr. Jordan told the committee that they would refuse to sit for questioning.

Despite those obstacles, the committee turned its attention to lower-level aides, who investigators knew were in the room for many of the key events that occurred in the lead-up to and during the assault, or were told almost immediately about what had occurred. Those witnesses tended to be younger and have far less money to hire high-end white-collar defense lawyers to fend off the committee. So far, the committee has spoken to at least a half-dozen lower-level aides who fall into this category.

When Mr. Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, refused to testify, the panel turned to his top aide, Ben Williamson, who complied with a subpoena and sat for hours of questioning. After Mr. Clark, the Justice Department lawyer, refused to cooperate, a former senior counsel who worked for him, Kenneth Klukowski, sat for an interview with the committee.

Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the panel, said the committee was not trying to flip witnesses the way investigators might do in a criminal case. But, he said, If you drew some kind of social diagrams of whos testifying and whos not, pretty much everyone is testifying, except for those who are in the immediate entourage of Donald Trump.

Among the other aides who have testified before the committee are Marc Short, Greg Jacob and Keith Kellogg, all of whom worked for former Vice President Mike Pence. Three former spokeswomen for Mr. Trump have also cooperated: Kayleigh McEnany, Stephanie Grisham and Alyssa Farah Griffin.

The committees investigative work related to Mr. Trumps current spokesman illustrates the aggressive steps the panel is taking. The spokesman, Taylor Budowich, turned over more than 1,700 pages of documents and sat for roughly four hours of sworn testimony.

Shortly after testifying, Mr. Budowich learned that the committee had requested financial records from his bank related to pro-Trump rallies. A federal judge turned down an emergency request by Mr. Budowich to force congressional investigators to relinquish his banking records, which JPMorgan Chase had already given to the committee.

Investigators also sought a broad swath of phone records from Ali Alexander, a right-wing rally organizer who was cooperating with the committee, for two months before Jan. 6, 2021 well before he claims to have thought of planning an event that day and for one month after.

Late last month, another example of the panels investigative approach emerged. Mr. Jones, the conspiracy theorist, who has sued the committee, was questioned by investigators in a virtual interview. He later said on his radio show that in the interview he had invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination nearly 100 times.

I just had a very intense experience being interrogated by the Jan. 6 committee lawyers, he said. They were polite, but they were dogged.

Even though Mr. Jones refused to share information with the committee, he said the investigators seemed to have found ways around his lack of cooperation. He said the committee had already obtained text messages from him.

They have everything thats already on my phones and things, he said. I saw my text messages with political organizers tied to the Jan. 6 rally.

Maggie Haberman, Matthew Cullen and Alan Feuer contributed reporting.

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Jan. 6 Panel Adopts Prosecution Tactics for Its Investigation - The New York Times

When its his liberty on the line, Steve Bannon evidently doesnt subscribe to the venerated axiom Never complain, never explain. Last Friday, Bannons lawyers, on his behalf and with his agreement, filed a motion complaining about federal prosecutors going after the telephone records and email records from the personal and professional accounts of [Bannons] defense counsel, Robert J. Costello.

The Department of Justice sought the documents as part of its November 12 criminal contempt indictment against Bannon for refusing to appear before the House Jan. 6th Committee or to provide documents in response to its subpoenas.

Time for Bannon to put on the big-boy pants. When you stiff legal obligations, you cant expect prosecutors to play nice. Serious prosecutors use every legally authorized weapon in their arsenal.

Yet now that he has brought the DOJs wrath down upon himself, Bannon sounds like something his ex-wife says he once hatefully called others. According to her statement during child-support proceedings, he said that he doesnt like Jews and . . . the way they raise their kids to be whiny brats. Can you hear the faint echo of a pot calling the kettle black?

In seeking the records from Bannons lawyer, the DOJ seems to have Bannon dead to rights. Bannon has asserted an advice of counsel defense. That means that he claims that his lawyer advised him it was fine to refuse to show up when the Jan 6th Committee subpoenaed him.

An advice of counsel claim waives the attorney-client privilege for the obvious reason that the defendant has put in issue what his lawyer said to him. Hence, the jury is entitled to hear the advice in order to decide whether the defense is valid.

In addition, in early November, Costello sat twice for FBI interviews in which he, according to Politico, described repeatedly advising Bannon not to cooperate with the select committee, saying he viewed their process as flawed and illegal. Those interviews reinforce the intentionality of the attorney-client privilege waiver privilege.

Costello is an experienced criminal defense lawyer. It isnt such lawyers practice to talk to the FBI about a clients potentially criminal conduct unless the decision is part of a deliberate strategy to put forward the matters discussed.

Costello may have envisioned multiple benefits in giving the interview. It was before Bannon was indicted, so he may have thought it could help dissuade the DOJ from charging Bannon. And if it didnt, an early disclosure of Bannons defense would bolster it by showing future jurors that Bannon did not make it up on the eve of trial.

Finally, giving the interview could well allow the jury to hear the defense via questioning on the stand of the FBI agent who interviewed Costello. That would avoid Bannon having to become a witness at trial to describe his lawyers advice . . . a smart tactic to avoid exposing him to withering cross-examination about his history of deception. (In 2020, Bannon was indicted for defrauding donors to his build-the-wall scheme before Trump pardoned him.)

In any event, there is no way that Costello gave those interviews without discussing it with Bannon and getting his agreement. That makes Costellos opening the door to his records Bannons decision, too.

DOJ has said that it has been careful to circumscribe its requests from Bannons lawyer, focusing strictly on those to which it is legally entitled. Aside from the information that Mr. Costello voluntarily disclosed on behalf of Mr. Bannon, the DOJ prosecutor wrote in response to Bannons lawyers, the Government has not taken any steps to obtain . . . any confidential communications between Bannon and any of his attorneys.

So wheres the beef, Mr. Bannon? If you dont like what comes along with asserting an advice of counsel defense, dont assert it.

Alternatively, you can end the whole matter. Appear before the committee. If you dont want to say anything, invoke your Fifth Amendment rights.

At that point, while the DOJ would not technically be compelled to drop the indictment, it likely would. Otherwise, at a subsequent trial, your defense lawyer would argue to a jury that you made amends and corrected your conduct. No harm, no foul is typically a winning argument for a white-collar, white-skinned defendant.

Of course, you may be too proud. Or perhaps defiance is your brand. Orif youll excuse a dab of cynical speculationcould it be that testifying would depress your Trump-base fundraising?

Whichever it is, we shouldnt expect an answer that explains. Pardoned con men are more likely to complain.

The rest is here:
Prosecutors Are Justified in Seeking Bannons Lawyers Records - The Bulwark

When I first met Marianna Wright, executive director of the National Butterfly Centera private nature conservatory near Mission, Texas, thats made national news since having to close indefinitely after Wright was physically attacked by right-wing conspiracists last weekshe was leaping to shore from a pontoon boat on the Rio Grande. I was reporting a story for this magazine about Americas 100th meridian; how that informal climate divide is marching east due to climate change and subtly reshaping life along the way. Wright offered me a beer and, though I had only come to discuss the butterflies her Center labors to protect, immediately launched into a Jeremiad on the Centers neighboring border wall as we puttered upstream alongside itor rather, alongside them.

That red one is the government border wall, and this is the Bannon-Fisher scam, she said. The towering slats of the private wall glared white in the sun and cut off abruptly near an elevated patrol tower skirted with invasive Carrizo cane. That patrol tower hasn't been operational for six months, maybe longer. That's how bad the crisis is.

The more she spoke, the more I realized our sunset cruise wasnt just for pleasure, and it wasnt just to show a strange journalist the Rio Grande. It was, in fact, a tiny act of protest. The Border Patrol, Wright said, has been discouraging public use of the river for years, and she and her colleagues and friends at the National Butterfly Center are insistent on taking it back. They often use the hashtag #reclaimtheriver: And thats what we wish everyone would do, you know? Everybody should be out here enjoying it, just like Mexico does.

Previously the executive director of The Foundation at Mission Regional Medical Center, Wright was recruited to fortify the fledgling National Butterfly Center in 2012. She doesnt hold back. Shes frank. Shes funny. Shes unapologetic. And alongside her operations sponsor, the North American Butterfly Association, shes currently a plaintiff in two separate lawsuits aiming to halt construction of the border walls, both direct threats to their 100-acre wildlife sanctuary and botanical garden.

When the National Butterfly Center was forced to close temporarily last week, following a bizarre encounter with Virginia congressional candidate Kimberly Lowe, I reached out to Wright again via Zoom. Heres what Wright had to say about the border wall, her butterflies, and the rightwing conspiracists who are out to get her.

***

[Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.]

Sierra:On its face, the phrase National Butterfly Center seems wholly innocuous. How did the NBC become so embroiled in Americas border wall debate?

Marianna Wright: On July 20, 2017, I found five government contractors cutting down our trees and mowing down our brush. I got on the phone with my US Border Patrol community liaison. He had no idea what was going on either. The next morning, five Border Patrol agents showed up demanding to speak with me. We met inside the visitor pavilion, and they told me that what we were asserting on the news and on YouTubebecause we had put out video of thishad not happened. I said, Come on, boys, get your trucks. Follow me over the levee. The contractors had left the Brush Hog and the brush boom there, so it was all evident. They laughed and said, Somebody will be in touch.

Chief Manuel Padilla, who was the head of the US Border Patrol Rio Grande Valley Sector, later showed up unannounced in plainclothes with his attach and a uniformed agent. He told me the government had indeed sent the contractors and they would be back, and they would be back with green uniform presence. I said, Armed federal agents on private property to protect private for-profit corporate employees? And he said, Yes, because people like you tend to get pretty upset when we take their land. And that has indeed been the case. Every time the contractors have come, or even Border Patrol agents themselves, they have come with a great deal of green uniform presence. Surrounding us, attempting to intimidate us, agents on horseback, in their SUVs and trucks, on foot, on the ATVs, the helicopter overhead, all of it.

Shortly after that incident, the National Butterfly Center filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security.

Correct. We filed in early December 2017, and that lawsuit sat with Judge Richard Leon in the DC district for 14 months without a single day in court. Never a hearing. Nothing.

There were several aspects to our complaint. There had been no waiver of law, so the government was actually violating the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, all sorts of their own laws in this construction project. And at that time, it was a project that had no congressional vote authorizing or even appropriating funds for it. So that was part of our lawsuit: You haven't waived the laws. You haven't exercised eminent domain. And yet here you are, and by virtue of your physical presence and actions here, you have effectively seized our land already.

The second part of the lawsuit were those Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights violations. The US Border Patrol has authority for warrant-less entry for the purpose of patrolling, but the word patrolling has never really been defined. And so Border Patrol has, over the 10 years I've been at the Butterfly Center, denied us access to enter our own property, denied our members and visitors entry, occupied the property physically with personnel and equipment. They drag tires, which obviously are harmful to wildlife and air quality and create erosion. They have installed motion sensors throughout the property, video cameras, dirt box audio technology, and lord knows what else. And we would argue that many of these things do not equal patrolling, including bringing unauthorized third-party contractors onto our land, which they were doing routinely.

The National Butterfly Center has since become a target for many right-wing extremists. Do you believe it was that litigation that put you and the Butterfly Center in their crosshairs?

After we filed suit there was some publicity, but it wasn't such that it provoked a violent backlash. It was mostly what we call disaster tourism. People in their red hats would show up at the Butterfly Center saying, Hey! We want you to show us where they're going to build our president's great big beautiful wall! And we would say, Walk a half mile that way to the levee and the Mission Main Canal, and then go ahead and walk another 1.2 miles to the Rio Grande River. So it really wasn't that bad.

What happened, though, is in May of 2019, [former White House senior advisor]Jared Kushner reportedly told an Oval Office full of GOP senators, We solved the butterfly thing, and we had no idea what that meant. But we quickly found out when Steve Bannons military grade misinformation campaigndesigned to promote a political agenda and influence campaigns and incite violencestarted in El Paso and Sunland Park and then came to Mission, Texas. When they were in El Paso, we discussed the fact that the next stop would likely be Mission and that they would try to buy the land right next door to us.

Both you, as an individual, and the NBC filed an additional lawsuit in 2019 against We Build The Wall, chaired by Steve Bannon, which has since raised over $20 million under the pretense of building a private border wall. What exactly were your complaints?

Our lawsuit against We Build The Wall had two aspects. One was defamation and business disparagement. The other was a land nuisance claim. The We Build the Wall structure is downstream from us. It is built on a sandbar that is a peninsula that juts out. It points toward Mexico. And if everybody could see me right now, they'd see that I'm giving you the middle finger, because that's what this peninsula looks like. And we are upstream at basically a 90-degree angle. So in the next flood, when the Rio Grande River is rushing downstream, this Fisher-Neuhaus-Bannon fence is going to become a dam. It is going to become completely clogged and blocked with organic and inorganic debris that floats downstream in the flood. That dam is going to redirect water. It's going to increase shear. It's going to cause sediment redistribution. It's going to result in accelerated erosion and real land loss for us upstream and inland.

How did We Build The Wall and its followers respond to your litigation?

In order to boost their fundraising, they needed a straw man, and they chose to make the National Butterfly Center and the North American Butterfly Association and me personally their pinata. They totally disparaged our organization and disrupted our operations. They declared that we were a cartel front, that we were involved in human trafficking, that I was selling women and children into sex slavery, that they saw dead bodies on the property swarmed by butterflies, that they had put snipers in the bushes around our property to protect their construction workers from us. There were hundreds of these kinds of lies, and not just on Twitter or YouTube, but on Steve Bannons War Room broadcast and on their other media partners, including the fake news websites that they threw up, like therundownnews.com, which doesn't exist anymore because it fulfilled its purpose in maligning us and garnering millions of dollars for We Build The Wall, which is a dark money fundraising operation.

And what did you make of these wild allegations?

We wanted to laugh it off, but the Walmart massacre had already occurred. 22 people shot in cold blood at Walmart in El Paso, dozens more shot and injured as a direct result of We Build The Walls activities there. That event and those activities, the inflammatory rhetoric, and the exact same operatives and content creators that we saw this week in McAllen and Mission making their fake videos outside of the National Butterfly Centerthey provoked stochastic terrorism and wound up getting more than 22 people shot and killed. So we couldn't laugh about this.

The NBC made news again last week after Kimberly Lowe, a Republican congressional candidate in Virginia, allegedly assaulted you and your son. How did this whole bizarre incident play out?

My son Nicholas was filling in at the front desk because COVID has run through the National Butterfly Center just like everywhere else. He interrupted me on a conference call to say there were two women who had come in and said they were not going to pay admission, but they wanted us to open the property for them to go back to the river and see all the illegals crossing on the rafts. One woman claimed to be running for congress, and the other woman claimed to be her Secret Service agent. I asked him to get the name of the woman who said she was running for congress, and I took a minute or two to look her up online. It was clear to me that she was a MAGA candidate. There are photos of her with Trump and the My Pillow guy and Matt Gaetz and a whole rogues gallery.

I informed them that this was private property and they were not welcome; that I understood who they were and what they were here to do, and we were having none of it. At that point they started with, So that means you're okay with the illegals and the babies being raped? and all of that. I said, If you're not going to leave, we'll call the police, and I signaled to Nicholas who picked up the phone and dialed 911. I followed them out and said, Keep it moving, at which point Michelle, the companion to Kimberly, said, I work for the Secret Service and nothing is off limits to me, and I laughed and said, That is hilarious.

I informed them that this was private property and they were not welcome; that I understood who they were and what they were here to do, and we were having none of it. At that point they started with, So that means you're okay with the illegals and the babies being raped? and all of that.

I turned then and saw that Kimberly appeared to be photographing or filming me at the front of the building. I immediately put my hand up to block herand then I was on the ground. She tackled me. The next thing I knew Nicholas was between me and Michelle, and Kimberly was in her car filming herself, yelling, Michelle, get in the car! Nicholas ran to close the front gate of the Butterfly Center. Michelle gets in the car, and then Kimberly guns it, screaming, Get the fuck out of my way! and swerves to hit my son with her car.

We called 911. The visitor called 911. I called the regular dispatch number. Still no one came. Finally, I called the deputy city manager and told her what had happened, and that we were waiting for police, and she said, Let me alert Chief Dominguez of the Mission Police Department, and then eventually the police did come. It took about an hour, and we now know why. Apparently, everyone on duty was at a pinning ceremony and celebration that Friday afternoon. So instead of answering 911, I guess there was a sheet cake to consume. It's criminal.

Do you believe the board of the North American Butterfly Association has shown appropriate concern for the rhetoric and now physical threats deployed by these far-right extremist groups?

In the beginning, I think there was some skepticism as to how sinister We Build The Wall is. There were folks who were unaware of Cambridge Analytica and what Steve Bannon has made a career doing. And there were people who did not believe that Steve Bannon was a part of this. When we filed suit against We Build The Wall and Fisher Industries and Neuhaus & Sons, we also named [We Build the Wall founder] Brian Kolfage individually, but we did not name Steve Bannon, which I had pressed for. We already had enough evidence, but there were people above me who thought that filing suit against Steve Bannon would be reaching too high. And now they know they were absolutely wrong.

If they didnt believe how serious it was in 2019 and 2020, when we were receiving death threats, and the militia had come to the property, and we had police officers in the state of Texas calling and threatening us, maybe now they know. Theyre actually meeting today to decide whether we should close the Butterfly Center temporarily or indefinitely. And I guess I should say whether we close again, because we did close Friday, Saturday and Sunday of this past week because of credible threats that were shared with us by a former state representative related to the We Stand America, MAGA midterm kickoff rally.

How were those threats communicated to the National Butterfly Center?

While we were waiting for the police, we spent more time on Kimberly Lowe's Facebook page. She was doing her own borderlands tour, hitting all the hot spots that have been popular backdrops for the lies that Bannon and Trump's ICE, DHS and CBP officials continue to use, like Catholic Charities and the National Butterfly Center. And there was a photo of her with a former state representative that I know.

So I called that state representative and said, Do you know this woman? She just came here. He said, I know this is what they intend to do in the election season, and this is how they intend to own their opponents. They say, I went to the border. I saw the dead bodies. I witnessed the cartel trafficking. I touched the Rio Grande River. Have you? And then he told me that I should be armed at all times, or better yet, out of town, and consider closing the center during the rally.

Given all this additional political baggage, how has your job the last five years impacted your family and your personal life?

It's been horrific. In February 2020, before the world shut down for COVID, my son was walking to his car at his high school campus and someone pulled a gun in his face and told him, I should blow your head off right now for who your mother is and what she does. So none of this has been limited to just the Butterfly Center or me. There is a real sickness in our country right now, a mass psychosis. People believed Pizzagate. They believe the We Build The Wall stuff that left people dead at Walmart, just doing their grocery shopping. And now they're trying to do that to us at the National Butterfly Center. We have targets on our backs.

I know that all of this has shortened my life. The stress mentally and physically is something I feel all the time. Brian Kolfage and Steve Bannon managed to get ahold of my tax returns. We can't even get President Trump's tax returns, but somehow they got ahold of my tax returns. So for the last three years I haven't sought any medical attention other than to go get tested for COVIDnot for my mental health, or my physical healthbecause I have no reason not to think that they would get ahold of those records, too, or anything I might be prescribed. It's been awful, and my son is receiving help and medication.

How has this ongoing controversy affected the National Butterfly Center itself?

I wish that I could speak to that in concrete terms, but you can't prove a negative. If there are people who maybe would have supported us before but won't now, we'll never know. And then there are people, on Twitter for example, who have learned about us because of this insanity; not necessarily because we broadcast it, but because maybe they follow Rolling Stone or BuzzFeed or something like that. As far as our organization and our ability to operate, I think that is very much at risk right now. I think the very future of the National Butterfly Center is on the table.

One way that we are sustainable at this point is that, prior to COVID, we served over 6,000 school children a year with traditional field education. Of course, that was disrupted during COVID, but we hoped it was something that would return and we could continue to build on to keep our nonprofit operating and help us make payroll. But if school districts, if teachers, if parents in our communities believe this stuffand it looks like as much as 50-percent of the population may believe this garbagethen what does the future look like for us?

What keeps you fighting for the National Butterfly Center?

I have a fantastic staff. And I have the most wonderful husband. And I do think about quitting all the time. So who knows? Everybody has their breaking point, and I'm not sure that mine is that far off.

See more here:
The Right-Wing Conspiracy Theorists and the Butterflies - Sierra Magazine

John Eastman, the conservative law professor who authored memos outlining how President Donald Trump could overturn the results of the 2020 election, invoked his Fifth Amendment rights 146 times when he was questioned by the Jan. 6 committee last month, a lawyer for the panel revealed late Monday.

The disclosure came in a court hearing before U.S. District Judge David Carter in Santa Ana, Calif., on Eastmans lawsuit to block a subpoena from the committee directing Chapman University where he previously worked as a professor to turn over more than 19,000 emails relating to his work for Trump in the months following the Nov. 3, 2020, election.

Attorney John Eastman, alongside Rudy Giuliani, speaks on Jan. 6, 2021, ahead of then-President Donald Trumps speech to contest the certification of the 2020 presidential election results. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)

The Eastman emails are considered crucial evidence by the committee because, in its view, the law professors memos laid out a road map for a constitutional coup: They argued that Vice President Mike Pence could refuse to accept the certified results of the Electoral College vote declaring President-elect Joe Biden the winner. Pence publicly rejected Eastmans advice, agreeing with the vast majority of legal experts who said he did not have the power to reverse the voters.

But Trump backed Eastmans legal views and lashed out at Pence on Jan. 6, 2021, calling on his vice president to show extreme courage during the vote certification. At the Stop the Steal rally that day in Washington, where Eastman also spoke, Trump urged his fans to fight like hell in support of his false claims that the election had been stolen. Many of those supporters then stormed the U.S. Capitol, assaulted Capitol Police officers and even chanted, Hang Mike Pence!

Trump supporters gather around a noose near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Eastman was questioned by the committee in a Dec. 9 deposition, but he refused to answer any questions on the grounds that it could violate his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination for potential criminal activity, the House lawyer, Doug Letter, disclosed. Just days after the deposition, Eastman sued the committee to protect his emails from disclosure, arguing that they were protected by attorney-client privilege covering his communications with then-President Trump and his legal team. In response to pointed questioning from the judge on Monday, Eastmans lawyer said his client has not even produced a privilege log identifying which of the emails are covered by the privilege because to do so would risk disclosing the existence of emails that could undercut his assertion of Fifth Amendment rights.

Story continues

But Eastmans argument suffered a blow when the lawyer for Chapman University, whose computer hosts the emails, told the judge that the professor had no right to use the university email system for his representation of Trump because it was partisan work on behalf of a political candidate a violation of the universitys status as a nonprofit.

Eastman speaking in April 2021. (Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

Any use by Eastman of Chapman emails on behalf of Trump was improper and unauthorized, said Fred Plevin, a lawyer for Chapman. I liken [it] to contraband, he added.

Once a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Eastman appears to have played a central role in developing strategies for Trump to cling to office even though state electoral boards had affirmed Bidens victory in the election. In addition to speaking at the Jan. 6 Stop the Steal rally along with Trump, Rudy Giuliani and Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks, Eastman testified before a Georgia legislative committee urging it to reject Bidens win in that state.

Eastmans lawyer, Charles Burnham, argued to Carter that Chapmans dean was well aware of his clients legal work for Trump and raised no objections. But Carter seemed most focused on why there had been no privilege log developed so that the law professor could specifically identify which of his communications he believed are covered by attorney-client privilege. He demanded that Eastman be provided with the emails by Chapman, review them and after consulting with the Jan. 6 committee lawyers come up with a plan for who should resolve any disputes: the judge or a so-called taint team of lawyers who would review the emails on their own. Carter said he wanted a status report on the matter next Monday.

Read more:
Jan. 6 panel: Lawyer behind Trump election memos invoked 5th Amendment 146 times - Yahoo News

By Shereen Siewert

A special council meeting is set for Tuesday in Wausau to discuss how the city will acquire land to accommodate a proposed recreational trail at the Business Campus, after the city attorney pointed to a state law that prohibits the use of eminent domain for such uses.

The project, which is funded at 80 percent by a Department of Transportation grant and 20 percent through city participation, requires Wausau to acquire permanent limited easements and temporary limited easements from six separate properties, which are now privately owned. Wausau Director of Public Works Eric Lindman, in a Jan. 28 memo to council members, said the city is progressing through the eminent domain process currently.

But that might not be legal in Wisconsin. In 2017, Act 59 of Wisconsins budget bill amended the states statutes to prohibit the use of eminent domain, or condemnation, to establish or extend recreational trails, bicycle ways, bicycle lanes or pedestrian ways.

Eminent domain is the right of government to take private property for public use following fair compensation. Using eminent domain to acquire property is considered controversial for several reasons. The Fifth Amendment and nearly all state constitutions mandate that government may only take private property for a public use. Almost from the very beginning, there has been conflict between advocates of the narrow and broad interpretations of this rule.

Dist. 3 Alder Tom Kilian last week asked City Attorney Anne Jacobson to weigh in on whether eminent domain was appropriate for the project, which was initially included in the councils consent agenda until Kilian asked the item to be removed for more discussion.

Kilian said that given his neighborhoods experience with eminent domain issues along Thomas Street, eminent domain is not something Im very fond of.

Jacobson told the council that the city is not always required to follow eminent domain to acquire property. Once the council agrees to use eminent domain, the city must follow through on the same process which can be complex and costly.

I dont know why theyre starting down this road or if theyve thought of other options, but it appears youre being asked to approve a relocation order, Jacobson said, noting that the order is the first step in the eminent domain process.

In addition to the public use debate, there is a documented tendency to under compensate owners of condemned property. The Supreme Court has long held that owners must get fair market value compensation, which critics say fails to account for the subjective value that many attach to their land over and above its market value. For example, a homeowner who has lived in the same neighborhood for decades places value on the social ties formed there, while a small business could have established a network of clients that would be hard to replicate elsewhere. Studies also show that owners often dont even get the fair market value compensation that the law requires.

Alder Lisa Rasmussen, who represents Dist. 7, said the land acquisition necessary would only rely on easements to address utility issues. But Jacobson responded by pointing out that even those easements are still an interest in land, which could be acquired through other means.

Kilian asked that the city attorney explore the issue further.

The multi-use trail is planned along 72nd Avenue from Packer Drive to International Drive. Prior to last weeks meeting, Wausaus Capital Improvements and Street Maintenance (CISM) Committee and Plan Commission approved an order that would have allowed the City to relocate or change and acquire certain lands or interests in lands for the trail. Both bodies had previously approved the temporary and permanent acquisition of lands for the trail project unanimously.

The council voted last week to table the issue for two weeks to allow for input from city staff. But a special meeting was since set for this week.

The meeting will be held at 6:15 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 407 Grant St., Wausau. Access the meeting materials at this link. Members of the public can attend remotely by calling 1-408-418-9388. The access code is 2482 494 6300 and the meetings password is cVj4MRJWv69.

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Wausau calls special meeting to discuss legality of using eminent domain for recreational trail - wausaupilotandreview.com

WASHINGTON Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, testified privately last week before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the latest turn in weeks of negotiations between the panels investigators and Mr. Pences team.

Mr. Short appeared in response to a subpoena from the committee, according to three people with knowledge of the developments, making him the most senior person around Mr. Pence who is known to have cooperated in the inquiry.

Investigators believe that participation by the former vice president and his inner circle is critical, because Mr. Pence resisted a pressure campaign by former President Donald J. Trump to use his role in presiding over Congresss official count of electoral votes to try to overturn the 2020 election.

Mr. Short was with Mr. Pence on Jan. 6 as a mob of Mr. Trumps supporters attacked the Capitol, and has firsthand knowledge of the effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to try to persuade the former vice president to throw out legitimate electoral votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in favor of fake slates of pro-Trump electors.

The people spoke on condition of anonymity about Mr. Shorts testimony, which was earlier reported by CNN.

Investigators have been in high-stakes negotiations for months with Mr. Pences team about whether he would cooperate with the inquiry. In recent weeks, they have sought the cooperation of Mr. Short and Greg Jacob, Mr. Pences former lawyer.

Mr. Short and Mr. Jacob were both closely involved in Mr. Pences consideration of whether to go along with Mr. Trumps insistence that he try to block the official count of Electoral College results by a joint session of Congress. Three days before the proceeding, the two men met with John Eastman, a lawyer then advising Mr. Trump, about a memo Mr. Eastman had written setting out a case for why Mr. Pence had the power to hold off the certification.

As a mob was attacking the Capitol chanting Hang Mike Pence, Mr. Eastman sent a hostile email to Mr. Jacobs, blaming Mr. Pence for the violence.

The siege is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened, the lawyer, Mr. Eastman, wrote to Mr. Jacob.

Mr. Eastman has since invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to defy the committees subpoena.

Ivanka Trump. The daughter of the former president, who served as one of his senior advisers, has been asked to cooperateafter the panel said it had gathered evidence that she had implored her father to call off the violence as his supporters stormed the Capitol.

Mark Meadows. Mr. Trumps chief of staff, who initially provided the panel with a trove of documents that showed the extent of his rolein the efforts to overturn the election, is now refusing to cooperate. The House voted to recommend holding Mr. Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress.

Marc Short. Mr. Pences chief of staff, who has firsthand knowledge of Mr. Trumps pressure campaign on the vice president to throw out the election results, testified before the panel under subpoena. He is the most senior person around Mr. Pence who is known to have cooperated.

Scott Perry and Jim Jordan. The Republican representatives of Pennsylvania and Ohio are among a group of G.O.P. congressmenwho were deeply involved in efforts to overturn the election. Both Mr. Perryand Mr. Jordanhaverefused to cooperate with the panel.

Big Tech firms. The panel has criticized Alphabet, Meta, Reddit and Twitterfor allowing extremism to spread on their platforms and saying they have failed to cooperate adequately with the inquiry. The committee has issued subpoenas to all four companies.

Fake Trump electors. The panel has issued subpoenas to 14 people who were part of bogus slates of electors for Mr. Trumpin seven states won by President Biden: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Roger Stone and Alex Jones. The panels interest in the political operative and the conspiracy theoristindicate that investigators are intent on learning the details of the planning and financing of rallies that drew Mr. Trumps supporters to Washington based on his lies of a stolen election.

Michael Flynn. Mr. Trumps former national security adviser attended an Oval Office meeting on Dec. 18 in which participants discussed seizing voting machines and invoking certain national security emergency powers. Mr. Flynn has filed a lawsuitto block the panels subpoenas.

Phil Waldron. The retired Army colonelhas been under scrutiny since a 38-page PowerPoint documenthe circulated on Capitol Hill was turned over to the panel by Mr. Meadows. The document contained extreme plans to overturn the election.

John Eastman. The lawyer has been the subject of intense scrutiny since writing a memothat laid out how Mr. Trump could stay in power. Mr. Eastman was present at a meeting of Trump allies at the Willard Hotelthat has becomea prime focus of the panel.

Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who was Mr. Pences national security adviser, has also testified before the committee. Mr. Kellogg told investigators that as rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump rejected pleas from him as well as from Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and Kayleigh McEnany, the press secretary, to call for an end to the violence. He said Ivanka Trump, Mr. Trumps eldest daughter and adviser, also attempted to intervene at least twice.

Mr. Kellogg said he and Ms. Trump also witnessed a telephone call in the Oval Office on the morning of Jan. 6 in which Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Pence to go along with a plan to throw out electoral votes. Mr. Kellogg told the committee that the president had accused Mr. Pence of not being tough enough to overturn the election.

Ms. Trump then turned to Mr. Kellogg and said, Mike Pence is a good man, Mr. Kellogg testified.

The developments come as Mr. Trump has continued to criticize Mr. Pence for refusing to embrace the call to overturn the 2020 election.

Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away, Mr. Trump said in a statement, referring to a group of senators who are discussing revamping the Electoral Count Act to clarify that the vice president cannot unilaterally change the election results. Unfortunately, he didnt exercise that power, he could have overturned the election!

Mr. Trump also said at a rally over the weekend that he might offer pardons to criminal defendants charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, and that he would organize more protests should he be charged with a crime.

See the rest here:
Former Pence Chief of Staff Has Testified to the Jan. 6 Committee - The New York Times

On the February 2nd agenda for Conshohockens Borough Council is an item involving the potential eminent domain of the Outbound Station property at 2 Harry Street. The agenda reads:

Discuss and consider authorizing advertisement of an ordinance to authorize eminent domain of 2 Harry Street (Tax Map Parcel No. 05-00-04876-00-6)

According to property records, the property has been owned by Joe and Barbara Collins since 1978. According to a source, the Collins were not aware this was being considered. Joe Collins is a former mayor of the borough.

In recent years, there have been three cafes that have leased the building. It has been vacant since the beginning of 2019.

As you may remember, MoreThanTheCurve.com has reported that this property is set to become a home to the Couch Tomato and it is expected to open in the coming months.

The 2 Harry Street property is unusual in that it is almost completely surrounded by parcels under different ownership. The surrounding parcels are owned by the estate of Ray Weinmann, who was one of the original developers behind the redevelopment of the lower end of Conshohocken. He passed away in 2021. These parcels are currently for sale.

The fifth amendment to the Constitution of the United States covers eminent domain. It reads (we bolded the relevant language):

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

We emailed Borough Manager Stephanie Cecco to inquire what the public use for this property would involve. We did not receive a reply (to be fair we only sent the email at 12:13 p.m.).

Two obvious uses are no longer needed. SEPTA recently announced that it is building a parking garage that will add approximately 400 spaces to the train station area. The apartments under construction at 400 West Elm Street also will add amenities connected to the use of the Schuylkill River Trail.

Questions:

How the Outbound Station property could be utilized for public use without the neighboring parcels is curious.

Is the intent to eminent domain this one property and other adjacent ones in the future?

The rest is here:
Borough of Conshohocken to consider the eminent domain of Outbound Station property - morethanthecurve.com