Judge Merchan: Trump's criminal interference with the last election should influence the outcome of the next election

Judge  Juan M. Merchan overseeing Donald J. Trump’s criminal case in Manhattan postponed his sentencing until after Election Day, a significant victory for the former president as he seeks to overturn his conviction and win back the White House, reported The New York Times. 

The irony of protecting the integrity of a candidate who has been convicted of trying overthrow an election should not lost in this decision. The last election, and Trump's criminal interference with that election are integral to the election coming up--Judge Merchan missed that point.

Judge Merchan rescheduled the sentencing for Nov. 26, citing the “unique time frame this matter currently finds itself in.” He had previously planned to hand down Mr. Trump’s punishment on Sept. 18, just seven weeks before Election Day, when Mr. Trump will face off against Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency.

“This is not a decision this court makes lightly but it is the decision which in this court’s view, best advances the interests of justice,” Justice Merchan wrote in the four-page ruling, which noted that “this matter is one that stands alone, in a unique place in this nation’s history.”

Being convicted and sentenced for tampering with an election should be a relevant issue in the current campaign. Trump is not running for city council, he is running for President.  Merchan ducked the issue and a convicted felon running for president gets a break.

The judge appeared eager to skirt a swirl of partisan second-guessing in the campaign’s final stretch. Asserting that the court is a “fair, impartial and apolitical institution,” he said that “the integrity of our judicial system demands” that the sentencing be “free from distraction or distortion.”

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Father of teen accused of killing two teachers and two students in Georgia arrested

Colin Gray, the father of the 14-year-old accused of killing two teachers and two students at his Georgia high school, was arrested and charged on Thursday with second-degree murder in connection with the state’s deadliest school shooting, reported The New York Times.

In addition to two counts of second-degree murder, Mr. Gray, 54, was also charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children, according to a statement. At a news conference, Chris Hosey, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation director, said the charges were “directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon.” He declined to offer much more detail, other than to note that Mr. Gray was in custody.

Though four people — two adults and two children — were killed in the attack, the suspect's father has been charged with only two counts of second-degree murder. In Georgia, that charge applies when a person is accused of causing a death while committing cruelty to children in the second degree, which involves criminal negligence.

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DOJ pursues websites linked to Russian disinformation

The US Department of Justice announced the seizure of 32 internet domains linked to an alleged Russian government-backed disinformation campaign aimed at influencing US and global audiences, reported Jurist.

According to the DOJ, the operation, known as “Doppelganger,” sought to sway public opinion in favor of Russian interests and interfere in the 2024 US presidential election. The campaign was allegedly orchestrated by several Russian organizations under the supervision of Sergei Kiriyenko, a senior official in the Russian Presidential Administration. These organizations utilized the domains to distribute pro-Russian propaganda and undermine international support for Ukraine.

Announcing the seizures, US Attorney General Merrick Garland said:

An internal planning document created by the Kremlin states that a goal of the campaign is to secure Russia’s preferred outcome in the election. The sites we are seizing today were filled with Russian government propaganda that had been created by the Kremlin to reduce international support for Ukraine, bolster pro-Russian policies and interests, and influence voters in the United States and other countries. Our actions today make clear that the Justice Department will be aggressive in countering and disrupting attempts by the Russian government, or any other malign actor, to interfere in our elections and undermine our democracy.

In conjunction with the DOJ seizures, the US Treasury Department announced it had imposed new sanctions against 10 individuals and two organizations linked to Doppelganger. The individuals designated for sanctions included Margarita Simonyan, chief editor of Russian state news broadcaster RT.

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Creators: GOP House Members Eye Parallel Investigation of Assassination Attempt

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators Syndicate
September 3, 2024

On July 24, by a vote of 416-0, the U.S. House of Representatives established a bipartisan task force to investigate the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump.

The House leadership appointed Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), for no other reason than he represents the district and lives in the county where the attempt occurred. In fact, he should probably be a witness in front of his own task force. He was present on July 13, when the attempted assassination occurred.

In 1981, following the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, Congress did not create a commission or task force to investigate. Reagan's would-be assassin, John Hinckley Jr., survived. The FBI and Secret Service did a detailed investigation of Hinckley's attempt and the Department of Justice prosecuted him. In 1982, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He is a free man today.

Thirty days after the creation of the "Trump Task Force," nine of the 14 task force members toured the Butler Farm Show grounds and met with local law enforcement officials. The task force saw firsthand the 430-foot gap between the rooftop, where 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks took aim, and the stage from which Trump was speaking.

Immediately following the tour, Reps. Kelly and Jason Crow (D-Colo.), the top Democrat on the panel, sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. looking for details about the site selection and security planning the for the ill-fated rally, reported Politico.

The only real modern parallel to the task force is the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, better known as the Warren Commission, created in the aftermath of the tragic assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy's assassin was killed, and there would be no trial. The commission was headed by United State Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren and consisted of a six-member bipartisan panel including, among others, future President Gerald R. Ford.

According to The Washington Post, the commission presented their findings in a report to President Lyndon B. Johnson, within 10 months of the assassination. The Warren Report consisted of 26 hearing volumes. The commission found no evidence that either Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate Kennedy. The Commission found no evidence of conspiracy, subversion or disloyalty to the U.S. government by any federal, state or local official.

At the time, the report faced no real opposition, had bipartisan support and, at least at its release, the full trust and faith of the American people. It did not remain that way. More than 60 years later, conspiracy theories abound.

On the 50th anniversary of the assassination, Donald E. Wilkes Jr. of the University of Georgia School of Law wrote, "We must, after 50 years, face the hair-raising, inescapable truth: The critics who warned us about the Warren Report were right all along. The Report was a sham which duped the American public while pretending to be based on a full, no-holds-barred inquiry."

Today, some conservative lawmakers are determined to run a parallel investigation into the attempt on Trump's life. Five conservative House members recently held an event in Washington — at The Heritage Foundation — vowing to push forward with their own probe into the assassination attempt. They questioned security decisions leading up to the shooting and encouraged whistleblowers to come forward.

The GOP-only shadow investigation will likely face an uphill battle as it tries to run its own investigation, reported The New York Times. In addition to the fact that the bipartisan task force holds superseding authority, the conservative probe will have to rely on whistleblowers and public information since it does not have subpoena power.

Unfortunately, a parallel investigation will do nothing but sow distrust and spur divisiveness in an era of unceasing misinformation and baseless theories of conspiracy.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on X @MatthewTMangino.

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Maryland court reinstates murder conviction for Adnan Syed of 'Serial' fame

The Maryland Supreme Court upheld an appellate court’s decision to reinstate the murder conviction of Adnan Syed, a blow to the “Serial” podcast subject but one that probably does not conclude his legal fight, reported the Washington Post.

In a lengthy majority opinion, the Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors and a lower court judge had “worked an injustice” in a key hearing in the case by not giving proper notice to the victim’s brother as prosecutors moved to vacate Syed’s conviction in 2022. The brother, who lives in California, was informed of the hearing three days before it occurred and spoke by Zoom after a circuit court judge rejected his request to postpone it until he could fly to Baltimore.

The majority ruling said Syed’s convictions should be reinstated and the case sent back to the circuit court for a new hearing. It marks the latest twist in a long and closely watched legal drama that has surrounded Syed since his murder conviction in 2000 over the death of his ex-girlfriend, 18-year-old Hae Min Lee, in Baltimore. Syed’s story captivated millions worldwide after he was featured in “Serial,” which reexamined his case and suggested Syed was wrongly convicted.

The 4-3 ruling was written by Justice Jonathan Biran, focused on whether Young Lee’s rights as a crime victim had been violated. Although Maryland law does not explicitly grant victims a chance to speak in these motion hearings, the Supreme Court concluded that crime victims or their representatives do have a right to be heard. The court cited a more general victim’s rights statute, which provides a right for victims to be heard where the “alteration of a sentence” is considered, as well as Maryland’s Declaration of Rights in the state constitution, which mandates a victim’s right to be heard at a criminal justice proceeding.

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Crime rates are falling, data collection not improving

 Washington Post Editorial:

There’s encouraging news about crime rates in the United States. After a spike in both violent crime and property offenses after the pandemic-and-protest year of 2020, statistics show that crime is reverting to 2019 levels. That’s according to a newly released midyear report by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, based on monthly offense rates for 12 violent, property and drug crimes in 39 cities that have consistently reported such data over the past six years.

Rates for 11 of the 12 offenses CCJ covered in its report were lower in the first half of 2024 than in the first half of 2023. One crime of any kind is too many, of course, and even five years ago the United States was unacceptably violence-prone. Still, those who are genuinely interested in eliminating crime, as opposed to exploiting the issue for political purposes, will take heart in the new trends and study them for hints about which anti-crime policies do and do not work.

Alas, many in politics are interested in exploiting the issue. Former president Donald Trump told a rally in March that “crime is rampant and out of control like never before,” and doubled down on that alarmist message by telling the Republican National Convention that “our crime rate is going up.” Political rhetoric interacts with the public’s long-standing tendency to believe the worst about crime, which is why Mr. Trump is not the only politician to play this game. Twenty-three out of 27 Gallup polls conducted since 1993 showed that at least three-fifths of American adults believed crime had risen over the previous year, though annual rates actually fell during most of that period.

It would be equally wrong to dismiss public concerns, however; they have a basis in reality. Even with the recent improvements, it is undeniable that crime, including the worst crime — homicide — spiked nationally in recent years. The trauma and insecurity that this caused lingers. In seven U.S. cities that provide data on carjacking, that offense remains 68 percent more frequent than it was in the first half of 2019, according to CCJ’s report. Shoplifting and car theft also remain at elevated levels.

Given the emotions that inevitably swirl around this subject, public opinion will probably never precisely reflect statistical reality. But at least the government could publish a sufficiently precise and up-to-date picture of statistical reality. Unfortunately, it does not, as another recent CCJ report explained. The lead federal source for national data, the FBI, issues annual reports each October based on numbers gathered up to 18 months previously and reported — voluntarily and with varying degrees of accuracy — to the bureau by some 18,000 police agencies. Crime rates are based on two different sources: The National Incident-Based Reporting System, which collects details on crimes reported to law enforcement, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey, which gathers data directly from individuals about their experiences with crime, whether these incidents were reported to police or not.

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How dictators are made and nations destroyed

Eighty-five years ago today, Germany marched into Poland and started World War II. The war was the product of a monstrous dictator Adolph Hitler the most most vile and evil man in the history of the world. 

How dictators are made: (pay particular attention to the highlighted portions)

According to the National War War II Museum, Hitler was an ideologue as well as the chief organizer of the Nazi Party. By 1921, the party had a newspaper, an official flag, and a private army—the Sturmabteilung SA (storm troopers)—made up largely of unemployed and disenchanted WWI veterans. By 1923, the SA had grown to 15,000 men and had access to hidden stores of weapons. That year, Hitler and WWI hero General Erich Ludendorff attempted to overthrow the elected regional government of Bavaria in a coup known as the Beer Hall Putsch.

The regular army crushed the rebellion and Hitler spent a year in prison—in loose confinement. In Landsberg Prison, Hitler dictated most of the first volume of his political autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). The book brought together, in inflamed language, the racialist and expansionist ideas he had been propagating in his popular beer-hall harangues.

After being released from prison, Hitler vowed to work within the parliamentary system to avoid a repeat of the Beer Hall Putsch setback. In the 1920s, however, the Nazi Party was still a fringe group of ultraextremists with little political power. It received only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections of 1928.

But the worldwide economic depression and the rising power of labor unions and communists convinced increasing numbers of Germans to turn to the Nazi Party. The Nazis fed on bank failures and unemployment—proof, Hitler said, of the ineffectiveness of democratic government. Hitler pledged to restore prosperity, create civil order (by crushing industrial strikes and street demonstrations by communists and socialists), eliminate the influence of Jewish financiers, and make the fatherland once again a world power. 

By 1932, the Nazis were the largest political party in the Reichstag. In January of the following year, with no other leader able to command sufficient support to govern, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor of Germany. Shortly thereafter, a fire broke out in the Reichstag building in Berlin, and authorities arrested a young Dutch communist who confessed to starting it.

Hitler used this episode to convince President Hindenburg to declare an emergency decree suspending many civil liberties throughout Germany, including freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and the right to hold public assemblies. The police were authorized to detain citizens without cause, and the authority usually exercised by regional governments became subject to control by Hitler’s national regime.

Almost immediately, Hitler began dismantling Germany’s democratic institutions and imprisoning or murdering his chief opponents. When Hindenburg died the following year, Hitler took the titles of führer, chancellor, and commander in chief of the army. He expanded the army tremendously, reintroduced conscription, and began developing a new air force—all violations of the Treaty of Versailles.

Hitler’s military spending and ambitious public-works programs, including building a German autobahn, helped restore prosperity. His regime also suppressed the Communist Party and purged his own paramilitary storm troopers, whose violent street demonstrations alienated the German middle class.

This bloodletting—called the “Night of the Long Knives”—was hugely popular and welcomed by the middle class as a blow struck for law and order. In fact, many Germans went along with the full range of Hitler’s policies, convinced that they would ultimately be advantageous for the country.

In 1938, Hitler began his long-promised expansion of national boundaries to incorporate ethnic Germans. He colluded with Austrian Nazis to orchestrate the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria to Germany. And in Hitler’s most brazenly aggressive act yet, Czechoslovakia was forced to surrender the Sudetenland, a mountainous border region populated predominantly by ethnic Germans.

The Czechs looked to Great Britain and France for help, but hoping to avoid war—they had been bled white in World War I—these nations chose a policy of appeasement. At a conclave held at Munich in September 1938, representatives of Great Britain and France compelled Czech leaders to cede the Sudetenland in return for Hitler’s pledge not to seek additional territory. The following year, the German army swallowed up the remainder of Czechoslovakia. 

September 1, 1939 followed and more than 50 million people would die as a result of Hitler's quest for world domination.

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