'It seemed very, very pointless': Dan Crenshaw fumes at MAGA House members forcing 15 McCarthy votes
January 08, 2023
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'Going for the kill': Experts say Trump could face 4 years in prison amid new grand jury probe
January 31, 2023
The Manhattan district attorney's office on Monday began presenting evidence to a new grand jury about former President Donald Trump's role in hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign, according to The New York Times.
The grand jury was recently impaneled and District Attorney Alvin Bragg appears to be "laying the groundwork for potential criminal charges against the former president in the coming months," sources told the outlet.
David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer who helped broker the deal with Daniels, was seen entering the building where the grand jury is sitting on Monday.
Former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money payment "in coordination with, and at the direction of" Trump in 2018, has said he has repeatedly spoken with prosecutors.
Prosecutors also intend to interview former National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard and Trump Organization employees Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarasoff — who helped arrange for Cohen to be reimbursed the $130,000 he paid to Daniels, according to the report. Prosecutors are also expected to meet with former Daniels attorney Keith Davidson. Prosecutors have also contacted former 2016 Trump campaign officials and subpoenaed phone records and other documents in a sign prosecutors are seeking to corroborate witness accounts.
Bragg empaneled the new grand jury after facing criticism for seemingly backing off Trump after replacing former D.A. Cy Vance, who first opened the probe. Bragg initially abandoned plans to present evidence against Trump himself, prompting two top prosecutors on the team to resign in protest. But after securing a tax fraud conviction against the Trump Organization last year, Bragg renewed his scrutiny of the hush money payment to Daniels, which first triggered the original probe. The renewed probe is focused on whether Trump's company falsely classified the reimbursement to Cohen as a legal expense. To charge Trump with a felony, prosecutors would need to show that Trump falsified the records to help commit to conceal a second crime — a violation of New York state election law — though the theory is largely untested in court.
Trump lashed out over the report, calling the case "old news" and insisting he "NEVER HAD AN AFFAIR."
"With murders and violent crime surging like never before in New York City, the Radical Left Manhattan D.A., Alvin Bragg, just leaked to the Fake News Media that they are still going after the Stormy 'Horseface' Daniels Bull….!" Trump wrote on Truth Social, claiming that Bragg was "working with the Weaponized Justice Department" in a "continuation of the Greatest With Hunt of time."
But legal experts say the move shows that Bragg likely has a good reason why he shifted course in the probe.
"Bragg initially made a decision not to pursue charges against Trump, and it appears to he now has reversed course," tweeted former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti. "I suspect there is more to this story and we'll learn about that in the months to come."
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who served on special counsel Bob Mueller's team, called the investigation the "sleeper case to watch" as Trump also faces potential legal trouble in a Fulton County DA probe looking at his post-election efforts to overturn his loss and a DOJ investigation into classified documents he refused to turn over in response to a grand jury subpoena.
"It may be that they have been able to uncover objective evidence that corroborates it... that makes him feel this is a stronger case than they did back when Alvin Bragg first came to office," former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade predicted during an appearance on MSNBC.
Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman told the network that the decision to impanel a new grand jury shows that Bragg is "going for the kill."
Trump could face up to four years in prison if he is convicted of first-degree falsifying business records, former district attorneys told Insider, though securing a conviction could be complicated.
"You're falsifying your records to show that it is a business expense, as if you're paying a lawyer to do legal work, and this wasn't that at all," Josh Moscow, a former senior financial crimes prosecutor at the Manhattan DA's office, told the outlet. "This was a conduit payment."
Prosecutors would have to link Trump himself to the payment but a recording Cohen made of Trump discussing a hush-money payment to another woman, Karen McDougal, could be "pretty incriminating," Daniel Alonso, a former chief assistant district attorney at the Manhattan DA's office, told the outlet.
"It always struck me as incredibly unfair that Michael Cohen is the only person that was charged in this crime," he added. "The idea that the bag man is the only one that goes down and the principal gets away scot-free just doesn't really square with justice."
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A Kansas woman killed her abuser: At every level — in every instance — the system failed her.
January 31, 2023
The story of Sarah Gonzales-McLinn is one of incomprehensible abuse and personal redemption.
It’s also one of baffling, and repeated, institutional failure.
At every step, those who might have been expected to care for and protect a victim of grooming and human trafficking looked the other way. They retreated into legalistic formalities. All the while, a woman who thought she had no other option than to kill her rapist sits in prison for at least a quarter century.
Read Kansas Reflector editor Sherman Smith’s story about the case as published Monday. And then ask yourself: Why did no one step up to help this woman in her times of need? And even today, why has Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly not granted her clemency?
“How do we define justice when an abused individual kills his or her abuser?” wondered retired journalist and advocate Dave Ranney. “I can’t give you an exact number, but I can assure you that there are a lot of women in prison for killing their abusers at a time when they truly believed their lives were in danger. Sarah is not alone in this.”
Kansans face a decision point today, in our Legislature and culture. We can decide to protect those like Gonzales-McLinn through targeted changes in state law and education about human trafficking. Or we can continue to avert our eyes from abuse of children at the hands of prominent community members or those employed by powerful institutions.
The powerful will always have those willing to defend their worst excesses. Those like Gonzales-McLinn face a system that has failed them and continues to do so.
Sarah Gonzales-McLinn appears May 25, 2021, in Douglas County District Court to accept a deal that reduced her first-degree murder sentence from a Hard 50 to a Hard 25. (Mackenzie Clark/The Lawrence Times)
Each juncture
Consider Smith’s careful and detailed reporting.
Gonzales-McLinn was molested as a child and raped at age 16. Her community did not protect her from those who sought to sexually gratify themselves at her expense. And it did not find a way to ensure that she had the supports she needed to heal from such violence.
“I wish I could say that I was just this ideal 17-year-old girl when I moved in there,” she told Smith. “But that’s not true. If I was, I don’t think he would have picked me, and I don’t think the tactics would have worked as well. But for the year that I lived there with him, I just felt like all of the pain building up and building up.”
As a 17-year-old, Gonzales-McLinn went to live Hal Sasko, then 50 years old. From her accounts, a man who promised to look after her and take care of her proceeded to rape her multiple times a week for 10 months. She sent a text to her sister reading: “I feel like a caged animal right now, and it’s making me crazy.”
Who was looking out for her then? Who was there to prevent a man in his 50s from grooming children?
A confidential police report found that Sasko tended to gravitate to girls who had been “abused, battered, dumped, trouble with the law, or massive complaints about their moms.” Think of how much damage could have been prevented if officials knew that, and acted on it, before Gonzales-McLinn went to live with him.
Even after the abuse, after the violent slaying, the system failed this young woman. The judge in her murder trial didn’t allow jurors to hear testimony about her abuse.
“Details of those allegations would not be proper in front of the jury during the guilt phase of the trial because they would be simply information that would be used to create sympathy for the defendant,” prosecutor Charles Branson argued to the judge, according to a 2015 transcript of a closed-door meeting.
Well, yes. That’s what common sense demands. Both the judge and prosecutor failed to allow a jury to hear all the evidence. They enabled a miscarriage of justice.
While Douglas County District Attorney Susanne Valdez later reached a deal with Gonzales-McLinn to reduce her Hard 50 prison sentence to a Hard 25, the change only matters if a parole board agrees to let the prisoner out. And there’s no guarantee of that. In other words, Valdez made a high-profile change that appeared to extend mercy but instead represented another falling short, another person shying from the courage necessary to make a difference.
When it came time to write this story, Smith witnessed another systemic failure. The state Department of Corrections would not allow him to meet in person with Gonzales-McLinn, who has grown and flourished while confined. She was forced to speak about her personal pain via telephone, in a shared space.
Its official policy states that “the Kansas Department of Corrections does not grant interviews with specific residents, except for those rare circumstances where residents are designated by the Department to participate in news stories about topics determined appropriate.”
This topic, apparently, was not deemed appropriate.
The way Megan Stuke sees it, Sarah Gonzales-McLinn acted in self-defense when she killed Hal Sasko. Stuke is the executive director of The Willow, a domestic violence center in Lawrence. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
Taking responsibility
Countless societal and institutional failures have crashed down on Gonzales-McLinn, who already has spent the better part of decade behind bars.
Her fate rests in the hands of Kelly, whose staff likely would advise against granting clemency to someone who committed a brutal murder. They may be right, politically. But that makes Kelly the latest person to fail this young woman, to ignore her promise and potential.
We don’t have to accept this. We aren’t helpless.
Right now, as I write these words, bills have been introduced in the Kansas Legislature to address child sexual abuse. Advocates and survivors have spoken up, sometimes at great personal cost. We can create laws, policies and societal expectations to prevent more children and adults from falling into the traps that ensnared Gonzales-McLinn. We can educate one another about human trafficking, sexual abuse and mental health.
Megan Stuke of The Willow, a Lawrence domestic violence center, put it in perspective: “There’s so much shame, there’s so much guilt, there’s so much minimizing and denying and self blaming that when you’re in that situation, you’re not looking for resources, you’re just trying to kind of hide and survive. So the bigger the conversation gets, the more people will recognize it when it’s happening to them, and realize that they may have options.”
We can enlarge that conversation. We can act to protect children and young people.
We can also grant a measure of mercy to Gonzales-McLinn.
Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, the Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.
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'Conspiracy mastermind': Fate of former Ohio House speaker could hinge on one factor
January 31, 2023
It appears that federal prosecutors have a mountain of evidence they want to present to the jury in their racketeering case against former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio GOP Chairman Matt Borges.
They have emails, text messages, wiretap transcripts, and the testimony of undercover agents and confidential informants. They have so much material that U.S. District Judge Timothy Black said prosecutors and defense attorneys labored mightily before the trial even started to agree on what could be presented to the jury. The process was meant to avoid bogging down what’s already expected to be a six-week ordeal.
But all that evidence could miss the mark if none of it shows that Householder undertook an “official act” in exchange for all the millions Akron-based FirstEnergy funneled into 501(c)(4) dark money groups to support the effort to elect friendly Republicans who would vote to make Householder speaker. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned a public corruption conviction on that basis just six years ago.
Householder is accused of masterminding a conspiracy to use $61 million from FirstEnergy and other utilities to make himself speaker and in return ramming through a $1.3 billion ratepayer bailout of failing nuclear and coal plants. His trial began last week, but after two days of testimony it was delayed — first because of weather and then because a juror was diagnosed with COVID.
But last week, FBI Special Agent Blane Wetzel testified about conduct that made both Householder and FirstEnergy look pretty bad.
Householder is accused of using about $500,000 from the dark money groups to pay off credit card debt, settle a lawsuit, and repair a Florida home. Meanwhile, FirstEnergy was losing so much money on its nuclear and coal plants that in 2016 it started the process that would send the subsidiary that owned them into bankruptcy.
But even as the company and Householder were swimming in red ink, he and the company’s CEO flew to Washington, D.C., on private jets in January 2017 for three days of dinners and drinks at some of the city’s swankiest bars and restaurants, Wetzel said.
Within two weeks, FirstEnergy money was flowing into Householder-controlled dark-money accounts. In November of 2018, enough Householder-friendly Republicans were elected — many with the help of money from those accounts — to make him speaker the following January. Less than six months later, on May 28, 2019, the House passed its first version of the billion-dollar bailout, House Bill 6. The body passed a final version on July 23, 2019 and Gov. Mike DeWine signed it the same day.
When former U.S. Attorney David M. DeVillers announced Householder’s arrest almost exactly a year later, he called the scheme with FirstEnergy “likely the largest bribery and money-laundering scheme ever in the state of Ohio.”
But did Householder undertake an official act in exchange for money corruptly received from FirstEnergy and other Ohio utilities? The answer might not be as straightforward as you think.
For their part, Householder’s attorneys are arguing that their client was merely raising money like any effective politician would and that he only wanted to subsidize the power plants to save Ohio jobs and the tax bases of school districts.
In addition, the Supreme Court in 2016 threw out the conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell even though he and his wife took more than $170,000 worth of loans and gifts from a businessman in exchange for hosting him at functions, recommending his product to state agencies, and trying to persuade state universities to study it.
At issue was whether any of those were “official acts.”
In that case, Jonnie Williams, CEO of Star Scientific, supported the Virginia Republican’s successful 2009 campaign. Once in office, the gifts really started to flow — including $20,000 worth of designer clothing for McDonnell’s wife, Maureen McDonnell, and a Rolex watch that Maureen gave Bob for Christmas.
Williams was peddling a compound found in tobacco as a nutritional supplement called Anatabloc. In 2011, the McDonnells hosted an event at the Governor’s Mansion that Williams testified was intended to launch the product. He wanted scientists at the state’s universities to research it, but neither he nor the McDonnells could interest them in the supplement.
The governor also told the state secretary of administration and the director of the Virginia Department of Human Resources that it would be a good idea for all state employees to take Anatabloc like he was. The officials apparently didn’t take the hint.
Investigators caught wind of the McDonnells’ arrangement with Williams and charged them with numerous crimes related to bribery.
In 2014, they were convicted in federal court and Bob and Maureen were sentenced to two and one year in prison, respectively. They appealed, but the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond upheld the conviction.
However, when the case made it north to the U.S. Supreme Court, in Washington, D.C., it was overturned. Unanimously.
Chief Justice John Roberts, the author of the ruling, said that the court took up the case expressly “to clarify the meaning of ‘official act.'”
In his trial, “Governor McDonnell had requested the court to further instruct the jury that the ‘fact that an activity is a routine activity, or a ‘settled practice,’ of an office-holder does not alone make it an ‘official act,’ and that ‘merely arranging a meeting, attending an event, hosting a reception, or making a speech are not, standing alone, ‘official acts,’ even if they are settled practices of the official,’ because they ‘are not decisions on matters pending before the government.'” Roberts wrote.
Instead, McDonnell’s lawyers argued, an official act must be intended to “influence a specific official decision the government actually makes — such as awarding a contract, hiring a government employee, issuing a license, passing a law, or implementing a regulation.”
In overturning the convictions, the high court agreed, ruling that the McDonnells could still be prosecuted, but the “Government must identify a ‘question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or controversy’ that ‘may at any time be pending’ or ‘may by law be brought’ before a public official. Second, the Government must prove that the public official made a decision or took an action ‘on’ that question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding, or controversy, or agreed to do so.”
How much comfort Householder should take from the ruling is uncertain, however. Roberts ended the ruling with what seems to be a warning to politicians thinking of doing shady stuff.
“There is no doubt that this case is distasteful; it may be worse than that,” he wrote. “But our concern is not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes, and ball gowns. It is instead with the broader legal implications of the Government’s boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute. A more limited interpretation of the term ‘official act’ leaves ample room for prosecuting corruption, while comporting with the text of the statute and the precedent of this Court.”
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and Twitter.
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