Legal expert highlights an unusual fact about Michael Cohen’s final grand jury testimony
March 15, 2023
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Coast Guard takes action against mariner accused of rape — but only after it was reported by major news outlet
March 22, 2023
Coast Guard officials have filed administrative charges against mariner Edgar Sison, who was accused to giving a female trainee alcohol and raping her while the two were at sea, CNN reported.
The charges that were filed address the alcohol violations, and they were brought one day after CNN reported that the Coast Guard had taken no disciplinary action had been taken against Sison -- and even renewed his credentials. As CNN points out, the Justice Department could possibly bring charges in regards to the alleged rape.
"Hope Hicks was a senior at the US Merchant Marine Academy when she sparked a Me Too movement in the commercial shipping industry by coming forward with her story, first in an anonymous account posted online and then to Coast Guard investigators," CNN's report stated. "The agency’s criminal investigation into Hicks’ rape allegation was handed over to the Justice Department in early 2022, but a prosecution decision has yet to be reached. The Coast Guard typically waits to initiate administrative actions until a possible criminal case has been resolved, so focusing on an alleged alcohol violation seemingly allows the agency to go after Sison’s credential without jeopardizing the criminal probe."
Speaking to CNN, Hicks said that the Coast Guard needs to do more since "the industry is not safe."
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“I’m frustrated that any survivor would have to go on CNN and tell the world about the worst thing that ever happened to them in order to get the Coast Guard to take action against their assailant,” she said. “It shouldn’t be that difficult.”
An investigation by CNN found that not a single credential for shipboard sexual misconduct had been revoked by the Coast Guard over the past decade, while members who've tested positive for cannabis have been stripped of their ability to work on ships.
“Recent decisions handed down by [the Coast Guard’s administrative court] on sexual misconduct cases, such as those highlighted in the recent CNN story, are extremely troubling, and I don’t have a lot of confidence the court would do the right thing in my case either,” Hicks said.
Read the full report over at CNN.
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Jim Jordan’s attack on Manhattan DA will ‘backfire’ and allow Democrats to expose coordination with Trump: columnist
March 22, 2023
Republican House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan's unprecedented attack on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg this week will "backfire" on the GOP, according to a Washington Post columnist who spoke with House Democrats.
Chairman Jordan, who has no constitutional oversight authority over an elected county district attorney, demanded Bragg hand over documents and communications and testify before Congress about his criminal investigation into Donald Trump's hush money payoffs and business practices. Some believe an indictment could come as early as Wednesday afternoon.
"If Jim Jordan and MAGA Republicans attack the Manhattan DA's potential indictment of Trump, Democrats will use the proceedings to draw attention to coordination between House Republicans and Trump's legal team, Dems tell me," The Washington Post's Greg Sargent said Wednesday via Twitter. "This will backfire on the GOP."
Sargent adds House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin told him: “This is an extreme move to use the resources of Congress to interfere with a criminal investigation at the state and local level." Raskin likened "GOP 'political culture' to 'authoritarian dictatorships.'"
Sargent says Democrats "can use this against the GOP."
He adds: "Trump's lawyer sen[t] a letter to Jim Jordan urging an investigation into any charges against Trump, the NYT reports. Dems will use any hearings that Jordan holds to shed light on coordination between Trump's legal team and House Republicans, aides tell me."
In his Wednesday Washington Post opinion column Sargent calls on Democrats to "marshal some serious creativity in response" to Republican attacks.
"The extraordinary move by House Republicans to insert themselves into Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation of Trump provides Democrats with an opening to do just that," he says.
Sargent says "it’s not clear that Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chair, has thought this through. The course of action signaled by the letter — also signed by Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) — could go sideways for Republicans in unforeseen ways."
Raskin is an attorney, constitutional law professor, and was the lead impeachment manager for the second impeachment of Donald Trump. He has become a leading voice for American democratic values and in the fight against the MAGA Republicans.
“If and when there is an indictment, we will be able to reconstruct all the facts of this case in a way that makes sense to the American public,” Raskin told Sargent, who explains: "The aim, he noted, would be to 'show the justice process is working, and there is no call for extraordinary intervention by the U.S. Congress.'"
Sargent warns, "A Trump indictment will unleash months of information warfare around a numbingly complex matter never before litigated in the public arena. Democrats sometimes undervalue the importance of sheer creativity in politics, and as ugly as the GOP response has been, Republicans are responding to unprecedented circumstances with new innovations. Democrats must meet them on that battlefield."
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Potential Trump indictment delayed at least another day as grand jury told to stay home
March 22, 2023
It will be at least another day before former President Donald Trump gets potentially indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.
Business Insider reports that the grand jury investigating the former president's hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels has been told not to come in on Wednesday, despite having been scheduled to meet this afternoon.
What's more, the publication writes that "it is unlikely that the grand jury will meet at all this week," thus pushing back a vote on an indictment of the former president into next week.
Trump over the weekend had told his followers that he would be indicted and arrested on Tuesday this week, although that has not come to pass.
RELATED: Trump now in an 'unusual and very dangerous' legal situation: analyst
The lack of indictments has not stopped Trump from going on angry rants against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, however, and he posted on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday morning that Bragg was for some reason not allowed to bring criminal charges against him.
"The Rogue prosecutor, who is having a hard time with the Grand Jury, especially after the powerful testimony against him by Felon Cohen’s highly respected former lawyer, is attempting to build a case that has NEVER BEEN BROUGHT BEFORE AND ACTUALLY, CAN’T BE BROUGHT," Trump wrote. "If he spent this time, effort, and money on fighting VIOLENT CRIME, which is destroying NYC, our once beautiful and safe Manhattan, which has become an absolute HELLHOLE, would be a much better place to live!"
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