#Colleen Kollar-Kotelly | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

gettothedancing · 1 year ago

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The defendants were indicted for their participation in an October 2020 rescue action at the D.C.-based Washington Surgi-Clinic (WSC), the abortion facility run by Cesare Santangelo. Santangelo was featured in Live Action’s InHuman investigation stating that if a child was born alive at his facility during an abortion, “we would not help it.”

Two defendants – Lauren Handy and Herb Geraghty – cited Live Action’s InHuman video as informing their belief that abortion survivors might be being left to die at WSC, which in turn motivated their decision to participate in the rescue action at Santangelo’s facility.

However, calling the video “gossip from propagandists” (despite the fact that the video showed the abortionist in his own words) presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly would not allow the video itself to be admitted into evidence.

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Bias on the part of the prosecution was evidenced by its own word choices. For example, government attorneys referred to a three-day abortion procedure as “care” and as a “treatment” that was “absolutely needed.”

Government attorneys also made sarcastic, condescending remarks to and about the defendants, with one caustically remarking, “That’s convenient,” after a defendant said she could not remember a specific detail.

The judge herself was not above entering into heated exchanges. Sparks flew after defendant Herb Geraghty asserted under cross-examination that federal law prohibits certain types of abortion procedures nationwide:

(Gov. Attorney) Patel: You know that abortions are legal in the District of Columbia? Geraghty: I know that some abortions are, but partial birth abortion and abortion that a fetus survives outside the womb– Patel: Sir– Judge Kollar-Kotelly: Sir, as a practical matter, that’s not correct. There are no statutes in the District of Columbia that say anything about limitations on abortion. Geraghty: There’s federal laws, Your Honor. Judge Kollar-Kotelly: You are going to be the legal expert here? I suggest that you not get into that.

However, partial-birth abortion, or D&X, is indeed outlawed under the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2007.

During deliberations on Friday, the jury sent three questions to the judge.

First, they asked: What do “oppression” and “intimidation” mean as defined by law?

Second, pertaining to a particular client of the abortion facility who was on the final day of a three-day abortion procedure and was experiencing labor pains when she arrived at WSC on the day of the rescue: What were the exact medical symptoms of the woman who collapsed in the hallway?

And lastly: What is the nature of ‘treatment’ for each of the different 3 days of ‘procedures’ at the Washington Surgi-Center?

There was a discussion about whether to define “oppression” and “intimidation” narrowly, as in the FACE Act, or more broadly, as it frequently is under conspiracy charges. Ultimately, the judge settled on a broad definition. With regard to the second and third questions, the judge gave the jury no answers; the second on the grounds that private medical conditions are not relevant, and the third on the grounds that there was no evidence given about specific abortion procedures during the trial.

More can be read about the trial at the links below:

Witness testimony in federal trial of pro-life rescuers begins, with court’s bias on display

Prosecution calls more witnesses in day two of pro-life rescuers’ federal trial

Arresting officers take stand at FACE Act trial in DC as judge warns religious pro-lifers on-site

FACE Act trial judge calls video of abortionist that motivated defendants ‘gossip from propagandists’

Defense and prosecution rest in FACE Act trial, as judge appears ignorant of federal abortion law

Defense in FACE Act trial closing arguments: Criteria not met for guilty verdict

#FACE Act #Live Action #activists #pro life #Lauren Handy #Will Goodman #John Hinshaw #Heather Idoni #Herb Geraghty #conspiracy #Bettina di Fiore #Washington D.C.#rescue #Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly #abortion clinics #bias #courts #Youtube

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the-psudo · 14 days ago

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Trump got absolutely dumpstered in court in the last few days.

His and Elon's program to pay people to retire early has been halted by a temporary restraining order issued by District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. of the US District Court, District of Massachusetts in American Federation of Government Employees et al v. Charles Ezell (acting Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management). This temporary order only lasts until they have a hearing on Monday to determine whether this program is constitutional.

13 state attorneys general sued to prevent Elon from accessing personal data about government employees and citizen clients of their agencies, leading to Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in the case Alliance for Retired Americans v. Scott Bessent (Trump's Secretary of the Treasury) ordering the Department of Justice to ensure no unauthorized persons, including Elon and his team, have access to the Labor Department's database of information on tax filings, employment, and the like.

Two separate judges have ruled that Trump's executive order trying to eliminate birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge John Coughenour of the western Washington district, a REAGAN appointee (!), said, "It has become ever more apparent that to our president the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain." The other judge, US District Judge Deborah Boardman of Maryland, ruled that the executive order cannot be implemented until she has had a chance to rule on the merits of the case.

US District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth in DC paused Trump’s restrictions on transgender women being incarcerated in women’s prisons and federal prisons providing gender-affirming medical treatment, after inmates (!) sued to block the policy.

US District Judge Loren L. Alikhan of DC broadly blocked the Trump administration’s memo halting almost all federal assistance.

That's six rulings scrapping five of Trump's major policy operations in the past four days (Feb 3rd through the 6th, 2025).

That's news worth celebrating!

#politics #us politics #trump #american politics #uspol #resistance #judicial resistance #the courts #law and order

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 28 days ago

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Mike Luckovich

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 23, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Jan 24, 2025

Last night, in an interview with host Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel, President Donald Trump tried to explain away his blanket pardons for the January 6 rioters, calling the instances of violence against police officers “very minor incidents.”

In fact, as Brett Samuels of The Hill reported, about 600 of the rioters were accused of assaulting, resisting, or impeding police officers, and ten were convicted of sedition.

Ryan J. Reilly of NBC News explained that rioters wounded more than 140 officers with “firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bike racks, batons, a metal whip, office furniture, pepper spray, bear spray, a tomahawk ax, a hatchet, a hockey stick, knuckle gloves, a baseball bat, a massive ‘Trump’ billboard, ‘Trump’ flags, a pitchfork, pieces of lumber, crutches and even an explosive device.”

Three federal judges have weighed in on the pardons after Trump’s appointees in the Department of Justice ordered them to dismiss pending cases against current January 6 defendants, an order that, as David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo noted, “flies in the face of decades of DOJ independence.”

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly summed up the judges’ outrage when she wrote: “Dismissal of charges, pardons after convictions, and commutations of sentences will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021. What occurred that day is preserved for the future through thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions analyzing and recounting the evidence through a neutral lens. Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.”

The leaders of two key paramilitary gangs who participated in the January 6 violence, Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, are not helping Trump to put the pardons behind him. Now out of prison rather than serving his 22-year sentence, Tarrio called in to conspiracy-theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars within hours of his release to claim that he still commands the gang and that he plans retribution for those who put him behind bars. Tess Owen of WIRED reported that the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which monitors online activity, saw a surge among Proud Boys’ channels after the pardons, as members discussed ways to advance Trump’s agenda.

Rhodes, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison, also wants revenge. On Wednesday, he was at the U.S. Capitol, where Michael Kunzelman and Lisa Mascaro of the Associated Press reported he met with at least one lawmaker and chatted with others.

Politico’s Charlie Mahtesian reported tonight that those January 6 rioters Trump pardoned are already talking about running for office. Mahtesian notes that in primaries where candidates need to prove they are truly MAGA, those who served time in prison for Trump will have sterling credentials.

Kunzelman and Mascaro also noted that, in an apparent attempt to divert attention from the pardons back to Trump’s contention that the bipartisan January 6 committee had been biased against him, on the same day that Rhodes was at the Capitol, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) revived a special committee to retrace the steps of the House committee that investigated the riot.

But that didn’t go terribly well, as Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post today reported an exclusive story revealing that last June an aide to Johnson advised the committee not to subpoena White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson out of concern that if it did, the sexually explicit texts Republican lawmakers had sent her might come to light. According to Alemany, “multiple colleagues had raised concerns with the speaker’s office about the potential for public disclosure of ‘sexual texts from members who were trying to engage in sexual favors’ with Hutchinson.” Instead, the committee accused former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) of talking to Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s lawyer present. Cheney called the report “defamatory” and a “malicious and cowardly assault on the truth.”

Apparently undaunted, Trump today issued pardons for nearly two dozen antiabortion activists convicted of violating the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act, which the civil rights division of the Department of Justice explains “prohibits threats of force, obstruction and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services.” Trump, who is due to speak tomorrow by video with the annual antiabortion March for Life, said it was a “great honor” to pardon the protesters.

Still, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico reported that one antiabortion activist, who wanted to remain anonymous because she fears retaliation from the administration, wondered why Trump hadn’t pardoned the antiabortion activists on Monday, as he did the January 6 rioters. “These pardons are fully in line with Trump’s agenda to oppose the weaponization of the government,” she told Ollstein. “So why he couldn’t have pardoned them along with the 1,500 on Day 1 is beyond me.”

It seems that for Trump and his extremist supporters, the federal government—which reflects the will of the majority—has been “weaponized” against a political minority that seeks to control the country.

To gain that control, Trump has assured his followers that the country is literally under attack and that the United States, which has the strongest military and the strongest economy in the world, is losing. On Monday, Trump—who persuaded congressional Republicans to kill a strong bipartisan measure to tighten the border and fund immigration courts so asylum-seekers could have quick hearings—declared that a national emergency exists at the southern border of the United States, although border crossings are lower now than they were at the end of his first administration. The order asked the heads of the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security to consider whether it was necessary to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which allows the president to deploy the military to suppress domestic insurrection.

Yesterday, acting secretary of defense Robert Salesses told reporters that the Department of Defense has ordered 1,500 active-duty military personnel along with air support and intelligence assets to the southern border of the United States, joining 2,500 active-duty military personnel already there, and that the military will provide flights for deportations led by the Department of Homeland Security. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump is directing “the Department of Defense to make homeland security a core mission of the agency.”

Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart of Reuters report that there have been informal discussions in the department about sending as many as 10,000 troops to the border, a discussion that raises the question of whether Mexico would feel obliged to respond in kind. And, according to Meg Kelly, Alex Horton, and Missy Ryan of the Washington Post, the Trump administration is trying to get rid of an office in the Pentagon that works to protect civilians in battlefield operations. The Civilian Protection Center of Excellence is housed within the Department of the Army and works to help the military limit unintended civilian deaths.

And yet the idea of using a strong military to defend America apparently does not extend to its leadership. Tara Copp of the Associated Press reported that Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Fox News Channel weekend host Pete Hegseth, who has a history of financial mismanagement, alcohol abuse, and allegations of sexual assault, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he paid a woman $50,000 as part of a confidentiality agreement to maintain her silence after she accused him of sexual assault.

Today, both Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) said they could not support Hegseth’s nomination. They were the only two Republicans who refused to vote in favor of his nomination advancing to the full Senate today.

But they are not the only ones standing against Trump’s attempt to overturn traditional American values.

Today, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour issued a temporary restraining order to block Trump’s executive order that sought to end the birthright citizenship established in 1868 by the Fourteenth Amendment. Twenty-two states and two cities, as well as other parties, have sued over the executive order. Coughenour was responding to a suit brought by Arizona, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington.

Coughenour, who was appointed to the bench by Republican president Ronald Reagan in 1981, told Trump’s Department of Justice attorneys, “I have been on the bench for over four decades. I can't remember another case where the question presented is as clear as it is here. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order." When the lawyers told him they maintained the order was constitutional, Coughenour was aghast. "I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar can state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It boggles my mind. Where were the lawyers when this decision was being made?"

Coughenour blocked the order until February 6, when he will hold a hearing to consider a preliminary injunction.

And after Trump announced he would withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), billionaire former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg yesterday announced that his philanthropic foundation will cover the financial contribution the U.S. will not. According to Zack Budryk of The Hill, it will also provide the agreement’s reporting requirements for emissions associated with climate change.

“[P]hilanthropy’s role in driving local, state, and private sector action is more crucial than ever—and we’re committed to leading the way,” Bloomberg said.

Finally, tonight, firefighters have begun to control the fires in Southern California. As of this evening, the Hughes fire is 36% contained, the Laguna fire is no longer expanding, the Palisades fire is 75% contained, and the Eaton fire is 95% contained. New fires have broken out, but rain is forecast for the weekend.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Mike Luckovich #Heather Cox Richardson #Southern California #MAGA pardons #presidential pardons #Paris Climatee agreement #Bloombeerg #Philanthropy #Hegseth #paramiitary groups #rule of law #vengeance

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grits-galraisedinthesouth · 8 months ago

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Supreme Court Overturns DOJ's Use of Key J6 Felony Court

"Today's decision means Attorney General Merrick Garland and federal judges in Washington wrongfully prosecuted roughly 350 J6ers with the post-Enron felony"

JULIE KELLY

JUN 28, 2024 In a devastating but well-deserved blow to the Department of Justice’s criminal prosecution of January 6 protesters, the U.S. Supreme Court today overturned the DOJ’s use of 18 USC 1512(c)(2), the most prevalent felony in J6 cases.

The statute, commonly referred to as “obstruction of an official proceeding,” has been applied in roughly 350 J6 cases; it also represents two of four counts in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s J6-related criminal indictment of Donald Trump in Washington.

In a 6-3 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the “c2” subsection is tethered to the “c1” subsection that addresses tampering with a record, document, or “object.”

From the opinion:

Roberts was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Amy Coney Barrett authored the dissent (!) joined by Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

Today’s decision means hundreds of Americans have been wrongfully prosecuted by Attorney General Merrick Garland as he insists his department is dedicated to upholding the “rule of law” and pursuing justice “without fear or favor.”

An Irreversible Black Eye for DOJ and Federal Courts in Washington

The matter originated in the case of Joseph Fischer, a Pennsylvania man who attended Trump’s speech and later went to the Capitol. According to court documents, Fischer briefly entered the building around 3:25 p.m., nearly an hour after the joint session of Congress to certify the electoral college votes had recessed. He exited about four minutes later.

In March 2021, a D.C. grand jury indicted Fischer on numerous counts including 1512(c)(2). The statute reads:

Whoever corruptly—

(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or

(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.

It is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Fischer, in addition to many J6ers facing the count, asked his judge to dismiss the charge. Judge Carl Nichols, appointed by Trump, dismissed the count against Fischer and two other defendants by finding the language in the post-Enron/Arthur Anderson statute covered tampering with records or documents not interrupting a meeting of Congress. The DOJ appealed Nichols’ decision.

In December, SCOTUS granted Fischer’s petition to grant cert seeking to reverse the appellate court’s mandate. Oral arguments were held on April 16.

Nichols is the only judge to have dismissed the count; 18 district and circuit court judges in Washington refused to dismiss the count. The judges essentially enabled the Biden DOJ’s unlawful pursuit of Americans who protested Biden’s election that day.

The List of Shame:

Judge Beryl Howell (Obama, former chief judge)

Judge James Boasberg (Obama, current chief judge)

Judge Rudolph Contreras (Obama)

Judge Trevor McFadden (Trump)

Judge John Bates (GW Bush)

Judge Amit Mehta (Obama)

Judge Dabny Friedrich (Trump)

Judge Royce Lamberth (Reagan)

Judge Richard Leon (GW Bush)

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (Clinton)

Judge Amy Berman Jackson (Obama)

Judge Timothy Kelly (Trump)

Judge Randolph Moss (Clinton)

Judge Paul Friedman (Clinton)

Judge Christopher Cooper (Obama)

D.C. Circuit Court Judge Florence Pan (Biden)—Pan wrote both appellate court decisions upholding 1512c2

D.C. Circuit Court Judge Justin Walker (Trump)

D.C. Circuit Court Judge Cornelia Pillard

There Goes Your Summer, Your Honor

The federal courthouse in Washington has been bracing for a flood of motions post-Fischer; a few judges have released individuals from prison in anticipation of a reversal. Roughly 110 J6ers have been sentenced to prison on 1512(c)(2) convictions; several J6ers were held under pretrial detention for being charged with the nonviolent obstruction count alone.

But despite the law’s legal limbo over the past year, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves, a Biden appointee, continued to indict J6ers on 1512(c)(2) while some judges continued to sentence those convicted to lengthy prison terms. Last month, Beryl Howell, the former chief judge who upheld the 1512(c)(2) charges for defendants in her courtroom, sentenced a Missouri man to 60 months in prison for the 1512 conviction and assault on police.

In January 2022, Howell gave the green light for her colleagues to support the DOJ’s use of the obstruction count. Here is what she said in denying a motion to dismiss filed by two J6ers:

“For over 200 years, the peaceful transition of power from one presidential administration to another has been marked with Congress's certification of the Electoral College vote; and this event has been respectfully observed by American citizens, but not on January 6, 2021. And I start with this historical fact because what happened on January 6th was a chilling new type of criminal conduct to which our criminal laws have never before had to be applied. Application of criminal laws to conduct never before seen, like what occurred on January 6, 2021, appropriately generates the kind of legal questions the defendants raise here about whether the criminal law fits the charged criminal conduct.”

The first judge to uphold the obstruction charge in J6 cases was Trump-appointee Dabny Friedrich. In 2021, she agreed that interrupting a meeting of Congress met the definition of “official proceeding” and that the statute’s broad language did not require the government to prove the conduct involved tampering with records or documents.

Ironically—or not—Friedrich is married to Matthew Friedrich, a former DOJ official who worked on the Enron Task Force alongside Andrew Weissman and current deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco. The 1512(c)(2) statute was a product of the Enron/Arthur Anderson investigation; Weissmann, as the lead prosecutor for Special Counsel Robert Mueller in the bogus Russiagate probe, pushed the DOJ to charge Trump with 1512(c)(2) while in office.

Retired judge Thomas Hogan recently warned how a SCOTUS’s reversal of 1512(c)(2) would affect the DC courthouse. Here is Hogan, who upheld the statute in J6 prosecutions, with former DOJ official and FISAgate mastermind Mary McCord:

Reacting to the SCOTUS decision, Geri Perna, aunt of Matthew Perna, told me this by email:

“When Matthew was unexpectedly charged with the felony of Obstruction of an Official Proceeding—after initially facing only misdemeanors—his world collapsed. The weight of a potential lengthy prison sentence bore down on him, filling his days with insurmountable worry and anxiety. At that time, there was no glimmer of hope that this severe charge would be dropped.

Matthew has now been dead for 28 months. In the wake of his passing, the Supreme Court of the United States is finally set to rule on whether the Department of Justice wrongfully applied 1512(c)(2) in January 6 cases. As much as I am hopeful for a just ruling in favor of the January 6 defendants, I am consumed by a profound sense of loss and anger. My nephew's death was both avoidable and senseless.

I feel cheated, and if that sounds selfish, then so be it. The pain of losing Matthew under such circumstances is a burden I carry every day. I fervently hope that those responsible for wielding this charge erroneously will be held accountable in a court of law. However, I am not holding my breath.”

#freedom of speech #free J6ers #free speech #free trump #jan 6

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mybeautifulchristianjourney · 9 months ago

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Pro-life grandmother Heather Idoni has been sentenced to two years in prison for her role in a protest at a notorious abortion clinic in Washington, D.C.

Idoni – wearing a bright orange prison jumpsuit – was brought before radical, far-left U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Wednesday May 22, 2024. Judge Kotelly sentenced Idoni to 24 months in federal prison, with credit for the nine months she’s already served, The Epoch Times reports.

Idoni spoke to the court before her sentence was announced....

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yourreddancer · 28 days ago

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Heather Cox Richardson

January 23, 2025

Jan 24

In fact, as Brett Samuels of The Hill reported, about 600 of the rioters were accused of assaulting, resisting, or impeding police officers, and ten were convicted of sedition.

But they are not the only ones standing against Trump’s attempt to overturn traditional American values.

Coughenour blocked the order until February 6, when he will hold a hearing to consider a preliminary injunction.

“[P]hilanthropy’s role in driving local, state, and private sector action is more crucial than ever—and we’re committed to leading the way,” Bloomberg said.

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vague-humanoid · 2 years ago

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The prosecution’s case against a former CIA officer accused of sexually abusing more than 20 incapacitated women in Mexico City is at risk of collapsing because the Justice and State departments may have botched the execution of a warrant to seize the officer’s iPhones, court records show.

A federal judge is set to hear arguments Thursday about whether nearly 600 photos of the defendant allegedly abusing incapacitated women should be thrown out, in a dispute that could make new law on the question of what constitutes an improper search in the digital age.

The former CIA officer, Brian Jeffrey Raymond, has been held without bail in a Washington, D.C., jail for nearly three years. He made a deal to plead guilty to two counts of sexual abuse in July 2021, admitting in court to preying upon women he met in and outside the U.S. through dating sites even as he carried out his clandestine duties.

But the one-time spy withdrew his plea last year after members of his legal team realized there were significant problems with how the evidence in the case was obtained. In allowing Raymond to change his plea, the federal judge ruled that one of his former defense lawyers had been ineffective in noting major concerns about the manner in which investigators gained access to Raymond’s iPhones. The judge ruled that law enforcement agents may have violated Raymond’s rights under the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable search and seizure, and under the Fifth, which says a person can’t be forced to testify against himself.

That same judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, is now set to decide whether to grant the defense’s motion to suppress nearly all the evidence in the case. If she does that, it could seriously undermine the charges against a man Kollar-Kotelly described as “a sexual predator with the means and motive to seek out unsuspecting women on dating applications, drug them, abuse them, and leave them without the memory or wherewithal to report his deviant schemes to law enforcement.”

In ruling to deny Raymond bond, Kollar-Kotelly concluded that “the video and photographic exhibits” show that the “defendant has violently enacted a fetish for unconscious women by drugging and sexually assaulting scores of women over the course of several years.” That evidence included Raymond’s interactions with hundreds of women on dating sites, photos of a sexually aroused Raymond manipulating the bodies of unconscious women, interviews with victims, and evidence that he repeatedly searched the internet using terms including “passed out girl,” “ambien and alcohol and pass out,” and “deep sleep.”

As part of his agreement to plead guilty to two charges, the FBI said, “Raymond admitted to having sexual intercourse with two of the women depicted when both were unable to appraise the nature of the conduct.” In the plea agreement, the FBI said, “He also admitted that over the course of 14 years, he recorded and/or photographed unconscious and nude or partially nude women and touched their breasts, buttocks, and/or genitalia while they were incapable of consent.”

His defense lawyers have now withdrawn that admission and dispute all charges against him (with the plea voided, he could face up to 25 counts). His attorneys also contend that all of the electronic evidence should be thrown out. They say the photos of women found on the phone were used to establish the probable cause that led to the seizure of almost all of the other key evidence in the case from Raymond’s iCloud account, his laptop and other devices.

“Mr. Raymond requests the Court to do what it must in this case — to suppress all evidence that is fruit of the poisonous tree,” defense lawyers wrote in a recent brief.

The judge agreed in a ruling that “there are viable concerns regarding the manner in which the warrant was executed” and “troubling” actions by law enforcement agents stemming from their “admitted technological ineptitude” and their failure to plan. Now she will have to decide whether those concerns amounted to impermissible constitutional violations.

Raymond’s defense lawyers declined to comment, as did the Justice Department and the State Department, whose Diplomatic Security Service agents were said by the court to have acted questionably when executing the warrant.

Legal experts consulted by NBC News were split on the likelihood that the defense will prevail.

“The defense raised several interesting, nonfrivolous questions concerning the constitutionality of the search,” NBC News contributor Chuck Rosenberg said. “In the end — and this may just be my bias as a former federal prosecutor — it seems to me that the government has the better of the argument. The search, though unusual in some ways, was conducted lawfully, and the evidence seized should ultimately be admissible.”

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deepnerdbearllama · 9 days ago

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rwnnews · 14 days ago

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Elon Musk's D.O.G.E Banned from U.S. Treasury Systems: A Legal Showdown.

In a landmark decision that underscores the tension between innovation in governance and the sanctity of government operations, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E) has been legally barred from accessing the U.S. Treasury’s payment systems. This ruling, issued by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, comes after a series of lawsuits filed by federal employee unions and…

#DOGE #ElonMusk #GovernmentEfficiency #Trump #USTreasury

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buttercupkg66 · 14 days ago

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Wicked Leftist Judge Who Blocked DOGE at Treasury Is Same Woman Who Threw 78-Year-Old Pro-Life Grandma into Prison and Mocked Her on the Way Out the Door

The 78-Year-Old was the tenth defendant to be sentenced by the Biden Regime related to the peaceful abortion protest.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly taunted the elderly woman and mocked her Christian faith and told her to honor the “tenets” of her religion and not die in jail.

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misfitwashere · 14 days ago

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ROBERT REICH

FEB 7

Friends,

Musk’s rats continue to burrow into sensitive government payment systems.

According to the best source I’ve found on this (Nathan Tankus’s Crises Notes), Musk and his rats have now gained unrestricted access to your Social Security number, your confidential bank information, your confidential medical information, and much more.

Musk boasts that his team is “rapidly shutting down” Treasury remittances.

They’ve tunneled into the health payment systems at the Department of Health and Human Services. They’ve begun to burrow into the Labor Department (I have no idea whether they’ve penetrated the Bureau of Labor Statistics as yet), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They’ve already penetrated the Veterans Affairs systems.

Yesterday, federal Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly temporarily barred the Treasury Department from handing data from its payments system to Musk and his rats, but it’s far from clear this will stop them.

Technically, Musk’s rats still retain “read and write” code access because Judge Kollar-Kotelly barred “read only” access. That means they can still stop or alter federal payments.

Note that even after another federal judge — George A. O’Toole, Jr. — blocked Musk’s buyout offer for federal employees until a full hearing Monday afternoon, Musk has continued to urge federal workers to voluntarily leave their jobs or brace for layoffs.

According to yesterday’s Wired magazine, some of Musk’s rats who have gained access to sensitive federal data couldn’t pass background checks required for such access.

Yesterday, one of them, a 25-year-old coder named Marko Elez, abruptly resigned after apparently racist comments from a dormant social media account were unearthed.

Another, a 19-year-old high school graduate now combing through sensitive government information, also runs a business that controls dozens of web domains, including at least two that are registered in Russia. One offers an AI bot for servers targeting the Russian market.

Hello?

Musk and his rats have nothing whatever to do with rooting out “waste and fraud.” Their real purpose is to usurp Congress’s authority over spending, under Article I Section 8 of the Constitution.

If Trump can turn off a spigot on what Congress wants, he has more power to get something back from Congress for turning that spigot on — say, the authority to close down the Labor Department or the EPA, or spend more on the border.

Sure, there’s some waste and fraud in government. That’s why every department had an Inspector General to find and stop it — until Trump fired most of them. In addition, before Musk’s rats tunneled into the General Services Administration, accountants oversaw every department’s and agency’s spending.

In other words, the coup continues.

Zoom out and the picture is even worse. You want waste and fraud? Look at what some big corporations and very wealthy people are getting away with.

Tesla’s annual financial report, released Wednesday, shows that although the corporation earned $2.3 billion in the United States in 2024, it reported to the IRS that it owed precisely zero in federal income taxes.

Or consider billionaire Scott Bessent, Trump’s new Treasury secretary (who’s been allowing Musk’s rats into the federal payments system). Turns out, Bessent paid no Medicare taxes on income he earned through his hedge fund (a practice the IRS has deemed illegal).

Oh, and Bessent fully exploited the “carried interest” loophole to lower his taxes even further.

Musk of course won’t recommend eliminating these and other tax loopholes— even though they caused the government to lose at least $1.8 trillion worth of tax revenue in 2023 alone.

I also doubt Musk will recommend cutting the billions in government contracts and subsidies his own corporations receive.

Or cutting America’s bloated military budget that’s bigger than the next nine countries’ military budgets combined — half of which goes to private defense contractors like Musk’s own SpaceX and Starlink.

And Musk of course won’t recommend that Republicans halt their plans to extend Trump’s tax cuts — which will add at least $5 trillion to the deficit and predominantly benefit billionaires, like him.

That’s more than twice the amount Musk initially said he’d cut in “wasteful” government spending, if you’re keeping track.

Instead, Musk wants to cut the government agencies that protect you but limit the profitability of his corporations.

The Labor Department, into which Musk’s rats are now burrowing (and which I once ran), protects workers from employers who want to scam them — as Musk has done to his own employees.

The Department of Labor also protects workers from employers who want to cut corners on safety and thereby expose employees to harms on the job — as has Musk at Tesla and SpaceX.

And the National Labor Relations Board — now rendered inoperable because Trump illegally terminated one of its members — protects workers from being fired for trying to form a union, as Musk has done to Tesla employees.

In addition, because there’s no other place to find anything close to the $2 trillion Musk is promising to cut from the federal budget, I expect he’ll turn to cutting Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, which together comprise roughly 45 percent of the federal budget.

The fundamental issue isn’t the size of the government or how to make government more “efficient.” It’s who our government is for.

Should it work mainly for big corporations and billionaires, including the richest person in the world — or for the rest of us?

#robert reich

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