#i think the attorney inside her was about to call him a felon and should have

[only-when-i-write]

Yesterday I stalled all day and only sat down to write very late and after I obviously exhausted myself w/ wanting to write but not doing it. Stressed me out and got me nowhere • Today I started right in the morning and had to give up bc I just couldn’t get into the text. Guess I’ll give it another go, spend the day relaxing (this time for real I hope) and write later today. If I am putting out another insane word count later I am going to scream tho

I want a fucking manual for my brain. Is this too much to ask? Or a sort of traffic light system? Red-yellow-green go? Look we are not on speaking terms we need another form of communication

[sweetyyhippyy]

Part of You. Spencer Reid x OC! Character. Chapter 17.

Chapter 17: Positive

(Not my gif)

Summary: Things haven’t been easy since Spencer’s arraignment hearing. Bridgett has been having a hard time without Spencer. When Penelope comes to check on her best friend, Bridgett realizes her timing is off.

TW: Mentions of murder. Spencer going to jail. Mentions of pills. Mentions of alcohol. Mentions of throwing up. Pregnancy. Putting pregnancy at risk.

Word Count: 3.2k.

A.N: The italicized paragraph in the beginning is a flashback..

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was the day...

The day of Spencer’s arraignment hearing. Nobody knew what he was going to plead, not even Bridgett… she didn’t even think Spencer knew. Once Emily got the call that the Mexican authorities had found the knife used in Nadie Ramos’ murder, everything went downhill from there. At first they were offering if Spencer pleaded guilty that he would do 5 years, if he chose to plead not guilty, he was looking at 25 years to life. Fiona gave him both of his options, but Spencer decided then and there that he was going to plead not guilty.

“Can I have a minute alone with him please?” Bridgett asked, turning to Emily and Fiona.

“Of course. We’ll both be outside.” Fiona says, grabbing her briefcase and walking out of the room with Emily behind her.

Bridgett stayed quiet, staring at Spencer, waiting for him to explain himself. His eyes stayed on the table between them, not wanting to have the conversation with his girlfriend.

“Do you know what you’re putting yourself up against by pleading not guilty? You could go to prison for a long time, Spencer. Think about all the evidence.”

“Scratch has been very thorough with making sure things don’t look good for me.”

“Yeah, and a jury isn’t going to see that you were set up. They’re going to see that all signs point to you. They don’t know Scratch like we do.”

“Do you think they’ll convict me?”

Bridgett sighs heavily, shrugging her shoulders. “I don’t know. But if you plead guilty… 5 years isn’t the worst. You can come out of prison and still have a life.”

“Yeah but not as an FBI agent. I’ll be a convicted felon.”

“But you would be free. You and I could still have a life together.” Bridgett replies, already tearing up.

“And while I do want that, you know that the FBI is where I belong.”

“But you don’t belong in prison, baby. If you want to roll the dice, and take your chances with going to trial, 25 years might as well be a life sentence.”

“If this whole thing has been orchestrated by Scratch, I know the team can get him.”

“Without a doubt we will. I know we will. But.... what if we can’t prove it this month, this year… or this decade. Spence, we can’t figure it out by tomorrow for your arraignment.” Bridgett lets out a sob.

Spencer shakes his head, sniffling and dropping eye contact with Bridgett.

“What do I do?” Spencer says, his voice straining to keep from crying.

Bridgett sighs shakily, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I don’t know, baby. I don’t know. But I’m here, okay? Whatever you decide, I’m going to be here either way.” She brings him in for a hug, letting him cry onto her shoulder.

***

The whole  team was in the front row on his side, watching as the bailiffs walked in with Spencer between them in handcuffs, walking him to the desk in front of them and helping him sit down. Bridgett was right behind him, giving him a warm smile when he turns around to look at the team.

“How do you plead, Agent Reid?”

Doctor.

“Not guilty.” He says sternly.

Bridgett’s heart jumps at his decision.

Okay… that means we’ll go to trial. But we can get through it.

Penelope held onto Bridgett’s hand while Fiona and the defense attorney went back and forth about why Spencer should and should not have bail set. At one point, both Bridgett and Penelope wanted to hop over the railing and beat the attorney up for the negative accusations he was saying against Spencer. Luke could tell Bridgett was getting agitated, but he took her other hand and gave it a squeeze of comfort. The judge was being less than understanding when Fiona offered the team as character witnesses to speak on Spencer’s behalf, not feeling “in the mood” to hear what they had to say.

“Bail is denied. Defendant will be remanded to federal custody pending trial.” She fires, banging the gavel.

Bridgett’s whole heart falls into the pit of her stomach, hearing that Spencer wouldn’t be coming home with her. She looked in horror at Spencer as he looked to her, just as scared as she was.

“How long until his case goes to trial?” Emily asks Fiona.

“It’s a complicated case. We’re looking at maybe 3 months.”

Bridgett reaches for Spencer’s hand over the railing, he takes it and pulls her in for a hug.

“I’m sorry. So sorry, Bridge.” He whispers.

“I love you. Please be careful.” She says back, trying to take in his embrace one last time, trying to commit to memory his smell and how he held her.

The two bailiffs pull Spencer back from Bridgett’s embrace, taking one of his hands behind his back. Before they get the other hand Spencer points to the top of his sternum and mouths “I’m right here.” Alluding to the necklace he gifted her years ago.

Bridgett sniffles and grabs the moon pendant and rubs it with her thumb, nodding her head.

Spencer turns around one last time as he’s being escorted out, looking at his family; lost and scared to be leaving them. After the door closes, Bridgett sobs, gripping the railing under her to keep her standing. Everyone’s worst nightmare just came true... Spencer was going to prison for something he didn’t do, and they still had no physical evidence of him being set up. Bridgett drops her head as she feels Luke grab her, bringing her in for a hug.

This isn’t really happening. He wasn’t actually going to prison. This was all just a big mistake.

“Bridge, come on, let’s go outside.” JJ says, rubbing her arm.

Bridgett lifts her head from Luke’s chest, wiping her eyes. “I need to go home. I can’t… I can’t be here.” She cries, scooting past Emily and Penelope and walking out of the courtroom.

***

Bridgett’s eyes flutter open, looking at the empty space in her next to her that Spencer always slept in when he was over. Her eyes filled with tears again as she touched the dark grey sheets next to her, feeling the tears go over the bridge of her nose and rolling onto the pillow under her head.

The muscle relaxer she had taken a few hours prior had knocked her out, it was the only way she was going to get sleep. She hugged the body pillow tight, wishing it was Spencer that she was hugging instead of the damn pillow. It had been 2 weeks since the hearing and Bridgett was going through a serious depression. She hadn’t been  back to work since the hearing, Emily said she needed time to get into the right headspace, which usually Bridgett would argue with being away from the job, but now it wasn’t a fight.

A possibility of 3 months. 3 months. 90+ days before his case went to trial. How was she going to get through 3 months without him? The prison wasn’t allowing him visitors just yet for whatever reason. Emily was hopeful that within the next week or so that they would allow them.

Finally, Bridgett grabs the throw blanket at the foot of her bed, wrapping it around herself before getting out of bed and walking into her living room. Her head felt fuzzy and dizzy as she shuffled out of her room, a definite side effect of the pills and alcohol she was consuming everyday for the past 2 weeks.

She stood in the middle of the room, closing her eyes to try to get the spinning to subside. The spinning made her feel nauseous, a bitter taste developing on her tongue, one of her queues that she was about to throw up. Bridgett hurries to the kitchen, going through her pantry to find some crackers to snack on, needing some sort of substance to fill her stomach. She chewed slowly through the saltiness of the cracker, sipping on a glass of water as she chews.

Bridgett’s phone chirps from the other side of the counter, she sees a text from Penelope.

Hey I’m less than a minute from your place, I just want to see how you’re doing.

Bridgett shuffles to the living room, opening the apartment door to wait for Penelope in the hallway. It was the first time she had been out of her apartment. Once she sees her blonde hair and the red as black patterned dress she was wearing, she half smiles, stepping back inside.

Penelope shuts the door behind her, embracing Bridgett right away. “I miss your beautiful face, Bridgy.” She says, squeezing her tightly.

“I miss you too. You know you don’t have to come check on me, right? I’m… fine.” Bridgett shrugs.

“How long have I known you?”

“10 years.”

“And don’t you think I know when you’re not okay? Your man being in prison means that you’re definitely not okay.”

Bridgett sighs, leaning back on the couch. “I feel like if I tell myself that I’m okay, at some point my mind will believe it and I’ll start being okay.”

“Eventually you will be. It’s just going to take a while. It’s been 3 weeks since the hearing, you’re still getting used to life.”

“3 weeks? It’s been 2.”

“No, it’s been 3. The hearing was on the 20th.”

“Wait, it’s really been 3 weeks?” Bridgett mumbles. She quickly sits up on the couch, trying to do math in her head, but she was already so scatterbrained at the moment that things weren’t making sense. She hops up from the couch, going to the calendar on her desk to try and figure it out.

“Bridge? Hey what’s wrong?” Penelope asks, following after her.

Bridgett puts her pointer finger up in her direction, counting the weeks for the fourth time. There was no way.

“Bridgett, what’s wrong? You look scared.”

Bridgett’s heart started to beat out of her chest as the realization sunk in that her math was spot on. She sinks down onto the chair, covering her mouth in shock.

“I’m late.” She mutters.

“Oh!” Penelope gasps, her eyes growing wide.

“I was supposed to get my period the week after Spencer got arrested, but it never came. I thought it was all the stress. It wouldn’t be the first time my period just doesn’t show because I’m stressed out because of the job. And I figured it still hadn’t come because I’m beyond stressed out, but it’s been almost 2 months since I’ve gotten it. Eventually my body is like ‘okay just give the girl her period now’.” Bridgett runs fingers through her tangled hair, her leg bouncing up and down feverishly. “Oh my god, I can’t be pregnant. Not now.”

“Yeah, probably not the best time, but it’ll be okay. You know you have all of us to support you.”

“Penelope, you don’t understand. I’ve been drinking everyday since Spencer’s hearing, taking pills to help me sleep. Oh my god, I’m an idiot. I should have known with how long it’s been since I’ve had my period. Shit.” Bridgett cusses.

“You didn’t know, Bridge. It’s not your fault.”

“Spencer and I were trying for a baby for almost a year and a half before he brought Diana to live with him. We put it on hold, but… what if now that we stopped trying, I really am pregnant?”

“Okay, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go down to the drugstore down the block and get you a pregnancy test, and we’re going to find out if you’re actually pregnant before we panic, okay?” Penelope says, grabbing her purse and hurrying out the door.

Bridgett sighs, biting at the hangnail on her pointer finger. If she was pregnant, she was at least 2 maybe 3 months, but that was not likely. She hadn’t been careful with consuming alcohol, especially after the hell she had been through the past month and a half.

Bridgett being the overthinker and worst case scenario on her mind all the time type person she was, she got onto Google to ‘Risks of consuming alcohol during pregnancy’. Most of it was common knowledge, but it was almost as if her mind needed to punish her for the horrible thing she was doing to her possible child.

“You didn’t lock the door after I left?” Penelope scolds her, walking back in the door.

Bridgett turns around, sighing. “I uh… no sorry. Can I have the test?”

“Oh, yeah, I bought you this water in case but you do you. Think happy thoughts.” She says with a smile, handing her the plastic bag with the box inside.

***

“I didn’t know you and Spencer were trying for a baby.” Penelope says, sitting next to Bridgett on the couch, handing her a glass of water.

Bridgett takes a big glup, trying to focus on anything else at all. “Yeah we went through a scare about a little over a year a half ago. It came out negative but then we talked about trying. Nothing came of it… until maybe now. How much longer?”

Penelope looks at the timer on her phone, “45 seconds.”

Bridgett sighs, gnawing at the inside of her cheek. “What am I going to do if I am pregnant? I put this baby at risk by being so irresponsible.”

“You stay here, I’ll go get the test and then we’ll go from there before we panic.” Penelope says, getting up from the couch and walking to the bathroom.

Bridgett takes several deep breaths, trying not to give herself a panic attack as she waits for Penelope.

“Okay, so what we’re going to do is… uh, I have a friend who’s an OB, and we’re going to get you an ultrasound to check the baby out, okay?” Penelope says, holding a pair of Bridgett’s shoes in her hand and the test in the other.

Bridgett’s eyes grow wide, her jaw dropping. “Wait, I’m… it’s positive?”

Penelope nods her head slowly, offering the rest to her. Bridgett covers her mouth with her hand, gasping into it. The tears flow hot down her cheeks as Penelope hands her the test. She sobs as she sees the word “PREGNANT” on the screen, a cold shiver running over her body.

“Oh my god. Oh my god.” Bridgett says over and over, sniffling.

“Honey, everything is going to be okay.”

“This is my fault, Penelope! I should have known I was pregnant! And now… shit, how am I going to tell Spence?”

“We can’t worry about that right now. We need to worry about getting you to see someone to check on my future god child.”

***

“Miss Mendez?” A petite red headed lady walks into the room.

Bridgett smiles at her, still completely terrified. “Yes, you can call me Bridgett.”

“My name is Dr. Clark, I’m going to check you and your baby out, okay? Penelope said you were worried.”

“Yes, I… I went through a hard time the past month or two and I’ve been drinking and taking sleeping pills. I had no idea I was pregnant, I lost track of time and didn’t realize I was so late until today. I figured it was all the stress I’m under.”

“So what I’m going to do is first see how far along you are, and see if the baby is developing normally, the brain, heart, all the organs are developing normally as well, okay? And I’m going to tell you something, there are lots of women who don't realize they’re pregnant and drink, smoke, do a lot worse things that they shouldn’t do. You’re not the first, and you’re not the last. What matters is that now that you know you’re pregnant, you stop all of that immediately.”

Bridgett nods her head, fighting back tears. Obviously Bridgett was the biggest cry baby before pregnancy, but she couldn’t imagine how much worse it was going to be with pregnancy hormones.

The doctor squeezes a gel onto Bridgett’s belly, her body covered in goosebumps at how cold it was. Penelope was smiling from ear to ear next to Bridgett as she sees what actually looks like the shape of a baby on the monitor.

“Oh my god, Bridgy, look.” Penelope says with excitement.

Bridgett looks at the monitor in disbelief, it didn’t look like a baby, but like a large bean.

“So you’re measuring about 8, almost 9 weeks. And the measurements look spot on for where the fetus should be.”

“Oh thank god.” Bridgett says.

“With that being said, do you want to hear the heartbeat?”

“I can do that?” Bridgett asks, smiling at the doctor.

“Yes! Let me turn this on, and find it for you.”

The room is filled with a loud and fast rhythmic thumping. Bridgett’s jaw drops hearing how quickly the thumping was going.

“Healthy heartbeat.” The doctor beams.

“Oh my god.” Bridgett smiles, looking over at Penelope who was now crying too.

“Congratulations. I’m going to print some pictures for you to take home with you.”

“Thank you.” Bridgett replies, looking at the screen in awe. “That’s my baby. Mine and Spencer’s baby.”

Penelope smiles, “Baby genius on the way.”

***

Penelope and Bridgett go around her apartment, throwing away all the empty bottles of liquor that she had accumulated throughout the past few weeks, tossing them in a garbage bag.

“Can I ask you something? Are you going to tell Spencer you’re pregnant?” Penelope asks.

“Not now. I’m going to wait. I don’t want me being pregnant to be something he worries about while he’s in prison.”

“What if…”

“I don’t want to think about that. Worst case scenario, I’ll tell him before he goes to trial. I just want to be able to see him.”

“Emily told us this morning that they’re allowing visitors starting tomorrow. I took it upon myself to make a chart of who’s visiting Spencer and when, but obviously you get first priority.”

“Okay, I’ll go see him tomorrow. But I’m going to keep it to myself just for now. That means that you, Penelope Garcia, need to keep a secret. You can’t tell the team that I’m pregnant, okay?”

Penelope nods her head, crossing her heart. “I promise I’ll keep you and my future god child, a secret.”

“Thank you. We both appreciate it.” Bridgett rubs her stomach. “It’s crazy to think that I have a baby growing inside me. Even crazier to think it’s Spencer’s baby.”

“You two are going to be the best parents ever. I can’t imagine how much love this baby is going to be surrounded by.”

Bridgett smiles, getting a little emotional over the fact that her and Spencer were going to be parents. “Do you think he’s going to be happy?”

“Who, Spencer? Are you kidding? He’s going to be so excited. I’m going to get going, do you need anything?”

“No, I’m okay. Thank you so much for being here, Garcia.” Bridgett says, hugging the woman tight.

Penelope takes the garbage bags with her as she leaves the apartment, closing the door behind her.

Bridgett sits on the couch, taking the ultrasound pictures in her hand and looking at the black and white blob in the picture. Her hand drops down to her stomach, nowhere near a baby bump yet and rubs it.

“Hey in there. I’m mom.” Bridgett laughs. “Your dad is away as I’m sure you know with how much I’ve been crying over it. But you’ll meet him soon and he’s going to love you so much. I can’t wait to meet you. And I promise I’m going to take better care of you. I’m so sorry for hurting you before, but now that I know, I’m going to protect you.”

[vinayv224]

Former special counsel Robert Mueller prepares to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in July 2019. | Salwan Georges/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Robert Mueller has avoided speaking out about his report. But Trump’s clemency for Roger Stone changed his mind.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller offered pointed criticism of President Donald Trump’s decision to commute the sentence of his longtime friend and campaign advisor Roger Stone in an op-ed in the Washington Post on Saturday, declaring that despite being granted clemency, Stone “remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.”

Trump commuted Stone’s sentence on Friday — just days before he was set to begin serving a 40 month prison sentence after being convicted of lying to lawmakers who were investigating whether Russia influenced the 2016 elections. That conviction stemmed from work done by Mueller’s team in its investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Stone was convicted of seven charges in total, which also included witness tampering and obstructing a congressional committee proceeding.

Mueller’s emphatic defense of his investigation’s findings about Stone marked a sharp departure from his history of either avoiding discussing his investigation or presenting its findings in understated terms, and has prompted Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to say he will allow Mueller to testify before the Senate, something Democrats on that committee have long pushed for.

On Saturday, Trump continued his defense of Stone, tweeting his friend had been “targeted by an illegal Witch Hunt that never should have taken place.”

But in his op-ed, Mueller refuted the president’s aspersions, and systematically laid out Stone’s many violations of the law — including the way he lied to avoid revealing his links to the Russian government:

Congress also investigated and sought information from Stone. A jury later determined he lied repeatedly to members of Congress. He lied about the identity of his intermediary to WikiLeaks. He lied about the existence of written communications with his intermediary. He lied by denying he had communicated with the Trump campaign about the timing of WikiLeaks’ releases. He in fact updated senior campaign officials repeatedly about WikiLeaks. And he tampered with a witness, imploring him to stonewall Congress.

The jury ultimately convicted Stone of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress and tampering with a witness. Because his sentence has been commuted, he will not go to prison. But his conviction stands.

Mueller also defended the women and men who conducted the investigations and prosecutions, writing that they acted “with the highest integrity” and operated based “solely on the facts and the law.”

Mueller’s decision to intervene in the public debate that followed Trump’s commutation diverged from his general tendency to avoid defending his investigation, and his apparent preference to have the report his team produced speak for itself. Vox’s Zack Beauchamp described Mueller as having “such a circumscribed view of his own responsibilities that he didn’t want to answer questions beyond simple statements or citation of the full report” when he testified before the House of Representatives last July:

Mueller testified before both the House Judiciary Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence, saying very little of substance beyond what was already contained in the text of his report. He responded to questions with monosyllables or requests for clarification. According to a count by NBC, Mueller “deflected or declined to answer questions 198 times” during the two three-hour hearings.

Mueller did not detail what informed his decision to write the op-ed, but it comes at a time when Democrats — as well as some Republicans — have expressed deep concern about the extraordinary precedent that Trump is setting by granting clemency to his friend and someone who, according to prosecutors, lied to protect the president.

Jeffrey Toobin, a legal analyst for CNN and the New Yorker, has argued that with the commutation of Stone, Trump has entered new, dangerous territory.

“Trump had not, until now, used pardons and commutations to reward defendants who possessed incriminating information against him,” he wrote in the New Yorker. “The Stone commutation isn’t just a gift to an old friend—it is a reward to Stone for keeping his mouth shut during the Mueller investigation. It is, in other words, corruption on top of cronyism.”

Trump is receiving pushback for what may be unprecedented corruption

Trump’s move to pardon Stone was notable even amid his sustained trend of using his powers as president to reward those who are loyal to him (and punish those who he believes aren’t). Experts say that that the frequency with which Trump has granted clemency toward those he sees as allies — like when he pardoned or commuted the sentences of 11 people who had an inside connection to him or were promoted on Fox News in February — appears to be historically unique.

“Modern presidents have sullied clemency through disuse (both Bushes) and occasional self-serving grants (Clinton),” Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas’ School of Law, told NPR. “However, no president [until Trump] has ever used clemency primarily to reward friends and political allies.”

On Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned Trump’s decision to scrap Stone’s sentence in strong terms.

“It’s staggering corruption, but I think it’s important for people also to know it’s a threat to our national security,” Pelosi said on CNN’s State of the Union. “The whole impeachment process was about our national security. Why we are at the Supreme Court on these cases was to find out about the Russian connection, and we will continue to pursue that. This case was about the Russian connection.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) told NBC News on Saturday that Trump’s commutation sends the clear signal that, “If you lie for the president, if you cover up for the president, if you withhold incriminating evidence for the president, you get a pass from Donald Trump.”

Schiff argued that the situation speaks to the urgency of passing a bill he introduced in 2019 — the Abuse of the Pardon Prevention Act, which requires the president to present evidence to Congress when granting clemency to someone in an investigation in which the president or a family member is a witness, subject, or target.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), who has demonstrated a willingness to break from his party in his criticism of the president, deemed Trump’s move ”unprecedented, historic corruption.”

He was joined in this criticism by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), who said in a statement, “In my view, commuting Roger Stone’s sentence is a mistake,” adding, “Earlier this week Attorney General Bill Barr stated he thought Mr. Stone’s prosecution was ‘righteous’ and ‘appropriate’ and the sentence he received was ‘fair.’ Any objections to Mr. Stone’s conviction and trial should be resolved through the appeals process.”

The critiques from the Republican senators caused Trump to lash out at them on Twitter Saturday, calling them Republicans in name only.

Do RINO’S Pat Toomey & Mitt Romney have any problem with the fact that we caught Obama, Biden, & Company illegally spying on my campaign? Do they care if Comey, McCabe, Page & her lover, Peter S, the whole group, ran rampant, wild & unchecked - lying & leaking all the way? NO!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2020

Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham followed that tweet with one of his own, indicating Mueller would be asked to testify before his committee.

“Apparently Mr. Mueller is willing — and also capable — of defending the Mueller investigation through an oped in the Washington Post,” Graham wrote on Twitter. “Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have previously requested Mr. Mueller appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify about his investigation. That request will be granted.”

It’s unclear, however, whether Mueller will ultimately testify, or if the op-ed will be his final word on the issue.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/3gPGTob

[thisdaynews]

Possible pardons loom for former Trump aides

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/possible-pardons-loom-for-former-trump-aides/

Possible pardons loom for former Trump aides

In any other administration, and in any other time, it’d be shocking to consider that three men with such deep personal ties to the president might get their legal troubles expunged in an election year — not to mention from a president facing impeachment proceedings.

But this is not any other administration.

The clemency calculations come because Stone, Flynn and Manafort — all former Trump campaign aides — know the president has repeatedly proven willing to trample over his own advisers despite warnings of political consequences. Most recently, Trump cleared the records of three armed services members accused or convicted of war crimes over the objections of several of his top military brass.

“Like everything else with this president, you can’t look to history for precedent,” said a person who previously worked for President Trump. “If he felt Manafort and Flynn and others were deserving of pardons, he’d just do it.”

Trump got involved in the military cases after being lobbied not only by lawmakers but Fox News personalities who spotlighted their stories. It’s a tactic employed repeatedly by people seeking pardons or prison-sentence commutations. Earlier in the Trump administration, Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza and George W. Bush White House aide Scooter Libby saw their prospects for presidential mercy take off thanks to well-connected allies and conservative cable TV segments highlighting complaints about how they’d been mistreated inside the federal justice system.

In Trump’s White House, few of his top aides see pardons for the likes of Stone, Flynn or Manafort as a good idea, at least not until after Election Day 2020. There are still scars from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which concluded with a 448-page report that featured an obstruction of justice section detailing several conversations and public statements about pardons for former Trump aides involving the president and his personal lawyers.

While Trump himself has been coy in recent months about any post-Mueller pardon plans, he’s been anything but shy when registering his disdain for the Russia probe and how it landed him, members of his family and so many other current and former staffers in considerable legal jeopardy.

Back in August 2018, the president wrote on Twitter that he felt “very badly” for Manafort on the morning after a Virginia jury convicted the former Trump campaign chairman on a series of financial fraud charges. This June, Trump praised Flynn when the former national security adviser who had already pleaded guilty and cooperated with Mueller’s investigators made a U-turn and hired Sidney Powell, an outspoken Mueller critic, as his new lawyer. “Best Wishes and Good Luck to them both!” the president tweeted. And Trump complained, just minutes after Stone’s conviction last month on charges of lying to Congress and witness tampering, because several of his own longtime adversaries — he named Hillary Clinton, James Comey and Adam Schiff, among others — weren’t facing the same kinds of criminal prosecutions.

Despite the presidential airing of grievances, people who regularly speak with Trump say the looming impeachment proceedings have dominated conversations — not pardons. “I think the president is probably focused on other things at the moment,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican and outspoken Trump defender.

But Trump’s pardon calculations could very well change as a rapid-fire series of events unfold.

Stone is scheduled for sentencing Feb. 6 before U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, where he faces up to 50 years in prison. As a first-time offender, Stone’s punishment is expected to be significantly lighter. Still, prison is prison, and attempts to get the president’s attention have been coming from all directions to keep Stone — a longtime political adviser dating back to the early 1980s — a free man.

InfoWars host Alex Jones said he was relaying a direct message from Stone to Trump on his show the day before the jury reached its guilty verdicts. “He said to me, ‘Alex, barring a miracle, I appeal to God and I appeal to your listeners for prayer, and I appeal to the president to pardon me because to do so would be an action that would show these corrupt courts that they’re not going to get away with persecuting people for their free speech or for the crime of getting the president elected,’” Jones said.

Just hours after Stone’s conviction, reporters filmed an unidentified man just outside the White House’s West Wing entrance blowing a giant horn and urging the president to give Stone “immunity.” That same night, Stone’s daughter Adria pleaded for the president’s intervention during a Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson. “Donald Trump, if you can hear me, please save our family,” she said.

Flynn’s fate, meantime, remains very much up in the air. The retired Army lieutenant general’s sentencing this month got postponed in anticipation of a Justice Department inspector general report about the intelligence community’s conduct during the Russia probe. While the report expected to be released Monday may not yield the thunderclaps Trump and his conservative allies have envisioned, Powell nonetheless says she expects it can produce additional evidence that would prompt the federal judge presiding in Flynn’s case to toss out her client’s guilty plea because of “egregious government misconduct.”

In light of Flynn’s new legal posture, the federal prosecutors who obtained his initial guilty plea have said they may revisit their initial recommendation to Judge Emmet Sullivan that he sentence Flynn to one year of probation instead of prison time. But their sentencing memo is now on hold until the IG report comes out — raising the prospect that Flynn may indeed need Trump’s help to stave off a more severe punishment.

“All we want is justice to be done as we know he committed no crimes and was set up,” Michael Flynn’s brother, Joseph, said in an email to POLITICO when asked about a potential Trump pardon. He added that Powell “has it well under control.. and we are extremely thankful she is in our lives.”

Manafort, meantime, still has about six years to go on his prison sentence, which also covers a series of lobbying and witness-tampering crimes. His allies have been less public in their attempts to win Trump’s help — a year-old petition on Change.org asking Trump to commute Manafort’s remaining time in jail has less than 1,000 signatures. But the president’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, confirmed to the Washington Post in October that he’d recently been in touch with the former Trump campaign chief as he presses ahead with a controversial campaign to pin the blame on Ukraine for meddling on Hillary Clinton’s behalf in the 2016 presidential election.

Republicans say Trump may also have running room on the pardon front should he successfully fend off impeachment early next year in the Republican-led Senate.

“For the president’s sake, he should be looking at the political implications,” said Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King. “I’d say for all the specious reasons that have been manufactured by the Democrats, they’d probably call that reasons number infinity-plus-one and infinity-plus-two to impeach the president. So, I’d say let’s get this through first and then take a look at those circumstances.”

For the most part, presidents before Trump tended to stay clear of controversial first-term pardons. President Barack Obama granted five pardons and one commutation in fiscal year 2012, according to clemency data compiled by the Justice Department. Bush granted 12 pardons and two commutations during fiscal year 2004 as he geared up for his reelection race. President Bill Clinton didn’t give any pardons or commutations in fiscal 1996, though the year before that he granted 53 pardons and commuted three sentences.

No doubt, the most famous example of a president suffering at the ballot box over a clemency decision involves Gerald Ford, who arguably lost his 1976 bid for a full term because of his decision to give former President Richard Nixon a pardon after his resignation due to the Watergate scandal.

Lame-duck presidents have also gotten into hot water for exercising their pardon powers. Clinton faced significant scrutiny for issuing a pardon on his final day in office to Marc Rich, a fugitive international financier whose ex-wife had made donations to Democratic Party accounts and the Clinton Foundation. After losing his reelection bid to Clinton in 1992, President George H.W. Bush pardoned six former Reagan administration officials ensnared in the Iran-Contra scandal, including Caspar Weinberger, the defense secretary who was scheduled to go on trial in a case where Bush may have been implicated. The Bush pardons were backed by the attorney general at the time: William Barr.

While it might not be seen as politically savvy in the middle of an election year for Trump to pardon people like Stone, Flynn or Manafort, he has seen an advantage when getting involved in other high-profile cases that have been featured on Fox News and brought to his attention by allies.

Pete Hegseth, a Fox contributor, helped draw Trump’s interest to the latest military case, which culminated last month with full pardons for former Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, who were convicted of war crimes, and allowed for chief petty officer Edward Gallagher, who was stripped of military honors during his prosecution on murder charges, to have his promotion reinstated.

Bernie Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner and himself a convicted felon, advocated for Gallagher. Tim Parlatore, Gallagher’s attorney, said Fox News and Hegseth should also be credited with presenting the case on Trump’s preferred cable channel. “Whether you believe Fox News or not, the president took the time to hear the other side of the story rather than just believing the Navy,” Parlatore said.

Over the weekend, Trump welcomed two of the pardoned men to the stage at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida.

Several other possible pardons that Trump hasn’t touched still remain on the president’s radar. Parlatore recently submitted Kerik’s name for a pardon that would wipe clean a criminal record from a 2009 guilty plea for tax fraud and false statement charges and a since-completed four-year prison sentence.

Then there’s the so-called “Blackwater Four,” a group of four security contractors who were convicted and jailed for a 2007 shooting in Baghdad in which 17 Iraqis died, as well as the case of a Marine sniper group photographed urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters in 2011.

Trump himself has maintained interest in two convicted cast members from his reality TV show “Celebrity Apprentice” — Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor convicted in 2011 for trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama, and businesswoman Martha Stewart, who served five months in jail in the mid-2000s for obstructing justice and lying to investigators about a stock sale.

Illinois’ House GOP delegation has urged the president to leave the Blagojevich case alone. But Trump is hearing both sides. The former governor’s wife has appeared multiple times on Fox asking for the commutation of the remainder of her husband’s 14-year jail sentence. At an October fundraiser in Chicago, Trump reportedly polled supporters about letting the governor go free.

“I feel very badly. I think he was very harshly sentenced, but we’re looking at it very strongly,” Trump told reporters in August. “People feel very strongly about Rod Blagojevich and his sentence.”

A spokesman for Blagojevich, Mark Vargas, said “the family is grateful to President Trump, and they remain hopeful that their 11-year nightmare might soon be over. As the president has said publicly, 14 years was a very harsh sentence — and thanks to the president, we are now seeing broad bipartisan support for the former governor’s release.”

Beyond the Mueller probe, Trump’s pardon powers have drawn scrutiny from Democrats. The House Judiciary Committee sent a subpoena this fall to the Homeland Security Department seeking documents about the president allegedly offering pardons to government officials who break the law while implementing his immigration agenda. Before abandoning his 2020 presidential bid, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke proposed a constitutional amendment banning presidents from pardoning anyone tied to an investigation involving the president, or for family members.

Democrats in the middle of the current impeachment probe said Trump would only make matters worse for himself if he pardoned any of the former aides ensnared in the Mueller probe.

Read More

[deniscollins]

He Committed Murder. Then He Graduated From an Elite Law School. Would You Hire Him as Your Attorney?

In 1992, at age 19, Bruce Reilly killed a community college professor while high on drugs and engaged in sex and was sentenced to 20 years, followed by 25 years of probation. He was paroled in 2005 and graduated from Tulane Law School in 2014, but it’s highly unlikely that he could pass the “character and fitness” portion of the bar admissions process. If you were a law office manager, would you hire Mr. Reilly to do public policy research and advocacy: (1) Yes, (2) No? If yes, would you inform co-workers about his murder background? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decisions?

Last September, a group of academics and activists gathered at Princeton University to discuss the limits of artificial intelligence in public policy.

The longest debate concerned some of the most sensitive decisions in the justice system, like whether to release a person on bail or parole. Many in attendance were queasy about using algorithms to determine prison stays — not least because crime data tends to reflect racial bias. But one conference goer in particular stood out for his skepticism.

His name was Bruce Reilly. The deputy director of a New Orleans organization called VOTE, which advocates for the formerly incarcerated, Mr. Reilly is a minor celebrity in the field. He was a sounding board for the leader of the recent Florida ballot campaign that restored voting rights to up to 1.4 million former felons, and helped lead similar initiatives in Rhode Island and Louisiana.

Mr. Reilly, 45, has playful eyes, weathered skin and a boyish voice, and at Princeton, he wore a dark blazer that did not appear to be his natural uniform. Though it was barely midmorning, his shirt was already threatening to decamp from his pants as he turned to address a Princeton postdoctoral researcher sitting next to him.

“Statistically,” Mr. Reilly told her, “the safest person to let out of prison is a murderer.” The academic, Madelyn Sanfilippo, screwed up her face in apparent disbelief.

“You seem like a person who cares about statistics,” Mr. Reilly continued, arguing that people convicted of lesser crimes often cycle in and out of prison, while someone serving a long sentence for murder has typically matured out of crime by the time he is released.

“That makes sense,” Ms. Sanfilippo said, warming to the claim.

They talked amiably for a few more minutes. When they were done, Mr. Reilly turned and whispered in my ear: “She has no idea.”

‘You need to be broken’

In September 1992, a Rhode Island community college professor named Charles Russell picked up a 19-year-old hitchhiker on an interstate. The two men eventually made it to Mr. Russell’s home, where they smoked marijuana and talked books for hours.

About a week later, the hitchhiker returned. The two men talked and smoked again. But as Mr. Russell performed oral sex on him, the younger man became enraged. He picked up a knife and began stabbing at Mr. Russell’s neck.

Mr. Russell tried to defend himself with a fireplace poker, but the man wrested it from his hand and beat him until he stopped moving. As the younger man was dressing, Mr. Russell rose to his feet, picked up a small statue and charged. The man took the statue away and delivered several more blows, fatally crushing Mr. Russell’s skull.

A year later, acting on a tip, the police arrested Bruce Reilly. He confessed that he had snapped during the sexual encounter, and that the fight had escalated once Mr. Russell fought back.

“I was reacting — I had stuff built up inside of me,” Mr. Reilly told me. Facing life in prison, he accepted a deal to plead guilty to second-degree murder, and a judge sentenced him to 20 years, followed by 25 years of probation.

Many of Mr. Reilly’s high school friends were shocked, if not entirely surprised. He had always been precocious, but his home life was a mess — his mother was in and out of psychiatric institutions, and he lived in foster care for years as a young child. As a teenager, he dealt drugs and stole license plates. He was accepted to college but didn’t fill out the paperwork in time to qualify for financial aid. He was constantly hustling from one dead-end gig or sketchy apartment to another, until one night he ended up at the home of the man he would kill.

In prison, Mr. Reilly became something of an ascetic. He read and wrote for hours each day and strictly limited his TV intake. He accumulated a small circle of friends who believed he had special insight into surviving incarceration. They would write essays on a chosen topic, like whether democracy was the best form of government, and circulate them for feedback.

When they debated prison reform, their views were a mix of Old Testament justice and New. They came to believe that their dreary sentences were central to their rehabilitation.

“You need to be broken,” Greg Tovmasian, a member of the group, told me. “You need to be completely honest with yourself about why you’re in there. If you’re constantly on the phone, talking to people out there, your head is still in society.” The flip side, they believed, was that if a person had done his grappling and come through it, there ceased to be a point to keeping him locked up.

Mr. Reilly was often the most effective legal adviser his fellow inmates ever consulted. He spent hundreds of hours studying case law in the prison library and wrote dozens of petitions, briefs and motions. He helped at least two fellow prisoners reduce their sentences by several years. “It was like magic to people — like mixing chemicals,” said his friend Steven Parkhurst, who is still in prison.

Mr. Reilly was paroled in 2005. He enrolled at Rhode Island College, worked low-wage jobs and became active in a local civil rights group that’s now known as OpenDoors. The organization was campaigning for a ballot initiative to restore the voting rights of felons after their release, and Mr. Reilly eventually worked as a strategist and volunteer coordinator for the effort, which passed.

To help continue his work on behalf of the formerly incarcerated, Mr. Reilly applied to law school. Although he scored in the top 7 percent on the standardized entrance exam, he didn’t have a bachelor’s degree, and only one of more than two dozen schools accepted him. In the fall of 2011, Mr. Reilly arrived on the campus of Tulane University — and almost immediately confronted the question that still dogs him today.

The purest test of mainstreaming

The political consensus for bringing former convicts back into society’s mainstream has shifted faster this decade than at any other moment in modern history. Late last year, President Trump signed into law a watershed bill reducing prison sentences for a range of federal offenders, with backing from a coalition that ranged from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Koch brothers. Numerous cities and states have enacted “ban the box” laws, preventing employers from asking about criminal history on a job application. The Florida initiative whose leader Mr. Reilly counseled passed by a nearly two-to-one ratio.

But many of these recent gains have accrued to nonviolent offenders. What about rehabilitation for those who have committed a brutal crime?

“We as a culture have yet to confront forgiveness for someone who commits a crime that we universally agree” is abhorrent, Mr. Reilly once told me, using an expletive. “The drug offender — that person should not even be in jail,” he continued. “The hard questions are reintegration for people the criminal justice system was actually designed for.” People like him.

Since I started tracking his career, in 2013, I’ve come to think of Mr. Reilly, whom prosecutors once described as a manipulative “predator,” as the purest test of America’s commitment to mainstreaming ex-felons. Even as Mr. Reilly makes it his life’s work to advance the cause, he finds himself illustrating its limits. That’s both because his crime was so severe and because he is not satisfied merely to be housed or employed. He craves elite credentials and recognition, like advanced degrees and fellowships, and wants to work on cutting-edge legal issues.

Last summer, I attended a Soros Justice Fellowships conference in New Orleans with Mr. Reilly, who had been invited to appear on a panel about solitary confinement. Funded by the liberal billionaire George Soros, the organization behind the conference is one of the country’s largest financial backers of criminal justice reform.

As he collected his name tag from a table, Mr. Reilly glanced down at the other names and began identifying who had won various fellowships, grants and accolades. “I’ve applied to them all, have not gotten any of them,” he said. And then, referring to his efforts in Louisiana and Rhode Island, he added with a degree of pride: “But apparently you don’t need a fellowship to win voting rights.”

When Mr. Reilly got to Tulane Law School in 2011, he initially fell in with a circle of students interested in civil rights and unfazed by his past. “He straight-up told me he had been convicted of murder,” one classmate, Allyson Page, recalled. “I was like, ‘O.K., that’s cool.’ I wasn’t expecting that, but I didn’t care that much.”

But within a few weeks, another student began to broadcast Mr. Reilly’s criminal record across campus. Some classmates complained that his presence compromised their safety and would make it harder for them to land jobs.

The story — ex-murderer at exclusive law school! — was picked up by the popular legal blog Above the Law. An unnamed student wondered if, “when placed in one of the most stress-inducing environments in the United States, Mr. Reilly will reach his tipping point and live up to his violent past.” Another espoused a form of Nimby-ism: “I think felons should get a second chance. But why at Tulane? What are we, the law school for murderers?”

TV crews turned up near his house. A producer for “Dr. Phil” called Mr. Reilly on his cellphone; a reporter from “Inside Edition” staked out his apartment.

Publicly, David Meyer, the law school’s dean, was statesmanlike. Tulane’s admissions process “allows for the possibility of redemption even in exceptional circumstances of tragedy and hardship,” he told Above the Law. But privately, Mr. Meyer seemed as panicked as anyone. Susan Krinsky, the dean of admissions, said in an interview that Mr. Meyer had told her, “You have endangered this entire community.” (Ms. Krinsky left Tulane about a year later, and Mr. Meyer declined to comment.)

Mr. Reilly, fearing Tulane would revoke his admission, tried to lie low. But he soon realized he had to stop his classmates from getting their information secondhand, off the internet. And he tried to convince his peers, one at a time, that he belonged.

“Bruce was in the hallway — he was friends with people who were conservative, people who were liberals,” recalled Tony Viviani, a close friend. “One of the most staunch conservative guys was an Alabama grad. He was talking football with him, smacking right back.”

Two years later, when I was in New Orleans to give a talk, I arranged to meet Mr. Reilly for coffee. I was fascinated by how someone could live in two completely different worlds, one familiar to me, the other unimaginable. But as the appointment got closer, I started to worry. I had a daughter, a wife. Was it really such a good idea to schmooze with a murderer?

When we did meet, we chatted for nearly an hour about writing and fatherhood. (Mr. Reilly has a daughter from a relationship in Rhode Island.) He was humble and thoughtful, and I was immediately embarrassed by the vague scenarios I had played out in my head.

Still, to this day, I sometimes struggle to shake my mental image of his crime. And I can’t help thinking: If Mr. Reilly worked at, say, a top-shelf law firm, how many partners would claim the office next to his? Bunk with him on a corporate retreat? Introduce him to their spouse and children?

Although Mr. Reilly apologized to the Russell family at his sentencing hearing in 1996, it takes only a little probing to affirm how fresh his crime remains. His victim’s sister-in-law, Marilyn Rodriguez, told me that she and her two children had been especially close to Mr. Russell, and that his death had “made a mess of our whole family.”

“The hurt is still in our family,” she added. “It can’t be undone.”

Confined by his past

Mr. Reilly, who graduated from Tulane in 2014, would like to be able to practice law, but it’s highly unlikely that he could pass the “character and fitness” portion of the bar admissions process. He’s interested in data and internet privacy issues, but he’s hard-pressed to get a foothold in such fields.

After getting his law degree, Mr. Reilly searched unsuccessfully for a position that would suit his qualifications: policy jobs in Washington, entertainment-law gigs in Los Angeles, even a job with the Tribeca Film Institute in New York. He landed only two interviews and struggled to discuss his criminal record with prospective employers.

“Once you let the debate go there,” Mr. Reilly said, “now they’re visualizing you killing someone.”

Finally, after nearly six months piling credit card debt on top of his student loans, he landed a job in New Orleans as a paralegal at the Capital Appeals Project, which represents indigent people on death row. From there he moved to another criminal justice reform organization and eventually to VOTE.

Last summer, Mr. Reilly was part of a small team of activists that met with Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the National Football League, and executives for the New Orleans Saints. He briefly told his story, explaining how he was an impulsive teenager before committing his crime, but came out of prison an adult. He made a plea for the Saints and the league to throw their weight behind initiatives that would ease assimilation. The executives nodded sympathetically.

Mr. Reilly makes a quick impression with his intellect. When he was a law student, for example, it took him only a few hours of research to conclude that Louisiana’s ban on voting by felons on probation or parole probably violated the state’s Constitution, and a large group of legal scholars agreed. Still, the fact that Mr. Reilly has devoted his professional life to the rights of the formerly incarcerated — as opposed to a less personal issue like genetically modified foods, another law school interest — testifies to the way his past confines him.

In some ways, he confines himself. Mr. Reilly has a habit of leaning into stereotypes about felons, almost as a political protest, and I sometimes wonder if it is self-defeating. The T-shirts he favors do little to conceal his tattoos, and he leans heavily on jailhouse idiom when he speaks. There are frequent allusions to “bids” (tours in prison), “guys in the yard” (fellow prisoners) and “shankings” (stabbings with a makeshift weapon).

Race also complicates his upward trajectory in an uncomfortable way. After Mr. Reilly introduced me as a journalist to fellow reformers at the Soros conference, some responded with a measure of irritation: Criminal justice issues disproportionately affect minorities, and I was going to profile a white guy? From Rhode Island? Who went to a fancy law school?

Mr. Reilly is the first to concede the advantages he has over former inmates who are black or Latino. “I can go incognito as a white guy,” he said. But he is still pained by the skepticism his race sometimes provokes among progressives.

Then there is the continuing threat to his freedom, in which even a seemingly minor political dispute can escalate into a crisis.

In December, a judicial oversight committee in New Orleans ruled that a candidate for a local judgeship had made false statements about Mr. Reilly’s employer, VOTE. On the day of the ruling, the candidate, Marie Williams, applied for a temporary restraining order against Mr. Reilly, saying he had harassed her through social media, filed baseless claims against her and endorsed her opponent.

The temporary order was granted — Louisiana has a low threshold for such actions — and a judge found probable cause to believe that Mr. Reilly violated the order when his lawyer reached out to Ms. Williams to request that she withdraw it. Now a pending warrant for his arrest could send him to jail. Mr. Reilly’s lawyer hopes to resolve the matter this month, when a court will consider the case.

The sheer hysteria of a murder conviction

Mr. Reilly is encouraged by the growing number of formerly incarcerated people who have gained entree into elite professions and rarefied social strata. He cites with pride his friend Andres Idarraga, who spent time in prison for selling drugs and later earned a law degree from Yale and worked for the famed law firm Boies Schiller Flexner; and Reginald Dwayne Betts, an acclaimed poet who graduated from Yale Law after serving time for a carjacking. Neither of them, though, has a murder conviction.

A vanishingly small number of such people have even begun to claw their way toward mainstream respectability after serving their sentences. Michelle Jones, who published original historical research while serving more than 20 years for the murder of her young son, lost out on a place in a Harvard Ph.D. program when the school overruled its own history department. (She gained admission to New York University.)

Mr. Reilly’s prison friend Greg Tovmasian, who was convicted of second-degree murder, abandoned his application to the University of Rhode Island when he was told that he would have to meet with a university official to be considered. “I just wasn’t ready emotionally to face another parole board,” Mr. Tovmasian said. Instead he earned an economics degree at the smaller Rhode Island College.

Mr. Reilly believes that by telling his story, he can help diminish the sheer hysteria a murder conviction can inspire. But while he has been granted more audiences from the likes of Princeton and the New Orleans Saints, Mr. Reilly has not found that organizations outside the criminal justice field are rushing to work alongside him, in close quarters, for sustained periods. They see him as a source of information or a helpful perspective, but rarely as a potential colleague or friend.

At the Princeton A.I. conference, Mr. Reilly had a long and seemingly productive conversation about life after prison with a man named Chuck Howell, who had an impressive job at a company that manages federal research and development centers. But later, as the two men bantered about police departments and the issue of disciplining rogue cops, Mr. Reilly spun out an extended prison metaphor.

If a gang member wrongs an inmate from a different gang, he said, leaders from the offender’s group will typically agree to punish him on their own. From where I stood, Mr. Howell, who had seemed engaged and receptive at the beginning of the exchange, started to look uncomfortable.

“The problem with the cops is they don’t do it,” Mr. Reilly continued, meaning that police departments don’t rein in rogue officers. “If you were a real gang, you’d off that guy. I’m not saying off that guy — but take care of it.”

Mr. Howell went quiet. The conversation was never the same again.

[usnewsaggregator-blog]

Bronx cop blasted for kissing woman after her ex was arrested

New Post has been published on http://usnewsaggregator.com/bronx-cop-blasted-for-kissing-woman-after-her-ex-was-arrested/

Bronx cop blasted for kissing woman after her ex was arrested

A Bronx detective is under fire for making out with a woman after arresting her ex-boyfriend for assaulting her, the Daily News has learned.

But Detective Nicholas Chabert doesn’t feel he did anything wrong, testifying in court last month that the makeout session “was not improper.”

“The patrol guide says you cannot have a relationship with a known felon,” Chabert said smugly after being subpoenaed to testify at Jonathan Raboy’s trial. “It doesn’t say anything about having a relationship with a victim of a crime.”

Chabert, an 11-year veteran of the NYPD, is facing departmental discipline for the lip-locking session with Yesenia Arias, an NYPD spokesman said.

How a 4-year-old girl in cardiac arrest was saved by Bronx EMTs

“I wouldn’t call it a date,” Chabert, 45, testified about the romantic rendezvous. “I apologize on how the shadow of this casts on the arrest.”

Jonathan Raboy, the ex-boyfriend, is facing misdemeanor assault charges after Arias claimed he bent her finger on Dec. 13, 2015, causing a fracture. The couple has 4-year-old twins, a boy and a girl.

On Jan. 21, 2016, Raboy, 35, went to the 50th Precinct stationhouse and asked detectives to execute an order of protection from a Yonkers judge barring Arias from coming near him or their children. Chabert “refused to do so,” according to Raboy’s defense attorney, Howard Levine.

“He made statements that (Raboy) was taking advantage of Ms. Arias and he was trying to use her children against her,” Levine said. “He then took her upstairs and, an hour later, Jonathan was arrested.”

Cops bust four people in the Bronx, seize drugs and guns

“A mother should be with her children,” Chabert said at the time, according to Levine.

Two days later, on Jan. 23, cops arrested Raboy again after Arias claimed he violated an order of protection barring him from being near her.

Chabert didn’t make the arrest, but admitted in court that he was present when detectives questioned her and signed off on her statement to the police.

“I think from the very get go he was manipulating the facts to try and help (Arias) in her dispute with Jonathan,” Levine said. “He arranged that Jonathan would get arrested and he arranged the facts of the second arrest so that Jonathan would get arrested a second time.

“I think the Police Department needs to look into this, investigate and ask him hard questions,” Levine said.

Raboy is fighting the criminal charges.

“How does any civilian trust the NYPD when a domestic violence detective is willing to prosecute or tailor an arrest against somebody who is innocent so he could take advantage of the so-called victim here?” Raboy asked.

During his testimony on Oct. 27, Chabert admitted to driving to Arias’ home on Feb. 2, 2016, in his private vehicle to “talk about the case.”

Crooks steal man’s backpack, find nearly $200G inside

The two went to a bar near her home, then made out in his car and inside her apartment. Arias’ mother was home, but in another room.

Jonathan Raboy (l.), Yesenia Ariast’s ex-boyfriend, was arrested for assaulting her.

(Facebook)

“It was in the living room. It was the only place I’ve ever been (in the apartment),” he testified. “It was not planned to be a date.”

Chabert repeatedly claimed he didn’t remember much about Raboy’s arrests. And he was adamant that the makeout session “just happened.”

“We never intended to go that far,” he said.

Arias initially denied the romantic encounter, but admitted to it at Raboy’s trial, claiming they only talked about “personal matters” and had kissed passionately, according to Levine.

Arias couldn’t remember who initiated the kiss, the lawyer said. She refused to talk about her date with Chabert when reached Saturday.

“Should we talk about the domestic abuse I endured?” she asked. “This is backlash.”

Her attorney, Steven Goldman, confirmed that Arias and Chabert had a “single, nonsexual, date,” but it had nothing to do with the charges against Raboy.

“(It) happened after the arrest — which is how she got to know him,” Goldman said. “It’s kind of messed up. It’s created a distraction in the criminal case that wouldn’t otherwise exist. Clearly it was ill-advised. But that’s very different from saying he made a false arrest because he had the hots for my client. That is not the case.”

The NYPD chief of detective’s office and Internal Affairs Bureau questioned Chabert about his actions, which he initially denied, but ultimately confessed to, a source told The News.

During a second round of IAB questions on April 19, which was recorded, he admitted to fondling Arias’ breasts and kissing her. He said it happened only after the case was handed off to a domestic violence detective.

“In retrospect, now I think it was probably an error in judgment,” he told IAB, according to a recorded interview reviewed by The News.

The investigators questioning him quickly scolded him for romancing a crime victim.

“We’re not allowed to date complainants,” a lieutenant taking part in the IAB interrogation said. “There are strict guidelines on that. It’s also strict common sense.”

NYPD spokesman Lt. John Grimpel wouldn’t disclose the departmental charges Chabert is facing, citing Section 50-a of the state Civil Rights Law, which prevents the public disclosure of personnel records of uniformed officers, even though Chabert hasn’t been found guilty.

Attempts to speak to Chabert outside the courtroom were unsuccessful. A woman who answered the door at Chabert’s Westchester address said he wasn’t home and ordered a reporter off her property.

With Elizabeth Keogh, Andy Mai

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[attendantdesign-blog]

New Post has been published on Attendantdesign

New Post has been published on https://attendantdesign.com/computer-law-expert-says-british-hacker-arrest-problematic/

Computer law expert says British hacker arrest problematic

A laptop regulation professional on Friday defined the proof up to now supplied to justify the U.S. Arrest of a notorious British cyber security researcher as being tricky—an indictment so flimsy that it could create a weather of distrust among the U.S. Authorities and the network of information-protection professionals.

News of Marcus Hutchins’ arrest inside the United States for allegedly developing and selling malicious software capable of acquiring financial institution account passwords has shocked the cyber security community. Many had rallied at the back of the British hacker, whose brief thinking helped control the spread of the WannaCry ransomware assault that crippled thousands of computers in May.

Attorney Tor Ekeland informed The Associated Press that the records in the indictment fail to expose rationale. “This is a totally, very difficult prosecution to my thoughts, and I suppose it is bizarre that America authorities have chosen to prosecute someone who’s arguably their hero inside the WannaCry malware attack and potentially stored lives and hundreds, masses of lots, if not millions, of bucks over the sale of alleged malware,” Ekeland said. “This is simply bizarre, it creates a disincentive for all and sundry inside the information protection enterprise to cooperate with the authorities.”

Hutchins become Computer detained in Las Vegas British  hacker 

as he became returning to his home in southwest Britain from an annual amassing of hackers and facts safety professionals. A grand jury indictment charged Hutchins with creating and distributing malware called the Kronos banking Trojan.

Such malware infects net browsers, then captures usernames and passwords whilst an unsuspecting user visits a bank or other depended on location, allowing cyber theft. The indictment, filed in a Wisconsin federal court docket closing month, alleges that Hutchins and any other defendant—whose call was redacted—conspired among July 2014 and July 2015 to market in the supply of the Kronos malware on net boards, sell the malware and make the most of it.

The indictment additionally accuses Hutchins of making the malware. The problem with software program creation, however, is that regularly an application can include code written by more than one programmers. Prosecutors might need to prove that Hutchins wrote code with precise objectives. Ekeland stated that what is amazing to him from the indictment is that it does not allege any financial loss to any victims—or in any way perceive them. Besides that, laws covering aspects of computer crime are uncertain, frequently giving prosecutors extensive discretion.

“The simplest money mentioned in this indictment is … For the sale of the software program,” he stated. “Which once more is intricate because in my opinion of this, if the prison principle at the back of this indictment is accurate, well then half of of the US software industry is probably a gaggle of felons.” Another professional in computer crime, Orin Kerr from George Washington University’s law faculty, also took aim at the costs. Kerr said it is unusual, and elaborate, for prosecutors to move after someone definitely for writing or promoting malware—as opposed to the usage of it to similarly against the law. “The indictment is pretty naked bones, and we do not have all of the facts or even what the authorities think are the facts,” Kerr wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Post. “So at the same time as we cannot say that this indictment is, in reality, an overreach, we can say that the government is pushing the envelope in some methods and can or may not have the records it needs to make its case.”

Jake Williams, a respected cyber security

researcher, said he observed it tough to accept as true with Hutchins is responsible. The guys have labored on diverse tasks, which includes training material for better schooling for which the Briton declined payment. “He’s a stand-up man,” Williams stated in a textual content that. “I cannot reconcile the fees with what I recognize approximately him.” Hutchins, who lives along with his family within the city of Ilfracombe, England, and labored out of his bed room, has till Friday afternoon to determine if he desires to rent his own legal profession. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based totally digital rights organization, stated Friday it changed into “deeply worried” about Hutchins’ arrest and become trying to assist him “achieve good legal suggest.”

Hutchins’ mom, Janet, who has been frantically trying to attain her son, stated she was “outraged” by means of the arrest and that it was “highly unlikely” her son became worried because he spends a whole lot of his time combatting such attacks. The curly-haired pc whiz and browsing enthusiast observed a so-called “kill transfer” that slowed the unparalleled WannaCry outbreak. He then spent the subsequent 3 days combating the trojan horse that crippled Britain’s clinic community as well as factories, authorities agencies, banks and other groups around the sector.

Though he had usually labored beneath the moniker of MalwareTech, cracking WannaCry led to the loss of his anonymity and propelled him to cyber stardom. There had been appearances and a $10,000 prize for cracking WannaCry. He planned to donate the cash to charity. “I do not suppose I’m ever going back to the MalwareTech that everyone knew,” he informed The Associated Press at the time.

Do you face performance issues with your laptop or PC? Is your computer getting slower and slower to boot up and work on? If yes, read on for a few tips on how to make your computer faster.

Here goes:

1) There is no need to retain unused programs. So uninstall them. So how do you do that? Open Control Panel’s “Program and Features” page and go through the list of installed software. Be careful to leave programs your computer’s hardware needs, the publisher listed as PC maker’s name or as Microsoft.

2) Getting rid of temporary files including internet history and cookies should give you a large amount of hard disk space, speeding up your PC. Open “My Computer”, select your hard drive, usually C:/, select the Windows folder and open the folder titled “Temp”. Select all the files that are older than the current date and press delete key. Then go to Recycle Bin on your desktop and empty it.

3) Even if you make sure to regularly clean out all your temporary files, if your hard disk becomes 85% full, it’s going to have a slow effect on your computer’s speed. If you film videos or use your PC for recording television, you will want a hard drive above 1TB in size.

[thedawgsblog]

HAPPY FAILS TO YOU!!!

NOT THE ROY ROGERS & DALE EVANS SONG

BY Warren Yates

Finally, the persecution of the Carson 8 is drawing to a close. This agenda driven vendetta is taken on maniacal dimensions. The case is so faulty that the person who engineered and mastered this travesty of justice, Brigit Fladager has never stepped foot inside of the court room in Department 26. This is tantamount to Fladager saying “I don’t want nuttin to do with this mess”. This is the equivalent of Dr. Frankenstein refusing to take responsibility for the monster he created.

On April 10, 2017, Judge Zuniga will render her decision to hold all, some or none of the Carson 8 defendants over to stand trial. This preliminary hearing has been one of the longest in California history. In this case is drawn statewide and nationwide interest due to the status of the eight-people charged with the murder of Korey Kauffman. Among them a prominent attorney, 3 California Highway Patrolmen, two area businessmen and two members of the prominent attorneys family.

Those of you who of the following the commentaries on this case know that there is a cabal of mutts led by the head mutt Dist. Atty. Fladager and various other mutts under her direct control. There is more evidence showing that Fladager has engineered this vendetta against Frank Carson, who whips her like a redheaded stepchild in court, then any evidence presented that shows the guilt of any members of the Carson 8.

The district attorney has brought charges against numerous innocent people including Mayor Carmen Sabatino, bail bond business owner AJ Pontillo and former police officer Frank Drummond. All three were found innocent by a jury of their peers. In all these cases the same common denominator appears to be a DA investigator by the name of Bunch. He has come to be known as Capt. Crunch Bunch. Another player with Capt. Crunch is Steve Jacobson who is now known as “Jake from State Farm”.

It had been noted several times in court and in commentaries that Capt. Crunch as committed prevarications while testifying but he passes off those prevarications as being mistaken. Citizens who make prevarications while testifying our charge of perjury. No double standard here. Judge Zuniga stated in open court that State Farm Jake has poor investigation techniques. And the presumption is that he really should not be training any new investigators.

I happen to be watching an old Gunsmoke episode on TVLand and an actor whose name I didn’t catch in the credits was a dead ringer For Capt. Crunch Bunch. He was a snake oil salesman who had been selling whiskey to the Indians and waiving his gun all around while he was searching for wampum or some kind of documents at a bail bond agency, if you get my drift.

Amazingly, in that same episode there was an actress whose name I did not catch in the credits that bore a striking resemblance to Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Ferreira. The actress played the part of a saloon “Angel” at the Long Branch Saloon who went around promising various dregs of society that she can make their life a lot more pleasant and help keep them out of jail for their transgressions if they would play ball with her.

This episode of Gunsmoke had a happy ending. Marshall Matt Dillon ran the snake oil salesmen out of town on a rail and took his gun away and told him to try to be a man without having to wave a gun around. Miss Kitty threw the saloon “Angel” out on the street and told her to quit making promises she can’t keep and to go look for a job she can handle like flipping flapjacks on the cook wagon on a wagon train.

Interestingly during the several days of closing arguments by the defense and the persecution, various and sundry unnecessary law enforcement personnel felt the need to sit in court while wasting taxpayers money. There would be no more testimony or other evidence presented which means they had no business being there.

Among them was Jon “Don’t mention domestic violence around me” Evers and Special Agent “Jed Clampett” Brody who appears to be trying out for a part in a mountain man movie. He’s got a long way to go to make it in Hollywood. Actually I thought Special Agent Brady Brody or whatever, bears closer resemblance to “Piltdown Man”. (Google it) Just saying…

Earlier in the hearing it was discovered that Capt. Crunch Bunch had given Robert Woody a polygraph exam that he didn’t tell anybody about until it came out in cross-examination. Capt. Crunch Bunch used a team of geniuses from the California Department of Corrections who if brains were gasoline, neither one of them could power a flea on a motorcycle around the inside of a Cheerio!

So now we are going to reminisce about my input regarding Frick and Frak, Dumb and Dummer from CDC and their education or lack thereof and their certification from the Back Stabbers School of Polygraphy. Actually I think it should be called an institution because they all need to be institutionalized. So let’s go back in time now, enjoy:

8-22-16 Well today was a rare day when I get to come into court. Court started late this morning at about 10:39 AM. John Jefferson from the CDC was on the stand as he was the polygrapher that gave the test to Robert Woody. He’d been called to the stand by defense attorney Percy Martinez.

Either in response to Mr. Martinez’s questions or by objections from Mme. Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Ferreira, Jefferson related the following information: Special Agent Brody called Special Agent Jefferson to ask him to do a polygraph exam on a subject for the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office.

As Mr. Martinez began to voir dire Mr. Jefferson, he had asked Mr. Jefferson how many polygraphs he has administered. Mr. Jefferson replied “several “which I thought was quite odd as to why he wasn’t pinned down with the actual number at that time. Jefferson stated that when they got ready for the polygraph there was a problem with one of the cameras and he had to call Brody in to take care of the problem.

Jefferson was asked why he couldn’t find the polygraph results and he stated that it was because his employer changed a program and transferred the information to a second computer and THEN THE DOG ATE THE SECOND COMPUTER. Horror of horrors. Jefferson stated that there was a problem obtaining the video proprietary software and encryption.

Jefferson was asked if he did a pretest interview and he stated he did but it was not recorded. Mr. Martinez asked him if it is normal in polygraphs, that the video starts when Robert Woody or any other examinee walks into the room. Mr. Jefferson replied “I don’t recall”. Throughout this morning’s testimony by Mr. Jefferson or should I say Special Agent Jefferson, there were enough “I don’t recall” and “I don’t remembers” to qualify him for employment with the Stanislaus County Dist. Atty.’s investigators staff.

Mr. Jefferson then stated that he does not always record the pretest interviews and he doesn’t remember if he did at this time or not. He knows that the camera was not operating properly and he needed to get assistance from Special Agent Brody. HELP SPECIAL AGENT BRODY, HELP.

At this time Martha Carlton Magana had noticed that Special Agent Brody was sitting in the jury area by the prosecution table. She told the judge Special Agent Brody needed to be removed from the courtroom because he is in fact a witness. Ms. Magana further stated that she had noticed that Special Agent Brody was making facial gestures to Special Agent Jefferson on the stand.

Judge Zuniga concurred and told Special Agent Brody to leave the courtroom. When Special Agent Brody got up to leave, Special Agent Jefferson’s jaw dropped and it looked like he had just lost his best friend. From that point on Special Agent Jefferson became extremely nervous and jittery. It was as if he didn’t know for sure how to answer questions so they would not mess up the Dist. Atty.’s case and he had no “signaler” there for him. So, that’s the story of the end of Heckle and Jeckle. The, the ,the that’s all folks.

When Special Agent Jefferson testified earlier about the fact that the camera wasn’t working properly before interviewing Woody, Special Agent Jefferson stated that the camera should’ve been working properly and he should’ve checked it. Shoulda, woulda and coulda. We’ve all heard that before. Here!

The whole case against the Carson 8 is a myriad of shoulda, woulda and coulda’s. Now Webster Merriam dictionary defines a myriad as 1) 10,000 and 2) a great number. I think that definition #1 is probably closer to the facts than definition #2. You add that to all of the lies testiLIED to by the prosecution dirt bag witnesses for consideration in their cases and this whole stupid case BLOWS UP!!

Special Agent Jefferson was asked by Mr. Martinez where he did his training for polygraph. He stated it was at the Baxter School of Polygraph in Sacramento. And as I mentioned before when he was asked how many polygraphs he had done his answer was “several”.

SHAKING LIKE A PUPPY POOPING PEACH PITS

As I mentioned before, once Special Agent Brody had to leave the courtroom, Special Agent Jefferson became very nervous and fidgety. He’s probably wishing by now that he had never answered Special Agent Brody’s phone call that day back on April 24, 2014. This’ll teach him to leave his phone on silent from now on.

As Mr. Martinez was questioning him about his training at the; well let’s wait just a minute here people. Being the investigator I am, I decided to look up the Huckster, darned spell check I mean the Backster Poly School. Here’s a couple of nuggets from their webpage:

STUDENT ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS:

High School or equivalent graduate

18 years old

No misdemeanor convictions involving moral turpitude

No felony convictions involving moral turpitude or other felony convictions within the last 7 years.

So let’s see now, you can receive a certificate at least from this school, even if you are a convicted felon and it was more than seven years ago. I am aghast at the great reputation this school must have. So if you can walk, talk, have a heartbeat, $5000 plus in your hand and if you’re felony conviction is at least seven years and one day old, COME ON DOWN!

On the application that can be seen on the website, it requires three personal references. I wonder for the three personal references, if you can just list their prison numbers for those friends you left behind or if you actually have to use names. Gee, this is a great school.

From the looks of this bulletin on their enrollment website, it appears the state of Oklahoma has caught up with them: ***PRIORITY CHANGE NOTIFICATION (PE-195): Our scheduled Oklahoma City course had to be canceled due to new Oklahoma polygraph school licensure requirements. We have returned to our home base in San Diego. “HOME SWEET HOME”!

Okay people, I’m getting so excited hearing about this great school. Now I wonder getting federal funding for my education there and I want to know what kind of certificate I get, so here it is:

A certificate is issued for satisfactory completion of the academic phase of the course.

A final graduation certificate is issued after successful completion of a field project consisting of 20 polygraph examinations

This accreditation is not approved by the Board of Education so federal funds are not applicable.

This school currently does not have available sponsored programs, government or otherwise, to provide grants or to pay for portions of tuition fees.

Oh horse puckey!! Double darn!! Not approved by the Board of Education. No fed loan money. Crap!! If this ain’t a pile of Doo Doo. I can always just go commit a crime again and get three hots and a cot.

Getting back to the business at hand, Mr. Martinez asked special agent Jefferson if in his training, he was told that he is supposed to write a report after each test. Special agent Jefferson replied “Yes”. Special agent Jefferson was then asked did you write a report? Special agent Jefferson answered “No”. Special agent Jefferson was then asked, did you ever write a report? Special agent Jefferson stated “Yes”. Special agent Jefferson was then asked when did you write the report? Special agent Jefferson answered “August 17…………………………………………………………… after much hesitation he stated 2016.

Special Agent Jefferson was asked if he gave the report to an investigator and he stated “no”. Special Agent Jefferson stated that he gave the results to Special Agent Brody and two Robert Woody’s attorney verbally. Special Agent Jefferson went on to state that he formulated the questions for the test from information received from Special Agent Brody and Special Agent Bunch. This sounds like a bunch.

Mr. Martinez then asked Special Agent Jefferson Avenue he had discussed the results with Stanislaus County Dist. Atty. after the test and he stated “Yes”. This caused Mme. Chief Deputy district attorney Ferreira to raise in immediate objection. Mme. Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Ferreira went on and on and on and on. Come on Mme. Chief Deputy district attorney, take a breath”. Give it a rest.

Special Agent Jefferson then explained that a pretest interview is supposed to establish rapport, show that the polygraph is consensual and it makes the examinee feel at ease. All very nice. Special Agent Jefferson was asked if Woody made any unsolicited statements before the test. Here comes another “I don’t recall”.

Special Agent Jefferson was then asked if he had been told that Frank Carson had been involved in this case. Whoa!! Guess what? He said “I don’t recall”. Imagine that. Special Agent Jefferson was then asked if Special Agent Brody told him that Korey Kauffman was killed for stealing stuff from the Frank Carson property? Of course Mme. Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Ferreira objects. Her objection was overruled by Judge Zuniga. KAPOW, ZAP AND SLAP AGAIN.

Special Agent Jefferson was then asked if Special Agent Brody wanted a copy of the whole report recently. Saints preserve us, Mme. Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Ferreira again voices an objection stating “He is leading the witness Your Honor”! Judge Zuniga overruled her objection, KAPOW, ZAP AND SLAP AGAIN and stated “Yes he is and I’m letting him do it”! KAPOW, ZAP AND SLAP AGAIN. That’s three strikes in just two paragraphs people. Mme. Chief Deputy district attorney, “YOUR FIRED!!!!”. Well we can hope can’t we?????????????????????

Then Special Agent Jefferson was asked if he told Robert Woody that the test could exonerate him? I never thought I’d hear this again, his answer was “I don’t recall “. Special Agent Brody was then asked if Special Agent Bunch had requested him to perform the polygraph test. Then nervous Nelly began with well Special Agent Brody asked me who I guess he got the information from Special Agent Bunch who wanted the test done. Hey! This Special Agent Jefferson must have worked for Arthur Murray dance studio before he decided to become a “dedicated”, a loose term thrown around with the law enforcement involved in this case as a career. He’s only a beginner though at the Arthur Murray dance studio because not quite dancing around all the answers.

HOT NEWS FLASH!!! This afternoon Special Agent Jefferson was asked had to answer the question of how many polygraphs he had completed. It got narrowed down to less than five. Hey guess what folks! Special Agent Jefferson had not completed the necessary 20 polygraph examinations necessary to become certified and receive a certificate. So obviously the Robert Woody polygraph was one of Special Agent Jefferson’s “practice games “so to speak.

So here we have the District Attorney’s Office using unqualified people and they have had many, and try to pass them off as experts. Same old stuff.

The careful out there folks, there may be false charges coming to a home near you. YOURS.

Well due to my workload and running behind I need to cut this short now but I’ll be back again before you know it with more commentaries. And I certainly hope that when Brody and everyone else at the District Attorney’s Office to read this, they won’t think I’m picking on Brady, whoops I mean Brody. It’s just that when you hang around certain people, everybody gets their turn in the barrel.

Bye for now!

WARREN YATES COMMENTARY……. HAPPY FAILS TO YOU!!! NOT THE ROY ROGERS & DALE EVANS SONG BY Warren Yates Finally, the persecution of the Carson 8 is drawing to a close.