OpenCDA

June 30, 2016

Boy, Were We Wrong!

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , , — Bill @ 2:00 pm

Lynch copyIn our OpenCdA posts on November 18, 2014, and December 5, 2014, we expressed our unqualified support for the US Senate to quickly confirm President Obama’s nominee, Loretta Lynch, to be the new United States Attorney General.  Our support was based on her responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee and Lynch’s performance as a straight-up US Attorney in the Eastern District of New York.

But then yesterday in a television news report from ABC15 News Arizona in Phoenix, we first learned that Attorney General Lynch and former President Bill Clinton met privately for 15 to 30 minutes on her airplane at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.  A few more details about the meeting were in today’s online Washington Post story headlined Attorney general meets with former president Clinton amid politically charged investigation into his wife’s email.

Both Lynch and Clinton denied that anything in their conversation was inappropriate.

Maybe, but we know that Lynch is obviously an experienced federal prosecuting attorney, and Clinton was at one time a practicing attorney.  Without any doubt, both Lynch and Clinton knew any private meeting between them would create an appearance of impropriety and be a very serious breach of legal ethics and professional conduct.  Conceivably, in Clinton’s case, his conduct could rise to the level of obstruction of justice.

OpenCdA would like to believe that AG Loretta Lynch was blindsided, that neither she nor her staff had agreed in advance to meet with Clinton.  Former president Clinton is a proven liar, so we do not believe his version of this story, that he just happened to be at Sky Harbor at the same time Lynch was and that he spontaneously decided to meet with her.

Unless there had been prior coordination of such a meeting, Lynch’s security detail should have stopped Clinton at the bottom of the stairs to her aircraft.  Clinton should never have been allowed to board her aircraft.  Lynch should have instructed her staff to politely but firmly decline to allow Clinton on board to meet with her and remind him of how such a meeting would appear.   It was the AG staff’s job to politely but firmly deliver that message to Clinton.  Once the AG’s staff had informed Clinton that the AG would not meet personally with him, it became the duty of the FBI SAs on her security detail to prevent his unauthorized boarding of her aircraft, physically if necessary.

AG Loretta Lynch had the duty, the authority, and the “muscle” to prevent former president Clinton from being in a position to  compromise her objectivity and integrity in making a charging decision about Hillary Clinton.  She failed.

Lynch’s failure of duty taints any decision she might be asked to make about Hillary Clinton’s alleged criminal conduct.

OpenCdA believed that after the fetid stench of Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch would be an ethical and professional breath of fresh air at the top of the US Department of Justice.

Boy, were we wrong!

June 21, 2016

Corrupt Congressman Uses Non-Profits and Charities to Launder Money

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: — Bill @ 4:36 pm

Chaka_Fattah_official_House_photo2Corrupt Pennsylvania Congressman Chaka Fattah, Sr. is likely going to be headed to a federal prison after being convicted of participating in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit bribery, bribery, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, mail fraud, money laundering conspiracy, money laundering, bank fraud, false statements to a financial institution, six counts of mail fraud, and five counts of falsification of records.

The scheme Fattah and his co-conspirators cooked up is well-described in the June 21, 2016, press release issued by Zane David Memeger, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

To make it easier to follow, OpenCdA is going to reduce the essence of the press release to several easily-digestible bullet points.  (more…)

June 20, 2016

NYPD Brass Arrested — Corruption

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , — Bill @ 12:52 pm

NYPDCorruptAccording to a press release from Preet Bahrara, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, NYPD Deputy Chief MICHAEL HARRINGTON, Deputy Inspector JAMES GRANT, and Sergeant DAVID VILLANUEVA were arrested today, along with a Brooklyn-based man, JEREMY REICHBERG, on bribery charges.

“Harrington, Grant, and Villanueva were charged in Manhattan federal court with conspiring to commit honest services wire fraud for a bribery scheme involving the receipt of tens of thousands of dollars in meals, trips, home renovations, and other benefits in exchange for an array of official NYPD actions, including private police escorts, ticket fixing, and assistance in settling private disputes.  VILLANUEVA, formerly a supervisor in the NYPD’s gun licensing division, was charged in Manhattan federal court with bribery offenses in connection with his receipt of cash bribes to expedite and approve gun licenses.”

Here is a link to an Associated Press story which appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune.  It was headlined NYC police officials charged in bribery corruption scandal.

The New York Daily News headline is more bombastic:  NYPD officials busted in corruption investigation took ‘substantial bribes’ from de Blasio fund-raiser, including hookers:  Criminal complaint.

For those readers wanting more specific details, here are links to the U.S. v. Grant Harrington Reichberg Complaint, the U.S. v. Villanueva and Lichtenstein Indictment, and the U.S. v. Ochetal Information.

The investigation and resulting criminal charges are relevant to those of us in northern Idaho.

The charges should remind us that law enforcement officers at all ranks are susceptible to bribes offered by people of wealth and influence.   The honest ones resist; the corrupt ones don’t.

In a state such as New York where restrictive laws make it nearly impossible for an average citizen to get one of the three types of concealed weapons permit, those extra-special friends of the law enforcement brass will have no difficulty at all securing one.  The Ochetal Information linked above describes how NYPD officials took bribes to make sure the “right” people got CWPs.

Finally, political party affiliation will not discourage an aggressive and honest US Attorney from pursuing some offenders.    Competent US Attorneys who pursue politically sensitive prosecutions without regard to political party influences and potential career-affecting consequences effectively insulate themselves from punitive dismissal.

US Attorneys who refuse to look at public corruption in their district only encourage it.

June 15, 2016

Public Corruption Bullet Points

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: — Bill @ 6:20 am

Calderon|

Another corrupt public official will likely be headed off to the federal hoosegow according to Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times story headlined Former state Sen. Ron Calderon’s guilty plea in corruption case marks blow to political dynasty.

OpenCdA hopes readers will take time to carefully read the entire story written so informatively and understandably by LA Times writers Joel Rubin and Patrick McGreevy.

Here are a few bullet-point highlights that caught our attention. (more…)

June 14, 2016

She Hopes…

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , — Bill @ 7:30 pm

Clinton 100OpacityThe Hill article titled Russian hackers stole DNC’s research on Trump reveals that, “Two separate Russian government hacking groups that did not appear to be working together infiltrated the DNC’s systems.”  “… hackers also targeted the campaigns of Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee; and Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee; as well as several GOP political action committees.”

But according to the Associated Press article titled Russian hackers breached Democratic Party’s computers, “Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state raised questions of how well her personal system was protected from intrusions; her campaign has said there’s no evidence it was breached.” [emphasis ours]

Unquestionably the Clinton private email server was targeted.   Unquestionably Clinton ordered that some and maybe all its content was erased; better yet from her viewpoint if it had been securely wiped.

Clinton is not stupid.  It seems reasonable that her effort to delete information on the server was to have also hidden  any evidence of a hostile breach as well.  The absence of evidence of hostile penetration bolsters her case which first professed there was no classified information on the server.  Evidence of hostile penetration increases the likelihood that valuable intelligence had been gleaned from her email traffic.

It is a fallacy that only classified information has value.  Open-source information, unclassified information, that reveals thought processes, personal weaknesses, chronic illnesses, behavioral disorders, medications, and personal desires and failures can often be of as much value as information with seemingly stratospheric classifications and compartments.

Some of our earlier posts on the Clinton email server issue explained the importance of the damage assessment being conducted by the Intelligence Community.

As much as Hillary Clinton hopes that little or none of the classified and compartmented information on her unlawful private email server will be retrieved by the Intelligence Community investigators, she also hopes that any evidence of outside penetration by other nations’ intelligence services will have been obliterated by her actions.  That’s part of the plan to conceal the damage her illegal use of the private email server has done to national security.  She hopes …

June 1, 2016

And In a Related Matter …

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: , — Bill @ 4:54 pm

Clinton 100OpacityIn a report headlined Survey:  More than half of corporate CEOs prefer Clinton over Trump, The Hill website is reporting “More than half of Fortune 500 CEOs [who responded to the survey] say they would prefer Hillary Clinton to win the White House instead of Donald Trump.”

And in a related matter, a note left scribbled on the wall of a McEuen Park porta-potty by an occasionally sober source informed OpenCdA that acting on a recommendation from the Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton has engaged the services of the often used but rarely mentioned Cayman Islands consulting firm of Bakhshesh, Baksheesh, Mordida, and Hùi Lù.   Apparently the State Department Inspector General’s report about Hillary Clinton’s email server has renewed the candidate’s concern about her criminal liability.  B-B-M & H has been retained to act as Clinton’s negotiator with the US Department of Justice.

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