Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

-Lurid Crime Tales-

Hunter Biden Hires Bill Clinton's Impeachment Attorney to Combat GOP House Probes

2022-12-25

[Breitbart] Hunter Biden hired former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment attorney Abbe Lowell this week to combat the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the Biden family business.

Abbe Lowell, who engages with clients engulfed in political scandals, is one of the establishment’s top attorneys. He has represented many high-profile clients, including Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), former Sen. John Edwards, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Bill Clinton, and Jared Kushner. Lowell is a Brox native and a 1977 Columbia Law School graduate. In 1982, he ran for the Maryland House of Delegates on the Democrat ticket.

Lowell will now join Hunter’s legal defense with Kevin Morris, the lead attorney, Chris Clark, and Joshua A. Levy. Lowell will defend Hunter from the congressional probe, while Clark and Levy’s work has focused on preventing Hunter from being charged by the DOJ for tax and gun violations.

Link

-Lurid Crime Tales-

The Mueller Bombshell That Wasn't - Is This Really All They've Got ?

2018-12-09

[DailyWire] Special counsel Robert Mueller and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York filed sentencing memos for President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen on Friday. Despite Cohen’s cooperation with the special counsel investigation, prosecutors recommended the disgraced lawyer serve 51 to 63 months in prison.

President Trump’s opponents, who eagerly awaited the memos as #MuellerFriday trended on Twitter for hours ahead of the filings, are likely to be disappointed with their findings. The Southern District linked Trump to Cohen’s payments to women who claimed to have had an affair with the president, concluding, "Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1 [Donald Trump]." However, even this implied violation of campaign finance law rings hollow after prosecutors failed to convict ex-Senator John Edwards on a far clearer cut version of this charge in 2012, to say nothing of Trump's long history of similar payouts to women, making it difficult to prove these were campaign-specific and not just business-as-usual at the Trump Organization.

The special counsel’s sentencing memo for Michael Cohen proved even more disappointing for the collusion crowd. Mueller writes:

Link

Home Front: Politix

The Media's Latest Scam: Trump's Going to Be Impeached Because of the Michael Cohen Plea

2018-08-23

h/t Instapundit
One of the "it’s so horrible it’s funny" things about the Trump era has been all the "Wow! Pence better get ready because this time we’ve got him for sure" stories. Trump says something, a scandal breaks, the media reports that an anonymous person who may or may not exist has revealed a shocking crime and it's supposed to be all over! Yet, like Jason from the Friday the 13th series, Trump shrugs off the media’s ax to the forehead or Democrats’ shotgun blast to the chest like it’s nothing and he’s back doing what he does five minutes later while they pull their hair out.

The latest story of this sort is Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen pleading guilty to a number of crimes, all of them unrelated to Trump except for a campaign finance violation. Cohen paid off the porn stars Trump slept with and Trump paid him back.

First of all, is this a campaign finance violation at all? That is arguable because campaign finance laws, beyond the basics, are a murky, byzantine mess that only highly specialized lawyers can navigate and even they only get definitive answers when a judge rules.

Trump’s argument will probably be something akin to, "My personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid off those women I slept with and I reimbursed him. No campaign funds were used. Michael Cohen told me it was legally fine and I did it because I didn’t want to cause any embarrassment to my family." Is this true? We can’t know for sure at this point, but it certainly seems to be an extremely plausible argument. That is doubly so because Trump has a history of setting up nondisclosure agreements and paying out what could be considered "hush money."

Cohen claimed that this was done to influence the election, likely because he was promised less time in jail on his other charges if he’d be willing to agree to something that could be used to implicate Trump. If this were to go further, you’d be likely to see a he said/she said argument. Cohen, who’s just been convicted of numerous crimes, will claim his client knew he was breaking the law, did it specifically for purposes of influencing the election, and told him to do this. Trump will say that isn’t true and that he had no reason to believe anything illegal was going on because his lawyer, whose advice he trusted, told him it was perfectly fine.

All of this is on top of the fact that whether this is even a campaign finance issue is extremely dubious. Apparently, no campaign funds were used. Cohen was paid back and using your own lawyer to coordinate that kind of payoff seems reasonable. Pretty clearly, no married man would want that kind of information out there, so you can’t even definitively say it was done for the sake of the campaign.

That being said, some people might compare this to payoffs to a mistress from a John Edwards donor, but it’s not really the same thing. Trump ultimately used his own money to pay off the women via his lawyer. Edwards didn’t pay back his political donor, which made it much easier to argue that it was a backdoor campaign contribution. Yet and still, Edwards wasn’t convicted in court over that allegation and Obama’s Justice Department dropped the case.

Link

Home Front: Politix

'Congratulations to the baby daddy!': Trump's married communications director quits

2016-12-26

... just two days after being appointed as female staffer hints in series of tweets that he has been involved in a 'John Edwards' style sex scandal

[snip] Deputy communications director Jessica Ditto also reportedly joined the duo [Miller and Trump strategist and senior staffer AJ Delgado] at the Sapphire Las Vegas, it was reported at the time by the New York Post.

The strip club boasts of 70,000 square feet of topless entertainment and serves 'the finest variety of cocktails, wines, champagne and cigars,' according to its website.

On the night of the debate, Miller, Delgado and Ditto were all very active on social media.
Serious lapse in judgement. Mr. Miller got a "One of the three B's" "twofer."
Delgado shared a close-up selfie with the caption: 'We're very happy right now! Go Trump! What a debate!!'

Miller also shared a picture from the venue ahead of the debate's start with the caption: 'Let's do this #MakeAmericaGreatAgain.'
Provided true, whoever 'twas the spiller of the beans has done Mr. Trump (and the USA) a "Yuuuuuge" favor. Otoh, had this happened to the HRC admin., it would have probably resulted in a "Tragic Accident™"

Link

Home Front: Politix

Inside the Garden of Political Town Hall Plants

2016-01-08

[REALCLEARPOLITICS] On Thursday, CNN will host a town hall with President B.O. as part of his "final-year push to make gun control part of his legacy." In addition to sitting down with liberal anchor Anderson Cooper, the network says Obama will "take questions from the audience."

Uh-oh. Get out your best pruning shears and trowels. In an age of micromanaged partisan stagecraft and left-wing media enablers, there is no such thing as a spontaneous question.

CNN has a long history of allowing political plants to flourish in its public forums.

At the cable station's Democratic debate in Las Vegas in 2007, moderator Wolf Blitzer introduced several citizen questioners as "ordinary people, undecided voters." But they later turned out to include a former Arkansas Democratic director of political affairs, the president of the Islamic Society of Nevada, and a far left anti-war activist who'd been quoted in newspapers lambasting

Harry Reid
... the charismatic senator-for-life from Nevada, currently majority leader ...
for his failure to pull out of Iraq.

At a CNN/YouTube GOP debate two weeks later, the everyday, "undecided voters" whose questions were chosen included:

--A member of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual Americans For

Hillary Clinton
... sometimes described as For a good time at 3 a.m. call Hillary and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another Abel P. Upshur ...
Steering Committee.

--A young woman named "Journey" who questioned the candidates on abortion and whom CNN failed to properly identify as an outspoken John Edwards
...Former senator from North Carolina, former vice presidential candidate, former Democratic presidential contender. Edwards was noted for his Two Americas stump speech and for his pretty hair. People started to notice which of the two Americas he belonged to when he got a $400 haircut in his private plane. While his wife, Elizabeth, was dying of cancer Breck Boy was porking a hussy named Riehl Hunter, with whom he fathered a child, then paid one of his aides to claim that the baby was his. He is currently trying to explain to the friendliest judge he can find how he happened to use campaign funds to do all that, rather than dipping into his own considerable fortune...
supporter.

--A supposed "Log Cabin Republican" who had declared his support for Obama on an Obama '08 campaign blog.

--A supposedly unaffiliated "concerned mother" who was actually a staffer and prominent Pittsburgh union activist for the United Steelworkers -- which had endorsed Edwards for president.

--A supposed "undecided" voter who urged Ron Paul to run as an independent, but who had already publicly declared his support for former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's Democratic presidential bid.

--A staffer for Sen. Dick Durbin
...Senator-for-Life from Illinois and Democratic Party Whip. In April 2006, Time magazine identified Durbin as one of America's 10 Best Senators, so what's that tell you? He was the first United States Senator to support the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, then the junior senator from Illinois....
, D-Ill.; a former intern for Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., and a former intern for the Council on American-Islamic Relations
... the Moslem Brüderbund's American arm ...
Once a manipulative gardener, always a manipulative gardener. During the push for Obamacare
... aka the Affordable Care Act, an ineptly designed and worse executed piece of legislation designed to bring 17 percent of the U.S. economy under the direct control of the government. The previous iteration, known as Hillarycare, was laughed out of Washington. This stinker was passed on a party-line vote without being read...
, Democrat plants spread like kudzu across town hall propaganda events. At White House "citizen town halls" in 2009, Team Obama hand-picked not-so-random "random" questioners who included:

Link

Home Front: Politix

Can Hillary Clinton crumble?

2015-05-27

[NEWSDAY] Martin O'Malley
...former Democratic governor of Maryland and aspiring presidential candidate, known locally as The One-Man Economic Wrecking Crew. O'Malley was elected to his second term driven by union support and near-Stalinesque vote margins in Baltimore city (82%) and Prince George's County (88%)...
has good abs. And wasn't he was once mayor of Baltimore?
Also governor of Maryland, the man who imposed the rain tax, whose hand-picked successor went under in the last election not so much to a Publican as to "anybody but O'Malley's hand-picked successor."

That seems to be about the sum of what most Americans know about the former Maryland governor as he prepares to launch a presidential bid on May 30.
He's hoping that's all they ever find out about him.
O'Malley polls somewhere between zero and 2 percent in early Democratic primary surveys, a dozen points behind Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who's not even running.
As people learn more about him that should be where he stays.
But O'Malley is suddenly interesting, far more so than his anemic poll numbers would typically warrant. He matters because he's the sole candidate in the current Democratic field who could legitimately step in as the party's standard-bearer should Hillary Clinton's candidacy collapse. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (12 percent in the latest Economist survey) is an avowed socialist, which, thankfully, still makes him a non-starter in American politics. Vice President Joe Biden (11 percent), who is reportedly hanging around in the wings in case Clinton tanks, remains America's favorite crazy uncle. He's a hoot at Thanksgiving, but you don't want to see him behind the wheel.

O'Malley's the epitome if the Feelings™-talkin' Taxocrat. No matter how tired you become, do not let him hold your wallet.
O'Malley comes out of central casting.
He's counting on that. Being a pretty boy gets him the same bloc that went for John Edwards.
He's handsome, articulate and passionate about his beliefs.
How can he be "articulate" when he's burying his recent past? Though I guess it does take something like articulateness to evade so many crucial questions.
He stands decidedly to Clinton's political left,
Somewhere between Kamenev and Zinov'ev...
but he has the clean-cut looks of someone who wouldn't spook the American public in a general election.
A Prell user, if I'm to judge...

Not many of those nowadays.

Indeed, when he's not posing shirtless for cameras in beach photo-ops, he looks like the Brooks Brothers conservative Aaron Sorkin might conjure for a new HBO series. And at 52, O'Malley is vibrant. He appears to be reaching his prime, whereas Clinton, rightly or wrongly, seems to have exceeded hers.
She has "Sell by November, 2008" tattooed on her left thigh...
It's not so much that her past is wearing on her, it's that it's catching up with her.
Whereas O'Malley thinks he can outrun his...
It's a marvel to watch Clinton at present. It's as if she's suspended in air. She's the prohibitive favorite to be the Democratic nominee while carrying at least 1,000 pounds of baggage, with more seemingly being added by the day. The big question is whether she can continue to defy gravity. It's possible she can. But it's probable that she eventually falls to earth.
Crash. Burn. No survivors. No insurance.

Link

India-Pakistan

Bar president, lawyer killed in clash between lawyers and police in Sialkot

2015-05-26

[DAWN] SIALKOT: Protests erupted in several cities across Punjab after two lawyers — including Daska Bar Association President Rana Khalid Abbas — were killed and two others wounded on Monday during a clash between protesting lawyers and police in Daska tehsil of Sialkot district in Punjab.
Has anyone ever heard of lawyers thumping police anywhere else in the world?
Lawyers in various parts of Multan, Faisalabad and Gujranwala are staging protests against the killing of their colleagues. Several lawyers also resorted to attacks on police personnel and mobile vans, according to TV reports.
I don't think they feel disgrace like we do.
Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court took notice of the killings and summoned the heads of various lawyers organisations. The CJ also sought a report from the Daska district and sessions judge as a meeting went under way in this regard.
You'd think that because of common cultures and backgrounds you'd see such things in India and Afghanistan, too. But Pakistain is the only place I've ever heard of where the lawyers run riot inside and outside the courtroom.

During the meeting, it was decided that Rangers personnel would be sought to maintain the law and order situation in the violence-hit areas.
Somehow the picture of a trial lawyer heaving a brick through the windshielf of a police van does not compute. Not even John Edwards would do such a thing. At least I don't think he would.

Of course not. Such active activity might mess up his hair.

Earlier, officials of Daska Tehsil Municipal Administration (TMA) along with SHO of Daska city police station Shehzad Warraich were conducting an anti-encroachment drive in Sialkot's Daska tehsil when local residents and lawyers staged a protest, seeking more time from authorities.
Despite the number of lawyers infesting its courtrooms, Pakistain doesn't have an actual system of real property deeds.
The SHO opened straight fire to disperse the protesters as a result of which a pedestrian and three lawyers, including the Daska bar president, sustained gunshot wounds.
"Straight fire" means they waited until they saw the whites of their rolling eyes. Too bad about the innocent pedestrian. He shoulda kept his eyes closed.
The injured were shifted to Civil Hospital Daska where Rana Khalid Abbas and another lawyer succumbed to their wounds during treatment.
"Yer honor... Rosebud!"
"I object, yer honor! [WHEEZE!] I am undone!"
Fear and tension gripped the area after the incident as lawyers and area residents took to the streets protesting against the action. Businesses and markets also closed down after the clash.
Yeah. Fear and tension.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Breck Boy Hanging Law Shingle Again

2013-11-20

[DEALBOOK.NYTIMES] Before he served as a United States senator, before he made a run at the presidency and before his political career collapsed amid a sex scandal and fraud trial,

John Edwards
...Former senator from North Carolina, former vice presidential candidate, former Democratic presidential contender. Edwards was noted for his Two Americas stump speech and for his pretty hair. People started to notice which of the two Americas he belonged to when he got a $400 haircut in his private plane. While his wife, Elizabeth, was dying of cancer Breck Boy was porking a hussy named Riehl Hunter, with whom he fathered a child, then paid one of his aides to claim that the baby was his. He is currently trying to explain to the friendliest judge he can find how he happened to use campaign funds to do all that, rather than dipping into his own considerable fortune...
was a trial lawyer.

Now, Mr. Edwards is returning to his roots and opening a new law practice. The plaintiffs' firm, Edwards Kirby, reunites him with his former partner, David F. Kirby, and includes on its payroll his eldest daughter, Cate Edwards.

"The reason we formed this firm is because we all believe in the same thing -- in standing up for the disenfranchised and those who need an equal chance," Mr. Edwards said in a telephone interview from his offices in Raleigh, N.C. "That's why we exist."

The path back for the 60-year-old Mr. Edwards began in earnest in May 2012, when a federal jury in Greensboro declared a mistrial on five corruption charges and acquitted him on one more. Prosecutors charged Mr. Edwards with misusing nearly $1 million in campaign donations to hide a pregnant mistress as he reached for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.

Mr. Edwards walked out of court with his law license intact and vindicated legally, but the blow to his family, reputation and ego was devastating.

For nearly six weeks, a jury -- and by extension, a nation -- heard about Mr. Edwards's most intimate sexual secrets and the string of public lies he told regarding his affair with his campaign videographer and her subsequent pregnancy. The trial laid bare Mr. Edwards's efforts to conceal his mistress from his wife, Elizabeth Edwards, an accomplished lawyer who was engaged in a public fight with breast cancer.

Since the trial, Mr. Edwards has done much to repair his family and personal life. He has remained based in his sprawling home in the countryside not far from Chapel Hill, tending to Emma Claire, 15, and Jack, 13, two of the four children he had with Mrs. Edwards.

His son, Wade, was killed in a car wreck when he was 16.

Mrs. Edwards had separated from Mr. Edwards in 2010, but never legally divorced him, and died in December of that year.

Link

Home Front: Politix

New Era of Open Government

2012-10-19

Eric Holder, attorney general under President Barack Obama, has prosecuted more government officials for alleged leaks under the World War I-era Espionage Act than all his predecessors combined, including law-and-order Republicans John Mitchell, Edwin Meese and John Ashcroft.

The indictments of six individuals under that spy law have drawn criticism from those who say the president's crackdown chills dissent, curtails a free press and betrays Obama's initial promise to "usher in a new era of open government."

The Obama administration has prosecuted more leakers of classified information to the news media than Republican predecessors.

Thomas Drake, a whistle-blower and former analyst at the National Security Agency, talks about the personal and professional toll resulting from an allegation that he gave a reporter classified information about inefficiencies and cost over-runs in an NSA surveillance program. Drake, who was prosecuted in 2010 by Obama's Justice Department under the Espionage Act and maintains he never shared classified information, spoke this week to Bloomberg's David Ellis.

In 2009, former FBI linguist Shamai Leibovitz was indicted for handing over transcripts of government wiretaps of the Israeli embassy in Washington to a blogger. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

"There's a problem with prosecutions that don't distinguish between bad people -- people who spy for other governments, people who sell secrets for money -- and people who are accused of having conversations and discussions," said Abbe Lowell, attorney for Stephen J. Kim, an intelligence analyst charged under the Act.

Lowell, the Washington defense lawyer who has counted as his clients the likes of Jack Abramoff, the former Washington lobbyist, and political figures including former presidential candidate John Edwards, said the Obama administration is using the Espionage Act "like a club" against government employees accused of leaks.

Despite Transparency Promise, U.S. Denies More Than 300,000 Information Requests in One Year.

The prosecutions, which Obama and the Justice Department have defended on national security grounds, mean that government officials who speak to the media can face financial and professional ruin as they spend years fighting for their reputations, and, in some cases, their freedom.

Link

-Election 2012

Convention devoted to women celebrates Ted Kennedy unironically

2012-09-05

I've got to say, in all sincerity: I appreciate their brazenness in building a convention around the theme of a "war on women" while not only inviting Bill Clinton to be a headline speaker but having a video tribute to Teddy to start things off. They're all but admitting that their pretense of moral superiority really is just a pose taken for political effect. If John Edwards had walked out onstage to a standing ovation after this clip ended, it would have been one of the most honest moments in recent convention history. Alas, a missed opportunity.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Seven dead in 'terror' gun attack on US Sikh temple

2012-08-06

MILWAUKEE -- A gunman attacked worshippers on Sunday at a suburban Sikh temple in the midwestern United States, killing at least six people before he was himself shot dead by police.

Not entirely sure yet that this is 'domestic terrorism' as opposed to a psychopath/sociopath like Aurora.

The police commander at the scene in Oak Creek, near Milwaukee in Wisconsin, said he and federal agents were treating the mass shooting as a suspected act of "domestic terrorism," though the shooter's motive was unclear.

Oak Creek Police Chief John Edwards told reporters that his officers had responded to a 911 call and raced to the temple, where one was "ambushed" and shot multiple times before a colleague took down the gunman. The suspect died, as did six others shot in and near the temple. Three men, including the wounded officer, were taken to a Milwaukee hospital, where a medic said they were in "critical condition."

Japal Singh, 29, spoke to several fellow parishioners about what happened and said that while people were still confused, some things were now clear. A man who dropped his father off at the temple, known to Sikhs as a "gurudwara," said he saw the shooter -- described as a white man with a bald head -- kill two people in the parking lot.

"Then he went down inside the temple and then went into the room where the holy scripture is kept and basically shot more people there, multiple people there," said Singh, a combat medic in the US Army reserve.

Witnesses told Singh it was "a horrible place, a lot of blood and basically screams of everybody. Children, women, everybody. It was chaotic inside. People didn't know what was going on."

Police did not confirm the identity of the shooter, although media reports said that the FBI had confirmed his name and had launched a raid at his home.

"We looked at it, the scope of it and what the implications might be. We are treating it as a domestic terrorist incident," Edwards said, adding that there was thought have been only one shooter and that the scene was secure.

Police tactical units were on the scene, along with officers from multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Sapreet Kaur, executive director of the Sikh Coalition, which represents the community in the United States, said police should be allowed to investigate but he suspected a hate crime had taken place.

"There have been multiple hate crime shootings within the Sikh community in recent years and the natural impulse of our community is to unfortunately assume the same in this case," he said. "Americans died today in a senseless act of violence, and Americans of all faiths should stand in unified support with their Sikh brothers and sisters."

Link

-Short Attention Span Theater-

Rielle Hunter Reveals John Edwards' Multiple Mistresses

2012-06-19

[ABC News] Rielle Hunter was

John Edwards'
...Former senator from North Carolina, former vice presidential candidate, former Democratic presidential contender. Edwards was noted for his Two Americas stump speech and for his pretty hair. People started to notice which of the two Americas he belonged to when he got a $400 haircut in his private plane. While his wife, Elizabeth, was dying of cancer Breck Boy was porking a hussy named Riehl Hunter, with whom he fathered a child, then paid one of his aides to claim that the baby was his...
~~most recent~~ last mistress, but not his first or only one, she claims in a revealing tell-all memoir obtained by ABC News.

In the bombshell book, "What Really Happened" set to hit stores on June 26, Hunter reveals that Edwards, a two-time presidential candidate, had affairs with at least two other women dating back 20 years, and did not reveal the truth about his former relationships until 2011, two years after Hunter appeared before a grand jury.

The release of the book, which she wrote in an effort to explain her relationship with Edwards to their daughter, coincides with an exclusive interview with ABC's Chris Cuomo, which will air this Friday, June 22.

Link

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