Thursday, August 25, 2022

Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't


The day after Torrance police shot Christopher DeAndre Mitchell in 2018, his mother and a dozen of his loved ones staged a protest outside the department’s headquarters.

At the same time, a group of officers — including the two who had killed Mitchell — were discussing the situation via text message.

“Was going to tell you all those [N-word] family members are all pissed off in front of the station,” one wrote, according to court documents recently reviewed by The Times.

Court records show the officers later mused about what might happen once the identities of those who shot the 23-year-old became public.

“Gun cleaning Party at my house when they release my name??” one asked.

Yes absolutely let’s all just post in your yard with lawn chairs in a [firing] squad,” another replied.

Eight months ago, a Los Angeles Times investigation revealed portions of racist and homophobic text messages exchanged by at least a dozen Torrance police officers, a scandal that sparked an investigation by the California attorney general’s office.

Criminal cases in which the officers were involved continue to be dismissed, and at least one man has been released from prison. Lawsuits filed against officers involved have already cost Torrance more than $10 million. Still, most of the officers implicated remain employed by the city.


The state attorney general’s office filed a subpoena in May for thousands of pages of Torrance police records, but officials have declined to provide updates on the state investigation. Despite critics’ calls for a civilian board to oversee the Police Department — as Los Angeles has — there’s little evidence that Torrance officials have taken tangible steps toward reform since the scandal exploded.

And earlier this year, another trove of offensive texts came to light.

In response to a court filing from officers implicated in the scandal, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office submitted an exhibit containing all 390 “anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic or transphobic remarks” allegedly made by the officers between 2018 and 2020. The documents, which were heavily redacted, included the comments about Mitchell’s loved ones and contained racist cartoons of Black and Latino residents as well as remarks about lynching suspects and killing Black children.

Officers have long been trying to suppress evidence of the texts, which were found last year shortly before prosecutors charged former Torrance police officers Christopher Tomsic and Cody Weldin with spray-painting a swastika inside a car.

A search warrant executed as part of that case found Tomsic, Weldin and at least 15 other officers had been exchanging racist, violent and homophobic messages for years, court records show. The officers’ attorneys argued the search went way beyond the scope of the criminal investigation, so most of the texts should be barred from use in prosecutions or internal disciplinary hearings.

Ironically, it was that move to suppress the texts that made them available, after the district attorney’s office filed its report on the messages in court.
 
Racist cops cost taxpayer billions in lawsuits and kill thousands every year, and yet we continue to put up with these state-sanctioned murder gangs.

We should do much, much less of that.

Black Lives Still Matter.

 

A Major Case Of Diary Mens Rea

The Florida couple that stole Ashley Biden's diary to use as opposition research against her father Joe Biden in 2020 have plead guilty to a federal charge of interstate trafficking in stolen goods.
 
Two Florida residents pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to trafficking in stolen goods for selling a diary and other personal effects of President Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley Biden, the Justice Department said.

The criminal charges are the first to emerge from a federal investigation into how, prior to the 2020 presidential election, the journal reached the conservative video outlet, Project Veritas. The group has said it paid for rights to the publish the diary, but never did so because it couldn’t authenticate it. Contents from the diary later emerged on a more obscure right-wing site.

Last November, the FBI carried out search warrants at the home of the founder of Project Veritas, James O’Keefe, and two of his colleagues, in connection with the investigation. None of those individuals have been charged, but O’Keefe has denounced the raids as an attack on press freedom.

In a Manhattan federal court hearing Thursday, Aimee Harris, 40, of Palm Beach and Jonathan Kurlander, 58, of Jupiter each pleaded guilty to a single conspiracy charge stemming from their involvement in selling the journal, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan said in a statement.

“Harris and Kurlander stole personal property from an immediate family member of a candidate for national political office,” Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. “They sold the property to an organization in New York for $40,000 and even returned to take more of the victim’s property when asked to do so. Harris and Kurlander sought to profit from their theft of another person’s personal property, and they now stand convicted of a federal felony as a result.”


Both defendants pleaded guilty as part of agreements with prosecutors. Kurlander has agreed to cooperate with investigators as part of his deal, Williams’ office said. Details of the plea agreement were not immediately available. Each defendant faces a maximum possible sentence of five years in prison, but defendants are typically sentenced under federal guidelines that usually call for a sentence well below the maximum.

A White House spokesperson referred a request for comment on the charges to the Justice Department. A lawyer for Ashley Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the developments.

 

And while O'Keefe and his merry miscreants at Project Veritas continue to scream about "jounalistic protections" keep in mind that it's not the Biden administration or liberals who want to get rid of those protections.

No, that would be Justice Clarence Thomas and the conservatives on the Roberts Court.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Hair Trumpenfuror wants Mitch McConnell put out to pasture again, but given the half-dozen other times he's called for McConnell's ouster, I really don't think anyone cares.

Former President Trump on Wednesday called on Republicans to boot Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) from his post as Senate minority leader, accusing the senator of being a “pawn for the Democrats.”

In a statement, Trump cited a Wednesday story from The Federalist about McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao’s alleged ties to China in calling for the senator’s ouster from his longtime leadership post.

“Mitch McConnell is not an Opposition Leader, he is a pawn for the Democrats to get whatever they want,” Trump said in his statement. “He is afraid of them, and will not do what has to be done. A new Republican Leader in the Senate should be picked immediately!”

Trump has feuded with McConnell, who he has dubbed “Old Crow,” since the Senate leader denounced the former president in Congress for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Over the weekend, the former president slammed McConnell for making remarks last week about “candidate quality,” in a reference to Republicans running for Senate, a number of whom were hand-picked by Trump. McConnell has said the race for Senate control in November will be close.

Trump also took a dig at Chao, his former Transportation secretary who resigned from office one day after the Jan. 6 attack, calling her McConnell’s “crazy wife.” In Wednesday’s message, he called her “Coco.”

Last year, Trump also called for Republicans to select a new Senate leader to boost the party’s chances of retaking Congress in 2022.
 
Honestly, McConnell's successfully evil manipulations of federal judiciary nominations during the Trump regime and brazen denial of Merrick Garland's SCOTUS seat are among reasons why the GOP want to keep Mitch in charge. The rest of the Senate GOP are...well...Ted Cruz? Marco Rubio? Nobody actually wants the job.
 
As much as I'd love to see a dipstick like Joni Ernst or Tommy Tuberville get the post and crash into the ground like a Yeager-era USAF test jet with missing bolts, he's not going anywhere, no matter how angry Trump gets at him.
 
You know, unless the underworld comes a-callin' for him.