Last Call For Secret (Squirrel) Service

Sometimes you have to chutzpah of a criminal plan to bribe Secret Service agents before you crush the whole operation.

 

Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged two men they say were posing as federal agents, giving free apartments and other gifts to U.S. Secret Service agents, including one who worked on the first lady’s security detail.

The two men — Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 36 — were taken into custody as more than a dozen FBI agents charged into a luxury apartment building in Southeast Washington on Wednesday evening.

Prosecutors allege Taherzadeh and Ali had falsely claimed to work for the Department of Homeland Security and work on a special task force investigating gang and violence connected to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. They allege the two posed as law enforcement officers to integrate with actual federal agents.

Taherzadeh is accused of providing Secret Service officers and agents with rent-free apartments — including a penthouse worth over $40,000 a year — along with iPhones, surveillance systems, a drone, flat screen television, a generator, gun case and other policing tools, according to court documents.

He also offered to let them use a black GMC SUV that he identified as an “official government vehicle,” prosecutors say. In one instance, Taherzadeh offered to purchase a $2,000 assault rifle for a Secret Service agent who is assigned to protect the first lady.

Prosecutors said four Secret Service employees were placed on leave earlier this week as part of the investigation.

The plot unraveled when the U.S. Postal Inspection Service began investigating an assault on a mail carrier at the apartment building and the men identified themselves as being part of a phony Homeland Security unit they called the U.S. Special Police Investigation Unit.

Prosecutors say the men had also set up surveillance in the building and had been telling residents there that they could access any of their cellphones at any time. The residents also told investigators they believed the men had access to their personal information.

Taherzadeh and Ali are scheduled to appear in court on Thursday. It was not immediately clear if they had lawyers who could comment on the allegations.

 

So the question is why bribe the USSS agents, and what they were getting in return. That's going to be a fun investigation, I think. It seems since I started this blog back in 2008, the USSS has not exactly covered itself in glory as an institution.

 

Here's hoping we get real reform.

 

A Shadow Of A Country

The Supreme Court issued yet another "shadow docket" ruling today, another 5-4 unsigned ruling with no explanation or decision, that restored a Trump regime environmental rule. The Roberts Court has done this before, most notably in refusing to stay Texas's Abortion Bounty law, a practice that has all but eliminated abortions in the state over the last few months, but the the difference this time is that Chief Justice Roberts finally joined the Court's three liberal justices in denouncing the practice.

Chief Justice John Roberts for the first time joined the U.S. Supreme Court’s liberal wing in blasting the conservative majority’s handling of the stream of emergency requests that critics have dubbed the “shadow docket.”

Roberts joined the three liberal justices in dissent Wednesday as the court temporarily reinstated a Clean Water Act rule issued by former President Donald Trump’s administration. A federal trial judge had tossed out the rule, which scaled back federal protections for streams, wetlands and other bodies of water.

Writing for the dissenters, including Roberts, Justice Elena Kagan said the states and industry groups backing the rule hadn’t shown that its reinstatement would have any practical impact. The court typically requires a showing of “irreparable harm” to issue an emergency order.

The majority’s decision “renders the court’s emergency docket not for emergencies at all,” Kagan wrote. “The docket becomes only another place for merits determinations -- except made without full briefing and argument.”

The Environmental Protection Agency under President Joe Biden is in the process of rewriting the rule. The court is planning to consider a more sweeping clash over the reach of the Clean Water Act in the nine-month term that starts in October.

 

Indeed, Justice Kagan ripped into the practice by the five conservatives.

Writing for the dissenters, Justice Elena Kagan said the court should have allowed the appeal to proceed in the ordinary course.

“The applicants have given us no good reason to think that in the remaining time needed to decide the appeal, they will suffer irreparable harm,” she wrote. “By nonetheless granting relief, the court goes astray.”

She added: “That renders the court’s emergency docket not for emergencies at all. The docket becomes only another place for merits determinations — except made without full briefing and argument.”

 

So yes, another SCOTUS decision with no oral argument, no debate, no authored opinion to explain the ruling, just a decree from the bench by five justices.

 

That's how the Court works now, you see. It's just there to rubber-stamp what the GOP wants.

 

 

 

The Road To Gilead Goes Through Oklahoma

In anticipation of SCOTUS ending Roe v. Wade in the weeks ahead, Oklahoma Republicans have essentially banned and criminalized abortion outright.

With no fanfare and very little noise of any kind, the Oklahoma House of Representatives on Tuesday morning passed and sent to the governor a near-total ban on abortion.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the final vote on Senate Bill 612, by Sen. Nathan Dahm, R-Broken Arrow, occurred as abortion rights activists and others gathered outside the Capitol for a previously scheduled protest against several bans implemented this year by the Republican-controlled state leadership.

If signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt, SB 612 would almost certainly be immediately challenged.

While federal courts have recently upheld state laws severely restricting access to abortion, an outright ban on the procedure has yet to be allowed.

A holdover from last session, when it passed the Senate and a House committee, SB 612 would outlaw all abortions in Oklahoma except to save the life of the woman. It would impose a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine on anyone performing an abortion.

The law would not penalize women who undergo the procedure.

Some might consider SB 612 redundant, since Oklahoma statute already would reactivate the state's long-dormant abortion laws should Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that guaranteed a woman's right to an abortion, be overturned.

Some think that could happen in a few months, when the current Supreme Court is expected to issue its decision in a Mississippi case.

Anti-abortion rights activists calling themselves abolitionists advocate ignoring Roe v. Wade or any other federal action that permits abortion, but SB 612's House sponsor, state Rep. Jim Olsen, R-Roland, said he would not go that far.

Olsen said his bill is intended to have everything in place should Roe v. Wade be overturned.

It could also become a vehicle for a direct challenge of Roe v. Wade if that decision is not overturned.

SB 612 passed off the House floor 70-14, with 16 members not voting. Rep. Carol Bush, R-Tulsa, who is not seeking reelection, was the only Republican voting against the measure.

It was not immediately clear whether Gov. Kevin Stitt will sign SB 612, though he has said previously he would sign any bill restricting abortion rights that comes to him.

Again, the most likely outcome is that there are five votes on the Supreme Court to dismantle Roe and Casey v. Planned Parenthood within three months from now, and states will be allowed to restrict abortion as they see fit, creating a two-tiered system where women will have rights to their bodies in half of America and won't in the Gilead states.

I don't particularly see it affecting Republicans negatively, either. If anything, we'll see a massive turnout of the MAGA faithful willing to finish off civil rights for good.

We're going to have to beat them with numbers unseen in our history.