THE LAWLESS LAWYER CLASS IS A PROTECTED CRIMINAL CLASS AND ARE AMERICA'S GREATEST THREAT!
THE MOST CORRUPT POLITICIANS IN MODERN U.S. HISTORY HAS BEEN THESE GAMER LAWYERS ALL APPOINTED AND ANNOINTED BY BIG BANKSERS.
How Judicial Misbehavior Skates in America
We have a serious problem within the federal Judiciary in how it protects itself from malfeasance issues when people file judicial misconduct complaints against judges.
The Judicial Conduct and Disability Act allows "[a]ny person alleging that a judge has engaged in conduct prejudicial to the effective and expeditious administration of the business of the courts" to file a complaint against the judge. And then when a complaint is filed, everything simply goes out the window in terms of transparency and accountability — and yes, even the ultimate goal of justice, due to built-in rules designed to muzzle the public and prevent an actual meaningful proceeding.
First, there is a law dictating that with a few exceptions, all papers, documents, and records of proceedings relating to judicial misconduct complaints shall be confidential and shall not be disclosed by any person in any proceeding. In other words, when a person has information about judicial corruption done by a federal judge, once that person files a complaint against that judge, that person cannot make any public statements about the judicial malfeasance. This law seems to be in substantial conflict with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which expressly prevents the government from making laws that abridge the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press.
And if suppression of a person's freedom of speech weren't enough, there is a law that disallows judicial review of anything stated in an order dismissing a judicial misconduct complaint once a chief judge or judicial council does its thing in protecting judicial corruption. In other words, the complaint is terminated, and the person has no right to further review. This also seems to be in substantial conflict with the First Amendment, which prevents the government from making laws that abridge a person's right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It should be noted that the First Amendment is one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.
Furthermore, the law's disallowance of judicial review beyond what a chief judge or judicial council decides is in blatant disregard of the Supreme Court's decision in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, where the Supreme Court stated, "The very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws whenever he receives an injury" (at 163). Further, "[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is" (at 177).
Whoever is involved in creating these unconstitutional laws needs to learn that the Marbury v. Madison decision was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that established the principle of judicial review in the United States, meaning that American courts have the power to strike down laws and statutes that they find to violate the Constitution. The Supreme Court made clear that "a law repugnant to the Constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument" (at 180). Chief Justice John Marshall reasoned that the Constitution places limits on the American government's powers, and those limits would be meaningless unless they were subject to judicial review and enforcement. Justice Marshall held that in the event of conflict between the Constitution and statutory laws passed by Congress, the constitutional law must be supreme.
It is bad public policy for federal lawmakers to be so influenced as to enact unconstitutional laws to protect bad behavior of federal judges by muzzling people, suppressing their free speech rights to speak about secret processes that are calculated to insulate misbehaving federal judges from public scrutiny. And it is bad public policy to impermissibly prevent injured people from seeking redress of their grievances as to infected decisions by chief judges and judicial councils who are protecting corrupt activities by federal judges by way of unconstitutional secret processes.
Chief Justice Marshall made the point that the Legislature imposes judges to take an oath to support the Constitution, and that this oath certainly applies "in an especial manner, to their conduct in their official character," so it stands to reason that federal judges have a responsibility to behave in an honest and upright manner in their "official character." When they don't, they should be subject to public scrutiny and not secretly protected from it. It also stands to reason that misbehaving federal judges should not be afforded protections from judicial review of their infected actions against people and that people indeed have a fundamental right to seek redress of their grievances against a diseased system designed to protect judicial corruption.
Public policy is served best by allowing people to exercise their free speech rights, allowing public denouncement of a poisoned process of protectionism of judicial corruption, not by an unconstitutional law that suppresses that right. Public policy is served best by allowing people to exercise their fundamental right to seek redress of their grievances against infected decisions by chief judges and judicial councils that wrongfully protect misbehaving judges, not by an unconstitutional law that prevents people from seeking a judicial review of those infected decisions given by brethren of misbehaving judges. There is nothing in the Constitution that affords unlawful secrecy protections to the persons wearing the black robes who violate their oaths of office. "The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse" (Edmund Burke).
Brian Vukadinovich is the former executive director of the Posner Center of Justice for Pro Se's and author of the book Motion for Justice: I Rest My Case.
Image via Max Pixel.
The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse: A judicial travesty
On Friday, after four days of deliberations, a Kenosha jury returned a verdict of “not guilty on all counts” against Kyle Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse had been charged with wrongfully killing two people, wounding a third, and nearly striking a fourth with an AR-15 rifle during protests against police brutality in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 25 last year.
Rittenhouse, 17 at the time of the shootings, had traveled to Kenosha from Illinois to join a far-right “patriot” vigilante militia calling itself the “Kenosha Guard,” which had been mobilized to “defend property” and assist the police with crushing the protests that had erupted two days earlier following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Blake was shot seven times in the back at point-blank range in front of his children, leaving him paralyzed.
The Kenosha shootings occurred in the midst of the reverberations of the largest demonstrations in American history, during which an estimated 15 to 26 million people took to the streets following the murder of George Floyd to protest the epidemic of police killings and official cover-ups.
During these protests, armed far-right vigilante militias, which had been mobilized months earlier in opposition to measures to stop the spread of COVID-19, were brought forward to assist the police in the brutal nationwide crackdown orchestrated by the Trump administration. The Kenosha shootings, which occurred on the eve of the Republican National Convention, were embraced by Trump and the Republicans in the period leading up to the violent coup attempt on January 6, during which the Proud Boys and other paramilitary groups constituted the shock troops for the assault on the Capitol.
The Rittenhouse verdict will embolden these violent paramilitary forces that have been cultivated in the orbit of Trump and the Republican Party.
The acquittal of Rittenhouse follows a travesty of a trial in which a right-wing judge systematically undermined the prosecution by excluding all of the evidence that would have rebutted Rittenhouse’s claim that he was acting in “self-defense.”
Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder did not permit the jury to hear that after Rittenhouse posted bail, he celebrated the killings at a pub with top Proud Boys members, where he flashed “white power” signs, belted out the Proud Boys anthem and grinned for selfies with other Proud Boys members.
Nor did the judge permit the jury to hear that before the shooting, Rittenhouse was recorded saying that he wanted to shoot people he thought were shoplifting. “Bro, I wish I had my f—ing AR,” he said. “I’d start shooting rounds at them.”
The judge ordered that prosecutors would not be allowed to refer to the men shot by Rittenhouse as “victims” or even “alleged victims.” At the same time, Rittenhouse’s defense attorneys were given free rein to refer to the victims as “arsonists,” “looters” and “rioters.”
This double-standard was on full display during closing arguments earlier this week. While the prosecutors were admonished not to make the case “political,” Rittenhouse’s attorney was permitted to deliver a full-throated fascistic diatribe.
Midway through his closing arguments, Rittenhouse’s attorney Mark Richards effectively dispensed with the fiction of “self-defense” and suggested that Rittenhouse’s victims had it coming because “they were rioters.”
While prosecutors could not mention that Rittenhouse was affiliated with the Proud Boys, Richards specifically emphasized that Gaige Grosskreutz, a volunteer medic Rittenhouse shot in the arm, was affiliated with “People’s Revolution.”
Richards made every effort to dehumanize the people whom Rittenhouse killed. “I’m glad he shot him,” Richards declared, referring to Joseph Rosenbaum, who was mentally ill, as “a crazy person.”
The trial was a right-wing spectacle from beginning to end. At one point the judge, wearing an American flag tie, led the jury in a round of applause for one of Rittenhouse’s experts on the grounds that he was a “veteran” who “served our country.” At another point the judge’s cellphone rang with a Trump rally ring tone. At the end of the trial, he let Rittenhouse pick the jurors’ names out of a tumbler like it was a circus raffle.
The argument that Rittenhouse was acting in “self-defense” turns reality upside-down. If anyone had a right to self-defense, it was the protesters who collectively confronted a right-wing vigilante who appeared at their protest pointing a loaded military-style rifle at them.
When Rittenhouse opened fire, Gaige Grosskreutz and other protesters believed that he was an “active shooter.” Like a soldier who jumps on a grenade to save his comrades, Anthony Huber pushed his girlfriend out of the way and charged Rittenhouse, armed only with a skateboard in an effort to protect the other protesters. Rittenhouse shot him dead.
“We are heartbroken and angry,” Huber’s parents wrote in a statement after the verdict. “Today’s verdict means there is no accountability for the person who murdered our son. It sends the unacceptable message that armed civilians can show up in any town, incite violence, and then use the danger they have created to justify shooting people in the street.”
The “self-defense” framework within which Rittenhouse’s actions were presented was a mechanism for airbrushing all of the political content and context out of the picture. It was a way of dissolving all of the broader political and historical questions involved into the sole question of the propriety of Rittenhouse’s conduct as an individual in the split-second during which he allegedly decided to pull the trigger.
Even on its own terms, the “self-defense” argument was illegitimate, since it was Rittenhouse who recklessly provoked the confrontation by carrying his rifle into a hostile protest as a member of a far-right vigilante militia.
Where the law was clearly against Rittenhouse, the judge simply moved the goal posts. While countless left-wing protesters were subjected to violent attacks and the threat of arrests by police for violating the curfew in Kenosha, the judge threw out the curfew charge against Rittenhouse on a flimsy evidentiary technicality. While Wisconsin law prohibits juveniles from carrying firearms, the judge threw out the underage firearms charge on the basis of laws that permit juveniles to go hunting.
After the verdict was announced, Trump immediately issued a statement congratulating Rittenhouse. The violent and fascistic elements around him joined the chorus. “Today is a great day for the Second Amendment and the right to self-defense,” tweeted Republican representative and January 6 conspirator Lauren Boebert. “Glory to God!”
Biden, meanwhile, set the tone for the Democrats’ response by solemnly declaring that “the jury system works”—a remarkable statement given the legal travesty that had just unfolded in broad daylight on live television.
Joining the open fascists in their celebrations of the verdict are a collection of pseudo-left and libertarian figures like Glenn Greenwald and Jimmy Dore, who worked throughout the trial to present Rittenhouse as a sympathetic figure.
In contrast to those seeking to blind the population to the political issues involved, the World Socialist Web Site warned that the campaign around Rittenhouse is an effort to normalize and legitimize far-right vigilante terror.
The aim of this campaign is to create conditions where Proud Boys and other far-right vigilante groups can march into future left-wing demonstrations and brandish loaded guns. Unchecked and undeterred, they will come to strikes, to lectures at universities and to socialist political meetings. They will wave guns in the faces of journalists and school board officials. And if anyone tries to disarm or evict them, they will open fire and yell “self-defense,” knowing that there are cops and judges who will bend and twist the law to shield them.
The Proud Boys and other violent far-right militias are being brought forward not because American capitalism is in a position of strength but because it is in a position of weakness.
These forces are being elevated under specific conditions: In the midst of a pandemic in which millions of people have died as a result of policies that have prioritized profits over human life and amid a social, economic and political crisis to which capitalism has no solution except war and repression.
While the US political establishment is moving ever further to the right, embracing mass death in the COVID-19 pandemic and legitimizing fascist violence, the great mass of the population is moving to the left, amid a major upsurge of working-class struggle.
In that context, the acquittal of Rittenhouse will only serve to further discredit the whole American political system in the eyes of millions of people.
Donald Trump meets with Kenosha shooter Rittenhouse at Mar-A-Lago
On Tuesday evening, Donald Trump said during an interview on Fox News that he recently met at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida with Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenage vigilante shooter who was acquitted of homicide charges in a court-rigged jury trial on November 19 in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Although he did not say precisely when he met with Rittenhouse at Mar-A-Lago, Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he “got to know him a little bit” and that the shooter was a “really nice young man.” Trump further said that the meeting was prompted by a request from Rittenhouse. “He wanted to know if he could come over and say hello because he was a fan,” Trump said.
Trump went on to claim that Rittenhouse, “should never have been put through” a trial to face multiple criminal charges for murdering Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, both of whom were unarmed, and for injuring Gaige Grosskreutz with an AR-15-style rifle that he brought to protests against police violence on August 25, 2020, in Kenosha.
Trump told Hannity that the case against Rittenhouse was “prosecutorial misconduct, and it’s happening all over the United States right now with the Democrats.” As reported on the World Socialist Web Site on Monday, Trump and his right-wing Republican supporters have been celebrating the acquittal of Rittenhouse. They are using the outcome as means or rallying their fascistic base for further attacks against the democratic rights of protesters and the mass struggles of the working class.
Kyle Rittenhouse was 17 years old when he volunteered with a group of armed vigilantes to “defend property” and assist the police in suppressing mass protests in Kenosha following the shooting of Jacob Blake two nights earlier. Blake, a 27-year-old black man, was shot seven times in the back and paralyzed by Kenosha policeman Rusten Sheskey. The brutal attack was captured on smartphone video.
Although his political history and affiliation with fascists were concealed by the judge during the trial, Rittenhouse was a gun enthusiast and police cadet who was recorded two weeks prior to the shootings in Kenosha saying he would have liked to “start shooting rounds” at people he claimed were shoplifting. Furthermore, Rittenhouse’s support for Trump was well-known, since he had been recorded on video in the front row of a 2020 reelection rally of the former Republican president in January 2020.
The right-wing campaign supporting Rittenhouse’s claim of self-defense in Kenosha began immediately upon his arrest, including a fundraising effort that generated the $2 million needed for the shooter to post bail at his arraignment in November 2020. After his release, Rittenhouse appeared with members of the fascist Wisconsin Proud Boys at a local bar, sang their anthem and flashed “white power” symbols. Judge Schroeder blocked any of these critical facts from being entered into evidence by the prosecution.
Trump’s enthusiasm for the fascist shooter as a “really nice young man” is reminiscent of the statements made while he was President following the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017. After a white supremacist drove his car into an anti-fascist protest, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 35 others, Trump said there were “very fine people” among those participating in the neo-Nazi rampage.
The Fox News report of Trump’s meeting with Rittenhouse followed by one day the appearance of the teenage shooter in a Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson. Contributing “an observation” prior to the interview, Carlson said the fascist youth is not “especially political” and “never wanted to be the symbol of anything.”
In a politically significant comment, Carlson went to elaborate on a false narrative that Rittenhouse is a representative of the working class, saying, “It is hard to ignore the yawning class divide between Kyle Rittenhouse and his critics in the media. Rittenhouse comes from the least-privileged sector of our society. In high school he worked as a janitor and cook to help support his family.”
During the interview, Rittenhouse reviewed his well-rehearsed account of the events of August 25, 2020, emphasizing how he was trying to “help our community,” cleaning graffiti from buildings and offering medical assistance during the protests in Kenosha when he was inexplicably set upon by the men who he shot.
However, Rittenhouse was set upon because he aimed his AR-15-style rifle at protesters and it was they who were entirely within their rights to defend themselves against him. In the words of Assistant District Attorney Binger during his closing argument, “You cannot hide behind self-defense if you provoked the incident. If you created the danger, you forfeit the right to self-defense by bringing that gun, aiming it at people, threatening people’s lives. The defendant provoked everything.”
The effort to lionize Rittenhouse and use his not guilty verdict as a vehicle to legitimize far-right politics continues. At least three fascistic Republican Congressmen—Matt Gaetz of Florida, Paul Gosar of Arizona and Madison Cawthorn—have offered Rittenhouse an internship in their government offices.
Candidate JD Vance, who is seeking the Republican nomination for US Senate in Ohio, called the trial of Rittenhouse “child abuse” and said that the teenager “saw a bunch of thugs and rioters destroying his community and no one was going anything about it.” Vance said the prosecution “slandered and lied about him” and “treated basic manly virtue as white supremacy.”
On Wednesday, QAnon supporter and January 6 coup-plotter Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia introduced a bill to award a Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor of the legislative branch of the US Congress, to Kyle Rittenhouse. Although the full text of Greene’s proposed legislation has yet to be drafted, an official summary states, “H.R.6070 - To award a Congressional Gold Medal to Kyle H. Rittenhouse, who protected the community of Kenosha, Wisconsin, during a Black Lives Matter (BLM) riot on August 25, 2020.”
The Kyle Rittenhouse Case - Send in the Clowns
Insanity based on falsehoods recklessly peddled by media and politicians.
During and after the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the white 18-year-old accused of murdering two white men and injuring another, one could hardly keep track of the insanity based on falsehoods recklessly peddled by media and politicians.
In Chicago, the Rev. Jesse Jackson marched in the front line of a group of protesters where some chanted, "When black lives are under attack, what do we do?"
Black lives under attack? Rittenhouse is white, as were the two men he shot dead and the man he injured.
In September 2020, presidential candidate Joe Biden posted a video that included a picture of Rittenhouse, slamming President Donald Trump for "refusing to disavow white supremacists." But the New York Post's Miranda Devine wrote: "The accusation has become holy writ, but there is zero evidence. The FBI scoured Kyle's phone and found nothing about white supremacy or militias, the court heard. All they saw were pro-police, 'Blue Lives Matter' posts from a kid who had been a police and fire department cadet, wanted to be a police officer or paramedic and once sat near the front of a Trump rally. That was enough for the media to brand him a white supremacist."
PolitiFact claimed that Rittenhouse was illegally in the possession of a firearm: "The Wisconsin Department of Justice honors concealed carry permits issued in Illinois. But Rittenhouse did not have a permit to begin with, and he was not legally old enough to carry a firearm in Wisconsin."
But The New York Times wrote: "The judge in Kyle Rittenhouse's homicide trial on Monday dismissed the misdemeanor gun possession charge the teenager faced after defense lawyers argued that he did not violate the state statute in question because of his age and the length of the barrel of his semiautomatic rifle. ... The statute says it applies to minors carrying a rifle or shotgun only if they are not in compliance with at least one additional statute (including) the prohibition of rifles with barrels less than 16 inches long.
"Mr. Rittenhouse was 17 at the time of the shootings. The judge threw out the charge after nobody in court disputed the length of the gun's barrel."
Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., said: "Here you have a 17-year-old boy who was driven by his mother across state lines with an automatic weapon — frankly, she should have been detained for child endangerment — to go to a protest."
But Fackcheck.org wrote: "The Smith & Wesson semiautomatic rifle that Rittenhouse used in the shootings was already in Wisconsin, according to court testimony and police interviews. ... Using money that Rittenhouse gave him, Dominick Black, a friend who also dated one of Rittenhouse's sisters, bought the gun at a hardware store in Ladysmith, Wisconsin, in May 2020. Black, who was 18 at the time, purchased the gun for Rittenhouse, who at age 17 was too young to legally buy it for himself. In court this month, Black and Rittenhouse said they agreed that Black would hold onto the rifle until Rittenhouse turned 18 in January 2021, and that it would be kept at Black's home in Kenosha."
NAACP CEO Derrick Johnson said, "It's hard to reconcile the verdict with the experience that many African Americans have faced over the several decades." But reportedly the jury was not all white. Chicago's WTTW reported: "It consisted of seven women and five men, all of them were white except one person of color." If so, does that mean the other 11 white jurors browbeat "the person of color" into finding Rittenhouse not guilty on all five counts?
One more note of madness. Consider this tweet posted before the verdict by Gregory McKelvey, vice chairman of the Oregon Democrats Black Caucus: "Employers, consider giving your Black employees a day or two off after the Rittenhouse verdict. Regardless of the outcome, it's going to be hard for Black people to work and it isn't fair to expect them to."
Why complain? This means I'm not required to write a column this week.
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