Law & Law Enforcement

From Chicago: Today’s “It Isn’t What It Is!” Moment Of Delusion…

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The impetus for this indignant and ignorant rant is Walmart’s announcement that it is closing 4 of their 8 stores in Chicago, including the one at issue. In announcing the move, Walmart explained,

The simplest explanation is that collectively our Chicago stores have not been profitable since we opened the first one nearly 17 years ago – these stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, and their annual losses nearly doubled in just the last five years. The remaining four Chicago stores continue to face the same business difficulties, but we think this decision gives us the best chance to help keep them open and serving the community.

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Addendum To “An Ethics Conflict Conundrum: The Fraudulent Friend”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Apparently my choice of words confused some readers when I wrote that once “The Ethicist’s” inquirer in this post was made aware of a serious fraud (and an ongoing one) perpetrated by a close friend, she had become an accessory after the fact. That’s a legal term of art and I was careless to use it in nontechnical context. Almost no one is ever charged as an accessory for not blowing the metaphorical whistle, but the woman nonetheless shared responsibility for the harm done by the ongoing fraud by knowing about it, having the ability to stop it, and not doing so, thus letting it continue.

The duty she breached was an ethical one, not a legal one. As I said, I should have been clearer.

I am reminded of a personal experience that might clarify the issue further. I may have even related this story in another post; if so, I can’t find it, and it is worth repeating.

A lawyer friend contacted me for advice. He had been meeting with a client at the client’s home, and overheard, in the kitchen, a loud argument between his client and his wife culminating in what sounded like a hard punch in the face, the woman crying out in pain, and someone falling on the floor. My friend said he had said nothing, but was increasingly bothered by what he heard.

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An Ethics Conflict Conundrum: The Fraudulent Friend

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

From “The Ethicist” (that’s the New York Times Magazine’s ethics advice columnist, his name is Kwame Anthony Appiah, and he’s not bad) comes a new version of an eternal ethics conflict that I have encountered both hypothetically and in life:

My friend told me that she and her husband, who combined earn around $500,000, asked their son’s stepmother to declare him on her taxes for the last two years so that he could get more financial aid for college. Their son doesn’t even live with the stepmother, and she provides no support.

I just learned that her son is now getting a full grant to a very expensive private college. I’m supposed to take a weekend trip with my friend in a few weeks, but I’m so angry about this I don’t know if I can speak to her. Is this fraud? What is my responsibility in this situation?

“The Ethicist” waffles and settles on,

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San Francisco Spin, Brought To You By The Great Stupid: “Since Bob Lee Wasn’t Murdered By A Drug Addict, Homeless Person Or Coddled Criminal, The City Is Safe After All, So There!”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

It’s come to this.

San Francisco is one of many irrationally woke cities falling apart in chunks because of “social justice” policies that encourage crime, make responsible citizenship difficult, and devastate local businesses. “The City by the Bay” is a particularly depressing case study in the nationwide phenomenon, with the city’s most storied locations marred by human feces, discarded drug paraphernalia, and obstreperously entitled homeless. Meanwhile, businesses are fleeing because shoplifting has become epidemic.

When Bob Lee, the former chief technology officer of Square and one of the founders of Cash App, was stabbed to death ten days ago, his high-profile murder was pointed to by social media critics and conservative pundits as more evidence of San Francisco’s decline as its culture embraces progressive cant over the lessons of civilization. Ah, but this week a rival tech entrepreneur was arrested for the murder, prompting the city’s defenders–and the defenders of its bonkers policies— to launch into one of the most bizarre victory laps ever conceived.

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The “Get Trump!” Plan Has Officially Abandoned All Restraint

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The Washington Post revealed that it isn’t just state prosecutors like Alvin Bragg who are determined to find something, anything, to use to convict Donald Trump, it is federal prosecutors too. The Post story also makes it clear that not only are the gloves off, so is any pretense of rationality.

The federal prosecutors still looking for ways to claim Trump was trying to mount an “insurrection” on January 6, 2021 have now begun seeking documents related to his fundraising after the 2020 election. Somebody apparently had a brilliant idea: “Hey! The news media keeps saying that Trump’s claims that the election was stolen are “baseless,” so why can’t we say that Trump or scammed donors by using false claims about voter fraud to raise money?” So that’s the latest Hail Mary. It might be the most ridiculous and dishonest yet.

This latest “Get Trump!” miasma focuses on money raised during the period between Nov. 3, 2020, and the end of Trump’s time in office on Jan. 20, 2021, with prosecutors looking at whether anyone associated with the fundraising operation violated the wire fraud laws, which make it illegal to make false representations over email to swindle people. The Post’s anonymous (of course!) sources say that special counsel Jack Smith’s office has sent subpoenas to Trump advisers and former campaign aides, Republican operatives and other consultants involved in the 2020 presidential campaign, some of these figures have already testified in front of a Washington grand jury. The idea, apparently, is to find communications proving that Trump, his allies allies and advisers were privately admitting that Biden’s election was beyond reproach, while stirring up passionate supporters with appeals using the voter-fraud claims to generate more than $200 million in donations.

Please. Seriously? We are now going to use a fraudulent claims basis to prosecute political fundraising messages? THAT will work out well.

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“Apparently Donald Trump Is A Ham Sandwich,” Continued: Prof. Turley Weighs In, Among Others

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

I’ve been looking for commentary by legal and ethics experts I trust that defend Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Donald Trump, now that the thing is in black and white. (Speaking of White: old Popehat blogger Ken White was one of the first I checked. The former Ethics Alarms Award-winner as best ethics blogger has so far avoided the topic, I suspect because he regards explaining why an indictment of someone he obviously detests is a lot of hooey with the same eagerness he applies to having sex with a horseshoe crab.) In the earlier post today, Ethics Alarms looked at Andrew McCarthy’s analysis, which was searing in its contempt for Bragg’s efforts. Later, I discovered that one of the Washington Post’s worst knee-jerk progressive members of its editorial board, Ruth Marcus, wrote,

…the indictment unsealed on Tuesday is disturbingly unilluminating, and the theory on which it rests is debatable at best, unnervingly flimsy at worst.That is a scary situation when it comes to the first criminal charges ever lodged against a former president.

Then she almost immediately demonstrated why I hold her in such contempt by adding,

I’m not saying prosecutors will lose this case. They could well win, and I hope they do, because a failure to secure a conviction will only inflame Trump and his supporters in their claims that the criminal justice system is being weaponized against them.

Got that? She hopes Bragg wins a bad case and Trump is convicted because Trump and his supporters will have evidence to support the “claim” that the criminal justice system is being weaponized against them. Somebody explain to Marcus, a lawyer, though it always astonished me that she is, that ethical lawyers don’t want defendants to be convicted on bogus charges no matter who they are.

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Now THAT’S An Unethical Concession Speech!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election Tuesday gave Democrats (well, liberals/progressives—the election is supposedly non-partisan) a one-vote majority as it faces deliberations over the state’s abortion ban, its gerrymandered legislative districts and the voting rules for the 2024 presidential election. Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz’s defeated former state Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly and ended 15 years of conservative control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Kelly’s concession speech made Richard Nixon look gracious. Ethics Dunce, Unethical Quote, Incompetent UN-elected official—Kelly qualifies for several EA designations, none of them positive. His speech alone shows that the voters made the right choice. Who wants a judge with such atrocious judgment?

What a jerk.

________________

Pointer: valkygrrl

Apparently Donald Trump Is A Ham Sandwich [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

Of course, we’ve known for decades that the man was a ham. Yesterday, however, unethical prosecutor Alvin Bragg provided decisive evidence that the former POTUS is also a ham sandwich, with an abusive grand jury indictment that perfectly embodied the old saw (first coined by former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals Sol Wachtler) that district attorneys could get grand juries to “indict a ham sandwich.”

When the breathlessly anticipated indictment finally came down from the grand jury (here is the indictment), it fulfilled the worst predictions of critics.

“Oh, we have to wait to see the indictment” was the mantra from Bragg’s defenders, and that was sort-of true. However, we already knew that this was a bad case: the statute of limitations has lapsed, Bragg has no jurisdiction to enforce federal law, the act of paying for a non-disclosure is not a crime, the claim that the pay-off was really a campaign contribution is based on circumstantial evidence at best, the key witness is Michael Cohen, one of the sleaziest lawyers in the professions long line of sleazy lawyers and convicted perjeror, and both the Justice Department and Bragg himself had already decided it was too weak to prosecute, at least to prosecute ethically. Moreover, Bragg’s “statement of facts” before the indictment (which you can read here), made the case sound just as weak as many suspected it was.

When we learned that there were 34 counts, we thought, or at least I did, “Wow! Bragg must have a lot more to pin on Trump than Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen!”

Uh, no.

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Ethically And Legally, Yeshiva University Can’t Have It Both Ways

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Yeshiva University is in a legal fight with a group of LGBTQ students, the YU Pride Alliance, that demands that the Modern Orthodox Jewish university recognize their campus club. To make the argument that it can refuse to do so, Yeshiva is claiming that it is a religious institution, which would which would exempt it from anti-discrimination laws under the First Amendment.

There’s a problem, though, a rather substantial one. Before the 2021 lawsuit, Yeshiva held itself out as an educational institution, which made it eligible for public funds but also meant that it could not defy city and state non-discrimination laws. The institution has received an estimated $230 million in taxpayer dollars to pay for the construction and renovation of its facilities, among other expenses, when it claimed to be an educational institution before 2021.

Now Yeshiva is stuck. The chairman of the State Senate Judiciary Committee has stated, “Regardless of anyone’s motives, misrepresentation to procure public money is dishonest and could potentially violate state law.” If it acquired those state funds legitimately, then Yeshiva cannot deny the students their organization without breaking the law. If the school has always been a religious institution as it now claims, it engaged in fraud by claiming otherwise to get $230 million dollars. Continue reading →

A Show Of Hands On The Trial And Conviction Of Douglass Mackey

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Douglass Mackey was convicted by a federal jury in Brooklyn last week of Conspiracy Against Rights during the weeks before the 2016 election by circulating false and misleading tweets that, I think it is fair to say, were aimed at tricking naive, stupid or ignorant Hillary Cinton voters into failing to cast valid votes. The verdict followed a one-week trial before United States District Judge Ann M. Donnelly, and now Mackey faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

This is an immediate and significant law vs. ethics conundrum.

Mackey was part of an apparently loosely organized effort by Trump supporters in 2016 to use misleading and false tweets and memes like those above to fool Hillary Clinton supporters into believing that they could vote for the Democrat in the Presidential election via text messaging. The question raised by the conviction is whether such internet-based election dirty tricks actually violate the federal civil rights statutes. The relevant one in this case makes it “unlawful for two or more persons to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person of any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the United States, (or because of his/her having exercised the same).”

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