PhonyBeatlmaniaHasBittenTheDust
TwistedLyricsVille
The latest on Paulie Walnuts, via the AP:
Former Trump adviser Paul Manafort was removed from a plane at Miami International Airport before it took off for Dubai because he carried a revoked passport, officials said Wednesday...
{snip}
...Manafort, 72, led former President Donald Trump’s campaign for several months during the 2016 presidential race but was ousted in August of that year after revelations about his business dealings in Ukraine.
He was later indicted on a broad array of financial crimes as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He was convicted by a jury in August 2018 and later pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington.
Speaking of Ukraine...
Emma Graham-Harrison and Joe Dyke, in the Guardian document how Russia is using the playbook they developed in Syria in Ukraine....This is brought into stark relief by the horrible devastation shown in drone footage over Mariupol as well as first hand reports from folks on the ground.
Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat details the machinations of Mr. Putin's disinformation campaign in the Financial Times while Digby notes a specific example in that the Russian prop initiative to bring the H. Biden Biolab Laptop conflabulation to the Fox News mainstage is working...
South of the Border...
Dan Froomkin of Press Watch notes that the NY Times Editorial Board does not understand the US first amendment.
While sharp commentators like the New Yorker's Jane Mayer are spelling out the 'supreme' legal ramifications of Ginni Thomas's Emails with then Trump administration chief of staff Mark Meadows, what seems to be lost is how apparently seriously Q-Anon/Kraken conspiracies were being taken inside the actual White House in the run-up to January 6, 2021.
Mike the Mad Microbiologist explains why professional Democrats who turn their other cheeks to the most riseable of Republican smears over and over and over again are very poor at their jobs...
And In #bcpoli news...
Heavy Kevvy is doing his darndest to get the Real Estate Board of Central Lotusland on his side by hinting at a Wild West of bold, big policy changes to come...Or some such thing.
And in the 'woulda-thunk-it' department, former BC Liberal AG Geoff Plant, the very fine fellow who once told anyone who would listen, including this lowly F-Troop list blogger, that there was 'no prior inducement' in the six million dollar BC Rail deal, is back in the provincial legal trenches displaying both grace and aplomb while representing Westcoast Forest Products in the Nuchalaht First Nation's land rights claim case.
Gosh, where have we heard the name Westcoast Forest Products linked to big chunks of land and BC Liberal government mucky-mucks before?...Hmmmmm....Hang on as second while I head on over to the archives for a second...OK...I'm Back...With the...goods.
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3 comments:
Every time I see a reference to Geoff Plant’s March 28, 2012 “dear John” letter I am reminded of how inept (I’m being charitable) our local press can be. Mr. Plant stated in writing that as a matter of law there could not be a formal binding agreement tying the waiver of liability for the legal fees to the guilty pleas, and further that the guilty pleas were offered first, on the “understanding” the fees would be waived.
On May 08, 2013 Global News published leaked documents that included a formal binding agreement between the government (as represented by the Assistant Deputy Attorney General) and the defendants tying the waiver directly to the guilty pleas, and stipulating they had to be entered on the counts and terms required by the special prosecutor. That’s some “understanding”.
Global then dropped the file and hasn’t to this day followed up on the implications of those leaked documents beyond letting Mike de Jong utter nonsense that dug the government a deeper hole.
In addition, the Auditor General’s Manager of Legal Services told the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts on June 24, 2014 that defence counsel informed her that they would not even have shown the defendants the special prosecutor’s offer unless and until that separate and secret plea deal with the ADAG had been negotiated.
So a written agreement that Mr. Plant says can’t exist as a matter of law does in fact exist, and the defendants offered to plead guilty to a plea deal they hadn’t even seen. Right…
A guilty plea is involuntary if it is made under hope of advantage held out by someone in authority. The written offer made by the ADAG offering to waive liability for $6.4 million only if and after the defendants pleaded guilty put the defendants under hope of advantage. The judge might have wanted to know that, since section 606 of the Criminal Code says a court may accept a plea of guilty only if it is satisfied that the accused is making the plea voluntarily.
But this is British Columbia, where a judge and special prosecutor can be duped in a criminal trial and it isn’t even newsworthy.
Lew--
The Cutting Ledgie Boys decided the whole thing wasn't newsworthy after Campbell won re-election in 2005.
Given how much the Keef bows down to the giants of the mainstream, I wonder if he realizes the irony of his and the Dean's POV on Railgate compared to, say, Ben Bradlee continuing to chase Watergate after Nixon won 4 more years.
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Yeah. Funny how the public consciousness fades in sync with the unconsciousness of the media monopoly.
Thing is, there were some powerful folks due up on the witness stand that would have had to conjure up some interesting explanations under oath for stuff Keef and crew wouldn’t touch. And so the law was broken by the very government institution mandated to uphold it in order to end the trial. Keef and crew only touched that travesty hard enough to put lipstick on it.
Bill Good, who had the flagship morning slot for CKNW all through the BC Rail trial, with Keef and the Dean frequent guests, actually told me on Twitter that he didn’t have an opinion on the outcome of the trial because he never covered it.
Cutting edges be damned.
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