CrackerMania!!!

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AP finds most arrested in protests aren’t leftist radicals

FILE - In this May 30, 2020, file photo, protesters demonstrate as a Salt Lake City police vehicle burns, in Salt Lake City. Investigators studied video footage to find Jackson Stuart Tamowski Patton, 26, who is accused of tossing a combustible substance into the patrol car, feeding the flames that destroyed it, prosecutors said in court documents. The Department of Justice is using aggressive tactics against those it has charged in the civil unrest over racism. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump portrays the hundreds of people arrested nationwide in protests against racial injustice as violent urban left-wing radicals. But an Associated Press review of thousands of pages of court documents tells a different story.

Very few of those charged appear to be affiliated with highly organized extremist groups, and many are young suburban adults from the very neighborhoods Trump vows to protect from the violence in his reelection push to win support from the suburbs.

Attorney General William Barr has urged his prosecutors to bring federal charges on protesters who cause violence and has suggested that rarely used sedition charges could apply. And the Department of Justice has pushed for detention even as prisons across the U.S. were releasing high-risk inmates because of COVID-19 and prosecutors had been told to consider the risks of incarceration during a pandemic when seeking detention.

Defense attorneys and civil rights activists are questioning why the Department of Justice has taken on cases to begin with. They say most belong in state court, where defendants typically get much lighter sentences. And they argue federal authorities appear to be cracking down on protesters in an effort to stymie demonstrations.

“It is highly unusual, and without precedent in recent American history,” said Ron Kuby, a longtime attorney who isn’t involved in the cases but has represented scores of clients over the years in protest-related incidents. “Almost all of the conduct that’s being charged is conduct that, when it occurs, is prosecuted at the state and local level.”
In one case in Utah, where a police car was burned, federal prosecutors had to defend why they were bringing arson charges in federal court. They said it was appropriate because the patrol car was used in interstate commerce.

Not to say there hasn’t been violence. Other police cars have been set on fire. Officers have been injured and blinded. Windows have been smashed, stores looted, businesses destroyed.

Of more than 300 arrested, there are about 286 defendants, others had charges dropped. Some live in cities like Portland and Seattle where local prosecutors declined to bring some protest-related charges.

Some of those facing charges undoubtedly share far-left and anti-government views. Far-right protesters also have been arrested and charged. Some defendants have driven to protests from out of state. Some have criminal records and were illegally carrying weapons. Others are accused of using the protests as an opportunity to steal or create havoc.

 

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This may be the whitest thing I've ever seen:

 

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Trump family friend Ken Kurson charged in New York stalking case

NEW YORK — Ken Kurson, a friend and associate of President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was arrested Friday in a federal stalking case, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn.

The political consultant and author, who for four years edited a weekly newspaper owned by Kushner, is accused of stalking a doctor at Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital and harassing her colleague and the colleague’s spouse, according to a person familiar with the matter. The alleged incidents date back to 2015, when Kurson was going through a divorce, this person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the case’s political sensitivity.

Kurson surrendered to authorities and made an initial court appearance Friday afternoon in the Eastern District of New York. His bail was set at $100,000.

Kurson has made multiple appearances at the White House during Trump’s time in office, posting photos of himself on social media from events he’s attended there. The Trump administration sought in 2018 to install him as a board member of the National Endowment for the Humanities, but he withdrew from consideration during his background check, the New York Times reported at the time.


In 2016, during Trump’s first presidential campaign, Kurson became the subject of controversy when it was revealed that, while he edited Kushner’s newspaper, the New York Observer, the two friends consulted with then-candidate Trump on a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Kushner has sought Kurson’s input in this election cycle as well.

The White House had no comment.

Kurson also has ties to Trump’s attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, with whom he has co-written a book.
His lawyer, Marc Mukasey, said in a statement that Kurson “is an honorable man, a loving dad, and a brilliant writer,” adding, “This case is hardly the stuff of a federal criminal prosecution.”

Mukasey is a former law partner of Giuliani’s and also represents the president.

Court papers portray Kurson as a person unraveling during a time of personal and family distress. His attempts to intimidate and annoy the alleged victims involved leaving negative reviews on the website Yelp.com using pseudonyms that the FBI eventually traced back to Kurson, according to the criminal complaint. He is also accused of taking photographs at the hospital and asking about the work schedule of one of the alleged victims, authorities said.

His online aliases — “Jayden has Wagner” and “Eddie Train” — were used to lodge bogus complaints with Mount Sinai about the doctors, authorities said. Kurson tracked and threatened the doctors, they allege, blaming one for causing his divorce.

“Kurson is alleged to have engaged in a disturbing pattern of retaliatory harassment that intimidated and alarmed several victims and their employer,” acting U.S. attorney Seth DuCharme said in a statement.

Kurson ran Kushner’s newspaper from 2013 to 2017 and now heads Sea of Reeds Media, according to his biography on the company’s website. He co-authored Giuliani’s book “Leadership,” which was published in 2002.

 

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FBI: Far-Right Extremist Posed As BLM Protester, Fired On Minneapolis Police Precinct

The alleged gunman, a member of the Boogaloo Bois, shouted “Justice for Floyd” and helped set the building on fire, according to a federal complaint.

A member of the far-right anti-government Boogaloo Bois has been charged with opening fire on a Minneapolis police precinct while pretending to be a Black Lives Matter protester, according to the federal complaint against him.

Amid protests following the police killing of George Floyd in May, Ivan Harrison Hunter, 26, allegedly opened fire on the Third Precinct building with an AK-47-style gun and yelled “Justice for Floyd” as he ran away, said the complaint, which was made public Friday.

Hunter, a Texas resident, has been charged with one count of interstate travel to incite a riot.

He was captured on video shooting 13 rounds at the police building while people were inside on the night of May 28, according to the complaint, which also said he helped set the building ablaze.

At the time, President Donald Trump was publicly blaming antifa, or anti-fascist protesters, for the violence, and threatening to declare it a terrorist organization — even though no formal antifa group exists.

Hunter and other members of the Boogaloo Bois had planned on Facebook to travel to Minneapolis and meet up near the Third Precinct building, according to the court documents. “Lock and load boys,” said one of the messages, according to the complaint. “Boog flags are in the air, and the national network is going off.”


On May 29, Hunter texted fellow member Steven Carillo about targets for their movements among Black Lives Matter protesters, the complaint stated.

“Go for police buildings,” Hunter encouraged Carrillo, according to the court documents. Carillo, a California resident and an active duty U.S. Air Force sergeant at the time, responded: “I did better lol.”

Carillo was later arrested and charged with killing federal protective services officer Dave Underwood in Oakland on May 29, and fatally shooting sheriff’s deputy Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller in Santa Cruz just days later.

“This antifa violent activity has to stop,” White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien said at the time, referring to Underwood’s death.

Hunter also bragged about his role in the Minneapolis destruction on Facebook, the complaint noted. “I helped ... burn down that police station” and “I didn’t protest peacefully Dude … Want something to change? Start risking felonies for what is good,” he allegedly wrote.

 

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LOL @ Kasowitz saying she "never made that gesture"

 

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Far-Right Groups Are Behind Most U.S. Terrorist Attacks, Report Finds
White supremacists and other like-minded groups have committed a majority of the terrorist attacks in the United States this year, according to a report by a security think tank that echoed warnings made by the Department of Homeland Security this month.
The report, published Thursday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, found that white supremacist groups were responsible for 41 of 61 “terrorist plots and attacks” in the first eight months of this year, or 67 percent.

The finding comes about two weeks after an annual assessment by the Department of Homeland Security warned that violent white supremacy was the “most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland” and that white supremacists were the most deadly among domestic terrorists in recent years.

The think tank researchers found that the threats of violence were linked in part to this year’s mass protests and confrontations with protesters from a variety of factions. The report said that “far-left and far-right violence was deeply intertwined” and that far-left groups, including anarchists and antifascist organizations, were responsible for 12 attacks and plots so far this year, or 20 percent of the total number, up from 8 percent in 2019.

The report by C.S.I.S., which describes itself as a nonpartisan center, found that far-left extremists most frequently targeted law enforcement, military and government facilities and personnel.

The report highlighted several cases, including fatal shootings related to protests and the F.B.I.’s arrest of 13 men accused of plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan, a Democrat. Those cases, along with President Trump’s denunciations of left-wing activists and his refusal at a presidential debate to condemn an extremist right-wing group, have repeatedly raised fears this year of politically motivated violence.

“Part of the issue we’re seeing is with people congregating, whether it’s for protests or other issues, in cities, is it has basically brought together extremist individuals from all sides in close proximity,” said Seth Jones, the director of the Transnational Threats Project at the center. “We’ve seen people on all sides armed, and it does raise concerns about escalation of violence in U.S. cities.”

The report also linked the threat of violence to the country’s charged politics, the coronavirus pandemic and its financial fallout. It warned that violence could rise after the presidential election because of increasing polarization, growing economic challenges, concerns about racial injustice and the persistence of coronavirus health risks.

It said that if the Democratic presidential candidate, Joseph R. Biden Jr., wins the election, white supremacists could mobilize, with targets likely to be Black people, Latinos, Jews and Muslims. A Republican presidential victory could involve violence emanating out of large-scale demonstrations, the report said.

There were some encouraging signs. The number of fatalities from domestic terrorism has been relatively low so far this year, compared with some periods of U.S. history.

Five fatalities were caused by domestic terrorism in the first eight months of this year, compared with the past five years, in which total fatalities ranged from 22 people to 66.

The study attributed the lower number of fatalities to effective intervention by the F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies.

The relatively low number of fatalities that resulted from a high number of terrorist incidents showed that extremists this year have wanted to send messages through threats and intimidation, the report found. Many of the incidents involved vehicles or weapons, so there was a high potential for fatalities, but “an apparent lack of will,” it said.

Of the five fatal attacks this year, the report attributed one in Portland, Ore., to an activist affiliated with the loose far-left movement known as “antifa”; one in Austin, Texas, to a man described as a “far-right extremist”; one in New Jersey to an “anti-feminist”; and two in California to a man linked to the so-called Boogaloo movement, an anti-government group whose members seek to exploit public unrest to incite a race war.

In an endnote, the researchers said they did not classify the shooting in Kenosha, Wis., that killed two protesters in August, as a terrorist attack. They said that the person charged in the shooting, a teenager whose social media accounts showed strong support for the police, “lacked a clear political motive for the killings.”

Mr. Jones said the number of small, structured groups had increased over the last couple of years, as part of a broader increase in organized violence recently compared with the 1960s and ’70s, when attacks tended to be carried out by relatively decentralized extremists.

A continued increase in organized violence in the United States, perpetrated by groups with sophisticated structures for training and fund-raising, Mr. Jones said, would be “a very concerning development.”

Demonstrators were targeted in a large percentage of the attacks from both far-right and far-left groups, the report found.

Bruce Hoffman, a professor at Georgetown University focusing on terrorism and insurgency, said the number of attacks directed against demonstrators was alarming.

“It is fundamentally concerning that Americans exercising their right to freedom of assembly and speech at protests are increasingly targeted,” said Mr. Hoffman, who was not involved in the center’s report. “I think all Americans have to find that worrisome. That’s not our country.”

 

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Judge blocks DOJ's gambit in Trump's E. Jean Carroll case

Donald Trump's private legal team have repeatedly tried and failed to make E. Jean Carroll's defamation lawsuit go away. As regular readers may recall, the Justice Department filed court documents last month, declaring its intention to represent the president in the case.That doesn't appear to be going well. CNBC reported this morningA federal judge on Tuesday rejected an effort by the Department of Justice to have the United States government replace President Donald Trump in a lawsuit in which he is accused of defaming writer E. Jean Carroll after she said he raped her in the mid-1990s. The DOJ had argued that Trump was acting in his capacity as a government employee when he said Carroll was lying and motivated by money.

Because of that, the DOJ said, the government should be the defendant in Carroll's civil lawsuit, not the president.U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected the Justice Department's arguments, clearing the way for Carroll and her attorneys to sue the president for defamation personally.For those who may need a refresher on the controversy, let's revisit how we arrived at this point.Carroll spent years as a prominent writer, media figure, and advice columnist, including having hosted a show on America's Talking, which later became MSNBC.

As regular readers may recall, in June 2019, she also joined a long list of women who've accused Trump of sexual misconduct.Indeed, in a book published last year, Carroll described an alleged encounter in a New York department store in the mid-1990s, which the writer described as a violent sexual assault committed by the future president.

Though definitively proving or disproving Carroll's claim is difficult -- there is no security footage to review -- the writer said she confided in two friends shortly after the alleged incident, telling them at the time what she said occurred. Those friends soon after came forward with on-the-record accounts.She also wrote in her book, "The Donna Karan coatdress still hangs on the back of my closet door, unworn and unlaundered since that evening." It's led Carroll to seek Trump's DNA as part of her case.The president has denied the claim, arguing, among other things, that his latest accuser is a "liar" who isn't his "type." Following those comments, Carroll sued Trump for defamation. (When the allegations first surfaced over the summer, Trump issued a statement claiming that he'd never met E. Jean Carroll. There is, however, a photograph of the two interacting at an event in the mid-1980s.)

In August, a New York judge rejected the latest in a series of efforts to delay the case, and soon after, the Trump/Barr Justice Department decided to intervene.In fact, the Justice Department peddled a very strange argument, asserting that the president was "acting within the scope of his office" when he lashed out at the woman who accused him of sexual assault, which meant not only that American taxpayers should pay for Trump's legal defense, but also that the United States government should be the defendant in the case.And since the government can't be sued for defamation, the gambit appeared to be an effort on the part of the Justice Department to make the entire case go away.Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal described the Justice Department's position last month as "insane," adding that DOJ officials "are doing everything they can to appear to be Trump's personal law firm."The judge in the case, not surprisingly, also failed to find the Justice Department's argument persuasive, concluding that Trump clearly was not acting in his official capacity when he publicly targeted Carroll. "His comments concerned an alleged sexual assault that took place several decades before he took office, and the allegations have no relationship to the official business of the United States," Kaplan wrote.

Today's ruling will very likely be appealed. Watch this space.

Postscript: It's also worth noting for context that the public was confronted with a recording from 2005 in which Trump was heard bragging about committing sexual assaults. The Republican said that he kisses women he considers attractive -- "I don't even wait," Trump claimed at the time -- which he said he could get away with because of his public profile."When you're a star, they let you do it," Trump said on the recording. "You can do anything. Grab 'em by the p***y."Among the claims raised by Carroll was an allegation, denied by the president, that Trump "forced his fingers around my private area."

 

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Looks like those two shouldn't drop the soap:
Conservative Operatives Jacob Wohl, Jack Burkman Indicted In Second State For Voter Suppression Scheme

Right-wing operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman—known for their roles in a series of outrageous political schemes—were indicted in a second state on Tuesday for allegedly orchestrating a large-scale robocall campaign designed to intimidate minority voters ahead of the 2020 election.

Wohl, 22, and Burkman, 54, were each charged with eight counts of telecommunications fraud and seven counts of bribery in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, for “devising a robocall scam that attempted to suppress voting in local minority neighborhoods by intimidating residents to refrain from voting by mail.”

These charges, which could amount to a possible 18.5 years in prison, compound multiple felony charges waged against the duo by Michigan’s attorney general on Oct. 1 for the same scheme.

Per a news release from the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office, Burkman and Wohl placed over 67,000 calls across multiple states in the Midwest with pre-recorded messages falsely warning people that if they voted by mail law enforcement, collection agencies, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would use their information for pursuing old warrants, collecting outstanding debts and tracking for mandatory vaccines.

Over 8,100 of those calls were directed to phone numbers in Cleveland and East Cleveland, 3,400 of which were answered by a live person or voicemail.

Wohl and Burkman have claimed they did not orchestrate the robocall campaign, however, in Michigan, prosecutors plan to call as a witness the owner of a robocall company allegedly used by the pair, and prosecutors also say they have an email from Wohl arranging scripts for the call.

“The right to vote is the most fundamental component of our nation’s democracy,” Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael C. O’Malley said in a statement. “These individuals clearly infringed upon that right in a blatant attempt to suppress votes and undermine the integrity of this election These actions will not be tolerated.”

Wohl, a conservative social media personality who was recently ejected from Facebook and Instagram, has joined Burkman, a conservative lobbyist and conspiracy theorist, in multiple outrageous, pro-Trump plots. Among the most well-known are the duo’s attempt to smear rivals of President Trump, including Elizabeth Warren, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Pete Buttigieg and Robert Mueller, through fabricated sexual assault allegations. Wohl is also facing a felony charge in California for unlawfully selling securities, which he pleaded not guilty to in February.