My first big assignment as a journalist was covering President Jimmy Carter’s 1995 visit to Rwanda, a doomed mission that brought him little acclaim.
Carter didn’t fight disease, promote democracy or negotiate peace to make headlines. He did the work quietly and diligently to make the world a better place. His life was a master class in a leadership style firmly out of fashion but will hopefully return.
I was in my third month as the Associated Press and Voice of America stringer in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. A civil war between an ethno-fascist Hutu government and rebels from the Tutsi minority had culminated in the 1994 genocide that slaughtered 1 million people, most of them Tutsi civilians, in 100 days.
The Tutsi-led rebels drove the Hutu leadership and 1.2 million of their followers into neighboring Zaire, rnow known as Democratic Republic of the Congo. Insurgents from the Zairian refugee camps were still killing 300 people a week in Rwanda more than a year later.
I trailed Carter through Rwanda and the Zairian refugee camps. His Secret Service detail was minimal, yet he moved through these dangerous places with a confidence, kindness and humility that only comes from tremendous inner strength.
He spoke to political leaders, genocide victims, refugees and me with the same courtesy and respect. He knew Mobutu would probably never agree to a peace deal, but unlike most famous people, he didn’t allow the likelihood of failure to stop him from trying.
Carter wanted to negotiate a deal between the new Tutsi-led Rwandan government and Zaire’s dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, whose murderous misrule had made him a pariah.
“These leaders know that I’m their last chance to rejoin the international community,” Carter told me while driving to a church where the skeletons of the dead were displayed as a genocide memorial. He laughed and added, “If Jimmy Carter gives up on you, there’s no one else coming.”
Carter met with Mobutu, and he agreed to a summit with the Rwanda foreign minister. Diplomats knew Mobutu had cancer and hoped he might cut a deal to boost his legacy.
Carter’s staff asked me to join the trip to Mobutu’s palace in Gbadolite, Zaire. I watched Mobutu turn the summit into a farce. Eighteen months later, Rwanda overthrew him, installed a new president and forced the refugees home. The old dictator died in exile. Carter kept lobbying for world peace.
I saw the former president many more times over my 11 years in Africa. His foundation, the Carter Center, monitored elections and fought preventable diseases like river blindness, guinea worm and other neglected tropical diseases. Carter’s work saved tens of millions of people from suffering, but he never made a big deal out of it.
No one can accomplish so much without steely determination. Too often, I hear people describe Carter as the weak and bumbling caricature that President Ronald Reagan created to win the 1980 election. Folks should stop confusing courtesy for weakness.
After the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam debacle, Carter, in 1976, offered an alternative to Richard Nixon’s imperial presidency. He practiced what has become known as servant leadership, the theory that a leader’s primary duty is ensuring subordinates have the tools they need to accomplish their mission.
In the Army, my brigade commander instilled servant leadership in me when I joined his staff as a newly minted sergeant in 1986. He explained that junior enlisted members did not serve me because I outranked them; my rank meant I was responsible for their success, and the colonel promised to hold me accountable if they failed.
The term servant leadership is hackneyed, but it captures valuable techniques that have caught on in the business world. It emphasizes listening, empathy, persuasion, stewardship and community building while discouraging egotism and authoritarianism.
The greater good comes first, not any individual.
While president, Carter rejected much of the pomp at the White House. His speeches focused on addressing problems, not promoting himself. Despite attending the U.S. Naval Academy and serving in the nuclear navy, he was never a warrior-king style leader, which American voters tend to favor.
Humility does not do well in the current culture, where conspicuousness is valued. Politicians must constantly self-promote while denigrating their rivals. Compromise is considered a failure, and vulgarity is considered clever.
The strongest people I’ve encountered in the most difficult places don’t puff up their chests. They don’t need others to bow before them. People with inner strength don’t use cruelty to prove their power.
Here’s hoping kindness makes a comeback, courtesy becomes cool, and strength is demonstrated by lifting people up, not knocking them down.
Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance explains in plain English the latest court case that Trump lost.
His lawyers appealed a decision awarding E. Jean Carroll $5 million, claiming that the trial judge erred by allowing admission of evidence about previous accusations of sexual assault by other women, as well as the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected Trump’s appeal.
After I read the post below, I asked a friend who is a lawyer whether Trump could evade accountability by pardoning himself, and she replied, “No, the President can pardon only criminal convictions, and this is a civil conviction.”
After an inexplicable delay, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued its opinion, affirming the jury verdict in the first of E. Jean Carroll’s two defamation cases to go to trial against Donald Trump (for those of you who followed closely, you’ll recall this was actually “Carroll II,” the second of the cases Carroll filed, but it made it to trial first for reasons discussed here.)
At the start of it’s 79 page opinion, the court recites that “after a nine-day trial, a jury found that plaintiff-appellee E. Jean Carroll was sexually abused by defendant-appellant Donald J. Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1996. The jury also found that Mr. Trump defamed her in statements he made in 2022. The jury awarded Ms. Carroll a total of $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.”
The Second Circuit’s decision today does not involve the other case, where Carroll was awarded $83.3 million by a second jury. That happened in large part because Trump, after losing the first go-round, was simply incapable of letting it drop and continued to defame Carroll, including in a CNN town hall the day after the $5 million verdict.
The most important part first: The court ruled in Carroll’s favor, finding that Trump failed to show that the trial court committed errors that entitled him to a new trial. This is the final word in the Second Circuit’s view. Trump can ask the full court to rehear the case en banc, which it is unlikely to do. Or, he can petition the Supreme Court for certiorari review. But the Supreme Court doesn’t have to take the case and, in fact, it would be surprising if it did.
If that topline from the case is enough for you, stop here. But if you want more, I’ve read the entire opinion, and I have some hot takes for you. Yes, it’s a lot of legalese, but I think you’ll find it worth your time. (And if you’re done here, do skip down five paragraphs and read the two starting with “In it’s recitation of the case,” because whether it’s intentional or not, the court has something to say about why E. Jean Carroll didn’t come forward for years.)
Keep in mind that as the court is careful to say, in an appeal like this, it’s required to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff—that’s E. Jean Carroll—so the legal assumption the court proceeds with is that her version of the facts is accurate. This is the legal device used in an appeal of this nature: the Court of Appeals is evaluating the verdict and whether it can stand, assuming Carroll’s version of events, which the jury accepted, is true. Even with that in mind, the court’s recitation and evaluation of the evidence is a timely reminder of who the next president of the United States that is worth reviewing, even if you’re already thoroughly disgusted.
This appeal is primarily about whether the trial court erred when it admitted certain types of evidence at trial (see below), and in our legal system, those decisions are committed to the sound discretion of the trial judge and are only reversed if there is an abuse of that discretion. The Court of Appeals put it this way, “We accord ‘great deference’ to a district court, however, in ruling ‘as to the relevancy and unfair prejudice of proffered evidence, mindful that it sees the witnesses, the parties, the jurors, and the attorneys, and is thus in a superior position to evaluate the likely impact of the evidence.’” It is the trial court’s unique opportunity to eyeball the evidence and the witnesses during trial that puts it in the best position to make these calls.
Trump complained that Judge Kaplan improperly admitted certain types of evidence at trial. The Court of Appeals found there was no abuse of discretion and affirmed the verdict and award of damages to E. Jean Carroll.
There is nothing unique or novel in this case beyond the identity of the defendant. There is nothing to take it beyond the realm of the thousands of cases where decisions made by the courts of appeals across the country stand as a final decision every year. This decision should be the end of this case. If the Supreme does decide to take it, that, even in this era, would be a shocking abuse and indication of special treatment for Trump.
It takes four Justices votes for the Court to agree to hear a case. Of the 7,000-8,000 cert petitions filed each term, the Court typically hears about 80 of them. Fact based questions about whether a trial judge abused their discretion in admitting evidence that demonstrates intent, motive, pattern of behavior, and so forth—evidence that is frequently used in cases—typically doesn’t rise to that level.
In its recitation of the facts of the case, the court seems to grasp something that Donald Trump never did, and that society at large often misses. Trump claimed Carroll made the whole thing up, that she wouldn’t have waited so long to tell the story if it was true. Of course, Carroll did tell two of her closest friends at the time, but she never went to the police. One of her friends had cautioned her: Trump was too powerful; it would end her career. It’s an all too familiar story for women.
Here is the court’s take: “While conducting interviews for a book that she was writing in 2017, the accounts of assaults perpetrated by Harvey Weinstein came to light and received nationwide attention. As a consequence of the many women who came forward to report their experiences of sexual assault, Ms. Carroll finally decided to share more broadly what Mr. Trump had done to her in 1996.” Me too was a watershed moment for so many women. It was for E. Jean Carroll too. In an era where women have faced taunts of “your body, my choice” in the wake of the election, we might want to stay focused on what women have gained—and lost—in recent American history.
In discussing the trial judge’s decision to permit Carroll’s lawyer to put on evidence of other alleged sexual assaults committed by Trump, the Court of Appeals writes, “Rules 413 and 415 permit a jury to consider evidence of a different sexual assault ‘precisely to show that a defendant has a pattern or propensity for committing sexual assault.’” They continue, “Congress ‘considered knowledge that the defendant has committed [sexual assault] on other occasions to be critical in assessing the relative plausibility of sexual assault claims and accurately deciding cases that would otherwise become unresolvable swearing matches.’ … ‘[T]he practical effect of Rule 413 [and Rules 414 and 415] is to create a presumption that evidence of prior sexual assaults is relevant and probative’ in cases based on sexual assault.”
A trial judge has the ability to prevent a jury from hearing evidence of prior sexual assaults if the value of the evidence in proving the plaintiff’s case is outweighed by undue prejudice to the defendant. That doesn’t mean that any prejudice is enough to keep the evidence out—all good evidence offered at trial is prejudicial, in the sense that it helps prove that one of the parties did or said something that they are being sued for. The question is whether there is unfair prejudice.
The court relates the evidence Carroll’s lawyers used at trial and concludes that all of it was properly admitted:
Jessica Leeds was assaulted on an airplane by Trump in 1978 or 1979 after he had a flight attendant invite her to come sit with him in first class. Leeds testified, “he was trying to kiss me, he was trying to pull me towards him. He was grabbing my breasts, he was — it’s like he had 40 zillion hands, and it was a tussling match between the two of us. And it was when he started putting his hand up my skirt that that kind of gave me a jolt of strength, and I managed to wiggle out of the seat and I went storming back to my seat in the coach.” Leeds acknowledged the groping and patting women frequently endured in that era, but testified, “when somebody starts to put their hand up your skirt, you know they’re serious and this is not good.”
Natasha Stoynoff testified that, in December 2005, she was areporter for People magazine on assignment at Mar-a-Lago to do a story about Trump and Melania’s one-year anniversary and the birth of Barron Trump. Donald Trump took Stoynoff to a room where he said he wanted to show her a painting. She testified, “I hear the door shut behind me. And by the time I turn around, he has his hands on my shoulders and he pushes me against the wall and starts kissing me, holding me against the wall.” Trump was interrupted when his Butler walked in, but he told Stoynoff afterward that they were going to have “an affair” and told her to remember what his second wife, Marla Maples, had said about him, “best sex she has ever had.”
The infamous Access Hollywood tape was played twice for the jury. In the recording, Mr. Trump states that he “moved on” a woman named Nancy “like a bitch” and “did try and fuck her.” The first block below is what Trump says in the tape, as related by the court. The second one is Trump’s deposition testimony about it (the same deposition where he misidentified a photo of Carroll at the time as one of his second wife, Maples):
Here’s what the court has to say about this evidence adding up to show a pattern of sexual assault by Trump: “In each of the three encounters [Leeds, Stoynoff, and Carroll], Mr. Trump engaged in an ordinary conversation with a woman he barely knew, then abruptly lunged at her in a semi-public place and proceeded to kiss and forcefully touch her without her consent. The acts are sufficiently similar to show a pattern or ‘recurring modus operandi.’ … Moreover, the [Access Hollywood] tape was ‘directly corroborative’ of the testimony of Ms. Carroll, Ms. Leeds, and Ms. Stoynoff as to the pattern of behavior each allegedly experienced, and ‘the matter corroborated’ was one of the most ‘significant’ in the case — whether the assault of Ms. Carroll actually occurred.” On the question of undue prejudice, the court concludes, “we also find that the other act evidence was not unfairly prejudicial, as the incidents in question were ‘no more sensational or disturbing’ than the acts that Ms. Carroll alleged Mr. Trump to have committed against her.” The jury was entitled to hear all of this evidence against Trump.
Trump also objects to areas the trial judge didn’t permit his lawyers to go into in front of the jury, including why she never DNA tested her decades-old dress and why she didn’t file a police report. Using the same standard, the Court of Appeals concluded the trial judge did not abuse his discretion when he excluded this evidence.
So there you have it. The next president of the United States of America. A timely reminder.
As I’m writing this, the opinion is still only available on Pacer, the U.S. Court’s ridiculously expensive documents system. Unfortunately, that means I can’t link to it now, but I’ll update as soon as it’s available publicly. Taxpayers fund the courts, and they are well-funded. There is no reason the document system shouldn’t be available free of charge to everyone—open courts, and all that.
Scott Maxwell is an opinion writer for The Orlando Sentinel. I consistently enjoy his writings. Here he explains what he believes. I agree with him, although I am not a Presbyterian.
He writes:
Every new year, I follow a tradition started by former Orlando Sentinel columnist Charley Reese who believed that, if a newspaper columnist is going to tell you what he thinks all year long, he should first tell you who he is and where he stands.
I am a married father with two grown kids, both of whom picked up their best attributes from their mother.
I’m not a Republican nor a Democrat. I’m a lifelong unaffiliated voter who has seen too many people defend indefensible deed-doers simply because they share a party affiliation.
That said, I lean left of center. I believe in public education, free speech, equal rights, balanced budgets and the U.S. Constitution.
I believe most of the politicians who lead this state and claim to be constitutionalists are full of it. We have the court rulings to prove it.
I believe censorship is favored by those with weak minds. If you crave government censorship, you’re an authoritarian’s dream disciple.
I think the world has two kinds of people: Those who hear an idea and immediately think: How will this affect me? And those who hear a new idea and also wonder: How will this affect society? I have a lot more respect for the latter.
One of my favorite quotes involves the definition of privilege — when something doesn’t strike you as a problem because it’s not a problem to you. I believe that explains why families with disabilities are on seven-year-waiting lists for basic services in this state.
Another one of my favorite quotes is: Fifty percent of the enjoyment you get from a vacation comes from the anticipation beforehand. My wife and I always have several vacations planned.
We love our children. I’d throw myself in front of a bus for either one. That said, now that they’re both grown, I’m glad that any buses they might take nowadays will drop them off at their own respective homes. My wife and I have fully embraced being empty-nesters.
Our daughter works with children in the arts. Our son writes and also substitute teaches. Both of our kids are good with kids. We take great pride in that.
I believe teachers are underappreciated. So are social workers, public defenders and full-time caregivers.
I believe arts and culture are an essential part of any community. So are nonprofit organizations. If cultural groups are the heart of a community, nonprofits represent the backbone.
My wife and I have two main sources of income — my salary at the newspaper and hers with the Department of Veterans Affairs. We’ve worked at both jobs for the past quarter century. Her job is a lot more stable.
We both read voraciously. She reads books — at least two a week. I read lengthy court rulings, drafted legislation and just about every piece of current-event info published about Florida.
We also diverge a bit when it comes to film. She likes Hallmark movies where a busy, big-city boss lady stumbles into a small town and discovers love on a Christmas tree farm. I like ridiculous, scary movies where the big-city boss lady stumbles into giant insects that have mutated in size thanks to toxic sludge dumped in that small town’s water reservoir.
My wife says her book and movie tastes are more normal. She’s usually right. About most things in life.
We own two houses — the one in which we live near downtown Orlando and our starter home that we still own and rent out in Seminole County.
I don’t have or accept any other streams of income. Mainly because I try to avoid financial conflicts of interest. But also because I find my one job pretty exhausting.
I start most days by 4 a.m. and work 60 to 80 hours a week, partly because our newsroom has only a fraction of the journalists and editors it used to have.
This newspaper business has changed a lot, in many ways for the worse when it comes to staffing and customer service. But I still believe in the mission and am honored to work alongside feisty, smart and curious journalists who aren’t easily intimidated, virtually all of whom are still in local journalism because they care about this community.
I’m also honored to work for a paper with editors and publishers who have never — ever — told me what I can or can’t write.
I welcome dissenting opinions. In fact, I seek them out. When I’m writing a column, I usually spend as much time looking up arguments against my premise as I do ones that support it. I’d much rather hear the best arguments before I publish a piece.
I don’t worship any politician and am a bit puzzled by those who do. I’ve yet to meet one who was flawless. I respect elected officials who truly study the issues, question what they’re told and are willing to challenge the status quo.
I believe in checks and balances and that one-party control is a recipe for both extremism and corruption.
I’m a Presbyterian and church elder, a die-hard Tar Heel, a decent poker player, solid Worldler and much less-solid pickleball player.
I love laughter and plot twists and loathe bigotry and standing in lines.
I think Tesla Cybertrucks look ridiculous.
I feel privileged to have this job and honored to know so many of you read and share your own stories with me.
In President Joe Biden’s tribute to President Jimmy Carter, there is an implicit contrast with the man who will be inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States. Just take every self-evident statement about Carter’s integrity, honor, and humanity, and flip it to its opposite extreme. You will have a portrait of 47: a man who never donned the uniform of his country; a man who never did an unselfish act for anyone else; a man whose business career was noted for bankruptcies, thousands of lawsuits, and unpaid bills; a man known for serial lies; a man who has been married three times and cheated on all his wives. A man whose name is synonymous with lying, cheating, greed, and selfishness.
Now, read about the other extreme: a man who devoted his life to his country and service to others. President Jimmy Carter. A man who had a lifelong devotion to his wife. A man who sent his only child Amy to public schools in D.C. when he was President.
President Biden released this statement:
Today, America and the world lost an extraordinary leader, statesman, and humanitarian.
Over six decades, we had the honor of calling Jimmy Carter a dear friend. But, what’s extraordinary about Jimmy Carter, though, is that millions of people throughout America and the world who never met him thought of him as a dear friend as well.
With his compassion and moral clarity, he worked to eradicate disease, forge peace, advance civil rights and human rights, promote free and fair elections, house the homeless, and always advocate for the least among us. He saved, lifted, and changed the lives of people all across the globe.
He was a man of great character and courage, hope and optimism. We will always cherish seeing him and Rosalynn together. The love shared between Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter is the definition of partnership and their humble leadership is the definition of patriotism.
We will miss them both dearly, but take solace knowing they are reunited once again and will remain forever in our hearts.
To the entire Carter family, we send our gratitude for sharing them with America and the world. To their staff – from the earliest days to the final ones – we have no doubt that you will continue to do the good works that carry on their legacy.
And to all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning – the good life – study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith, and humility. He showed that we are great nation because we are a good people – decent and honorable, courageous and compassionate, humble and strong (love this line).
To honor a great American, I will be ordering an official state funeral to be held in Washington D.C. for James Earl Carter, Jr., 39th President of the United States, 76th Governor of Georgia, Lieutenant of the United States Navy, graduate of the United States Naval Academy, and favorite son of Plains, Georgia, who gave his full life in service to God and country.
Allison Gill is a Navy veteran, a comedian, a podcaster, and a blogger. Her blog “Mueller, She Wrote,” was launched at the beginning of that long-ago investigation of Trump’s connections to Russia. This post appeared on her blog:
I’m not a lawyer, but usually, when the Supreme Court hears a case, they are supposed to rule on that specific case. Yet somehow, in two crucial cases about holding Donald Trump accountable for insurrection, the corrupt court went out of its way to decide on questions not before it, and create “a rule for the ages,” as Neil Gorsuch put it during oral arguments this past spring.
The first bomb they dropped to destroy accountability for Trump was their ruling overturning the Colorado Supreme Court on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The justices decided 9-0 that Colorado could not keep a federal candidate off the state ballot – but a 5-4 majority took it a step further by deciding that Section 3 of the 14th amendment is not self-executing; meaning Congress has to first pass legislation disqualifying Trump. An idea so wrong that even Amy Coney Barrett joined the liberal justices and objected to that part of the ruling in her concurrence.
The second bomb they dropped was the immunity ruling. Not only did they grant Trump presumptive immunity in the case before them, but they granted all presidents presumptive immunity, and took it a step further by disqualifying official acts from being used as evidence to prosecute unofficial acts.
But that’s not all! Rather than deciding which acts in the Trump case were subject to immunity, they kicked it back down to the lower court, teeing up a second interlocutory appeal on whatever the lower court ruled. That effectively added another year to the delay. Additionally, it would give the corrupt court another swing at the DoJ case on the second appeal, where I imagine they’d rip it apart once and for all. When all was said and done, they decided that they themselves would be the ultimate arbiter of rulings on official acts for criminal presidents while adding ridiculously long pre-trial appeals to the process.
That’s nothing compared to the official acts evidence part of the ruling. Again – so bad and so wrong that Amy Coney Barrett joined the liberal justices to disagree. The gist is this: let’s say you want to prosecute a president after he leaves office for accepting a million dollar bribe in exchange for an ambassadorship. And let’s say you have emails between the president and the potential ambassador explicitly stating “I will give you this ambassadorship in exchange for a million dollars.” This Supreme Court ruling says you can’t mention the appointment of the ambassador (the quo) while trying to prosecute the bribe (the quid). Absolutely bonkers.
These two rulings are the reason we can’t have nice things. That and Mitch McConnell failing to convict Trump of Insurrection after his impeachment. These decisions are the reasons Trump has not been held accountable. All because a bought-and-paid-for supreme court, funded by dark money with corporate interests before the court, needed to protect Trump from prosecution and accountability.
Were it not for the immunity ruling, Donald would have faced trial for his role in the insurrection in March of 2024. Would a conviction have made a difference in the election given he was already a 34-count convicted felon? I don’t know, but we would have had a trial were it not for the Supreme Court. The immunity ruling also contained a permission slip from Clarence Thomas in his concurrence for Aileen Cannon to dismiss the documents case, opining apropos of NOTHING that Jack Smith was probably appointed and funded improperly.
POOF. Both DoJ trials were scrapped from the pre-election calendar. But even if Trump had lost the election, there’d be a second interlocutory appeal of Judge Chutkan’s immunity determinations that would have gone all the way back up to the Supreme Court – adding at least a year to the trial calendar. Would the corrupt court have left Judge Chutkan’s ruling in place, allowing the case to go to trial? If you believe that, I have a luxury motor coach to sell you.
People have been trying to convince me that if Trump were indicted sooner, he would have gone to trial before the election and wouldn’t have been re-elected. For that to be true, you’d have to convince me that the dark money funded oligarchs on the Supreme Court would have been cool one time and allowed the trial to happen. You’d also have to convince me that people are fine electing a man convicted of 34 felonies, but not a man convicted of 38 felonies. I have my doubts.
Regardless, I will forever blame the billionaire-funded Supreme Court. They are part of the oligarchy, and were installed to dismantle democracy.
Right after the election, Trump announced that he had chosen Matt Gaetz, Congressman from Florida, as his choice to be Attorney General of the United States. The AG is the highest ranking officer of the law in the nation.
Faced with strong opposition, including enough Republican votes to stop him, Gaetz withdrew from the nomination.
(CNN) — The House Ethics Committee found evidence that former Rep. Matt Gaetz paid tens of thousands of dollars to women for sex or drugs on at least 20 occasions, including paying a 17-year-old girl for sex in 2017, according to a final draft of the panel’s report on the Florida Republican, obtained by CNN.
The committee concluded in its bombshell document that Gaetz violated Florida state laws, including the state’s statutory rape law, as the GOP-led panel chose to take the rare step of releasing a report about a former member who resigned from Congress.
“The Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” panel investigators wrote.
The panel investigated transactions Gaetz personally made, often using PayPal or Venmo, to more than a dozen women during his time in Congress, according to the report. Investigators also focused on a 2018 trip to the Bahamas – which they said “violated the House gift rule” – during which he “engaged in sexual activity” with multiple women, including one who described the trip itself as “the payment” for sex on the trip. On the same trip, he also took ecstasy, one woman on the trip told the committee.
Kristy Greenberg is a veteran prosecutor in the U. S. Attorney’s office in New York. She is the former deputy chief of the criminal division of the Southern District of New York. She is currently a legal analyst for MSNBC.
She explains why President Biden was right to pardon his son Hunter. I agree with her. Can you imagine how the Trump administration would have demeaned and humiliated Hunter Biden once they got their clutches on him? With Trump zealots in charge of the Justice Department and the FBI, Hunter would not stand a chance. Already, Republicans in Congress are saying they are not finished with Hunter, despite the pardon. House Republicans have a blood lust going for Hunter.
Greenberg writes:
Critics have argued that President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter was political nepotism—bad for the country, selfish, the height of privilege. But the actual story is the very opposite of nepotism: Hunter Biden was treated worse than an ordinary citizen because of his family connections. It’s good for the country when the president acts against injustice; President Biden rightly condemned the injustice of his son’s prosecution. His pardon was necessary to prevent Donald Trump’s Justice Department from targeting Hunter for years to come.
I worked as a federal criminal prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York for 12 years, during which time I supervised and prosecuted many gun and tax cases. President Biden argues that the gun and tax charges Hunter was convicted of should never have been brought. I agree. When I served as deputy chief for the Southern District of New York’s Criminal Division, my job was to approve charging and non-prosecution decisions on gun and tax cases. I would not have approved the felony gun and tax charges brought against Hunter Biden; such charges are rarely—if ever—brought in similar circumstances.
Prosecutors charged Hunter with lying about his drug addiction when he purchased a firearm, and with possessing that firearm while he was a drug addict. They were wrong to do so. As a first-time offender with no criminal record or history of violent behavior who possessed a gun for only 11 days and didn’t use it, he did not pose a public-safety risk to warrant federal gun charges. The public interest is served by treating addiction, not weaponizing it. In a gross display of addiction-shaming, prosecutors used Hunter’s own words from his memoir about overcoming drug addiction against him at trial. They forced his former romantic partners to testify and dredge up details of his addiction. The prosecution’s trial presentation was cruel and humiliating.
Nor should prosecutors have charged Hunter with failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes during the period when he suffered from drug addiction. The IRS’s primary goal—to recover unpaid taxes—was satisfied when Hunter fully repaid the taxes he owed with interest and penalty. Felony tax charges are unwarranted here given that the tax amount is not exorbitant, his nonpayment occurred while he was using illegal drugs, and he fully repaid his taxes. A civil resolution or tax-misdemeanor charges would have been appropriate.
Notably, there had been a fair non-felony plea deal between Trump-appointed Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss and Hunter, but congressional Republicans worked to crush it. They opened an investigation into the DOJ’s plea negotiations, held hearings with testimony from IRS case agents and prosecutors, and attempted to intervene in the case before the plea. Amid intense political pressure from Republicans, Weiss killed the deal, requested and obtained special-counsel status, and charged Hunter with gun and tax felonies. As President Biden stated in announcing Hunter’s pardon, a number of his opponents in Congress took credit for bringing political pressure on the process. President Biden is correct that Hunter was treated differently; most criminal defendants do not have members of Congress interfering in their cases to lobby for harsher treatment. That is not how our criminal-justice system is supposed to work.
If there were reason to believe that Hunter had committed any of the more serious crimes that reportedly were under investigation—bribery, money laundering, or illegal foreign lobbying, I would be far less sympathetic to the president’s pardon. But Hunter was never charged with these more serious offenses. Weiss investigated Hunter for six years; that’s an unusually long time for a criminal investigation focused on one individual. If after six years Weiss still does not have a real case against Hunter, then it doesn’t exist. (Complicating matters is the fact that this past February, Weiss charged Alexander Smirnov—a former FBI informant and the GOP’s star witness against Hunter—for falsely accusing President Biden and Hunter of receiving bribes from Ukrainian businessmen.)
The absence of a credible case against Hunter does not mean that a Trump DOJ wouldn’t bring bogus charges against him. During his campaign, Trump vowed that, if elected, he would appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” “the Biden crime family.” In nominating Pam Bondi for attorney general and Kash Patel for FBI director, Trump has further signaled how serious he is about using the DOJ as an instrument of personal revenge. At the 2020 Republican convention, Bondi argued that President Biden and his son were corrupt. Recently, Patel proposed using the law “criminally or civilly” against Trump’s political rivals. When he announced the pardon, President Biden stated, “In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me—and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.” He’s right.
Now is not the time to cling to norms that Trump is poised to shatter. Political prosecutions are coming, and I fear that our democratic institutions will not withstand them.
That’s why President Biden’s pardon should not be his last. President Biden should use his pardon power to protect others from political prosecution just as he used it to protect his son. He should condemn Trump’s plan for political prosecutions. He should pardon Trump’s political enemies preemptively to stymie the Trump DOJ’s politically motivated investigations. In particular, public servants who have drawn Trump’s ire for doing their job should not have to spend precious time and money defending themselves against Trump’s lies. Nor should they have to endure the reputational hit, the safety risk, or the emotional toll of political prosecutions. President Biden alone has the power to stop other needless political prosecutions before they begin. He should use it.
After Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017, he choose respected FBI veteran Christopher Wray to replace Comey. The FBI Director is appointed for a ten-year term, to insulate the Director from partisan influence.
Senator Chuck Grassley is the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on the Budget.
In this letter, directed to Director Wray, Grassley says he is finished and it’s time to pack his bag. He explains why. The heart of the matter is that he failed to investigate Republican claims that Biden was corrupt, but approved a search of Trump’s home for classified documents.
Next up is the odious Kash Patel, nominated by Trump to be FBI Director. Patel is a MAGA ideologue who has said that if appointed, on day one, he would close the FBI Headquarters and re-open it as a “museum of the deep state.”
Let’s see what Senator Grassley says about the unqualified Patel.
Heather Cox Richardson writes here about President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter, which was condemned widely in the media, even in liberal publications like The Atlantic and The New Yorker. in her post, she wrote first about Jane Mayer’s expose of Pete Hegseth’s drunken sprees, then turned to the pardon.
She writes:
Also last night, President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden after repeatedly saying that he would not.
Trump-appointed Special Counsel David Weiss charged Hunter Biden on firearms and tax charges, but as former U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance made clear in her Civil Discourse, Hunter Biden would not have been charged if he had been anyone other than the president’s son. He was charged with possession of a firearm by someone who is addicted to illegal drugs, a charge that prosecutors do not usually bring. Biden owned a gun for eleven days and apparently lied on the paperwork for it by saying he was not a drug addict when he was, in fact, in the throes of addiction.
The other charges stem from Hunter Biden’s failure, while dealing with addiction, to pay about $1.4 million in federal income taxes, which he has since paid in full plus interest and penalties. Vance explains that the government usually handles cases like his with administrative or civil penalties rather than criminal prosecution, as it did in the case of Trump henchman Roger Stone, with whom the government reached a settlement in 2022 for more than $2 million in unpaid income taxes, interest, and penalties without criminal charges.
But President Biden’s pardon covers not just those charges, but also “those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.” The pardon’s sweeping scope offers an explanation for why Biden issued it after saying he would not.
Ron Filipkowski of MeidasTouch notes that Biden’s pardon came after Trump’s announcement that he wants to place conspiracy theorist Kash Patel at the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Filipkowski studies right-wing media and points out that Patel’s many appearances there suggest he is obsessed with Hunter Biden, especially the story of his laptop, which Patel insists shows that Hunter and Joe Biden engaged in crimes with Ukraine and China.
House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) spent two years investigating these allegations and turned up nothing—although Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia used the opportunity to display pictures of Hunter Biden naked on national media—yet Patel insists that the Department of Justice should focus on Hunter Biden as soon as a Trump loyalist is back in charge.
Notably, Trump’s people, including former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his ally Lev Parnas, spent more than a year trying to promote false testimony against Hunter Biden by their Ukrainian allies. Earlier this year, in the documentary From Russia with Lev, produced by Rachel Maddow, Parnas publicly apologized to Hunter Biden for his role in the scheme.
As legal commentator Asha Rangappa noted: “People criticizing the Hunter Biden pardon need to recognize: For the 1st time, the FBI and Justice Department could literally fabricate evidence, or collaborate with a foreign government to ‘find’ evidence of a ‘crime,’ with zero accountability. That’s why the pardon goes back to 2014.”
And yet, much of American media today has been consumed not with the story that Trump has appointed a deeply problematic candidate to run what could be considered the nation’s most important department, overseeing about 3 million personnel and managing a budget of more than $800 billion, or with the reality that Biden’s distrust of our legal system under Trump is a profound warning for all of us.
Instead, they have focused on President Biden’s pardon of his son, many of them condemning what they say is Biden’s rejection of the rule of law.
Some have suggested that Biden’s pardoning his son will now give Trump license to pardon anyone he wants, apparently forgetting that in his first term, Trump pardoned his daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law, Charles Kushner, who pleaded guilty to federal charges of tax evasion, campaign finance offenses, and witness tampering and whom Trump has now tapped to become the U.S. ambassador to France.
Trump also pardoned for various crimes men who were associated with the ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian operatives working to elect Trump. Those included his former national security advisor Michael Flynn, former campaign manager Paul Manafort, and former allies Roger Stone and Steve Bannon. Those pardons, which suggested Trump was rewarding henchmen, received a fraction of the attention lavished on Biden’s pardon of his son.
In today’s news coverage, the exercise of the presidential pardon—which traditionally gets very little attention—has entirely outweighed the dangerous nominations of an incoming president, which will have profound influence on the American people. This imbalance reflects a longstanding and classic power dynamic in which Republicans set the terms of public debate, excusing their own objectionable behavior while constantly attacking Democrats in a fiery display that attracts media attention but distorts reality.
The degree to which the media endorsed that abusive power dynamic today does not bode well for its accurate reporting during Trump’s upcoming term. It also leaves the public badly informed about matters that are important for understanding modern politics
President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter, who was targeted by House Republicans, convicted for tax evasion, and buying a gun without admitting that he was a drug addict at the time.
Biden was immediately criticized for pardoning Hunter because he had said in the past that he would not do it.
President Joe Biden on Sunday pardoned his son Hunter, a controversial decision that reverses his long-standing pledge to not use his presidential powers to protect his only surviving son, who was found guilty of gun-related charges in Delaware and pleaded guilty to tax evasion in California.
Using his executive authority in the waning days of his presidency, Biden lifted the legal cloud that has hung over his son for several years. While the president had pledged several times not to pardon or commute Hunter Biden’s sentences for federal crimes, many close to him had expected the pardon would come, given the president’s loyalty to his family. The move also comes at a time when Biden will face few political ramifications, given that he is a lame duck and voters have already rendered their verdict on his administration by sending Donald Trump back to office.
In a lengthy statement on Sunday night, released just as he was preparing to depart for Africa, the president said that his son had been “being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.” He said that he did not interfere with the cases but that the cases were brought about because of political pressure on federal prosecutors.
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” he said. “There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough….”
“I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice,” Biden said in his statement. “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”
Hunter was prosecuted by Special Counsel David Weiss, Weiss, a Republican who started investigating Hunter in 2018. Republicans demanded that Merrick Garland appoint him, and Garland did. But then Republicans complained that Weiss was not strong enough. They wanted to drag Hunter through the mud, destroy his reputation, and hoped that Hunter’s tribulations hurt his father.
Can you imagine Trump’s Attorney General appointing a Democrat to investigate another Democrat?
The Republicans went after Hunter with a passion that would have been more appropriate for a mass murderer.
Hunter served years of humiliation and anxiety because he was a stand-in for his father.
It is just and right that his father pardoned Hunter.
Diane Ravitch's blog 