CEO Mark Crosswhite reportedly plans to indemnify Balch & Bingham, deepening Alabama Power's ties to a law firm with racist and white-supremacist baggage

Jay Town and Mark Crosswhite

Alabama Power Company apparently has reached an agreement to indemnify Birmingham law firm Balch & Bingham for financial losses it might incur due to an ever-growing list of unsavory activities -- apparently beginning with the North Birmingham Superfund bribery scandal and perhaps going back further -- according to a report at banbalch.com. 

For starters, let's establish what indemnify means. From Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Indemnify verb

1 : to secure against hurt, loss, or damage;

 

2 : to make compensation to for incurred hurt, loss, or damage

 

So Alabama Power CEO Mark Crosswhite wants to provide a financial cushion for the ethically challenged law firm that helped launch his rise to power? That raises all kinds of questions, such as:

 

*  Will Alabama Power ratepayers essentially be subsidizing Balch & Bingham every time they slip their monthly power-bill payment in the mailbox?

 

* Will black power-company customers be forced to help float a law firm with apparently racist and white supremacist actions in its background?

 

* The Alabama Public Service Commission (PSC) holds regulatory power over Alabama Power. What do PSC commissioners think of this? Did they have a say in it?

* What about the Alabama Legislature? Have legislators signed off on this? If so, what do their constituents think of it?

 

* Does the reported indemnity plan mean Balch -- and Crosswhite -- see serious financial setbacks in the firm's future?

All of these questions arise as Crosswhite appears set for a promotion. K.B. Forbes, publisher of banbalch.com, questions whether Crosswhite is fit to serve in the position he already holds, much less getting a promotion:

Rumors are flying that Southern Company Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Tom Fanning is retiring next year.

And Alabama Power CEO and Chairman Mark A. Crosswhite is allegedly telling bourgeois insiders that he has the lock and key to the C-Suite at Southern Company, Alabama Power’s parent company.

Crosswhite is unfit to serve.

He worked as a top partner for alleged racist and embattled law firm Balch & Bingham before taking the revolving door to Alabama Power.

Instead of distancing himself from Balch, Crosswhite appears to be embracing his former employer, even allegedly subsidizing the firm with lucrative business as Balch is hemorrhaging from alleged unsavory and criminal scandals engulfing the 99 year-old firm.

Now unsubstantiated rumors say Alabama Power and unknown related entities have indemnified Balch and others for their alleged criminal, racist, and egregious misconduct.

Hiding behind non-disclosure agreements and now allegedly million-dollar indemnity deals, the Crosswhite scandal smells like raw sewage.

What does this say about Crosswhite's leadership? It isn't pretty, Forbes writes:

For Crosswhite, protecting Balch & Bingham appears to be more important than protecting poor African-American children.

Institutional investors and the Southern Company Board of Directors should not take these rumors lightly.

Sources close to Balch and Alabama Power say the jaw-dropping photos of Crosswhite chugging back cocktails with disgraced ex-U.S. Attorney Jay E. Town allegedly rocked “the most powerful man in Alabama.”

The alleged secret deal to keep Alabama Power “unmentionable” during the North Birmingham Bribery Trial is now an enormous stain not only for Town but also for Crosswhite.

And the photos appear to confirm an inappropriate meeting allegedly at the height of the criminal trial.

In addition, Alabama Power’s blood money tied to the January 6th insurrection was a decision allegedly made exclusively by Crosswhite.

Most significant is the sheer panic Crosswhite had with the rebirth of the North Birmingham Bribery Scandal where he and his legal counsel Mark White fumbled the ball.

With a federal RICO lawsuit coming, more scrutiny from federal investigators, and heightened interest from U.S. congressional leaders, the Crosswhite scandal will undoubtedly make institutional investors nervous.

Southern Company seems to have developed a protective coating of Teflon over the years. But that might not be the case for Crosswhite and Alabama Power, Forbes writes:

Wall Street has consistently supported Tom Fanning, regardless of the billion-dollar Vogtle and Kemper boondoggles.

Crosswhite is a completely different story. The sent of raw sewage surrounds Crosswhite.

The decades of alleged shenanigans involving actors, AstroTurf campaigns, alleged corruption, hidden bribes, and staged arrests have taken their toll.

Now with alleged secret indemnity agreements, an alleged hidden deal to be “unmentionable” during a federal criminal trial, and millions spent on an alleged racist law firm, Crosswhite’s future appears to have been terminated.

FBI raids NYC and D.C. properties linked to Oleg Deripaska, raising questions about the Russian oligarch's longstanding ties to Alabama politicos

FBI raids mansion linked to Oleg Deripaska

 

FBI agents this week raided homes in New York City and Washington, D.C., linked to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Why the raids, and what was the FBI looking for? Those questions remain unanswered here in the early going, but the whole affair could have serious ramifications in Alabama's right-wing political world -- and for those tied to the Donald Trump administration. From a report at Reuters about the raids:

FBI agents on Tuesday raided homes in Washington and New York City linked to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire with ties to the Kremlin and to Paul Manafort, the onetime chairman of Donald Trump's 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

The agents carried boxes out of a mansion in one of Washington's wealthiest neighborhoods, with yellow "CRIME SCENE DO NOT ENTER" tape across the front yard and towed away a vehicle.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed the agency was conducting a court-authorized law enforcement activity at the home, which the Washington Post has previously reported was linked to the Russian oligarch.

The specific reason for sealing off and searching the Washington mansion was not immediately clear, and the FBI spokesperson did not provide details.

How does Alabama enter the picture?  Deripaska has longstanding ties to the "Heart of Dixie," mainly through efforts to gain a $40-billion Air Force refueling-tanker contract for the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS). The contract wound up going to U.S.-based Boeing, but had it gone to EADS, Deripaska's companies were to provide aluminum for the project, and much of the manufacturing was to be done in Alabama. From an October 2017 Legal Schnauzer post about Deripaska's links to Alabama, especially via former U.S. Sen. and Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions:

Revelations last week that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort has $60 million of financial connections to a Russian oligarch could shine light on corruption involving some of the biggest names in Alabama politics, according to a prominent whistle blower and opposition researcher.

That's because Alabama GOP luminaries such as Jeff Sessions (Trump attorney general and former U.S. senator), Bob Riley (former governor), and Bill Canary (head of the Business Council of Alabama) have worked with Manafort on a $40 billion-dollar Air Force refueling-tanker deal that was to include the oligarch, Jill Simpson says.

If Special Counsel Robert Mueller digs deeply on the ties between Manafort and Oleg Deripaska, it could lead to Jeff Sessions' office -- and from there to any number of individuals connected to Bill Canary and Bob Riley, Simpson says. Canary already has fallen out of favor with a number of business elites, including executives from Alabama Power, so any ties to the Trump-Russia scandal are not likely to help his standing.

Simpson, who testified before Congress about a Republican plan to conduct a political prosecution against former Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman, said Manafort worked closely with Alabama officials on a proposal that called for the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS) to build the Air Force tanker, in part, at a planned construction facility in Mobile, Alabama. Deripaska, a billionaire, is part owner of a company that was to provide aluminum for the project.

Why did EADS lose out on the Air Force deal? Deripaska's reported ties to organized crime likely did not help the EADS cause:

The Pentagon wound up choosing U.S.-based Boeing over EADS, perhaps in part because of EADS' ties to seedy characters, including the Gaddafi family in Libya and individuals tied to Vladimir Putin in Russia. From a 2011 post on the competition:

The Russia Connection -- The Gaddafi family reportedly developed ties to EADS through big-money interests in Russia. Prime among them is Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who partly owns a company that was to provide aluminum for the EADS planes. Deripaska has close ties to Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin, and Russian interests reportedly have a significant stake in EADS. Was the Pentagon comfortable with this arrangement, given the rise of organized crime in Russia? Probably not.

Did Alabama political figures jump in bed with Russian organized crime, tied to Putin, in an effort to land the tanker project for EADS? Are Alabama officials still connected to the Russian mob, now that Donald Trump appears to be Putin's chosen puppet in the White House?

An NBC report late last week could shine white-hot light on those questions.  From the report:

Paul Manafort, a former campaign manager for President Donald Trump, has much stronger financial ties to a Russian oligarch than have been previously reported.

An NBC News investigation reveals that $26 million changed hands in the form of a loan between a company linked to Manafort and the oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a billionaire with close ties to the Kremlin.

The loan brings the total of their known business dealings to around $60 million over the past decade, according to financial documents filed in Cyprus and the Cayman Islands.

Manafort was forced to resign from the Trump campaign in August 2016, following allegations of improper financial dealings, charges he has strenuously denied. He is now a central figure in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Investigators have said they are looking into Manafort's financial ties to prominent figures in Russia.

Could the FBI raids on Deripaska's homes be tied to possible allegations of money laundering? There is reason to believe the answer is yes. Reports NBC:

Lawyers specializing in money laundering said the loans appeared unusual and merited further investigation.

“Money launderers frequently will disguise payments as loans,” said Stefan Cassella, a former federal prosecutor. “You can call it a loan, you can call it Mary Jane. If there's no intent to repay it, then it's not really a loan. It's just a payment.”

The documents go on to reveal loans of more than $27 million from the two Cyprus entities to a third company connected to Manafort, a limited-liability corporation registered in Delaware.

In a recent post at her Facebook page, Simpson describes her research on Manafort and Deripaska:

This past winter and late last fall of 2016, I laid out exactly how Oleg Deripaska had washed (laundered) millions through Cyprus and the Caymans. Well turns out the grand total was $60 million, which was about what I thought. When folks got to looking closely at the $19 million Manafort was sued over -- which I had the paperwork on, as I track . . . Oleg for press folks . . .  well, oh my, it became obvious what was going on.  Oleg would give Manafort the money as a loan then mark it off the books for deals but never clear it for tax purposes, and when folks started looking at how Oleg sued Manafort in the Caymans but never filed a bar complaint, it was slowly becoming apparent that [the lawsuit] was all a big hoax.

The Russian mob's influence in the American South goes beyond Alabama, Simpson states. How did Manafort and longtime GOP consultant Richard H. Davis develop connections to Alabama? Simpson says it developed via EADS and former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour:

I first started tracking Manafort and Rick Davis when they started dealing with Riley, Sessions, and Canary through Haley Barbour on the EADS tanker deal for Oleg Deripaska. I might add I went all the way to Russia to track what was up in 2008 with Manafort and Oleg and did a ton of stories. It will be fun to watch what the FBI does now that they realize how much Manafort was making working for Russian Government against our country.

Simpson has been outspoken about the dangers of a cozy relationship between Russian mobsters and Alabama politicians:

Simpson has not been quiet about the ties between Manafort, Russia, and Alabama. She spelled them out to reporters who were looking into the Siegelman case:

I might add when I came forward [on the Siegelman case], I explained all this operation with Russia to 60 Minutes; it was how I got on the show. Folks said ugly things about me back then, but I told the truth on all I knew about Manafort and Rick Davis and the Riley/Sessions/Canary gang -- and their involvement with the top Putin Russian Business Spy Oleg Deripaska, who at that time was cooking a deal to get to supply the aluminum for U.S. tankers for EADS. 

I [talked] with reporters in New York and at the National Press Club about this. I might add I am the source that outed that whole story in 2008. Had I not known how they operated, from being a Republican back then, I never would have been able to out their whole Russian operation for progressives to push the FBI to investigate in 2016.

Simpson practiced law for 20-plus years, but she no longer is a member of the Alabama State Bar, thanks to a peculiar chain of events she apparently traces to the Alabama Gang, led by Jeff Sessions. She is firing back now as an opposition researcher, with information that could help FBI and Mueller investigators put Sessions and his cronies in a very bad place. She wrote the following to her Facebook readers:

Now y'all know how Oleg Deripaska became my hobby, as I have said many times in the last year -- since I was hired to [research] it . . . in late 2016 and early 2017, it is a heck of story and goes right to Jeff Session's doorstep. I might add that is why he and Russian ass-kissing buddies tried to destroy me in 2014 and 2015, but all the a-holes did was make me more determined than ever to see they went to jail. If I never work again, I am still satisfied I kicked their ass with my research in 2015, 2016, 2017.

Could that research, in fact, cause Sessions, Riley, Canary, and other Alabama politicos to wind up in federal prison? Stay tuned.

Here is more information about this week's FBI raids, which might have a few sphincters tightening among the Alabama political set. Reports Reuters:

A representative for Deripaska said the home, as well as the one in New York, belong to relatives of the oligarch. Reuters could not immediately determine Deripaska's whereabouts.

A spokesperson for the FBI's New York field office confirmed "law enforcement activity" at the home in New York City's Greenwich Village neighborhood but declined further comment.

Deripaska, 53, has been under U.S. sanctions since 2018. Washington imposed sanctions on him and other influential Russians because of their ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin after alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Deripaska once employed Manafort, who was convicted in 2018 on tax evasion and bank fraud charges and was among the central figures scrutinized under investigations of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which Moscow denies.

Russia used Manafort and the WikiLeaks website to try to help Trump win that election, a Republican-led Senate committee said in its final review of the matter released last year. While still president last December, Trump pardoned Manafort.

The Senate report found Putin personally directed the Russian efforts to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton.

The report also alleged Manafort collaborated with Russians, including Deripaska and a Russian intelligence officer before, during and after the election.

Deripaska owns part of Rusal (RUAL.MM) via his stake in the giant aluminum producer's parent company En+ Group (ENPLI.RTS). Washington previously dropped sanctions against both companies but kept them on Deripaska.

Could license-plate readers, placed along America's highways, shine light on shooting into David Roberson's vehicle -- after yielding clues on Jan. 6 riot?

License plate reading camera

Did you know license-plate readers have been strategically placed along many American highways? It was news to me, and civil liberties groups are concerned about privacy implications. But as crime-fighting tools, the readers have proven invaluable. The readers, and other high-tech devices, have helped federal authorities bring charges against several hundred suspects in the investigation of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection, according to a report at The Washington Post (WaPo).

The issue is of special interest here at Legal Schnauzer because of an incident in late February where someone shot into the car of former Drummond Company executive David Roberson as he drove on U.S. 280 near Birmingham. Are license-plate readers placed along 280? If so, is law-enforcement checking them for clues on the Roberson shooting? We aren't sure about the answer to the first question, but we've seen little sign of any serious investigation into the shooting.That raises this question: why? Is an apparent assassination attempt not deserving of scrutiny?

The WaPo report is based on review of more than 1,000 pages of arrest records, FBI affidavits and search warrants, detailing one of the biggest criminal investigations in American history. Almost 700 suspects have been charged in the melee that shook the nation’s capital and left five people dead.  

(Note: Despite progress in the probe, Ali [Akbar] Alexander [he of Alabama ties via Montgomery lawyer Baron Coleman] apparently remains in hiding, even though he is identified as the organizer of the "Stop the Steal" rally that turned into an assault on the Capitol. Alexander appears to have ties to Roger Stone and the Proud Boys -- and at least one of the group's leaders reportedly has been an FBI informant, raising the question: Is Alexander serving in a similar role or is someone protecting him for some reason?)

Reports WaPo on the investigation:

The federal documents provide a rare view of the ways investigators exploit the digital fingerprints nearly everyone leaves behind in an era of pervasive surveillance and constant online connection. They illustrate the power law enforcement now has to hunt down suspects by studying the contours of faces, the movements of vehicles and even conversations with friends and spouses.

The cache of federal documents lays out a sprawling mix of FBI techniques: license plate readers that captured suspects’ cars on the way to Washington; cell-tower location records that chronicled their movements through the Capitol complex; facial recognition searches that matched images to suspects’ driver’s licenses or social media profiles; and a remarkably deep catalogue of video from surveillance systems, live streams, news reports and cameras worn by the police who swarmed the Capitol that day.

Agents in nearly all of the FBI’s 56 field offices have executed at least 900 search warrants in all 50 states and D.C., many of them for data held by the telecommunications and technology giants whose services underpin most people’s digital lives. The responses supplied potentially incriminating details about the locations, online statements and identities of hundreds of suspects in an investigation the Justice Department called in a court motion last month “one of the largest in American history, both in terms of the number of defendants prosecuted and the nature and volume of the evidence.”

“If the event happened 20 years ago, it would have been 100 times harder to identify these people,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a D.C.-based think tank. “But today it’s almost impossible not to leave your footprints somewhere.”

As for license-plate readers, WaPo reports: 

License plate readers and facial recognition software together played a documented role in helping identify suspects in nearly a dozen cases, the federal records show. In many cases, agents used existing government contracts to access privately maintained databases that required no court approval. In several cases, including for facial recognition searches, it’s unclear what software the government used to build the cases for arrests.

Is the technology flawless? No:

The FBI declined to comment for this story. Most of the incidents described remain allegations.

Many cases hinge on imperfect technology and fallible digital evidence that could undermine prosecutors’ claims. Blurry license plate reader images, imprecise location tracking systems, misunderstood social media posts and misidentified facial recognition matches all could muddy an investigation or falsely implicate an innocent person.

But license-plate readers tracked some suspects numerous times throughout their trip to D.C.:

One man from New York’s Hudson Valley, William Vogel, had his round-trip voyage to D.C. photographed by license plate readers at least nine times on Jan. 6, from the Henry Hudson Bridge in the Bronx at 6:06:08 that morning to Baltimore’s Harbor Tunnel Thruway at 9:15:27 a.m. and back to the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, N.J., at 11:59:22 that night, a criminal complaint claims.

Vogel generated more evidence of his presence inside the Capitol with a set of videos he posted to Snapchat, the complaint said. And though no license plate scanners captured his car in D.C., they offered other clues to his movement: A photo that morning from a stretch of Interstate 95 northeast of Baltimore showed a comically oversized “Make America Great Again” hat on Vogel’s dashboard. Agents said in the complaint that they later matched it to a Facebook selfie in which he appeared to be wearing “the same large red hat.”

Installed on thousands of streetlights, speed cameras, toll booths, police cars and tow trucks across the United States, the scanners record every passing vehicle into databases run by contractors such as Vigilant Systems, which reports that it has recorded 5 billion license plate locations nationwide. In Maryland alone, government and police scanners captured more than 500 million plates last year, state data shows.

Dominick Madden, a New York City sanitation worker who was on sick leave when he allegedly stormed the Capitol, had his car’s license plate scanned half a dozen times in his round-trip journey to Washington, a criminal complaint states. Madden was also allegedly caught on video walking through the Capitol’s Senate wing in a blue QAnon sweatshirt. . . . .

The documents highlight just how much digital evidence an ordinary person sheds in everyday life: In one case, prosecutors said they gathered more than 12,000 pages of data from a suspect’s phone using Cellebrite, a tool popular with law enforcement for its ability to penetrate locked phones and copy their contents. The search also recovered 2,600 pages of Facebook records and 800 cellphone photos and videos. 

 

David Roberson's vehicle after shooting on 280

 

The fraud case of Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes in California features separate trials, while the same right was unlawfully denied to David Roberson in Alabama

Elizabeth Holmes (Associated Press)

The biggest court story in the country right now is the criminal fraud trial in San Jose, CA, of Theranos Inc. founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes. In conjunction with Theranos President Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, Holmes is accused of conducting a massive fraud at the blood-testing company, which once was a hot Silicon Valley startup. Company executives claimed to be able to test for a wide range of health conditions using just a few drops of blood from a finger prick. In reality, as The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) first reported in 2015, Theranos’ proprietary technology was unreliable and the company ran many of its tests on commercial analyzers, including some that it modified to work with smaller blood samples.

The defendants now are charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. No verdict has been reached, so we don't know what the fallout might be. But the Theranos case already has taught an important legal lesson, one that was ignored in a high-profile Alabama case, causing a man who likely would have been acquitted to be found guilty -- and he is set to report to federal prison by late October.

We are talking about the North Birmingham Superfund case and former Drummond Company executive David Roberson. As we have shown in a previous post, Roberson -- due to the possibility of prejudice and his likely inability to bring a full advice-of-counsel defense -- should have been tried separately from Balch & Bingham attorney Joel Gilbert, the very lawyer who advised Roberson that his actions in the Superfund case were lawful. U.S. District Judge Abdul Kallon ordered a joint trial, and Roberson essentially was found guilty by association -- exactly the kind of prejudice the law is designed to prevent. The U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which seemingly never met a wrongful conviction it didn't like, upheld the conviction -- rubber stamping one of the most gross injustices we've seen in a criminal matter since the Don Siegelman case.

That, however, will not happen in the Theranos case. Only Elizebeth Holmes is being tried now, with Balwani set for trial early next year. Here's how WSJ reported on the handling of the Theranos trial:

Ms. Holmes met Mr. Balwani, a veteran tech executive about 20 years her senior, when she was a student at Stanford University, and he later joined her at Theranos as its president and chief operating officer. The pair kept their romantic relationship secret from investors, board members and company employees for years, according to depositions of former directors and staff members taken in civil cases brought by disgruntled investors and reviewed by the Journal.

Mr. Balwani used his personal wealth, gained from his work at an earlier tech startup, to help prop up Theranos, including putting his own money up as collateral for a loan in 2009 and later investing in the company, according to the deposition of Theranos’s former corporate controller.

Ms. Holmes and Mr. Balwani worked closely together until he departed in 2016 as the company faced a raft of regulatory, legal and public relations challenges.

The newly public court documents include filings by Ms. Holmes indicating she could bring a mental-health or mental-defect defense, based on what she called the psychological impact of the relationship with Mr. Balwani and abusive tactics that allowed him to exert control over her.

This line of defense could also include testimony that Ms. Holmes suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, the filings show, from the relationship with Mr. Balwani and a second event that remains redacted in the court record.

The filings show Ms. Holmes could argue that "she lacked the intent to deceive because, as a result of her deference to Mr. Balwani, she believed that various representations were true. . . ."

Also unsealed were motions made by Mr. Balwani and Ms. Holmes asking the court to separate their trials, citing her allegations against him.

Mr. Balwani requested a separate trial from Ms. Holmes in December 2019, arguing that there would be "devastating prejudice" if she raised her allegations against him at a joint trial. "In the minds of nearly any potential juror this Court finds, this case will be against a sexual predator," rather than a tech executive, Mr. Coopersmith argued in a motion.

Judge Davila scheduled Mr. Balwani’s trial second when granting the motion to split the proceedings in March 2020. It is expected to begin early next year.

In Ms. Holmes’s request for separate trials, her lawyers argued that the physical presence of Mr. Balwani in the same courtroom could be an emotional and psychological trigger that could make it hard for her to concentrate during her case.

One of Ms. Holmes’s lawyers told the judge it "was highly likely Holmes would testify" about Mr. Balwani’s abuse, an unsealed court order shows, shedding light on the question of whether jurors would hear from her directly.

Of all the ugly truths in our "justice system," this is one of the ugliest: In California, a defendant can lawfully receive a separate trial and possibly achieve justice, while in Alabama, a separate trial is denied, resulting in gross injustice. In other words, the system not only is filled with crookedness and incompetence, it also is wildly inconsistent.

Eugene Robinson, of The Washington Post, wonders out loud if mass stupidity in America is going to drive a nation of dunces right over a cliff to nowhere

Eugene Robinson

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson recently asked one of the most profound, and sobering, questions I've read in a long time. The question is contained in this jarring headline: "How dumb can a nation get and still survive?" Robinson jumps right to the point, with no sugar-coating to bog things down:

T.S. Eliot wrote that the world ends "not with a bang but a whimper,” but I fear our great nation is careening toward a third manner of demise: descent into lip-blubbering, self-destructive idiocy.

How did we become, in such alarming measure, so dumb? Why is the news dominated by ridiculous controversies that should not be controversial at all? When did so many of our fellow citizens become full-blown nihilists who deny even the concept of objective reality? And how must this look to the rest of the world?

Read the headlines and try not to weep:

Our elected representatives in the U.S. Senate, which laughably calls itself “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” agreed Thursday not to wreck our economy and trigger a global recession — at least for a few weeks. Republicans had refused to raise the federal debt ceiling, or even to let Democrats do so quickly by simple majority vote. They relented only after needlessly unsettling an international financial system based on the U.S. dollar.

The frequent games of chicken that Congress plays over the debt ceiling are — to use a term of art I recall from Economics 101 — droolingly stupid. In the end, yes, we always agree to pay our obligations. But the credit rating of the planet’s greatest economic superpower has already been lowered because of this every-few-years ritual, and each time we stage the absurd melodrama, we risk a miscalculation that sends us over the fiscal cliff.

Today’s trench-warfare political tribalism makes that peril greater than ever. An intelligent and reasonable Congress would eliminate the debt ceiling once and for all. Our Congress is neither.

The self-inflicted debt-ceiling wounds are just for starters. Writes Robinson:

In other news, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) was speaking to a crowd of Republicans at a country club in his home state Saturday when he tried, gently, to boost South Carolina’s relatively low rate of vaccination against the coronavirus. He began, “If you haven’t had the vaccine, you ought to think about getting it because if you’re my age — ”

“No!” yelled many in the crowd.

Graham retreated — “I didn’t tell you to get it; you ought to think about it” — and then defended his own decision to get vaccinated. But still the crowd shouted him down. Seriously, people?

Covid-19 is a highly infectious disease that has killed more than 700,000 Americans over the past 20 months. The Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines all but guarantee that recipients will not die from covid. I have, or had, an acquaintance who refused to get vaccinated, despite pleas from his adult children to protect himself. He got covid-19, and it killed him. Most of the deaths the nation has suffered during the current delta-variant wave of the disease — deaths of the unvaccinated — have been similarly needless and senseless.

Covid-19 is a bipartisan killer. In the tribal-political sense, the safe and effective vaccines are a bipartisan miracle, developed under the Republican Trump administration and largely distributed under the Democratic Biden administration. People in most of the rest of the world realize, however, that vaccination is not political at all; it is a matter of life and death, and also a matter of how soon — if ever — we get to resume our normal lives.

Why would people not protect their own health and save their own lives? How is this anything but just plain stupid?

In a sense, Graham's audience -- his own supporters -- were cheering on a deadly virus over the best weapon we have to stop it. "Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar, all for death and suffering stand up and holler!" Believe it or not, the examples get even more insipid:

We are having other fights that are, unlike vaccination, partisan and political — but equally divorced from demonstrable fact.

Conservatives in state legislatures across the country are pushing legislation to halt the teaching of “critical race theory” in public schools. I put the term in quotes because genuine critical race theory, a dry and esoteric set of ideas debated in obscure academic journals, is not actually being taught in those schools at all. What’s being taught instead — and squelched — is American history, which happens to include slavery, Jim Crow repression and structural racism.

I get it. The GOP has become the party of White racial grievance, and this battle against an imaginary enemy stirs the base. But the whole charade involves Republican officials — many of them educated at the nation’s top schools — betting that their constituents are too dumb to know they’re being lied to. So far, the bet is paying off.

And then, of course, there’s the whole “stolen election” farce, which led to the tragedy of Jan. 6. Every recount, every court case, every verifiable fact proves that Joe Biden fairly defeated Donald Trump. Yet a sizeable portion of the American electorate either can’t do basic arithmetic or doesn’t believe that one plus one always equals two.

How dumb can a nation get and still survive? Idiotically, we seem determined to find out.

Alabama-connected Ali Alexander, organizer of a rally that turned into assault on U.S. Capitol, faces subpoena from House committee investigating Jan. 6

Ali Alexander

 

The Congressional Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has issued a subpoena for Alabama-connected right-wing extremist Ali (Akbar) Alexander.  From a report at Politico:

The Jan. 6 select committee on Thursday (10/7) subpoenaed Ali Alexander, a key figure behind the “Stop the Steal” movement that aided former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.

The subpoena, one of three issued Thursday by the House panel investigating the Capitol attack, targets a divisive hard-line conservative who had regular communication with Trump allies, including some congressional Republicans, in the crucial weeks after President Joe Biden's win.

“The rally on the Capitol grounds on January 6th, like the rally near the White House that day, immediately preceded the violent attack on the seat of our democracy,” Chair Bennie Thompson said in a statement on the committee's third round of subpoenas, referring to the "Stop the Steal"-sponsored event that metastasized into a riot.

“Over the course of that day, demonstrations escalated to violence and protestors became rioters. The Select Committee needs to understand all the details about the events that came before the attack, including who was involved in planning and funding them. We expect these witnesses to cooperate fully with our probe.”

The subpoenas go well beyond Alexander, who has a criminal record and once was known as Ali Akbar:

In addition to Alexander, the subpoenas target Nathan Martin, another organizer of the pre-insurrection rally, and the Stop the Steal organization. A previous round of 11 subpoenas targeted other Trump allies who helped organize various events in the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. And four close Trump associates — including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows — are facing a  subpoena deadline to turn over documents to the committee.

Martin and Alexander have two weeks, until Oct. 21, to respond to the panel’s demand for documents. The committee set an Oct. 28 deposition for Martin and a Oct. 29 deposition for Alexander, while the group Stop the Steal has one week to produce documents.

Martin confirmed receipt of the subpoena but declined to comment.

Alexander said in a since-deleted video that he worked with Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) to attempt to use Congress’ Jan. 6 session certifying Biden’s victory as a chance to pressure lawmakers to overturn the electoral results.

“We four schemed up to put maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,” Alexander said in the video.

Alexander reportedly has been in hiding since Jan. 6, so it is unknown if he actually will appear before the committee:

 It’s unclear if any of the subpoena recipients intend to comply with the committee’s orders.

Trump has directed Meadows and other close aides to defy the committee’s demands, a likely precursor to an intense legal battle to force them to cooperate. Trump himself intends to block the National Archives from sending his former White House’s records to the committee, which promises to ignite another significant court fight.

Some watchdog and civil rights groups had raised concerns about the panel’s plans to seek information from those related to organizing the rallies. The Project on Government Oversight sent a letter to the committee on Tuesday urging them to use caution with individuals’ private data.

“While claims of election fraud were baseless and have seriously undermined public faith in our democracy, false and grossly offensive speech is still constitutionally protected. Accordingly, we urge the committee to be especially cautious in its demands for records that could implicate First Amendment rights or set precedent for future demands that chill First Amendment-protected activities,” wrote POGO executive director Danielle Brian.

New clerk Crystal Clanton has a history of posting racist statements, making one wonder if Bill Pryor, her boss-to-be, even believes in equal justice for all

Crystal Clanton (right), with Clarence and Ginni Thomas

U.S. 11th Circuit Judge Bill Pryor, from Alabama, has hired a law clerk with a documented history of making hateful statements about Black people via text messages. But a columnist for The Washington Post (WaPo) suggests such comments likely would disqualify the new hire, Crystal Clanton, from even entering law school or joining a bar association, much less receiving a prestigious federal clerkship. Writes WaPo's Ruth Marcus (subscription required for full article):

Indeed, there is a reasonable question about whether someone who has expressed these views and not apologized should be admitted to law school, let alone the bar; after all, state bars generally require evidence of good moral character.

In Virginia, where Clanton attends law school, that includes any “conduct that reflects adversely upon the character or fitness of an applicant,” although in making that assessment bar officials take into account the applicant’s age at the time of the conduct and “evidence of rehabilitation.”

Did Pryor know of Clanton’s texts before he hired her? Do her comments concern him? If not, why not? I put those questions to Pryor by email. I haven’t heard back.

The whole story is ugly, but it probably says more about Pryor than it does about Clanton, Marcus writes:

And this is the truly worrisome part of the Clanton story: that a sitting federal judge is credentialing someone with this kind of hateful statement in her background, and perhaps grooming her for a post that’s even more important, a Supreme Court clerkship.

It gives me no pleasure to focus on Clanton, who did not respond to requests for comment. I have daughters her age, one of whom happens to be in law school. We all do stupid things when we are young, and some of us do terrible things. We should allow some space for repentance and forgiveness.

But there is no evidence of repentance here, and her reported comments are astonishing in their savagery. This is not a case of a racial slur directed in anger at a single individual — not that such conduct would be in any way acceptable. This is even worse: animus expressed toward an entire race.

Nor was this an isolated outburst. The year after the New Yorker story, the website Mediaite, reporting on Clanton’s hiring by Ginni Thomas, described a Snapchat message featuring “a photo of a man who appears to be Arab and a caption written by Clanton that reads, ‘Just thinking about ways to do another 9/11.’”

Someone who writes such things would not be hired in my private-sector workplace or most others, unless I miss my guess. Moreover, judicial clerkships are federal positions, paid for by taxpayer dollars, where dispensing equal justice under the law is job one.

And federal judges are called on to interpret and enforce the law impartially. Ask yourself: How do Black litigants — or Black lawyers — with cases before Pryor have confidence of a fair ruling in their cases with a clerk with Clanton’s record waiting in chambers? How do litigants in employment discrimination or voting rights cases have confidence that they will be treated equally in his court?

Marcus correctly notes that "dispensing equal justice under the law is job one" for the federal judiciary -- at least it's supposed to be. But Pryor's hiring of Crystal Clanton makes one wonder if he even believes in equal justice or seeks to apply it.

No wonder he is avoiding questions from journalists.

To make the story even more alarming, much of it seems to run through U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni. Writes Marcus:

For a graduating law student, a clerkship with a federal appeals court judge is a glittering credential. With the right judge, it can be a steppingstone to the most sought-after credential of all, a clerkship at the Supreme Court itself. One of those reliable “feeder” judges is William H. Pryor Jr., chief judge of the 11th Circuit and on Donald Trump’s original shortlist for the Supreme Court.

Pryor has just selected his next crop of law clerks, including Crystal Clanton of the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, a development first reported by the legal website Above the Law.

Clanton, 26, is Pryor’s first clerk from Scalia, according to a list published by the school, but she is notable for another reason: racist comments she appears to have made years ago when working for the conservative youth group Turning Point USA.

I hate black people. Like f--- them all … I hate blacks. End of story,” Clanton, then the group’s national field director, wrote in a text message to a fellow Turning Point employee unearthed by the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer in 2017. (Her version was unexpurgated.)

In an email to Mayer then, Clanton wrote, “I have no recollection of these messages and they do not reflect what I believe or who I am and the same was true when I was a teenager.” It’s not clear how old Clanton was when she wrote the text.

Clanton left Turning Point right after Mayer’s story appeared, and ended up working for conservative activist Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whom she had met while at Turning Point.

Pryor has sent on law clerks to every conservative justice except Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and most of those have worked for Thomas, who over the years has selected an astonishing 13 Pryor clerks.

Daily Dot data analysis indicates right-wing extremist Ali Alexander is running for cover, but his efforts might be futile in the wake of massive hack at Epik

Ali Alexander (YouTube)

Part Two

Right-wing extremist Ali (Akbar) Alexander and his allies have made it a habit to harass and threaten progressive voices in Alabama, where he has a base of operations that includes Montgomery lawyer Baron Coleman. Two of the favorite targets for Alexander & Co. have been attorney/activist/whistle blower Dana Jill Simpson and yours truly. Simpson has stated that she suspects Alexander or his allies have been involved in a number of alarming attacks against her, including a fire on her property.

Could a massive hack of the website-hosting firm Epik lead to revelations about Alexander's activities in Alabama -- and elsewhere, given that he was organizer of the Stop the Steal rally that turned into the Jan. 6  assault on the U.S. Capitol? The answer is "maybe" -- partly because it could take months or even years for tech experts to sift through the data. (See Part One.)

Alexander reportedly has been in hiding since Jan. 6, but he might be running scared, according to an article at dailydot.com, under the headline "After the Capitol riot, ‘Stop the Steal’ organizer Ali Alexander was scrambling to hide his digital footprint":

Just days after supporters of former President Donald Trump violently stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, Ali Alexander, one of the primary organizers of the rally that day, appeared to be busy, attempting to hide his ties to dozens and dozens of websites calling the 2020 election stolen.

Domains tied to Alexander that pushed Stop the Steal, which the Daily Dot reviewed, including ones he publicly posted on as himself, were scrambled in the wake of the riot to hide ownership. But hacked documents show they trace right back to Ali and an anonymize service from the web hosting company Epik.

In the run-up to the failed insurrection, which was sparked by weeks of false allegations regarding widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, Alexander had positioned himself as the movement’s de facto leader with his “Stop the Steal” campaign.

At a Dec. 19 rally in Arizona that he spoke at, Alexander made his intentions for Jan. 6 clear: He and his legion of followers would do whatever was necessary to stop Congress from certifying the electoral votes of President Joe Biden’s victory.

According to the Washington Post and Daily Beast, Alexander was already working with far-right Republican legislators to plan the Jan. 6 rally.

“We’re going to convince them to not certify the vote on Jan. 6 by marching hundreds of thousands, if not millions of patriots, to sit their butts in D.C. and close that city down, right?” Alexander said that December day. “And if we have to explore options after that…”

How did Alexander, with his well-documented criminal record, become a national figure in the GOP, which used to be known as the law-and-order party? Perhaps it is a case of "the right thug, at the right time":

Alexander has been a prominent backchannel in Republican politics for nearly two decades. He’s also pled guilty to felony charges under a previous name, when he was known as Ali Akbar. He’s been friendly with far-right operatives like Laura Loomer and Jacob Wohl. He also has ties to Roger Stone, who is under investigation for his role in fomenting the Capitol riot. At the time of the Capitol riot, Alexander had almost a quarter of a million Twitter followers.

On the night before the riot, Alexander was filmed chanting “Victory or Death” to an enthusiastic crowd. He’d also dubbed himself an official co-ordinator of the Jan. 6 event, and was filmed on a roof during the rally glowing about its success.

Has Alexander been anxious to take credit for his role in launching the deadly Jan. 6 attacks? Not exactly, reports Daily Dot: 

When the dust finally settled on Jan. 6, Alexander had already seemed to start an effort to obfuscate his ties to the movement. With five deaths, hundreds of injuries, and extensive damage to the Capitol, the conspiracy theorist would find himself facing permanent suspensions across social media before eventually going into hiding.

As the national outrage over the riot intensified, work appeared to be happening behind the scenes. On Jan. 15, just nine days after the failed insurrection, Alexander, or someone working with him, took steps to anonymize his personal information on the registrations for more than 100 domains. Nearly half of those domains are directly related to Stop the Steal. Domains such as stopthestealmovement.com, stopthestealnews.com, and stopthestealupdates.com were all scrambled in the wake of the riot.

Alexander had opted to entrust his web addresses with the domain registrar company Epik, which offers a domain privacy feature known as “Anonymize.” The decision would, theoretically, keep the public from discovering which domains he owned.

Yet on Sept. 13, the hacking collective Anonymous announced that it had pilfered a decade’s worth of data from Epik, a company known best for hosting extremist websites. Although the company initially claimed to be unaware of a breach, Epik CEO Rob Monster later said in a bizarre, four-hour-long video conference that hackers had obtained a backup of its data.

Released online in a torrent, the 180-gigabyte data cache included, among other things, domain registrations and account credentials as well as the personal details of individuals who had registered some of the internet’s most notorious far-right domains.

Has the hack left Alexander vulnerable? From Daily Dot:

Analysis of the data by the Daily Dot was able to link an email tied to Alexander to 122 separate domains. On Jan. 15, the far-right figure received an email to a ProtonMail address thanking him for setting up an Anonymize account.

“Dear Ali A,” the email begins. “Thank you for signing up with us. Your new account has been setup and you can now login to our client area . . .

By searching through the hacked data for the ProtonMail address used to register the account, the Daily Dot was able to locate Alexander’s Anonymize profile. The data includes Alexander’s username and hashed password as well as a phone number and address. The address appears to be that of a UPS store in Texas. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram previously tied that UPS address to Alexander.

The Daily Dot made repeated attempts to reach Alexander over the phone number and email address found in the breach but did not receive a reply by press time.

The account creation date listed under Alexander’s account information, Jan. 15, matches the date of the email that says he signed up for the Anonymize service.

The account for Alexander was assigned a unique ID, that would take the place of his actual name on his public domain registrars. The Daily Dot is not disclosing Alexander’s ID.

As for the ugly events Simpson and i have experienced, apparently at the hands of Akbar and/or his associates, we addressed those in a Sept. 2 post:

Closer to home, Alexander has bragged about his ties to the Alabama legal world, perhaps through his friendship with Baron Coleman, who once practiced with Alabama State Bar official Tripp Vickers.

Simpson and I know what it's like to be the target of Alexander and his right-wing goons. Alexander once threatened  to sue me for reporting accurately and fairly about a letter  Simpson wrote to Obama re-election counsel Robert Bauer in 2012. My wife received notice of the lawsuit threat shortly after my "arrest for blogging" in October 2013. Was that a coincidence, considering that Alexander's NBC buddies were in a blogging frenzy when word broke of my incarceration. Does that mean they know who caused the unlawful loss of my freedom, the loss of our Birmingham home via wrongful foreclosure, and perhaps my wife's severely broken arm in 2015 at the hands of deputies in Missouri (where we now live)? Let's just say we haven't ruled out Alexander and NBC's knowledge of, and perhaps involvement with, any or all of those events.

Simpson has experienced all kinds of unsettling incidents related to her house, vehicle, and property -- some involving fire. She has stated publicly that she suspects Akbar and/or his colleagues' involvement in at least some of these evens.From a November 2018 LS post: 

Simpson's interactions with the right-wing crazies go back several years, to the beginnings of the Don Siegelman case:

The NBC, as we call them, came to my attention when they harassed and told false stories about Siegelman activists. The NBC is a vicious group. What is such a hoot is that is how I first learned about crazy Steve Bannon's bunch. I started getting a master's degree in philosophy and religion, and the nuts in the National Bloggers Club started following me around in D.C. and California. The idiots were making a film for Andrew Breitbart and were trying to falsely claim I was a ring leader in Anonymous, as they were friends of mine, and that I was dating a guy who they believed was in Anonymous. The dimwits offered me all kinds of things to say I was part of it, through him.

Simpson knows these creepy wingers can get both scary and personal. She also says they are behind -- at least in part -- some of the abuse (false arrest and imprisonment, theft of house) that has been directed at my wife, Carol, and me. . . . Says Simpson:

Even as late as 2013 they were threatening me and called my boyfriend (now husband) trying to advise him not to marry me, telling him I was going to jail. The GOP National Blogger bunch in 2014, due to me having a neck injury, worked with their Alabama State Bar buddy, Tripp Vickers, and his former law partner,  Baron Coleman and a federal judge to try to set me up -- when in all likelihood it was them who set my office yard on fire and burned up my car and my shed with all my files in it. They spent months trying to frame me with all kinds of things. They were not successful. I might add, in my opinion, they were responsible for what happened to Shuler as well -- as some of their members bragged about it at their Web sites and were working with Rob Riley who first used a #MeToo deal in the Doug Jones-Roy Moore race.

Alexander also has threatened legal action against Simpson. Consider this from one of his online comments:

Jill Simpson should lawyer up buddy. Tell her not to worry about coming to Texas. I can come to Alabama. I'll dine with the Governor and then spend the afternoon cashing in favors with Alabama lawyers.

This raises some questions that hit close to home: The governor at the time was Robert Bentley, who I helped bring down by breaking the story about his extramarital activities with senior aide Rebekah Caldwell Mason. And what kind of favors was Alexander cashing in with Alabama lawyers? Is this a reference to the Alabama State Bar? What implications might this have for Carol and me, given that Missouri deputies  shattered her arm during an unlawful eviction that occurred about the time I was breaking the Bentley story? We will ponder that question in a future post.

Meanwhile, we note that Alexander and Coleman have a history of making sport of others' legal misfortunes. Consider this repartee under the LS headline"Tweet suggests Ali Akbar and attorney Baron Coleman know who's behind my arrest and our foreclosure

 

Akbar starts the festivities by tweeting about Matt Osborne, the editor of Breitbart Unmasked, and me--with a reference to a $3.5-million default judgment against me in the (Jessica Garrison case). The default judgment, by law, is void and due to be overturned, and that process is ongoing.

Removing extraneous comments from a couple of other folks, here is the conversation between Akbar and Coleman:

Akbar: Matt Osborne sure helped Roger Shuler out. Hahaha. $3.5 M libel mishap. Idiots flock together.

Coleman: The last three year's of that guy's life is a fine example of what not to do.

Akbar: His whole existence.

Coleman: He's judgment-proof, has nothing. No reason to bother fighting it. $1 might as well be $10 million to him.

In the wake of the Epik hack, Akbar and Coleman might not find legal difficulties so amusing.