Kristy Greenberg, Former Deputy Chief at SDNY’s Criminal Division, appeared on MSNBC’s The Weekend show (06/09/24) where she made quite a compelling case as to why former President Trump should be imprisoned after being found guilty of 34 felony counts in the hush money case–the best case yet, as far as Yours Truly is concerned.
Kristi Greenberg: “I think that if you objectively look at all of the factors that are taken into account in sentencing, the prosecutors here should be seeking a jail sentence, and the judge should impose one. Look at the nature and the seriousness of the conduct…This was about the subversion of democracy. This was about depriving the voter of information that they would need when they go to the ballot box and decide who to vote for. What is more important than that?”
She also knocked down the argument one regularly hears on Fox News and other pro-Trump media outlets–that Trump should be accorded some deference and spared prison time, simply because he’s a former president. She argued instead that, because Trump wrote the hush money checks from the Oval Office, the judge should treat that as “an aggravating factor” for sentencing purposes.
In conclusion, she made the case that because Michael Cohen went to jail for the same conduct, Trump should likewise be imprisoned, especially given the fact that he was directing the criminal scheme–a slam dunk argument in my opinion. She specifically told the MSNBC hosts (1:09): “Michael Cohen went to jail for the same conduct, and he was less culpable than Donald Trump, who was directing him to do it. So if it’s serious enough for Michael Cohen to go to jail, it is certainly serious enough for Donald Trump to go to jail as well.”
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A bombshell segment on the 05/20/24 edition of The Rachel Maddow Show (TRMS) delved into the GOP’s long history of using political pressure to scuttle criminal investigations and prosecutions targeting them.
Maddow’s intent was to bring attention to the Republican political attacks currently being leveled against Fulton County DA Fani Willis, as she tries to hold former President Trump accountable for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential elections in Georgia.
It is widely assumed by many, that the political attacks currently playing out against DA Willis are somehow novel, or totally unheard of in America, when as Maddow clearly illustrates, there is a very long and sordid history of Republican politicians successfully employing similar tactics in the past.
The full Maddow segment (YouTube) is available here for context, but my posts on X(formerly Twitter) get to the crux of her argument, and that is, the Republican attacks on Fulton County DA Fani Willis are nothing knew. Republicans have been doing these political pressure campaigns against prosecutors dating as far back as the 1940s. Such pressure campaigns have largely evaded media scrutiny because as she puts it, they make the country and all the stakeholders look bad.
#Maddow: "The prosecutors and investigators personally were CRUSHED. They were smeared and discredited and destroyed, so they were in no position to tell the story either, and so the story, mostly, was not told. But we NEED TO KNOW that story and stories like that…" pic.twitter.com/UsZnixTvpw
As Maddow correctly points out, it’s incumbent upon any democracy-loving individual, to step up and defend DA Fani Willis, or any other similarly situated prosecutor, against such political pressure campaigns. They are antithetical to a free and democratic society.
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There have been numerous media reports about a very troubling practice by the FBI to designate Black activists as “Black Identity Extremists”, an often bogus designation which is then used to justify subjecting the said activists to all levels of surveillance–private, local, state, federal and even military surveillance in major cities like Houston, LA, Chicago, New York and others. The rationale, a bogus one, is that a “Black Identity Extremist” or BIE is more likely to attack law enforcement officers and thus needs to be placed under 24-hour surveillance.
The controversy surrounding this program, beyond its prima facie racism, centers around the ease with which a Black activist could end up in this designation. Several media reports have said that even mundane activities like organizing or attending a Black Lives Matter rally could in the eyes of the FBI qualify a Black activist as a BIE subjecting them to unjustified long-term government surveillance, the fruits of which could be used in their criminal prosecution. Needless to say, Black activists who support/sympathize with Black Lives Matter on social media (Twitter, Facebook) can also very easily be designated as BIEs. Simply put, this is a very serious problem that is yet to garner the mainstream media attention it deserves.
Yours Truly has ranted and raved about the lack of mainstream media attention surrounding this seemingly–let’s face it–racist surveillance by the FBI for quite a while now, wondering when House Democrats would take up this serious issue with the justice department.
Well, it turns out Rep Sheila Jackson-Lee (R-TX) did indeed raise this issue with then U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions at a House hearing on November 14, 2017. Rep Jackson-Lee asked Sessions; “My question is, as I hold up the poster dealing with the report under your jurisdiction–Black Identity Extremists. It is interesting to me that you are opposing [meant targeting] individuals who are opposing lethal force, similar to the attack on Reverend Dr Martin Luther King on Cointelpro, but there seems to be no report dealing with the tiki torch parade in Charlottesville chanting ‘Jews will not replace us’. Why is there an attack on Black activists versus any report dealing with the Alt Right and the White Nationalists?” AG Sessions responded that he was not aware of the report.
Cointelpro which Rep Jackson-Lee referenced in her questioning was a controversial and secret surveillance program the FBI deployed on Black civil rights activists in the 60s, most notably, on the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Historians agree that the primary reason the FBI ran Cointelpro on Black civil rights activists was to scare them into silence. This is precisely why when Black activists hear about “Black Identity Extremists” they are immediately reminded of stories they’ve read about Cointelpro and are justified in questioning whether the FBI has indeed reverted back to its 1960s tactic of stifling Black dissent.
Bottom line the “Black Identity Extremist” debate is one that begs for serious mainstream media attention. The mainstream media and indeed members of Congress must not remain silent as a section of the population is unjustly subjected to heightened levels of government surveillance all in an effort to stifle their first amendment compliant political speech. At moments like these, Martin Niemoller’s famous words come to mind; “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist, then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist, then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
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