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Showing posts with label COLUMBUS POLICE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label COLUMBUS POLICE. Show all posts

Friday, August 27, 2021

RSN: Sanders Not Ruling Out Trips to Manchin, Sinema Home States to Pitch Spending Plans

 

 

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26 August 21

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Sen. Bernie Sanders. (photo: Getty)
Sanders Not Ruling Out Trips to Manchin, Sinema Home States to Pitch Spending Plans
Aris Folley, The Hill
Folley writes: "Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says he's open to paying visits to Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema's (D-Ariz.) home states to pitch a $3.5 trillion social safety net package that would advance key parts of President Biden's legislative agenda."

enate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says he's open to paying visits to Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema’s (D-Ariz.) home states to pitch a $3.5 trillion social safety net package that would advance key parts of President Biden’s legislative agenda.

Sanders made the remarks in an interview with Politico published Thursday as he ramps up travel to promote the massive spending bill, which Democrats hope to pass without Republican support using a process called budget reconciliation.

But Democrats will need every Democratic senator on board to pass the bill, and they've faced difficulties achieving unity among members on spending, including the $3.5 trillion price tag for the reconciliation package that both Manchin and Sinema have taken issue with.

By contrast, Sanders has remained steadfast on that dollar amount, calling the number, which is just over half as much as he initially proposed, “non-negotiable” in the new interview.

“Democrats have a very slim majority in the House. We have no majority in the Senate. That’s it. It is 50/50,” Sanders told the outlet. “Trust me, there are a lot of differences in the Senate among the Democrats.”

“But at the end of the day, every Democrat understands that it is terribly important that we support the president's agenda. And most of these ideas came from the White House,” he added.

Sanders’s itinerary has included places like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and West Lafayette, Ind., in recent days as he hits the road to promote the package, which Democrats have said will unlock funding for universal pre-K, tuition-free community college, investments in clean energy efforts and health care expansions, among other top party priorities.

Despite differences amongst party members, Sanders expressed confidence in the recent interview that that the forthcoming spending package will still fetch the necessary votes to pass both chambers.

Sanders said that “every member of the caucus understands that ... this is transformative for the American people, it is the right thing to do.”

“And it is politically popular,” he added.

According to a USA Today-Suffolk University survey released Wednesday, a majority of Americans support the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, though some polled found the measure to be expensive.

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Sidney Powell, right, and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, were members of President Donald Trump's legal team. (photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Sidney Powell, right, and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, were members of President Donald Trump's legal team. (photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

ALSO SEE: Trump Claims Executive Privilege at House Committee
After It Requests Secret Capitol Riot Documents


Federal Judge in Michigan Orders Pro-Trump Lawyers Disciplined Over Lawsuit Seeking to Overturn 2020 Election
Rosalind S. Helderman, The Washington Post
Helderman writes: "A federal judge in Michigan has ordered that Sidney Powell, L. Lin Wood and seven other attorneys who filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the state's 2020 presidential election be disciplined, calling the suit 'a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.'"

In a scathing 110-page opinion, Federal District Judge Linda V. Parker wrote that the lawyers had made assertions in court that were not backed by evidence and had failed to do the due diligence required by legal rules before alleging mass fraud in the Michigan vote.

“This case was never about fraud,” she wrote. “It was about undermining the People’s faith in our democracy and debasing the judicial process to do so.”

She ordered the lawyers to pay the attorney’s fees for their opponents in the case — the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan. She also wrote that she will require them to attend legal education classes. And she referred the group to the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission, as well as attorney disciplinary committees in the states where each attorney is licensed, which could initiate proceedings that could result in the lawyer’s being disbarred.

Neither Powell nor Wood immediately responded to requests for comment Wednesday.

The order in Michigan came as judges around the country have been weighing how to hold accountable lawyers who used the courts to advance flimsy challenges to the election.

In June, a panel of judges in New York suspended the law license of former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, arguing that former president Donald Trump’s personal lawyer had “communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements” that amounted to an ongoing threat to the public. Giuliani’s lawyers have said they are confident his license will be restored after a hearing.

This month, a judge in Colorado disciplined two other lawyers who had sought to file a class-action suit on behalf of every American voter alleging a mass conspiracy to steal the election.

In July, Parker had held a nearly six-hour hearing with the lawyers involved in the Michigan case, where she grilled the group about the minimal — and at times nonexistent — steps they had taken to ensure the filings in their case had been accurate.

In her opinion Wednesday, Parker wrote that the group had violated legal rules that prohibit attorneys from clogging the court systems with frivolous motions or from filing information that is not true.

“Plaintiffs’ counsel’s politically motivated accusations, allegations, and gamesmanship may be protected by the First Amendment when posted on Twitter, shared on Telegram, or repeated on television,” she wrote. “The nation’s courts, however, are reserved for hearing legitimate causes of action.”

One of a series of lawsuits known as the “Kraken” cases — after Powell promised her lawsuits would amount to releasing the mythical creature in Trump’s defense — the Michigan case had been brought on behalf of six local Republicans in late November 2020, after Joe Biden’s victory in the state had already been certified.

It argued that Biden’s win had been marred by fraud and asked Parker to require that Trump instead be declared the winner of Michigan’s 16 electoral votes. Parker rejected the request in December, writing that she was being asked to disenfranchise “more than 5.5 million Michigan citizens who, with dignity, hope, and a promise of a voice, participated in the 2020 General Election.”

She added that the plaintiffs had advanced “nothing but speculation and conjecture that votes for President Trump were destroyed, discarded or switched to votes for Vice President Biden.”

Lawyers for the city of Detroit, as well as Attorney General Dana Nessel (D), acting on behalf of the state’s governor and secretary of state, had moved for the lawyers to be disciplined.

“It has remained abundantly clear from the outset that this lawsuit aimed to do nothing more than undermine our democratic process,” Nessel said in a statement. “I appreciated Judge Parker’s thoroughness in the hearing last month, and I appreciate the unmistakable message she sends with this ruling — those who vow to uphold the Constitution must answer for abandoning that oath.”

“This ruling sends a powerful message to attorneys everywhere — follow the rules, stick to the truth, or pay a price,” said David Fink, an attorney for the city of Detroit. “This ruling means that attorneys can be held accountable for using the courts to broadcast false information, and, hopefully, it lets the world know that there was no basis for this lawsuit, and the big lie that this election was stolen has been rejected.”

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Bobby Ledogar, then a Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of New York. (photo: Courtesy Bobby Ledogar)
Bobby Ledogar, then a Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of New York. (photo: Courtesy Bobby Ledogar)


US Marshal: I Was Fired for Protecting a Gay Colleague
Kate Briquelet, The Daily Beast
Briquelet writes: "In the summer of 2015, deputy U.S. Marshal Dawn Mahoney went to her supervisor for help. A gay woman and Army vet, Mahoney claimed some of her male colleagues in the New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force were harassing her relentlessly, and that the office culture was akin to the movie Animal House, but with guns."

A gay woman and Army vet said her male colleagues were harassing her. Her supervisor stood up for her—and found himself the target of internal investigations.

n the summer of 2015, deputy U.S. Marshal Dawn Mahoney went to her supervisor for help. A gay woman and Army vet, Mahoney claimed some of her male colleagues in the New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force were harassing her relentlessly, and that the office culture was akin to the movie Animal House, but with guns.

At one point, she claimed, someone in her office in Central Islip, New York, urinated in a cookie jar on her desk. In another episode, a task force member allegedly gazed at her body and said, “Look at you, you sexy bitch,” before grabbing her waist when she walked past him.

One of those lawmen was later accused of shoving her from behind as she monitored a woman inside a house during the execution of a search warrant. She told the U.S. Marshals Service Office of Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) that she believed her coworker’s actions were “premeditated,” records show, and that “his presence there was to instill fear in her and to send a message.”

Mahoney told Bobby Ledogar, then a Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of New York, that she was concerned for her safety because of the alleged bullying, which she believed was escalating and potentially dangerous in the field.

Ledogar, who worked in both Brooklyn and Central Islip federal courts and was a warrant-squad supervisor, reported the shoving incident up the chain of command—to then-U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of New York Charles Dunne, and Chief Deputy Bryan Mullee—and pressed for an internal investigation.

But Ledogar says that after he defended Mahoney, the U.S. Marshals Service initiated four internal affairs investigations—what his attorneys have referred to as “fishing expeditions”—against him in as many years. One of those probes led to his termination last year, when he was 70 days away from retirement. In Mahoney’s case, internal affairs closed its inquiry into her claims of harassment without taking action, and when the agency investigated the shoving incident, it found her accusations “unsubstantiated.”

Now Ledogar is fighting for his pension and appealing his termination, which he claims was retaliation for exposing the harassment of his subordinate—at a time when the federal law enforcement agency was under pressure from a Senate investigation. The 51-year-old Navy veteran, who served in the Gulf War, was with the U.S. Marshals since 1995 and has received 166 letters of support from law enforcement colleagues and managers in response to the agency’s proposals in 2017 and 2020 to remove him from federal service.

Those endorsements did little to dissuade agency headquarters from terminating him based on charges including, among others, conduct unbecoming a Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal, lack of candor, misuse of position and misuse of a government property-IT device—a charge relating to photos on his government phone of a fugitive model’s Playboy spread.

On Monday, Ledogar filed written closing arguments to the federal Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which will determine whether he was wrongfully terminated and if he’s entitled to his full retirement. (He also has a pending complaint before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for retaliation and harassment.)

“This is a classic example of retaliation for protected activities,” Ledogar’s lawyer, Raymond R. Granger, told The Daily Beast. “Not only did headquarters in Washington punish Bobby for standing up for a fellow employee who clearly was being harassed and discriminated against based on her gender and sexual orientation, but it sent a clear message to other Marshal Service employees that they could expect the same treatment if they, too, rocked the boat and took actions that could embarrass headquarters.”

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Marshals Service confirmed Ledogar worked for the agency from June 1995 through April 2020 but said, “Due to privacy considerations, USMS is not able to provide specifics related to an individual’s employment record.” Dunne, who left the agency in 2017, declined to comment but did not dispute Ledogar’s portrayal of events. Mullee, who has testified in support of Ledogar, also declined to comment.

The U.S. Marshals Service and its local and regional task forces have not operated without scrutiny in recent years.

In February, a report from The Marshall Project and USA Today put these local-federal squads under the microscope, revealing that while “many police departments have come under public scrutiny for shootings, marshals and their task forces have not—even though they are more likely to use their guns.”

The task forces consist of U.S. Marshals Service employees and state and local police who are deputized as federal officers to track down and arrest fugitives. The deputized cops can cross state lines to capture suspects and, as The Marshall Project reported, are often insulated from local prosecution, litigation and oversight.

When Mahoney filed her complaint in 2015, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley was in the middle of investigating misconduct and mismanagement within the federal agency.

In late 2018, the Iowa senator released a memo of his inquiry, which examined claims by more than 100 whistleblowers, and “identified a culture of mismanagement, reckless spending, favoritism, and a general lack of accountability.” It also detailed a “frat”-like environment where “senior officials appear to act with impunity while lower level employees are held to a stringent standard.”

Some employees, Grassley’s report said, claimed they had participated in internal affairs and EEO investigations, or otherwise reported misconduct, only to face “frivolous or vindictive misconduct investigations” themselves.

From Ledogar’s perspective, U.S. Marshals Service headquarters wanted to sweep Mahoney’s accusations under the rug to avoid any blowback to the fugitive task force, one of eight such Congressionally funded units across the country. (The agency also has 56 other local task forces focusing on violent offenders.)

“To have this exposed, that you had U.S. Marshals and local police officers sexually harassing, assaulting, bullying, degrading and mocking a female U.S. Marshal who is a lesbian, that’s a nice big black eye against the government,” Ledogar told The Daily Beast.

“And it’s going to come out that one supervisor defended her, and the investigation of the female’s initial complaints was done by the same people she did a complaint against?” Ledogar added. “You didn’t even let internal affairs do it? You investigate yourself? We’ve all seen a history of how that works out.”

Mahoney filed a complaint with the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) internal affairs unit, which then punted the claims to the Investigative Operations Division (IOD)—which oversees the regional task forces.

“Nothing about this case has been ordinary,” Mullee wrote in a letter of support to Chief Inspector Cheryl Jacobs in February 2020, when he was the acting U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District. “From the very beginning, all attempts to resolve Dawn’s case have been met with obstruction. Ask yourself why IOD investigated the matter when the complaint was sent to Internal Affairs.”

“Why have Dawn’s allegations all been disregarded and taskforce personnel been cleared yet district personnel continuously find themselves subject to investigations, all stemming from the original matter,” Mullee added. “The agency’s handling of this matter has been anything but equitable. Robert is a victim of this inequity.”

Mahoney joined the New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force’s Long Island arm in 2010 after Ledogar, nicknamed “Led” by his colleagues, recruited her. At the time, she had been working as a U.S. Marshal in the federal courthouse in Central Islip.

Ledogar told us the fugitive task force “is the job of jobs for any Marshal and any cop,” and that it’s among the most dangerous jobs in law enforcement. From 2008 to 2011, A&E featured members of the elite New York/New Jersey corps in a reality show called Manhunters: Fugitive Task Force.

“When I found out that Led proposed for me to be selected and assigned full time to the warrant squad representing the district in the New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force, I was humbled,” Mahoney would later write in a letter of support for Ledogar which was sent to U.S. Marshals Service Chief Inspector Cathy Jones.

“There were so many male deputies that desperately wanted that opportunity,” Mahoney wrote. “Led could have given it to any one of them. Instead he chose me, a female and a lesbian. I was honored that Led, who already had a very diverse, diligent, conscientious warrant squad, was now adding me.”

While Ledogar was in the crosshairs of internal affairs, Mahoney was among the many colleagues who wrote a letter defending him. She called him “a man with pure integrity.”

“What is most difficult for me to accept personally is that his current persecution is solely based on his courageous actions of support in standing up for me, the original victim of bullying by those making retaliatory complaints against him,” Mahoney wrote.

Mahoney declined to comment for this story, and her attorney didn’t return messages. But in documents reviewed by The Daily Beast, Mahoney claimed her relationship with task force members began to deteriorate in 2014, after she became a team leader on the fugitive squad and resigned from that role because some task force members openly disrespected her. She stayed on the task force as a rank-and-file member, though one agency record states Mahoney believed “this was the beginning of the hostile work environment because of her sex.”

Ledogar and Mahoney, in their own government filings, described a “frat”-like culture at work similar to those described in Grassley’s report.

Mahoney, in a letter to Jones, claimed some of the task force officers who harassed her would also “interrogate all the young male interns about their sex lives” and question them on whether they were gay, and made degrading comments about women, including female interns, and their bodies. “It was a free for all of abuse,” Mahoney wrote, adding that the officers “had no filter and no fear of repercussion.” Their supervisors, she claimed, usually just laughed at their behavior.

Granger, Ledogar’s lawyer, has also described “a toxic climate driven by three individuals” in a 2017 letter to the inspector. Granger alleged the task force members were “disrupting the workplace by loudly playing profane rap songs and videos; sexually harassing both coworkers and student interns; traipsing shirtless around the office… or sitting naked in the office’s co-ed sauna” and “wearing and otherwise displaying a gorilla mask to mock African-Americans,” including two task force officers when they weren’t around. The accused bullies also allegedly tossed around a football scribbled with male and female genitalia. (The Daily Beast reviewed photos of a shirtless investigator in the office, the mask, and football.)

Granger also accused the men of creating a “shrine” in the office made of property snatched from fugitives and their families. “For example, if they felt a family member of a fugitive had not been helpful and owned an expensive car, they would steal the key to punish the person, knowing it would be expensive and inconvenient to replace,” the letter states. “Other times they stole personal property such as jewelry or other personal items from a fugitive or the fugitive’s family members, and confiscated contraband such as a switchblade, brass knuckles, a machete, and a sword.”

In August 2015, Mahoney filed a complaint with OPR’s internal affairs unit, which transferred the matter to U.S. Marshals Service’s Investigative Operations Division—of which the task force is a component. According to one of Ledogar’s appeal filings, the assigned IOD investigator was a close friend of the task force supervisor, who was “accused of having condoned the very misconduct being investigated.”

IOD closed its investigation a month later, calling Mahoney’s claims unsubstantiated. But Ledogar’s filing states that Eastern District brass Dunne and Mullee “were upset greatly by IOD’s decision and felt that the entire process had been biased and improper” and Mullee “felt that the Agency was trying to suppress the allegations of misconduct and was not going to allow them to be fully investigated or otherwise exposed.”

One management official within the Marshals Service told us IOD is the largest division within the agency and has a stream of employees who rise through the ranks to become deputy and associate directors. “They’ve built an empire,” the official said on condition of anonymity. “They are the people pulling the strings behind the scenes.”

In documents filed as part of the Ledogar's case, Mullee hinted at tension between the U.S. Marshals Service and the New York office: “Since this case started in 2015, you know, the district has not been the same. I feel like our relationships with headquarters have not been the same.”

“Just look at the sheer number of allegations that have been leveled against [Ledogar] that have been unsubstantiated,” Mullee stated in a filing. “To me, that just goes to show you that people were grasping at straws. They were trying to find anything to level against him to get back at him for exposing the Task Force and for bringing certain issues to light.”

In his 2020 letter to Chief Inspector Jacobs, Mullee wrote that Ledogar’s whistleblowing “set off a chain of events that ultimately pitted the taskforce and the Investigative Operations Division against the district.”

“The animosity is still palpable,” he continued. “I feel, as a district manager, that our district and our employees have been and continue to be targeted.”

Mullee said that because of the strained relationship between task force members and agency personnel, he and Dunne took steps to reduce interaction between them, including revoking the task force’s access to the agency’s Central Islip gym and secure parking facilities. Mullee claims the agency “reprimanded” them for doing so.

The alleged shoving incident, Mullee continued, occurred while the deputized officers were temporarily removed from the office but permitted to remain on the task force.

The feds would again investigate Mahoney’s claims in January 2016, after Eastern District management informed the agency that a task force member had peed in a box of animal crackers on Mahoney’s desk. This time, OPR took the lead.

The renewed probe followed inquiries from Grassley’s office, as well as the office of New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who sought information from the Marshals Service on whether it would investigate Mahoney’s complaints. (Gillibrand’s office confirmed to The Daily Beast that it had contacted the agency on Mahoney’s behalf.)

Because of Grassley’s Senate investigation, Ledogar’s filing states, the Marshals Service’s general counsel “agreed that it had been a conflict of interest for IOD to have investigated” Mahoney’s claims on the shoving incident and reopened them. Senator Grassley’s office also contacted Mullee about Mahoney’s complaint, Ledogar says.

Grassley’s office didn’t return messages.

Ledogar testified under oath four times between 2015 and 2017 as part of the government’s investigations into Mahoney’s accusations. Each time, Ledogar says, he corroborated Mahoney’s allegations of harassment and discrimination.

According to Ledogar, Mahoney settled her EEO complaint in 2019. She was transferred out of the task force, an opportunity she considered a dream job, for safety reasons; the task force members accused of harassing her, however, were permitted to return.

One of the accused bullies, a local police officer, lost his spot on the task force in September 2015, after he allegedly confronted Ledogar at a New York Mets game about his support of Mahoney. Ledogar says the cop was so angry he worried the officer would clock him.

Immediately after the cop’s ouster, Ledogar was named in an IOD investigation, prompted by the task force supervisor’s claims that someone broke into his office. According to one of Ledogar’s filings, that investigation was closed as unsubstantiated in 2016.

That wouldn’t be the end of Ledogar’s troubles.

In June 2016, two months after he was interviewed a second time in Mahoney’s harassment case, Ledogar was again targeted by internal affairs—this time over accusations he made racist comments in the workplace.

Ledogar contends those accusations were fabricated by the same task force members who allegedly harassed Mahoney. Indeed, the cop accused of pushing Mahoney was the first to raise the racism claims while agency investigators questioned him about the shoving incident.

During an internal affairs interview, the officer told an inspector that higher-ups within the task force “were sorry to see me go” and that “the reason I had to leave was because of an argument that I had with one of your bosses, Robert Ledogar, at a ball game…” He described Ledogar as a former friend who even attended his wedding.

“That’s why I’m not on this task force that I loved,” the erstwhile fugitive hunter added, according to a transcript of the interview. “That was a big part of my life.”

Because the inspector was looking into “office culture,” the cop said, he wanted to disclose that Ledogar routinely used the n-word around employees. “He did it frequently,” the deputy claimed. “I’m talking about hundreds of times.”

Asked whether he ever reported Ledogar’s alleged language, the deputized officer answered no. “The reason I didn’t do it was because of the blue line,” he added.

He then claimed Ledogar said he was a silent partner of a mixed martial arts gym on Long Island that was owned by a convicted felon familiar to the task force. (Ledogar’s lawyers have called this accusation “bizarre and patently false.”)

In March 2017, the U.S. Marshals Service proposed terminating Ledogar based on this officer’s claims. One month later, records show, Chief Inspector Jones dismissed the racism accusations as unsubstantiated. Ledogar says more than 100 law enforcement colleagues sent Jones letters defending him against these claims.

At the same time, Ledogar learned he was the subject of two more internal affairs investigations: one based on his connection to a convicted felon and confidential informant who falsely claimed he was staying at the home of Ledogar and his wife while on temporary release; the other related to additional claims from the local cop that Ledogar used racial slurs, stole property, and used drugs.

Those investigations would continue into 2020, when the Marshals Service removed him from office because of the informant probe. The inquiry based on the cop’s racism claims was closed without further action, Ledogar’s lawyers say.

In one appeal filing, Ledogar’s attorneys claim that the U.S. Marshals Service kept the racism probe “open for nearly three years despite the fact that it knew at approximately the time the matter was first opened, and especially upon Chief Inspector Jones’s April 26, 2017, dismissal of all charges… that the underlying accusations were false or otherwise not credible.”

In the informant case, the felon claimed to have intel on an alleged sexting scandal—later called a hoax by police—involving former Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano. Ledogar consulted with the local U.S. Attorney’s Office, which opened an investigation. While the informant provided assistance, Ledogar held money for him and gave him a small loan to pay rent. Ledogar later told OPR's internal affairs that he agreed to help the informant so he could continue helping law enforcement and guarantee he “stayed clean, out of trouble, and functional.”

The internal affairs accusations, Ledogar says, stemmed from state corrections officials’ confusion over the felon’s release. In order to keep the U.S. Attorney’s office probe secret, the man allegedly made false claims about staying with Ledogar at his home.

The New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision filed a complaint about the circumstances surrounding the prisoner’s release, leading to an investigation with the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General. After a federal prosecutor corroborated the criminal probe, OIG declined to take action.

But the U.S. Marshals Service used the claims to open a probe of its own. According to Ledogar’s filings, the same local cop who accused him of racism while battling accusations by Mahoney had previously “made the patently absurd claim” that Ledogar owned a Long Island gym with the informant.

During the course of the U.S. Marshals’ internal affairs investigation, Ledogar was also questioned about images of a fugitive DJ and model’s Playboy spread found on his government phone.

Ledogar told them he led a team that arrested the model on an extradition warrant at New York City’s JFK Airport in November 2015. Shortly afterward, U.S. Marshals personnel took photos of the model’s belongings to be inventoried including her suitcases, jewelry and the magazine, which positively identified the model as their suspect.

“He did not take the photographs of the magazine for his personal gratification and did not post them or send the photographs to anyone outside the course of his duties,” Ledogar’s filing alleges.

Meanwhile, U.S. Marshals officials questioned Ledogar about his close relationship with a man who happened to be a convicted felon, for whom he wrote a character reference on agency letterhead. Ledogar claims he didn’t know his buddy had a criminal record until four years into their friendship, and that he’d previously self-reported their ties to OPR. (In his letter, Mullee said he and Ledogar met the pal around the same time through a law enforcement nonprofit; the friend was a businessman and supporter of the charity.)

Still, Ledogar’s colleagues continue to stick by him despite the charges.

Last November, the National Police Defense Foundation, a nonprofit that provides medical and legal support to members of law enforcement, announced it was supporting Ledogar over the Marshals Service and launching a legal defense fund to “to help support his legal efforts in order to challenge his unjust termination.”

Because U.S. Marshals don’t have a union, Ledogar says, he and his wife have paid for legal fees with their savings and by borrowing money from relatives and friends during the years-long battle against his removal from service.

His father, Charles Ledogar, called the Marshals Service’s actions “a witch hunt against my son, his family and friends.” The elder Ledogar, a Vietnam vet and retired New York sanitation worker, told The Daily Beast: “To know that our government will go to any means to hurt a good person for helping people, is disgusting.”

Craig Caine, a retired U.S. Marshal and fugitive task force inspector in Nassau County who worked with Ledogar for years, told The Daily Beast that Ledogar was respected, well-liked, “treated everybody with equality” and often tried to be a “troubleshooter” for the district.

“He’s going through hell and back,” Caine said. “What these people did to that poor man, I don’t even have an adjective to describe it. They threw their own under the bus in support of outsiders that made some frivolous bogus lies.”

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Activists call for justice for Ma'Khia Bryant in Detroit on 1 May. (photo: Adam J. Dewey/Shutterstock)
Activists call for justice for Ma'Khia Bryant in Detroit on 1 May. (photo: Adam J. Dewey/Shutterstock)


Months After Ma'Khia Bryant's Killing, Columbus Police More Emboldened Than Ever
Audra Henrichs, Guardian UK
Henrichs writes: "Since 2013, officers in Columbus, Ohio, have killed children at a higher rate than most other US police forces - but they lack any real accountability."

Since 2013, officers in Columbus, Ohio, have killed children at a higher rate than most other US police forces – but they lack any real accountability

n 20 April, millions held their breath as they waited for a judge to read the verdict that the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin had been found guilty of the murder of George Floyd. About 20 minutes before the verdict, Ma’Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old foster child, was fatally shot by a police officer a few hundred miles away in Columbus, Ohio.

According to early reports, the altercation that prompted a call to police involved Bryant and two women in their early 20s, and had escalated outside the foster home of Angela Moore, where Ma’Khia and her younger sister, Ja’Niah, were placed. Body-cam footage would reveal that Bryant was clutching a knife, making her the only person visibly armed until Nicholas Reardon, a 23-year-old officer who only joined the force just a year and a half earlier, arrived at the scene and within seconds fired four shots in quick succession – all of which found their target, Bryant.

“She’s just a fucking kid, man!” exclaimed a man, later established as Ma’Khia’s biological father who had gathered with other bystanders including Jeanene Hammonds, the girls’ grandmother, in the driveway. Ma’Khia was taken to Mt Carmel East hospital in critical condition and pronounced dead soon after.

While Ma’Khia’s case received national attention, she’s actually one of several children who have died at the hands of police in Ohio’s capital city between 2016 and 2021 alone. In that period, five other juveniles have been killed in similar altercations with police use of deadly force: 13-year-old Tyre King in 2016; 16-year-olds Julius Ervin Tate Jr and Joseph Edward Haynes in 2018; and 15-year-old Abdirahman Salad and 17-year-old Joseph C Jewell III in 2020. Haynes, who was white, was the only non-Black victim. Data from the research collaborative Mapping Police Violence indicates that since 2013, among all police departments across the US, officers in Columbus have killed their city’s youth at a higher rate than most other police forces in the country.

But months after the city erupted in protests for George Floyd, some combination of apathy, unease and frustration has led the same local lawmakers who publicly decried Minneapolis police to forget the vast number of victims of police killings in their own backyards. That has left the Columbus police department devoid of any real accountability, and in fact more emboldened than ever as the city’s largest expense.

‘A rogue police force’

Columbus police released the body-cam footage in the immediate hours following Ma’Khia’s shooting via livestreamed press conference, calling it an effort in “transparency”. But the Bryant family was less than comforted. “I know what happened the night before. I know what happened the night of the evening of this incident, and that’s what I was going to discuss with them before a videotape got out, making my granddaughter looking like she is a monster,” Hammonds then said.

The women involved in the altercation are now known as the former foster children of Moore, who were often left alone with the Bryant sisters unsupervised while she was at work. Michelle Martin, the Bryant family’s attorney, says the women – both in their 20s – bullied and berated the sisters and mocked Ma’Khia’s speech impediment. The environment had become so contentious that Ja’Niah Bryant called police one month before the fatal shooting.

Following an investigation conducted by the bureau of criminal investigations, the Ohio attorney general, David Yost, ultimately decided to send the case to special prosecutors for a grand jury review. Martin and Hammonds are now providing weekly testimony to prosecutors to give history of the threats and attacks from the former foster children of Angela Moore that preceded the shooting.

Meanwhile, Ja’Niah, Martin said, has noted that the protests and demonstrations in support of her elder sister have paled in comparison with those of George Floyd last summer. “I think what people do is dumb down the situation to those 10 seconds before Ma’Khia was killed and I think that that’s not fair to her,” she said. “People always need one bad actor, but if they can’t see how the entire system worked collectively to back her into a corner, then we are not going to get the support that we need.”

The family has also considered holding a march or action in remembrance of Ma’Khia with local organizers, but have not made any plans for fear of backlash and counter-protests. The organizing landscape has drastically changed in the capital city since the summer of 2020, when protests surged in solidarity with George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others despite an escalating pandemic. Dozens of protesters accumulated stories that detail how they were terrorized by police.

“The Columbus police unleashed a literal war in our city for weeks,” Tammy Fournier-Alsaada, former mayor-appointed community safety advisory commissioner and co-founder of the People’s Justice Project, said. Fournier-Alsaada, among 25 other protesters, chose to file a class action lawsuit against the police department for its range of attacks on protesters, including rubber bullets, teargas and assault.

“There is video evidence in this lawsuit of their abuse of power. When you allow someone to have that much power and no way to hold them accountable, then you have a rogue police force. That is clearly the case here in Columbus, Ohio,” she said.

The case, now on record as Alsaada v City of Columbusraises questions about why and how police – unconstitutionally, says Fournier-Alsaada and others – used teargas and other “less-lethal” weapons against protesters.

“Police officers started using tactics that we’ve never seen in our life – jumping out of vans, snatching people up and pointing their guns at anyone without asking questions. Even after the protests, people started getting ghost warrants – 60 to 90 days after an action, warrants were issued and executed in private and when people tried to look for you, they couldn’t find where you’d been taken,” said Heather Johnson, an activist and protester. Ghost, or phantom warrants, which have haunted people across the country in recent years, are expired or erroneous arrest warrants that in most cases unknowingly remain on a person’s record.

And just weeks before she was killed, four Republican-backed bills that would increase the number of arrestable offenses at protests and enhance penalties for crimes committed during demonstrations were introduced and one has already advanced out of House committee. That bill, which aims to expand the definition of obstructing justice to include failure to follow a lawful order or diverting a law enforcement officer’s attention, is of particular concern as organizers believe it will allow for selective enforcement and disproportionately harm Black citizens.

“It’s dangerous for us to be in the streets because we now have legislation being presented that doesn’t protect us,” said Johnson.

‘A real disconnect’

Since January 2020, eight people have died at the hands of Columbus police, effectively ranking the city’s Franklin county 18th among the 100 most populous counties nationally in its annual fatality rate. But local organizers and groups like People’s Justice Project, and Columbus Police Accountability Project, have found themselves discouraged by an overall lack of action from state lawmakers.

Following Ma’Khia’s shooting, the Ohio governor, Mike DeWine, promised a sweeping police reform package was on its way, telling citizens that “If this bill is passed, it’ll put Ohio at the forefront,” of reform. “We will be able to say, ‘Look, we have gotten serious about this,’” DeWine said.

Yet with state lawmakers now on summer break, no such bill has been introduced and will probably not be until legislators return in the fall. In 2021, police funding also remained the largest item of the city’s budget at nearly $337m – a slight decrease from $361m in 2020 – with $152m going toward police patrol alone.

The Columbus mayor, Andrew Ginther, has insisted spending categories like public health and technology also saw a boost to create a more “holistic approach to public safety”, and recently pushed the US Department of Justice to conduct a review of the Columbus division of police and propose methods of reform. But organizers aren’t convinced.

“There’s a real disconnect between what politicians are saying and the actions behind it,” said Jordyn Close, state coordinator at Urge: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity, an intersectional reproductive justice organization. “I think organizers in the movement have gotten to a point where we’re offered these platitudes like community review boards and de-escalation training but you can’t reform white supremacy, which is what police and the industrial-prison complex uphold.”

In a time when many major cities are taking steps toward reform, from an increase in mental health services to a decrease in police budget, the organizers who have not “gone home” can’t help but see the lack of action and accountability not only as a missed opportunity in the wake of Ma’Khia’s death, but a gross injustice.

“We have to see this as a true public health crisis – that our children are literally dying in the streets and killed by members of public service,” said Martin. “Until then, that is why people are not still rallying. We have to really have a passion for changing the way that our world treats our children and how we respond to racial disparities in our country.”

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People wearing protective face masks walk, as the global outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, along the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago, Illinois. (photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
People wearing protective face masks walk, as the global outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, along the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago, Illinois. (photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)


Governor Pritzker Announces Illinois Mask and Vaccine Mandates
NBC Chicago
Excerpt: "Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has reinstated a mask mandate for the state, requiring masks indoors for residents as he says the state is 'running out of time as our hospitals run out of beds.'"

llinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has reinstated a mask mandate for the state, requiring masks indoors for residents as he says the state is "running out of time as our hospitals run out of beds."

The new indoor mask mandate, similar to mandates already handed down in Cook County and Chicago, will begin Monday and require facial coverings in indoor settings, regardless of COVID vaccination status.

"Illinois will join several other states that have reinstituted statewide indoor mask requirements, regardless of vaccination status, effective on Monday," Pritzker said. "Masks work. Period."

In addition, Pritzker also announced a new mandate requiring teachers, healthcare workers and higher education students to either receive the coronavirus vaccine, or to submit to weekly COVID testing through an enhanced protocols program.

Vaccines will be required for P-12 teachers and staff, higher education personnel, higher education students, and healthcare workers in settings like hospitals, nursing homes, urgent care facilities and physician's offices, Pritzker said, adding the mandate takes effect Sept. 5. Those who remain unvaccinated will be required to get tested for COVID-19 at least once a week, but may require additional testing in some cases like outbreaks.

Pritzker said the delta variant "is increasingly causing concern for our hospital capacity in communities across Illinois."

"Let's be clear, the vaccination is the most effective tool we have for keeping people out of the hospital and preventing deaths," he said.

Calling it "a pandemic of the unvaccinated" Pritzker said "you don't need to be an epidemiologist to understand what's going on here."

As of Wednesday, all 102 of Illinois' counties are experiencing "high transmission" levels of COVID-19, meaning that the counties are either seeing 100 or more new cases of COVID per 100,000 residents each week, or are seeing positivity rates of greater than 10% on all COVID tests.

Under those parameters, residents in those counties are recommended to wear masks by the CDC, but Pritzker's order will go one step further, requiring individuals to wear masks in indoor settings, regardless of vaccination status.

The decision is also driven by rapid increases in the number of patients requiring ICU beds while battling COVID. In Region 5, located in southern Illinois and comprised of 20 counties, just six of the region's 86 ICU beds are currently available, up from just one available on Tuesday.

Officials say 22 beds of 171 are currently available in northwest Illinois' Region 1, while 21 are avaialble in Region 3, which includes Springfield.

On Tuesday, Pritzker had warned of "significantly greater mitigations" if COVID metrics didn't begin to decline across the state.

"We're consistently looking at the menu of options that we may need to impose in order to bring down the numbers," Pritzker said during a press conference Tuesday. "I will remind you that if we are not able to bring these numbers down, if hospitals continue to fill, if the hospital beds and ICUs get full like they are in Kentucky -that's just next door to Illinois - if that happens, we're going to have to impose significantly greater mitigations."

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A U.S. Chinook military helicopter flies above the U.S. embassy in Kabul, August 15, 2021. (photo: Wakil Kohsar/Getty)
A U.S. Chinook military helicopter flies above the U.S. embassy in Kabul, August 15, 2021. (photo: Wakil Kohsar/Getty)



Military Contractor CACI Says Afghanistan Withdrawal Is Hurting Its Profits. It's Funding a Pro-War Think Tank.
Sarah Lazare, In These Times
Lazare writes: "On August 12, the military contractor CACI International Inc. told its investors that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is hurting its profits."

What CACI reveals about the feedback loop between military contractors and think tanks.


n August 12, the military contractor CACI International Inc. told its investors that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is hurting its profits. The same contractor is also funding a think tank that is concurrently arguing against the withdrawal. This case is worth examining both because it is routine, and because it highlights the venality of our “expert”-military contractor feedback loop, in which private companies use think tanks to rally support for wars they’ll profit from.

The contractor is notorious to those who have followed the scandal of U.S.-led torture in Iraq. CACI International was sued by three Iraqis formerly detained in Abu Ghraib prison who charge that the company’s employees are responsible for directing their torture, including sexual assault and electric shocks. (The suit was brought in 2008 and the case is still ongoing.)

In 2019, CACI International was awarded a nearly $907 million, five-year contract to provide “intelligence operations and analytic support” for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan.

During an August 12 earnings call, CACI International noted repeatedly that President Biden’s withdrawal from the 20-year Afghanistan War harmed the company’s profits. John Mengucci, president and CEO of CACI International, said, “we have about a 2 percent headwind coming into FY 2022 because of Afghanistan.” A “headwind” refers to negative impacts on profits.

Afghanistan was mentioned 16 times throughout the call — either in reference to the dent in profits, or to assure investors that other areas of growth were offsetting the losses. For example, Mengucci said, “We’re seeing positive growth in technology and expect it to continue to outpace expertise growth, collectively offsetting the impact of the Afghanistan drawdown.”

Similar themes were repeated in an April 22 earnings call, where the company lamented the “headwinds” posed by the Afghanistan withdrawal. (Industry and defense publications have picked up on this them, but framed it in the company’s terms, by emphasizing the offsets to its losses.)

Despite CACI International’s clear economic interest in continuing the war, on the August 12 call, company officials were careful not to editorialize about the Biden administration’s decision. The closest they came was a cautious statement from Mengucci: “At least as of today we’ve watched the administration make the decision to completely exit Afghanistan by 9 – 11 and all I can say is they’re executing on that decision.”

But CACI International does not have to broadcast its positions on the war: Instead, it is funding a think tank that has been actively urging the Biden administration not to leave Afghanistan.

CACI International is listed as a “corporate sponsor” of the Institute for Study of War, which describes itself as a “non-partisan, non-profit, public policy research organization.” Dr. Warren Phillips, lead director of CACI International, is on the board of the think tank. (Other funders include General Dynamics and Microsoft.)

When it comes to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, however, the think tank is extremely partisan. In an August 20 paper, the think tank argued that “Russia, China, Iran, and Turkey are weighing how to take advantage of the United States’ hurried withdrawal.”

Jack Keane, a retired four star general and board member of the Institute for Study of War, meanwhile, has been on a cable news blitz arguing against the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as reported by Ryan Grim, Sara Sirota, Lee Fang and Rose Adams for The Intercept.

Kimberly Kagan, founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War, told Fox News on August 17 that the U.S. withdrawal could cause Afghanistan to become the “second school of jihadism.” She warned, “It is not clear that the Taliban, which seeks international recognition and legitimacy, is going to want to tolerate or encourage direct attacks on the U.S. from al Qaeda or other extremist groups based in Afghanistan.”

The think tank’s backing from a military contractor was not discussed in these media appearances.

The case of CACI International is not unique. The Intercept notes, “Among the other talking heads who took to cable news segments or op-ed pages without disclosing their defense industry ties were retired Gen. David Petraeus; Rebecca Grant, a former staffer for the Air Force secretary; Richard Haass, who worked as an adviser to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell; and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.”

This cacophony of voices matters because Biden is facing a media uproar over the withdrawal. Pundits and mainstream press outlets that have been ignoring civilian deaths for years are suddenly expressing moral outrage at their hardships now that the war is ending. While there are legitimate concerns about the fate of Afghans as the Taliban seizes control, the vast majority of the firestorm stems from a reflexively pro-war perspective, in favor of the indefinite extension of an occupation that has proven brutal and lethal for civilians. The overwhelming effect is to send the message to Biden, and any future presidents, that they should think twice before withdrawing from a war, lest they have a media revolt on their hands.

But this outcry didn’t materialize out of nowhere. Think tank “experts,” whose organizations are financed by the very companies profiting from the war, play a key part. They are trotted out in front of cameras and quoted in major media outlets, presented as above-the-fray observers. They are well-financed, polished and groomed precisely for moments like these. And the companies financing them get to launder their own objectives through institutions that are seen as respectable, academic and rigorous. It’s a grotesque system that is functioning as it was designed.

In its August 12 call, CACI International simply acknowledged the company’s economic interests out loud.

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Demonstrators protest the Line 3 pipeline on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol, Aug. 25, 2021. (photo: Roots Action)
Demonstrators protest the Line 3 pipeline on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol, Aug. 25, 2021. (photo: Roots Action)



Thousands Protest Enbridge Line 3 Pipeline at Minnesota Capitol
Zoë Jackson and Mike Hughlett, Star Tribune
Excerpt: "With singing, dancing and waving of flags, Indigenous leaders, activists and elected officials peacefully descended upon the Minnesota State Capitol on Wednesday in a late-stage plea to halt construction on Enbridge's nearly completed Line 3."

As Line 3 nears completion, opponents rallied to make their voices heard.


ith singing, dancing and waving of flags, Indigenous leaders, activists and elected officials peacefully descended upon the Minnesota State Capitol on Wednesday in a late-stage plea to halt construction on Enbridge's nearly completed Line 3.

Opponents of the controversial oil pipeline planned a series of demonstrations that began Monday at the Capitol, as construction surpasses 90% completion and the legal remedies to stop it have nearly been exhausted. Wednesday's protest called on Gov. Tim Walz and President Joe Biden to stop construction of the 340-mile pipeline, which will carry oil from Canada.

About 2,000 people, including local elected officials, members of Treaty People Walk for Water who walked 256 miles along the pipeline route, and community leaders from across the state gathered on the Capitol grounds Wednesday afternoon. Protesters young and old danced on the lawn, some holding signs that read, "Break free from fossil fuels" and "Honor the treaties."

Taysha Martineau, who co-founded the Migizi pipeline resistance camp in Cloquet, Minn., said she doesn't have much hope that elected officials will step in at this point to stop construction. But she said she believes that officials still need to hear the voices of protesters.

"They can build this pipeline, but we still have the time now to remedy the situation and step away from fossil fuel addiction," she said. "Those who are in places of power still have the time to ensure a climate future for future generations."

State officials recently expanded the security presence around the Capitol, including reinstalling a fence perimeter — measures that organizers decried as a militarized response to peaceful demonstrations.

At least 100 law enforcement officers guarded the Capitol on Wednesday, some in riot gear. State Patrol troopers closed some nearby streets and guarded the Minnesota Judicial Center and other government buildings.

"Water protectors" — activists who oppose projects and policies that they believe harm water systems — were in attendance as a line of defense if law enforcement attempted to take down tepees or other ceremonial objects on the lawn, Martineau said.

"We're not here to instigate, we're not here to fight police," she said. "We're just here to ensure the safety of all who are present."

Thabiso Rowan of St. Paul said he attended the demonstration because "I love Mother Earth and I want to see the people that occupy this planet live in harmony."

"I'm really happy that I can come out here and support the water protectors, who give so much of their time and energy to support being in harmony with the water," he said.

The $3 billion-plus new Line 3 prompted a six-year battle through Minnesota's regulatory process, with Calgary-based Enbridge getting its final permits late last year. The pipeline replaces the 1960s-vintage original Line 3, which is corroding and can run at only 51% capacity. Enbridge maintains the new pipeline is a significant safety improvement; it will restore the full flow and boost the company's earnings.

The new Line 3 runs partly on a new route. Pipeline opponents say it will expose new regions of Minnesota's lakes, rivers and wild rice waters to oil-spill degradation — and will exacerbate climate change.

Sam Strong, secretary of the Red Lake Nation, reminded the crowd at the Capitol of how climate change has already affected them — how for a week this summer it was hard to see the sun due to wildfire smoke and children couldn't play outside.

"There has already been much suffering, and it's only gonna get worse," Strong said. "But we do have an opportunity to make a difference, we do have an opportunity to show the world a better way to live."

Enbridge has said it will begin pumping oil during the fourth quarter, and that could come sooner rather than later. The company has already filed for "toll surcharges" with regulators in Canada and the United States. The tolls on its customers could be effective as early as Sept. 15, and service could then start within the next 30 to 60 days.

In a statement, Enbridge said it has "demonstrated an ongoing respect for tribal sovereignty." The company said that with its new route for Line 3, it purposely avoided crossing the White Earth and Fond du Lac reservations, which currently host all six Enbridge pipelines across Minnesota.

The Fond du Lac band fought hard against the new Line 3. But once the Public Utilities Commission approved it, the band allowed the new pipeline to cross its land on the current Line 3 route, getting an undisclosed amount of compensation from Enbridge in return.

Pipeline opponents argue that the new Line 3 still crosses lands where they have treaty rights to hunt, gather and fish.

Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, commended the crowd at the Capitol for coming out, and called on them to have conversations with the people in their lives who said they would, but didn't.

"We have 10,000 lakes but do not care about the water that's in them," he said.

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