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Michael Krieger | LibertyBlitzkrieg.com<\/p>\n
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In theory, Americans should be proud of their national capital and all the important work that gets done there. In theory.<\/p>\n
In reality, our nation\u2019s capital is an utter cesspool of self-serving, unethical and unaccountable parasites. We all know it and, even worse, it\u2019s probably a hundred times more grotesque than we can imagine. A distressingly high number of people attracted to this swamp don\u2019t go there to do good public work or help the American people. They go in order to enrich themselves at our expense.<\/p>\n
A particularly degenerate strain of D.C. cretin is the lobbyist. These people swarm into Washington to influence the purse-strings of the U.S. government and funnel as much American treasure as possible in the direction of their clients, including Wall Street oligarchs, defense contractors and barbaric foreign monarchies like Saudi Arabia. We\u2019re told that Washington D.C. exists specifically to protect and benefit the American public, yet the average citizen is the one constituency which has virtually no actual representation there. Helping the vulnerable doesn\u2019t pay very well.<\/p>\n
Over the past couple of days, I\u2019ve be reading political stories describing the \u201cbeltway buzz\u201d in the aftermath of the Paul Manafort and Rick Gates indictments. I\u2019ve found these articles quite instructive. The common theme is that hordes of the shady crooks who operate in D.C., and add absolutely zero value to society, are panicking that their gravy train of legalized corruption may be coming to an end.<\/p>\n
To see what I mean, let\u2019s examine two recently published articles. First from\u00a0Politico<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n Washington lobbyists who represent foreign powers have taken comfort for decades in the fact that the Justice Department rarely goes after them for potentially breaking the law.<\/strong>\u00a0That all changed on Monday.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The two-tier justice system works quite nicely for D.C. crooks.<\/p>\n The news of Tony Podesta\u2019s resignation from his namesake firm and indictment of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates sent K Street scrambling, as lobbyists rushed to make sure they\u2019re in compliance with the rules. The developments also renewed calls for Congress to pass legislation beefing up the Justice Department\u2019s enforcement of the law, which lawmakers in both parties have derided for lacking teeth.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cFirms are going to be even more careful than they have been in the past in the foreign lobbying arena,\u201d said Trent Lott, the former Senate majority leader who\u2019s now a lobbyist at Squire Patton Boggs, where\u00a0his foreign clients have included Saudi Arabia and Turkey.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Prosecutions of violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act \u2014 which requires lobbyists who represent foreign governments, political parties and other groups seeking to influence American foreign policy to register with the Justice Department \u2014 are rare. And it\u2019s not clear whether the Justice Department will follow special counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s lead and start cracking down on foreign lobbying violations.<\/em><\/p>\n The DOJ unit dedicated to enforcing FARA is small, and has focused in the past on prodding lobbyists to comply with the law voluntarily, rather than going after them by pressing criminal charges.<\/strong>\u00a0Mueller\u2019s willingness to indict Manafort and Gates instead of just hounding them to file has struck fear into lobbyists that they could be next.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n If you\u2019re a D.C. power player, you get asked politely to follow the law. Must be nice.<\/p>\n \u201cIt used to be [that the Justice Department would work with you to become compliant,\u201d said another foreign lobbyist, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.\u00a0\u201cNow there\u2019s a fear that they\u2019ll just prosecute you.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Oh, the horror. They might \u201cjust prosecute you\u201d like a common peasant.<\/p>\n But the bar for criminal prosecution is high.\u00a0Under the law, prosecutors can go after lobbyists only for willful violation of the law \u2014 a tough standard to prove.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cPolicy makers are here to serve the interests of the American people, so we need to know when someone is pushing the priorities of a foreign interest,\u201d Grassley said in a statement. \u201cUnfortunately, we\u2019ve seen time and again how lobbyists of foreign principals skirt existing disclosure laws to conceal their clients\u2019 identities and agendas.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n But Lott said he wouldn\u2019t hold his breath waiting for Congress to pass the legislation, especially with President Donald Trump still pushing to move a tax reform bill by the end of the year.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s not much of anything happening right now in Congress, to be perfectly frank,\u201d Lott said.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Of course not. Criminals run the place and they\u2019re not going to prosecute themselves.<\/p>\n Now let\u2019s turn to a few nuggets from a similarly themed\u00a0BuzzFeed<\/em><\/a>piece:<\/p>\n WASHINGTON \u2013 The threat of serving hard time for failing to disclose foreign lobbying work is rattling Washington\u2019s multi-billion dollar influence industry following Monday\u2019s 12-count\u00a0indictment<\/a>\u00a0against Donald Trump\u2019s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates.<\/em><\/p>\n And although the charges have largely been seen as a blow to the White House, Monday\u2019s actions by special prosecutor Robert Mueller also sent shivers down the spines of Washington\u2019s lobbyists, both Democrats and Repulicans.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a swampy place, and the swampy stink knows no partisan allegiance,\u201d said one senior Democratic congressional aide.<\/em><\/p>\n A September 2016\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0by the Justice Department\u2019s inspector general identified a series of problems with how DOJ had handled FARA cases in the past. There was disagreement within the department about what types of cases should be prosecuted, the inspector general\u2019s office found, and the FBI felt DOJ attorneys were slow in reviewing FARA cases and reluctant to sign off on criminal charges.\u00a0The report also found that the FBI and local federal prosecutors reported feeling frustrated at being overruled by attorneys from the National Security Division about cases that they believed were worth pursuing.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hold on a minute, what the heck is the\u00a0\u201cNational Security Division\u201d<\/a>and why is it preventing rank and file FBI agents from prosecuting criminal lobbyists?<\/p>\n So that\u2019s how the law works for D.C. lobbyists. Let\u2019s now examine what happens if you\u2019re a protester who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time during Donald\u2019s Trump inauguration.<\/p>\n What follows are some very disturbing excerpts from a must read article published in\u00a0The Nation<\/em>,\u00a0The Prosecution of Inauguration-Day Protesters Is a Threat to Dissent<\/a>:<\/p>\n L<\/span>ate next month, the first mass trial will be held for some of the roughly 200 people facing years\u2014or even decades\u2014in prison after being arrested during an anti-capitalist, anti-fascist protest that took place on the day of Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration. The \u201cJ20\u201d cases, as they are known, offer a glimpse at the treatment of dissent in this country, and the story they tell is one of overreach and criminalization.\u00a0Defense lawyers have\u00a0described<\/a>\u00a0the government\u2019s approach as \u201cunprecedented,\u201d its indictments as \u201clittered with fatal irremediable defects.<\/strong>\u201d Sam Menefee-Libey of the\u00a0DC Legal Posse<\/a>, a group of activists who provide support to the defendants, was more blunt, criticizing the cases as \u201cblatant political prosecutions\u201d designed to \u201cchill resistance.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The story of the J20 protesters should frighten anyone concerned about the future of both free assembly and dissent in the United States. The charges\u2014which include felony rioting, inciting or urging others to riot, conspiracy to riot, and property destruction\u2014all stem from the same mass arrest, during which police indiscriminately swept up protesters, journalists, and legal observers.\u00a0What makes the charges all the more troubling is that prosecutors then failed to allege that the bulk of defendants did anything specifically unlawful; rather, merely being at the protest was a crime.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n A case in point: The prosecution charged all of the defendants (at one point numbering 214) with breaking the same windows. Prosecutors, of course, know that 200 people cannot break the same windows. But the logic of the case dictates that the defendants\u2019 mere presence at a protest during which property damage occurred makes them guilty\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n Few people dispute that property destruction took place during the march. Some individuals smashed windows, including those of a Bank of America branch and a limousine; prosecutors allege that there was more than $100,000 in property damage and that six police officers received minor injuries.\u00a0Where things get thorny is that many of the people who have been charged did not commit property damage or violence but have been deemed guilty by their mere presence at the protest.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The problems began during the arrests themselves\u2014arrests deemed so troubling that the ACLU has brought a lawsuit against the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD)\u00a0accusing<\/a>\u00a0its members of using excessive force, making unconstitutional arrests, and more.<\/em><\/p>\n Among the controversial practices police engaged in that day, lawyers and observers\u00a0say<\/a>, was a tactic called \u201ckettling.\u201d Kettling is a form of indiscriminate mass arrest, wherein police block off a given area and arrest everyone within it. To be lawful, an arrest requires probable cause based on individual suspicion. Yet, inevitably, this heavy-handed tactic often sweeps up other protesters and bystanders whose only offense was their physical proximity to the alleged crime. Indeed, a report on the inauguration by the DC Office of Police Complaints\u00a0noted<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cit seems that proximity to the area where property damage occurred was a primary factor\u201d in the arrests.<\/em><\/p>\n The mass arrests gave birth to the next government overreach, mass \u201cfelony riot\u201d charges against those arrested. Felony rioting carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine, and applies when the alleged riot results in more than $5,000 in property damage. This is opposed to misdemeanor rioting, which can get you only 180 days in jail.<\/em><\/p>\n Attorneys who have long represented protesters in DC report never having\u00a0encountered<\/a>\u00a0mass felony charges stemming from a protest before. Not the least of the reasons is that it\u2019s difficult to produce enough evidence to sustain felony charges against dozens\u2014or in this case, some 200\u2014people. Yet, rather than backing down, prosecutors expanded the case by filing additional charges, and, in April, a grand jury returned a superseding indictment that added inciting or urging to riot and conspiracy to riot to the list of crimes. These new charges brought the number of felony counts up from one to eight and the amount of time defendants could face from 10 years to more than 70 years in prison.<\/em><\/p>\n The government\u2019s overarching theory, then, seems to be one of guilt by association. Or that, as Assistant US Attorney Jennifer Kerkhoff\u00a0asserted<\/a>\u00a0during a hearing about dismissing the charges,\u00a0it is \u201cthe group that is the danger, the group that is criminal.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0Thus one need not have committed an act of vandalism as an individual; just being present at the protest makes one guilty. (The DoJ declined to comment for this story, as the cases are currently pending.)<\/em><\/p>\n Among those swept up in this overbroad approach was a group of at least seven journalists who were covering the J20 protests. While prosecutors ultimately\u00a0dismissed<\/a>\u00a0the felony rioting charges against the bulk of the journalists nearly as quickly as they were filed, two journalists remain in the crosshairs: Aaron Cant\u00fa, then a freelancer who has published with The Nation and The Intercept, and Alexei Wood, who livestreamed the event. In April a grand jury brought a superseding indictment of eight felony charges against both reporters along with the other defendants. They face as many as\u00a070 years in prison<\/a>, possibly more.<\/em><\/p>\n The indictment against Cant\u00fa deploys the same guilt-by-association approach that mars the entire case. Per prosecutors, Cant\u00fa moved in proximity to the march\u2014something that would be necessary in order for him to do his job as a journalist. But prosecutors have additional evidence against Cant\u00fa:\u00a0He wore the color black.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n