"Class Envy Run Amok" - Fund Manager Asks Trump To Pardon Michael Milken

Twenty-three years after former Drexel Burnham Lambert executive Michael Milken finished a 22-month minimum-security prison sentence, one fund manager is lobbying President Donald Trump to pardon his past convictions, arguing that Milken’s prosecution was an example of anti-banker hysteria run amok.

Wealth-management executive David Bahnsen told Bloomberg that he sent a plea to Trump asking that he pardon Milken, an innovator who is widely lauded in the financial world for helping to popularize junk bonds among a broader set of investors during the 1980s. Bizarrely, Bahnsen says he’s never met the man. Milken pleaded guilty to securities fraud charges in 1992, and was initially sentenced to 10 years in prison, though he only served 22 months.

Bahnsen said a pardon would send an important message to prosecutors trying to burnish their reputations by going after white-collar criminals.

“Bahnsen, a managing director at Morgan Stanley before he started his own wealth-management group in 2015, told Trump in a letter that Milken’s prosecution was a result of “a period of class envy run amok.” Bahnsen, a Republican donor, said in an email he’s never met Milken.

…

Bahnsen, whose Bahnsen Group oversees more than $1 billion, told Trump the pardon would signal a stop to “headline-seeking, human-damaging corporate prosecutions, devoid of due process.” The banker said he sent an earlier version of the request and revised it after Trump pardoned former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio last week.”

Milken, 71, is now a philanthropist and namesake of the Milken conference. While he was investigated by the SEC in 2013 for allegedly violating his lifetime ban from the securities industry, the matter was eventually dropped. Milken has not asked that he be pardoned.

Seeing that Milken himself hasn’t asked for a pardon – and the public is still widely resentful of Wall Street executives for evading prosecution after the financial crisis – it’s unlikely that the request will be seriously considered.

Trump proved his mastery of the f**k you pardon by granting clemency to sheriff Joe Arpaio, a man who – apart from being a longtime friend and campaign-trail ally – is popular with a certain segment of Trump’s base. But we doubt he would do it again to appease a much, much smaller crowd of supports, with whom he has a shaky alliance, at best.

Sheriff Who Trump Pardoned Protected Pedophiles by Refusing to Investigate 100s of Child Sex Crimes

President Trump issued his first official pardon on Friday, sparing former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was found guilty of criminal contempt after he violated a court order in a racial profiling case by continuing to target illegal immigrants.

While both Trump and many of his supporters have applauded Arpaio, who refers to himself as “America’s toughest sheriff,” there is one thing he is not always tough on—pedophiles.

In fact, according to a report from the Associated Press in December 2011, Airpaio’s office failed to investigate “more than 400 sex-crimes” that were reported in Maricopa County from 2005 to 2007, “including dozens of alleged child molestations—that were inadequately investigated and in some instances were not worked at all.”

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The report cited current and former police officers familiar with the cases who claimed that victims of the horrific crimes were as young as 2 years old. In El Mirage, the city where Arpaio’s office was providing contract police services, officials reportedly discovered at least 32 reported child molestations, and even though suspects were known in all but six cases, Arpaio “failed to follow through.”

While Arpaio made headlines for his infamous Tent City Jail, a camp in which nearly 1,000 illegal immigrants were forced to live outdoors in Arizona’s sweltering 120-degree heat, he did not make headlines for his treatment of the children of illegal immigrants. According to the officers who worked with him, many of those children were victims of sex crimes, which Arpaio ignored, as he let their American citizen predators run free.

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After Arpaio’s contract ended, and his office was no longer required to provide police services for El Mirage, Detective Jerry Laird told the AP he found that an overwhelming majority of the cases he received from the office hadn’t been worked, which meant that “there were no follow-up reports, no collection of additional forensic evidence and zero effort made after the initial report of the crime was taken.”

While some of the cases Arpaio’s office neglected were turned over to prosecutors, the report noted that the El Mirage Police Department claimed “most were no longer viable—evidence dating as far back as 2006 had grown cold or wasn’t collected in the first place, victims had either moved away or otherwise moved on.”

Arpaio held a news conference in response to the 2011 report, in which he said, “If there were any victims, I apologize to those victims.”

As The Free Thought Project has reported, a number of cases involving pedophiles have come to light under the Trump Administration, such as a pedophile ring investigation that resulted over 900 arrests in May, and a sex-trafficking investigation that resulted in over 1,000 arrests earlier this month. This raises the question—why aren’t Arpaio and other members of his office being held to the same standards?

Joe Arpaio’s harsh treatment towards illegal immigrants has stirred up controversy, but his outright neglect of children who are victims of sex crimes seems to have slipped under the radar.

Children have no control over which country they are born in, and they are the most vulnerable to predators. If a child is a victim of a sex crime, the question of whether the predators are “illegal aliens” or “legal American citizens” should not keep officials like Sheriff Arpaio from holding them accountable for their actions, and he should be held accountable for his failure to do so.

Sebastian Gorka Resigns From White House Post

A week after the White House pushed out former chief strategist Steve Bannon, the Trump administration has lost another controversial staffer. The departee this week is Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to the president and former Breitbart employee who was closely allied with the White House’s rapidly shrinking anti-globalist faction. News of Gorka’s resignation was first reported by the Federalist, and later confirmed by Axios and a host of other news outlets.

As with Bannon’s ouster last week, the storyline of who said what when has gotten muddled: Gorka claimed he resigned, while the White House insinuated that he was pushed out.

News of Gorka’s ouster broke shortly after Trump announced that he would be pardoning sheriff Joe Arpaio, a decision that was widely expected after Trump hinted that he “wouldn’t do it tonight” at a rally in Phoenix earlier this week. It also comes as Hurricane Harvey, which has been upgraded to a category four hurricane, is threatening to lay waste to the southwest.

In a copy of Gorka’s bluntly worded resignation, which he leaked to the Federalist, the former staffer “expressed dissatisfaction with the current state of the Trump administration.”

“[G]iven recent events, it is clear to me that forces that do not support the MAGA promise are – for now – ascendant within the White House,” Gorka wrote. “As a result, the best and most effective way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People’s House.”

In the letter, Gorka blamed the president"s failure to outline a plan for exiting Afghanistan after “16 years of disastrous policy decisions" for being the final straw. He also criticized the president and his military advisers for omitting any mention of Radical Islam from the president"s statement on Afghanistan, delivered earlier this week.

“Regrettably, outside of yourself, the individuals who most embodied and represented the policies that will ‘Make America Great Again,’ have been internally countered, systematically removed, or undermined in recent months. This was made patently obvious as I read the text of your speech on Afghanistan this week…

“The fact that those who drafted and approved the speech removed any mention of Radical Islam or radical Islamic terrorism proves that a crucial element of your presidential campaign has been lost…

“Just as worrying, when discussing our future actions in the region, the speech listed operational objectives without ever defining the strategic victory conditions we are fighting for. This omission should seriously disturb any national security professional, and any American who is unsatisfied with the last 16 years of disastrous policy decisions which have led to thousands of Americans killed and trillions of taxpayer dollars spent in ways that have not brought security or victory.”

Echoing comments made by Bannon following his ouster last week, Gorka reportedly told the president that he could better serve his America First agenda from the outside: "[I]t is clear to me that forces that do not support the MAGA promise are – for now – ascendant within the White House..."

That"s probably not far from the truth. As Axios points out, Gorka, a self styled national security and counterterrorism expert, was best known for his fiery television appearances, his only real contribution to the administration, and the quality that initially endeared him to the president. Gorka can easily keep up his TV schedule from outside of the West Wing. Gorka was widely reviled by Trump opponents because of his reputed affiliation with Hungarian nationalist group Vitezi Rend.  

According to Axios, Gorka"s resignation is a sign that Chief of Staff John Kelly is tightening control of the White House"s sprawling, unaccountable fiefdoms.

The White House communications department confirmed that Gorka was no longer employed at the White House, but wouldn"t comment on whether he was fired or left voluntarily, according to ABC.

"I can confirm he no longer works at the White House,” the official said.

His ouster brings the number of officials who have been fired or otherwise departed the Trump administration to 14:

Finally, with the ouster of Bannon, the list of high-ranking personnel fired by Trump rises to 14. They are:

Sally Yates
Michael Flynn
Katie Walsh
Preet Bharara
James Comey
Michael Dubke
Walter Shaub
Mark Corralo
Sean Spicer
Micheal Short
Reince Priebus
Anthony Scaramucci
Steve Bannon
Sebastian Gorka

Maybe Trump will start putting weekly firings on the White House calendar?
 

Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio found guilty of ‘contempt of court’

MARICOPA COUNTY, Ariz. (INTELLIHUB) — Former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio claims that he did not intentionally go against a previous ruling by a federal judge when he turned illegals over to authorities but was still charged with criminal contempt.

America’s toughest sheriff told authorities that he did not authorize DHS or ICE to turn illegal aliens over to U.S. Border Patrol and claimed that the judge’s ruling wasn’t very clear.

In 2011 a judge ruled that ‘just because someone is in the country illegally doesn’t mean that law enforcement can arrest them.’

One American Civil Liberties Union supporter said that she can’t wait until the day comes that the former sheriff is behind bars.

“Experts believe that Arpaio will not go to jail,” a Fox News staffer reports.

Featured Image: Gage Skidmore/Flickr

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Soros Drops Millions To 'Rig' Justice System In Arizona

As we recently noted, with hundreds of millions of dollars poured into presidential and congressional elections in the United States it can be difficult, even for mega donors like George Soros, to truly understand how much influence is being "bought."  That"s why Soros is pursuing a new strategy to dump millions into the campaigns of local district attorneys, a position which "exercises the greatest discretion and power in the system."  So far, Soros has funneled $3 million into seven local DA races over the past year but his support is "expected to intensify in the next few years, thanks to longer-term planning and candidate recruitment."  In general, Soros looks to fund progressive DAs running on platforms to "reduce racial disparity in sentencing" and support prison "diversion programs" for drug offenders instead of trials that could result in jail time.

And now it appears, as Politico"s Scott Bland reports, Soros" efforts to "reshape the American justice system" are accelerating as the billionaire has contributed $2 million to a group working to defeat Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona, the latest target of Soros’ big spending in local law enforcement campaigns over the past year.

The Soros-funded PAC, Maricopa Strong, will file campaign finance documents Friday showing Soros’ multi-million dollar investment against Arpaio, along with $500,000 from Texas energy billionaires Laura and John Arnold and $250,000 from Laurene Powell Jobs (the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs). The group had previously reported a $300,000 donation from Soros, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors.

Soros has spent millions in 2015 and 2016 funding campaigns to defeat local prosecutors around the country and elect new ones who back criminal justice reform measures. Soros-backed groups are currently spending big in three big-city district attorney races: Houston’s Harris County, where Soros has contributed over $1 million, according to local campaign finance filings; Gilpin and Jefferson counties outside Denver, where Soros has given about $1.5 million to unseat an incumbent; and Phoenix’s Maricopa County, where a Soros-funded PAC has also spent over $1 million against the Republican district attorney, Bill Montgomery.

Read more here...

But, as Bland points out, Soros’ spending against Arpaio, a high-profile liberal bogeyman, is his single biggest investment in a local race this year, as well as the billionaire’s first effort against a sheriff. It folds in immigration reform, another policy passion of Soros’, alongside criminal justice reform.

Arpaio made his name in Arizona and nationally as an opponent of illegal immigration. He was charged by federal prosecutors last month with contempt of court for violating an order to halt discriminatory policing practices.

Maricopa Strong has spent $2.9 million in the sheriff’s race, with the donations from Soros and others funding a flurry of mailers and TV ads boosting Democratic candidate Paul Penzone and hammering Arpaio. Soros has typically been the sole funder of his local outside-spending campaigns around the country, though Jobs and the Arnolds joined him in funding Maricopa Strong.

“Rapes, assaults, even child molestation remained uninvestigated while Arpaio focuses on his personal agenda,” the narrator says in one of the group’s TV ads. “Arpaio talks tough, but he doesn’t keep us safe.”

Arpaio’s campaign has attacked Soros’ efforts, calling him a “far-left globalist,” saying he is trying to buy a local race, and alleging that his group has broken disclosure rules, per the Arizona Republic.

“We made a major investment in the effort to defeat Joe Arpaio for two reasons,” said Michael Vachon, a Soros spokesperson. “First, Joe Arpaio has been a stain on the justice system in Arizona for more than two decades, violating civil rights and abusing his office. Second, his influence on the national conversation about immigration has been poisonous. This election is an opportunity to send a message: when matched on an even playing field, the values of justice and inclusion will defeat the politics of fear-mongering and intolerance."

That said, we"re sure any objections to George"s plan is derived from a simple misunderstanding of his motives.  After all, last time someone said he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America it worked out pretty well, right?