I give Congressman Duncan and Margaret Hunter credit: They’ve got some kind of nerve.
Hunter’s campaign has published a lengthy statement calling the effort to indict him a “witch-hunt.”
I’ve broken his statement up into small bits, juxtaposed with paragraphs from the 48-page indictment. Sometimes the two pieces are related. Sometimes they’re not. It’s a long, but worthy read. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll wonder how this guy looks in the mirror in the morning.
Bonus: Some Juicy Snips from the Indictment
Congressman Duncan Hunter is refusing to step down from his assignments on the Armed Services, Education, and the Workforce and Transportation committees, according to Politico.
Following the release of a 48-page indictment, House Majority Leader Paul Ryan urged the 50th District Congressman to resign his committee assignments until the matter was resolved.
Republicans in the House of Representatives are now planning to take action to remove Hunter in a steering committee meeting slated for September 4. The full GOP conference is expected to ratify this the following day, and shortly thereafter it will go to the House floor, where it will be made official.
[Read more…]
To the tune of $250,000, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-50th Congressional District) did it, said he and his wife did it, and now a federal grand jury says he’s going to pay for doing it.
Just doing what you do when you’re a criminal grifter with all the sense of a dissipating cloud of vaporizing campaign dollars fraudulently spent on personal expenses via campaign debit card.
Aug. 21, 2018 will be a day that will live forever in Duncan Hunter family infamy. [Read more…]
Lanny Davis, who serves as attorney for former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen, stated yesterday that Cohen is willing to talk to special counsel Robert Mueller about crimes that go beyond those Cohen admitted on Tuesday. According to Davis, Cohen will provide evidence about the “possibility of a conspiracy to collude and corrupt the American democracy system in the 2016 election.” And Cohen will also testify that Trump knew about the theft of documents from the DNC by Russian hackers before that information became public.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen plead guilty to eight counts including felony violations of campaign finance laws, During this plea, Cohen stated that he undertook these crimes at the direction of “a candidate for federal office.” making Trump literally an unnamed co-conspirator in multiple federal offenses.
But Davis, appearing on MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow program, made statements that went beyond implicating Trump in admitted crimes. Davis’ statements made it clear that Cohen was willing to talk to the special counsel, and was able to speak directly to the area of a conspiracy involving the Russian government. [Read more…]
By Abby Zimet / Common Dreams
A word on Colbert’s beloved “truthiness.” Amidst the eruption over Rudy ‘Foot-In-Mouth’ Giuliani’s claim that “truth isn’t truth,” after the mockery and analysis and Orwellian analogies, let’s remember this isn’t a blip or aberration – it’s who Trump and his fellow, enabling madmen are.
On Tuesday, Giuliani muddied the deeply swampy waters with a “clarification” that his statement “was not meant as a pontification on moral theology but one referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements… Sometimes further inquiry can reveal the truth other times it doesn’t.” Umm, okay. But still nope.
Coming after Trump’s over 4,200 “alternative facts” and “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening” etc etc etc, Giuliani’s flub is, in fact, Trump’s epitaph, his mantra, his jingle, the perfect awful soundbite for “an entire enterprise (that) has been a lie, a fraud, a grift, a cruel deception.” [Read more…]
Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter and his wife, Margaret are expected to be arraigned on Thursday morning in Federal court.
A 48-page grand jury indictment accuses the couple of diverting more than $250,000 in campaign funds to family vacations, school tuition, theater tickets and other personal expenses.
They are facing charges of wire fraud, falsifying records, campaign finance violations, and conspiracy, resulting from a more than year-long investigation by the Department of Justice. [Read more…]
Imagine California’s system for handling people accused of crimes embodied as a statue of bounty hunter Dwayne “ Dog” Chapman. Senate Bill 10 was supposed to make it go away.
What happened instead was the statue was gone, but the base upon which it stood remained intact. As of October 2019, the old system of requiring cash or a bail bondsman’s assurance as a condition for pre-trial release will go away.
I won’t miss the seedy buildings downtown or what they stand for. People with the means to post cash bail get it refunded if they’re found not guilty or the case is dismissed. If you’re not so wealthy, you get stuck with the bondsman’s 10% fee, regardless. [Read more…]
Editor’s Note: The San Diego Free Press has asked three dozen candidates in key electoral contests from throughout the county for submissions explaining why they think progressive-leaning voters should consider voting for them. Many of these candidates are running in down-ballot contests often overlooked by voters.
I am challenging Gary Kreep in the upcoming November election for Seat 37 – California Superior Court Judge. This race stands out as the only one of six county-wide races from the June primary to advance to the general election in November. No matter where you live in San Diego County this race will appear on your ballot.
I began running for this seat when I saw the Commission on Judicial Performance had censured Judge Kreep in August of 2017 for committing over two dozen violations of the Cannons on Judicial Ethics that govern the behavior of judges in our local courts. Though these ethical violations were varied the ones that caught my attention were those involving unprofessional and disrespectful treatment toward women and minorities in court by Judge Kreep. I was already aware that Judge Kreep had participated in a lawsuit to prohibit President Obama’s name from appearing on the ballot in 2012 premised on the debunked theory that our nation’s first black president’s birth certificate lacked authenticity. This was known commonly as the birther movement. Once I became aware of the nature of Judge Kreep’s ethics violations it confirmed my suspicions regarding his worldview and made it clear to me he needed to be removed from his position of authority in our community. [Read more…]
By Egberto Willies / Daily Kos
America needs a paradigm shift when it comes to how it deals with products that affect our moods, psyche, and our overall well-being. We must do so based on data instead of ideology, and deprogramming many will be difficult. But marijuana must be completely decriminalized.
Houston cannabis activist Ashley Miller appeared on Politics Done Right to bring awareness to many issues about marijuana, aka weed, aka cannabis. Her first goal was to dispel the notion that there are any valid reasons why marijuana is illegal. Second, she hoped to activate Americans both locally and throughout the country. As one listens to all the arguments and discourse about marijuana, there can only be one conclusion: the product should not be illegal.
Monica Montgomery, Tasha Williamson, Mark Lane, Yusef Miller, and other community members held a press conference on Wednesday to publicly request that District Attorney Summer Stephan recuse herself and her office from the investigation into Earl McNeil’s death while in the custody of the National Police Department.
On August 10, 2018 the National City Police Department turned the investigation into Mr. McNeil’s death over to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office. They are also asking DA Stephan to re-open every case where Earl McNeil was used as a law enforcement informant for the Office.
[Read more…]
The Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI) Executive Director Kyra Green blasts the the San Diego County Board of Supervisors on their attempt to prevent having the Full Voter Participation Act (FVPA) measure appear on this November’s general election ballot by first requiring a preliminary study. It appears the court has now affirmed her position, as the Voice of San Diego reports that Superior Court Judge Ronald Styn ruled in favor of having the measure appear on the November ballot. [Read more…]
I was just about to write down my thoughts on a meeting I attended a little while back, but I thought I’d check my email first so I could really settle in with what I wanted to say.
One particular email in my inbox got my attention right away: news the San Diego City Council hadn’t taken a step that was necessary in the process of readying an amendment regarding the creation of a Commission on Police Practices for placement on the November ballot.
They just let it drop. And although that’s shocking to me, I’m not the least bit surprised because, and I can only speak for the years I’ve been in San Diego since 1962, our City Councils, on the whole, have never been about much of anything beyond empty “America’s Finest City” kind of platitudes. [Read more…]
