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You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#133 in a series)

Friday, November 8th, 2024

Winter is coming, if it hasn’t showed up already in your neck of the woods. We need something to keep us warm, and what better than flaming hyenas?

The mayor of Jacksonville, Mississippi, Antar Lumumba, has been indicted on federal bribery charges.

Also indicted: Aaron Banks, who is a councilman, and Jody Owens, the county DA.

I missed this, but another city council member, Angelique Lee, pled guilty to “conspiracy to commit bribery” charges in August. I get the impression she hasn’t been sentenced yet, and I’m wondering if she’s now a “cooperating witness”.

Owens is facing eight felony counts; Lumumba is facing five felony counts and Banks is facing two felony counts.
Owens faces one count of conspiracy, three counts of federal program bribery, one count of use of an interstate facility in aid of racketeering, one count of wire fraud, one count of money laundering and one count of making a false statement.
Lumumba faces one count of conspiracy, one count of federal program bribery, one count of use of an interstate facility in aid of racketeering, one count of wire fraud and one count money laundering.
Banks faces one count of conspiracy and three counts of federal program bribery.

…

According to the recently unsealed indictment, Owens facilitated over $80,000 in bribe payments to Lumumba, Lee and Banks in exchange for their agreement to take official action on the city’s long-sought after hotel development project across the street from the Jackson Convention Complex. It is a project the city has been trying to build since the mid-2000s. The city released a statement of qualifications, or SOQ, for the project on Jan. 31.
Owens accepted at least $115,000 in cash and “promises of future financial benefits” from two developers from Nashville who turned out to be undercover FBI agents. The agents used Owens’ relationships with the elected officials “to act as an intermediary” for the bribes. Smith helped Owens facilitate the bribes.
“Owens, Banks, Lumumba, Lee and Smith were not aware that, in reality, the Developers were working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the indictment states.

…

On Jan. 11, Banks allegedly requested $50,000 in exchange for his future vote in favor of the “developers” bogus real estate company that was bidding on the city’s SOQ. In February, Banks allegedly accepted an “initial payment” of $10,000 from the undercover agents through Owens, along with a promise of an employment opportunity for a family member. Additionally, Lee accepted nearly $20,000 in February and March also in exchange for her vote in favor of the undercover agents’ company.
During the meeting, Owens dismissed Banks then told the agents:
“We never give them the asking price. I buy [expletive for women’s genitalia], I buy cars, I buy cows, I buy drugs, whatever. My point is like [Banks] need 50, you get 30. He gets installments. That’s my game,” according to the indictment.

…

On Feb. 12, 2024, Owens arranged a dinner with the agents, Lumumba and Smith. After introductions, Owens told Lumumba, “I’ve done background checks. They’re not FBI by the way.” He also told the mayor the agents’ focus “shifted” to the hotel project across from the convention center.

…

Owens then allegedly stated:
“I don’t give a [expletive] where the money comes from. It can come from blood diamonds in Africa, I don’t give a [expletive]. I’m a whole DA. [Expletive] that [expletive]. My job, as I understand it, with a little paperwork, is to get this deal done, and get it done most effectively … We can take dope boy money, I don’t give a [expletive]. But I need to clean it and spread it. I can do it in here. That’s why we have businesses. To clean the money. Right? I don’t give a [expletive]. You give us cash, we deposit it and give it back that way. That’s easy.”

NYT coverage. I think this is better organized for non-locals, but it lacks a lot of the more colorful quotes from DA Owens.

Posted in Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Sorry, not sorry.

Thursday, November 7th, 2024

Part of me thinks I should apologize for not posting yesterday. The other part of me doesn’t.

I got about 3.5 hours of sleep Tuesday night, though I did nap some on Lawrence’s dog couch. So I was pretty worn out yesterday and still had to put in a full day at work. Plus, as I’ve said before, I am not a politics or geo-politics person. I have some things I could say about politics and gun politics, like what I’m hoping for out of the new boss (same as the old boss) but I’d just be stirring the metaphorical pot with a metaphorical stick.

There are plenty of other people who are smarter about politics than I am. I’d suggest Lawrence and Borepatch to start with. I’d also recommend the folks on Lawrence’s sidebar.

At least I can stop muting political ads, and continue muting Medicare supplement ads and lawyer ads.

In other news, I wanted to bookmark this article from American Handgunner, “Sixguns To The Rescue: The M1917 In World War One” about the M1917 revolvers. (Previously on WCD.)

From the obit front: Geoff Capes. I’d never heard of him, but he was hugely popular in the United Kingdom. He was a multiple time winner of the World’s Strongest Man competition, a six-time winner of the Highland Games, and won the “U.K. Truck-Pulling Championship” in 1986.

At 6-foot-6 and 365 pounds, Mr. Capes was a crushing Adonis whose daily diet consisted of seven pints of milk, two loaves of bread, a dozen eggs, two steaks, a jar of baked beans, two tins of sardines, a pound of butter and a leg of lamb.
His gargantuan caloric intake powered his extraordinary feats in strongman competitions: pulling 12-ton trucks uphill, flipping cars, tearing London phone books in half and tossing five-pound bricks as if they were Kleenex boxes. He could run 200 meters — nearly the length of two American football fields — in under 25 seconds.

…

His physical prowess made him a favorite of Queen Elizabeth II, who howled in laughter after her glove stuck to his sweaty, sticky hands when she congratulated him on winning the Braemar Games, another Scottish skills competition, in 1982. Prince Charles and Princess Diana stood nearby having a giggle.

He was also a world-class breeder of budgies.

He competed in budgerigar shows throughout Europe, winning a world championship in 1995. He was named president of the Budgerigar Society in 2008 and frequently judged competitions.
“There’s something about their color and beauty that fascinates me,” Mr. Capes told The Sunday People. “They bring out my gentler side.”

This is one that I’ve been a little behind on: Richard A. Cash, big damn hero.

One of the things that people don’t understand until they’ve read at least a little bit about medicine is: dehydration will kill you. And there are lots of diseases, such as cholera and dysentery, that trigger fatal dehydration.

Patients could go “from a grape to a raisin” within hours, Dr. Cash often said.

Dr. Cash and Dr. David Nalin were working in Pakistan in 1967, and together developed an experimental oral rehydration therapy. It worked exceptionally well in trials.

Their approach was put to the test in 1971, when Bangladesh’s war of independence drove tens of thousands of refugees into camps across the border in India. Cholera and other diseases soon spread rapidly.
An Indian pediatrician helping with the response, Dilip Mahalanabis, made oral rehydration a cornerstone of his strategy, with astounding success — proof for all the world that a simple solution could be brought to bear against one of the world’s greatest killers.

…

The World Health Organization estimates that oral hydration therapy has saved more than 50 million lives, a majority of them children. In 1978, the British medical journal The Lancet called their innovation “potentially the most important medical advance this century.”

Posted in Admin, Birds, Bookmarks, Guns, History, Obits, Politics, Smith and Wesson, Sports | No Comments »

Obit watch: October 16, 2024.

Wednesday, October 16th, 2024

Megan Marshack passed away earlier this month at the age of 70.

That’s a name that might ring a bell with the old people in my audience. You younger folks never heard of her.

Ms. Marshack was “with” former vice-president Nelson Rockefeller when he died on January 26, 1979.

I use “with” above because the circumstances of Mr. Rockefeller’s death were and are unclear.

The initial account of Mr. Rockefeller’s death was supplied by Hugh Morrow, his longtime spokesman, after midnight on Jan. 27. He told The New York Times that Mr. Rockefeller had died instantly, at 10:15 p.m., while he was in his office, alone with a bodyguard, “having a wonderful time” working on an art book he was writing.
The next day, The Times began deconstructing the official story. The paper reported that someone called 911 to report Mr. Rockefeller’s death an hour after he was reported to have died; that Mr. Rockefeller was not at his office but rather at a brownstone he used as a clubhouse; and that at the time he was with Ms. Marshack, who was identified as a research assistant.
A drip-drip of revelations ensued. First The Times reported that it was Ms. Marshack who called 911; then the paper said that the caller had actually been a friend of hers, who lived in the same apartment building as Ms. Marshack, down the block from Mr. Rockefeller’s brownstone. It also turned out that Mr. Rockefeller had given Ms. Marshack the money for her apartment, a loan amounting to $45,000 (about $200,000 in today’s money), which he forgave in his will, along with other loans to top aides.

…

The circumstances of Mr. Rockefeller’s death remain mysterious. One account said that he was found dead wearing a suit and tie and surrounded by working papers; another said that he was nude, amid containers of Chinese food. Several credible sources indicated that he did not actually die at his brownstone but rather at Ms. Marshack’s apartment. The cause of death is generally understood to have been a heart attack.
Aside from minimal statements confirming that she had indeed been with Mr. Rockefeller when he died — released to The Times by Mr. Morrow immediately after Mr. Rockefeller’s death — Ms. Marshack never publicly commented on any of the accounts.
“My understanding is that, after he passed away, she signed a nondisclosure agreement with the family at their request, and that’s why she never spoke of it,” Ms. Marshack’s brother said in an interview. “I think she had a desire to tell the story all along but held on to her obligation.”

Ms. Marshack left behind an obituary that she wrote herself.

Ms. Marshack’s self-written obituary disclosed some previously unreported details about her association with Mr. Rockefeller but did not mention a romance — although it ended suggestively, quoting from the 1975 musical “A Chorus Line.” Ms. Marshack wrote that she “won’t forget, can’t regret what I did for love.”

And another historical footnote: Richard V. Secord, of Iran-Contra fame.

Paul Lowe, photojournalist.

Mr. Lowe’s work as a photojournalist encompassed several conflicts and major events, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Russian invasion of Grozny in Chechnya. His best known photographs emerged out of the siege of Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the longest sieges of a capital in modern history.

He was stabbed by his 19-year-old son, who was apparently suffering a mental health crisis.

Posted in History, Obits, Photography, Politics | No Comments »

Your tax-fattened hyena follow-up.

Thursday, September 26th, 2024

I’ve been struggling all day to get time to myself to go through the coverage.

Right now, it looks like the charges against Mayor Adams involve…wait for it…yes, the Turks! I think I called that one.

The indictment, which was unsealed on Thursday morning, follows an investigation that started in 2021 and has focused at least in part on whether he conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal foreign campaign contributions and whether he took official actions on its behalf.

…

Mr. Adams had “sought and accepted improper valuable benefits” since at least 2014, when he was Brooklyn borough president, according to the indictment.
The benefits included luxury travel — free and discounted Turkish Airlines tickets and free meals and hotel rooms — from wealthy foreigners and at least one Turkish government official, prosecutors said. He traveled on the airline even when it was inconvenient, they said, including a 2017 flight to France from New York that first stopped in Istanbul.

…

In exchange, prosecutors said, Mr. Adams pressured officials at the New York Fire Department to permit a new Turkish consulate building in Manhattan despite safety problems. A Fire Department official overseeing the safety assessment said he was told he would lose his job if he did not follow the order.

Gracie Mansion was raided early this morning. And the feds took Mayor Adams cell phone (phones?). Again.

Reports I’ve seen say he doesn’t have to resign, and he can’t be recalled by the electorate. The only person who has the authority to remove him is Governor Hochul, and she hasn’t shown any inclination to do so yet.

“Here Are the Charges Eric Adams Faces, Annotated“. Yes, I’m burning a gift link for you, my loyal readers. But this is big.

Summary: Conspiracy to commit wire fraud, solicit foreign contributions and accept bribes (1x), wire fraud (1x),
solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national (2x), and bribery (1x). That link includes the actual indictment, both annotated by the paper of record and the original unannotated PDF.

“Eric Adams promised to be a mayor such as New Yorkers have never seen. Much about him remains head-scratching.” Well, I wouldn’t say “never seen”, but most New Yorkers today probably weren’t alive during the days of Tammany Hall and “honest graft“. (Yeah, okay, Tammany Hall didn’t officially dissolve until 1967, but my impression is that it had ceased to be an influential organization long before that.)

Posted in Law, Politics | No Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#132 in a series)

Wednesday, September 25th, 2024

NYC Mayor Eric Adams indicted.

The indictment is sealed, and it is unclear what charge or charges Mr. Adams will face.

This is still developing. I expect much much more tomorrow morning.

(Hattip: Mike the Musicologist.)

Posted in Law, Politics | No Comments »

Watching the hyenas…

Wednesday, September 25th, 2024

Yesterday was an interesting day for political hyenas, flaming or otherwise.

David Banks, the NYC schools chancellor. announced he’s resigning at the end of the year. This doesn’t seem to be linked to any specific allegations of corruption yet, but:

The announcement came just weeks after federal agents seized Mr. Banks’s phone as part of a bribery investigation involving his brothers and fiancée — and it promised to roil not just the nation’s largest school system but also a mayoral administration already reeling from at least four separate federal corruption inquiries.
The schools chancellor’s resignation is the fourth in less than two weeks among top officials in Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, following the resignations of the police commissioner and the city’s top lawyer and a statement from the health commissioner saying he would leave office at the end of the year.

This next one could almost be a “News of the Weird” entry:

Three members of the Liberty County Fire Marshal’s Office are out on bond following an investigation by the Texas Rangers where they have been accused of committing crimes on the job.

Fire marshals? What kind of crime could they commit on the job?

In this case, the three accused individuals responded to a crashed 18-wheeler. They are accused of siponing off diesel fuel from the truck’s tank into a “55-gallon drum in the bed of their hazmat vehicle.”

But wait, there’s more:

Additionally, the 18-wheeler carried frozen items, such as duck meat, high-end cheese, croissants, butter, and venison.
“After draining the saddle tank of the 18-wheeler, [deleted] and approximately three other members of his hazmat company proceeded to unload product from the trailer of the 18-wheeler and put it into their own vehicles to keep for personal use,” the affidavit states.

They’re also accused of stealing items from another truck crash. In addition, the indictment claims that the men were doing fire inspections, approving permits, and doing fire investigations without any licenses to do so. Also, one of the men is accused of using his fire marshal’s gear to gain “early access” to scenes for his non-profit “South Liberty County Hazardous Materials Team”.

In court records, he is also accused of using his position to convince towing services that they must pay his hazmat company a fee to operate in Liberty County.

The human resources department of the New Jersey State Police is now being run by the New Jersey Attorney General’s office.

Why? Well, turns out the NJSP has a habit of using disciplinary investigations as a weapon.

A separate review done by the attorney general’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability highlighted two troubling episodes involving a retired lieutenant, Joseph Nitti, who had worked in the agency’s internal affairs unit.
After receiving an anonymous letter containing a complaint that a trooper had made a racist comment about a senior Black officer, Mr. Nitti “squandered police resources” trying to identify the tipster rather than investigating the accuracy of the concern, according to the attorney general’s office.
Mr. Nitti, who according to state treasury records retired last year with a $8,893 monthly pension, obtained typewriter samples and video from the area near a post office where the envelope had been mailed and evaluated fingerprints found on the letter. Against orders, he also submitted it for DNA testing. Then, at the lieutenant’s urging, the Black officer who had been the reported target of the racist comment was brought up on bogus internal affairs charges.

…

In another case, investigators found that Mr. Nitti had sent a text message to colleagues discussing the arrest of a trooper who had been charged with giving alcohol and having sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl on a school sports trip. “Can we at least see a pic of her. I’d like to see what all the hubbub is about,” he wrote, according to the attorney general’s office.

Finally, Stewart Rosenwasser died yesterday. Mr. Rosenwasser was a former judge and prosecutor in New York (I believe in Orange County). He was indicted on Monday for taking $63,000 in bribe money.

According to the 43-page indictment, Rosenwasser and millionaire businessman Mout’z Soudani conspired to build a case against Soudani’s sister and nephew and recoup the allegedly stolen cash.

…

The plot targeted Martin Soudani and his mother, Eman Soudani, who were allegedly involved in embezzling $1.6 million from Mout’z Soudani, a wealthy former restaurateur, the indictment said.
On March 8, 2023, Rosenwasser, as an Orange County assistant district attorney, charged Soudani’s kin with grand larceny for allegedly stealing the money from Mout’z Soudani and had arrest warrants issued.
When they appeared in court, defense lawyers asked that Rosenwasser recuse himself from prosecuting the case because he had represented Mout’z Soudani in the 1990s and that presented a conflict of interest.
Rosenwasser denied the claim and remained on the case.
But by June 2023 the DA’s office was getting wise and Rosewasser was replaced on the case, the indictment said.
By March 2024, the case against Soudani’s sister had been dropped and his nephew agreed to plead guilty to grand larceny in the embezzlement case in exchange for a prison sentence of one to seven years.
Martin Soudani and Eman Soudani later filed a $22.5 million lawsuit claiming the cases against them were tainted.

Mr. Rosewasser resigned earlier this year. The FBI was coming to arrest him yesterday on the charges in the indictment, and he allegedly decided to open fire on the agents. SWAT responded, and Mr. Rosewasser was found dead when the police entered his home. The FBI claims he committed suicide, but it isn’t clear to me if an official determination has been made yet.

Posted in Cops, FBI, Law, Politics | No Comments »

Obit watch: September 23, 2024.

Monday, September 23rd, 2024

Mercury Morris, one of the great NFL players. ESPN. NYT (archived).

Morris made no secret of the fact that he was filled with pride about the 1972 Dolphins being the first — and still only — undefeated and untied team in NFL history, pulling off a truly perfect season.
He also tried to make this clear: No, the Dolphins were not rooting against the teams that came close to matching their feat of perfection or had champagne on ice waiting for the moment that the last unbeaten team in a season gets defeated.
“And for the record, we DO NOT TOAST every time an unbeaten team loses,” Morris posted on social media in 2015, when the Cam Newton-led Carolina Panthers started 14-0 before losing the next-to-last game of their regular season. “There’s no champagne in my glass, only Canada Dry Ginger ale! Ha!”

Kathryn Crosby, der Bingle’s wife who had a pretty successful career of her own. NYT (archived). Other credits include “Anatomy of a Murder”, “The Phenix City Story”, and “The Night the World Exploded”.

Tongsun Park, who was at the center of the 1970s “Koreagate” scandal.

In 1978, he was indicted on charges of conspiracy, bribery and making contributions as a foreign agent, and he fled the country. He returned with a promise of criminal immunity to testify in Congress and before a grand jury.
He said that he had passed money to 31 members of Congress — up to $273,000 in one case — and while he denied acting on behalf of the South Korean government, a former Korean intelligence officer told Congress under oath that Mr. Park was working for Korean intelligence as part of an influence-buying operation code-named Ice Mountain.
But the accusations, splashily covered in the post-Watergate period, largely fizzled out. Only three of the 31 current and former congressmen Mr. Park named were indicted, and only one, Richard T. Hanna, a California Democrat, was convicted. He served a little over a year in jail.
The House, which considered disciplinary action against 11 sitting members, ended up reprimanding just three, in what critics called an example of Congress’s inability to discipline its own members.

He later got caught doing illegal lobbying for Saddam Hussein, and served five years for that.

Shortly after I posted Friday’s obit watch, the NYT posted their Nelson DeMille obit.

KMart. Sort of. The last “full-sized” store in the United States, in Bridgehampton, New York, is closing in October. There is one store left in Miami, but it is described as being the size of a CVS, not a full-sized store. There are also other stores in places like Guam and the Virgin Islands.

Posted in Books, Law, NFL, Obits, Politics, Sports | No Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#130 in a series)

Wednesday, September 18th, 2024

The mayor of Atlantic City, Marty Small Sr., and his wife (the superintendent of schools) have both been officially indicted.

I thought I had written about this before, but Google doesn’t turn up a reference. I know, though, that there have been stories circulating for months. Mayor Small and his wife aren’t charged with corruption, which is unusual for an Atlantic City mayor.

They’re charged with beating the s–t out of their teenage daughter.

Prosecutors said that on Jan. 13, 2024, Marty Small Sr. hit his daughter multiple times in the head with a broom, causing her to lose consciousness.
Ten days earlier, they said, Small engaged in an argument with his daughter, grabbing her head and throwing her to the ground, and threatening to throw her down a flight of stairs.
He threatened to “smack the weave out” of her head during the incident, according to prosecutors.
The 50-year-old Democratic mayor also is accused of punching his daughter repeatedly in the legs, causing bruising.
La’Quetta Small, 47, is accused of punching her daughter multiple times on the chest, leaving bruising. In another alleged incident, she is accused of dragging her daughter by the hair and striking her with a belt on her shoulders, leaving marks.
In yet another incident, La’Quetta Small is accused of punching her daughter in the mouth during an argument.

And I wasn’t aware of this previously, but Constance Days-Chapman, the principal of Atlantic City High School, was indicted last week. Charges against her include “official misconduct” and “child endangerment”.

According to the indictment, in December the girl, who was 15 at the time, told Days-Chapman she was suffering continuous headaches from being beaten by her parents in their home.
But instead of telling authorities, Days-Chapman instead told the Smalls.

By the way:

Days-Chapman is a close friend of the Smalls; La’Quetta Smalls is her boss.

I’m sure this is going to be one of my more controversial and divisive opinions, but:

Fark these people. Fark any parent who thinks it is okay to do their kids this way. Fark anybody who’s a mandated reporter that goes to the parents instead of Child Protective Services when a kid tells them their parents are beating them.

Sorry. A bit grumpy today.

Posted in Law, Politics | 2 Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#129 in a series)

Monday, September 16th, 2024

This is still breaking. Two chiefs with the New York Fire Department have been arrested on bribery charges.

The six-count indictment accuses them of soliciting and receiving bribes in that role from 2021 to 2023 for projects underway in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.
“For nearly two years, Saccavino and Cordasco misused this authority for their own financial gain,” the indictment charges. The men were also charged with lying to the F.B.I. in February about their involvement in the scheme.

These, by the way, are the same two chiefs whose homes and offices were raided by the FBI in February.

A retired firefighter who expedited building projects, Henry J. Santiago Jr., was identified by federal prosecutors as a co-conspirator who solicited and accepted bribes, but he was not named or charged in the indictment. The New York Times had previously reported his involvement, and he was identified by name by the authorities at a news conference about the case on Monday.

I’m going out on a limb here and saying: they flipped him.

According to the indictment, the two chiefs steered potential clients who wanted to expedite approval of their building projects to Mr. Santiago, and then ordered that those projects receive preferential treatment. Among the projects they fast-tracked were a high-end restaurant in Manhattan, a Brooklyn apartment building and two hotels near Kennedy Airport in Queens.
After getting paid by his clients, Mr. Santiago delivered bribes to Mr. Saccavino and Mr. Cordasco in cash and by check in face-to-face meetings at Fire Department offices in Brooklyn and steakhouse dinners in Manhattan, prosecutors said.
Mr. Saccavino funneled the illicit payments through a company started by his wife, while Mr. Cordasco received them through a company he had created and claimed was an entertainment business, prosecutors said.

Just in case you were wondering…

There is no indication that the case is related to any of the four separate federal corruption investigations swirling around Mayor Eric Adams, his campaign and some of his most senior aides. The inquiry focused on the mayor is being conducted by the same agencies that investigated the chiefs, however, and also relates in part to fire safety inspections, according to several people with knowledge of the matter said.

Posted in Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#128 in a series)

Thursday, September 5th, 2024

This may not the five-alarm fire I thought it was at first, but it is still pretty significant to say the least.

Federal agents on Wednesday zeroed in on the highest ranks of Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, searching a home and seizing the phones of the New York City police commissioner, the first deputy mayor, the schools chancellor and others, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The police commissioner. They seized the police commissioner’s phones. Wow.

Among the other officials the federal investigators sought information from were the deputy mayor for public safety and a senior adviser to the mayor who is one of his closest confidants, the people said. Both men have had other legal challenges.
The agents also searched the home and seized the phone of a consultant who is the brother of both the schools chancellor and one of the deputy mayors, the people said.
The nature of the investigations is unclear, but it appears that one is focused on the senior City Hall officials and the other touches on the police commissioner, the people said.

…

Representatives of the City Hall officials — the first deputy mayor, Sheena Wright; her partner, Schools Chancellor David C. Banks; the deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks III; and a senior adviser to the mayor, Timothy Pearson — could not be reached or declined to comment.
The consultant, Terence Banks, a brother of Philip Banks and David Banks, recently opened a government and community relations firm aimed at closing a gap “between New York’s intricate infrastructure and political landscape.” He, too, could not be reached for comment.
Several of the officials had their phones seized or records of their communications subpoenaed.

…

In addition to the police commissioner, Edward A. Caban, several other department officials, including Mr. Caban’s chief of staff and two Queens precinct commanders, also had their phones taken by federal agents, two of the people said.

…

In 2013, Ms. Wright and David and Philip Banks were involved in an incident that raised ethical questions. Ms. Wright and Gregg Walker, her then husband, had a dispute that led to mutual allegations of domestic abuse and the arrest of both people. The City reported that David Banks called his brother Philip, then a high-ranking police official. The charges were dropped.
Ms. Wright has denied any wrongdoing in the case, telling The New York Times in 2022 that she “never asked anyone to make any phone calls” on her behalf and that she was released “almost immediately not because of any outside influence, but because the facts of the case were so obvious.”

…

After taking office in 2022, Mr. Adams selected Philip Banks as his top aide overseeing public safety, though Mr. Banks himself had previously been ensnared in a federal criminal investigation.
Years earlier, the same federal prosecutors’ office conducting the current investigations named him an unindicted co-conspirator in an expansive corruption case that led to prison time for Mr. Banks’s then close friend Norman Seabrook, at the time a leader of the city’s correction officers’ union, among others.
Over the course of two years, prosecutors scrutinized Mr. Banks’s acceptance of gifts in 2013 and 2014 while he was chief of department, the city’s top uniformed police official. The gifts included paid vacations to the Dominican Republic and Los Angeles, cigars and a ring worn by Muhammad Ali. He received gifts from and socialized with two businessmen who were trying to curry favor with city leaders. One later pleaded guilty to criminal charges, cooperating with prosecutors, while the other was convicted at trial.
But prosecutors did not charge Mr. Banks, concluding that they did not have sufficient evidence to prove that he had taken official action in exchange for the gifts he received, people familiar with the case have said.

Nobody will go on the record as knowing what’s going on, but there’s speculation that it is tied to that whole weird Turkish consolate thing.

Or it could be something else. It sounds like the whole Adams administration is so packed with corruption, they can’t even keep the lid screwed on. Of course, all suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. And to be fair, none of the subjects of the raids have been charged with any crimes.

Yet.

Posted in Cops, Law, NYPD, Politics | 1 Comment »

Flaming hyena update.

Thursday, August 29th, 2024

I wrote a while back about Robert Telles, the former public administrator of Clark County, who was charged with murdering Jeff German. Mr. German was a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal who had been covering Mr. Telles management of the office, and discovered all sorts of problems: hostile work environment, affairs with subordinates, those kind of things.

Mr. Telles went on trial a couple of weeks ago.

He was convicted yesterday of first degree murder. He’s already been sentenced to life in prison, though he can apply for parole in 20 years.

Coverage from the R-J by way of archive.is. Since it is close to the end of the month, I’m going to burn a NYT gift link to their coverage of the story.

Posted in Law, Media, Politics | No Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#125, #126, and #127 in a series)

Friday, August 23rd, 2024

Quel fromage!

Mike the Musicologist sent over a link from the Department of Justice: Trayon White Sr., who is a member of the DC City Council, was arrested Monday on bribery charges. (I know, a little old, but I missed this until MtM called it out.)

A corrupt DC city council member? What are the odds?

More from the WP (archived) which describes him as “a Marion Barry protege”.

Barry, for all his legal issues, never faced charges that he sought to enrich himself, although his associates were convicted of public corruption, including Ivanhoe Donaldson, a senior adviser who pleaded guilty to embezzling $190,000 in city funds.
“People looked at Marion’s issues as human frailties,” said Ron Lester, a veteran D.C. pollster whose clients included Barry. “Whether you liked or disliked him, Marion wasn’t someone accused of taking bribes. If these allegations prove to be true, Trayon doesn’t have a political future. It’s more clear-cut than anything Marion faced.”

The complaint alleges that, beginning in June 2024, White corruptly agreed to accept $156,000 in cash payments in exchange for using his position as a D.C. Councilmember to pressure government employees at Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (ONSE) and DYRS to extend several D.C. contracts. The contracts at issue were valued at $5.2 million and were for two companies to provide Violence Intervention services in D.C. As alleged, the $156,000 White agreed to accept in exchange for using his official position to pressure renewal of those contracts to particular companies was three percent of the total contract value. According to the complaint, White’s agreement with a confidential human source (the owner of the companies) – including the source’s payments to White of $35,000 in cash on four separate occasions (June 26, July 17, July 25, and August 9, 2024) and the source showing White a document reflecting how White’s three-percent cut was calculated based on those contracts – was captured on video.

In other news:

A grand jury on Friday indicted [name and age deleted – DB] who used to be AISD’s Executive Director of Compensation and Benefits, with stealing between $30,000 and $150,000 from the district using gift cards. Austin ISD and police haven’t specified the exact amount believed to be stolen.

According to KXAN, she resigned from the district in March of last year, and went to work for…the City of Austin.

Bond records list [name deleted – DB], another former AISD employee who worked in her department, as [name deleted – DB] co-defendant. City of Austin officials said in a statement to KXAN that [name deleted – DB] was also recently indicted in connection with her previous employment with AISD.

So just to be clear, that’s two former AISD employees, who seem to have worked in the same department, that have been indicted.

Yeah, the names are in the KXAN article, but I’m avoiding using them here. Why avoid using them, while at the same time naming Trayon White Sr.? Given the previous mess with an AISD employee, I’m not sure the district can be trusted to get it right, so I’m erring on the side of caution here.

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