Here's one take away from the Mueller report: The President is not a liar. When, in reaction to the news that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had requested the appointment of a special counsel, Trump truthfully said "I'm fucked."
Yup.
We also learned that the President requested other members of the Justice Department lie for him, requesting that they write false memos, and in one instance, offering one of them an Ambassadorship to Singapore. Sign us up for that one.
We also learned that the President doesn't like lawyers who take notes and we also loved this exchange:
POTUS: "Lawyers don't take notes. I've had a lot of great lawyers who didn't take notes. Roy Cohn didn't take notes."
White House Counsel Don McGhan: "I'm a real lawyer."
We take notes.
Query: Do you take notes?
DOM says on his blog that the Feds are threating defendants who do not take pleas. He also has recently learned that Truman beat Dewey.
The behavior of the US Attorneys Office against Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli is disgraceful. They are punishing two people who have exhibited the audacity through their counsel to not immediately roll-over and beg for leniency. The superseding indictment for money laundering is outrageous as is the bandying about of forty plus years in prison- more than many defendants get for murder. The case once again brings into stark light the outrageous penalties for while-collar crimes.
Assume for a moment that Ms. Loughlin and her husband Mr. Giannulli are guilty of subverting the college admissions process and essentially using money to cheat the system to get their air-head daughter into college. How much prison time is enough? It's not like they will ever do this again. So how much is enough? A year? Two years?
The media spreads the perception that defendants who receive a year or two in prison spend their time laughing about their sentence. Nothing could be further from the truth. Any prison sentence significantly if not permanently disrupts a person's life, from bringing them to the edge of bankruptcy, to affecting their ability to drive, work, obtain housing and credit, and all the things most people need to live in a civilized society. And this bunk about discouraging others is just that-bunk. Most people we have met in our practice do not come to us saying "We were reading the opinions out of the Eleventh Circuit one day and saw a few five year sentences for stock fraud and decided that the penalty was light enough to encourage us to take a chance and commit a crime."
The fact is that sentences do not discourage other would-be criminals. No one likes prison for one day, and not one of the these parent-defendants ever thought that a light prison sentence was worth getting their child into USC. And when did USC become such a great school anyway? Its not Stanford.
What these parents did was disgraceful in many ways, not the least of which is that there are parents of modest means and some of their children who didn't get into a college they were qualified for now feel they never had a fair chance. This damages our educational system and our society. But it does not mean that any of the defendants should be sentenced to decades in prison. Any sentence over 18 months for the parents is excessive.
When the story broke, most of those parents probably had the same thought as our president when he learned about the appointment of the special counsel. And they both deserve to end up in the same place, and 18 months sounds about right.
When you see something that is not right, not fair, find a way to get in the way and cause trouble. Congressman John Lewis
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5 comments:
That's Roy Cohn and not Roy Cahn. And the reason he did not take notes was that he was a know it all egomaniac whose interpretation of what he had just heard would be contradicted by what he had just heard. I like Trump but can you name one individual who was represented by both Roy Cohn and Rudy Guiiiani? I can't.
God Rump! I don't know that I want to spend hard earned money to maintain otherwise decent parents in prison. Probation and community service is more than enough. Especially since the scummy middlemen who ensnared them are getting 5ks and sweetheart sentences. Also, not for nothing but these people were robbed. If you got money, you give it straight to the college with some vague mention of your kid applying and you thinking of donating a fountain. Shit how do you think little Bush got into Yale? SATs?
What do the guidelines say is appropriate for someone with no criminal history who commits mail fraud and get $10,000 -$40,000? I'm a big fan of consistency in sentencing and this is what I think is comparable.
As the parent of a child who has recently been through the college admission process USC is a very selective school and is very different from when us gen-xers went to college. When I was going to college it was not hard to get into and everyone mocked it as University of Spoiled Children. No more --it is a very good school that raised its reputation by giving lots of scholarship money to attract much brighter students than it used to.
As for Lori Loughlin fuck her and her obnoxious stupid kids. People like her think that the rules that govern the rest of us just don't apply to her. They think that they can buy anyone and everything and the exposure of her behavior is the perfect coda to this sickeningly corrupt gilded age in which we live. The idea that we are living in a meritocracy is a joke. The idea that a poor person can work hard and do just as well as a rich kid in the college admissions process is a joke. Not sure of what your favorite Ayn Rand would have to say about where we are today.
And if you think that putting her in jail for a while wont deter people from doing this you have been hanging out in state court too long defending violent crimes. I have defended many white collar criminals and they often say after they are caught and facing a real prison time either "I thought if I got caught I wouldn't be facing prison" or "everyone has been doing this forever and I never thought that I would get caught."
I am not saying that she needs to go to prison for five years but she needs to do time. DOM can get all worked up and self righteous as he loves to do, but adding money laundering charges is not like adding a minimum mandatory count and wont affect the sentencing guidelines all that much. yes the Uninformed media will freak out over the 20 year stat max but in reality this might add 12 months to her guideline range.
USC. University of Spoiled Children.
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