I am a moderate who’s historically voted about 50/50. I know that I keep saying this, but I do so because it’s necessary. For whatever reason, half of the right has completely lost their minds. Every day I’m inundated with stories in the news that can only be the result of blatant attempts to mislead people into believing whatever nonsense the writers and their readers believe. That’s assuming that they actually DO believe their nonsense which I’m not even entirely sure about.
These people don’t care one bit about reality or responsibility. They don’t care if their readers are misled. All they care about is that they have a forum that gains them popularity and the money that comes with it. Today’s example…or one of them, is the article in the link above regarding the prosecutor choosing to drop some of the charges against Sam Bankman-Fried.
In case you’re unaware just now hearing about it, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is a rather young American that had launched a cryptocurrency which earned him millions of dollars and pushed him to number 61 on the Forbes 400 list. It all unraveled on him in October of 2022. Just over a month later, US Attorney Damien Williams filed 8 charges against him. Seven were for fraud and money-laundering. Another involved conspiracy to make unlawful campaign contributions. Over the course of 18 months he had made roughly $70 million dollars in donations to a large group of politicians and political action groups. Most of these transactions were to democratic candidates but he’s been quoted as saying that he made equal amounts of donations to gain favorable status among politicians to be able to positively impact his NFT business. His statement was that with GOP contributions, most were made utilizing dark money transactions which are known to be heavily used by GOP members as it is untraceable.
The Commonwealth of The Bahamas is an independent foreign nation with whom we have a treaty. This treaty allows for extradition of wanted criminals. Just as is the case with France, Great Britain, Germany, etc. we had to request extradition from the Bahamas. When a person is extradited, the foreign country uses its police forces to detain the person, takes them to their court for an extradition hearing and informs them of the reason for the extradition and then holds them for authorities from the other nation to retrieve. Per our treaty with The Commonwealth of the Bahamas, they will not extradite someone to be charged with political crimes, which is common in western democracies.
In December of 2022, the prosecution arranged for extradition and detained SBF. In March of 2023, a Grand Jury returned an additional small group of charges including conspiracy to bribe foreign officials and two other similar conspiracy counts. All was headed for trial when in July, the Bahamas contacted the prosecutor’s office to let them know that the 8th charge involving a political charge was not approved per the extradition laws. They also let them know that the new charges would need to be reviewed by them and that they would not approve of extradition if any of the charges were political in nature.
The DOJ, rather than let him go free, or drag things out for months or years debating with the Bahamas, elected to drop the political charge on the first indictment and stay the second indictment in the hopes that they could work out an agreement with the Bahamas on an exception. They were unable to do so by the time of the trial so they went to trial on the seven initial charges in November. They won in all seven cases and the sentencing guidelines allow for a combined maximum of up to 110 years in prison. Along with that, he will be required to pay restitution to the victims. Sentencing was set by the judge for March 28, 2024.
When the Prosecutor dropped the charges to prevent the Bahamas from demanding the return of SBF, they decided to leave the case open hoping that in the interim they might get an exception out of the Bahamas for those charges but just as the Supreme Court often simply refuses to hear a case, the Bahamas appears to have chosen to ignore the requests rather than respond. They are not required to respond. No response is the same as “No”.
Each of the seven charges carries a minimum of 5 to 10 years and maximum of between 10 and 25 years depending on the charge. With 7 guilty verdicts, the judge could decide on the maximums for all of them and order them to be served consecutively which would result in a 110 year sentence, or he could order the minimum and have them served concurrently which would result in a 10 year sentence. He can also split them anywhere in between.
The sentencing hearing is coming up on March 28. That’s just under three months. They haven’t received approval yet from the Bahamas to disregard their expedition laws, nor are they required to. This means it’s not likely to come. They could get the President involved and possibly put some pressure on the Bahamas, but even if it was done tomorrow, it’s unlikely that they could get the additional charges filed, heard, and decided without delaying the sentencing hearing from the previous cases.
At the time that the additional charges were dropped, the prosecutor decided that since they wouldn’t likely be able to bring those charges, they would take advantage of the wide latitude in sentencing by presenting the evidence of the additional charges as it fit into the prosecution’s timeline of events and pointing out that those charges were dropped only due to the extradition treaty with the Bahamas. By doing so, they were then able to request that the judge consider the charges that couldn’t be filed when sentencing. Had the additional charges been litigated, the overall sentence would likely not be much different, if at all.
Had the prosecutor chosen to continue to push the issue and obtained an exception from the Bahamas at the end of this month, they would have had to schedule a trial for them. Sentencing for the existing guilty verdict would then be delayed until 4-6 months after the conclusion of the second trial which wouldn’t even be ready to start until April at the earliest. Once it came to conclusion a sentencing date would then be scheduled for anywhere between October and December, assuming everything went perfectly. Since the charges that have been dropped were political charges involving how money was spent, the charges that were dropped will not in any way impact restitution. Since the prosecutor specifically requested that the judge consider the charges that had to be dropped, for which evidence was still presented, the judge will likely include the totality of the evidence when choosing the sentence to be carried out.
That’s the basics of the case. But then we have this “news” article. The author, likely aware that they were spouting nonsense and not wanting to be accountable for it later, chose to place “The Washington Examiner” on the byline rather than their own name. It’s a shame that some news organizations publish “news” stories like this with a blatant disregard for the truth. Sure, some “journalists” play fast and loose with the truth. Eventually they get exposed by their competitors and are run out. That’s entirely different from organizations that only report total garbage that is detached from reality and do so while making claims of being “fair and balanced.”
Since the ownership, management, and editorial staff of the Washington Examiner appear to have a blatant disregard for truth, I’ve decided to do their job for them beginning with the title of the article.
“Another political cover-up at Biden’s DOJ”
As far as I can tell, there haven’t been any cover-ups from the DOJ during the Biden administration. A few claims have been made but they’ve revolved around events like the DOJ delaying or refusing to allow the dissemination of evidence being used in an active investigation. This has been standard for every law enforcement body and both parties in the US since the very first investigations. Or claims against Jack Smith, a republican, that he’s somehow corrupt while he’s been meticulously playing by the book.
It seems to me that they just make these claims, knowing darned well they aren’t true, simply because they know that it will sow confusion among the less informed members of their base. They spout nonsense and just let it run through the echo-chambers until it spills out onto everyone else. Those who don’t know any better then begin to believe the nonsense because they’re hearing it from every direction.
The article that I’m referring to begins with the following:
A Biden Department of Justice so recently caught trying to sweep crimes committed by the president’s son under the rug should not sidestep politically embarrassing prosecutions.
But that is what happened on the Friday before New Year’s when DOJ lawyers informed a federal judge they would not continue prosecuting convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried of conspiring to fund millions of dollars in political donations to the Democratic Party and its candidates.
The first sentence is nonsense. No one has tried to sweep anything under the rug. They won all 7 counts that they were able to try without creating an international crisis. Biden isn’t involved. I have an entire article about Hunter’s case and it’s very similar to this one…insinuation implied over innuendo, sprinkled with confusion and molded into the shape of nonsense. The second half of the sentence is a masterpiece of an appeal to ignorance.
The second sentence is also nonsense. They state that the first sentence happened and that they would not be prosecuting SBF for something that he wasn’t charged for to begin with. According to multiple sources, this guy gave roughly equally to both parties to ensure influence regardless of who won elections. But he has stated that much of the GOP money was funneled through as “dark money” which is a known untraceable method of sending money which Many in the GOP are known to be taking advantage of.
I should probably point out that the prosecutor on this case is Damian Williams. Damian is a democratic US Attorney for New York’s southern district. This is the attorney that forced the democratic Lieutenant Governor of New York, Brian Benjamin, to resign after charging him with corruption. He lost the case but Benjamin’s political career is over. This is the attorney that has charged the powerful and entrenched NY democratic Senator Bob Menendez with a number of corruption charges that will be going to trial in May.
If Damian Williams is a partisan player, he’s doing it wrong!
Damian isn’t in DC. He’s in New York. Biden likely has enough going on that he doesn’t even know who he is and doesn’t care what he’s doing. Why would he?
Despite this, they continue with more nonsense…
In addition to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, Bankman-Fried was also charged with conspiracy to defraud the Federal Election Commission and commit campaign finance violations.
I’m not sure what they mean by “conspiracy to defraud the Federal Election Commission.” Fraud by definition is a deception to achieve unlawful gain. If I gave you a bad check and you gave me something in return, that would meet the definition of fraud. But the election commission has nothing that a person like SBF would want and in return, what would go the other way? Donations? No, because he was charged with making actual contributions, not fake contributions.
This charge isn’t on any of the documents and it doesn’t even make sense.
Campaign finance violations I’ll just allow it even though I didn’t see it anywhere.
During extradition proceedings, the Bahamas rejected the campaign finance charges against Bankman-Fried, and his defense attorney then filed a motion in federal court to remove them from the indictment since international law bars prosecution for crimes not approved of by countries that agree to extradite a suspect.
Prosecutors went forward with the prosecution of the other charges, and Bankman-Fried was convicted on all counts in November. A new trial was scheduled to begin this March on the campaign finance charges, but in a letter dated Dec. 29, the Friday before New Year’s Day, President Joe Biden’s DOJ announced it was dropping the second trial.
The first paragraph shows that the writer just doesn’t know what they’re talking about. international law has nothing to do with it. There’s nothing about “crimes not approved of by countries that agree to extradite a suspect”. Countries don’t get to approve crimes. It just happens that most countries, including the US, will not approve of extradition for crimes that are political in nature. The entire paragraph is total crap.
The next is interesting. The first sentence is totally correct. Prosecutors went forward with the remaining 7 cases and won in every one of them. But then they dive off the deep end. No trial was scheduled for March. March 28 is just the sentencing hearing. One that if they chose to proceed on any other cases would not only create a wreck of relations with the Bahamas, but would delay the order of restitution to victims until the next trial concluded and sentencing occurred several months later and subject to the current schedule.
They go on with this:
DOJ officials said there is a “strong public interest in prompt resolution of this matter” that would be undermined by waiting until March for a new trial. The agency said a second trial would not change Bankman-Fried’s punishment because U.S. sentencing guidelines allow judges to consider all conduct and evidence of the campaign finance charge was presented at the first trial.
What is the “strong public interest” in seeing Bankman-Fried sentenced so soon? He is already locked up in the Metropolitan Detention Center and will be behind bars whenever a new trial ended. No more money will appear that could make his victims whole. There is no rush.
The first paragraph here is correct and makes the same point that I did…that the sentence wouldn’t be different.
The next is bizarre. After ranting as if Biden wants to cut the criminal some slack, they want to delay sentencing. They state that “no more money will appear that could make the victims whole”. But that’s not accurate. By sentencing him 9-12 months later, that leaves a lot of time for money to evaporate. The guy is far from broke. It would also delay payment of that restitution to the victims.
They acknowledged that the sentence would remain unchanged. So what’s the point? All we would get in exchange for shooting ourselves in the foot would be tension with the Bahamas where they may do something similar and prosecute an American for something prohibited in our agreement with them, or simply refuse extradition the next time we need to play that card.
And the nonsense continues:
A public airing of Bankman-Fried’s campaign violations could shame more politicians and their fundraising arms into returning donations from Bankman-Fried and his co-conspirators. Bankman-Fried gave $22 million to Democrats in 2022 alone. All that money should be returned to the people he defrauded. It is alleged that Bankman-Fried laundered another $100 million in client funds mostly to Democratic candidates and entities.
The remaining charges are POLITICAL in nature. Our WRITTEN EXTRADITION TREATY with the Bahamas DOES NOT ALLOW for extradition for political crimes. The DOJ CANNOT bring the additional political charges against him without consent from the Bahamas which they have not given since it was requested in the summer of 2022. Doing otherwise would put us in violation of our treaty and they could reverse their release of him to us and we would have to release him to them or we would be in violation of our treaty.
Any restitution owed to victims will be determined at sentencing on March 28. The remaining political charges are about how he spent the money he stole and have no bearing whatsoever on restitution.
The only actual justification given in the article for dragging out the prosecution and sentencing while breaking our extradition treaty with a foreign country is so that they could learn what money went to whom. But that information has been made publicly available for over a year and is available here along with information about the current status of any returns of those funds. This leaves absolutely no reason whatsoever to do anything but close the case down, wrap up sentencing and move forward.
I know I’ve been a bit wordy and repetitive. I haven’t run a spellcheck either but it’s getting late. Maybe I’ll come back and slim it down some in the near future. But just in case it was too much, here’s a brief summary…
The writer of that article expects people to believe that an extremely hungry, selfish, and greedy Progressive democrat illegally worked to fool countless people into a complex scam to make him the 41st wealthiest person on the Forbes 400 list, at which point he found ways to illegally donate $70 million of that money over an 18 month period to mostly democratic legislators and organizations so that Democrats would prevail and would do the democratic thing and tax the remaining money from him heavily as democrats do….But the democratic prosecutor who is secretly working for Biden to undermine the case chose to drop the political charges that had to be dropped in order to extradite him without causing a foreign relations nightmare yet still requested that the judge consider the charges that were dropped in this letter when sentencing him and has done something horribly wrong by not violating our extradition treaties which would do nothing but delay sentencing for 9-12 months while making the victims wait longer to be made whole and simultaneously risking the possibile loss of those funds while they wait.
Those are the facts. I challenge anyone to explain within this framework why the additional charges should be pursued or how the decision made was wrong…..
BRING IT!