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Last night a jury acquitted Hearne City Councilman Rodrick Jackson of a charge that he forcibly kissed and groped a fifteen-year-old girl, and I think the verdict proved what I have been saying all along: the charge was politically motivated and never should have been filed in the first place. The acquittal also creates serious problems for the City of Hearne, because Mr. Jackson’s civil rights lawsuit can now proceed in federal court.

As you may recall, the Texas Rangers and Robertson County District Attorney’s Office investigated the allegation against Mr. Jackson and District Attorney Coty Siegert rejected the case, but the City of Hearne then charged Mr. Jackson, an outspoken critic of corruption at city hall, with Class C misdemeanor “assault by contact.” A Class C misdemeanor is the legal equivalent of a traffic ticket.

As of December 17, 2017, the city had spent nearly $20,000 in legal fees for a special prosecutor from suburban Houston, and I suspect that figure will climb significantly after yesterday’s trial. All of that for a citation that is punishable by a maximum $500 fine and no jail time.

On January 18, 2018, I asked the U.S. District Court in Waco to block the prosecution on the grounds that the city was retaliating against Mr. Jackson for exposing corruption at city hall. Judge Robert Pitman denied our request for an injunction, but he asked the city’s attorney afterwards, “This looks bad, doesn’t it?”

Indeed it does. If you are not familiar with the case, you may be wondering why it was tried in municipal court, i.e., traffic court, because it’s a felony for a grown man to kiss and grope a teenage girl. The short answer: politics. Apparently city officials could not get the Rangers and the DA to do their dirty work for them, so their only option was to charge Mr. Jackson in municipal court, where the maximum charge is a Class C misdemeanor. … Read more

As if we needed any more evidence that the FBI was politicized under James Comey, we get this in a Friday evening document dump:  The top attorney for the FBI and an attorney representing Hillary Clinton loyalists worked together to keep politically-damaging computer contents from being subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.

Beth Wilkinson, wife of former NBC host and current CNN commentator David Gregory, represented Clinton aides Cheryl Mills, Heather Samuelson, and Jake Sullivan during the FBI’s whitewash investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s secret email server, and Ms. Wilkinson apparently convinced an all-too-cooperative FBI to protect the contents of Ms. Mills’s and Ms. Samuelson’s laptop computers from public scrutiny.

“The Government explicitly agreed that the FBI would not assert custody and control of the devices in the face of Freedom of Information Act requests,” Ms. Wilkinson wrote in an August 11, 2016 email from Ms. Wilkinson to James A. Baker, who was then the general counsel of the FBI.  Here’s an excerpt from the agreement that Ms. Wilkinson cut-and-pasted into her email.

The Device is being provided to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) solely for the purposes of the Department of Justice Investigation, and for the Department’s use in connection with the investigation. In voluntarily providing the Device, Cheryl Mills does not relinquish ownership or control over the Device, except for the FBI’s limited investigative use as specified by this agreement. The FBI does not assert custody and control over the Device or its contents for any other purposes, including any requests made pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552.

Let me translate that excerpt into plain English: Even though the FBI clearly had custody and control of the laptops, it would deny that it had custody and control whenever somebody (like me) submitted a FOIA request for the contents of those laptops. And I must rely on Ms. Wilkinson’s representation of the agreement because, even though I asked for copies of all agreements between Ms. Wilkinson and the FBI / DOJ more than ten months ago, the government still has not produced the actual agreements. … Read more

If you thought the drunken debauchery of former U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith, Jr. of Waco, Texas was old news, think again.  A motion filed this morning by a federal death-row inmate asks the court to set aside his sentence on the grounds that the alcoholic judge was too impaired to pass judgment.

In the motion filed by attorneys Robert C. Owen of Northwestern Law School and Asst. Public Defender John R. Carpenter of Tacoma Washington on behalf of Brandon Bernard, they cite records from a judicial misconduct complaint that I filed against Smith in 2014, including the deposition testimony of a former deputy clerk who says she was sexually assaulted by Smith in the federal courthouse in 1998 while he was drunk (I have uploaded the motion’s evidentiary exhibits below).  Bernard was sentenced to death for his role in the 1999 murders of Todd and Stacie Bagley, a married couple who served as youth ministers for a church in Iowa.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a pro bono co-counsel for one of Bernard’s co-defendants in the murder cases. Although I normally do not practice criminal law, and I certainly do not dispute the horror of the Bagley murders, I happen to think that defendants have a right to be sentenced by a judge who is not drunk. Is that really such a radical idea? … Read more

A top commander in the Texas Department of Public Safety forged a signature and tampered with government records in an attempt to fire a whistleblower, according to a federal lawsuit that I filed this morning, and the commander probably didn’t act alone.  Meanwhile, an East Texas DA has referred the case to the Texas Attorney General for further investigation and possible prosecution.

You may recall that Trooper Billy Spears made international headlines in 2015 after he was reprimanded for allowing himself to be photographed with Calvin Broaddus, a.k.a. the Doggfather of rap, a.k.a. Snoop Dogg. You may also recall that we obtained an email from DPS Director Steven McCraw complaining that Billy allowed himself to be photographed with a “dope smoking cop hater.” DPS brass took a beating in the press, and shortly thereafter we filed suit against Billy’s superiors for retaliating against him (both before and after the Snoop Dogg photo).

Things have only gotten worse since then.

In 2016, someone in Billy’s chain of command post-dated a memo and cut-and-pasted Billy’s signature onto it in order to deny him a medical waiver for an on-duty knee injury.  Billy submitted the original memo in late May of 2016, but the date was changed to June 2, 2016 to make it appear untimely (and the altered memo included facts that had not occurred as of the time that the real memo was written). … Read more

Here’s some news you won’t see in the New York Times or the Washington Post: In an order dated November 17, Maryland’s highest court temporarily blocked a lower court order that required bar prosecutors to investigate Hillary Clinton’s lawyers for destroying evidence. At the same time, the Maryland Court of Appeals denied my request to appoint a special counsel to investigate the crimes that bar prosecutors keep trying to bury.

The appellate court’s stay order will remain in effect until oral argument in March, but the handwriting is already on the wall: the left-wing court intends to protect attorneys David Kendall, Cheryl Mills, and Heather Samuelson at all costs, never mind the law and the facts.

How do I know the case is rigged? Let’s start with the stay order itself.  Normally, when a party asks an appellate court to temporarily stay a lower court’s order, that party must first request a stay from the trial court. If the trial court denies the request, then the appellate court will then consider it. In this case, however, the bar prosecutors never requested a stay from the trial court, but the Court of Appeals granted a stay anyway.

Similarly, appellants normally must raise arguments or objections at trial before those issues can be raised in the Court of Appeals. In their petition asking the Court of Appeals to hear the case, the bar prosecutors asked the court to apply an amended rule retroactively in order to bury my complaints against Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers, but they had never presented that argument in the trial court.  Even though bar prosecutors offered no excuse whatsoever for failing to raise the argument at trial, the Court of Appeals decided to hear it anyway. … Read more

This morning I filed a bar grievance against former FBI Director James Comey based on evidence that he lied to Congress. I also asked the New York attorney grievance committee to reopen prior grievances and investigate Mr. Comey, former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and private attorney Beth Wilkinson for the destruction of evidence from the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Stephen Dinan at The Washington Times posted a story today about the grievances, so I won’t write much here. I’ve uploaded today’s grievance as well as a January 5, 2017 letter that I received from the New York grievance committee.

By the way, I’d like to dedicate my grievance to H.W. “Buddy” Pecot of Longview, Texas, a former FBI agent and a longtime friend and mentor to me. I know a lot of good men and women inside the FBI, and nobody hates this stuff more than they do.

This afternoon I asked a Maryland judge to order the state’s bar counsel to treat me like any other person who files a grievance against a crooked lawyer, namely by sharing the letters that it receives from Hillary Clinton’s lawyers in response to my grievances.  In the process, I discovered that Maryland officials recently changed the rules to squelch people like me and protect powerful attorneys like Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers.

As was widely reported last month, Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Paul Harris ordered the Attorney Grievance Commission of Maryland and its Office of Bar Counsel to investigate David Kendall, Cheryl Mills, and Heather Samuelson for their roles in destroying emails from Hillary Clinton’s secret server. Bar prosecutors had thumbed their noses at the law that required them to investigate.

Now it appears that the bar prosecutors are thumbing their noses at Judge Harris’s order.  The motion that I filed today notes that a Maryland attorney normally must share his / her written responses with the person who filed a grievance against that attorney, but this time it appears that bar prosecutors want to keep everything under wraps. In fact, for all we know the bar prosecutors may not be investigating at all.  And given their efforts to protect Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers thus far, I have long suspected that they might just do nothing for a few months, claim they found no evidence, and then close the case. … Read more

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington, D.C. must release records about the murder of former Democratic National Committee employee Seth Rich, according to a Department of Justice official, and I have asked DOJ to compel the FBI to release any records that it may have about the murder.

In a letter dated October 2, 2017, the chief of administrative appeals at DOJ’s Office of Information Policy, Sean R. O’Neill, wrote that he was directing the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys to search for and produce any records covered in my September 1, 2017 Freedom of Information Act request. As records are produced, I’ll post them here.

For those of you who live in a cave (or get your news from the New York Times or Washington Post), Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has hinted very strongly since last year that he received leaked DNC emails from Seth Rich, not Russian agents. And last week Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said that Mr. Assange is willing to produce proof in exchange for a pardon.

Does that mean that Mr. Rich’s murder is related to the leaked emails? I have no idea. But when, as Glenn Greenwald has asked, will it be appropriate to start questioning the official narrative? … Read more

A petition asking the Trump Administration to order the FBI to release records related to the Hillary Clinton email investigation surpassed 50,000 signatures this week, more than half the number of signatures needed to compel an official response from the White House.

Another petition launched this morning requests the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Mrs. Clinton and the FBI. As most of you already know, Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham released a letter last week claiming that former FBI Director James Comey decided to bury the case against Mrs. Clinton months before the key witnesses (including Mrs. Clinton) were interviewed.

At this point, the FBI cannot be trusted to investigate itself or Mrs. Clinton. Of greater significance, however, is the fact that the nation’s premiere law enforcement agency has been tarnished by evidence of lawlessness at the top. If the FBI is to be trusted again, there must be an independent investigation.

That said, for more than a year we’ve had overwhelming evidence that Mrs. Clinton destroyed evidence, broke national security laws, and gave false testimony under oath. Nobody should be above the law, regardless of whether he or she is a Republican or a Democrat, a Bush or a Clinton, a plumber or a Presidential candidate. The issue here is not Democrats vs. Republicans, but the powerful vs. the peons. … Read more

Thanks to the Drudge Report and The Washington Times, Hillary Clinton supporters lit up my Twitter feed like a Christmas Tree this evening.  I should probably feel guilty for snickering at them, but then I should probably give up Clif Bars so I can lose a few pounds.  Yeah, not gonna happen.

As reported by the Times, the FBI denied my FOIA request for records related to the Clinton email investigation because it decided — and I’m not making this up — that the email scandal is not a matter of public interest. Actually, the FBI first told me that back on August 8, 2017, so I sent them a response on August 12, 2017:

Frankly, I am stunned that I should have to explain why my request pertains to a matter of public interest. At the time of the perjury referral, Mrs. Clinton was the Democratic nominee for President of the United States, a former U.S. Secretary of State, and a former U.S. Senator. As one would expect, the referral made national news.

I have enclosed a copy of a July 11, 2017 Washington Post article titled “Congressmen ask U.S. Attorney’s Office to investigate Clinton for perjury.” One need only Google Chaffetz+referral+Clinton and a string of articles appears. Clearly, my request pertains to a matter of public interest.

As I wrote at the time, I seriously considered writing that letter in crayon. In retrospect, I should have. This morning I received a letter from the same FBI flunky informing me that the feds still did not consider it a matter of public interest. I wonder how much practice it takes to write something that dumb.

Meanwhile, Hillary’s hordes are calling me names and gloating because they think that I have been defeated and that evidence of Hillary’s guilt will never see the light of day. Obviously they don’t know me very well. … Read more