by dap | Sep 23, 2023 | Fox News
The
against Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., of bribery is devastating. The senator enjoys the presumption of innocence, and an indictment only reflects the government’s side of the case, but the indictment contains a level of detail and a description of official acts taken by the senator that will be difficult for the defense to overcome and likely impossible for the senator to overcome politically.
Sen. Menendez may have nine lives, but perhaps he used up eight of them successfully defending the last corruption case against him, in 2017.
This indictment paints a picture of old-school,
. There is little nuance to envelopes of cash – nearly $500,000 worth – a new Mercedes-Benz convertible, a no-show job, and in a throwback to another era, $150,000 worth of real gold bars found at his house during an FBI search in June 2022. It is surprising that they did not also find a Tommy Gun, just to complete the picture.
More important than the image of these valuables is how Sen. Menendez and his wife, Nadine (
), came to possess them.
Nadine Menendez started dating the senator in February 2018. Among the things she brought into the relationship was her longtime friendship with Will Hana, a New Jersey businessman of Egyptian descent, who maintained close ties with Egyptian officials. Hana, along with his associates, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes, are all codefendants with Senator and Mrs. Menendez.
They immediately put the senator to work. The indictment describes numerous official actions taken by Sen. Menendez beginning in March 2018, and valuable items bestowed upon him and Nadine close enough in time to create a strong inference of a quid pro quo.
, Uribe and Daibes, tie the bribery allegations together tightly, as do details such as fingerprints and/or DNA of Daibes or his driver appearing on the envelopes of cash found in the Menendezes’ house; a Google search performed by Sen. Menendez for “kilo of gold price”; and Hana purchasing 22 gold bars two days after the senator met with him and an Egyptian official — and two of those gold bars subsequently being found in the Menendezes’ home.
Bribery cases have become more difficult for the government to bring in recent years. In the case against former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, the
narrowed the definition of what constitutes an “official act” to support a bribery conviction against a government official. Specifically, the Court observed that “setting up a meeting, calling another public official, or hosting an event does not, standing alone, qualify as an ‘official act.'”
Further, for purposes of establishing bribery in an honest services fraud prosecution, the Court concluded, an “official act” requires a public official to “make a decision or take an action,” or agree to do so, on a “question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or controversy.”
The actions Sen. Menendez is alleged to have taken for the benefit of Hana, Uribe and Daibes, if proven, clearly surpass the bar set for bribery in the McDonnell case. Indeed, they represent classic, even extreme, illustrations of how a senator might sell out his office if he were so inclined, for example:
These official actions that the
took in exchange for this treasure go to the heart of his responsibilities as a senator and would reflect an astounding betrayal of his oath of office.
Interference with ongoing criminal investigations is “third-rail” stuff for elected officials, and manipulating foreign military aid can have profound policy implications.
It does not appear that the senator will be able to credibly characterize these official actions as benign “constituent services.”
Sen. Menendez has
. In 2015, he was alleged to have accepted close to $1 million worth of lavish gifts and campaign contributions from Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist. Melgen was involved in a billing dispute with Medicare, and Senator Menendez allegedly used his staff to try to advocate on Melgen’s behalf, among other favors for Melgen.
That case resulted in a hung jury after Sen. Menendez emphasized in his defense that he had a longtime genuine friendship with Melgen, and then decoupled Melgen’s largesse from his official actions – “just friends helping friends,” went the defense theme.
The present case involves several significant differences from the Melgen matter: Sen. Menendez does not have a longtime friendship with Hana, et al.; the official actions he took on their behalf were
; and the items of value he received from them were far more scandalous than the vacations he took with his pal Dr. Melgen.
Bottom line: It will be difficult for him to prevail with the same playbook this time around.
by dap | Sep 23, 2023 | Fox News
The New York Mets recently announced that they would retire the numbers of
, two of the most exciting players ever to set foot on a baseball field.
But while the
, cancer nearly had the home run hitter’s number 25 years ago.
Back then, Darryl Strawberry was a star among many stars on the 1998 Yankees team, one of the greatest teams in baseball history, which would go on to sweep the World Series against the San Diego Padres. Yet when the Yanks raced onto the field at Qualcomm Stadium to celebrate, Strawberry wasn’t there. He was back in New York, recovering from surgery to remove a tumor from his colon.
“All through September,” Strawberry recalls, “I didn’t feel a lot of pain, but I just kept losing weight. I had blood in my stool every time I went to the bathroom, and I knew something was wrong.”
Strawberry waited until the end of the regular season because he was playing well, and he did not want the team’s trainers to recommend sitting him down.
“It was a great team,” Strawberry says. “We were just having a phenomenal season. But I knew I had to go in and get checked, and I didn’t think it would be anything that serious. Once I got in, the doctors told me to sit down because they needed to talk to me. It was very serious.
“They said I had colon cancer, and they could remove the tumor, and that the surgery could take as long as six hours. I was devastated because my mom passed at age 55 from terminal breast cancer. And I would end up losing my sister, Regina, at the age of 51 from cancer, too.
“I understood that I was in a high-risk category, that something like this could happen to any one of us in our family. It was just a really tough time for me. It was hard because I was playing baseball. I thought, I’m an athlete. I’m in great shape. How could this be?”
Strawberry’s phenomenal physique may well have saved his life. The doctors told him that his abdominal muscles were so strong that they had kept the tumor locked in one place. If he hadn’t had such strong abs, one big swing of the bat or one hard slide could have caused the tumor to burst and spread throughout his entire body.
When Strawberry awoke from the anesthesia after surgery, he was astonished to find a guest sitting next to him in his hospital room: George Steinbrenner.
Baseball fans remember the Boss, as he was known, as the headline-grabbing, manager-firing
with the firmness of a drill sergeant in the Marines. There was another side to Steinbrenner, a softer side, and this was what Strawberry saw when he awoke.
“The Boss was sitting there!” Strawberry exclaims with a sense of wonder in his voice, 25 years after the fact. “He was sitting right there in my hospital room! It was amazing. When I saw him, I wondered, what is he doing here? I was shocked he wanted to be there. He was concerned about what was happening with me. At that moment, the team was on the road playing for the World Series in San Diego. But the Boss wanted to be by my side instead of celebrating that victory. What a blessing. What a great man.
“The boss had compassion for people,” Strawberry adds. “He had a clear understanding about people and their lives and what they go through. There was never any judgment from him about life, about my life or my struggles. I was just a part of his family, and I’m thankful that he thought of me that way.”
Strawberry says that Steve Cohen, the Mets owner, has the same determination as Steinbrenner.
“Steve Cohen is the same way,” Strawberry says. “He’ll get there. It’s going to take some time. He’s smart enough to know from where he’s been in life and how he got to where he is, what it takes to succeed. He got there by being patient and understanding that it’s going to take work. But he’ll get there.”
Although the initial surgery was successful, Strawberry’s doctors warned him that the cancer could recur, and two years later it did. His left kidney had to be removed in surgery so the doctors could get at the tumor. Strawberry has been cancer-free ever since. He says that if fans really want to honor his accomplishments on the field, they should
as soon as possible.
“It’s important to have yourself checked,” Strawberry says. “So many forms of cancer, including colon cancer, can be treated if they are caught in time. There’s no reason to die young, especially if that death was preventable.
“Of course, I’m thrilled and honored that the Mets are retiring my number. But talking about avoiding an unnecessary death is far more important than any game. If you are a male over the age of 45, don’t hesitate. You don’t want to go through what I went through. “And if you do,
won’t be sitting in the hospital room waiting for you to wake up!”
by dap | Sep 23, 2023 | Fox News
Editor’s note: The following column was first published by Creators Syndicate.
The Biden
is setting a booby trap in case a Republican wins the presidency in 2024.
On Friday, the White House unveiled a proposed rule that would make it even harder than in the past for an incoming Republican president to wrestle control of the left-leaning federal bureaucracy and actually implement the conservative policies promised to voters.
Of the 2.2 million federal civil workers, only 4,000 are presidential appointees. The rest stay in their jobs, from one administration to the next, protected by rules that make it nearly impossible to discipline or replace them.
They overwhelmingly favor the left. A staggering 95% of unionized federal employees who donate to
give to Democrats, according to Open Secrets. Only a tiny 5% support Republicans.
Some federal workers in high positions slow-walk or even derail a Republican president’s agenda — and get away with it.
Why bother to vote if the left-leaning deep state stays in charge no matter who wins the presidency?
GOP candidates
, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis are vowing to conquer this obstructionism.
Everett Kelley, union president of the American Federation of Government Employees, claims GOP contenders want to “politicize routine government work.” Nonsense. We’re not talking about mail carriers. It’s time to make lawyers, PhDs and other top-level career bureaucrats implement the president’s agenda, not their own.
After Trump won in 2016, they went to town neutralizing him on almost every policy front, explains James Sherk, special assistant to the White House Domestic Policy Council under Trump.
Career lawyers in the
flat out refused to challenge Yale University’s discrimination against Asian American applicants. Trump had to recruit lawyers from other divisions. After Joe Biden became president, the DOJ dropped the case. But the same career lawyers who refused to sue Yale made the losing argument in support of affirmative action before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Career health officials like
circumvented Trump’s instructions to moderate COVID lockdowns. Environmental Protection Agency lawyers pursued cases against fossil fuel producers and withheld the information from Trump appointees.
Trump mandated in a 2020 executive order that new federal buildings be designed to please the public, which prefers classical designs. Instead, General Services Administration architects chose modern designs they like. Trump mentioned as an example the San Francisco Federal Building, the ugliest edifice in the city.
It goes on, including
against the president himself.
In October 2020, Trump issued an executive order that federal workers who make policy should be reclassified as at-will employees who can be terminated.
But before it could be implemented, Biden became president. He canceled it immediately, knowing the bureaucrats were on his side.
The rule announced Friday would slow a president’s ability to reinstate Trump’s order. Democrats in Congress are going further, pushing to eliminate the president’s authority to reclassify jobs altogether.
The
announced, “Biden Administration Aims to Trump-Proof the Federal Work Force.”
Ramaswamy vows to go further than Trump, eliminating half or more of civil service positions. “Speaking as a CEO, if somebody works for you and you can’t fire them, they don’t work for you,” he said in a speech on Sept. 12.
facetiously claims holding employees accountable is a threat to good government, and warns that a Republican victory will mean “a new class of federal appointees charged with a partisan agenda.”
Democrats and their media allies falsely romanticize civil service, claiming it protects “merit” over patronage.
Merit was the intention when the civil service was created in 1883 by the Pendleton Act. But merit is largely gone. Scramble those five letters and what you’ve got is the “timer” system.
get bigger salaries and fatter benefits than private-sector workers doing comparable jobs. And they almost never lose their job, no matter how derelict they are. They put in their time and skate to a gold-plated retirement package.
It’s a gravy train, paid for by John Q Public. That’s sickening enough. But it’s even worse when these civil “servants” put their own leftist leanings ahead of the president and public they’re paid to serve.
Bravo to the GOP candidates pledging to take on the deep state — replete with deadbeats and lefties — and return government to the people. It’s a worthy fight.
Shame on Biden for protecting bureaucracy instead of democracy.
Not in America.
