The federal indictment of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert makes no mention of any inappropriate sexual relationship with former students he taught at Yorkville High School decades ago, but Hastert's attorney, Thomas Green, complained to U.S District Court Judge Thomas Durkin in a hearing today that "the indictment has effectively been amended by leaks from the government." Green said of the leaks, "It is now the 800-pound gorilla in the case." He believes the uncharged sexual allegations have been "impermissibly" injected into the case, and he now plans to have the charges dismissed on that basis.
There's just one catch. Like all other matters regarding this case, Green wants the contents of his motion kept under seal. Judge Durkin warned Green that even if he agrees to seal all or part of his motion, his ruling will be made public and will likely disclose sealed portions of the motion. According to the Chicago Tribune, Hastert was not present for today's hearing. He has not spoken to any reporters since his indictment last month.
Government prosecutors do seem to have the advantage when it comes to leaking information to build a perception of guilt in the public's mind before an accused has the chance to defend himself in a court of law. No other recent case of this sort of abuse was more prevalent than the public corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The federal judge in his case sided with government prosecutors in blocking release of most of the recorded conversations it made of his phone calls while the former governor was under investigation. Yet government prosecutors allowed full access to those recording to two reporters for the Chicago Tribune whose reporting was decidedly pro-prosecutor and who later profiteered from a book they wrote about Blagojevich's case, which included references to content of recordings not released to the public or allowed to be used by Blagojevich's attorneys at trial.
Blagojevich, who is serving an unusually harsh 14-year prison sentence, appealed his conviction to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. A decision in that case has not been made more than 18 months after a 3-judge panel heard oral arguments in the case. Blagojevich's attorneys maintain that he was denied a fair trial because of the judge's order blocking the jury from hearing recorded conversations he claimed would have helped prove his innocence, and that his convictions rested, in part, on the argument he was convicted based upon horse-trading that elected officials regularly engage while making decisions as opposed to bribery. At least one member of that 3-judge panel, Judge Frank Easterbrook, showed sympathy for that argument.
4 comments:
Blagojevich is serving an unusually harsh fourteen year prison sentence because Obama's henchmen want 'Blago' shut up. It's just that simple.
The US is now socialist fascist Amerika where leftist liberals shut you up when you deviate from their Moonie-like fetish for their absurd political religion. We've been transformed into a nation where speaking the truth, or at the least exercising the freedom of speech now virtually no longer enjoyed in the country, allows Clinton-appointed Democrat U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman to rule that conservative filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza must continue community service for four more years, but he also has to undergo Communist Stalin-style re-education with forced psychiatric counseling.
I am willing to bet Blagojevich knows something that The Messiah BO does not want revealed and that is why Blago remains imprisoned and his petition to the court is yet unanswered. Similarly, D'Souza told the truth about Marxist America-hater extreme left of center liberal Democrat Obama and now D'Souza is paying the price. This is what left of center liberals do: they shut you down rather than allow you to have your seat at the table of ideas.
I guess Blagojevich can take consolation in the fact that he's still alive to see his wife and daughters again some day. Many others have been murdered for the greater cause. He has his health so it won't be as easy to kill him in prison like the Clintons had federal prison officials handle Jim McDougal.
Esterbrook is a fairly competent and fair judge, I think. The Department of Justice has long been awash with crooks and thieves and misconduct. Senator Stephens anyone? Was it Pat Fitzgerald who went after scooter libby even though the asshole knew who actually leaked the information of the broad and her worthless husband? As for Rod, yeah, he screwed up but Tony Rezco is also paying a price.
Fitzgerald targeted everyone who had the goods on Obama to sink his career. Fitzgerald knew Rezko paid cash bribes to Obama, but he covered that and other Obama crimes up, while he conflated everything Blagojevich discussed on the government wiretaps into criminal acts. He prematurely ordered Blagojevich's arrest because he knew Obama, Emanuel, et al. were on the verge of becoming co-conspirators to the criminal charges he wanted to nail on Blagojevich alone.
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