Tag Archives: original intent

Inside the Belly of the Beast – The Just Us System

Sworn as an AUSA by US Attorney Paul Curran, SDNY

Sworn as an AUSA by US Attorney Paul Curran, SDNY

I’m a recovering N.Y. federal prosecutor.

I say “recovering” because you never quite get over the power and authority you enjoyed as a young man – as a ‘puppy” prosecutor.

In New York, a port city, the cases are a big deal, mobsters plot their crimes a few blocks from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in lower Manhattan, vast quantities of drugs, heroin and cocaine come into the Big Apple from every direction imaginable, there are illegal transfers of money, in and out of banks, securities fraud and oceans of bad acts and words deceiving the public, plots and devices hatched by a variety of rogues within walking distance of Foley Square, where the Courts and federal prosecutors are lodged.

If you do it right, when you’re a prosecutor, no matter the jurisdiction, your mission is to do justice for the individuals charged.

The Executive US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Sylvio J. Mollo, pulled the flag around him while he was testing my resolve to become an Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Sylvio said, “when you stand before the court as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, you represent the people and the government, but, like the flag [that he had in his hand], those you represent are silent, not there with you, and they depend on you to do what’s right.”

Years after walking out of my last grand jury as a prosecutor, I started representing the Accused, upset about how the government was pushing around those they accused – in a way I’d been instructed was just plain wrong. Continue reading

Alternative law

“Alternative Facts” – we all know now – means to lie to confound and manipulate the public.

The Courts declare what is law and what is constitutional, not the White House

The Courts declare what is law and what is constitutional, not the White House

Instead of accepting the facts, when they are plainly evident, Mr. Donald Trump lies, for instance, about how many folk attended his inauguration.

If journalists don’t accept the lies Mr. Trump tells, Mr. Trump hounds and ridicules journalists and anyone else in tweets and sets upon the press his mad dog press secretary who performs like a thoughtless school yard bully you would have popped in the mouth when you were a kid.

Another great whopper, viral on social media, told by the conning Ms. KellyAnne Conway, a Trump adviser, was that there was a “Bowling Green Massacre” by mid-east terrorists when, in truth and fact, no massacre ever occurred.

Ms. Conway claimed this “imagined” massacre justified Mr. Trump’s unlawful and unconstitutional ban on Muslim immigrants from seven mostly Muslim nation states.

George Orwell in a spectacular essay, “Politics and the English Language,” warned that “the slovenliness of our language makes it easier to have foolish thoughts,” and, when published, such “language can also corrupt thought.”  Continue reading