The Best People: White House Emailed Talking Points Meant For Surrogates To Dems, Tried To Recall Email Afterwards

from the heads-up-everyone dept

At the time of this writing, I'll go ahead and assume that anyone reading this is now fully immersed in Ukraine-Call-Gate or whatever we're calling this potentially impeachment-inducing scandal Donald Trump has managed to build for himself. What started as a murky story surrounding the administration flatly ignoring the law in handling a mysterious whistle-blower complaint has since been clarified in the extreme. What happened essentially is that the whistle-blower raised alarms over several occurrences, one of which was a call that occurred between Trump and the recently elected Ukrainian President in which Trump reportedly pushed his counterpart to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of his potential 2020 rival. Then, for reasons that are beyond me, Trump released an unredacted "rough" transcript of the call, which demonstrates that he did that very thing. You're going to hear a great deal of obfuscation over the next days and weeks about what the transcript shows. Go read it for yourself. Trump asked Ukraine, while withholding aid money at the time, to investigate the Bidens.

In the wake of the outrage over the transcript, the White House obviously went into damage control. That's to be expected. As part of any scandal, talking points are developed for surrogates to use when talking on any of the insanely stupid 24 hour news channels. That's also to be expected. But once those talking points are in written format, it's not customary to send them out to the opposing party's Congressional members.

The White House on Wednesday sent out talking points on how to spin the release of a summary of President Trump’s phone call to his counterpart in Ukraine — but emailed them to House Democrats, apparently by mistake.

Here's the goods, should you want to see them for yourself.

Now, look, I've made this mistake in my own professional life. That said, I'm not one of the "very best people" working for a White House embroiled in a full on scandal of its own making, so there's that. When you're trying to sow confusion and intrigue around what appears for all the world to be a really simple example of abuse of Presidential power, you really have to be careful about who is in that "To:" field.

And, even when I have made this mistake, I was smart enough not to frantically send out one of those useless "recall email" requests to those very same rivals I had accidentally emailed.

Now, I know some of you are thinking that this really isn't a laughing matter. And you're right, but you're also wrong, because this is fucking hilarious. One is forced to imagine Stephen Miller himself furiously sending out recall requests to Nancy Pelosi having just realized what he's done.

Will this inadvertent transparency matter? Probably not. If you're the sort that spends any calories watching cable news, this will all probably fly right over your head. Meanwhile, partisanship has so infested Washington that one of the truest things Donald Trump has ever said is probably that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue without consequence. So at least we can have a laugh at the very best people's use of email, instead.

Filed Under: donald trump, hunter biden, impeachment, nancy pelosi, recall, talking points, transcript, ukraine, white house

Court Calls Out Cops For Altering Interrogation Transcript To Hide Suspect's Request For A Lawyer

from the inconvenient-facts dept

The opening of this recent decision [PDF] by the Maryland Court of Special Appeals is eye catching. It quotes Breaking Bad prequel, Better Call Saul. More specifically, it quotes Jimmy McGill, who gradually morphs into the more-huckster-than-lawyer Saul Goodman over the course of the series. The case has to do with a murder suspect's request for a lawyer, one that was ignored by law enforcement. The quote sets the stage, letting readers know anyone accused of anything by law enforcement is better off exercising their right to be represented. (h/t Keith Lee)

Craig Kettleman: I just think I'd look guilty if I hired a lawyer.

James McGill: No, actually it's getting arrested that makes people look guilty, even the innocent ones, and innocent people get arrested everyday. And they find themselves in a little room with a detective who acts like he's their best friend. “Talk to me,” he says, “Help me clear this thing up. You don’t need a lawyer, only guilty people need lawyers” and BOOM! Hey, that’s when it all goes south. That’s when you want someone in your corner. Someone who will fight tooth and nail.

Mynor Vargas-Salguero was arrested and convicted of second-degree murder, robbery, and theft. The lower court sided with the government, finding his demands for a lawyer "ambiguous." The Appeals Court disagrees, finding it clear enough, especially when the recording of the interrogation is compared to law enforcement's transcript of the recording's contents.

That's where the real ambiguity lies. Or rather, there doesn't seem to be much ambiguous about law enforcement's attempt to retcon the post-arrest questioning to make Salguero's request for a lawyer vanish into the ether.

There was a language barrier but not an insurmountable one. Salguero's first language is Spanish but he knows some English. Two of the detectives present spoke Spanish. One spoke only English. Occasionally, translation was needed for the single English-only speaker in the room. But, for the most part, the interrogation flowed. The detectives told Salguero he wasn't being charged with anything, despite hauling him in with an arrest warrant. Salguero made it clear he wasn't interested in talking if he didn't get a lawyer.

The first demand came early in the interrogation when the detectives tried to determine Salguero's daily routine.

[DETECTIVE DELEON]: Okay. Tha—that’s why I asked you.

A: At 5:30 my ride wakes me up, there at the house where I live—lived right now with my sister, that I just moved in. [DETECTIVE DELEON]: Right.

A: And I go to work. That’s all I have to say to you. And if you accuse me of something I better want an attorney. (underlining added).

The detectives apparently understood this as a request for a lawyer. But they forged ahead with the interrogation after a brief pause. One of them acknowledged this during the interrogation, but that was conveniently left out of the transcript prepared for the court.

A: Right. Ask me whatever you want.

[DETECTIVE BELLINO]:Okay. Maybe…

A: People confuse me and—this has to be this way, man.

[DETECTIVE BELLINO]: Hold up, just a moment ago you said you wanted a lawyer but you’re willing to talk to us right now, right?

The footnote exposes the alteration by law enforcement.

The bolded text represents the words Mr. Vargas-Salguero spoke during the interrogation—as the circuit court and we can see on the video—that the police left out of the transcript they prepared and submitted to the court.

[...]

The record does not reveal, nor do the police explain, why their transcript deviates from the interrogation. The discrepancies were not identified to the circuit court, and the court made no findings about them; the court reviewed both the transcript and the video, and thus could consider the full interrogation, but didn’t address the differences. We cannot help but notice, however, that the officers’ transcript omitted words Mr. Vargas-Salguero in fact said at two critical points in the interrogation, and that the omitted language bears directly on whether the officers understood that Mr. Vargas-Salguero invoked his rights to counsel and to remain silent.

Here is the second critical point where the transcript deviated from the video:

A: In what moment did – did – I don’t want to say anything else now. Because I have nothing else to say. I have nothing else to tell you. Me, killing a poor man. (unintelligible.)

[DETECTIVE BELLINO]: Go ahead here.

[DETECTIVE DELEON]: Here.

A: There, what? Go ahead, what? What you got in there? What do you say? I don’t see anything there. Nothing.

[DETECTIVE BELLINO]: Look are you willing to talk to us? I thought you said you didn’t want to talk. Do you want to talk to me? Are you willing to talk to me?

A: Yeah.

The cop version:

The police-prepared transcript says only “I understand you want to talk.”

The transcript also fails to show what actually occurred during this moment. The Spanish-speaking detectives chose not to translate this assertion of Salguero's right to remain silent for Detective Bellino. Instead, the Detective DeLeon decided to stand back and let Bellino keep hammering away at Salguero in the suspect's non-native language.

The government argued Salguero's statement was ambiguous. The court points out it wasn't -- not when the context is considered.

Now back to Mr. Vargas-Salguero. The condition “if you accuse me of something” in the first half of his statement had indisputably been met, at least in the way that a normal person—and a reasonable police officer—would consider himself “accused of something.” At the time he made these statements, he had been arrested at his home in the middle of the night pursuant to an arrest warrant, issued by a court, that included serious crimes, and was being questioned in an interrogation room by three detectives. He mentioned (and lamented) several times that he felt like he could be going to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. It doesn’t matter for these purposes whether the charging documents had triggered his Sixth Amendment rights (we’ll deal with those below), or that the detectives claimed that he wasn’t being accused of anything. Maybe he “sought to couch [his] request [for an attorney] in polite or (more likely, given the context) deferential terms,” Ballard, 420 Md. at 493, but he was there because he had been, and was being, accused of serious crimes.

With that condition met, Mr. Vargas-Salguero’s statement that he’d “better want an attorney,” the officers’ translated understanding of his statement in Spanish, sufficiently invoked his desire for an attorney. Other cases have held “I think I want an attorney” or “I’d rather have an attorney” was sufficient. See, e.g., Harris, 305 S.W.3d at 489 (suspect invoked right to counsel by stating “I’d rather appoint a lawyer”); McDaniel, 506 S.E.2d at 23 (suspect invoked right to counsel by stating “I think I would rather have an attorney here to speak for me”). This statement was at least as strong as those.

Furthermore, the detectives' own actions indicate they at least thought Salguero had exercised his right to demand an attorney. They stopped the interview and stepped out of the room to discuss his "if you accuse me of something…" statement before apparently deciding they might be able to get away with ignoring his request. Detective DeLeon's statement -- conveniently excised from the official transcript -- further indicates he understood Salguero's statement to be a request for a lawyer. ("Hold up, just a moment ago you said you wanted a lawyer…")

The same goes for Salguero's right to remain silent. This was invoked when he said he had nothing more to say and pushed back from the table. This statement -- made in Spanish -- went conveniently untranslated and the Spanish-speaking detective too pushed back from the table to let the single non-Spanish person in the room override the invocation of a Fifth Amendment right.

The Appeals Court reverses the lower court's decision and sends it back, pointing out it clearly erred by allowing the government to submit an illegally-obtained confession as evidence. No evidence is as harmful to a criminal defendant as a confession, so there's no chance the lower court can claim the two violations of Salguero's rights were "harmless."

The examination of the transcript and the recording by the Appeals Court clearly indicates why all in-custody interrogations should be recorded. Relying only on a version of events written by those with a stake in the outcome results in the sort of malfeasance exposed here. The court won't go as far as to accuse law enforcement of lying, but it does make it clear it will trust videotape more than it will trust cops.

Filed Under: interrogation, lawyers, maryland, mynor vargas-salguero, police, transcript

Prosecutor Sanctioned For Altering Transcript Of Police Interview With Child Molestation Suspect

from the roflmao-life-liberty-etc. dept

The California State Bar has finally handed down sanctions [PDF] in a case of prosecutorial misconduct that could have landed a defendant with a life sentence.

Last year, a court tossed child molestation charges against a defendant after it came to light prosecutor Robert Murray had altered the transcript of a police interview with the suspect. Murray claimed it was all just a joke. But the "levity" he inserted into the transcript drastically altered the prison sentence the defendant was facing (from 16 years to a possible life sentence), prompting his defense lawyer to push him toward a plea bargain.

All it took was two sentences:

(Detective): "You're so guilty you child molester."

(Defendant): "I know. I'm just glad she's not pregnant like her mother."

Even if it was just a joke, Murray made no effort to inform the defense lawyer of these additions, despite claiming it was supposed to be something enjoyed equally by the defendant's legal representation. In fact, Murray didn't admit anything until he was forced to, a full nine days later and only after the actual interview transcripts were made available to the defense.

The District Attorney's office didn't like seeing its prosecution vanish. It argued that dismissing charges was too much of a deterrent -- something that should be used only in the most egregious cases of "abject physical brutality." "Oh my, no," said the court.

Indeed, there is simply no support for the People’s contention that an act must involve some form of physical brutality in order to support a sanction of dismissal. Meanwhile, there is ample support for defendant’s contention that egregious violations of a defendant’s constitutional rights are sufficient to establish outrageous government misconduct.

Now it's time for Murray to face sanctions from the bar association for his "joke." Murray, to his credit, was open and cooperative after being forced to confront his own misdeed. (Indeed, some credit is granted for his cooperation, but it's nowhere near as expansive as Murray hoped it would be. The bar court doesn't have much sympathy for the "Well, I'm really sorry now" argument.) Nearly railroading someone into a life sentence was considered to be only worth about 30 days of professional discomfort to the prosecutor, according to the judge who first handled Murray's case.

Fortunately, the bar itself disagreed. And the state bar court agrees with its harsher assessment. It's not a straight-up trade of life-for-possible-life, but it's far more than was originally recommended.

After independently reviewing the record (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 9.12), we agree with the courts of record in this matter. We find that Murray deliberately created and inserted a fraudulent document into a criminal prosecution while he was actively negotiating a resolution by plea agreement. This altered evidence bore no indicia of being a "prank," and Murray made no prompt effort thereafter to control the consequences. Murray's behavior is wholly inappropriate and unbecoming of an experienced prosecutor, who is expected to adhere to the highest standards of ethical conduct and to act as a gatekeeper to the fair administration of justice. We therefore recommend a one-year actual suspension to protect the public and to maintain integrity and confidence in the legal profession.

Murray sought the 30-day suspension, feeling that his actions were only "gross negligence," as the previous judge had ruled. But the state bar court sees it differently. This wasn't just negligence. It was a purposeful distortion of the justice system -- something that cannot possibly described as merely a "joke gone bad." It was something no one on the prosecution side found even remotely funny, nor could they recall anything like this happening before.

Hinman's supervisor, Chief Deputy Kang, said he had never seen a prosecutor play a joke like this on a public defender in his office. When asked whether he thought Murray was joking, he testified: "Maybe, in some measure, in Mr. Murray's mind, this was funny. I don't see it as a joke."

Similarly, when Officer Martinez was asked his opinion of Murray's actions, he testified: "I didn't think it was funny." He further testified that in his experience as a law enforcement officer, he had never before seen or heard of a prosecutor doing something like this.

Not only did Murray harm his own case and the reputation of the DA's office, but he also hurt the very people he's supposed to be protecting. The dismissal of charges means the 10-year-old victim's allegations will never be fully addressed. Murray's "joke" cost her a chance at justice. He doesn't just have to look the defense in the eye and admit he screwed everything up. He also has to look a child in the eye and try to explain why he single-handedly destroyed her case.

Filed Under: california, confession, robert murray, transcript