Posted on 05/10/2016 4:11:28 PM PDT by DaxtonBrown
It reads like a cast of characters for a detective film noir: powerful politicians, shady businessmen, high-ranking law officers and an idealistic, persistent prosecutor.
The plot includes allegations of corruption, cover-ups and the naked exercise of power.
Let's title this movie "Rogue Runner" — only this story is not fiction. It's the code name Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings has given the sprawling probe he has spun off from the investigation that ensnared former Utah Attorneys General Mark Shurtleff and John Swallow.
And now, in a dramatic twist, Rawlings wants a state grand jury this summer to hear the evidence he has amassed and consider possible criminal indictments.
(Excerpt) Read more at sltrib.com ...
I thought Mike Lee was choir boy.
With your insight & considering the political system, what’s the chances of actual indictments and even convictions?
“Casino”? Did you mean “Dirty Harry”?
Thanks for posting.
The gang of 535 should be in federal prison with many former members.
HOORAY Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings.
The men being investigated all wear the same underwear. Could be interesting if it really goes somewhere.
“I thought Mike Lee was choir boy.”
It seems he might have gotten caught up with AGs John Swallow and John Shurtleff who were in turn taking money from launderers Richard Rawle and Jeremy Johnson. But I don’t have the details. The real target should be Reid, I now know he is dirtier than you can imagine.
Here is a link to the fifth edition of my book. My website is down (a crashed server). I will have more info there in the next weeks.
z....I believe this is the picture where Robert D’Niro played the part of a Casino owner or manager.
Didn’t end well.
Popcorn! Gitcher popcorn heah!
“With your insight & considering the political system, what’s the chances of actual indictments and even convictions?”
The best they’ve ever been. However, multiple levels of obstruction and witness tampering.
But now there is so much background history of bribes and extortion that a solid case can be made. Here’s a side case that people need to know about:
https://www.gofundme.com/cjmdt8dt
“HOORAY Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings”
a true hero.
(snip)
The criminal cases came about 10 months after a 2013 announcement that federal authorities would bow out of prosecuting either man — despite a long FBI investigation into the allegations.
Federal officials provided no reason for the decision.
(snip)
This time, Ed Sullivan
/snips
This time a really BIG SHOE is going to drop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnNM-vZoaHw
Kabuki Theater Presents
“I believe this is the picture where Robert D’Niro played the part of a Casino owner or manager.”
I now know a lot more than was in Casino. What happened before and after. Truly scary stuff.
Thanks very much for the link in post #10. How deep the rat hole? How high the corruption/obstruction?
You would use the law to oppose socialism? But it is upon the law that socialism itself relies. Socialists desire to practice legal plunder, not illegal plunder. Socialists, like all other monopolists, desire to make the law their own weapon. And when once the law is on the side of socialism, how can it be used against socialism? For when plunder is abetted by the law, it does not fear your courts, your gendarmes, and your prisons. Rather, it may call upon them for help.
“The Law” - Frederic Bastiat
and....
The Salt Lake Tribune
Feds sue, allege Johnson illegally donated to Mike Lee, Harry Reid and former Utah A.G.
By TOM HARVEY | and Robert Gehrke | The Salt Lake Tribune connect
First Published Jun 19 2015 09:15PM • Last Updated Feb 17 2016 03:02 pm
Indicted St. George businessman Jeremy Johnson illegally funneled tens of thousands of dollars to Sens. Harry Reid and Mike Lee as well as then-Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, according to a new federal lawsuit.
In a complaint filed Friday in Salt Lake City’s U.S. District Court, the Federal Election Commission accused Johnson of giving about $50,000 to Lee’s 2010 campaign after John Swallow, Shurtleff’s top aide and handpicked successor, advised him that the Republican Senate hopeful, if elected, could influence the selection of Utah’s next U.S. attorney, who then could protect Johnson’s business interests.
“Johnson has reported that Swallow said to him: ‘[I]t is important that we raise this money and make Mike Lee our guy,’ “ according to the complaint. “ ‘[H]e is going to be choosing the next U.S. attorney and you gotta have him in your corner and you gotta have the U.S. attorney in your corner, especially while you are processing poker [payments] in this district.’ “
At the time, federal law limited campaign contributions to $2,400 per person, per election. The FEC alleges that Johnson gave tens of thousands of dollars to friends and associates to make so-called “straw donations” as a way to dodge those caps.
There is no indication in the complaint that Lee, Shurtleff or Reid knew Johnson was making illegal donations to their campaigns.
“At no time during the 2010 campaign, was Senator Lee or anyone associated with the Lee campaign aware of any unlawful contributions to the Lee campaign,” Boyd Matheson, Lee’s chief of staff, said Friday. “The documents obtained by investigators confirm that the scheme was known only to individuals who may have been involved as stated in the report.”
Shurtleff’s attorney, Richard Van Wagoner, said that his client “relied on his professional campaign finance staff to accept only legal contributions, and he had no knowledge of prohibited donations, if any, to his Senate campaign.”
“We know nothing about Mr. Johnson’s latest legal problems with the Federal Election Commission,” said Reid spokeswoman Kristen Orthman.
Swallow’s lawyer could not be reached Friday evening.
The FEC complaint says Johnson enlisted straw donors to kick in $20,000 to the 2010 re-election push of Nevada’s Reid, the Senate’s Democratic leader. The aim, again, was to shield Johnson businesses, which then included a southern Utah operation that processed online-poker payments.
Johnson said Friday that the FEC complaint stems from interviews he gave investigators pursuing multiple criminal charges against Swallow and Shurtleff.
“For my cooperation, I was guaranteed immunity. In other words, the information I shared in those confidential meetings with the FBI and state agents, I was told, would not be used to hurt me in any way. For reasons yet to be explained to me, that very information is now being used against me by the Federal Election Commission Election Commission,” he said in an emailed statement. “I am stunned. I can’t imagine anybody who wouldn’t be outraged if they were in my shoes.”
Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings, who along with Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill investigated Swallow and is now prosecuting Shurtleff, backed, to some extent, Johnson’s version of events.
“There is more truth than fiction to Jeremy Johnson’s statement,” Rawlings wrote in an email late Friday. “In exchange for his significant cooperation, he is getting screwed by the United States government. I have demanded to know why and exactly who is behind this.”
Swallow acted as a chief fundraiser for Shurtleff, a former three-term attorney general, when the latter was exploring a run in 2009 against incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah.
Shurtleff dropped out of the race. By the time he did so, however, Johnson already had contributed about $100,000 to his campaign through straw donors, the FEC complaint
(snip)
The criminal cases came about 10 months after a 2013 announcement that federal authorities would bow out of prosecuting either man — despite a long FBI investigation into the allegations.
Federal officials provided no reason for the decision.
/snip
The states have become the stomping grounds for socialists.
The most important question that was ever proposed to your decision, or to the decision of any people under heaven, is before you, and you are to decide upon it by men of your own election, chosen specially for this purpose. If the constitution, offered to your acceptance, be a wise one, calculated to preserve the invaluable blessings of liberty, to secure the inestimable rights of mankind, and promote human happiness, then, if you accept it, you will lay a lasting foundation of happiness for millions yet unborn; generations to come will rise up and call you blessed. You may rejoice in the prospects of this vast extended continent becoming filled with freemen, who will assert the dignity of human nature. You may solace yourselves with the idea, that society, in this favoured land, will fast advance to the highest point of perfection; the human mind will expand in knowledge and virtue, and the golden age be, in some measure, realised. But if, on the other hand, this form of government contains principles that will lead to the subversion of liberty — if it tends to establish a despotism, or, what is worse, a tyrannic aristocracy; then, if you adopt it, this only remaining assylum for liberty will be shut up, and posterity will execrate your memory.
Momentous then is the question you have to determine, and you are called upon by every motive which should influence a noble and virtuous mind, to examine it well, and to make up a wise judgment. It is insisted, indeed, that this constitution must be received, be it ever so imperfect. If it has its defects, it is said, they can be best amended when they are experienced. But remember, when the people once part with power, they can seldom or never resume it again but by force. Many instances can be produced in which the people have voluntarily increased the powers of their rulers; but few, if any, in which rulers have willingly abridged their authority. This is a sufficient reason to induce you to be careful, in the first instance, how you deposit the powers of government.
So far therefore as its powers reach, all ideas of confederation are given up and lost. It is true this government is limited to certain objects, or to speak more properly, some small degree of power is still left to the states, but a little attention to the powers vested in the general government, will convince every candid man, that if it is capable of being executed, all that is reserved for the individual states must very soon be annihilated, except so far as they are barely necessary to the organization of the general government. The powers of the general legislature extend to every case that is of the least importance — there is nothing valuable to human nature, nothing dear to freemen, but what is within its power. It has authority to make laws which will affect the lives, the liberty, and property of every man in the United States; nor can the constitution or laws of any state, in any way prevent or impede the full and complete execution of every power given. The legislative power is competent to lay taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; — there is no limitation to this power…
And are by this clause invested with the power of making all laws, proper and necessary, for carrying all these into execution; and they may so exercise this power as entirely to annihilate all the state governments, and reduce this country to one single government. And if they may do it, it is pretty certain they will; for it will be found that the power retained by individual states, small as it is, will be a clog upon the wheels of the government of the United States; the latter therefore will be naturally inclined to remove it out of the way. Besides, it is a truth confirmed by the unerring experience of ages, that every man, and every body of men, invested with power, are ever disposed to increase it, and to acquire a superiority over every thing that stands in their way. This disposition, which is implanted in human nature, will operate in the federal legislature to lessen and ultimately to subvert the state authority, and having such advantages, will most certainly succeed, if the federal government succeeds at all.
In a free republic…
Brutus #1 - Anti-federalist
I thought Mike Lee was choir boy.
Thank God we found out that Cruz and Lee and a disgrace. Down with both. Fake Conservatives are not needed. Lee supporting Cruz (a little) was the end for that creep.
“How deep the rat hole?”
take the movie Casino, duplicate it about 6 times over 45 years. bribes, extortion, titty bars, loansharking, online casinos, marijuana licenses, land deals.
“For when plunder is abetted by the law, it does not fear your courts, your gendarmes, and your prisons. Rather, it may call upon them for help.”
All the mob lawyers are involved.
HOORAY Taylor Johnson (link post #10)
Great post and perspective, Daxton Brown. Thanks. BTTT
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