Justice Department corruption has to stop
One big reason not to vote for Paxton in Texas: `He's a crook'
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Investigations started by the Justice Department against Donald Trump were brought because of his misdeeds.
Investigations started by the Justice Department against Trump’s opponents have been brought for revenge.
Enough already!
CNN reported on Wednesday that magazine writer E. Jean Carroll was being investigated by the Justice Department for perjury during her testimony in the sexual assault trial against President Trump.
Carroll won a $5 million judgment against Trump for sexual assault when he was out of office, then another $82 million judgment when he continued to defame her after the first judgment.
Trump has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the judgments and has not paid Carroll any of the money owed to her so far.
CNN was told by an anonymous source that Carroll is now being investigated for perjury during the civil lawsuits.
Carroll is being accused of lying about whether outside funding was behind her lawsuit. But at the time, Carroll’s lawyers told the court the financial support was “irrelevant to Carroll’s legal claims and that she had nothing to do with obtaining the outside funding.”
President Trump and his henchman, the acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who defended him in the Carroll case, are intent on going after every person who ever tried to hold the president accountable for his misdeeds.
The list is long and seems to get longer every single day.
CNN reported Blanche has recused himself from the probe because of his representation of Trump in the Carroll case.
“The probe is the latest move in the department’s ceaseless, and somewhat strained, efforts to meet Trump’s demands to target his longstanding personal foes,” CNN wrote. “Under acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the department has pushed to speed up Trump’s campaign of retribution. But the cases he’s brought since taking the reins of the department in April have been heavily criticized and are likely to face challenges in court over allegations of politicization.”
Reuters has produced a website that chronicles the extent of the retribution handed out by Trump and his Justice Department.
It is frightening.
Reuters found that at least 470 people, organizations and institutions have been targeted for retribution since Trump took office a second time. Some were singled out for punishment, others swept up in broader purges of perceived enemies. The count excludes foreign individuals, institutions and governments.
In a March 2023 speech, Trump said “I am your retribution.”
He is making good on that promise.
Reuters points out that payback has often been based on ideological grounds:
At the same time, Trump and his appointees have used the government to enforce ideology: ousting military leaders deemed “woke,” slashing funds for cultural institutions held to be divisive, and freezing research grants to universities that embraced diversity initiatives.
Reuters also made this statement:
Reuters reached out to every person and institution that Trump or his subordinates singled out publicly for retribution, and reviewed hundreds of official orders, directives and public records. The result: the most comprehensive accounting yet of his campaign of payback.
Trump was found guilty in May 2023 by a federal jury in New York of sexually abusing Carroll in a department store dressing room in the mid 1990s. She was awarded $5 million by a jury and the verdict was upheld on appeal. His request for a new trial was also rejected.
And now the Justice Department is going after an 80-year-old woman.
This is America today.
Journey continues
One thing I’ve learned about having a play in production is that it is never really finished.
As I’ve gradually worked myself north this week, I’ve also been working diligently on another draft of my play.
The Last American Newspaper, which will premier at Capital Repertory Theatre on Sept. 25 for 26 shows through Oct. 19, is scheduled for an invitation-only “industry reading” on Tuesday, June 9 in New York City.
The performance space is literally on Broadway.
I found out last week that veteran Broadway actor, Sebastian Arcelus, will be playing me in the reading. You may know Arcelus more for his TV work — he actually played a journalist in House of Cards and was a main character on Madam Secretary.
It’s all very heady and encouraging that there is interest in the story about the role small newspapers played in their communities.
As I understand it, the nonprofit news outlet New York Focus is planning on inviting a couple dozen journalism professionals to get their feedback on the production while other “Broadway” professionals will be on hand to see if my play passes muster.
With Arcelus reading the lead, that may draw even more attention to the production.
Returning to the cast are Queensbury natives Nick Baroudi and Beth Pietrangelo as well as David Girard, the artistic director of Troy Foundry. A new addition is Teisha Duncan, an artist in residence at Skidmore College.
Rounding out the cast will be Broadway veteran William Oliver Watkins and Gabra Zackman.
A panel discussion with New York Focus Editor Akash Mehta, director Marcus Kidd, Capital Rep producing artistic director Miriam Weisfeld and me will follow the reading.
Dead presidents
A couple of years ago, I completed my journey of visiting the gravesites of every American president with a visit to the Ronald Reagan Library in California.
Then, President Carter died.
On Wednesday, I completed the journey again with a visit to the humble graves of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter in Plains, Georgia.
Just across the street from the Carter’s home, it is a lovely parklike setting.
The home is currently undergoing renovation and is not open to the public.
Cute couple
Earlier this week, I was watching a segment on cable news about the Senate primary in Texas between Attorney General Ken Paxton and incumbent John Cornyn.
The TV correspondent said he had interviewed a “cute couple” — TV code for over 65 — after they had voted in the primary.
The husband said he voted for Paxton because he felt that Cornyn had not been supportive enough of President Trump’s policies, even though Cornyn had voted for them 99 percent of the time.
Trump endorsed Paxton.
The answer from the man’s wife was shorter, when the TV reporter turned to her.
“He’s a crook,” she said of Paxton.
“There’s an independent for you,” the husband said.
Yeah, that is an independent, I thought. You should not vote for crooks.
For context, Paxton was a state senator who was elected attorney general in 2014, but was soon followed by scandal and was indicted on securities fraud just eight months into being Texas’ top law enforcement official.
He was accused of encouraging investors to put money into a tech company, without informing them he was making a commission on their investments. It took 10 years to resolve the case, and Paxton reached a deal with prosecutors to pay $300,000 in restitution if he did not have to admit guilt.
In 2020, Paxton’s top aides reported to the FBI he was abusing his office. The four aides were fired. A judge later agreed they were fired improperly and awarded them more than $6 million.
In 2023, the Texas House, dominated by Republicans, impeached Paxton on a bipartisan vote; under pressure from Trump, the Texas Senate acquitted him. And then, last year, his wife, state Senator Angela Paxton, filed for divorce on “biblical grounds,” saying Paxton had committed adultery.
In 2023, Paxton was impeached by a bipartisan vote in the Texas House of Representatives on charges he used his office to help a real estate investor but was acquitted following a nine-day trial in the state Senate after Trump weighed in.
Paxton won the primary on Tuesday night, although just 8 percent of Texas voters turned out.
Reporter out
60 Minutes lost one of its regular correspondents this week, when CBS let Sharyn Alfonsi’s contract expire. It came days after late-night TV host Stephen Colbert aired his last show after he was canceled by the network.
Pay attention to what has happened at CBS since Bari Weiss took over.
Alfonsi was in the center of a firestorm over a story she reported about torture at Salvadoran prisons was pulled off the air by Weiss. It ran a couple of weeks later.
In the aftermath, Alfonsi said CBS chose not to negotiate a new contract.
“It sends a chilling message to the entire newsroom,” Ms. Alfonsi told the New York Times. “I think it was a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize accurate reporting.”
Alfonsi remains employed at CBS, but with no contract in place, she told the Times she had no expectation of returning to the news magazine show.
“I’m not resigning,” she said. “If they want me gone because I did my job, they’ll have to fire me.”
Free speech
The U.S. Military Academy at West Point set a policy recently that civilian faculty members need to obtain permission to speak to outside audiences about their areas of expertise.
Judge Cathy Seibel of U.S. District Court in White Plains ruled this week that West Point cannot prevent professor Tim Bakken from expressing his views to students in the classroom.
Bakken, who has taught at West Point for 26 years, sued the academy because its policies violated the First Amendment. He has frequently spoken and written criticisms of the U.S. military.
The New York Times reported that Judge Seibel issued a preliminary injunction, blocking both the approval requirement and the restrictions on Professor Bakken’s speech.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and his play “The Last American Newspaper” is being produced by Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany Sept. 25 to Oct. 18 . He currently lives in both Queensbury, N.Y. and New Orleans, La.
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” - Harry S. Truman
And here we are.
Talk about retribution. The State of New York maintains a 400 acre state park in Westchester and Putnam counties in honor of Trump, the Donald J. Trump New York State Park, as proudly proclaimed on Taconic Parkway highway signs. The park was fraudulently foisted upon the state, illegally created and it exists in violation of the New York state Constitution. It is an insult to the moral integrity of the people of the State of New York and the enduring symbol of Trump's immorality, venality and corruption. No New Yorker will ever be able to escape the retribution of his memory.