Tag Archives: criminal investigation

Alan Dershowitz: In regards to Fani Willis, who will prosecute the prosecutors?

Fani Willis

“When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.” ~Thomas Jefferson

Important Takeaways:

  • Fani Willis Is Probably Guilty of Perjury: Who Will Prosecute the Prosecutors?
  • If Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis were prosecuting Citizen Fani Willis and her former boyfriend Nathan Wade for perjury, conspiracy and obstruction of justice, she would have an extremely strong case.
  • Based on this and other incriminating evidence, the real issue is not whether this pair should be allowed to continue to prosecute the case against Trump, but instead whether this pair should be investigated, indicted and convicted of serious crimes.
  • The presiding judge in the case has no power to commence a criminal investigation or prosecution. But other law enforcement authorities do. If they fail, they will be damaging the rule of law, the integrity of the US legal system and the waning trust that many Americans already have in equal justice.
  • Who will guard the guardians? More specifically, who will prosecute the prosecutors? The facts of this case demand criminal investigation.

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U.S. Justice Department Russia probe review now criminal investigation: source

U.S. Justice Department Russia probe review now criminal investigation: source
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. Justice Department review of the origins of the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election is now a criminal investigation, a person familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

The person, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, declined to say whether a grand jury had been convened in the investigation, which was first reported by the New York Times.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr launched a review earlier this year to investigate President Donald Trump’s complaints that his campaign was improperly targeted by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies during the 2016 election.

Democrats and some former law enforcement officials say Barr is using the Justice Department to chase unsubstantiated conspiracy theories that could benefit the Republican president politically and undermine former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

The Democratic chairmen of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees blasted the reported move, saying it raised “profound new concerns” that Barr had turned the department into “a vehicle for President Trump’s political revenge.”

“If the Department of Justice may be used as a tool of political retribution or to help the President with a political narrative for the next election, the rule of law will suffer new and irreparable damage,” Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Adam Schiff said in a statement late Thursday night.

As part of his inquiry, Barr has asked Australian and British justice officials for assistance and visited Italy twice, meeting intelligence agents in Rome in August and September to learn more about people mentioned in Mueller’s report. Trump has also contacted foreign officials over the review, the department has said.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte this week said that the meetings established that Italy had no information in the matter and was not involved. A letter reviewed by Reuters showed Australia offered to assist in May.

Mueller’s investigation found that Moscow interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump, and led to criminal convictions of several former campaign aides. But Mueller concluded that he did not have enough evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy with Russia.

Barr appointed Connecticut State Attorney John Durham to lead the review of whether U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies acted properly when they examined possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, which ultimately led to the Mueller investigation.

Trump, who calls the Russia investigation a witch hunt and a hoax, says U.S. officials launched the probe to undermine his chances of winning the White House, although he and his supporters have provided no evidence.

Trump is also grappling with a Democratic-led impeachment inquiry focused on his request in a July telephone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, who is a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination to face Trump in the 2020 election.

Schiff is leading the impeachment inquiry being conducted along with the House foreign Affairs and Oversight panels.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Writing by Mohammad Zargham and Susan Heavey; Editing by Eric Beech, Peter Cooney and Giles Elgood)

Five Vale staff and contractors arrested after Brazil dam disaster

A view of a dam owned by Brazilian mining company Vale SA after it collapsed, in Brumadinho, Brazil January 29, 2019. REUTERS/Adriano Machado

By Pedro Fonseca and Gram Slattery

RIO DE JANEIRO/BRUMADINHO, Brazil (Reuters) – Three employees of Brazilian miner Vale and two contractors were arrested on Tuesday, prosecutors said, as a criminal investigation began after a devastating dam rupture expected to leave a death toll of more than 300 people.

Vale said it was cooperating with investigators in the case, which has enraged Brazilians and raised fresh questions about the company’s commitment to safety after a similar dam burst just over three years ago at a nearby mine it jointly owned.

Two of those arrested were Vale’s senior managers at the Corrego do Feijao mine, where a tailings dam broke on Friday, hammering the nearby town of Brumadinho with a flood of mining waste – according to a court order seen by Reuters. The job of the third Vale employee was not immediately clear.

Two other engineers, who worked on behalf of Vale and are accused of attesting to the safety of the dam, were arrested in Sao Paulo, state prosecutors there said.

Minas Gerais state investigators issued a total of five arrest warrants and seven search warrants on suspicion of murder, falsification of documents and environmental crimes, a judge’s decision showed.

The collapse of the dam in the hilly, pastoral region has caused 65 confirmed deaths so far, according to firefighters’ count on Monday night, with another 279 people missing and likely dead.

Chief Financial Officer Luciano Siani said Vale was doing all it could, offering money to mourners, extra tax payments to local government, a special membrane to remove mud from the river and major investments to make its dams safer.

Members of a rescue team search for victims after a tailings dam owned by Brazilian mining company Vale SA collapsed, in Brumadinho, Brazil January 28, 2019. REUTERS/Washington Alves

Members of a rescue team search for victims after a tailings dam owned by Brazilian mining company Vale SA collapsed, in Brumadinho, Brazil January 28, 2019. REUTERS/Washington Alves

Yet residents in the devastated town of Brumadinho have been unmoved, watching in shock and anger as one dead body after another has been pulled from the mud.

Following a deadly 2015 tailings dam collapse just a few towns over at a mine half-owned by Vale, the disaster remained unforgivable in the eyes of many Brazilians.

“Vale is destroying Minas Gerais,” said Robinson Passos, 52, who lost a cousin and friends in Brumadinho.

“There’s anger, sadness, everything,” he said, holding back tears as he surveyed the destruction in Corrego do Feijao, a hamlet within Brumadinho that gave its name to the mine at the center of the disaster.

‘PREMEDITATED’

At the headquarters for the local mining union, which lost more than one in 10 members by organizers’ count, treasurer José Francisco Mateiro, blamed the company and authorities for putting him and his comrades at risk.

“They call it an accident but the design of those dams was premeditated,” he said. “There have been warnings about all mining dams for a long time now.”

Vale CEO Fabio Schvartsman said the facility was up to code and equipment had shown the dam was stable just two weeks before the collapse.

“We are 100 percent within all the standards, and that didn’t do it,” he said in a Sunday TV interview.

Siani said the company would donate 100,000 reais ($26,600) to each family that had lost a loved one, adding the company would continue paying mining royalties to Brumadinho despite a halt in operations there.

The company was building a membrane to stop the flow of mud now snaking down the Paraopeba River. A “bold” investment plan also would speed the process of making dams more secure, he said.

Prosecutors and politicians have not been impressed.

On Monday, a presidential task force contemplated forcing out Vale’s management. Government ministers have said Brazil’s mining regulations are broken. The country’s top prosecutor said the company should be criminally prosecuted and executives held personally responsible.

(Reporting by Gram Slattery in Brumadinho and Pedro Fonseca in Rio de Janeiro; Additional reporting by Marta Nogueira and Gabriel Stargardter in Rio de Janeiro; Editing by Mark Potter and Bill Trott)

At least 64 people, some children, killed in Russian mall fire

Still photo taken from video provided by Russian Emergencies Ministry shows a site of a fire at a shopping mall in Kemerovo, Russia March 25, 2018. Russian Emergencies Ministry/Handout via REUTERS

By Maria Kiselyova and Christian Lowe

MOSCOW (Reuters) – At least 64 people were killed by a fire which engulfed a busy shopping mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo, Russian investigators said on Monday, and some of the dead were children.

The fire, one of the deadliest in Russia since the break-up of the Soviet Union, swept through the upper floors of the “Winter Cherry” shopping center on Sunday afternoon where a cinema complex and children’s play area were located.

Emergency services said they had extinguished the blaze, but later said it had reignited, and that rescuers were struggling to reach the building’s upper floors because the roof had collapsed. TV footage on Monday showed thick black smoke rising from the yellow building.

A man reacts at the scene of a fire in a shopping mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo, Russia March 25, 2018. REUTERS/Marina Lisova

A man reacts at the scene of a fire in a shopping mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo, Russia March 25, 2018. REUTERS/Marina Lisova

It was unclear if any people were still unaccounted for, but 11 people were being treated in hospital, including an 11-year-old boy who was in a serious condition.

Earlier on Monday, people had posted appeals on social media seeking news of their relatives or friends, and authorities set up a center in a school near the mall to deal with inquiries.

Anna Kuznetsova, Russia’s children’s rights commissioner, said the fire had been caused by incompetence and warned there were many similar shopping centers.

“Other regions, the bosses of other malls must right now, without waiting for (routine) checks, ask themselves: Have we done everything we can to ensure something like this doesn’t happen here,” Kuznetsova said in a statement.

The shopping mall, a former cake factory, had few windows or doors.

CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION

Witnesses were quoted by Russian media as saying that the fire alarm had failed to go off, and that many people had found themselves trapped because exit doors were locked.

Video footage from inside the mall after the fire broke out showed a group of people in a smoke-filled staircase trying to smash a fire exit door, which was jammed.

Russia’s Channel One TV station reported that some people had jumped from upper windows to escape the flames.

State investigators, who have opened a criminal investigation into the blaze, said four people had been detained over the fire, including the owners and lessees of outlets inside the mall. Russia’s Investigative Committee, which handles major crimes, said it was trying to bring in the mall’s owner for questioning.

The Interfax news agency cited an unnamed local official source as saying the main theory being looked at was that the fire had been caused by an electrical short circuit.

However, it quoted Vladimir Chernov, the region’s deputy governor, as saying on Sunday that the blaze had started when a child had set fire to the foam on a trampoline in a play area using a lighter.

State TV said the mall had opened in 2013.

President Vladimir Putin, elected to a new term last weekend, spoke by telephone with the governor of the Kemerovo region and with the head of the Emergency Situations Ministry whom he dispatched to the scene.

Russia’s health minister, Veronika Skvortsova, flew to Kemerovo, a coal-producing region about 3,600 km (2,200 miles) east of Moscow, and visited the injured in hospital.

Putin “expressed his deep condolences to the relatives and loved ones of those who died,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

Mourners left flowers near the scene of the blaze.

Other big fires in Russia have often turned out to be the result of serious violations of fire safety regulations.

In 2009, 156 people were killed in the city of Perm when an indoor pyrotechnics display at a nightclub went wrong. The owner of that nightclub was convicted of negligence and sentenced to almost a decade in prison.

(Writing by Christian Lowe and Andrew Osborn; Editing by Andrew Heavens)