By Federale
02/13/2024
Many are surprised at the failure of the Special Counsel (S.C.) appointed by Merrick Garland to prosecute President Joe Biden for his criminal violations of the Espionage Act of 1917 and other laws that regulate the possession of classified information. In summary, the case against Biden was open and shut. Biden illegally retained classified information, in fact stealing many documents from a Secure Classified Information Facility (SCIF) when he was a Senator, as well as retaining classified information from when he was Vice President.
Possession of classified information is restricted to those with both an appropriate clearance and a need-to-know, neither of which Biden had when he left office, either as Senator or Vice President. The Espionage Act is what is called a nonspecific intent statute, that is there is no specific intent needed to violate the law. The Act is a general intent crime, which basically means that if you did the act, then intent is presumed, much like a traffic offense. If you were recorded as speeding, then you’re guilty of speeding; there is no need for the prosecution to prove you intended to speed. This is different from crimes like murder, a specific intent crime, where the prosecution must prove you intended to commit the crime. In fact, the 1917 statute specifically states that gross negligence is grounds for prosecution, which means mere possession is sufficient to show a violation.
However, the S.C., one Robert Hur, and yes, that is not an American name, it’s Korean, declined to prosecute Biden because he thought Biden’s defense would be “I’m an old man who forgets a lot.” Now, that is not a defense, but an appeal to jury nullification. In fact, Biden would have to testify to his forgetfulness and geniality for that defense to play out. Of course, any competent prosecutor could tear Biden apart on the witness stand. But for some reason, Hur did not want to force Biden into that position.
I spent 28 years in Federal law enforcement and spent many fruitless hours presenting cases for criminal prosecution to Assistant United States Attorneys (AUSAs), who, under the supervision of a presidentially appointed United States Attorney (USA), prosecute Federal cases. Most AUSAs are lazy and only want easy cases. One reason is that in the annual evaluations by their managers, the most important metric is how many cases were successfully prosecuted. Consequently, that is why there are so many drug cases prosecuted: those cases are easy and have great jury appeal. But more important, drug cases are plea-deal cases, and that is how an AUSA keeps his job or gets a Quality Step Increase or performance-based cash award: lots of plea deals.
The easiest way to get a plea deal is, as one particularly aggressive AUSA I worked with for many years said, make the defendant eat a shit sandwich.
Obviously no one wants to eat a shit sandwich and that seems like something difficult to force on someone looking at the shit sandwich of prison time. But an aggressive AUSA does that by stacking charges. Stacking charges is the application of multiple criminal charges on a single criminal act.
Let me give an example. Take a very common and widespread Federal crime, fraud in the disaster assistance benefits administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). There is not just one Federal crime when an individual defrauds the Federal government of such monies, there are several.
The first and most obvious is the general fraud charge in Title 18 of the United States Code (USC), which is the general criminal code for Federal law, though other Titles cover other applicable offenses, such as Title 8, which covers immigration law, both for benefits and for criminal offenses.
When an individual acts to defraud FEMA, the primary charge is a violation of Title 18 USC Section 287, False Claims, which covers the attempt, whether successful or not.
During the application, another crime is committed whereby the fraudster makes false statements about his eligibility for the benefits, a violation of Title 18 USC Section 1001, False Statements.
Then, if the fraud is successful, then there is an additional charge, a violation of Title 18 USC Section 641, Theft of Federal Property.
Then there is the manner of how the crime was committed. Did the fraudster apply on-line for the disaster benefits for which he was not entitled by law? That is a separate violation, with a much harsher penalty, Title 18 USC 1343, Wire Fraud.
Receiving the payment for the fraudulently obtained benefits is a separate offense, if received electronically by wire transfer: see 18 USC 1343. If a check was mailed, then that is a violation of Title 18 USC 1341, Mail Fraud. Maybe the defendant mailed in some fraudulent supporting documents: then there is an additional mail fraud charge and an additional false statement charge.
Mail and wire fraud are very serious statutes, with the possibility for a 20-year sentence for a single offense. And any conviction runs the risk of the sentence for each being cumulative rather than consecutive. The seriousness of possible sentences makes defendants eat shit sandwiches.
So, you can see from a single offense, even one of a low dollar amount, the risks are high. But few are forced to eat the whole shit sandwich, they usually only have to eat a small part, and the criminal defendant eats a small portion of the shit sandwich because he does not want to eat the whole shit sandwich. This is called stacking and getting a plea deal. Everyone is a winner: The defendant doesn’t have to eat the whole shit sandwich, the public gets a bad guy off the streets, the AUSA gets a conviction stat, and the court can close a case and move on.
Which brings us to the question of why our Korean-American S.C. did not make Joe Biden eat a shit sandwich. Obviously the fix was in. But why? One reason is our broken immigration system. For some reason we are allowing in groups of clannish immigrants who want to protect their own.
But Joe Biden isn’t Korean. Yes, but Biden’s top aide involved in the story, Kathy Chung, the same aide whom Joe Biden has blamed for the transfer of top-secret records from his Vice Presidency to his garage in Delaware and other places, is Korean.
Chung is thrown under the bus at 5:10.
Kathy Chung, Mr. Biden’s former assistant, gave a voluntary, transcribed interview to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on April 4. She testified that she and another aide packed up the outgoing vice president’s office at the end of the Obama administration, placing folders and other items in boxes. Those boxes were then taken to a government transition facility before eventually ending up at the offices of the Penn Biden Center in Washington, a think tank run by the University of Pennsylvania where Mr. Biden kept an office, Chung testified…
According to a partial transcript from Democratic staff on the committee, Chung testified that she and another Biden assistant, Ann Marie Person, worked quickly to help pack up the vice presidential office before Donald Trump took office. She testified that she didn’t notice any classified material at any point in the process. Chung said she had a security clearance and experience handling classified material while she was in the vice president’s office.
Former Biden Aide Told House Committee How Classified Documents Ended Up At Private Office, by Arden Farhi and Kathryn Watson, CBS News, May 3, 2023
So, would the notoriously ethnocentric Koreans do anything to each other in the white man’s country? Of course not. Hur was just protecting his fellow countryman, a fellow Korean.
Also, Hur is a protégé of the notorious Rod Rosenstein and the execrable Christopher Wray. Rosenstein was the éminence grise behind the Russiagate fraudulent investigation and Wray is behind the ongoing persecution of pro-lifers, whites like Derek Chauvin, and anyone associated with Donald Trump.
The fix was in. Any prosecutor with minimal experience could have prosecuted not only Biden, but all of his aides involved in the theft of classified information. Hur could have made Biden, Chung, and others eat shit sandwiches. But instead of announcing an indictment of Chung and Ann Marie Person as a prelude to a trial of Biden after he left office (DOJ policy is not to indict a sitting president), Hur just gave up. And gave up on making the world’s biggest shit sandwich.
Hur could have obtained an indictment for each individual document that was found in Biden’s garage, at his university think tank, and at other locations. That would be dozens of violations of the Espionage Act, as well as violations of Title 18 USC Section 2314, Transportation Of Stolen Goods, and a violation of 18 USC Section 371, Conspiracy, for each document.
If Hur had started with Chung and Person, he could have gotten easy plea deals and had them ready to testify against Biden. This is the classic way to bring down the Big Guys, roll up their subordinates, make them eat a shit sandwich, then use their potential testimony to make the Big Guy eat a shit sandwich.
Instead, Hur just rolled over, whether to protect a fellow Korean or because he is part of the Deep State, but let it be known, he could have gone down as putting Joe Biden’s hide on his office wall.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.