Mick Jagger is on the mend.

Question: What part of the college admissions cheating scandal is interesting to you? The scam itself, the coaches, proctors and test takers, the parents, and if so, what about them: their wealth or their sense of entitlement, the students, the charges, the way they were arrested, why some are pleading guilty and others aren't, or something else? [If the answer is none of it, just scroll on by, no need to tell us, I'm going to write about it anyway].

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Lawyer and TV pundit Michael Avenatti has been charged in federal court in Los Angeles with 36 counts of fraud, tax crimes, obstruction and related offenses. The charges principally relate to his use of settlement money received for clients for his own use, and failing to pay his taxes. The U.S. Attorney's long announcement is here. The even longer Indictment is here.

There are four clients highlighted in the charges "client 1" client 2 client 3 and client 4. Client 1 is a parapalegic for whom he (and co-counsel) obtained a $4 million settlement from the City of Los Angeles. The unnmamed client is Geoffrey Ernest Johnson. The case is 13-cv-04496-MMM-AJW in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. In one pleading I read, Doc. 119, Avenatti and cocounsel describe their client:

Plaintiff is a paraplegic who sustained his life altering injuries while in Defendants’ custody at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility. Plaintiff sustained his injuries when he attempted to commit suicide for a second time while in Defendants’ custody. Both times it was by jumping from an upper tier. Since Plaintiff was an inmate in Defendants’ custody, Defendants and their employees had a constitutional obligation to take reasonable measures to protect Plaintiff’s safety and to provide safe conditions of confinement.

[More...]

Julian Assange has been arrested and removed from the Ecuador Embassy in London, where he has spent the last 7 years, due to the return of an Indictment in the U.S. charging him with conspiring with Chelsea Manning and others to commit conspiracy intrusion. The charge carries up to five years in prison. The Indictment is available here.

Assange, arrested by British police in London and carried out of Ecuador’s embassy, faces up to five years in prison on the American charge, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement. His arrest paved the way for his possible extradition to the United States.

The Indictment was obtained in March 2018 and sealed until today. [More...]

Once again, Donald Trump has catered to his underninformed, xenophobic voter base. He met with Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen Sunday and asked for her resignation, which she readily provided. She'd had enough.

While the 30-minute meeting was cordial, Mr. Trump was determined to ask for her resignation. After the meeting, she submitted it.

What happened? [More...]

I'm still buried under with work, but I am hoping to take a little break to blog and barbecue this weekend.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Mick Jagger has had a heart procedure performed at a New York hospital and is feeling fine. The show will go on, just at later dates, most likely beginning in July.

The procedure is called "transcatheter aortic valve replacement." (Is that a fancy name for a stent?) Billboard reports:

Doctors were able to access Jagger's heart valve through his femoral artery and are now monitoring the Rolling Stones frontman for any complications that could arise from the procedure, including excess bleeding.

Get well, Mick. And please reschedule Denver!

Update: Answer to my question: Yes, it is kind of like a stent.

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman-Loera has filed a motion for an evidentiary hearing on the issue of whether flagrant and admitted juror misconduct during the trial warrants a new trial.

I wrote this long post on the juror misconduct when it was first disclosed.

The 26 page motion is available here. It was written by attorneys Marc Frenich and Jeffrey Lichtman (and very well done in my opinion).

I doubt this judge will allow the defense to question the jurors, but hopefully he'll at least agree to question them himself and ask written questions proposed by both sides.

Prosecutors in Chicago today dropped all charges against "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett, who had been charged with 16 felonies for allegedly directing a hate crime against himself.

Jussie continues to maintain his innocence. The AP has a curious statement in its article:

It was not immediately clear what prompted the decision to dismiss the case. Typically, a minimum condition of dropping cases is some acceptance of responsibility.

That's obviously wrong. It suggests that cases are never dropped because police make mistakes and the defendant is innocent. Why would a person who has been falsely charged accept responsibility for anything? Shouldn't the police or DA be accepting responsibility for rushing to judgment and filing charges it decides a few weeks later it cannot prove? Innocence may or may not be why Smollet's charges were dropped, but it is a reason many other people's charges are dropped. Not everyone who is arrested and charged is guilty.

There is no statement by the DA's office that they dropped the case because Jussie is innocent. [More...]

I apologize for the lack of open threads recently. It's because I start one and try to include something worthwhile and end up writing half a novel about a topic and then get diverted to something else and never finish it.

So here's an empty open thread, all topics welcome.

Months ago, Michael Avenatti, the abrasive TV pundit and lawyer for Stormy Daniels, was suggesting he should be President. Today, he was charged in Federal Court with two sets of crimes:

Lawyer Michael Avenatti was hit with a one-two punch of federal charges on Monday: an allegation in New York that he tried to extort Nike for up to $25 million and an accusation in California that he misappropriated a client’s settlement money.

....Minutes later, on the opposite coast, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman told reporters that Avenatti had “used legal and extortionate threats with the purpose of obtaining millions of dollars in payments for himself”—an old-fashioned shakedown.

Here is the Press Release from the SDNY. The Criminal Complaint and Affidavit is here. [More...]

We knew Donald Trump wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but who knew he can't even read?

Trump claimed today Mueller's report on the Special Counsel's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and obstruction of justice exonerates him. Attorney General Barr's four page letter contains this direct quote from Mueller's report: (link fixed)

The Special Counsel states that "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

Either Donnie can't read, or he didn't have the attention span to make it to page three of a four page letter. Take your pick.

[For those of you too young to remember the song, it's "Johnny Can't Read" which was released in 1982.]

Robert Mueller has turned in his report on Russia. What's in it? No one knows. Attorney General Robert Barr says he will update Congress this weekend.

Since there have been no announcements of new arrests, I assume D.Jr. skated on charges of lying to Congress. As soon as Trump announced it's okay with him if Mueller's report gets released, I figured that would be the anti-climatic ending.