Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Too Big to Jail: Amanda Marshall, Hillary's Oregon Avatar



"I love the law," lied Amanda Marshall, who actually just loved putting people in cages.



As we were recently reminded, lying to federal investigators is a monumentally serious criminal offense, except when it isn’t. While the language of the relevant statute is unambiguous, the practice of applying it is a science of single instances, since such decisions depend entirely on the professional identity of the suspect.

Aspiring global imperatrix Hillary Clinton is the most conspicuous recent beneficiary of the “Justice” Department’s deference to the privileged and powerful, but she is not the only one. Former US Attorney for Oregon Amanda Marshall has similarly been spared the prospect of five years in prison by a similar decision not to prosecute her for multiple violations of federal laws during an investigation of her official misconduct.

For more than a year, Marshall – who is married with three children – carried out an affair with a subordinate named Scott M. Klein, who eventually ended the relationship. The affair itself violated standards of professional conduct and, possibly, federal sexual harassment statutes. There is no ambiguity about the fact that Marshall’s behavior after the relationship ended – barraging Klein with unwanted and sexually explicit emails and texts –violated harassment laws

Klein filed a complaint, which prompted an investigation by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General. Marshall, who was still Klein’s superior, lied to investigators about the nature of their former relationship. She also lied to Klein by telling him that he was the one facing official scrutiny and potential prosecution, and advising him not to speak with investigators


Marshall’s actions – which were undertaken with clear criminal intent –constituted deliberate violations of 18 U.S. Code sec. 1001, criminalizing “materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement[s] or representation[s]” to federal investigators, and 18 U.S. Code sec. 1505, which makes it a felony to impede or obstruct a federal investigation. 

Martha Stewart, it should be recalled, was sent to prison after being found guilty of lying to FBI and SEC investigators regarding the details of a stock transaction that was perfectly legal.
“This criminal case is about lying – lying to the FBI, lying to the SEC, lying to investors,” insisted the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York as he announced the charges against Stewart. “Martha Stewart is being prosecuted not for who she is, but because of what she did.”

The official who made that announcement was a rising federal prosecutor named James Comey, who rather famously applied a different standard in a more recent case involving a celebrity suspected of lying to the FBI. 

In April 2015, Marshall resigned from her position as a subsidized accuser, claiming that she was seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. She is now privately practicing law in McMinnville. Her trauma, assuming it existed, was not induced by the prospect of prosecution and possible incarceration. She was never in peril of being treated like a Mundane. 

The OIG announced its findings on June 16 without releasing its report. Marshall, who faces an immeasurably small possibility of professional discipline by the Oregon Bar, offered the most perfunctory gesture of affected contrition, claiming to be “deeply sorry” and promising to “spend the rest of my life trying to make amends.” 

If Amanda Marshall had behaved in precisely the same fashion as an executive in a private corporation, a significant portion of her life would be stolen from her by the system she dutifully served as a prosecutor. Like so many other feeders of Regime’s carceral apparatus, Marshall was a stranger to the concept of official leniency until she was its privileged beneficiary.

“I’ve always been attracted to justice, and I love the law,” Marshall preened in an interview with an Oregon State University alumni magazine. “I’ve always been drawn to the security that the law provides. It is the great equalizer, and the best tool we have for fairness.”

Marshall issued that homily in defense of her aggressive enforcement of federal prohibition statutes against people who produced and sold marijuana for the treatment of health problems – the legitimate kind, rather than those that miraculously materialize as needed by corrupt officials seeking to cultivate public sympathy. Marshall, interestingly, is a representative of that odd tribe we could call "Flower Child Fascists": After being raised in a Bay Area commune where Grace Slick was an occasional visitor, Marshall drove to her first gig as a prosecutor in Oregon's Coos County in a car adorned with a "Question Authority" bumper-sticker. She obviously outgrew the best aspects of her upbringing.

“Could I be a defense attorney now?” Marshall mused in the interview, ultimately concluding that she simply couldn’t fill a role in which she might be expected to lie or misdirect attention from damaging facts.

“If I don’t believe something, I just can’t say it,” she continued, every syllable adding to her moral indictment as a self-preoccupied hypocrite. “I remember I was speaking to some high school kids and they asked me why I was a prosecutor instead of a defense counsel, and I said the first thing that popped into my head: `Because I always get to tell the truth.’”

Prosecutors generically are among the most promiscuous liars in our society, which is why Marshall was able to decant that lie so readily and then recall it so proudly. Her mastery of the nuances of privileged dishonesty helps explain why she was appointed US Attorney for Oregon by Barack Obama in October 2011 – and her capacity for vindictiveness would be displayed to good advantage by her pursuit of Harney County ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond.

The Hammond family.
The Hammonds were charged with arson in 2012 for two fires they set on their own property that got out of control and damaged land the BLM supposedly owns on the basis of a constitutionally specious claim. (It should be remembered that when the BLM’s culpable mismanagement destroys private land, the agency “punishes” itself by expanding its power over the victims.)  They were prosecuted under a post-Oklahoma City federal anti-terrorism statute and sentenced to a year and a day in prison, and served their term in 2013.

Owing to her irrepressible desire for strict application of the law without fear or favor, Marshall was scandalized by Judge Hogan's leniency. 

“I am not going to apply the mandatory minimum … because, to me, to do so under the Eighth Amendment would result in a sentence which is grossly disproportionate to the severity of the offenses here,” explained trial Judge Michael Hogan. “And with regard to the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, this sort of conduct could not have been conduct intended under that statute.”
 
Dwight and Steven returning to a government cage.
The terms of that statute “might apply” if a landowner were to “burn sagebrush in the suburbs of Los Angeles where there are houses up those ravines,” Hogan continued. “Out in the wilderness here, I don’t think that’s what Congress intended. And in addition, it just would not … meet any idea I have of justice, proportionality. I am not supposed to use the word `fairness’ in criminal law… But this – it would be a sentence that would shock the conscience to me.”

Marshall’s conscience, such as it is, was shocked by the practice of limited judicial discretion in the interest of proportionality, which she described as “illegal.” Among her last official acts as US Attorney for Oregon was to file a successful appeal seeking the imposition of four additional years in prison for the Hammonds.

Thus it was that last December, the Hammonds – who had already served their sentence -- were forced to return to prison, precipitating local outrage that engendered a protest occupation of the nearby Malheur Wildlife Refuge. That occupation, in turn, has become a public works project for Marshall’s erstwhile comrades in the Regime’s prosecutorial apparatus, whose pursuit of “justice” in that case – as in so many others – displays a lethal avidity that was curiously absent when one of their own was caught breaking the law.

The impunity enjoyed by Hillary Clinton is the murderous fruit of a poisoned tree with very deep roots.

This week's Freedom Zealot Podcast: Freedom means the right to say "no" -- even, or perhaps especially, when "social justice" doesn't recognize that right --







Dum spiro, pugno!

7 comments:

Ronald Thomas West said...

Good stuff William.

It could also be said there is evidence prima facie of just how those 'chosen' to either exercise, or be blessed with *impunity* are selected. Hillary's 'Christian guru' is Doug Coe, leader of 'The Family' which sponsors the so-called 'National Prayer Breakfast' attended by the American regime elite. In private practice these self-annointed "new Chosen" uphold certain named role models; Mao, Pol Pot and Hitler inclusive. Quoting investigative journalist Jeff Sharlet, author of "C Street"

"Doug Coe offered Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden as men whose commitment to their causes is to be emulated. Preaching on the meaning of Christ’s words, he says, “You know Jesus said ‘You got to put Him before mother-father-brother sister? Hitler, Lenin, Mao, that’s what they taught the kids. Mao even had the kids killing their own mother and father. But it wasn’t murder. It was for building the new nation. The new kingdom.”

And:

"Attempting to explain what it means to be chosen for leadership [...] he asked a young man who’d put himself, body and soul, under the Family’s authority, “Let’s say I hear you raped three little girls. What would I think of you?” The man guessed that [the younger, heir apparent David] Coe would probably think that he was a monster. “No,” answered Coe, “I wouldn’t.” Why? Because, as a member of the Family, he’s among what Family leaders refer to as the “new chosen.” If you’re chosen, the normal rules don’t apply"

'the normal rules don't apply'

Quoting Hillary (from a Mother Jones article on her autobiography) concerning her relationship to Doug Coe:

“Coe, she writes, “is a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God”

Except for the 'normal rules don't apply'

I suppose that could also be how we were 'blessed' with James Comey who resigned his position of board director at HSBC, the the international narcotics & arms trafficking money laundering bank, to take up directorship of the FBI and effectively has 'forgiven' Hillary. Because the normal rules don't apply.

Stephen T. McCarthy said...

Great article, William!
And great comment, Ronald!

Every day, and in every way...
I'm getting more and more depressed.

~ D-FensDogG
'Loyal American Underground'

Anonymous said...

Donna from ND -

Indeed. The 'chosen' are definetly committed to their spiritual master.

They actually know and DO their lord's will -

- in sad contrast to many who claim to be the disciples of Christ.







kirk said...

clinton/marshall, federal/state, above the law/above the law.

we now know who the 'gods' among us are, because, after all, 'we are all equal before the law' (gods exempted, of course).

'down on your knees to your gods' is the motto of progressive amerika.

DJam said...

In response to being "down" over "knowing too much", this: The One that really counts is He who knows the number of hairs on your head. The One, That will intervene in the darkest hour. and your agony become ecstasy. It goes on until the souls acts like what was created and stop being a side defect of Zoroastrian default evilness. Know ye not that ye are gods? The Evil operates opposite to its' expressed purposes and its' power is directed as down from above. Don't expect the system to work from the mortal bottom upward. Life and death power is the ultimate aphrodisiac of the sick and lazy revolution liberal. Be wise all and God bless us every ONE who carries the burden of this knowledge.

Anonymous said...

Hillary skated because Obama would have been called to testify and you know that is never going to happen.
All the other sellout traitor globalist rats in the best government money can buy would also be in jeopardy if Hillary was indicted.
The rule of law is over in the people's republik of Amerika.
People of African descent and poor white trash already knew we had a two tiered system of justice but now even the dim bulbs know those with money and power walk while the poor with nothing serve the time.
There were two policemen shot and killed at a Dallas Black Lives Matter rally tonight.
It is probably in retaliation for the innocent black man with no criminal record shot and killed in Minnesota and the Alton Stirling case in Lousiana.
In the Minnesota case you can tell the cop had no business working in law enforcement as he is screaming at the top of his lungs as the slain man's wife calmy says we were complying with your orders sir and you shot four bullets into my husband.
She was in the drivers set while her husband was on the passenger side and she recorded the whole encounter on her selfie phone and uploaded it.
In the Louisiana case selling some bootleg CDs/DVDs shouldn't be a fatal offense no matter what the man's past criminal record was but he had a *gasp* gun and precious law enforcement officers may have been in jeopardy.
I'm sure everyone who frequents this blog knew this already but it is every man for himself in the great hopenchange fundamental transformation.
What great timing for Chicago Mohammed Imam Hussein to have the country melt down.
At least you are in the Shangri-La known as the Mountain West WNG.
It is probably the best place to be for what is coming.

DowntoEarthThinking.com said...

Excellent read indeed . Our system is completely corrupted and Oregon is no exception. The people of this state are blind as bats and don't really want to know the truth, not at all unlike the rest of what we used to call Amerika !

Amanda is the story of a vile human being distorted by progressive left wing dogma. A very harmful person to many and she has no clue who she actually is or the harm she has done most likely. Our country is run by sociopaths and psychopaths just like her all across the land and of course DC. Amerika is whacked these days!