The vote which will decide the fate of JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park and The Great Walkway along the Pacific Ocean is tomorrow.
San Francisco needs to make a statement that it cares about the environment and wants to provide two car free recreation spaces for all its citizens.
Dede Wilsey and the wealthy connected patrons who run the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are sparing no expense to destroy the two car free venues.
All in the name of greed and profit. Doyenne Dede Wilsey, Dow Chemical scion and lavish supporter of Donald Trump, cut the 200K check paying mercenaries to qualify Proposition I for the ballot.
As judgment day approachesDede Wilsey just chipped in another $10,000. Which for her is virtually nothing. But to those who are watching her callous political effort it means a lot.
Report to San Francisco Ethics Commission showing Diane ‘Dede’ Wilsey’s latest 10K contribution to ‘Access for All, Yes on I, No on J, sponsored by Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums and Open the Great Highway Alliance
The FAMSF have argued that the car free JFK Promenade has stifled attendance at The De Young Museum. This argument is a total fiction. Last Saturday Liz Heidhues and I visit the De Young and had lunch in the cafeteria. The Museum was packed.
Entrance at the DeYoung – November 5, 2022
Since launching its campaign just five months ago Dede Wilsey and the FAMSF have received officially $762,105.01. Of course some of these so called ‘contributions’ have been Dede’s own money funneled into the campaign as Contributions.
Campaign Disclosure Statement Summary Page – ‘Access for All, Yes on I, No on J, sponsored by Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums and Open the Great Highway Alliance‘ showing total contributions of $762,105.01.
San Francisco voters cannot allow themselves to be swayed by this tsunami of corporate money and greed.
The People will PrevailA Richmond District home near JFK Promenade proudly displays the No On I – Yes on J campaign banners
Tuesday is election day in San Francisco and with two days to go a hardy band of supporters to preserve The Great Walkway along Ocean Beach and JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park gathered for the final push.
The Sunday crowd was joined by District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar, whose district is near the Pacific Ocean and The Great Walkway.The Supervisor pointedly reminded her listeners that a defeat of Proposition I is essential to preserve the shoreline and protect the Westside Wastewater Treatment facility.
San Francisco District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar urged the People to vote No on Proposition I and Yes on Proposition J – to preserve JFK Promenade in Golden Gate ParkTalking No on Proposition I and Yes on Proposition J on a Sunday morning along The Great WalkwaySeniors and people with mobility issues are able to take stroll on The Great Walkway with The Marin Headlands and Mt. Tamalpais in the background. Absent this Pacific Oceanside oasis these citizens will lose a safe haven to exercise unthreatened by cars.Sign of the times – VOTE NO ON I No 80M SeawallWhat the Great Walkway is all about. A car free recreational spot for all PeopleThe No on Prop I distributed rolls of Toilet Paper to neighbors living near The Great Walkway with a clean message. “Vote No on Prop I. Or be prepared to clean up sewage on Ocean Beach.A little bicycle maintenance on The Great WalkwayEven the birds can have some peace and quiet on The Great WalkwayThe Great Walkway. A place where a Seabird can fly highRemember. Vote Yes on Proposition J for JFK Promenade. Vote No on Proposition I
Election day is only three days away and on a rainy Saturday the supporters gathered one last time to preserve JFK Promenade.
The People in San Francisco who are working to preserve less than three miles of space as a car free oasis in Golden Gate Park and along the Pacific Ocean at The Great Walkway have waged a 2 1/2 year struggle.
Now the battle is reaching its judgment day as the voters of San Francisco will decide. Those who want these areas where people can mingle and not fear the automobile have to fight back against an entrenched community of motorists. In addition the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco has poured its vast resources to destroy JFK Promenade and The Great Walkway.
On the march on JFK PromenadeThe people rally on a drizzly Saturday to save JFK PromenadePeople of all ages on a rainy afternoon on JFK PromenadeLiz Heidhues and David Miles, The Godfather of Skate, parley on JFK PromenadeRallying for Yes on J – Safe Parks for AllDavid Miles and the merry band of skaters do their dance for Yes on JCycling along on JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park at The Rose Garden
After the JFK Promenade event Liz and I went into the De Young to check out the action and despite the false cries of Museum management that car free areas negatively impact attendance we found large throngs of visitors.
The crowds were attending the various exhibits and the Museum Cafe was totally packed with lunchtime diners. Including Liz and me.
The deep lines at the DeYoung Museum entranceDe Young Museum guests throng to the Ramses ExhibitAn exhausted Baby Boomer outside the Ramses ExhibitIn order to prevail on election day the voters must Vote YES on Proposition J to preserve JFK Promenade and Vote NO on Proposition I. The Measure placed on the ballot by the DeYoung Museum. It would destroy JFK Promenade as well as The Great Walkway at the Pacific Ocean, miles away from the DeYoung Museum.
Lost in the reporting about interim DA Brooke Jenkins illegal handling of criminal files is the specific case being prosecuted.
Troy McAlister is the parolee who ran down and killed two women on New Year’s eve 2021. This incident became a linchpin for the Recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin. For the next 18 months this crime was a main cudgel swung to politically lynch the Progressive DA on June 7, 2022.
Brooke Jenkins had no involvement in this prosecution when she worked for Chesa Boudin. Yet, after handing in her resignation in October 2021 and before exiting her job, she transmitted crucial files to Don duBain at his personal email. He, too, resigned from Chesa Boudin’s staff and went to work on the Recall.
The reason Jenkins and duBain took the McAlister case files as they walked out the door is painfully obvious. They planned to use these protected criminal case files to destroy Chesa Boudin.
Brooke Jenkins and Don duBain did just exactly that.
Following is a statement released by the San Francisco Public Defender on November 4, 2022.
SAN FRANCISCO – This week, Mission Local reported that days before Brooke Jenkins and Don du Bain were slated to leave the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office in October 2021, Jenkins improperly sent records to du Bain’s personal email which pertain to Troy McAlister, including his rap sheet. Jenkins and duBain never worked on Mr. McAlister’s pending case, but referenced information contained in those materials as the two campaigned for the recall of their former boss, Chesa Boudin. Today, Deputy Public Defender Scott Grant, who represents Mr. McAlister, issued the following statement:
“As Troy McAlister’s attorney, I am extremely disturbed that Brooke Jenkins improperly disclosed confidential information pertaining to Mr. McAlister, including his rap sheet, which is subject to stringent confidentiality requirements in our criminal system. Neither Ms. Jenkins nor Mr. du Bain ever appeared on the Troy McAlister case, were assigned to the case, or were supervisors of the prosecutor on the case. I have no reason to think that Ms. Jenkins and Mr. du Bain had any legitimate basis to access the records, not to mention disseminate those records outside of confidential channels.
Our criminal legal system gives law enforcement and prosecutors exceptional powers, including access to incredibly sensitive information. Our system justifies this power by requiring that the information will only be used for legitimate prosecutorial reasons, not personal or political reasons. When prosecutors use information for personal or political reasons, it destroys all trust that the prosecutor can carry out their public duties in an unbiased and ethical manner.
Mr. McAlister has already been used as a political pawn, and this revelation just makes clearer that his case has become about politics.
We are exploring all of the options available to address the violation of Mr. McAlister’s rights, including the possibility of filing a motion for the court to disqualify the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office from the prosecution.”
Top photo – San Francisco police investigate the scene of a fatal hit-and-run on Second Street just north of Mission Street on Thursday. Parolee Troy Ramon McAlister, 45, has been accused of killing two pedestrians. 1.1.2021
Predictably, the Apologists for the interim 153K “Volunteer” DA are in full throttle dismissing as so much sour grapes her incompetence, lack of ethics and, now, illegal actions.
London Breed is going to reap a political whirlwind for appointing this unqualified Political Hack who she thought would cover her own wrongdoing.
Both London Breed and Brooke Jenkins deserve to be tossed from office. NOW!!!
By the Way. Joe Eskenazi is the Mission Local reporter who broke this story. The same reporter who broke the story on the illegal residency of Leanna Louie in D4 (a close associate of Brooke in the political lynching of Chesa Boudin). Within days Louie’s candidacy was halted by an Order of the San Francisco Superior Court. That was a marker for the troubled interim DA.
Soul sisters Leanna Louie and Brooke Jenkins. Collaborators in the ouster of Chesa Boudin
Leanna Louie’s illegal behavior, brought to light by Joe Eskenazi, is a Marker for the interim DA. She’s skating on thin legal ice.
Even her benefactor and protector, the equally compromised London Breed, will not be able to save Brooke Jenkins.
Excerpted from Mission Local 11.2.2022
In a potential violation of state law, then-Assistant District Attorney Brooke Jenkins last year sent sensitive files from the DA’s office to a fellow district attorney’s personal email account — and subsequently used the materials in the political campaign to oust DA Chesa Boudin.
Multiple calls, texts, and emails to Jenkins and her office made over the course of just shy of 24 hours have not been returned.
Mission Local shared the details of the situation — but not the names of the individuals involved — with San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe. He was unambiguous in his assessment.
“In our office,” he said, “this would be a firing offense.” He added: “It is a misdemeanor offense to share a rap sheet for any purpose other than doing the prosecution.”
Former Los Angeles DA Gil Garcetti concurred. “You should not be sending police reports or rap sheets to anyone who does not have a direct interest in the particular case,” he said. “If you cannot articulate a reason to get a rap sheet, you should not have it.”
How much longer will the troubled interim DA be able to parrot the law and order line?
The email, since obtained by Mission Local, was sent from Jenkins’ work account to fellow Assistant District Attorney Don Du Bain on Oct. 9, 2021 — after both Jenkins and Du Bain had given notice and an interoffice email was circulated announcing their pending goodbye party. Both left the office on Oct. 16 of last year according to Department of Human Resources records.
The San Francisco Chronicle is lazy. Or the Chronicle doesn’t want to ruffle feathers in the cloistered San Francisco Police Department.
Here is an important story about the attempted assassination of Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on October 28.
Am I reading it in The San Francisco Chronicle? The City’s daily newspaper of record.
Why is The Chronicle not first on top of this story?
Answer: The cozy relationship between The Chronicle, the SFPD and City Hall which The Chronicle fears to disrupt.
Instead, I’m reading it in the Washington Post. The Chronicle should be intimately familiar with the Post. And, not just because it is famous for breaking the story in 1972 about the Watergate break-in scandal which brought down President Nixon.
The Chronicle’s current Editor, Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, is a former Editor at the Washington Post.
Excerpted from The Washington Post 11.1.2022
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott
San Francisco police officials also are facing growing questions nationally and locally, including from Nancy Pelosi’s neighbors, about why there wasn’t a more consistent presence outside the speaker’s home, given the intensity of the threats that she and other lawmakers have faced as well as previous incidents at the residence.
Officials with the San Francisco Police Department repeatedly declined to comment on security measures around Pelosi’s house in the city’s posh Pacific Heights neighborhood, including whether there was an alarm system at the residence that would have triggered an alert with the department.
Inside the command center for the U.S. Capitol Police, a handful of officers were going through their routines early Friday morning, cycling through live feeds from the department’s 1,800 cameras used to monitor the nearby Capitol complex as well as some points beyond, when an officer stopped. On a screen showing a darkened street nearly 3,000 miles away, police lights were flashing outside the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), officials say.
If the Capitol Police were going to stop an attack at the home of any member of Congress, they had perhaps the best chance to do so at Pelosi’s, according to several current and former law enforcement officials, many of whom spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because the break-in remains under investigation.
The officer in D.C. quickly pulled up additional camera angles from around Pelosi’s home and began to backtrack, watching recordings from the minutes before San Francisco police arrived. There, on camera, was a man with a hammer, breaking a glass panel and entering the speaker’s home, according to three people familiar with how Capitol Police learned of the break-in and who have been briefed on or viewed the video themselves.
On Friday, the Capitol Police never received an alert from the home security company, that person added. It was unclear if the system was armed at the time of the break-in.
Officials with the San Francisco Police Department repeatedly declined to comment on whether there was an alarm system at the house and if the department received an alert about the break-in besides the 911 call.
After the assault. Law enforcement is on the scene at Speaker Pelosi’s home. The FBI is a presence.
The 911 call and the struggle inside the home that followed have led to charges of attempted homicide of the speaker’s husband, and attempted kidnapping of the speaker, who is second in line to the presidency. The incident has also put a spotlight on the immensity — and perhaps the impossibility — of law enforcement’s task to protect the 535 members of Congress at a time of unprecedented numbers of threats against them.
The Capitol Police first installed cameras around Pelosi’s home more than eight years ago; she has an around-the-clock security detail; and for many months after the attacks of Jan. 6, 2021, a San Francisco police cruiser sat outside her home day and night. But hours after Pelosi left San Francisco last week and returned to D.C., much of the security left with her, and officers in Washington stopped continuously monitoring video feeds outside her house.
Lots of yellow crime scene tape from the SFPD as questions go unanswered
Since Friday, neighbors said, at least three San Francisco police squad cars have been positioned outside the residence, along with unmarked black SUVs and plain-clothed security officers — often signals that the speaker is at home.
Pelosi’s house is also protected by a private security system, two people said. When tripped, that alarm is supposed to notify San Francisco police and, secondarily, the Capitol police, one of the added.
It’s Halloween and it’s a genuinely Scary time in America.
The Reactionaries are totally unhinged and David LePape’s attempted assassination of Paul Pelosi, husband of Nancy Pelosi – second in line to the Presidency – is both a warning sign and a message of the shape of things to come.
Future assailant David LePape at San Francisco City Hall – 2013
Excerpted from The Nation 10.31.2022
Last week’s attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at the couple’s San Francisco home represents another in a long series of stress tests for American democracy.
And as at past such inflection points—the January 6 insurrection, the mobilization of a vast corps of election-denying and conspiracy-mongering candidates in the GOP, the pillaging of social media platforms by feckless billionaires—the system is showing every sign of impending breakdown.
January 6, 2021
An assassination attempt targeting the person third in line for the presidency—Paul Pelosi’s hammer-wielding assailant, David LePape, reportedly shouted, “Where is Nancy?”: the same refrain raised by January 6 rioters vandalizing the speaker’s office—largely registered within key segments of the American right as a regrettable and over-ardent case of propaganda-by-deed , if not indeed another conspiracy targeted at their movement.
“Unquestionably, we can expect more incidents like this,” says Joe Lowndes, political science professor at the University of Oregon and author of From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism.
“We’re at a moment when Republican elected officials can use the language of violence openly and demonize opponents as enemies in a way that’s as harsh as it gets.”
At the same time, Lowndes notes, the recourse to violent intimidation has deeper roots among right-wing leaders and activists. He observes, for example, that Fox News’s rapid transposition of DePape’s ideologically motivated attack into another campaign-cycle crime story directly echoes George Wallace’s response to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, which he attributed to generalized “lawlessness” and a “breakdown of law and order in this country.”
The migration of such responsibility-dodging rhetoric into the political mainstream is another symptom of the American right’s overt authoritarian makeover in the Trump era.
“The clichéd way to say it is that the needle has moved on the legitimacy of political violence on the right,” Lowndes says. “Not only is more of it allowed, but the very logic of it has shifted, as the GOP has become a far-right party of the European variety.”
Fascist reactionary in Speaker Pelosi’s office – January 6, 2021
While American politics has been steeped in violent confrontation going back to the origins of the republic, he adds, “what’s distinctive now is that one of the two major parties seems to be all in for political violence.
Before, the party system had served as this mediating institution between citizens and government to siphon off these tendencies. But now you have a party that sees itself as the outlet for them.”
Even his goddaughter is supposed to toe the Moscow Line. Apparently Ksenia Sobchak was not one to play ball with Vladimir and took a trip abroad.
She won’t be back in the USSR anytime soon.
Deutsche Welle 10.27.2022
Russian media personality Ksenia Sobchak, the glamorous goddaughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has arrived in Lithuania on an Israeli passport, officials said Thursday.
Sobchak is famous in Russia, where she took on various journalistic, celebrity and political roles over the years and has long-standing family ties with President Vladimir Putin. Her late father, former Saint Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, was Putin’s boss in the 1990s.
Sobchak first rose to fame as a fashionable socialite and reality TV star, but later tried to get rid of her spoiled and arrogant image. She got involved in politics when she joined the massive anti-Putin protests in Moscow in 2011-12, and later reinvented herself as a serious TV journalist and opposition activist.
A day before her property was searched by Russian police as part of a criminal case against her commercial director. The state news agency TASS reported, citing law enforcement agencies, that Sobchak herself was not a suspect.
Ksenia Sobchak meets the press
However, Sobchak hinted on her Telegram channel that the case that triggered the search was politically motivated and linked to a documentary she had made about the use of torture in Russian prisons.
Russian media claimed Sobchak bought tickets to Dubai and Turkey to mislead the authorities but eventually left for Belarus, from where she traveled to Lithuania.
“Citizens of (Israel) do not need a visa and are allowed to stay in the country for 90 days,” Darius Jauniskis, head of Lithuania’s State Security Department, told a local radio station. Jauniskis said Lithuania has no evidence of any threat that Sobchak could pose to national security.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told reporters that “Ms. Sobchak currently is not included in any sanctions list of the EU, UK or the US. This does not mean that it cannot occur.”
Lithuania and other Baltic states along with Poland stopped admitting Russian citizens with valid Schengen visas back in September. Hundreds were turned away, but many entered anyway, after presenting other countries’ passports at the border.
A grainy Putin looks over his goddaughter’s shoulder
Israel’s daily Haaretz newspaper reported in April that Sobchak acquired Israeli citizenship after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
She has often criticized Putin, but many Russian opposition figures have also accused her of serving the Kremlin’s agenda. In 2018, she became a liberal challenger in Russia’s presidential election, finishing a fourth with about 1.7% of the vote.
Her critics called her election campaign an attempt by the Kremlin to lend a democratic touch to Putin’s sweeping re-election. However, Sobchak denied serving Putin’s agenda.
Brooke Jenkins needs only to con San Francisco voters for another 13 days.
Brooke Jenkins continues to show herself to be totally in over her head, totally unqualified, and little more than a political creature at the service of Mayor London Breed, the San Francisco Police Department and the the Police Officers Association (POA).
Her latest bizarre stunt of firing one of the most respected jurists in California, Tony Kline, from his role in the Juvenile Court lays bare Jenkins total lack of qualification to be District Attorney. Jenkins said “sometimes we have to make very tough strategic decisions based on the need to promote more public safety.”
How does firing a widely respected jurist “promote more public safety”?
Jenkins wants the voters to forget that she called herself a “Volunteer” as she worked to to destroy her former boss Chesa Boudin. Only coming clean after Chesa was politically lynched. After the Coup d’etat telling the public she actually was paid over $153,000 in “Volunteer” wages by the MAGA reactionaries who ousted the Progressive DA.
Jenkins is now under investigation by the San Francisco Ethics Commission as it looks into her 153K “Volunteer” wages.
Jenkins is also the subject of a Complaint filed with the State Bar for her prosecutorial misconduct.
Bob Egelko is one of the most respected legal affairs writers in the country. What he has to say must be taken seriously.
Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 10.26.2022 – Bob Egelko
Tony Kline is “one of the most thoughtful people we’ve had in the California courts, ever,” said Justice Stuart Pollak, a 20-year veteran of the First District court.
He said the state law allowing each side to challenge a trial judge “encourages judge-shopping,” but added, “I’m not sure you’d want to shop for a better judge than Justice Kline.”
The sinking ship of San Francisco USS Public Safety under the helm of Brooke Jenkins and her enabler Mayor London Breed
Associate Justice Tony Kline’s removal from newly filed juvenile cases by interim DA Brooke Jenkins leaves only two other judges to handle the cases, and, according to local court observers, is the first “blanket challenge” by San Francisco prosecutors to any judge in recent years.
She initially refused to discuss her challenge to Appellate Justice Tony Kline, but confirmed her action Thursday October 20 in a short-lived debate at San Francisco State University.
Asked by the moderator why she had removed Kline, Jenkins refused to discuss individual cases or past rulings by the judge. But as reported by Mission Local, and confirmed by her office, Jenkins then said, “sometimes we have to make very tough strategic decisions based on the need to promote more public safety.”
Puppet DA Brooke Jenkins parroting the law and order line
Lawyers who have defended juveniles in Kline’s current court say he rules for the prosecution just as often as for the defense and has shown no sign of bias. And Kline is drawing strong support from his former colleagues on the appeals court.
“He’s very thoughtful and he tries to do the right thing in every case,” said Justice Alison Tucher, who served alongside Kline for five years. “He’s interested in a wide range of ideas and he thinks about things deeply.”
Young protesters in the audience brought the proceedings to a halt by repeatedly shouting the names of people killed by San Francisco police. Their leaders said afterward they were angry about Jenkins’ apparent lack of urgency in prosecuting police and her stated willingness to charge 16- and 17-year-olds as adults for serious crimes, reversing policies of Chesa Boudin, in whose office she had worked.
The San Francisco of Brooke Jenkins – It’s back to the Dick Tracy Crime Stopper days
John Hamasaki and Joe Alioto Veronese both told The Chronicle this week that Brooke Jenkins’ removal of Kline was wrong and her criticism of him was unfair.
As the protests continued, Jenkins walked off the the stage, leaving her opponents, John Hamasaki, Joe Alioto Veronese and Maurice Chenier, to debate without her.
Most of America and the World has probably forgotten or is trying to ignore the horrific prison sentence meted out to American professional basketball player Brittney Griner.
Brittney is now looking at spending the next nine years incarcerated in a Russian prison after her Appeal was predictably rejected by a Putin judicial lackey Judge Yelena Vorontsova.
Convicted of possessing a miniscule amount of hash oil, Brittney is just another pawn in warmonger Putin’s assault on Ukraine.
Brittney Griner – Another casualty of meglomaniac Vladimir Putin
Excerpted from The Moscow Times 10.25.2022
A Russian court on Tuesday rejected American basketball star Brittney Griner’s appeal of her nine-year sentence on drug charges, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported, raising the stakes of U.S. efforts to negotiate her release.
The 32-year-old was handed nine years in prison in August after security officers at a Moscow airport found vape cartridges with a small quantity of cannabis oil in her luggage in February.
She pleaded guilty to the charges but said she did not intend to smuggle drugs into Russia, while her defense lawyers presented doctors’ notes authorizing her to use medical marijuana, which is illegal in Russia
“I really hope that the court will adjust this sentence because it has been very, very stressful and very traumatic,” Griner told the Moscow regional court in the city of Krasnogorsk, appearing via video link.
Judge Yelena Vorontsova announced that the star athlete’s sentence would remain unchanged, RIA Novosti reported.
In a statement published on the White House website, U.S. President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan slammed the court’s ruling as a “sham judicial procedure.”
Brittney Griner in chains with a Russian jailer
Statement from National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on the Continued Wrongful Detention of BrittneyGriner
We are aware of the news out of Russia that Brittney Griner will continue to be wrongfully detained under intolerable circumstances after having to undergo another sham judicial proceeding today. President Biden has been very clear that Brittney should be released immediately. In recent weeks, the Biden-Harris Administration has continued to engage with Russia through every available channel and make every effort to bring home Brittney as well as to support and advocate for other Americans detained in Russia, including fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan. The President has demonstrated that he is willing to go to extraordinary lengths and make tough decisions to bring Americans home, as his Administration has done successfully from countries around the world. The Administration remains in regular touch with representatives of the families, and we continue to admire their courage in the face of these unimaginable circumstances.
“The president has demonstrated that he is willing to go to extraordinary lengths and make tough decisions to bring Americans home, as his administration has done successfully from countries around the world,” the statement reads.
Ahead of the hearing, Griner’s lawyers Maria Blagovolina and Alexander Boykov said in a statement that “Brittney does not expect any miracles to happen but hopes that the appeal court will hear the arguments of the defense and reduce the term.”
Her legal team has the ability to appeal the verdict again in a higher court following Tuesday’s decision.
When she was arrested, the two-time Olympic basketball gold medallist and Women’s NBA champion had been in Russia to play for the professional Yekaterinburg team, during her off-season from the Phoenix Mercury.
Griner’s case came amid fierce tensions between Moscow and Washington over Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine.
Brittney Griner – No way out
In August, Moscow said it was ready to discuss a prisoner swap for Griner, but there has been no apparent progress.
Media reports have suggested that Griner and another American jailed in Russia, Paul Whelan — a former U.S. Marine arrested in December 2018 and accused of spying — could be traded for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms trafficker serving 25 years in jail on a 2012 conviction.
Lee's Perspective 