Lee Heidhues 11.5.2022

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.”

Statement from Troy McAlister’s Public Defender on the DA Sharing of Confidential Case Files

Attached is one of the original reports about the Incident.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/SF-driver-accused-of-killing-two-women-is-15840271.php

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

Lee Heidhues 11.2.2022

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.

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.” 

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 subject line of Jenkins’ email was “Troy McAllister Police reports.” It contained three police reports regarding the serial offender who, while driving intoxicated on Dec. 31, 2020, struck and killed two pedestrians. All three police reports were unredacted and — significantly — one contained a lengthy, unredacted rap sheet for McAllister dating back to 1993.

Lee Heidhues 10.31.2022

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/pelosi-attack/

Top photo – Insurrectionist occupies Speaker Pelosi’s Chair in the House of Representatives – January 6, 2021

Lee Heidhues 10.27.2022

In Putin’s Russia all politics are personal.

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.

Russian media personality Ksenia Sobchak, the glamorous goddaughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has arrived in Lithuania on an Israeli passport, officials said Thursday.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ksenia_Sobchak

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.

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.

 

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.

https://www.dw.com/en/ksenia-sobchak-putins-goddaughter-flees-to-lithuania/a-63573592

Lee Heidhues 10.26.2022

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Citing-public-safety-S-F-D-A-is-still-17536945.php

Lee Heidhues 10.25.2022

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.

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.”

Statement from National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on the Continued Wrongful Detention of Brittney Griner

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.

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.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/10/25/russian-court-rejects-us-basketball-star-griners-drug-sentence-appeal-a79187

Lee Heidhues 10.25.2022

The country of Norway has become enmeshed in Putin’s War of Aggression against Ukraine.

The arrest comes on the heels of the sabotage actions against the Nordsteam 2 pipeline which carries natural gas under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Europe.

Putin has severely limited the flow and it is suspected that Russia is responsible for the sabotage.

Deutsche Welle 10.25.2022

The Norwegian domestic security agency on Tuesday said it had detained a visiting academic, who entered the country as a Brazilian, on suspicion of being a Russian spy.

Norwegian officials have arrested several Russian citizens in recent weeks, amid heightened fears over the security of energy, internet, and infrastructure.

What do we know so far?

The Norwegian secret service PST was reported to believe that the man was in Norway working for one of Russia’s intelligence services under a false name and identity.

A spokesman for the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) confirmed a suspected spy had been arrested and that the case was “huge,” without going into further detail.

PST deputy chief Hedvig Moe told the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK that the man had been based at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsoe.

She said the “Brazilian researcher” would be expelled from the Scandinavian country, “because we believe he represents a threat to fundamental national interests.”

Moe said the security service “is concerned that he may have acquired a network and information about Norway’s policy in the northern region.” “Even if this network or the information bit by bit is not a threat to the security of the kingdom, we are worried that the information could be misused by Russia.”

For the time being, a court placed the suspect under a four-week detention order.

Norwegian media wrote that the individual, who apparently had neither Russian nor Norwegian citizenship, arrived in Norway in 2021. He had reportedly been researching the northern regions, Norway’s Arctic policy, and hybrid threats.

The latest case comes after a slew of arrests of several Russian citizens for flying drones over Norwegian territory, violating a ban that officials imposed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Norwegian police have also arrested Russians on charges of illegally photographing sensitive sites.

There have been heightened fears about key infrastructure in European nations, particularly after underwater explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream pipelines. The conduits carry Russian natural gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany, although no supplies were flowing at the time.

Norway is the largest gas supplier to Europe after a drop in flows from Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.

Norwegian officials have said that protecting Norway’s gas exports to Europe against sabotage is a top priority.

After the suspected sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, Oslo deployed its military to protect its oil and gas installations, plus some 9,000 kilometers (5,600 miles) of pipelines.

https://www.dw.com/en/norway-arrests-researcher-as-suspected-russian-spy/a-63555182

Lee Heidhues 10.21.2022

In America the outrage against the Iranian regime quickly dissipated after some photo op protests following the death of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini.

The reality is that the Iranian government continues its violent crackdown targeting young people in a horrific effort to stifle dissent. The Iranian authorities would like to hold the West accountable for its crimes. It won’t work.

The Whole World’s Watching.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 10.21.2022

Security forces are increasingly raiding schools and targeting schoolgirls to put an end to the mass anti-regime protests roiling the country in recent weeks.

According to Amnesty International, at least 23 minors were killed by the unlawful use of force during the protests between September 20 and 30.

Asra Panahi, 16, was a student from the city of Ardabil in northwestern Iran. Wider and fiercer protests erupted in the city following reports that the teenager from the Azeri ethnic minority died on Friday after she was beaten to death by security forces.  

Authorities denied the reports, saying she died because of a chronic heart problem and police did not hit her.

Nevertheless, her death further fueled the public anger that was sparked by the recent death of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini after she was arrested by Iran’s so-called morality police in Tehran for violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code.

The Middle East nation has seen mass anti-regime protests nationwide in recent weeks.

It’s reported that Panahi died after security officials raided the Shahed girls high school in Ardabil on October 13 and ordered a group of girls to sing a song praising the Islamic Republic.

When some students refused to participate, they were severely beaten, leading to a number of them being taken to hospital. Panahi was also among them. On Friday, she reportedly died in hospital due to injuries sustained at the school.

Despite widespread internet outages in Iran, the news spread quickly on social media networks.

News agencies close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, like Tasnim, quoted Panahi’s uncle as saying the high school student had died of a heart problem.

But shortly afterwards, a screenshot appeared on the internet, showing that Panahi was a competitive athlete. At the age of 12, she came third in a regional swimming competition in her province.

This information has since been deleted from the swimming federation’s website.

“The truth is that she took her own life,” the mayor of Ardebil was quoted as saying by the news portal Entekhab. “She had taken pills because she had family problems.”

Former national soccer player Ali Daei slammed Iranian authorities on Instagram, saying: “You are not telling the truth.” Many Iranians share this view. Daei, who also played in the German Bundesliga for Arminia Bielefeld, Bayern Munich and Hertha Berlin, is from Ardebil. “I know what happened in my city,” the 53-year-old said. 

This is not the first time authorities have tried to deny responsibility for the death of schoolgirls in the last four weeks.

“We have information showing that at least three more schoolgirls were killed by violent blows to their heads,” Raha Bahreini, Iran expert at Amnesty International, told DW.

Among those killed are 20 boys between 11 and 17 years old and three girls, one of whom was aged 17 and the other two were 16, Bahreini said. “Most of the boys died because the security forces shot at them unlawfully with live ammunition, often at close range. The three girls — Setareh Tajik, Sarina Esmailzadeh and Nika Shahkarami — had all suffered fatal blows to the head.”

The childrens’ families, however, have been pressured to say that their children died as a result of illness or suicide, she said.

https://www.dw.com/en/iran-deaths-of-schoolgirls-further-stoke-public-fury/a-63494532

Lee Heidhues 10.20.2022

If the video feed is to be taken at face value it was not a pretty scene at San Francisco State University on Thursday evening at the District Attorney candidates debate.

Interim DA Brooke Jenkins, who is under investigation for prosecutorial misconduct and ethics violations, made a hasty exit when confronted by  a group of angry protesters. Their anger was encapsulated by the attached poster.

During her 104 day tenure as interim District Attorney, Brooke Jenkins has refused to engage in a serious discussion with her critics. Instead, she has feasted on a fawning Media which has been more interested in her trip to the ice cream shop in West Portal.

Jenkins one dedicated mission is to tear down and undo everything that the Man she ousted in a political coup d’etat put in place during his 30 month tenure.

Brooke Jenkins doesn’t even deserve to be in the same room with Chesa Boudin.

In a debate two days ago, Jenkins was able to walk away unscathed because of the weak format organized by The League of Women Voters.

 Jenkins needs to account for her actions. Tonight’s protesters were making a clear and unambiguous statement they are fed up with her law and order pandering.

The people who are condemning the protesters are of the same ilk which drove a Progressive District Attorney from office.

These are the same type people who, during the four month strike at San Francisco State in the winter of 1968-1969, joined with Ronald Reagan and set him on his way to the White House.

 I was there. I know.

Police State fascism has always been an integral part of Political life in San Francisco. The Power Elite will not let go. Ever.  

Brooke Jenkins is their latest agent of Repression.