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By Nancy Gertner

Ms. Gertner is a retired federal judge.

April 18, 2018

Was Robert Mueller, the special counsel, complicit in one of the worst scandals in the F.B.I.’s history — the decades-long wrongful imprisonment of four men for a murder they didn’t commit?

This question, which has been raised before, is being addressed again — this time by some of President Trump’s most ardent supporters on the right, especially Fox News’s Sean Hannity but also Rush Limbaugh and others. My friend Alan Dershowitz, the retired Harvard Law School professor, has also weighed in.

In an April 8 interview with John Catsimatidis on his New York radio show, Mr. Dershowitz asserted that Mr. Mueller was “the guy who kept four innocent people in prison for many years in order to protect the cover of Whitey Bulger as an F.B.I. informer.” Mr. Mueller, he said, was “right at the center of it.” Mr. Bulger was a notorious crime boss in Boston, the head of the Winter Hill Gang, and also a secret source for the F.B.I.

There is no evidence that the assertion is true. I was the federal judge who presided over a successful lawsuit brought against the government by two of those men and the families of the other two, who had died in prison. Based on the voluminous evidence submitted in the trial, and having written a 105-page decision awarding them $101.8 million, I can say without equivocation that Mr. Mueller, who worked in the United States attorney’s office in Boston from 1982 to 1988, including a brief stint as the acting head of the office, had no involvement in that case. He was never even mentioned.

 

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The case wasn’t about Whitey Bulger but another mobster the F.B.I. was also protecting, the hit man Joseph Barboza, who lied when he testified that the four men had killed Edward Deegan, a low-level mobster, in 1965. Mr. Barboza was covering for the real killers, and the F.B.I. went along because of his importance as an informant.

But the evidence — or rather, lack of it — hasn’t stopped the piling on against Mr. Mueller, particularly by Mr. Hannity. In a March 20 broadcast, he said, “Robert Mueller was the U.S. attorney in charge while these men were rotting in prison while certain agents in the F.B.I. under Mueller covered up the truth.”

 

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He returned to this theme on April 9, noting the Catsimatidis interview with Professor Dershowitz, and said: “Four men went to jail. Mueller was involved in the case. Two of them died in jail. They were all later exonerated.”

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He made the same case two days later on a show that was promoted by a tweet by President Trump — “Big show tonight on @seanhannity.” Mr. Hannity laid out his case for “Deep State crime families trying to take down the president,” including the “Mueller crime family.” Among Mr. Hannity’s accusations: “During Mueller’s time as a federal prosecutor in Boston, four — four men wrongfully imprisoned for decades framed by an F.B.I. informant and notorious gangster Whitey Bulger, all while Mueller’s office looked the other way.”

Rush Limbaugh added his own variant on April 13. “The men would have been cleared but Mueller and the prosecutors withheld evidence from the court,” he said, adding, “Thirty years in jail, four innocent people, from the man of impeccable integrity inside the establishment swamp.”

The record simply doesn’t support these assertions. As I explained in my decision, because of the gravity of the accusations made by the imprisoned men, I analyzed the evidence “with special care in order that the public, and especially the parties, could be fully confident of my conclusions.”

That said, I was unsparing in my criticism of the F.B.I. and Justice Department officials who were responsible for this wrongful imprisonment. I named names where the record supported it. I resoundingly condemned the government in an unusual court session in which I read my conclusions.

Mr. Mueller is mentioned nowhere in my opinion; nor in the submissions of the plaintiffs’ lead trial counsel, Juliane Balliro; nor in “Black Mass,” the book about Mr. Bulger and the F.B.I. written by former reporters for The Boston Globe.

Mr. Barboza, like Mr. Bulger and one of Mr. Deegan’s killers, Vincent Flemmi, was in the Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program started in 1961 by J. Edgar Hoover. The program, as I noted in my opinion, “was strictly confidential, which not only meant that its existence would be kept secret from the general public and other divisions within the federal government, but also from state law enforcement agencies.” Mr. Barboza’s F.B.I. handlers, Dennis Condon and H. Paul Rico, and their superiors, knew that Mr. Barboza had perjured himself and that he was protecting Mr. Flemmi, but they withheld that information from state prosecutors because of his importance as an informant and to protect the informant program.

They continued to withhold the truth during commutation hearings for the men; each time the F.B.I. could have disclosed Mr. Barboza’s lie, it did not. In fact, the agency lobbied against clemency.

Much has been made about an assertion made by Michael Albano, the former mayor of Springfield, Mass., who served on the Massachusetts Parole Board in the 1980s. He has said repeatedly that he saw a letter from Mr. Mueller, written during the period while he was in the United States attorney’s office in Boston, opposing the release of one of the four men.

 

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But no copy of that letter has ever been produced, and Mr. Dershowitz now says in a statement that several days after making his remarks on the Catsimatidis show, The Boston Globe “revealed for the first time to my knowledge that no such letter has been found. I never repeated the allegation after that.” Still, he said, “further investigation seems warranted, since absence of evidence is not conclusive evidence of absence, especially in government files.”

Perhaps. But an accusation of such gravity demands more. I found no such letter from Mr. Mueller in the commutation files in the court record. Neither did the lead trial lawyer for the plaintiffs, Ms. Balliro, who has a complete copy of the parole board files of all four men, which were produced in response to a subpoena before the trial. Other letters from federal prosecutors are in those files. But there was nothing from Mr. Mueller.

It wasn’t until the late 1990s that another federal judge, Mark Wolf, held hearings that revealed the F.B.I.’s refusal to inform the United States attorney in Boston that Mr. Bulger and his confederate Stephen Flemmi, brother of Vincent, were informants. In a report by the House Committee on Government Reform, which looked into the F.B.I.’s use of secret informants, the only reference to Mr. Mueller was a favorable one. He offered, as F.B.I. director, to work with the committee to reform the agency’s informant practices.

When Mr. Hannity and others say Mr. Mueller was responsible for the continued imprisonment of those four men, they are simply wrong — unless they have information that I, Ms. Balliro, the House investigators and the “Black Mass” authors did not and do not have. If they do, they should produce it. If they don’t, they should stop this campaign to discredit Mr. Mueller.

 
 

Nancy Gertner, a judge on the Federal District Court in Massachusetts from 1994 to 2011, is a senior lecturer at Harvard Law School.

Edited by Gil Bang
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Latvian public TV finds Fox TV censors content for Russia

Baltic translations for Fox TV undergo Russian censorship

https://eng.lsm.lv/article/society/society/baltic-translations-for-fox-tv-undergo-russian-censorship.a275385/

The original content of Fox TV channel is translated for Baltic audiences along guidelines that have been developed in Russia and require glossing over certain topics seen as sensitive by Russian censors.

The Latvian National Electronic Mass Media Council (NEPLP) has received a complaint from a viewer about this situation, that the translations of some Fox programs are deficient, and points out that this is the first time it is hearing about such translation guidelines.

NEPLP spokesman Kalvis Gavars told LETA that Fox is a TV channel in Spain’s jurisdiction and its programs are rebroadcast in Latvia’s territory, which means that the translation issues have to be dealt with between the holder of the programs’ rights and the translators, while the quality of the translations is outside the National Electronic Mass Media Council’s area of competence.

According to a letter to the translators of Fox programs which has been obtained by LETA, the translators have to follow Russian subtitling guidelines requiring glossing over or “softening content” concerning accidents, homosexual relationships, “anti-Russian propaganda”, narcotics, extremist activities and suicides.

For instance, the translators are instructed to “soften” all negative language about the Russian military and space program, policies of the Russian president and government, while positive texts about same-sex relationships have to be made more generalized so they could be attributed to relationships of any kind.

Authors of the letter admit that such an approach to translation cannot be consider good practice but that Fox content comes to the Baltic states through Russia which is why the subtitles have to be in line with the Russian law.

“Of course, such softening of language can be seen as controversial and may not be in line with the common practice, but it is required by law,” the letter to the translators says.

Sille Russ, Fox Marketing and PR Manager for the Baltics, could not be contacted for comment on the translation guidelines.

Igors Djacenko, the Latvian head of SDI Media subtitling company, said that the new guidelines do not require the translators to change or distort information but to “double check” their translation of texts concerning the aforementioned topics.

“In the process of their work, the translators focus their attention on sensitive topics, mark them and together with editors assess the definitions and terms,” Djacenko explained.

Anda Rozukalne, a media expert and associate professor at Riga Stradins University, said that Russia uses any channels and tools, including translation, to distort information wherever it can.

She admitted, however, that under the current regulation NEPLP is unable to reverse an intermediary’s requirements regarding the TV channel’s content.

Edited by Pods
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My in-laws watch Fox News all day and listen to Fox News radio in the car.  Wife brought our child over there the other day and noticed a brand new NRA camo duffel bag in the utility room.  Yep, apparently they send you the bag when you sign up to become an NRA member.  They aren't gun owners. 

 

 

 

 

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31 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

My in-laws watch Fox News all day and listen to Fox News radio in the car.  Wife brought our child over there the other day and noticed a brand new NRA camo duffel bag in the utility room.  Yep, apparently they send you the bag when you sign up to become an NRA member.  They aren't gun owners. 

 

 

 

 

How can you be sure? Did you look in the bag?

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6 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

You know things are going poorly when they wrap up the interview before the president is ready to stop talking.

Exactly - they tried to cut him off because even Kilmeade, Douche and the blonde --- all three knew he was damaging himself with his statements.

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1 minute ago, ChiTownDoc said:

Jesus, assholes.  Can someone clue me in?  Why’d they cut their golden ticket off?

Because he was putting himself in legal jeopardy by saying he knew about things he previously said he had no knowledge of. He also played the dictator card and said he might have to "do something" about the justice department. Also, a whole lot of but Hillary.

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1 hour ago, David Dennison said:

Because he was putting himself in legal jeopardy by saying he knew about things he previously said he had no knowledge of. He also played the dictator card and said he might have to "do something" about the justice department. Also, a whole lot of but Hillary.

OnBoard was furiously jerking off during this

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22 hours ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

“This is case law.   It’s clear and present case law.”  What on earth.  

WTF does that even mean?  It's just word fucking salad.

"It''s clear and present case law!  This is very serious habeas corpus, and the Rome Statute has been violated in contravention of the Geneva Conventions, ipso facto."

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3 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

WTF does that even mean?  It's just word fucking salad.

"It''s clear and present case law!  This is very serious habeas corpus, and the Rome Statute has been violated in contravention of the Geneva Conventions, ipso facto."

That's how all lawyer speak reads to me.  That last thing you said, that sounds reasonable to me.

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18 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

Who gives a shit if Trump perjures himself to Mueller?  Literally, some of the exact Congressmen who voted to impeach Clinton for perjury will then tell us Trump's perjury is to be expected.  I fully expect Mitch McConnell to be the poster child for this.

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2 hours ago, David Dennison said:

These people genuinely hate their country. Wow.

They don't hate their country. They don't give a fuck about their country. 

Those hosts are puppets who are willing to sing and dance and read whatever bullshit is put in front of them, so long as the paychecks clear. 

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I just watched MSNBC and CNN and I feel that was a time suck. I can't watch this every night, not sure how other people do.    They had a lot of lawyers on explaining what laws MIGHT have been broken depending on this that or the other, but they don't have the whole story. Lots of speculation and theories. They aren't as bizarro as Fox but they are almost just as bad.

Avenatti is fun to watch and he knows his shit, plus he is pretty damn smart. He keeps correctly predicting things. I'll just follow his twitter and catch him on whichever show he ends up on that day.

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On 5/2/2018 at 6:32 PM, Brisketexan said:

"It''s clear and present case law!  This is very serious habeas corpus, and the Rome Statute has been violated in contravention of the Geneva Conventions, ipso facto."

This is what I posted on my way out the door at Shaggy... to protect myself, legally.  It worked.  

It’s also a magical combination of words that cause serious shitposting.  It’s bad.  Seriously.  T&P’s.  

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8 hours ago, burntorangebongos said:

I just watched MSNBC and CNN and I feel that was a time suck. I can't watch this every night, not sure how other people do.    They had a lot of lawyers on explaining what laws MIGHT have been broken depending on this that or the other, but they don't have the whole story. Lots of speculation and theories. They aren't as bizarro as Fox but they are almost just as bad.

Avenatti is fun to watch and he knows his shit, plus he is pretty damn smart. He keeps correctly predicting things. I'll just follow his twitter and catch him on whichever show he ends up on that day.

 

The sad part people do and so they drift further and further to the far left and far right depending on which channel they watch. Throw in following only right or left leaning twitter and everybody surrounds them self in a vaccum full of one sided views which makes ALL of us stupid. 

And then when some negative shit happens between the two sides in public they go on the fucking TV and ask: Gee, I wonder why this has happened? 

They are ALL fucking guilty of creating the mess that we are currently in where good people on both sides are no longer viewed as someone who has a different view on a certain issue to THEY ARE MY MORTAL ENEMY AND EVERYONE MUST GET VOTED OUT BEFORE THEY DESTROY THE COUNTRY. 

 

13 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

It is insane.  I post this stuff so y’all get to see what the other side is saying.  

 

I don't disagree but saying Fox is the only problem is laughable. The cable news gig is all about ratings now, to get ratings you have to pimp fear mongering throw shit against the wall and see if it sticks. 

Yesterday on MSNBC Kasie Hunt spent a full uninterrupted hour with 6 guests talking about what the wiretapping of Cohen's office could mean. 

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Only to as we now know have the story just a little bit wrong..............

That fuels the mistrust of the media and gives the loons on the far right all the evidence they need to scream fake news. 

 

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56 minutes ago, JimmyHoffa said:

The sad part people do and so they drift further and further to the far left and far right depending on which channel they watch. Throw in following only right or left leaning twitter and everybody surrounds them self in a vaccum full of one sided views which makes ALL of us stupid. 

Except only one side is vilifying the other and that’s all it takes.

No one is demonizing conservatives on CNN or MSNBC by calling them violent fascists.

No one is chanting “Lock him up” in the MSM.

The both sides narrative is fucking bullshit.

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1 minute ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Except only one side is vilifying the other and that’s all it takes.

No one is demonizing conservatives on CNN or MSNBC by calling them violent fascists.

No one is chanting “Lock him up” in the MSM.

The both sides narrative is fucking bullshit.

 

You can't be serious. 

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1 minute ago, JimmyHoffa said:

 

You can't be serious. 

I’m dead serious. It’s easy to dismiss this because right wing media spends half their time vilifying and discrediting MSM with their own victim style perception lens.

Personally I’d love to see CNN go full fucking left wing and embrace their liberal bias like Fox does with the right.  CNN tries too hard to pander to the moderates and trumpkins IMO.

There is no version of Fox News on the left...perhaps there should be.

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2 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

There is no version of Fox News on the left...perhaps there should be.

There shouldn’t be. We want media that seek to report the truth, not propaganda. The problem with the MSM is their enormous fear of right-wing criticism, which has lead a majority of people in the industry to think that their job is simply to be stenographers who accurately present what “both sides” are saying, rather than reporters who accurately present what is happening.

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2 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

There shouldn’t be. We want media that seek to report the truth, not propaganda. The problem with the MSM is their enormous fear of right-wing criticism, which has lead a majority of people in the industry to think that their job is simply to be stenographers who accurately present what “both sides” are saying, rather than reporters who accurately present what is happening.

I know you’re right that there shouldn’t be for the health of society and that’s why there isn’t.

However, for just a week or two, I’d like to see a CNN go full left and fucking own it like Fox does to illustrate to the right how bad it could be and their whiny liberal bias narrative is way overblown.

The right currently can’t acknowledge how bad liberal bias could be because the worst form of it doesn’t really exist yet in the MSM.

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The "left winged" media is now far to concerned with trying and appearing to be "balance". Which is so stupid. When you have Fox on the other side which is now just a propaganda arm from the republican base and Trump. The media should be worried about reporting facts and news. Not trying to be balanced. The media needs to be providing oversight when the legislative doesn't. Now in their attempt to be balanced they let Trump and Fox get away with creating distrust in the media. It's all so fucked and stupid. 

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38 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

I’m dead serious. It’s easy to dismiss this because right wing media spends half their time vilifying and discrediting MSM with their own victim style perception lens.

Personally I’d love to see CNN go full fucking left wing and embrace their liberal bias like Fox does with the right.  CNN tries too hard to pander to the moderates and trumpkins IMO.

There is no version of Fox News on the left...perhaps there should be.

 

Fox is the king no doubt but are you honestly saying that MSNBC and CNN don't have shows and specific hosts that lean to the left and such the content on their show also runs that direction, the guest they have on, and the discussions they have? 

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