If the White House were to give 10% the attention to the 52,200 people who signed a WH petition as the attention it gave to OWS which in its best day had only 5,000 people, Justice in the USA would have a better face.
This is the Story:
Back in 2008, Federal Agents raided the Agriprocessors poultry plant in Iowa, run at the time by Sholom Rubashkin. He was arrested and charged for hiring illegal immigrants and was kept behind bars for ten weeks. Why was this American citizen, father of ten and first time alleged felon held for ten weeks without bail? He is a Jew and Prosecutors claimed he may run to Israel.
The Government dropped the immigration charges after ten weeks and Sholom was set free only to be arrested a week later on multiple bank fraud charges. The case in a nutshell is he inflated the revenue of his business to increase his multi million line of credit which was kept updated until Rubashkin was held behind bars during his initial arrest with frozen assets. The loan defaulted, and Prosecutors came back claiming that Rubashkin ran a $25 million scam that he didn’t plan to pay…
Prosecutors first wanted life in prison. Real life! However, after an outcry from six former US Attorneys General in addition to many former US Attorneys, DOJ requested 25 years. A Judge gave him 27 years.
Here are the multiple reasons for outrage:
1) Rubashkin was not born in Israel nor does he hold an Israeli passport. His passport at the time of his arrest was found in a safe next to $20,000 cash. Keeping vital documents in the same secure location as cash is the norm, and wealthy people – certainly those who hand out charity daily as Rubashkin did – hold amounts of cash at home. Neither is a sign of planning to escape. The question therefore is: would seizing the passport of this 50-year old American, father of ten, first time alleged felon, and placing a monitor on his ankle not been enough to assure he won’t jump bail?
2) Government agents disguised as looking for work, presented Agriprocessors on multiple occasions with noticeably false immigration documentation. The company declined to hire. In other words, those 300 legally paid, illegal immigrants (consisting of 38% the total staff) arrested at the time of the raid, presented good papers with no way to verify if it’s not Kosher. The question is: If Prosecutors knew that the firm does not intentionally hire illegals, and if prosecutors planned and eventually dropped the charges because it was indeed on weak grounds, why was it brought up against Rubashkin in the first place? (Separately, more than 9,000 state child labor and illegal hiring charges against Rubashkin was later dropped, and he was acquitted on the remaining eighty-plus charges.)
3) How is it that a long running bank loan which failed only due to Government keeping someone under arrest for a long term, can then be held against the person by the very same Government? Is this not Railroad Justice expected from a Government of the Middle Ages?
4) Granted, the loan was not exactly kosher. Why not request 36 months in prison at most? On what basis was 25 years requested for something which became a $25 million “crime” only due to Government keeping Rubashkin locked up for too long on overblown, later to-be-dropped immigration charges?
These and many more questions are on the mind of many Americans. 52,200 of them signed a petition to the President (the second strongest of any petition at the White House website), yet the response is ‘we cannot comment since it’s a Law Enforcement issue and the DOJ has an office which investigates allegations of prosecutors misconduct.’
Well Mr. President: the DOJ is part of your house; it’s part of the Executive Branch! The reason Eric Holder runs that Department on a daily basis and not you, is because you have many more things to run, such as Solyndra loans, Chevy Volts and campaign events. But at the end of the day it’s your Department! You may, can and should call the shots on these issues, certainly when 75 Law professors and former US Attorneys all decried this case.
I am not asking that you investigate how the Judges in this case acted. Indeed, here is where the fancy “separation of powers” phrase is thrown at me, despite the fact that the Legislative Branch can actually investigate a Judge, the Judicial Branch. But Prosecutors work for you Mr. Obama! They are your staff and they (including one whom you gave a high post in DOJ after you took office) ran this operation with gross injustice. When 52,200 take serious your website suggestion to petition you, it is cheap to change the terms as to what will get looked into only after many people signed it, and it deserves more than a no-response comment.
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