A proposal to extend Reuters’s investigation of state judges, which found “hardwired judicial corruption”,
https://judicial-discipline-reform.org/OL2/DrRCordero-Reuters_judges_investigation.pdf
Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq. Ph.D., University of Cambridge, England Judicial Discipline Reform 2165 Bruckner Blvd., Bronx, NY 10472-6506 M.B.A., University of Michigan Business School DrRCordero@Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org D.E.A., La Sorbonne, Paris www.Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org tel. (718)827-9521; follow @DrCorderoEsq July 26, 2020 A proposal to extend Reuters’s investigation of state judges, which found “hardwired judicial corruption”, to federal judges, who have institutionalized their abuse of power as their modus operandi, running the Federal Judiciary as a racketeering enterprise Their exposure can so outrage a public intolerant of abuse of power that the public forces the issue into the 2020 campaign, leading to transformative change in the administration of justice and the current form of government‡ Reporters Michael Berens and John Shiffman, michael.berens@thomsonreuters.com, and editor Blake Morrison, john.shiffman@thomsonreuters.com, Reuters blake.morrison@thomsonreuters.com, and all other reporters, editors, and Advocates of Honest Judiciaries Dear Messrs. Morrison, Shiffman, and Berens, reporters, editors, and Advocates, I read with interest your investigative report “The Teflon Robe”, published by Reuters on June 30, 2020, which “exposes hardwired judicial corruption” whereby “[t]housands of U.S. judges who broke laws or oaths remained on the bench” even though they “have made racist statements, lied to state officials and forced defendants to languish in jail without a lawyer – and then returned to the bench...sometimes with little more than a rebuke from the state agencies overseeing their conduct”. In fact, your “findings reveal an “excessively” forgiving judicial disciplinary system”. Despite judicial conduct review commissions, “state and local judges have repeatedly escaped public accountability for misdeeds that have victimized thousands...the system tends to err on the side of protecting the rights and reputations of judges while overlooking the impact courtroom wrongdoing has on those most affected by it”. Commissions may take years to start investigating a judge; have “special rules for judges” because “[m]ost states afford judges accused of misconduct a gentle kind of justice” while other “rules can leave lawyers and litigants fearing retaliation” so that they “intimidate anyone with a legitimate complaint”; drop a complaint after having “raised questions about whether proper procedures had been followed”; and allow judges to ‘return to the bench virtually unscathed’, while ‘victims of judicial misconduct are left uncompensated’, ‘“really losing sight of what a justice system should be all about”’. No charge sticks to judges. Their Teflon robes cloaks them in impunity...while the public is exposed to misconduct by the complained-against judge and all the other members of the judicial system. Judges are unaccountable. The public is at their mercy and their victims are uncompensated. And state judges are not the only ones to wear Teflon robes. A. Proposal for a joint investigation of federal judges and its justification This is a proposal for a joint investigation extending yours of state judges to federal judges, the only ones with national jurisdiction so that their decisions and orders are apt to affect and even harm everybody in our country. Hence, the audience for its findings is the national public. The target of the investigation is not misconduct that can be explained away as limited to individual OL2:1126 †http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL2/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates2.pdf >from OL2:394 rogue judges, whose removal and punishment would suffice to deal with the problem. Rather, the investigative target is forms of abuse of power so pervasive and necessarily coordinated among federal judges as to constitute their modus operandi: It is abuse so interwoven with their way of doing business that it has been institutionalized in the Federal Judiciary. Their motive is grabbing illegal gain and convenience. Given that their abuse is so organized and influences all aspects of their activity, federal judges run the Federal Judiciary as a racketeering enterprise. a. In fact, no lesser a politician than Senator Elizabeth Warren dare denounce in her “I have a plan for the Judiciary too” the systematic failure of federal judges to recuse themselves from cases in which they hold shares in the company of one of the parties before them and resolving the ensuing conflict of interests by favoring that party so as to maintain or increase the value of their shares. Sen. Warren has identified the circumstance enabling federal judges to commit such abuse to be their unaccountability. She has named it abusive self-enrichment. b. Federal judges’ self-enrichment by abusing their power necessarily entails the crimes of: 1) concealment of assets 2) tax evasion 3) money laundering 4) fraud on the parties through intentional frustration of judicial process predicated on fairness and impartiality 5) breach of contract for judicial services entered into with no intention to perform it and thus, in bad faith 6) breach of their oath and of public trust causing injury in fact. c. Federal judges have the means of committing those crimes: 1) The Federal Judiciary has a nationwide computer network run by expert personnel. It maintains a database that stores hundreds of millions of briefs, records, motions, applications, letters, decisions, orders, etc., and carries out electronic filings, retrievals, docket entries, daily schedule updating, database searches, etc. 2) It has leverage over the intelligence agencies, which run more extensive and sophisticated networks and whose secret requests for secret orders authorizing secret surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act must be approved by its judges. d. Would you and the rest of the public trust federal judges to care about administering to you “Equal Justice Under Law” although they have no qualms about breaking the law to ensure their abusive self-enrichment? ‘He who can do the more can do the lesser.’ The exposure of federal judges’ institutionalized abuse will have a substantial financial and journalistic impact. “Scandal sells”, and it can sell for years. Thus, it can render the investigation more cost-effective. Also, it can lead to a permanent increase in a media outlet’s audience and reputation. Moreover, the exposure can provoke such public outrage as to insert the issue of judges’ abuse into the presidential campaign. By journalism having such impact, it can set in motion transformative change in both the administration of justice and the rest of government, as discussed below. The proposed joint investigation of federal judges is based on an investigative plan with many leads that allow for it to be focused and cost-effective(infra 1132§F; *>jur:194§E); http://judicialdiscipline-reform.org/OL2/DrRCordero_institutionalized_judges_abuse_power.pdf. * http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf >all prefixes:# up to OL:393 OL2:1127 B. Proposal for the publi
Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq. Ph.D., University of Cambridge, England Judicial Discipline Reform 2165 Bruckner Blvd., Bronx, NY 10472-6506 M.B.A., University of Michigan Business School DrRCordero@Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org D.E.A., La Sorbonne, Paris www.Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org tel. (718)827-9521; follow @DrCorderoEsq July 26, 2020 A proposal to extend Reuters’s investigation of state judges, which found “hardwired judicial corruption”, to federal judges, who have institutionalized their abuse of power as their modus operandi, running the Federal Judiciary as a racketeering enterprise Their exposure can so outrage a public intolerant of abuse of power that the public forces the issue into the 2020 campaign, leading to transformative change in the administration of justice and the current form of government‡ Reporters Michael Berens and John Shiffman, michael.berens@thomsonreuters.com, and editor Blake Morrison, john.shiffman@thomsonreuters.com, Reuters blake.morrison@thomsonreuters.com, and all other reporters, editors, and Advocates of Honest Judiciaries Dear Messrs. Morrison, Shiffman, and Berens, reporters, editors, and Advocates, I read with interest your investigative report “The Teflon Robe”, published by Reuters on June 30, 2020, which “exposes hardwired judicial corruption” whereby “[t]housands of U.S. judges who broke laws or oaths remained on the bench” even though they “have made racist statements, lied to state officials and forced defendants to languish in jail without a lawyer – and then returned to the bench...sometimes with little more than a rebuke from the state agencies overseeing their conduct”. In fact, your “findings reveal an “excessively” forgiving judicial disciplinary system”. Despite judicial conduct review commissions, “state and local judges have repeatedly escaped public accountability for misdeeds that have victimized thousands...the system tends to err on the side of protecting the rights and reputations of judges while overlooking the impact courtroom wrongdoing has on those most affected by it”. Commissions may take years to start investigating a judge; have “special rules for judges” because “[m]ost states afford judges accused of misconduct a gentle kind of justice” while other “rules can leave lawyers and litigants fearing retaliation” so that they “intimidate anyone with a legitimate complaint”; drop a complaint after having “raised questions about whether proper procedures had been followed”; and allow judges to ‘return to the bench virtually unscathed’, while ‘victims of judicial misconduct are left uncompensated’, ‘“really losing sight of what a justice system should be all about”’. No charge sticks to judges. Their Teflon robes cloaks them in impunity...while the public is exposed to misconduct by the complained-against judge and all the other members of the judicial system. Judges are unaccountable. The public is at their mercy and their victims are uncompensated. And state judges are not the only ones to wear Teflon robes. A. Proposal for a joint investigation of federal judges and its justification This is a proposal for a joint investigation extending yours of state judges to federal judges, the only ones with national jurisdiction so that their decisions and orders are apt to affect and even harm everybody in our country. Hence, the audience for its findings is the national public. The target of the investigation is not misconduct that can be explained away as limited to individual OL2:1126 †http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL2/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates2.pdf >from OL2:394 rogue judges, whose removal and punishment would suffice to deal with the problem. Rather, the investigative target is forms of abuse of power so pervasive and necessarily coordinated among federal judges as to constitute their modus operandi: It is abuse so interwoven with their way of doing business that it has been institutionalized in the Federal Judiciary. Their motive is grabbing illegal gain and convenience. Given that their abuse is so organized and influences all aspects of their activity, federal judges run the Federal Judiciary as a racketeering enterprise. a. In fact, no lesser a politician than Senator Elizabeth Warren dare denounce in her “I have a plan for the Judiciary too” the systematic failure of federal judges to recuse themselves from cases in which they hold shares in the company of one of the parties before them and resolving the ensuing conflict of interests by favoring that party so as to maintain or increase the value of their shares. Sen. Warren has identified the circumstance enabling federal judges to commit such abuse to be their unaccountability. She has named it abusive self-enrichment. b. Federal judges’ self-enrichment by abusing their power necessarily entails the crimes of: 1) concealment of assets 2) tax evasion 3) money laundering 4) fraud on the parties through intentional frustration of judicial process predicated on fairness and impartiality 5) breach of contract for judicial services entered into with no intention to perform it and thus, in bad faith 6) breach of their oath and of public trust causing injury in fact. c. Federal judges have the means of committing those crimes: 1) The Federal Judiciary has a nationwide computer network run by expert personnel. It maintains a database that stores hundreds of millions of briefs, records, motions, applications, letters, decisions, orders, etc., and carries out electronic filings, retrievals, docket entries, daily schedule updating, database searches, etc. 2) It has leverage over the intelligence agencies, which run more extensive and sophisticated networks and whose secret requests for secret orders authorizing secret surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act must be approved by its judges. d. Would you and the rest of the public trust federal judges to care about administering to you “Equal Justice Under Law” although they have no qualms about breaking the law to ensure their abusive self-enrichment? ‘He who can do the more can do the lesser.’ The exposure of federal judges’ institutionalized abuse will have a substantial financial and journalistic impact. “Scandal sells”, and it can sell for years. Thus, it can render the investigation more cost-effective. Also, it can lead to a permanent increase in a media outlet’s audience and reputation. Moreover, the exposure can provoke such public outrage as to insert the issue of judges’ abuse into the presidential campaign. By journalism having such impact, it can set in motion transformative change in both the administration of justice and the rest of government, as discussed below. The proposed joint investigation of federal judges is based on an investigative plan with many leads that allow for it to be focused and cost-effective(infra 1132§F; *>jur:194§E); http://judicialdiscipline-reform.org/OL2/DrRCordero_institutionalized_judges_abuse_power.pdf. * http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf >all prefixes:# up to OL:393 OL2:1127 B. Proposal for the publi
<< Home