Long time GOP intern caught in creepy cyber-stalking scandal

This kid, who apparently aspires to be a professional political intern, has worked with a lot of big name Republicans, including most recently Mitt Romney. It seems when he wasn't busy fetching coffee and pizza for his boss, Adam Savader, 21, was attempting to extort nude photos from random women he mostly knows from school.

Savader is a political science student at SUNY Farmingdale who’s interned for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan as well as Romney. He’s charged with illegally obtaining nude pictures of 15 women and threatening to make them public unless the women sent him more naked pictures of themselves.

Clearly he's a better hacker than he is an extortionist. He somehow retrieved the photos from the victim's personal email accounts and then launched his blackmail scheme. But he wasn't looking for money, just some forced virtual sexytime with the women of his dreams.

His other hobby was having his photo taken with celebrities "which he often posted online."

His Facebook page is filled with photos of him with several prominent politicos and actors, including Ryan, former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, Georgia Rep. Tom Price, Michelle Duggar from the TV show "19 Kids and Counting," tax lobbyist Grover Norquist, actor Allen Covert, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

And he "often bragged about about dressing up as 'Ellis the Elephant.'" In fact he was in the suit at the big annual ConCon, CPAC. So if you were a woman at CPAC and ever in proximity to Ellis the Elephant, chances are creepy intern stealthily took upshots of your undies if you were following the dress code and wearing a tasteful skirt with sensible pumps. And especially if you ignored the dress code and showed up in a miniskirt and cowboy boots.

The FBI press release has more of the icky details. The good old family values party. They never fail to amuse in their failures.

Addendum: Dave Weigel has lots more photos.

Another gun show host murdered

Yet another high profile media gun guy gets murdered.

The host of The Sportsman Channel’s “A Rifleman’s Journal” was shot and killed in Montana on Friday. The gunman, seemingly a jealous husband, then turned the weapon on himself.

This seems pretty clearly a case where it would have happened no matter what because, it's Montana. I suspect they solve a lot of domestic disputes with guns there. But this is the third one in just a few weeks and the other two weren't over spurned lovers.

Steve M. tells me the wingers suspect a super secret diabolical government plot to kill all the famous gun people and then confiscate all the dispirited regular folks guns. Or something.

Lord knows I love me a good conspiracy theory but Mr. Occam is on the line reminding us famous people are always targets for crackpots. I'm thinking maybe it's not such a good idea to agitate a bunch of hot-headed, trigger happy, paranoid gun "collectors" with scary stories about gummit agents coming to git them. Nor to glorify the gun culture until it makes OK Corral shoot-outs practically mandatory.

When the answer is always a loaded gun, everything looks like a target.

Gloria Allred springs October surprise

Until the court agrees to unseal the records, this falls under juicy gossip only, but if it plays out it would be a bombshell. Because if Romney lied under oath to help a friend screw over his wife during a bitter divorce, that's a serious crime.

Mitt Romney LIED under oath when he testified in the divorce of his good friend and screwed the friend's wife out of a lot of money in the process ... so claims the ex-wife of Staples' founder Tom Stemberg.

Multiple sources connected with the divorce tell TMZ ... during Tom's uber nasty divorce case with ex-wife Maureen, Mitt Romney gave a deposition and testified during the trial that Staples was worth virtually nothing. Romney testified that the company was worth very little and Tom was a dreamer and "the dream continues."

Here's the tell that gives it credibility:

Partly as a result of Romney's testimony, Maureen got relatively little in the divorce, but we're told just weeks after the divorce ended, Romney and Tom went to Goldman Sachs and cashed in THEIR stock for a fortune. Short story -- Romney allegedly lied to help his friend and screw the friend's wife over.

And it gets uglier. In shades of Newt Gingrich the ex-wife "suffered from MS and had multiple bouts with cancer." Romney's BFF Tom Stemberg cancelled her health insurance, left her homeless and in severe financial distress. One might call such vile heartlessness the Vulture Capitalist Code, so beloved by conservatives across our country.

Time is short, so who knows if this will play out in time to make a difference but Gloria Allred was in court with the ex-Mrs. Stemberg and various newspapers have petitioned the courts to release the records. It would be really good if the truth came out before millions of Americans make the same horrible mistake as they did in 2004.

Darrell Issa is worse than a terrorist

No seriously. This Darrell Issa belongs in Gitmo. This just in from Imani. In his never ending quest to prove he's the world's biggest asshole, Darrell Issa signed a death warrant for Libyan activists working with the US:

But this afternoon, Darrell Issa—in a stroke of sheer idiocy—published reams of State Department documents, and this woman’s name appears in the documents—unredacted.

And now her life is in danger. The lives of several other Libyans named in the documents are in danger. And House Republicans, specifically Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz, are to blame.

Republicans have become a greater security threat to America than the terrorists. If they don't arrest them for treason, Congress should at least be demanding their resignation. Effective immediately.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Trash the vote

The GOP obviously can't win the election fair and square with their failed policies, so they do what they always do lie, cheat, and steal Democratic registration forms and throw them in the trash. This story broke last night and it just gets weirder as it develops.

This guy was a supervisor of GOP registration drives in swing states. He got caught throwing only eight forms away and only five of those were of voters not yet registered with the state. It begins to feel like he deliberatively got caught in a serious, but essentially petty crime in order to minimize the extent of the fraud. Authorities are already saying there's no evidence of a widespread problem. Yeah, Occam's Razor, but what better way to disguise a larger crime than to deliberately get caught in a smaller one which defines it as a lone wolf operation?

I mean there's an odd Rove connection in the story:

UPDATE: Sources close to the Rockingham County Sheriff's Office are telling me that Strategic Allied Consulting is involved in this. This is the same group that was in the national news two weeks ago for their "registration" drive in Florida that had forms with made up voters.

Even more interesting. Strategic Allied Consulting shares a Virginia headquarters with two other notables.

#1- American Crossroads- the superpac founded by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie

#2- The office of Virginia State Senator Jill Holtzman Vogel.

And this guy is well connected within the GOP, having worked for Republican officeholders and the RNC. Also Nathan Sproul, who has managed to get away with apparent registration fraud for years, lurks around the edges of the whole mess.

Suppose we'll never know. These people are pros at ratfking. But it will be interesting to see if wide spread registration problems surface at the polls on election day.

On a related note, a few days ago "the Maricopa County Elections Department mistakenly listed the wrong date of the upcoming general election on an official government document." Said document contained a voter ID card. And what a coincidence, the wrong election day date was only listed in Spanish on the document. The English version was correct.

I'm sure I don't need to remind you Maricopa County is home to America's worst Sheriff, Joe Arpaio who has a long history of anti-Hispanic chicanery. This is shaping up to be the ugliest election day ever.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Wall Street: Modern day Mafia

"One of the biggest lies in capitalism," says Eliot Spitzer, "is that companies like competition. They don't. Nobody likes competition."

Here's your Sunday long read, but take your blood pressure meds first. It's infuriating. Matt Taibbi read the pleadings in the recent conviction of a few minor league Wall Streeters and discovers a long running scam that comes straight out of the Mafia handbook. Brazen bid rigging on municpal bonds.

Nobody noticed since no one municipality lost startling sums of money, but as the saying goes, mulitply it by thousands of cities and towns in every state in America and suddenly you're talking about real money.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

George Zimmerman statement shot down by technology

Well, innocent until proven guilty and all that, but this seems like rather clear evidence that George Zimmerman lied to the police.

Tom Owen, forensic consultant for Owen Forensic Services LLC and chair emeritus for the American Board of Recorded Evidence, used voice identification software to rule out Zimmerman. Another expert contacted by the Sentinel, utilizing different techniques, came to the same conclusion. . . ” you can say with reasonable scientific certainty that it’s not Zimmerman,” Owen says, stressing that he cannot confirm the voice as Trayvon’s, because he didn’t have a sample of the teen’s voice to compare.

It's difficult not to think that George Zimmerman, being the son of the former judge, simply assumed he could say anything and get away with it. Breaking the code of silence, but it's not that big a secret that the legal system takes care of its own and Zimmerman skated on charges related to violent behavior before this, more than once. Indeed, if this case hadn't caught the media attention that engendered such a huge public outcry, he probably would have gotten away with it again.

Related, wingnut blogger Tom Maguire is an imbecile, or else he's being wilfully obtuse. Voice recognition technology has been around for a very long time. As far as I know, it's acceptable expert testimony in any courtroom. Also, too, the audio on that 911 call is heartbreaking.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Zimmerman standing on shaky ground - Updated

If this is the police video of George Zimmerman on the night of Trayvon Martin's death, his story and the police statements, just fell apart. I don't see any blood on the guy at all and it's possible you couldn't see grass stains on the dark jacket, but it doesn't even look rumbled. I'd also think if he had to shoot Trayvon while he was lying on the ground, he would have been sprayed with blood himself. That surely would have shown up on the lighter part of the jacket and his shirt. But watch for yourself.



No apparent injury to the back of his head either. If you can't see the embed, here's the direct link to the police tape video.

I would assume, if ABC could get this footage, then the new special prosecutor investigating Trayvon's case must have it too. Wonder if that's why she floated the idea she might be able to bypass a Grand Jury to bring charges?

Update: More evidence that refutes Zimmerman's statement.

The funeral director who prepared Trayvon Martin’s body for burial told HLN’s Nancy Grace Wednesday that he did not see any cuts or bruises on the teen’s hands that would have been indicative of a struggle with George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed the Florida teen.

Yes. I know. Nancy Grace? But just because she's crazy doesn't mean it's not true. I suppose the autopsy photos would prove that one way or the other if it comes to trial.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Trayvon's killer is a Democrat

Admit I laughed sardonically when I saw George Zimmerman is a registered Democrat. My first thought was, thanks all you wingnuts for defending a member of the party of your imagined evils. Wondered how they were going to reconcile that with their vigorous defense of Zimmerman's murder of Trayvon.

The early reaction suggests they've agreed to use it to excuse their own vile racism. In the world according to wingnuttia, their relentless years long villification of the poor and people of color couldn't possibly have had any effect on Zimmerman's paranoid vigilantism because he's not one of them.

Of course, this changes nothing. Zimmerman's political registration means as little as Trayvon's youthful indiscretions. The case can still be distilled to a single sentence. If Zimmerman had stayed in his car and waited for the police to arrive, as the dispatcher had advised to do, Trayvon would not be dead.

And while I'm on the subject, contrary to his wingnuttian defenders, Zimmerman's account of the murder, conveniently leaked by the police department doesn't absolve him either. You can't really judge between both sides of a story when one of the parties is dead. Furthermore, to repeat what I said on the twitter last night, it's hard to believe that no one took photos of Zimmerman's alleged injuries on the night of the murder. Funny that those haven't been leaked. And come to think of it, if Zimmerman was indeed so badly beaten up that his only recourse was to kill Trayvon, why didn't he go to the hospital to get those injuries treated?

No amount of spin can change the evidence that points to Zimmerman being an overzealous vigilante, a bigot and a stalker. The case was mishandled by the local police from the beginning and a full investigation is still needed. Whether or not he can avoid a murder charge under Stand Your Ground, there should at least be a hearing to determine whether Zimmerman is mentally fit to continue to carry a concealed weapon.

[Big thanks to Michael J.W. Stickings of The Reaction for the link at Crooks & Liars.]



[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Trayvon Martin: Mourning in America

I haven't posted about the killing of Trayvon because so much has already been said and I can't seem to write anything coherent myself. Every time I think about it, I'm overcome with rage and grief. But, Charlie Pierce captures my emotions in a fine rant. Don't want to excerpt a lot of it, because it needs to be read in full, but these few sentences resonate with me.

Well I certainly don't feel calm and measured, and it's not because my kids "could have been Trayvon." No, they could not have. My kids are white. ....nobody would have looked askance at them, let alone blown them away with a handgun.

I am sick to death of people who celebrate "the family" making excuses about why other people's children are expendable. I am sick to death of politicians who are more concerned about protecting zygotes than about the teenagers on whom they seek to balance their budgets and advance their careers. ...I am sick to death about how we can argue about anything simply to argue about it, and then move along to the next argument, as though anything at all has been settled.

Never mind the obvious inherent racism, I despair for the human race when I read the vicious reaction coming from Zimmerman's apologists. I feel like we're witnessing the final breakdown of civil society. And so much of the reaction feels like a simple transference of anger by people who just can't stand that a black man is our president. You know the ones I mean. They can prove they're not racists. Shee-it, they have black friends. It's just those other shiftless niggers they can't stand.

I've seen dozens of images in the last few days as people try to express their response to this travesty. This is one that moved me the most because it rings so very true.

This is the reality for this child simply because his skin is dark. No child should have to grow up with the certain knowledge this, in fact, could easily happen to him. [Original photo]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Conservative family values

Innocent until proven guilty and all that, but it's not like this is the first time we've seen an alleged "family values" conservative commit violent crimes against women.

March 17, 2012 (Lemon Grove)—Lemon Grove resident Michael John Kobulnicky, 50, a leader in the San Diego Tea Party and former regional director of the Southern California Conservative Party, is under arrest for allegedly kidnapping and raping a local woman on Fiesta Island.

“He dragged her out of the car and sexually assaulted her pretty brutally,” San Diego Police Lt. Andra Brown told ECM news partner 10 News in late February, shortly after the February 25 assault occurred.

Not only that, but one of the charges is rape with a foreign object. Whatever the hell that means. Apparently he offered her a ride home and then instead, he took her to a presuambly secluded place and left her lying there on the sand after he finished brutalizing her. And we might mention his former wife charged him with abuse as well.

Again, he hasn't been convicted yet, but both the Tea Party and the SoCal Con Party were quick to disown him. Meanwhile, one can only hope the unfortunate woman he is supposed to marry next month has the sense to call off the wedding.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

A dearth of perp walks

There's a running joke on the internets. I can't remember it exactyly but it goes something like, want to steal a little money, rob a bank. Want to steal a lot of money, own a bank. Sadly, it's not a joke. The same bastards who robbed the world economy and crashed it in 08 are still at it. Foreclosure scams are the new grand larceny.

Big financial institutions continue to foreclose on troubled borrowers in error -- either while a homeowner is awaiting a loan modification or because of fees incorrectly added to the seizure -- according to a national survey of attorneys representing borrowers.

One intent of the recent $25-billion mortgage settlement among attorneys general, the nation's five largest mortgage servicers and certain federal agencies was to do away with such errors, but in recent weeks consumer advocates have raised concerns that borrowers who are in the foreclosure process may still be harmed.

More than 80% of the attorneys surveyed said they had in the last year represented a borrower who was awaiting a loan modification but a foreclosure sale was attempted.

Atrios flagged this story this morning and then finds the new angle in their scam. After they wrongfully take the homes, the Banksters buy the foreclosed properties themselves and become slum lords. They ignore rules and regulations without fear of retribution.

And why would they be afraid? They sucked up most of the money betting on the fradulent mortgages in the first place and the government bailed them out when they lost the bet. None of the major players paid a price for their crimes. As Charlie succinctly puts it:

They will not stop — I mean, they absolutely will not stop — until a couple of hundred of them are thrown into jail for terms so long that they scare the tassels off the loafers of the ones who are left unarrested.

The incentives are fucked up. They arrested a few petty thieves like Bernie Madoff for show. Nothing is going to change until they perp walk a whole bunch of the serious larcenists.

The day democracy died

I suppose you can't really pin the death of our form of democratic governance on any one event, but Charles marks the anniversary of Iran-Contra with a short history lesson on the Reagan era debacle that was certainly one of the seminal moments. Even then, it was the media who were the gatekeepers for the cover-up.

The press was next to useless. (Mark Hertsgaard's On Bended Knee is the essential text here.) Hell, the scandal was uncovered by two guys in Beirut with a mimeograph machine. And while there was some excellent work done in spots by the elite American press, the general tone was that the scandal was "too complex" for the country to follow, which led to its having "dragged on too long" and to the eventual dissipation of its political force. (This was a trial run for the infantilization of political self-government, by which the self-governing public is treated as though it were made of candyglass. The masterwork in this regard was the haste to settle the "dangerous uncertainity" surrounding the 2000 presidential election, when almost every poll indicated that the country was perfectly willing to live through a constitutional crisis so long as the crisis followed the Constitution.) This was, of course, nonsense. The Whitewater scandal was insanely complex, largely because there was virtually nothing to the damned thing, and that dragged on all the way to an impeachment trial in the Senate.

Compared to a real-estate scam masterminded by crooks and loons in Arkansas that somehow led to hearings on what the president did with his pee-pee, Iran-Contra was a straightforward constitutional B&E. The Reagan people wanted to fight a war in Central America. Congress did its constitutional duty and shut off the money. The administration then broke the law by arranging private funding for its pet war. One of the ways it did that was to sell military hardware to the government of Iran, which sponsored not only terrorism, but also the kidnapping of various American citizens abroad. All of this was in service to a private foreign policy, devoid of checks and balances, and based on a fundamental contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law.

A must read post, especially for those who weren't adults when this happened. It's a short, yet comprehensibe summary that lends important historical context to where we are today.

Conservatives exploding

Since I was barely blogging while I was dealing with the first wave of grief over losing my Dad, I was late in posting about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Lately, I've making up some ground on that and one clear effect of the ongoing protests is conservatives are getting very angry about it. The comments on my posts at DetNews are extra cranky and I've had an unusual number of my readers there send very angry emails to my personal account.

Now, I'm not saying this is directly related, since we don't know who did it, but clearly somebody was mad enough to throw a bomb into an Occupy Wall Street encampment.

Portland police are looking for the person who threw a chemical bomb at the Occupy Maine encampment in Portland during the early morning hours on Sunday.

Sgt. Glen McGary said police responded around 4 a.m. Sunday to an explosion in Lincoln Park at Congress and Pearl streets.

Though no one was injured, McGary said the homemade bomb, which consisted of chemicals poured into a plastic Gatorade container could have caused serious injury.

More from Athenae, including a report from the Occupation website. They were very lucky no one got hurt.

Meanwhile, conservatives generally appear to be getting more and more unhinged of late. This Tea Party resoultion urges businesses to refuse to hire anyone, simply in order to bring down President Obama, and any economic recovery with it. You might think self-professed patriots would want the economy to succeed and our country to thrive no matter who's running it. Apparently you would be wrong.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Save the Banksters at all costs

Dr. Krugman takes on the banksters this morning in looking at the proposed government settlement over foreclosure fraud:

Ever since the current economic crisis began, it has seemed that five words sum up the central principle of United States financial policy: go easy on the bankers. [...]

The big drag on the economy now is the overhang of household debt, largely created by the $5.6 trillion in mortgage debt that households took on during the bubble years. Serious mortgage relief could make a dent in that problem; a $30 billion settlement from the banks, even if it proved more effective than the government’s modification program, would not.

So when officials tell you that we must rush to settle with the banks for the sake of the economy, don’t believe them. We should do this right, and hold bankers accountable for their actions.

Read the link for the depressing details. These people should be going to jail, not being let off the hook with a slap on the wrist. It's just sick.

Which reminds me of recent Atrios post:

Save The Banksters, Save The World

If instead of all that free money for banks, we'd given free money to people on the condition they give it to the banks (paying down debts), we could have gotten through this mess.

But bad poor people don't deserve money, only rich banksters who tried to destroy the world.

This is a view I've seen in many quarters, on the left and the right. I don't trust the hardcore right any more than the next guy, but this is one issue on which I wish we could have banded together and taken to the streets with the proverbial torches and pitchforks. Thinking mass protests could have brought accountability in the absence of political will to do the right thing.

America's most wanted

I honestly didn't think I would live to see this happen. The end of a legendary manhunt.

Fugitive South Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger, wanted for 19 murders, was captured last night in Southern California, the result of a tip from FBI television spots that began airing this week. His capture ended a 16-year manhunt that spanned the globe.

Maybe you have to be from New England to appreciate Whitey's legend. He was so colorful a character, rainbows paled in comparison. He was always in the news before he went on the lam. Putting aside that he did some terrible things, I have to admit I'm a little sad they finally got him. It feels sort of like getting to the last page of a book you really loved and don't want to end.

Anyway, the only thing that could top this would be finally finding Jimmy Hoffa.

Bomb threat thwarted in Spokane

Story is just breaking now so reports are sketchy but it appears there was a serious bomb attempt in Washington state yesterday.

A backpack bomb with the potential of killing or injuring dozens of people was found Monday along the route of a Martin Luther King Day “unity march” in downtown Spokane, Wash., authorities said today.

Gratefully, the bomb was discovered and neutralized well before it could cause mass mayhem.

Don't want to jump to any hasty conclusions but that the bomb was planted along a MLK parade route does make it seem likely we'll be adding this incident to Digby's list.

Extortionists

As I said in my previous post, I've long thought that a lot of the incomprehensible positions Obama has taken on economic policy have been a direct result of extortion by the Banksters. As in, "Nice stock market you have there. Would be too bad if something happened to it -- again." Clearly the Banksters have the tools to create another 2008 style crash.

On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan. The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable — and controversial — fields in finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their identities, have been strictly confidential.

....The banks in this group, which is affiliated with a new derivatives clearinghouse, have fought to block other banks from entering the market, and they are also trying to thwart efforts to make full information on prices and fees freely available.

These are the same guys still running the same Ponzi scam that created the 2008 meltdown and they're now back to profiting at record breaking levels from it. I mean, how is it even legal for them not to be required to disclose costs and fees on the derivative trades?

A couple of weeks ago there a brief buzz about the DoJ's purported "crackdown" on Wall St. fraudsters. I didn't need Bloomberg to tell me they were only netting small fry. What's disturbing is our supposedly internet savvy administration doesn't seem to realize they can't get away with this kind of smoke and mirrors PR effort anymore. Not while the internet remains even somewhat free. Which makes me worry about the future of the internets.

But that aside, it also leaves the question of what to do about the Banksters. I believe they could, and would, cause another meltdown if the White House goes after the big fish. It's not lik they couldn't weather another one. But I'm not so sure the rest of us little people could survive another one so soon.

I know I'm in tin foil hat territory here, but think about it. If this was the actual situation, and you were President, and really did care about the working class, what would you do? Me, I'm not so sure I wouldn't pay the ransom. Which I guess is just a long winded of explaining why I just can't quite shake my empathy for Obama's burden.

Recession is over -- on Wall Street

Unless you're a WSJ subscriber, don't bother to click the link, it's behind the paywall, but here's the money quote:

About three dozen of the top publicly held securities and investment-services firms—which include banks, investment banks, hedge funds, money-management firms and securities exchanges—are set to pay $144 billion in compensation and benefits this year, a 4% increase from the $139 billion paid out in 2009, according to the survey. Compensation was expected to rise at 26 of the 35 firms.

A lot of these people deserved to be indicted. Instead they're handsomely rewarded for gaming the system for their own profit. This is why the voters are pissed off at Democrats. Scapegoating Bernie Madoff for an entire industry's de facto criminality wasn't enough. A few more frogmarches would have gone a long way to sating the public anger.

Sheriff Arpaio's office under investigation

This is actually an old story. Or at least the accusations are old, I remember reading about the allegations of corruptions back when the worst Sheriff in America was conducting this witch hunt:

Top officials in the office of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio used its anti-corruption unit to conduct politically motivated investigations, misled the public about a campaign fund that helped Arpaio win reelection and surveilled the Arizona lawman's campaign rivals, according to an internal memo from a high-ranking officer. [...]

The most significant part of the memo concerns a search warrant that Hendershott allegedly directed to be served on the Republican-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, with whom Arpaio, also a Republican, has been embroiled in a lengthy feud. Arpaio and an ally, former County Atty. Andrew Thomas, filed conflict-of-interest charges against two supervisors that were quickly dismissed by judges as legally unsound.

Those charges, and investigations of the judges and other critics that followed, are believed to be at the heart of the federal grand jury probe.

Munnell wrote that, since the anti-corruption unit was formed in 2007, "it has been the pattern and practice of this unit to conduct politically motivated investigations at the implicit direction of Hendershott."

Of course the down side is, looks like his number two man is going to be the sacrificial lamb and the evil Sheriff won't go down for it. One can be sure it didn't happen without his authorization. But good to see to see his department called out for it in some kind of official manner anyway.