Louisiana Voice

“When Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin. If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.” 

—Michael Caputo, the top communications official at the Department of Health and Human Services, in a Facebook post on Sunday. [This is a government official, a member of the Trump administration. Let’s see Outlaw try this reconcile this with his cut-and-paste comment of yesterday.]

“Mr. Caputo is a critical, integral part of the President’s coronavirus response, leading on public messaging as Americans need public health information to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic.”

—Statement issued by HHS. [So, this is who we’re supposed to trust to keep us informed of any updates on the coronavirus. Wonderful.]

“I get along very well with Erdogan even though you’re not supposed to, because everyone says, ‘What a horrible guy.’ But you know, for me, it works out good. It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them. You’ll explain that to me someday, OK? But maybe it’s not a bad thing. The easy ones are the ones I maybe don’t like as much or don’t get along with as much.”

—Donald Trump, in excerpt from recorded interview with Bob Woodward.

“It’s difficult to measure the effect exactly, but the polling sort of shows it and in focus groups it shows up, with people deeply questioning the Democrats, and referring to the ‘deep state’ in particular — that there’s a real conspiracy against the president from the inside. There’s a strain in our political culture that’s accustomed to conspiracy theories, a culture that’s accustomed to coup d’etats.”

—Eduardo Gamarra, pollster and director of the Latino Public Opinion Forum at Florida International University, on the conspiracy theories being promoted against Joe Biden among Latinos by Q-Anon.

Tomorrow marks the midway point of LouisianaVoice’s September fund drive and we’re still short of our goal of $5,000 to be able to keep churning out investigative pieces like the one below this post.

If you have not been adversely impacted financially by the coronavirus, I humbly ask for your help in meeting our goal to keep us going until next April. We did not hold a fund drive last April because that was right in the midst of a national shutdown that sharply curtailed businesses across the U.S.

But if you can do so, I would greatly appreciate your help. There are fuel expenses, costs of documents and occasionally legal expenses in efforts to force compliance with Louisiana’s public records laws.

Because LouisianaVoice is now a 501(c)(3) non-profit, all contributions are fully tax-deductible and anyone giving $100 or more will receive a signed copy of my latest book, Louisiana’s Rogue Sheriffs: A Culture of Corruption.

To give by credit card, click on the yellow  button in the column to the right of this post. If you prefer, you may give by mailing a check to:

LouisianaVoice

P.O. Box 922

Denham Springs, Louisiana 70727

Thank you for your continued support,

Tom Aswell

Relative to the death of Ronald Greene back in May of 2019, maybe, they really are circling the wagons over at Louisiana State Police headquarters, as that retired state trooper said on Saturday.

Otherwise, why try to shield an internal report by LSP some 16 months after the fact? How long does it take to complete an investigation, anyway? And why not release the report to the public and even the attorneys for Greene’s family?

The explanation by LSP legal counsel Faye Morrison that the report is “pending review with the Lincoln/Union Parish District Attorney’s Office just doesn’t wash. (Greene’s death at the hands of six state troopers and a sheriff’s deputy occurred in Union Parish and both Union and Lincoln parishes comprise the 3^rd Judicial District.)

Morrison also explained in denying a public records request by LouisianaVoice that LSP’s “administrative investigation into the same is ongoing.” Seriously? After 16 months? Tom Clancy wrote his 700-page spy novels in something like three months.

And why did it take LSP 15 months to decide to place one of those involved – that’s right, only one – on leave? And was it paid or unpaid leave?

Why was Greene’s autopsy performed out-of-state? That’s a really interesting question that needs to be answered. Perhaps there’s a perfectly logical reason but we’ve yet to hear an explanation.

Why did officers inform Greene’s family that he’d been killed when his car struck a tree when in fact, he only sideswiped a tree, causing minor damage to the rear driver’s side of his vehicle and despite it being learned later that he’d exited his vehicle under his own power and attempted to apologize for not stopping when State Trooper Dakota DeMoss first tried to pull him over in Ouachita Parish?

For that matter, what prompted DeMoss to initially try and pull Greene over? We’re told it was after DeMoss observed Greene commit “a traffic violation”? What, specifically was that violation?

Why did officers claimed that Greene was intoxicated when a post-mortem toxicology examination revealed there were no drugs or alcohol in Green’s system?

Why did officers continue to tase and beat Greene after he was handcuffed and lying on the ground, presenting no threat? A retired state trooper told LouisianaVoice that procedures call for a suspect, once cuffed, to be taken immediately to a patrol car.

Finally, and this is a really curious question that no one has asked yet: Why was an LSP captain (John Peters) involved in the pursuit at midnight? Pursuits are not that uncommon, according to a second retired state trooper interviewed by LouisianaVoice and almost never involve command-level personnel.

A lot of questions remain unanswered, but we’ll see how well officials respond now that CNN is taking an interest of the story in light of other reports of deaths and beatings of Blacks at the hands of law enforcement personnel.

Of course, Ronald Haley of Baton Rouge and Mark Maguire of Philadelphia, attorneys for Greene’s family, having now filed a wrongful death action in Louisiana’s Western District federal court, will demand all the pertinent documents, including reported text messages between Union Parish sheriff’s deputies and state police under the rules of discovery.

Other answers will likely come when the six troopers and Union Parish deputy Christopher Harpin are deposed.

In the meantime, the wagons have been circled.

“Bill Barr has the chance to be the greatest of all time, but if he wants to be politically correct, he’ll be just another guy, because he knows all the answers, he knows what they have, and it goes right to Obama and it goes right to Biden.”

—Donald Trump, desperate to get what he believes will be a favorable report on his investigation into the origins of the Russian interference investigation out before the election. [Sounds like Trump’s getting a little antsy with his lapdog Barr. Maybe Barr should call Jeff Sessions for advice.]

“There is clear evidence that this motion reflects a corrupt and politically motivated favor unworthy of our justice system. The government’s failure to defend its own pretextual reasoning is matched by its silence on the subject of abuse of power,” the ex-judge added. “The government makes virtually no effort to deny or rebut the powerful evidence that its…motion improperly seeks to place this Court’s imprimatur on a corrupt, politically motivated favor for the president’s friend and ally.”

—Former federal judge John Gleeson, arguing on Friday that the Justice Department’s efforts to drop the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

“It’s been 72 hours since I released 11 years of state and federal ta returns and challenged Jaime Harrison to do the same. Crickets. What is he hiding?”

—Donald Trump apologist Lindsey Graham, calling on his Democratic opponent to release his tax returns. [Yep, and it’s been 4 years since Donald Trump promised to return his. Crickets. What is he hiding?]

“The status quo is irrevocably altered once those documents are disclosed, even to the district attorney, because, you know, quite obviously you can’t make them forget what they learned. You can’t un-ring that bell.”

—Trump lawyer William S. Consovoy, arguing against the release of Trump’s tax returns. [Um, exactly. And that’s why we deserve a peek at what he’s trying to keep everyone from learning.]

“To put it bluntly: he didn’t have the guts to make tough choices ― he left that to governors and the states. Now he’s decided he doesn’t have to respect our state’s laws. As usual, he doesn’t believe the rules apply to him,”

—Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, on Trump’s defiance of Nevada’s prohibitions of gatherings of more than 50 people, a policy based on White House recommendations, after Trump held a large indoor rally in that state Sunday night. {But…he’s only trying to play the coronavirus down – just like he told Bob Woodward.]

“They never said who they were. I didn’t know if I was going to be seen again. I didn’t know what was going on. But I could tell that I was being arrested or detained or something.”

—Evelyn Bassi, 30, a lifelong Portland resident, on being swept up by men in cammo who never identified themselves during protests in Portland, Ore. In July.

“This transfer that took place on June 2 was ordered by ICE headquarters. I do know that the local field office pushed back and attempted to refuse the transfer, and they were overridden by officials in Washington.”

— Jeffrey Crawford, the director of the Farmville, Va. Immigration jail, told Farmville’s town council on Aug. 12, after the Trump administration circumvented restrictions on the use of charter flights for employee travel by employing the ruse that detainees were being “transferred.” Among the Department of Homeland Security detainees were dozens who tested positive for COVID-19 who, in turn, infected 300 inmates of the Farmville facility, one of whom died. [The subterfuge by Trump allowed the rapid transfer of ICE agents employed to put down protests in Washington.]

“CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration. CDC tried to report as if once kids get together, there will be spread and this will impact school re-opening . . . Very misleading by CDC and shame on them. Their aim is clear. The reports must be read by someone outside of CDC like myself, and we cannot allow the reporting to go on as it has been, for it is outrageous. Its lunacy. Nothing to go out unless I read and agree with the findings how they CDC, wrote it and I tweak it to ensure it is fair and balanced and ‘complete.'”

—Donald Trump appointee Paul Alexander, aide to Health and Human Services spokesperson Michael Caputo, in typical attack on the CDC’s weekly Morbidity and Mortality reports on COVID-19 by unqualified, non-scientist political hacks. [The attempts by Trump to deflect attention away from his epic failure in responding to the coronavirus continue long after his bombshell revelation to Bob Woodward.]

“The ballots in Nevada on election night should be seized by federal marshals and taken from the state. They are completely corrupted. No votes should be counted from the state of Nevada if that turns out to be the provable case. Send federal marshals to the Clark county board of elections, Mr. President!”

—Roger Stone, in an interview on Alex Jones’s Infowars, Sept. 10. [Stone also said Trump should seize total power and jail Bill and Hillary Clinton, Mark Zuckerberg, Harry Reid and Apple’s Tim Cook, and form “an election day operation using the FBI, federal marshals and Republican state officials across the country to be prepared to file legal objections ([to results) and if necessary, to physically stand in the way of criminal activity.” [This, and the quote below, are prime examples of Third-World patriotism.]

“We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that. We have the right to do that. We have the power to do that if we want. Look, it’s called insurrection. We just send in and we, we do it very easy. I mean, it’s very easy. I’d rather not do that, because there’s no reason for it, but if we had to, we’d do that and put it down within minutes, within minutes.”

—Donald Trump, in interview with Fox News’ Jeannine Pirro, on Saturday. [If this dangerous rhetoric doesn’t serve as a would-be dictator’s desperate attempt to cling to power, nothing does.]