Support Our Journalism

Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Politics National News World Economy Lifestyle Store

Tag: eric adams

Acting US Attorney Resigns Over Order To Drop Charges Against Mayor Adams

The U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) top prosecutor in New York City just handed in a two-sentence resignation letter following orders to drop charges against Mayor Eric Adams.

NBC News reported Thursday that Danielle Sassoon — who was named acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York last month — refused an order from acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to drop the corruption case against Adams. Bove insisted that Adams be let off the hook so he could focus on addressing "illegal immigration and violent crime."

Sassoon's abrupt departure is particularly noteworthy given her conservative bona fides. In addition to being a member of the conservative Federalist Society, she also clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia — who was the most reliably conservative member of the High Court for decades.

“Moments ago, I submitted my resignation to the attorney general,” Sassoon wrote in the email, according to the New York Times. “As I told her, it has been my greatest honor to represent the United States and to pursue justice as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.”

In the memo instructing the case against Adams to be dismissed, Bove suggested that the charges against the New York mayor were filed for political reasons, writing that it "cannot be ignored that Mayor Adams criticized the prior Administration’s immigration policies before the charges were filed."

Adams had been prosecuted by former Attorney General Merrick Garland's DOJ for alleged corruption and bribery. NBC reported that the New York mayor was indicted in September on one count of conspiracy to receive campaign contributions from foreign nationals and commit wire fraud and bribery, two counts of soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals and one count of soliciting and accepting a bribe. The center of the scheme involved Adams allegedly taking $100,000 worth of free airline tickets from Turkey, along with allegedly accepting stays at luxury hotels in Turkey. He pleaded not guilty.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Murdoch Media Push Fake Story Blaming Migrants For Eviction Of 'Homeless Vets'

Right-wing media figures uncritically amplified a now-debunked New York Post story to demonize immigrants and attack Democratic lawmakers.

On May 13, the New York Post published a story alleging that a group of 20 homeless military veterans had been “evicted” from two upstate New York hotels to make room for immigrants who had settled in New York City. The Post claimed the supposed migrants were part of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ plans to secure temporary housing for immigrants entering the city.

After the Post published its story, the local outlet Mid Hudson News spoke with hotel management and service providers the Post claimed were involved in the removals. On May 18, the paper reported that not only had no homeless veterans been removed, but they were never there to begin with — one hotel manager “had never heard of” the veteran's group supposedly involved, while another said it “had not put any veterans in the hotel for ‘a long time.’”

The report also discredited a receipt presented by State Assemblyman Brian Maher as supposed evidence that the group representing the homeless veterans had paid for the rooms. The Post later reported that the group’s longtime advocate had lied to the newspaper about the entire situation, and on Friday the Mid Hudson News revealed that 15 homeless men were paid to pretend they were veterans who had been staying at the hotel.

\u201cFox News has added an editor's note to 3 online articles to "clarify allegations surrounding the treatment of homeless veterans," and reporter Nate Foy just delivered this update:\n\n"We are now looking into new reports that a veterans advocate misled lawmakers and media outlets"\u201d
— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona) 1684522507

By the time the story fell apart, right-wing media had already latched onto the now-debunked narrative and immediately weaponized the shoddily reported story as part of their ongoing fear campaign over a so-called “invasion” of migrants coming across the southern border.

Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt said it was “astonishing that some of these hotels are getting migrants” and having to cancel other reservations, adding, “There are two couples that booked rooms for their wedding … and 20 vets also were in that hotel, they all had to move out because these migrants moved in.”
Later on Fox & Friends, guest co-host Will Cain claimed that a “flood of illegal immigrants” are taking up hotel rooms and other resources in New York. Cain went on to remind viewers “about homeless veterans booted from a hotel so that rooms could be given to illegal immigrants,” with Earhardt adding that “Eric Adams says they’re gonna stay there for four months, so 20 veterans had to move to another hotel.”

Fox anchor Harris Faulkner claimed the story showed “the disgraceful treatment of our military veterans played out in Orange County, New York,” as the nonexistent group of “at least 20 homeless veterans, some reportedly suffering from PTSD, had to give up their hotel rooms for illegals.” Fox contributor Johnny “Joey” Jones added a jab at the Biden administration, stating, “A president that would leave Americans stranded in Afghanistan probably doesn't see the onus to take care of 20 veterans in a hotel. And I hate to say it, but that's just the absolute truth of it.”
Outnumbered co-hosts Emily Compagno and Kayleigh McEnany expressed outrage over the New York Post story, with Compagno claiming “America's heroes are now paying the price” for the “Southern border crisis.” McEnany lamented, “I can't help but notice the contrast when you have a 24-year-old — a veteran, had been in Afghanistan — kicked out of his hotel room as an Afghan national on the terror watch list is crossing the border in San Diego.”
Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum complained, “You’ve got the hotels in New York that are having to take folks in. You had one in Newburgh, New York, where they had to cancel a wedding and kick out some homeless veterans to make room for incoming migrants.”
Conservative moving company owner John Rourke appeared on One America News and ranted, “It just drives me nuts when we have veterans sleeping on the streets of this country and committing suicide in record numbers … and here we are filling up hotel rooms with illegal aliens, giving them cell phones, giving them medical attention, giving them food and water, and then putting them on planes.”
On Twitter, Donald Trump Jr. used the story to attack Democrats, stating, “Honestly, this is just infuriating! Homeless vets are being booted from New York hotels to make room for migrants. Fuck Democrats & their bullshit policies! America last isn’t hyperbole it’s their goal.”
Students for Trump founder Ryan Fournier tweeted, “Unacceptable. Nearly two dozen struggling homeless vets have been booted from NY hotels… So illegal immigrants can have space. WHAT?!”
Conservative radio host Bo Snerdley tweeted, “This is about as ruthless, coldblooded, and incredibly heinous as anything Biden and Democrats have ever done. Kicking American veterans out of their lodging to make way for illegal immigrants? What country IS this?”
Newsmax contributor Tony Shaffer later tweeted, “This tells you everything you need to understand about the progressive left cult - they are out to expand political power and a permanent underclass that will vote for them even if it means sacrificing veterans.”
Fox News contributor and former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted, “What could be more backwards than putting illegal immigrants ahead of American veterans? An insult to American sovereignty.”
2024 Republican presidential candidate and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley tweeted a link to the New York Post’s story, adding, “Liberal insanity at work.”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

No, People Shouldn't Be Living On City Streets

A lot of smart voices seem afraid to say outright that homeless mentally ill people should be taken off the streets, forcibly if necessary. They may easily agree that the sad humans sleeping on grates and under bridges would benefit from coming indoors for medical care and other social services. But they can't concede that the public's right to use sidewalks, parks and train stations should trump a homeless person's desire to take over those spaces.

Thus, this headline in the Harvard Gazette: "N.Y. plan to involuntarily treat mentally ill homeless? Not entirely outrageous."

The piece mostly defended New York Mayor Eric Adams' plan to hospitalize mentally ill people without their consent, but the "not entirely outrageous" was wrongly apologetic. There is nothing "outrageous" about stopping people living in filth, hollering into the night and sometimes attacking bystanders from, in effect, denying others access to public amenities.

This is a good opportunity to revisit the views of economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who wrote in the 1950s about "private affluence and public squalor" in our cities and towns. He was referring to the size and comforts of American homes versus the shabbiness of our shared streets with their poor lighting and trash all around. In cities like Paris, he said, the opposite was the case. There, apartments were tiny and lacking modern appliances, but the world outside was well kept.

Galbraith was a liberal and meant "private affluence and public squalor" to reflect the ability of our rich to better limit their exposure to the broken-down public sphere. And so there is great irony in self-described progressives' insistence that the squalor of homeless encampments is acceptable in the name of affording dignity to the poor.

Some have sued the city making mostly specious arguments. New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, for example, holds that the program puts people at risk for being detained "for merely living with their illness while in a public place."

The lawsuit further complains that they could be forcibly hospitalized "solely because an NYPD officer perceives them to have a mental disability and nothing more."

But that's not how it works. When the police take someone who concerns them to a hospital, that individual then undergoes evaluation by mental health professionals. Anyone who has witnessed the growing number of disheveled souls screaming at passersby and sometimes slamming into them understands that the bar for involuntary detention is high.

And those who recall the horrifying incident in which a homeless man pushed a young woman to her death as a subway train approached would be at pains to downplay his level of insanity as a "mental disability."

Katherine Koh, a street psychiatrist in Boston, told the Gazette that the criteria for hospitalizing someone without consent are whether there is serious risk of self-harm or harm to others. A third, "inability to care for oneself to a degree that it puts the person at risk of serious harm," is less clear but an important consideration.

For a treatable population, she adds, expanding community-based mental health services and supportive housing would be the preferred outcome to long-term hospitalization. If more staff and facilities are needed, the public has a duty to build them. But the public won't have the money to build them if the homeless crisis frightens away enough business to badly hurt the local economy.

In the end, citizens should have the right to enter a subway without having to step around cardboard boxes turned into shelters. And recognize that those who can afford the private affluence of taxis don't have to endure the public squalor of the others who have to walk through it. Where is the justice there?

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Going Soft On Crime Is What Democrats Should Never Do

It was always surprising to hear voices on the fringe left downplay the COVID-era spike in crime. Still more amazing, though, were the grown-ups in the Democratic Party who seemed to be giving them a sympathetic listen.

Kathy Hochul should have been able to easily put away Lee Zeldin in the New York governor's race. Zeldin was not one of those civilized Republicans whom Northeast voters often elect on the state level. He came out of the feral Trump wing of the Republican Party, peddling lies about a stolen election. Hochul won but should no have sweated so much, especially in a state where Democrats hold a 2-1 registration advantage over Republicans.

But crime was a big issue there as elsewhere, and Hochul had refused to oppose part of a 2020 bail reform law being blamed for a number of heinous crimes. New York Mayor Eric Adams was hotly critical of the controversial provision, which made it hard for judges to keep repeat offenders deemed dangerous locked up before trial.

The public shuddered at headlines like "Homeless man shoves stranger to her death in Times Square subway station" (Daily News) and then read that the "oft-arrested" individual had "a documented history of mental issues."

It matters not that the right exaggerates the extent of criminal violence in New York, while ignoring far worse numbers in red America. (The city's murder rate is a third that of Miami's.) Nor that an analysis of police statistics finds the likelihood of falling victim to a violent crime on the subway to be about the same as getting injured in a crash after driving only two miles.

Adams would not endorse Zeldin because of his lack of interest in stemming the flood of guns onto America's streets — which the former police captain ascribed for the spike in murders. Who could feel safe in a culture where people pull out firearms over parking places and loud music, and deranged individuals can easily carry semi-automatics?

From 2017 through 2021, 87 people died in Texas just from road rage shootings versus 15 in New York state. In that same five-year period, killings on the New York subways in totaled 18.

Yes, crime has risen since the pandemic though the wave seems to be breaking. Murder in New York City is down 14% so far this year. In the bad year of 2021, the city's homicide rate was still less than a fifth what it was in the very bad year of 1990.

Fox News likes to portray the Democratic stronghold of New York as the epicenter of criminal depravity. That's one reason why registered voters give Republicans a 20-point advantage over Democrats on ability to handle crime.

But then you had Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who rightfully came under fire for saying he would stop prosecuting low-level crimes and jail only those accused of the most serious offenses — which, according to him, did not necessarily include robbery and assault. Of course, the horrific crimes get the most attention, but a law enforcement official must never ever say that certain crimes will be ignored by his office.

And if you dig deeper into what unsettles New Yorkers, it is the frequent lower-level crimes — shoplifting, car break-ins, motorcycles on sidewalks — that leave a sense of general disorder. It bothers many that the cough medicine aisle at drug stores is now locked up.

It's a safe assumption that fear of crime is what flipped several suburban New York congressional districts to Republicans. The fears may not match the reality, but elected officials should not add fuel to them with careless talk. Kathy Hochul was lucky this time.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Shop our Store

Headlines

Editor's Blog

Corona Virus

World

        About The National Memo
    
The National Memo is a political newsletter and website that combines the spirit of investigative journalism with new technology and ideas. We cover campaigns, elections, the White House, Congress, and the world with a fresh outlook. Our own journalism — as well as our selections of the smartest stories available every day — reflects a clear and strong perspective, without the kind of propaganda, ultra-partisanship and overwrought ideology that burden so much of our political discourse.
TAGS

Created By

RebelMouse

About Masthead Terms of Service Privacy Statement Advertise Contact

Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Acting US Attorney Resigns Over Order To Drop Charges Against Mayor Adams

Murdoch Media Push Fake Story Blaming Migrants For Eviction Of 'Homeless Vets'

Going Soft On Crime Is What Democrats Should Never Do

Shop our Store

Constitution Cork Coaster

Bill of Rights Mug

Make America Think Again Hat

Constitution Rocks Glass

Headlines

'Rookie Mistake': GOP Senator Says 'Fool' Could Have Written Hegseth Remarks