Birther witness list

Melendres v. Arpaio (2007) is a federal lawsuit filed to stop the practice of racial profiling by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. The Court found that there was racial profiling and issued orders to end the practice. Interested readers can follow the history of that case at “What’s Your Evidence”.

The Court’s orders were not fully carried out, racial profiling continued, and federal judge G. Murray Snow ordered hearings on whether Sheriff Arpaio was in contempt of court. Sheriff Arpaio in an attempt to forestall a hearing admitted being in contempt and offered to pay money to settle the issue, but that didn’t work out.

The hearing was held and Judge Snow asked a few probing questions and then it hit the fan. Sheriff Arpaio admitted paying a Seattle software designer named Dennis Montgomery, widely reported to have sold bogus software to the government for detecting terrorist messages, to help him get dirt on the judge. That’s not how Arpaio couched what happened, but it is surely how it looks in some emails that the Court obtained from the Sheriff’s Office--and therein lies the birther angle. The participants in that email chain included Mike Zullo, head of Arpaio’s birther posse, and noted birther attorney Larry Klayman. Other information in the emails indicate that Montgomery was the source of the universe-shattering investigation that the Cold Case Posse has been talking about for a couple of years.

One cannot escape the question of whether Sheriff Arpaio lied in testimony last April when he said that Judge Snow was not individually targeted in what the Sheriff’s Office came to call “The Seattle Operation.” Charts and tables received by Arpaio from Montgomery appear to be very much about targeting the judge. Since Mike Zullo and Larry Klayman were knowledgeable about who was targeting whom, having participated in email exchanges on the subject, it seems extremely likely that these two will appear in federal court to answer questions. Judge Snow yesterday suggested that Klayman could be a witness.

I doubt much will come out about the birther side of the Seattle Operation because it’s not relevant. Still, strange twists do happen sometimes.

Joe Arpaio: Misprision of felony

"Misprision of felony" is one of those shiny objects the birthers discovered a few years back. The concept is knowing about a felony and not reporting it. Douglas Vogt's court action in Washington State was framed as a report of his belief that a felony was committed in regard to President Obama's birth certificate, and his desire to obtain a certification from the court that he wasn't guilty of hiding it.

Birthers aimed misprision at their opponents and members of Congress, saying that they knew Obama had forged his birth certificate and were covering it up.

Under federal law, "misprision of felony" is codified in 18 U.S. Code § 4, which says:

Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

They want the Obots dragged away and hung for this crime (or perhaps for the more severe "misprision of treason"). The reason this is nonsense is that the opponents of birthers do not believe that there is any felony, nor that they have any information indicating the commission of a crime. The courts have ruled that in order to be guilty of misprision of felony, a person must actively cover up the felony. Anti-birthers widely discuss birther claims, and nothing is covered up by anybody. Arguing that someone is wrong is not "covering up."

However, let's consider another possible charge of misprision of felony, this time on the birther side, and in particular against Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The felony is possession of classified documents, codified as 18 U.S. Code § 1924 - Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material. According to news reports, Dennis Montgomery came to Sheriff Arpaio and stated that he had made copies of data developed by him under contract with the CIA. The very existence of this material was classified. Montgomery then offered to mine the data for Arpaio for money.

Sheriff Arpaio paid Montgomery for information, and did not inform the US Attorney or the CIA of Montgomery's representations. Further, Sheriff Arpaio assigned Montgomery a confidential informant number, and instituted procedures whereby even people in his own department were unaware of possible felonious activity by Montgomery. Arpaio knew of crimes Montgomery claimed to have committed, and actively participated in keeping it secret. That sounds like misprision of felony to me and I am not the only one thinking this. Phoenix New Times Reporter Stephen Lemons, somewhat of an expert on the misdeeds of Joe Arpaio, raised the issue (after this article was initially published) based on a discussion with former U. S. Attorney for Arizona, Paul Charlton:

Charlton offers a couple of possible federal statutes that could apply, including 18 USC 371, conspiracy “to commit any offense against” the U.S. government. 

“Even if the information is not classified, it is still conspiracy,” Charlton says.
“Ask any narco who is currently in prison for conspiracy to transport, sell, or buy cocaine when in fact there was no cocaine, only a DEA agent pretending to deal in cocaine.” 

Then there is 18 USC 4, which has the rather exotic title “misprision of a felony.”
Charlton says this would entail Arpaio’s not alerting, say, the FBI upon learning that someone wanted to sell him classified information.

Did Joe Arpaio buy stolen CIA secrets?

Dennis Montgomery claims to have worked for the CIA, intercepting Internet communications of American citizens. He says he was bothered by what he was doing. Did he go to the New York Times or the Washington Post? No, he just made copies.

What did he do with this information he claims to have gathered for the CIA? He sold it to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s office for what is reported to be between $500,000 and a $1,000,000.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan testified in a contempt hearing before Judge G. Murray Snow in federal court in Phoenix that Montgomery was indeed on their confidential informant payroll. Sheridan’s testimony is now available, in part, in an emergency petition for writ of mandamus filed by Montgomery’s attorney Larry Klayman with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, seeking the removal of Judge Snow. Here is part of what Sheridan testified:

Okay. Here's where the plot thickens a little bit with Mr. Montgomery. Mr. Montgomery worked for the CIA. … 2007 to 2010, [note that Montgomery’s security clearance was revoked in January of 2006] sometime -- I may have the dates wrong, because this has been a few years, and I've had other things on my mind since this thing kind of got cold. He would -- when he worked for the CIA, he pulled data from American citizens for the CIA. I mean, we heard a lot about this a few years ago; it was very much in the media. And he said he was one of the individuals that was tasked with doing that, and he knew that was incorrect, it was wrong, and so he made backup copies that he took and he kept. And he was mining that data to find these e-mail breaches, to find the bank information that he originally came to us with.

We learned that 2 terabytes of information was provided to Arpaio by Montgomery, two terabytes of information allegedly private information, bank records, probably passwords, love letters, proprietary business data, all illegally obtained, illegally taken from the CIA, and sold to Joe Arpaio. If this is true, I find it outrageous. Why isn’t this guy in jail?

But is it true?

Here’s what Chief Deputy Sheridan said:

And we continued to work with him [Montgomery], we continued to keep him on our informant payroll, so to speak, as he was producing information. But it became very slow, it became very stale, and we finally realized that he was stringing us along.

Perhaps Sheriff Arpaio is only guilty of being gullible.

Confirmed: Cold Case Posse’s investigation was junk

In a court brief, Dennis Montgomery, named by Playboy Magazine as “The Man who Scammed the Pentagon,” confirmed what many of us already knew. He was the source for the “universe-shattering” investigation of the Cold Case Posse. The brief states:

16) I [Dennis Montgomery] have become concerned that Judge Snow’s personal interests in these matters could cloud the judgment of any normal human being so as to confuse the work of the “Cold Case Posse” and myself as being only about Judge Snow.

Of course, anyone who has been following the bizarre story as it unfolded before Judge Snow, knows that it included a tale of stolen CIA data, hacking bank accounts, and spying on the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and their legal team.
As reported in the press:

Snow asked Arpaio about the result of the Montgomery investigation being "junk."
Arpaio agreed with that assessment but said the investigation was still ongoing.

Chief Deputy Sheridan said that Montgomery was just “stringing us along.” So now we have it. Dennis Montgomery was the confidential source, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the Sheriff’s Office. He was baby sat in Seattle by Mike Zullo, and the two deputies that Zullo disclosed made up the team of the new super-secret criminal investigation. It was all a scam, and Arpaio confirmed it under oath.

Universe-shattering investigation revealed in court testimony Friday

It was somewhat of an anticlimax when Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan revealed in federal court Friday details of the “universe shattering” investigation Mike Zullo hinted about a year and a half ago. We already knew much of the story. Let’s view the facts chronologically.

Mike Zullo was the one who exposed the universe-shattering investigation in November, 2013. Carl Gallups tweeted:

BREAKING! BREAKING! ANNOUNCED TODAY - Zullo: We have universe-shattering information! PLUS: Arpaio is fully... http://t.co/MSy3DJMHDd

— PPSIMMONS (@PPSIMMONS) November 23, 2013

Zullo spoke to the Surprise Arizona Tea Party Patriots about that time. Sharon Rondeau interviewed an attendee:

Zullo “said that the investigation that they started ‘turned very dark…’

We can place a proximate time on the start of the investigation from a confidential informant inside the Sheriff’s Office. Stephen Lemons of the Phoenix New Times newspaper wrote (in June 2014) that he had discovered:

My sources -- one of whom is a former detective with the MCSO's Special Investigations Division and is well-acquainted with SID and those in it -- say Anglin and Mackiewicz were involved in an odd investigation dating back to October 2013.

Amazing: Mike Zullo now on the Court's RADAR

Mike Zullo

We never expected the Zullo inquisition, but Mike Zullo is now tied up with Joe Arpaio’s contempt proceeding before federal judge G. Murray Snow in Phoenix.

Mike Zullo and two Maricopa County deputies traveled to Seattle to meet with a known con man, Dennis Montgomery. Arpaio admitted in court yesterday that Montgomery was to supply information on federal judges, including Judge Snow. Snow examined Arpaio closely yesterday, with a copy of the Stephen Lemons article from June of last year in hand, exposing the trip. Judge Snow ordered that the Sheriff’s Office and the Cold Case Posse not destroy any records relating to communications with Montgomery.

Zullo, happy to give affidavits in out of state cases, blew off subpoenas from Orly Taitz in birther lawsuits. It is an Obot’s web dream to see Zullo testify under oath. Will he say that public funds went to a con man to investigate the judge in Arpaio’s case, or will he say that the money was funding the Cold Case Posse’s “universe shattering” investigation of Barack Obama’s birth certificate?