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.

Mike Zullo: Following the money

Reprinted from Obama Conspiracy Theories

The transcript of Day 3 in the Melendres v. Arpaio contempt hearing is now available, courtesy of the Friends of the Fogbow. It contains a somewhat confusing exchange between Judge G. Murray Snow and Sheriff Arpaio relating to the Cold Case Posse’s involvement with confidential informant Dennis Montgomery in Seattle, and in particular with money.

Q. And is zoo -- did you say Zulu? Zullo. Is he a posse member?
A. Yes.
Q. And did you pay funds from Maricopa County for Mr. Zullo to
go to the Washington area?
A. Yes.
Q. And then I assume you paid Anglin and Mackiewicz their travel costs?
A. We don't pay for Zullo, but --
Q. But you paid Mackiewicz and Anglin.
A. Yes.
…
Q. And so Mr. Montgomery proposed to -- who did he propose to at the MCSO that the DOJ was inappropriately -- I assume it was of interest to you if they were wiretapping my phone, among others?
A. Yes. And mine, too.
Q. And yours, too. And so were you conducting this investigation?
A. No.
Q. Who was in your department?
A. This is Zullo and I think Mackiewicz.
Q. What rank does Mackiewicz have?
A. He's a detective.
Q. Who did he report to about this investigation?
A. I think he and Zullo worked together.
Q. And who did they report to?
A. And Jerry Sheridan.
Q. They reported to Deputy Chief Sheridan?
A. At one time, but let me just say that the information we're -- we've been getting is the informer's not very viable.
Q. Well, I understand that, I think the article itself says, that you became aware after a considerable amount of time that the reporter was giving you junk. Is that fair to say?
A. Yes.
Q. Or the informer was giving you junk?
A. Yes
Q. How much money did you spend on the informant?
A. I don't recall.
Q. How much money did you spend on the investigation?
A. I don't have the figures.
…
Q. Did you keep any of the materials that Mr. Montgomery has
provided you?
A. I don't have them.
Q. Who does?
A. I believe Zullo does.
Q. And is he subject to your control --
A. Yes.
Q. -- as a member of your posse?
A. Yes.
…
THE COURT: I just wanted to reiterate some of the
things I said during my questioning of you to make sure
everybody was clear. I was told over lunch that posse funds
like Mr. Zullo -- Mr. Zullo's the head of one of your posses.
THE WITNESS: Yes.
THE COURT: Is it the Cold Case posse?
THE WITNESS: Yes.
THE COURT: I was told that you also have various sources of funding within the MCSO, like the Cold Case posse has its own funds. Is that possible?
THE WITNESS: No.
THE COURT: Okay. Do you know what the possible funding sources were for the investigations that were related to the Seattle operation? When I say "operation," I mean the one involving Mr. Montgomery and the investigations with Brian Mackiewicz and Mr. Anglin.
THE WITNESS: I'm not sure if it was our RICO, which is drugs seized -- I mean moneys seized from drug peddlers, or our general funds.
THE COURT: Were there other possible funds that might be involved that fund various like, for example, the Cold Case posse?
THE WITNESS: They're independent 501(c) --
THE COURT: 501(c)(3).
THE WITNESS: -- and they raise their own money.
THE COURT: All right. And you don't have any control over those funds?
THE WITNESS: No.

OK, you got that?

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.

Arpaio: Perjury?

Stephen Lemons of the Phoenix New Times used the “p” word in his article yesterday, “Judge Snow Rips the Lid Off an MCSO Riddled With Corruption, Confirming My Reporting in the Process.”

Lemons reported last June that Arpaio was paying a confidential informant big bucks to investigate an alleged conspiracy involving the Justice Department and federal judge G. Murray Snow. In testimony last week Sheriff Arpaio and Chief Deputy Sheridan confirmed the payments and the investigation. Sheridan further admitted that they got nothing useful from the informant, Dennis Montgomery, and that Montgomery was just stringing them along.

What Arpaio and Sheridan said in court was that he was investigating an allegation that the CIA had accessed 50,000 individual bank records in Maricopa County and that there was some wrongdoing involving the Justice Department and federal judges, but that Judge Snow’s inclusion in the investigation was incidental. So was the investigation of Snow central or tangential—targeted or coincidental? Lemons wrote:

My information always has been that Arpaio was up to his old tricks, attempting to conflict the judge, find dirt on him, and retaliate for adverse rulings.

A second point of conflict between Arpaio’s testimony and Lemon’s information is about who investigated the Judge’s wife. According to testimony, Arpaio attorney Tim Casey hired the investigator. Casey issued a statement that seems to contradict that. Lemons reported that the County Attorney’s Office was somehow involved.

So far Lemons has proven to be the more reliable source for what’s going on. I hope we’ll know a lot more when court hearings resume next June.

See also:

• Allegation: Sheriff Arpaio lied under oath

Explosive: Arpaio Admits Awful Accusation

Day 3 of Arpaio contempt hearing

Arpaio critics have known for some time that Sheriff Joe Arpaio was involved with a Seattle con man named Dennis Montgomery. He sent two deputies plus Mike Zullo to Washington State to meet Montgomery, reports of payments in excess of $100,000 plus $50,000 in computer equipment have appeared, and there was also a meeting between Arpaio and a Montgomery associate in Phoenix. Phoenix New Times reporter Stephen Lemons spilled the beans from a confidential source early last June.

I also believe that the "universe-shattering" reveal from Mike Zullo and the Cold Case Posse was also based on the Montgomery information, explaining why it was very suddenly hushed up when Montgomery's identity and past history became public.

Despite third-party denials, Sheriff Arpaio admitted in court today that he did indeed pay Montgomery for information on Judge Snow, and that he had paid a private investigator to dig up information on the judge's wife. Phoenix New Times article in hand, Judge Snow grilled Arpaio about all of this. This comes on the heels of a negative barrage of publicity in the local news media.

By way of explanation of why he deliberately ordered staff not to implement the court's orders, Arpaio said that it "slipped through the cracks."

Read more at KPHO:

• Arpaio admits to hiring private agents to investigate judge's wife
• 'Meeker' Arpaio testifies a 2nd day in racial-profiling case
• Arpaio shifts blame over disobeying court order
• Arpaio attorney quits; top deputy turns on boss
• Sheriff Joe Arpaio in court over profiling case
• AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio faces contempt hearing in profiling case

Read more at the Phoenix New Times:

• Noose Tightens Around Arpaio's Neck as He Channels Ronnie Reagan in Day Two of Contempt Trial