Category: Shitbags

According to the New York Times, a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals may call for a new trial in the case of Jimmy Janos v. the Chris Kyle estate because some remarks by the plaintiff’s attorney in the first trial were so prejudicial that he may have influenced the outcome of the trial;

During closing arguments, Ventura’s attorney, David Bradley Olsen, told jurors the “insurer is on the hook if you find that Jesse Ventura was defamed.” That followed questions he put to two HarperCollins employees about whether Kyle was covered by the publisher’s policy.

Courts are reluctant to permit such testimony out of concerns that it could taint a jury’s decision. Appeals Judge William Jay Riley challenged Olsen on Tuesday to cite precedents that would have allowed those statements. Olsen could not point to other cases with the exact same circumstances, but Riley gave him time for more research.

Of course, Little Jimmy Janos blames the “Scruff Face” story for a loss of income, not the fact that he’s a big has-been and his conspiracy theory cable television show didn’t contribute to the fact that he can no longer make a living. He says that the story made him an outcast in the SEAL community. Suing one of the widows of that community had nothing to do with it, I suppose.

“I’ve suffered a great deal from this lie,” Ventura said.

[…]

Ventura said he stands by his statement that if he loses he’ll probably move to Mexico, where he now spends his winters.

“I don’t think I’d want to live in a country where you can profit from wrongdoing and the courts allow that,” he said.

That’s fine, because we don’t want you here, either.

Mick sends us a link to the Virginian-Pilot which tells the tale of naturalized US citizen and former Navy engineer, Mostafa Ahmed Awwad, who tried to sell the plans of the USS Gerald Ford to the Egyptians, in the land of his birth. He was sentenced to eleven years in prison and five years of supervised release when he gets out;

“I’m not a bad man or an evil person,” he said. “I’m just a man who lost his way.”

Awwad didn’t make a single mistake, countered federal prosecutor Ben Hatch.

When U.S. Navy officials told him he’d have to renounce his dual citizenship with Egypt to get a security clearance, he went to the Egyptian embassy seeking help to keep his Egyptian citizenship.

Awwad told investigators it was there that someone asked him if he’d be willing to hand over information about nuclear technology. He responded by saying, “Allah willing. May Allah make this possible!”

Between September and December of 2014, he talked to and met with an FBI agent posing as an Egyptian spy several times, Hatch said. Awwad told the agent he had “top secret” clearance, even though he had only “secret” clearance in August 2014.

Awwad did hand over a thumb drive containing schematics of the Ford to the FBI agent. So, now he reaps his just rewards.

Little Jimmy Janos made a quixotic appearance on the “Opie and Jimmy Show” yesterday morning, according to The Blaze. He stuck his head in the broadcast booth and proclaimed “Chris Kyle was a liar, I won in federal court.” Then he walked away.

I’m expecting that he’ll join the Dutch Rudder Club soon just to be among fellow lunatics. He’s acting more like Dallas Wittgenfeld than a former Navy SEAL (Don Shipley says he’s a SEAL, so I’m siding with Don). The DRC has no respect for widows either, so he’d fit right in.

Thanks to Bobo for the link.

According to ABC News, Eugene Fidell, Bowe Bergdahl’s lawyer says that the fellow who went over the hill to the arms of the enemy and spent five years with the Haqqani Network insugent group in Afghanistan, is in danger of retaliation from his fellow soldiers;

Bergdahl’s civilian defense lawyer Eugene Fidell said former military and intelligence officers appearing in conservative news media had vilified Bergdahl and stoked hatred over social media such as Facebook over Bergdahl’s perceived misconduct while in captivity. Fidell provided examples from the “Bergdahl is a Traitor” page.

“In short, it has been ‘open season’ on SGT Bergdahl,” wrote Fidell, a military law veteran and past-president of the National Institute of Military Justice, who is leading the soldier’s defense. “His immediate commander believes he is in physical danger, and therefore has required since last year that he be accompanied by NCOs [non-commissioned officers] whenever he leaves Fort Sam Houston.”

Well, there’s another solution – don’t let him leave the military base.

Actually, in my opinion, Bergdahl and his lawyer should be thanking those soldiers because they kept their mouths shut about the circumstances of his walkabout until he came home. If he had lost his value to the Haqqani, they would have wasted no time in the separation of his head from his shoulders. The only reason that he’s alive is because those soldiers that he fears didn’t do their media tours while he was a captive.

The Associated Press reports that Army prosecutors have selected Section 899, Article 99 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as the main charge against Bowe Bergdahl, the fellow who defected to the Haqqani Network of terrorists several years ago which caused other troops to be placed in danger when they tried to rescue him from his bad choices;

“I’ve never seen it charged,” Walter Huffman, a retired major general who served as the Army’s top lawyer, said of the misbehavior charge. “It’s not something you find in common everyday practice in the military.”

Bergdahl could face a life sentence if convicted of the charge, which accuses him of endangering fellow soldiers when he “left without authority; and wrongfully caused search and recovery operations.”

Huffman and others say the misbehavior charge allows authorities to allege that Bergdahl not only left his unit with one less soldier, but that his deliberate action put soldiers who searched for him in harm’s way. The Pentagon has said there is no evidence anyone died searching for Bergdahl.

According to af.mil, Section 899, Article 99 reads thusly;

Any person subject to this chapter who before or in the presence of the enemy–

(1) runs away;

(2) shamefully abandons, surrenders, or delivers up any command, unit, place, or military property which it is his duty to defend;

(3) through disobedience, neglect, or intentional misconduct endangers the safety of any such command, unit, place, or military property;

(4) casts away his arms or ammunition;

(5) is guilty of cowardly conduct;

(6) quits his place of duty to plunder or pillage;

(7) causes false alarms in any command, unit, or place under control of the armed forces;

(8) willfully fails to do his utmost to encounter, engage, capture, or destroy any enemy troops, combatants, vessels, aircraft, or any other thing, which it is his duty so to encounter, engage, capture, or destroy; or

(9) does not afford all practicable relief and assistance to any troops, combatants, vessels, or aircraft of the armed forces belonging to the United States or their allies when engaged in battle;

shall be punished by death or such punishment as a court- martial may direct.

The AP story says that Bergdahl could be sentenced to life, but, reading the article, it looks like it is a capital offense. Yeah, I know he’ll never be sentenced to life in prison or death by neck stretching, but I can dream, can’t I? The AP also says that Article 99 is rarely used, as compared to the number of times it was used during World War II;

Misbehavior before the enemy was used hundreds of times during World War II, but scholars say its use appears to have dwindled in conflicts since then. Misbehavior before the enemy cases were tried at least 494 times for soldiers in Europe between 1942 and 1945, according to a Military Law Review article.

Legal databases and media accounts turn up only a few misbehavior cases since 2001 when fighting began in Afghanistan, followed by Iraq less than two years later. By contrast, statistics show the U.S. Army prosecuted about 1,900 desertion cases between 2001 and the end of 2014.

So, the article 32 hearing is scheduled to begin September 17th at Fort Sam Houston.