this particular judge hasn t just overseen the rick gates case. she has overseen more criminal prosecutions stemming from the mueller investigation than any other judge in the country. she s had a whole bunch of them. and at this sentencing for rick gates today she, you know, rips rick gates for the severity of his crimes, she praises rick gates for accepting responsibility for his crimes and pleading guilty and becoming a wholehearted cooperator with prosecutors. indeed, he has agreed to keep cooperating with prosecutors in multiple ongoing matters even after his sentencing today. the prosecutors sent information to the judge about that today under seal because those are still ongoing legal matters that gates is helping with. and in addition to doing all that the judge who again has overseen all of those mueller derived prosecutions, did this sort of remarkable thing in court today. at one point in the middle of talking about gates s case and the law that sort of directs her in terms
our best new idea for a t-shirt that could potentially explain the news this week. here s what the judge said today in court. quote, one of the letter writers said that gates got caught up in d.c. political drama, but i reject that. it is perfectly possible to conduct yourself with ethics, integrity and no hint of scandal even in politics. even in washington, d.c., even in ukraine. politics don t corrupt people, people corrupt politics. just in case we needed a better bumper sticker, politics don t corrupt people, people corrupt politics. judge amy berman jackson in federal court in washington today while she was in the process of sentencing rick gates, the deputy chair of the presidential campaign and number two on the inaugural. interesting, though, this particular judge hasn t just overseen the rick gates case, she has overseen more criminal prosecutions stemming from the
with belt toe o rourke, john hickenlooperer, amy klobuchar, and right now, voters are asking about health care, gun shootings, climate change, the national debt. they re not bringing up the mueller what they re saying in interviews, it s too soon, we don t know what s in there as i sit here in new hampshire and i live my day to day life. i have much more immediate concerns if i have access to a potential president. presidential candidate, i want to talk about those issues, not sort of arm chair quarterback on the mueller report. but the reality of all this is, once the report comes out, once the details are known, and if there is really damning information that s going to the southern district of new york or elsewhere that can change the equation. it may not be the end. we just word that mueller moved rick gates case to the u.s. in d.c. it s a reminder of some of the
reserved to notes on each case. you can zoom in on that notes case. in one case they re talking specifically about the timeline of the girl s last menstrual cycle as being tracked by the trump administration, except they spell menstrual wrong. this is literally the federal government tracking a 15-year-old s period because of what the federal government plans to do about it. let s look at one entry and detail here. one at random. just so you can see the kind of data they were collecting. this is a case from march of last year, march of 2018. a 14-year-old girl being held in a shelter in illinois. she s believed to be about one month pregnant from nonconsensual sex. 14-year-old girl. as you can see in the notes column, it says assaulted by unknown assailant in coo, which we believes country of origin here. so this is the federal government with your tax dollars keeping an individualized record
class action lawsuit led by that pregnant teenage girl who has literally being forced to continue this pregnancy against her will by the u.s. government until the aclu intervened to take her case and won it. bridget amiri is the aclu attorney who sued on her behalf and we talked to her about it at the time. they were literally holding her hostage, blocking the door, preventing her from obtaining an abortion. and i do believe that that was their goal, to hold her hostage until she carried this pregnancy to term against her will. bridget amiri talking about her client who had the name in court of jane doe. as that case made its way through the courts, the aclu kept turning up more janes, more girls who were being held in shelters overseen by this guy, scott lloyd, who were being blocked from getting an abortion. and it soon became very clear why. this was not just some fluke thing where somebody, like, wasn t properly trained or