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The article below had a consistent format when sent. If it shows irregularities
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overlook them. A pdf version of this article -as such likely to be free of
irregularities- is found here and downloadable through the next link.
Journalists interested in a scoop and a Pulitzer Prize,
senators voting on the confirmation of justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson,
and those outraged by The Wall Street Journal finding in only a sample of
federal cases
131 judges who broke the law by deciding cases where they had a financial
interest,
yet they have not been investigated by either
their Federal Judiciary or former chief judge Attorney General Merrick Garland
or required to disgorge the gains that they grabbed,
can use the official statistics of her circuit to show her participation inthe
cover-up of her peers' law-breaking and other forms of abuse of power
by dismissing 100% of complaints against her peers and
denying 100% of petitions to review those dismissals,
thus revealing her lack of courage to expose their abuse and
interest in not being shunned as a traitor but rather
in being accepted by the "brothers and sisters of the robe"
at the expense of the complainants and
the integrity of the system of justice,
left to fester with the underlying and untreated cause for complaint:
judges emboldened by reciprocally ensuring the risklessness of their abuse
http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL2/DrRCordero-journalists_politicians_scooping_judges_wrongdoing.pdf
By
Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.
Ph.D., University of Cambridge, England
M.B.A., University of Michigan Business School
D.E.A., La Sorbonne, Paris
Judicial Discipline Reform
New York City
http://www.Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org Dr.Richard.Cordero_Esq@xxxxxxxxxxx ;
, DrRCordero@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx , CorderoRic@xxxxxxxxx
Dear Journalists, Senators, and Advocates of Honest Judiciaries,
This is a pitch for the publication of the article hereunder.
Above, you find the "Subject" line as the pitch's blurb; and its title as the
article's abstract. Both make it self-explanatory why for the publication of
the article time is of the essence.
I am willing to edit the article as requested.
A. The official statistics on complaints against judges
1. The Senate confirmation hearings on justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson
have ended; but the Senate Judiciary Committee as well as the whole Senate
still have to vote. Even after their vote there will be an opportunity for
journalists, including the media outlets for which they work, who want to make
a scoop that can lead to their winning a Pulitzer Prize; the Senators opposed
to her confirmation; and people who are more interested in the integrity of the
judiciary than in partisan politics: They can examine her integrity and
character in light of the official reports and statistics of the District of
Columbia Circuit where Judge Brown sat as a trial judge from 2013 to 2021, and
where she has sat as an appellate judge of the Court of Appeals (CADCC) since
June 2021.
2. Those reports and statistics are submitted by the 13 U.S. courts of appeals,
including CADCC, and two national courts to Congressas a public document in the
Annual Report of the Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
The director is appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court under Title
28 of the U.S. Code [of federal law only] section 601(28 U.S.C. §601).
3. Complaints against judges of a circuit can be filed by any person, including
a judge, under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980(the Act; id.
§§351-364). The complaint statistics have appeared for most of those years in
Table S-22 of the Annual Report.
a. I have compiled and tabulated them for ease of presentation and analysis.
b. Those statistics show that for decades, federal judges have dismissed 100%
of complaints against their peers and denied 100% of petitions to review those
dismissals.
4. Indeed, the introduction to Table S-22 for 2021 states the following
concerning complaints filed in the 15 reporting courts:
"The number of complaints filed in 2021 was 1,282, an increase of 29
complaints (up 2 percent) from the number filed in 2020.
Fifty-nine percent of the complaints were made against district judges, 25
percent were against circuit judges,...
Chief judges dismissed 1,402 complaints in whole or in part. This total
includes complaints that later were terminated with finality by circuit
judicial council orders on petitions for review, as well as complaints for
which additional review was still possible.
Chief judges terminated 948 complaints with no further review. Circuit judicial
councils terminated 480 complaints, including 2 terminated after reports by
special committees were issued."
5. Table S-22 shows the outcome of those complaints:
Complaints with Corrective Action Taken
or Intervening Events 0
Censure or Reprimand 0
Suspension of Assignments 0
Action Against Magistrate Judge 0
Removal of Bankruptcy Judge 0
Requesting of Voluntary Retirement 0
Certifying Disability of Circuit or District Court 0
B. The implications for judges of the statistics on complaints against them
6. It follows indisputably that the outcome of processing complaints against
federal judges is predetermined: The chief circuit judge, who by law examines
them in the first instance, will dismiss them systematically. The circuit
judicial council, composed of district and circuit judges, will deny all
petitions for dismissal review out of hand on a 5¢ form bearing the
rubberstamped signature of the clerk of court. No reason whatsoever is given.
There is no discussion of facts or law. The denial is a fiat.
a. The processing occurs in complete secrecy. It guarantees that the
complained-against judges will not be disturbed by any complaint, for they need
not have to be notified of it...after all, it will be dumped no matter its
nature, frequency, and gravity. But if a judge replies, he can make up any
story in his defense and to the detriment of the complainant, who will not be
able to check it in rebuttal because she will not be given a copy of the reply
without the judge's consent.
b. The implication of such peremptory dumping of complaints is inescapable:
Judges take care of their own to ensure that "Judges are Untouchable".
7. It is statistically impossible for thousands of complaints over decades
involving hundreds of judges to have led to the same outcome but for the
implicit or explicit complicit agreement among judges to exonerate each other
by abusing the power to self-discipline granted by Congress: 'Today I exonerate
you and tomorrow, when I am or my friends are complained against, you and your
friends exonerate us'.
a. It is possible for that complicit agreement to exist and operate only
because of the connivance between, on the one hand, the politicians that
adopted the Act and ignore the Annual Report on complaints and, on the other
hand, the judicial candidates that they recommend, endorse, nominate, and
confirm to a judgeship or justiceship, whom must be provided with unequal
protection from the law and spared any investigation by law enforcement
authorities or congressional committees, lest the judges wield against the
politicians their devastating power of retaliation(jur:81§1; Lsch:17§C).
8. Judges wield the most power over people's property, liberty, and all the
rights and duties that frame their lives and shape their identity. This is
especially so of federal judges, who are the only officers in our country to
have a lifetime appointment; they have the longest time to hold grudges. When
judges dismiss 100% of complaints against their peers and deny 100% of
petitions to review those dismissals, they not only protect themselves by
covering up their abuse underlying the complaints against them. They also leave
complainants uncompensated and unprotected from the retaliation of all judges.
a. As Then-Judge, Now-Judge Neil Gorsuch put it when visiting with senators
before his confirmation hearings: "An attack on one of our brothers and sisters
of the robe is an attack on all of us".(OL2:546; 548) That was the expression
of judges' gang mentality. They do no process complaints impartially in light
only of the law and what is right and just. What matters is gang belongingness
and self-interest.
9. What is more, judges have left all parties and the rest of the public at the
mercy of judges emboldened by the assurance that no matter what they do, their
"brothers and sisters of the robe" will cover for them. They reciprocally
ensure that they are Judges Above Congress by in effect abrogating its Judicial
Conduct and Disability Act. Yet, they give the false impression to the public
that a complaint under that Act will be processed fairly and impartially. By
misleading the public to its detriment for their own gain and convenience, the
judges have committed fraud on the public.
10. That is what they have done as a matter of fact. For proof, there is the
series of articles published by the highly regarded The Wall Street Journal
beginning on September 28, 2021, under the initial title:
a. “131 Federal Judges Broke the Law by Hearing Cases Where They Had a
Financial Interest”. "[Federal] judges failed to recuse themselves from 685
lawsuits from 2010 to 2018 involving firms in which they or their family held
shares, a Wall Street Journal investigation found...Alerted to the violations
by the Journal, 56 of the judges have directed court clerks to notify parties
in 329 lawsuits that they should have recused themselves. That means new judges
might be assigned, potentially upending rulings."
b. Another article in the series was published on November 2, 2021, titled
“Hidden Interests - Federal Judge Files Recusal Notices in 138 Cases After WSJ
Queries. Rodney Gilstrap initially argued he didn’t violatefinancial-conflicts
law”; James.Grimaldi@xxxxxxx, Joe.Palazzolo@xxxxxxx, Coulter.Jones@xxxxxxx,
Michael.Siconolfi@xxxxxxx. (See the articles referred to here and at
Appendix:6§C.22.)
c. Who is going to pay for a new trial or appeal or for disentangling contracts
based on void or voidable decisions by law-breaking judges? See paragraph 26
below and a plan for collectively demanding compensation to be implemented by
journalists, professors, and students.
C. The implications for justice nominee Brown Jackson and A.G. judge Merrick
Garland
11. The above provides reasonable grounds, and even probable cause, to believe
that during her long career in the Federal Judiciary, including nine years on
the bench of federal district and circuit courts, Judge Brown acquired actual
knowledge of the abuse of power of judges and their complicit agreement on
reciprocal exoneration from complaints against them. She satisfies the standard
that makes jurors suitable peers of a defendant: 'a person with common sense
reasonably becomes aware and informs herself of the circumstances affecting her
and the people close to her emotionally, physically, or socially and forms an
opinion of what is right or wrong".
12. Judge Brown has breached the reporting duty under 18 U.S.C. §3057 -Title 18
contains the federal Criminal Code- on any judge “having reasonable grounds for
believing [which is a standard lower than “probable cause to believe” and much
lower than “evidence admissible in court ”] that any violation under chapter 9
[on bankruptcy, the classification of over 70% of all cases filed in the
Federal Judiciary] of this title [18] or other laws of the United States
relating to insolvent debtors, receiverships or reorganization plans has been
committed, or that an investigation should be had in connection therewith
[which lowers the standard below, and precedes, “having reasonable grounds for
believing”].
a. "Probable cause to believe" that a person has committed the offense with
which he has been charged is a standard of proof. It need not be satisfied to
warrant investigating a person. Before any investigation, it may be satisfied
by the facts known up to then, e.g., those surrounding the person's detention.
That explains why it can be applied before conducting discovery. In criminal
cases, district attorneys may invoke it to justify the indictment that they
present to the arraignment judge. The latter may reject the not guilty plea of
the defendant and rely on probable cause to commit him to jail with or without
bail. If the defendant cannot post the bail set, he is committed to jail until
he can or the case is finally disposed of.
b. Neither willful blindness nor willful ignorance(jur:88§§a-c) prevents
knowledge of such breach from being imputed to judges or their clerks.
13. Likewise, Judge Brown has breached her ethical reporting duties under the
Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges, Canon 3(B)(6)).
a. Judges have legal and ethical duties to report other judges' breach of
their duties and "improprieties and even the appearance of improprieties"(id.,
Canon 2).
14. Judges must not perform such reporting pro forma, but rather must pursue it
in good faith by exercising due diligence until the reporting achieves its
intended purpose of safeguarding their own integrity and that of judicial
process, lest the judges end up inured to the commission or cover-up of the
breach, condoning it, and becoming chargeable with misprision of felony(18
U.S.C. §4).
15. It follows that by Judge Brown not reporting judges' abusive
self-exoneration from complaints, she has covered it up. Thereby she has
contributed to judges' committing with impunity the abuse underlying the
complaints. In fact, she has aggravated their abuse, for people who commit one
type of abuse without suffering any adverse consequences are, far from
deterred, encouraged by risklessness and the lure of more gains and convenience
to grab them by committing ever more types. For both her, as accessory after
the last abuse that she knew about but covered up and as accessory before the
next abuse that the principals committed in reliance on that cover-up precedent
of hers, applying the law, never mind doing so fairly and impartially, has
become only an afterthought...'so long as it does not keep me from grabbing
ever more or making me run the risk of being treated as a traitor to "my
brothers and sisters in the robe".
a. That is how Judge Rodney Gilstrap broke the law by deciding 138 cases in
which he had a financial interest and the judges that heard him brag about it
covered him by failing to report him(supra, paragraph 10).
D. The opportunity for journalists and the senators
1. Conducting journalistic and congressional investigations
16. Journalists in their investigation and the senators in their written
questions before the hearing and their oral ones at the hearing can ask that
historic question asked of every witness by Senator Howard Baker, the
cochairman of the Senate committee holding hearings on the break-in at the
Democratic National Committee at the Watergate building in Washington, DC, by
Republican operatives engaged in political espionage in favor of the reelection
campaign of President Nixon: "What did the President know and when did he know
it?"
a. The answers to that question led to the resignation of President Nixon on
August 8, 1974, and the incarceration of all his aides.
17. Journalists and senators can reformulate that question to determine whether
Judge Brown has shown bias toward her peers and harmful indifference toward
parties and the rest of the public in disregard of her oath of office(28 U.S.C.
§453) that disqualify her from both becoming a justice and remaining a judge:
a. What did Judge Brown know and when did she know about, e.g., judges',
including A.G. Merrick Garland particularly while he was the chief judge of the
Court of Appeals for her circuit from 2013 to 2020, and Then-Judge, Now-Justice
Brett Kavanaugh:
1) implicit or explicit agreement for reciprocal exoneration;
2) breaking the law by failing to recuse themselves from cases in which they
had a financial interest;
3) bragging in court and out of court, e.g., at the suite of the organizer of a
judicial seminar, a country club, restaurants, about the gains and convenience
that they had grabbed by breaking the law that way and any other way;
4) concealing assets, evading taxes, money laundering, and filing misleading
and false mandatory annual financial disclosure reports under the Ethics in
Government Act of 1978(Appendix to 5 U.S.C.) with the all-judge Financial
Disclosure Committee of the Judicial Conference(28 U.S.C. §331) in reliance on
the Committee examining them only pro forma with the approval of their
appointer, none other than the Chief Justice;
5) many other questions are suggested throughout my three-volume study* † ♣ of
judges and their judiciaries, the product of my professional law research and
writing, and strategic thinking. The study is titled and downloadable thus:
Exposing Judges'Unaccountability and
Consequent Riskless Abuse of Power:
Pioneering the news and publishing field of
judicial unaccountability reporting* † ♣ i. Open the downloaded files
using Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available for free. a) Some of my
law articles included in that study are also posted to my website Judicial
Discipline Reform at http://www.Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org. b) My
articles analyze current events and propose concrete, reasonable, and feasible
actions that webvisitors can take in their own interest. c) Those
articles have attracted so many visitors and elicited in them such a positive
reaction that the number of those who had become subscribers as of March 29,
2022, was 43,672+(Appendix 3). d) How many law firms, let alone lawyers,
do you know who have a website with so many subscribers? e) You too can
subscribe: go to the website <left panel ↓Register or + New or Users
Add New. 18. Those questions can be supplemented by one that can havefar reaching implications by exposing the politicians-judges connivance and
