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Montana district court Judge Deborah Christopher tenders resignation

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Read the article on Daily Montanan

A district court judge who has been under scrutiny for the way she handled a child custody case and for repeatedly missing work is resigning from the job, according to a letter to the chief justice of the Montana Supreme Court.

In the letter, Judge Deborah Kim Christopher said it had been a privilege to serve Lake and Sanders counties for nearly 24 years, and she will resign effective April 5, 2024.

Christopher said as a judge, she learned much about people’s lives and professions.

“I was compassionate as a judge even with a reputation as a tough judge,” Christopher said in the March 15 letter.

The Lake County Leader first reported Christopher’s resignation. Christopher is a former prosecutor who grew up in Polson and spent time in the U.S. Army.

Thursday, the Montana Secretary of State’s Office still listed Christopher as a judge candidate for the November 2024 election. The other candidate listed is defense and civil attorney Britt Cotter of Polson.

Gov. Greg Gianforte has the authority to fill judicial vacancies after receiving notice from the chief justice and soliciting applications. A spokesperson from the Governor’s Office said it will initiate the process for filling the vacancy as outlined in law.

“There will be an application window in which interested parties may apply to fill the remainder of the term,” said Sean Southard of the Governor’s Office in an email. “The term will end on the first Monday of January 2025. ”

In January, the Montana Supreme Court removed Christopher from a case where she unexpectedly took away child custody from the caretaking parent and gave it to the father without either parent requesting it or alleging wrongdoing.

Christopher had also referred to the mother in the case as “you bitch” when discussing the case with staff after the mother had left the courtroom, according to a recording of the proceeding.

The Judicial Standards Commission brought a formal complaint against Christopher this year for repeatedly missing work without adequate notice or plans, jeopardizing defendants’ rights to speedy trials and due process.

In a separate case, the state health department recently asked the judge to be disqualified, alleging bias. Additionally, a lawyer who represented the mother in the custody matter earlier confirmed he and his colleague filed a judicial misconduct complaint against the judge.

“I am happy that Judge Christopher has elected to resign rather than to continue on the bench,” said Lance Jasper on Thursday.

Jasper and Spencer MacDonald had filed a complaint and publicly raised concerns about Christopher’s judgement.

“I am saddened that it’s now coming to light there are many individuals like Shanna (ManyWounds, mother in the custody case) that have suffered tremendous injustice that will now never be addressed due to the fact that her resignation results in all judicial complaints being dismissed without a determination being made,” Jasper said.

Jasper said the resignation means the judge doesn’t have to confront wrongdoings and the public doesn’t get the full picture.

“It’s a further insult to these people they (the complaints) can’t even be disclosed to the public,” Jasper said.

Christopher did not return a voicemail left for comment earlier this week.

However, she reflected on her career in the letter to Chief Justice Mike McGrath.

She said she was the first female judge in the Twentieth Judicial District, a ranking female officer at Airborne School at Fort Benning Georgia, and first female Lake County Attorney.

“I didn’t get it right all the time and I was always thankful to know if I got it wrong, there were seven Supreme Court Justices who would fix it,” Christopher said. “Given the incredible power held by a district judge with people’s lives, children, money, property, and futures, the position has always weighed heavily on me.”

However, she also said a sergeant major once told her she was “the most idealist lawyer” he knew and made her promise she wouldn’t lose her ideals “no matter what the price.

“I paid the price, but I kept the promise,” the judge wrote. “Having ‘Judge’ as a first name has been an honor and a privilege.”

The Raiding of Red Lobster

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The bankrupt casual restaurant chain didn’t fail because of Endless Shrimp. Its problems date back to monopolist seafood conglomerates and a private equity play.
BY LUKE GOLDSTEIN

The ongoing retail apocalypse claimed another victim this week.

Red Lobster, the casual dining restaurant chain with 550 locations, is entering Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, turning over ownership for a second time in ten years as its sales and revenues continue to nosedive precipitously.

The company abruptly shuttered roughly 50 of its locations across the country last week without informing employees, who showed up to work only to find signs announcing the closures, which may be a potential labor law violation. According to staff complaints, they only later received notice that they’d be laid off or transferred to the remaining stores, in some cases many miles away.

Several observers have attributed Red Lobster’s implosion to its “Endless Shrimp” promotional deal, which the company hoped would bring more foot traffic in the door. It might have been a hit with stoners, but broadly speaking the deal was a disaster that raised costs for individual restaurants without a compensating increase in revenue.

The company’s current management and CEO are eager to pin its demise on Endless Shrimp, which totaled $11 million in losses. Upon filing for bankruptcy, they also launched an internal investigation into whether their majority shareholder Thai Union Group, which is also their main seafood supplier, might have pushed the shrimp promotion in order to boost their own sales at the cost of the retailer’s finances. This ownership structure between parties that are supposed to be on opposite sides of restaurant transactions does appear to be a clear conflict of interest.

But the arc of Red Lobster’s collapse extends much further back than Thai Union, and bends toward what writer Cory Doctorow has vividly described as “enshittification.”

The Endless Shrimp fiasco was a minor speed bump amid a series of poor business decisions by the company’s numerous owners. Many of those mishaps look less like miscalculations and more like self-sabotage, intended to hollow out the restaurant chain to enrich the chain’s previous private equity owners, Golden Gate Capital.

Golden Gate crippled Red Lobster by selling off one of its most valuable assets, the real estate it owned, in what’s known as a sale-leaseback, for $1.5 billion. With that sale, Golden Gate nearly made back its $2.1 billion purchase of Red Lobster, while turning the chain into a permanent leaser, adding a massive additional cost in the form of rent that was orders of magnitude bigger than the cost of Endless Shrimp. When commercial leases started going up, Red Lobster was highly exposed, but by then Golden Gate had already sold off its shares to Thai Union, which inherited all the debts Golden Gate stacked on the company.

Even today, the financial extraction continues. The law firms conducting the bankruptcy on Red Lobster’s behalf have already billed the company $10.5 million, nearly equivalent to the entire loss on the shrimp promotion.

How Red Lobster originally fell under control of private equity foreshadowed the problems that would later follow under Thai Union Group. The downfall is an emblem of how the long-term effects of consolidation in seafood and restaurant retail laid the groundwork for corporate raiders to pillage the once-iconic American brand.

RED LOBSTER BECAME AN EARLY PIONEER of the no-frills casual dining experience that spread across the country in the second half of the 20th century. Per its name, the signature offering was a typically upscale delicacy out of reach for most Americans, brought to the masses at affordable prices. That sales pitch epitomized a cultural and business trend at the time, as other more upscale brands like Grey Poupon pivoted to a broader customer base.

But to make the business work, Red Lobster had to find a way to bring down the cost of seafood to something affordable for its middle-class customers. The chain rapidly expanded franchises across the country. With scale, Red Lobster could use buyer power to purchase in bulk from larger seafood processors and get discounts from them to lower costs, a similar business model to those other fast-food and chain restaurants employed during that period.

Red Lobster was tremendously successful and at its height had over 700 locations, becoming one of the biggest casual dining businesses in the U.S.

But according to The Wall Street Journal, its demise came about when the cost of global seafood started to go up around 2013. Red Lobster, with its mostly seafood-based menu, suffered from that more than the other causal chains like Olive Garden that were under the portfolio of its previous owner Darden.

Some of the spike in seafood prices could be accounted for by unusual weather events in open oceans that year, certain aquatic diseases, and rising consumer demand. But another unseen factor was a wholesale transformation in the structure of the fishing industry. Red Lobster’s own purchasing power would be countervailed by a rollup of its seafood suppliers.

Agriculture had been industrialized and monopolized much earlier into factory farming controlled by meatpackers and other middlemen. Those same trends were also taking place in the seafood sector, though it took longer.

U.S. fishing used to be much more regionally based and mostly made up of independent fishers who’d sell their catches into local markets. In the 1990s and 2000s, the U.S. government started implementing a “catch share” program, which capped the volume per fisher and imposed other restrictions to manage overfishing, for environmental reasons and to preserve wildlife. The high up-front costs for licensing and the limitations on the number of catches one fisher could sell by season mostly benefited the larger fisheries that were accruing market share at the time. Catch management was prone to consolidation, because the shares became tradable assets that dominant fisheries could simply purchase from smaller struggling ones.

“The retail apocalypse is all about having your real estate sold out from under you so that you have to pay the rent in good times and in bad.”
Around the same time, there was an onslaught of foreign imports of fishing (from companies such as Thai Union) that didn’t have the same environmental standards. To compete, U.S. fisheries started to race for market share, buying up catch shares and forcing fishers into contractual arrangements where they could only sell to one of the large processors. In the Alaska area, four companies control the share rights to over 77 percent of catches for specific crab species. Along the Pacific Northwest coast, one company—Pacific Seafood—effectively controls the local market fishers sell into for a wide range of catches, from salmon to shrimp.

Right around the same time as fish prices began rising for Red Lobster, plaintiffs filed a wave of major antitrust lawsuits against these giant seafood processors that had usurped the industry.

One core claim across these lawsuits was that the new fishing giants held vast “purchasing power” over the entire market. They used that power both to reduce what they paid the fishers, who had few other buyers to turn to for better prices, and also to exact markups to retailers. Even supposed competitors like Pacific Seafood and Ocean Gold Seafoods had entered exclusive partnerships with one another to share one another’s processing facilities and fix prices together.

“The difference between what the fishermen are getting paid and prices in the supermarket are such an astronomical difference,” one fisherman party to a 2011 complaint testified. The complaint argued that prices went from $77 per ton in 2004 to $137 in 2006, as a result of market power.

An especially troubling practice alleged by the plaintiffs was that during peak seasonal demand, large processors artificially reduced the time intervals when fishers were permitted to go out on the waters to bring back fresh catches. Companies like Pacific Seafood did this to advantage their own bargaining position as middlemen by limiting supply.

On the other side of the country, federal law enforcement in New England caught a fishing tycoon named Carlos Rafael, known as the “Codfather,” bragging about his ability to price-fix. He was later put in prison on a litany of charges for conspiracy and dealings with the Russian mafia.

These documented lawsuits shed light on the problems Red Lobster faced from its upstream suppliers. Red Lobster’s entire business model was reliant on its own buyer power over seafood suppliers; but once its suppliers merged together, they could wield their own power to add markups.

BECAUSE OF RED LOBSTER’S HIGH COSTS and declining profits, the company’s owner Darden sold it off in 2014 for $1.2 billion to Golden Gate Capital, which believed it could make the chain leaner and more efficient. That was also Golden Gate’s promise when it took over the iconic shoe retailer Payless in 2012, before selling it off to a separate private equity firm, Alden Global Capital, just a few years later, in worse shape than when it first took over the company. Over the first two years of Golden Gate’s reign at Payless, the retailer generated $322 million in operating profits and paid $352 million in one-time dividends to shareholders, the largest being Golden Gate, along with $83 million in interest payments on the debt it had been saddled with from the purchase. That left it with virtually no resources to adapt to the e-commerce era as its sales cratered.

Golden Gate followed the same pattern of behavior with Red Lobster. To finance the purchase, Golden Gate imposed a sale-leaseback on most of the real estate, which went under ownership of American Realty Capital Properties. This real estate play has become common in private equity purchases of other retailers and even hospitals, because it gives the PE owners a quick injection of cash from the get-go.

“The retail apocalypse is all about having your real estate sold out from under you so that you have to pay the rent in good times and in bad,” private equity expert Eileen Appelbaum told Business Insider.

That was just the start of Red Lobster’s problems. Restaurants would become chronically understaffed, as the owners tried to slash costs wherever they could. The extravagant payments that the company made to its owners made it difficult for the chain to adapt in a changing restaurant business shifting away from casual dining.

Thai Union, among the largest global seafood conglomerates and a major supplier to Red Lobster, first acquired a 25 percent stake in the company for $575 million in 2016. Then in 2020, it purchased the remaining portion of shares from Golden Gate. This new ownership structure was highly unusual; it would be analogous to Walmart’s largest discount supplier Procter & Gamble deciding to purchase the retail side of the operation.

Thai Union continued cost-cutting and failed to rejuvenate the business, which was still stuck with rising rent costs because of Golden Gate’s sale-leaseback. Red Lobster also suffered, like the rest of the restaurant industry, through the pandemic, when in-store dining was barred in much of the country for a period of time.

In 2021, Red Lobster refinanced its debt obligations, which led to another private equity firm, Fortress Investment Group, becoming a key lender. According to Bloomberg, Fortress is now in contention to take over the chain after bankruptcy, placing it back in the hands of a set of financial pillagers.

Leading up to its financial implosion and bankruptcy, Red Lobster joined a lobbying group called Stronger America Through Seafood. For the past several years, this group has been aggressively lobbying to essentially deregulate American fishing by opening up federal waters for industrial aquaculture farms to harvest fish at massive scale, despite ecological and competition concerns. Red Lobster’s owner Thai Union Group and other dominant fishing processors would stand to benefit by being able to acquire new permits to the waters and expand their operations. Those efforts haven’t succeeded yet but are still actively under way.

Hunter Hopes to Change Doctrine That Gives Wildlife Agents Free Rein on Private Property

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Michael Clements
Read the article on The Epoch Times

BATON ROUGE, La.—At 39 degrees under cloudy skies, that day was cooler than average for December. Having seen no deer, Tom Manuel decided to leave.

He was taken aback when he met a Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries agent standing beside a state truck. The warden asked for his gun so he could unload it.

Mr. Manuel refused to hand over his Remington Model 700 bolt action rifle, though he did remove a round from the chamber and place it on the seat of his pickup truck.

After answering the warden’s questions and proving he had not violated any game laws, Mr. Manuel asked the officer what probable cause he had to enter clearly posted private property.

“He said, ‘The mere fact that you’re hunting was all the probable cause I need,’” Mr. Manuel told The Epoch Times of the incident on Dec. 6, 2023.

Mr. Manuel found this odd since the officer had no way of knowing anyone was even on the property until he was almost 100 yards past the property line.

Mr. Manuel had left his gate open but parked his truck behind some young pines well out of sight of the main road earlier that morning. With the boundary lines clearly marked in blue paint and “No Trespassing” signs prominently displayed, he believed he had done all that is required by law to keep unwanted visitors out.

The Supreme Court laid the legal groundwork for Mr. Manuel’s encounter with the game warden 100 years ago, more than 680 miles away on a rural property near Travelers Rest, South Carolina.

The Supreme Court instituted the “open fields doctrine” through a series of decisions beginning in 1924. This doctrine interprets the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as giving the government carte blanche access to billions of acres of private property—in other words, Fourth Amendment protection doesn’t extend to open fields.

Mr. Manuel hails from Covington, Louisiana, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, at the opposite end of the causeway from New Orleans. He’s spent over 30 years as a forester and a lifetime walking the sandy trails and pine forests of his home state.

He and his wife, Phyllis, bought 243 acres of forest land in Ethel, Louisiana, from one of his clients 21 years ago. They intended to raise pine trees for lumber, but the land’s value goes well beyond the cash Mr. Manuel gets for the trees.

As he walks the cool pines on a recent April afternoon, Mr. Manuel talks of how the property instilled in his children a love for the outdoors. He recalls four-wheeler rides, camping trips, and bonding with his children.

He smiles as he talks about a “deer hunting” trip with his 3-year-old granddaughter, during which he left his rifle at home.

“I brought hot chocolate, snacks, and a five-gallon bucket to put pinecones in,” Mr. Manuel told The Epoch Times. “You asked me about hunting memories. That was probably the best one from last year.”

According to the open fields doctrine, the officer was within his rights to enter Mr. Manuel’s property, regardless of how it’s used. Under the doctrine, Mr. Manuel—and all other private property owners—lose their Fourth Amendment rights once they are outside the “curtilage” of any structures on their property.

According to legal experts, curtilage is a vaguely defined area adjacent to houses, barns, and other buildings on private property.

The open fields doctrine was born in prohibition-era America.

On Feb. 2, 1919, 17-year-old Charlie Hester of Travelers Rest, South Carolina, sold a quart of untaxed whiskey, known as “moonshine,” to a neighbor. Unbeknownst to Charlie, two federal Internal Revenue agents, Jake Gosnell and James King, had jumped a fence, crossed a pasture, and observed the transaction from the woods near the house he shared with his father.

The resulting raid included a foot chase, a gunshot, and searches of the house, a vehicle, and up to 10 individuals. In the end, Charlie was convicted of selling the whiskey. He appealed his conviction all the way to the Supreme Court, claiming that the agents had illegally entered the property under the Fourth Amendment.

The court ruled unanimously against Charlie Hester on May 5, 1924.

“The special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects’ is not extended to the open fields,” Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in a brief decision.

Legal scholars say that a strict interpretation of the original text supports Justice Holmes’ decision. They point out that each word, person, house, papers and effects, had, and continue to have, precise definitions.

Tom Manuel opens the gate to his property in Ethel, La., on April 19, 2024. Mr. Manuel claims agents with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries entered the posted property without a warrant in December 2023. (Sean Gasser for The Epoch Times)
Paul Larkin, a senior legal fellow with The Heritage Foundation, agreed. He pointed out that traditionally, “property” has been generally defined as a building, its contents, and the area immediately around it, known as “curtilage.”

Effects are typically defined as a person’s possessions or their “worldly estate.” The intent was to prevent government agents from searching boxes, cabinets, purses, or other personal items without probable cause or a warrant.

Joshua Windham is an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm focused on reigning in government power and securing individuals’ Constitutional rights, according to its website.

He said the Hester decision ignores the Amendment’s broader intent and instead focuses on a tiny part.

“The Fourth Amendment has 54 words, not just five words,” Mr. Windham said at a May 10 conference.

He compares the Fourth Amendment to a rule teachers use to maintain order. Students are told to “keep your hands to yourself.” Even children understand this to prohibit unwanted contact of any kind.

Applying Hester’s logic would mean that high-fiving is prohibited while kicking is allowed.

“Keep your hands to yourself, evinces, but it doesn’t exhaust the limits of conduct that won’t be tolerated in the classroom,” he said.

The limits of the open fields doctrine are also being explored. As technology develops, more questions are raised.

Virginia Case
Josh Highlander of New Kent, Virginia, is an Institute for Justice client. A brief encounter with Mr. Highland reveals he is passionate about real estate, the outdoors, and his Constitutional rights—not necessarily in that order.

He said he learned about the open fields doctrine when state agents began investigating allegations that he was illegally hunting over a baited field—a claim he vehemently denies.

On April 28, 2023, his wife and young son were playing basketball when they were frightened by a figure in camouflage clothing in the woods behind their house.

“I was concerned about what this person was doing in our woods and our property, just yards behind our house where my son was playing,” Ms. Highlander said.

Mr. Highlander suspected it was a game warden. He said his suspicion was confirmed when a wildlife camera he set up approximately 100 yards from his house went missing.

When he called the police to report the camera stolen, he learned that game wardens were searching the camera, reportedly hoping to find evidence of hunting violations they believed he was committing. Mr. Highlander said he was never notified that anyone would be on his property, why they were there, or what they were looking for.

“I called the Commonwealth Attorney . . . and he was like, ‘Did they have a warrant?’ I don’t know, if they did, they didn’t tell me about it,” Mr. Highlander told The Epoch Times.

Harvard Law School professor Maureen Brady said that if the camera had been within the curtilage, the area adjacent to his home, the wardens would have had to get a warrant because a camera is an “effect” under the Fourth Amendment. But the camera was on a post in an open field.

The fact that Mr. Highlander owns the field, has put up a fence to keep trespassers out, and asserts ownership of the camera on his private property is of no account.

“Leaving that camera out in the open is abandoning your privacy expectations,” Ms. Brady told The Epoch Times.

Louisiana Law
While most states allow state agents to operate under the open fields doctrine, some have rejected it. This includes Louisiana. In 1978, the Louisiana State Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution requires law enforcement to have a warrant to enter any private property.

Josh Highlander speaks during an interview with The Epoch Times in New Kent, Va., on May 8, 2024. Mr. Highlander claims a Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources agent took the camera under the authority of the Open Fields Doctrine. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)
James Knight, another attorney with the Institute for Justice, said Louisiana wildlife officers are still taught to trespass, which violates the state constitution and the court. Mr. Knight is part of a team representing Mr. Manuel in a lawsuit against the state.

“So, what Tom is asking the court to do is to reaffirm that older decision … and to tell the officers that they would have to get a warrant,” Mr. Knight told The Epoch Times.

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and the Louisiana Wildlife Agents Association didn’t respond to emails requesting comment for this story. However, Mr. Manuel said he had received a letter from a wildlife officer in another state defending the doctrine.

He said the officer claimed that game laws could not be adequately enforced without open fields. Mr. Knight disagrees.

Seven states—Mississippi, Montana, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Tennessee, and South Dakota—require game wardens to meet similar requirements to those of police officers to enter private property.

Mr. Manuel and Mr. Knight stressed that the lawsuit doesn’t seek financial damages and doesn’t target individual agents. They say the objective is compliance with the Fourth Amendment.

“The defendants in the lawsuit are the Department of Fish and Wildlife and the higher-up officials responsible for creating and enforcing these policies in their official capacities,” Mr. Knight said.

Last April, the Institute issued a report titled “Good Fences? Good Luck.” Drawing on data from the U.S. Geological Survey and a Microsoft database, the report states that approximately 1.2 billion acres, or 96 percent, of all private land has no Fourth Amendment protection.

“Officials can invade it, roam around for as long as they please, maybe … put cameras on your land. And the Fourth Amendment has nothing to say about any of that,” Mr. Windham said.

Locals Outraged as Pennsylvania Men Remain Jailed for Providing Livestock Ultrasounds

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The Epoch Times

Matthew Lysiak

A source told The Epoch Times they believe the arrests are meant to send a message to anyone who dares to compete with the larger animal care service providers.

The two Pennsylvania men charged and detained earlier in April for conducting ultrasounds on cows and horses without proper credentials remain behind bars 18 days after their initial arrest, provoking outrage from family members and the local farming community who are all demanding their immediate release.

Attorney Robert Barnes, who is representing both men, announced on social media that the Commonwealth Court denied an emergency petition for the men’s release after a hearing on April 29.

“Pennsylvania is out of control. The @PAStateDept demanded these two men remain illegally imprisoned, and the Commonwealth Court judge (who issued the first illegal imprisonment order) continues their illegal imprisonment. To the Supreme Court next!” Mr. Barnes wrote.

Rusty Herr, 43, of Christiana, Pennsylvania, was booked at the Lancaster County Prison on April 11, while Ethan Wentworth, 33, of Airville, Pennsylvania, was sent to the York County Prison on April 10, following a complaint of practicing veterinary medicine without a license.

Mr. Herr and Mr. Wentworth are listed as operating partners of NoBull Solutions LLC, “an all encompassing reproductive management business dedicated to dairy farmers to help them meet and exceed the reproduction goals within their herd,” according to the company’s Facebook page.

Dairy farmer Ben Masemore, who is acting as a spokesman for Mr. Herr and Mr. Wentworth, told The Epoch Times that both men were serving 30-day sentences without bail for using ultrasound for reproductive services such as pregnancy checks, which he said was business as usual on dairy farms.

“I’ve talked to several farmers and professionals here and not a single one thinks what they do is veterinary care,” said Mr. Masemore. “This whole thing is just ridiculous.”

Local Farmers on Their Side

A source who has done business with the company told The Epoch Times that they believe the arrests were intended to send a message to anyone who dares to compete with the larger animal care service providers.
“Look, they were very good at what they did and could do so at an affordable, fair price,” said the source, who would only speak on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from state authorities. “A lot of the so-called competitors who have become accustomed to overcharging weren’t so pleased about that and they made that clear, so this is what you get and now everyone knows what it is all about.”

“The community is firmly behind them,” the source said, referring to Mr. Herr and Mr. Wentworth, “but this is a sensitive issue because if they could come after these two guys who had a great reputation, they can go after any one of us.”

Kevin Robbins, who has a working relationship with the company, told The Epoch Times that the arrest came as a “shock to everyone” and that he could personally testify to the character of both men, calling them “stand-up people.”

Anger over the duo’s plight even inspired what appeared to be an artificial intelligence-generated song titled “The Ballad of Ethan and Rusty,“ which purports to tell ”the true story of two men from Pennsylvania, USA, who found themselves in an extraordinary situation.”

The song’s lyrics read in part, “Just simple farmers loving the land, but now they are in prison…Helping farms near and far but the law came knocking and their dreams fell hard.”

A GiveSendGo page set up to help pay for their legal costs says the two men were detained illegally “without due process, and being denied bail” for performing ultrasound scans on dairy cows and horses without a veterinary license.

The page, which had raised $18,855 by Monday afternoon, added that Mr. Wentworth was allegedly misled by authorities ahead of his arrest.

After being instructed by authorities to go to a courthouse to pay a fine, Mr. Wentworth was instead “kidnapped, denied the right to speak to an attorney or to call his family, and seven days later has still not seen a judge,” the fundraising page claimed. “Ethan’s pregnant wife and three young children are distraught and desperate to reach their husband and father, who is the sole breadwinner for their family.”

“Ethan and Rusty’s families need them to come home, and small dairy and horse farms throughout Lancaster, York and Berks counties depend on these men to help them breed their herds,” the fundraising page said. “Without their services, many of these farmers will not be able to afford the expensive veterinary services that the huge corporate farms can buy, causing even more of our small dairy farms to go out of business.”

Big Ag Versus Small Farms

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) told The Epoch Times in a previous report that an alliance between “Big Ag” and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has created a monopoly and brought small, independent farmers to the brink of extinction.
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“The deck is definitely stacked,” Mr. Massie previously told the publication. “Eighty-five percent of meat comes from four companies, and this monopoly exists as a result of government regulatory policy. There is an incestuous relationship between these large companies and the Department of Agriculture.”

In January, the alleged failures to adhere to the government’s regulatory policy led to Miller’s Organic Farm, a popular Amish farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, being the subject of an armed raid by officials on suspicion of selling “illegal milk,” among other products. The Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture filed a lawsuit on April 9 against the farm’s owner, Amos Miller, alleging that he had violated Pennsylvania’s Milk Sanitation Law by operating without government-mandated permits.

The farm had initially been ordered to halt all sales of its dairy products until a court ruling on April 12 permitted Mr. Miller to sell his goods anywhere in the world except in the state where he resides.

The Pennsylvania state authorities refused to comment on the detention of Mr. Herr and Mr. Wentworth, claiming they couldn’t confirm or deny an investigation due to confidentiality statutes.

Conservative Lawyers Reveal Retaliation They Faced Over Politics

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theepochtimes.com
Conservative Lawyers Reveal Retaliation They Faced Over Politics
Jacob Burg

The State Bar Court of California ruled in late March that John Eastman should be disbarred for helping then-President Donald Trump challenge the outcome of the 2020 election.

Mr. Eastman requested that a judge, before the California Supreme Court reviews the case, pause the order prohibiting him from practicing law so he could fund his defense in the criminal case brought against President Trump and his attorneys in Georgia.

Jeffrey Clark, who also tried to help President Trump, is facing a similar disbarment hearing in Washington. The focal point is a “proof of concept” letter he drafted for President Trump in December 2020 that would have asked top Georgia officials to investigate alleged voter fraud in the state.

Mr. Clark and Mr. Eastman are the latest attorneys to face backlash from the bar over their actions. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s license was suspended in June 2021 after a court ruled that he made demonstrably false statements while challenging the election results.

Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and Jenna Ellis have all been sentenced in the Georgia case after making plea deals. Lawrence Joseph, Julia Haller, and Brandon Johnson, who worked on President Trump’s post-election challenges in battleground states, are also facing disciplinary proceedings in Washington.

Other conservative attorneys have faced their own forms of professional repercussions and threats.

Christopher Crowley, a former prosecutor from Fort Myers, Florida, could be suspended by the Florida Bar after an ethics complaint was filed in 2020 for political statements he made about an opponent in a Republican primary for a state attorney election.

William Brown was fired from a prominent law firm in New Jersey for making political remarks about the glorification of violence in hip hop and militant forms of Islam in a December 2023 LinkedIn post.

James Bopp Jr. was subject to an ethics complaint after he asked a judge to recuse himself while representing Michael Gableman in an investigation into Wisconsin’s election commission.

Patrick Leduc was harassed and criticized for representing one of the first defendants to go before a judge in the indictments related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach.

And Timothy Parlatore faced public outcry for briefly representing President Trump in his Florida classified documents case and the one brought by Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith in Washington.

These attorneys have expressed to The Epoch Times a fear that legal proceedings and the legal profession as a whole are increasingly used to pursue lawyers on the right more than lawyers on the left.

Ty Clevenger, a civil rights attorney from Texas, said the alleged politicization of disciplinary actions against lawyers sends the wrong signals.

“The message that’s going out to lawyers is that if you represent the wrong clients, you can pay for it personally,” he told The Epoch Times. “And so it’s not just lawyers who are being intimidated. It’s all the defendants or potential defendants out there who are going to have or are having more difficulty getting lawyers because lawyers don’t want to have to deal with repercussions.”

John Malcolm, a senior legal fellow with The Heritage Foundation, agreed.

“There is no question that there is a political bias in the legal profession that skews dramatically to the left, and it is getting worse,” he told The Epoch Times.
Free Speech and Bar Rules

Indiana University law professor Margaret Tarkington told The Epoch Times that two model rules from the American Bar Association (ABA) have the potential to disproportionately affect conservative attorneys.

Rule 8.2 says, “A lawyer shall not make a statement that the lawyer knows to be false or with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or integrity of a judge, adjudicatory officer or public legal officer, or of a candidate for election or appointment to judicial or legal office.”

Ms. Tarkington said that although she believes that the rule as it is written seemingly complies with the U.S. Constitution, “the way 8.2 is applied by most states in the United States is absolutely unconstitutional and violates lawyers’ First Amendment rights.”

She said the rule usually targets comments about judges, including judicial candidates, as a means of preserving the “perception of integrity” within the judiciary as a whole.

However, Ms. Tarkington said she believes that it shields judges from “all effective criticism,” including from the very people who know what judges should and shouldn’t be doing: lawyers.

The Florida Bar’s version of this rule was applied to Mr. Crowley when he ran in 2018 for 20th Judicial Circuit state attorney against Amira Fox.

The Florida Bar stated that he “publicly disparaged his opponent through various political campaign materials, advertisements, and social media postings” and violated other rules, including promoting an unlawful raffle lottery, which Mr. Crowley said was settled with a diversion agreement.

He criticized Ms. Fox’s conviction record, called her “corrupt” and “swampy,” and referenced her uncle’s association with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). He shared an article on Facebook that referred to Ms. Fox as a “Muslim candidate,” and the Florida Bar stated that he was attacking her religion.

However, Mr. Crowley said he never knew, nor cared, about Ms. Fox’s religion and was merely sharing an article that he didn’t author that discussed her family’s relationship with the PLO, which he sees as a terrorist group.

“So basically, and factually, the Florida Bar is regulating political speech,” he told The Epoch Times.

Mr. Crowley said that, in calling Ms. Fox “corrupt,” he cited “facts, figures, and news articles.”

“Now the Florida Bar is saying I cannot do that,” he said.

Ms. Tarkington said rule 8.2 is usually applied to judicial candidates and not state attorney races.

“That is an absolutely bizarre application of that. That is not commonly done,” she said of Mr. Crowley’s Florida Bar ethics complaint.

Mr. Clevenger also took issue with the way ABA rules were applied in the ethics complaints against Mr. Crowley.

“If a lawyer cannot speak frankly and freely during a political campaign, then we just don’t have First Amendment rights anymore,” Mr. Clevenger said.

The ABA creates rule guidelines for state bar associations throughout the country but does not directly “license or discipline lawyers,” an ABA spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

“Each state licenses lawyers and investigates complaints of ethical violations by lawyers licensed in their state,” the spokesperson said. “Usually, it’s the state supreme court or state bar—under the authority of the state supreme court—that does that.”

Still, when state bar associations discipline lawyers such as Mr. Crowley and Mr. Eastman, they refer to rules enacted by the ABA, including 8.2.

There’s also ABA rule 8.4(g), which states that a lawyer shall not “engage in conduct that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know is harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or socioeconomic status in conduct related to the practice of law.”

This rule is not “narrowly tailored,” Ms. Tarkington said, and it covers comments that could be considered “derogatory or demeaning on a very long list of bases.”

“The problem is a number of conservative viewpoints, whether it be on abortion or on immigration or on traditional marriage, are things that because of the way [8.4(g) is] written, they would have a greater tendency to be problematic,” she said.

Ms. Tarkington said the way the rule is written also creates the “potential for greater restriction and greater discipline of conservative lawyers.”

The Epoch Times contacted the Florida Bar but didn’t receive a reply before publication.
Election Litigation

Some of the highest-profile disciplinary proceedings against conservative attorneys in recent years have been against the group that helped President Trump dispute the 2020 election results.

Beyond Mr. Eastman and Mr. Clark, the District of Columbia Bar Discipline Committee recommended disbarring Rudy Giuliani in July 2023, and the final decision will be made by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Sidney Powell and her lawyer, Lawrence Joseph, are also facing various repercussions from advancing claims and lawsuits related to the 2020 election results. Ms. Powell was sued by voting machine companies over accusations she made that the 2020 election was rigged against President Trump and was also indicted in the Georgia RICO case along with the former president, Mr. Eastman, Mr. Clark, Mr. Giuliani, lawyer Kenneth Cheseboro, lawyer Jenna Ellis, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and others.

Mr. Joseph, like Mr. Clark, received disciplinary charges from the District of Columbia Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel earlier this year.

“[The rules] need to be clarified as to the obligations for when you’re advising or assisting government,” Ms. Tarkington said.

She argued that the rules used to discipline these lawyers are “really broad and amorphous” and that it’s “really hard to know in advance whether whatever you’re doing would violate them.”

Ms. Tarkington said that although she takes issue with those who allegedly helped submit a second slate of electors, she doesn’t believe that disciplinary proceedings should be brought against everyone who represented President Trump or “everyone who filed litigation on his behalf” to challenge the 2020 election results.

The former president had a First Amendment right to challenge the election in court, she said, and “his lawyers had a corresponding First Amendment right to petition on his behalf to associate with him.”

Letitia James Presses Judge to Void Trump’s $175 Million Bond, Paving Way for Asset Seizure

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From The Epoch Times

KSIC posted the $175 million bond on behalf of President Trump on April 1.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has asked the judge in former President Donald Trump’s civil fraud case to declare the $175 million bond that a surety company posted on his behalf as “without effect” and to require it to post a new bond that is sufficiently collateralized, while calling into question the firm’s credibility.

The company that issued the bond—Knight Specialty Insurance Company (KSIC)—posted a $175 million bond on April 1 on behalf of President Trump, allowing him to fend off a possible seizure of his properties or other assets following a $464 million judgment (including interest) in a case that accused him of inflating asset values to get better loan terms.

Ms. James, a Democrat who brought the civil fraud case against President Trump, initially challenged the “sufficiency” of the $175 million bond in a court filing several days after KSIC posted it, leading the former president’s attorneys to insist in response that the company is well-capitalized and has enough collateral to back the bond.

But Ms. James has rejected that assertion, raising a number of arguments in opposition to KSIC’s claim in an April 19 court filing that asks the presiding judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, to declare the bond to be “without effect” and order a replacement bond to be posted within seven days.
KSIC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Justice Engoron has set an April 22 hearing to discuss the issue of the bond.

Bond Sufficiency Challenge

State law would have required President Trump to post the full judgment ($393 million disgorgement with 9 percent backdated interest for a total of $464 million) but an appeals court lowered it to $175 million, to be paid within 10 days.

Letitia James’ Attack on Legality of Trump’s $175 Million Bond Draws Allegations of Bias
4/10/2024

KSIC posted the $175 million bond on behalf of President Trump on April 1, staying execution of judgment in the case and preventing any seizure of his assets as his appeal is heard in the case.
However, both the bond’s validity and the company’s credibility were immediately challenged by Ms. James. In an April 4 filing, she said she took “exception to the sufficiency of the surety,” justifying her opposition in part due to the fact that KISC was not an admitted carrier in New York and lacked a certificate of qualification required by New York Insurance Law Section 1111.

Ms. James gave President Trump’s counsel, or KSIC, ten days to file a motion to justify the surety, threatening that the bond would otherwise become ineffective, a move that would then open the door to a seizure of Trump properties to satisfy the judgment.

In response, President Trump’s lawyers filed a motion on April 15 asking the judge to dismiss Ms. James’s objections to the bond, while laying out a series of arguments why they believe the surety to be valid.
President Trump’s counsel pointed out that there’s no legal requirement for a surety company to be an “admitted carrier” in New York State to provide the bond.

They also argued that the company is well-capitalized, with over $539 million in assets, $138 million in equity—plus having access to over $2 billion in assets and $1 billion in equity.

Further, they said in the filing that President Trump’s agreement with KSIC and the Charles Schwab bank allows KSIC to activate control of a brokerage account at Schwab held by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust and containing just over $175 million within two business days, meaning that “the $175 million bond is fully collateralized by $175 million in cash.”
However, Ms. James rejected those arguments in her April 19 filing.

“Defendants and KSIC (collectively, ‘Movants’) have failed to justify KSIC as the surety on this extraordinarily large undertaking for a number of reasons,” she wrote.

Credibility in Question

The New York AG argued in the filing that KSIC and Trump’s counsel have failed to prove that the collateral backing the $175 bond is sufficiently secure and ascertainable.

She objected to the structure of the agreements governing how the collateral is pledged and controlled, arguing that the $175 million in the brokerage account held by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust at Schwab can easily be emptied unless KSIC objects within two days after receiving notice of the proposed transaction.
Also, while the agreement requires the Trust to top up the balance in the brokerage account if it dips below $175 million, Ms. James claimed that this promise is “hollow” if the Trust lacks the funds to do so and concedes that the value of the collateral will fluctuate based on market conditions.

“On the evidence submitted by Movants in support of the Motion, there is insufficient basis for the Court to find that the bond is sufficiently collateralized by identifiable assets,” she wrote.
Further, she said the court shouldn’t rely on KSIC’s financial summary attached to the bond as evidence that the company has sufficient capacity to justify writing the $175 million surety.

“That is because KSIC sends 100% of its retained insurance risk to affiliates in the Cayman Islands, where lax regulations allow KSIC to use this risk transfer to reduce the liabilities it carries on its books in a way that artificially bolsters its surplus—a practice New York regulators have dubbed ’shadow insurance’ and about which they have sounded the alarm,” she wrote.

Finally, Ms. James said that even though it’s legal for a licensed excess lines broker to place business with an unauthorized insurer like KSIC, it can only do so if it is satisfied that the insurer’s management is “trustworthy and competent.”
“KSIC is not qualified to act as the surety under this standard because its management has been found by federal authorities to have operated affiliated companies within KSIC’s holding company structure in violation of federal law on multiple occasions within the past several years,” she argued in the filing.

She asked the judge to deny Trump counsel’s motion to dismiss her challenge and post a replacement bond within seven days.
While the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Ms. James’ bond challenge, Trump attorney Christopher Kise earlier denounced her actions as “another witch hunt.”

Mr. Kise suggested Ms. James had personal or political motives behind the move, and did it to “stir up some equally baseless public quarrel in a desperate effort to regain relevance.”

President Trump has vowed to fight the case all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.
He has pleaded not guilty in the case and has accused Ms. James of political motives.
Ms. James’ office did not respond to a request for comment on the bond challenge.

Letter: New York needs ‘DEFRs’ and so does Colorado

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Letter to the Editor  LETTER-TO-THE-EDITOR | 

In December of last year, a multi-agency conference was held in New York to determine if there is a future gap in electricity supply and, if so, what to do about it. New York has legislated requirements to reduce carbon dioxide emissions 70% by 2030 and 100% by 2040 (Colorado targets are 80% by 2040 and 100% by 2050).

New York’s independent system operator, or NYISO, looked at 22 years of hourly historic data. Even using optimistic projections, there were numerous periods where future renewable generation would not meet projected loads. The modeling confirmed that a new resource is required — one that is firm, dispatchable, emissions free and can power the system for days. They dubbed this new resource “DEFRs” for Dispatchable Emissions Free Resources. “DEFRs” must be able to ramp up quickly, stay online for prolonged periods and provide frequency and voltage control to the grid.

There is only one problem — “DEFRs” do not yet exist. NYISO has requested a temporary delay for fossil generation retirement dates. Xcel Energy should do the same here in Colorado. Fossil generators (think Hayden and Craig) should not be shut down until and unless proven alternatives exist.

The clock is ticking toward a catastrophic blackout in New York. Lofty ambitions will collide with reality. An identical situation exists here in Colorado, where Xcel Energy acknowledges that net zero cannot be achieved with extant technology.

A modern society cannot exist without abundant, reliable and affordable electrical energy. Hoping for “DEFRs” is not a viable strategy.

Bill Rutledge
Steamboat Springs

‘They took my trust and spit on it’: School district bus aide caught on video allegedly torturing autistic, nonverbal child

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DAVE URBANSKI
APRIL 10, 2024

A Colorado school bus aide was caught on video allegedly torturing an autistic, nonverbal 10-year-old child — and the victim’s tearful parents are expressing outrage.

What’s more, the boy reportedly isn’t the only victim of the now-former Littleton Public Schools paraprofessional.

What are the details?

KCNC-TV reported that the suspect allegedly caused injuries such as fractured bones, a knocked-out tooth, and deep bruises to at least three students with autism while they rode a bus the district provides, which brings the students to the Joshua School — one of the state’s most highly regarded private schools for students with autism.

The families of the victims asked that their last names not be shared, KCNC added.

“They took my trust and spit on it,” Devin, the father of 10-year-old Dax, tearfully stated during a press conference, the station said.

Dax’s parents wanted the disturbing video of what happened to their son made public without blurring his face, as they said their nonverbal boy’s facial expressions and body language are what speak for him, KCNC reported.

“It was a heavy decision to make to uncover it, but we cannot bring attention to this if we don’t look at it,” Dax’s mother, Jess, said, according to the station. “It’s ugly to look at, but it’s important to see how confused and afraid he was in that video. It just speaks to his vulnerability, and it speaks to the terror he had to endure while on that bus.”

That video was shared Tuesday morning, showing Dax aboard that LPS bus sitting next to paraprofessional Kiarra Jones. It was recorded March 18 and captures Jones, 28, physically abusing the 10-year-old boy – repeatedly elbowing him in the stomach, slapping his face, and stomping on his feet.
“How could someone that I trusted, someone that I was so friendly with, do this to my little boy?” Jess asked tearfully, the station said. “The torture and torment of my sweet boy could’ve been stopped.”

KCNC reported that Jess said she began noticing bumps and bruises on her son dating back to September 2023, after which she told Joshua School staff, who confirmed with her that Dax didn’t suffer those injuries while in their care.

She added to the station that she pivoted to LPS, but they said there was nothing to be concerned about. After Dax’s injuries worsened, Jess told KCNC she demanded answers from the district.

“I notified LPS on March 18, and on March 19 got a phone call from Littleton police informing me that an LPS employee had severely abused my child,” she added, according to the station. “I went to the LPS transportation building and was in utter shock.”

Then, Jess was informed that Jones allegedly abused other children as well, KCNC noted.

“My son does not have the ability to tell me when someone’s hurting him,” another victim’s father said, according to the station. “My son does not have the ability to tell me that he was forced to watch someone hurt his friends.”

‘Traumatized and tortured’

Now, the parents of these three students are prepared to sue the school district, KCNC reported, adding that they claim LPS knew about their abuse concerns for months and did nothing.

“They had everything they needed to stop it faster, and they didn’t,” attorney Ed C. Hopkins of the Rathod Mohamedbhai law firm stated, according to the station. “They had notice, and they ignored it. These children have been traumatized and tortured because they failed them.”

KCNC added that Jess said she wants to bring attention to an issue that is “unfortunately more common than you would think. There needs to be change.”

Anything else?

The station said the school district declined multiple requests for an interview but shared a letter a district spokesperson said the superintendent emailed Friday to LPS parents. The letter states that an internal investigation began March 19, Jones was fired, and police were notified, KCNC reported.

“This kind of behavior cannot be and is not tolerated,” the letter reads, according to the station. “As parents, you trust us with the well-being of your children and you should never have to worry about them being harmed when they are in our care.”

The letter also claims Jones was hired in August 2023 “after satisfactory reference checks and after passing through a background check.” Jones was arrested on April 4 after the incident was reported to the Englewood Police Department by Littleton police on March 28. She was released from the Arapahoe County Jail on a $5,000 bond on April 5.

Jones is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Arapahoe County Court on May 3 at 1:30 p.m. on charges of crimes against at-risk juvenile third-degree assault and crimes against at-risk juvenile-injury.

Read article on The Blaze.