Kim Potter Guilty Verdict, Kim Foxx Jussie Smollett Misconduct, Paul’s Festivus Spending Report

Tough day for former police officer Kim Potter as she is convicted by Minneapolis jurors of manslaughter in the shooting death of Daunte Wright. Former Jussie Smollett prosecutor Kim Foxx is in hot water for abusing her office to protect Smollett against fallout from his hate crime hoax. Senator Rand Paul releases his yearly Festivus report on wasteful government spending, and we review. 

🔹 Former Minneapolis police officer Kimberly Potter is convicted of manslaughter.
🔹 Judge Regina Chu reads the verdict as Kim Potter receives the news.
🔹 Potter’s defense lawyer crumbles to the table in grief.
🔹 Meanwhile, protestors and activists outside the courthouse cheer.
🔹 Daunte Wright’s brother celebrates with the crowd.
🔹 Kimberly Potter is taken away in handcuffs as someone shouts “Love you, Kim.”
🔹 Review of the Minneapolis Sentencing Guidelines – can Kim Potter get a downward departure?🔹 Kimberly Foxx, Cook County State Attorney, receives a blistering report about her office’s investigation into the Jussie Smollett hate crime hoax.
🔹 Special Counsel Dan K. Webb said Foxx’s office was a “disgrace.”
🔹 The 59-page report from the Office of the Special Prosecutor details Kim Foxx’s corruption.
🔹 Senator Rand Paul releases his annual festivus report on Government spending.
🔹 Paul’s report details over $52,000,000,000 in wasted government spending (sounds low).
🔹 The biggest categories? We list the top 3 on today’s show.
🔹 Your comments and questions!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, my friends. And welcome back to yet. Another episode of watching the Watchers live. My name is Robert grr. I am a criminal defense attorney here at the R and R law group. We're located in Scottsdale, Arizona. And today we're talking about the Kim Potter verdict guilty on the manslaughter charge. And so we're gonna have to break that down in our first set segment. We're then gonna change gears and talk about jesses mullet, small. Ye I almost said, and then we're gonna break it down and talk about what Rand Paul had to talk about with this new SS spending report. And so we've got a lot to get into. I wanna show you what the first segment is going to look like. This is of course the verdict form that came out. Count two, juror 48, signed this off saying that Kimberly Potter guilty manslaughter in the second degree. And that's only as to the second count. So we're gonna break that down. We've got several different clips from the court proceedings today. Kim Potter of course, was there as judge Regina Chu read through the verdict and delivered the bad news. We have some clips from inside the courtroom from outside the courtroom, and then we're gonna spend the bulk of the time in the Kim Potter segment, talking about sentencing and breaking down what happens next and how this all unfolds because it's pretty complicated. And given the nature of the charges of which she was convicted, she's looking at a pretty considerable prison term. And so we wanna see if there's anything Kim Potter can do to mitigate that down. What can she do now that she's been convicted of these charges to minimize the damage, minimize the amount of time that she ultimately has to serve in prison. And so we're actually gonna take a look at the Minnesota sentencing guidelines. Of course I am not a licensed Minnesota lawyer, but these things have the same mechanics everywhere you turn. And so we'll break those down so we can see what box she's in and how this all works. And we'll see what she can do. Then in our second segment, we're gonna talk about the juicy small yet case juicy, juicy, juicy, juicy smally. You remember this guy? Well, he was convicted as well of a number of different charges for perpetrating, a fake hate crime hoax that was, uh, gobbled up by the media and people, including Kamala Harris over there. And so he was convicted, but a lot of people still have a lot of questions about this entire investigation because we remember that there was a prosecutor out of, there goes by the name of Kimberly Fox out of cook county, Illinois, that dismissed these charges at the very early onset of the juicy small ye saga. And so there was a special prosecutor who was appointed to go and investigate Kim Fox. And that gentleman drafted a report, which we're gonna take a look at today showing you just how corrupt prosecutors' offices can be. The fact that they will oftentimes make charges for their friends, colleagues just go away, give them information, leak stuff to the media like Kim Fox did. And there's very little repercussions that ultimately come their way. And then in our last segment, we're talking about the ESTs report. This is an actual serious government report comes out from a government. Uh, us Senator might actually be the only report that's actually worth anything that comes out of the us government. Senator Rand. Paul is the person who drafted that report and it all talks about government spending. And so we'll talk about that because it is of course, the holiday season. And so if you want to be a part of the show, the place to do that is over@watchingthewatchersdotlocals.com. They are chatting away over there. I'm shout, shout outs to be spec. We've got leafy bug who says I'm chatting away over here, which he is. We, we have be spec chairman of the board, many others over@watchingthewatchersdotlocals.com. Shout out to black cat Meow. There's also a form that you can use if you want to ask questions. And today, because we have three separate segments, we've got three separate questions. Oh, I forgot to mention. We also have the poll form, the poll form. I did not share that link. Let's go ahead and do that. The poll form. We're gonna be asking some poll questions about Kim Potter in the first segment. So we're gonna have to share this poll form, get that out into the YouTube chat. Get that comment there it is. Get that comment pinned up there because we want your feedback on, um, did I pin the right one? There it is. Make sure we get your feedback on that. On the poll form, we're gonna be talking about, uh, Kim Potter clips channel, you know where those go, Robert Goler Esq clips let's get into it. Kim Potter convicted found guilty of manslaughter in the killing shooting of Dante Wright. We're gonna jump off with a headline before we break down and look at the actual clips from the proceeding. We're gonna take a look at the sentencing manual, the guidelines, and break this all down, but we gotta get our bearing straight. AP gives us some guidance. They say the jurors on Thursday convicted a suburban Minneapolis police officer that's of course, Kim Potter, two manslaughter charges for shooting killing Dante Wright. This was the incident that occurred when Dante Wright was fleeing the scene really, and Kim Potter confused her to hazer for the gun thought she was gonna be tasing. Dante didn't TA him shot him. And he died mostly white jury. Interesting deliberated for about four days before finding the former Brooklyn center officer guilty of first degree, second degree manslaughter. So pay close attention to these charges because we are going to take a look at how the sentencing guidelines work for those charges. First degree manslaughter, second degree manslaughter. So really we're only focused kind of on the first degree Potter, age 49 faces seven years in prison. According to the AP on the most serious count onto the state's sentencing guidelines, prosecutors say they would seek a longer term. And so we're gonna be spending time talking about this, okay. Ancy guidelines. You're gonna see the AP says it's seven years. I'm seeing other people say it's 15 years. I'm seeing other people say it's 10 and, uh, you know, aggravation for a weapon and all of that. That's all fine. Right? We can, we can talk a lot about the, the, the actual length of time. The bigger concept that I want to get clear on here in this segment is about the, the process by which this happens, where we start, when we're asking how much time now that they she's been convicted, how much time does she actually serve? Let's put a pin in that. We'll come back to that in a minute. So before we get to the actual analysis of the sent, of course, we need to take a look at what happened in court today. And so if you haven't seen it yet, this is judge Regina Chu, who is actually reading the verdict form. And then of course, we're going to see Kim Potter here on the left, who is getting the bad news in court today, awful situation for her, her family. You know, I'd say the Minneapolis police department or anybody who was really supporting her, who thought that this was, uh, something where she shouldn't have even been charged, you know, because this was a sort of an accident type of a situation, bad time, bad day for them. Here's how it sounded

Speaker 2: 6:51

In the matter of state of Minnesota versus Kimberly Potter court file. Number 27 C are 21, 74 90. We, the jury on the charge of manslaughter in the first degree while committing a misdemeanor on or about April 11th, 2021 in headman county, state of Minnesota find the defendant Gill.

Speaker 1: 7:20

Okay. So, uh, so you have that. You can see that was just a short Rick reading of it. Now this is what the verdict forms look like. Verdict count two, and let's play close attention to this. So remember that there were two different counts. So we've got count two, which is actually the lower level charge. This one here is for a manslaughter in the second degree. First degree is the more serious charge. And so this was about culpable negligence of course happened on or about April 11th, 2021. And so this verdict form, we know we see it was actually filed or submitted rendered two days ago on 1221. If you see this down here at the bottom. So yesterday or two days ago, this would've been on Tuesday of December. They had already come to their conclusions that Kim Potter was guilty at least as to the second count, the lower count. So then what they were deciding, which they decided today at 1140 juror 48, once again is the chairman or the foreperson of the jury. He says, we, the jury find manslaughter first degree guilty. And this is the first degree while committing a misdemeanor, right? So that's the worst charge. It's saying that the, the sort of the layman distinction between these two charges would be the culpable negligence. It was just, you were negligent, you were doing something ne negligent and somebody died as a result of that versus you doing something criminal. And somebody died as a result of that. So you can see those two different forms. Two days apart, 1221 at the bottom took'em another couple days to deliberate throughout the rest of the week. And then they came back and they gave us a verdict on 1223. And so we, that's what we heard today. Now, obviously a tough day for Kim Potter, legal counsel, everybody else on her side of the aisle and the defense attorney, didn't let that be hidden today in court, you can see him sort of keeled over at the desk, rightfully upset about, you know, the verdict that just came out and you can see the look on Kim Potter's face, right? We're waiting for the next steps. And here she is just, you know, sort of realizing what the future holds, uh, at least several years in prison. Very, very likely. So very, very sad moments inside the courtroom for Kim Potter and co, but outside the courtroom, a little bit of a different scene. And so this was outside the Hennepin county court center, government center, and this place, you know, they've had a lot of different activity around this, this part of the country, remember Derrick Chauvin was right around the corner. And so they were outside and this is what that sounded like 21

Speaker 3: 10:02

Inman county, state of Minnesota. You, he, so,

Speaker 1: 11:19

All right, so you've seen enough of that. Now, what is happening here? You know, it's always been something that's been interesting for me to see is when people are celebrating somebody, you know, going to prison for a long period of time. Now I can understand that on the one sense, you know, being justice, right? You can say the people who are celebrating out there, they feel hurt and traumatized and victimized. They, they lost somebody that they cared about. They feel like they're a part of a community that has been on the receiving end of a lot of abuse, but does that celebration bring back the, the member of their community? No, but maybe it might satisfy them. It might say, Hey, this is something, this is justice because this cop, whatever they believe about her, whether she's they might claim she's racist or that this was intentional, or that this is justice. That's that satiates them. Now we talk about this in terms of incentives and you know, what is a verdict like this? What are the incentives that this creates here? We see a situation where let's save that for a minute. Cuz I have another clip here. I wanna play this one first. This is the brother. Now this is the brother. This is also a celebration. I forgot. I had this one queued up here. Here is the brother of Dante Wright celebrate. Okay. So yeah. Strange, strange reaction. Uh, you know, look, as I said, there's kind of two different spectrums on this thing. On the one side, you can see how somebody who lost a family member lost a brother, might feel, you know, absolutely victim I, somebody shot and killed that person. And so a day like today is, is justice might feel good. Might feel like Kim Potter going to prison is gonna have some closure in the case. But to celebrate, you know, in, in a situation like this, what, what I always thought was a tragedy to sort of celebrate this. Like this is a big victory. Like your team just won. The super bowl. Never felt really right to me, always sort of felt like this whole thing was a tragedy. Uh, regardless of what happens now, it, it just feels, it's always felt weird for me to, to sort of celebrate somebody being convicted and having, having their lives basically over versus you can compare and contrast this now to a Kyle written house situation where Kyle rid house people are celebrating his innocence. Now you can flip that around right now. If you're on the other side of the Kyle written house acquittal, you're saying that those, those people were in mourning because Kyle written house in their eyes was a murderer. Here. You have the other side, these people are celebrating. You have a whole other contingent of society that says Kim Potter is going to be incarcerated for making a mistake. This is somebody who didn't intend for any of this to happen. They were performing their job reasonably and admirably. They were dealing with somebody who was already in violation of the law. Yes. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe there should be a penalty, but the fact that she's being convicted of a manslaughter in the first degree is a bit too far. And then you have to start thinking about the incentives that both of these create. I'm already seeing people all over Twitter talking about why would you ever be a police officer in Minneapolis, Derek Chauvin gone, Kim Potter gone. Many others have had a lot of difficult times in Minneapolis and elsewhere in Minnesota. And so a lot of people are now asking those questions. So weird reaction, not something that I ever thought was, was really, you know, appropriate. But all right, so, uh, let's take a listen here. This is, this is where we're gonna talk about now the sentence. So here is a breakdown. This is the defense attorneys asking the judge after the conviction saying, judge, can we not take her into custody immediately? In other words, we want to let her go home. Let me break this down a little bit further in a criminal case, there's really, before somebody goes to prisons, there's kind of two main components that you need. First of all, you need a conviction. You can't send somebody to prison if they're innocent. And so once you have that first light switch, go off, okay, conviction. But then you need a sentence before somebody actually is sentenced to go to prison or to jail or whatever, because you can be convicted and you can also be sentenced to probation or home detention, or you could be sentenced to, uh, pay a fine or pay a restitution. There's a lot of different options that happen at that sentencing proceeding. And so this is where we're at right now. So Kim Potter has been and convicted were carried over for sentencing. And so the judge hasn't officially said whether or not Kim Potter has to return to prison. And so we have this little bit of a gray area right now, we have this window between the conviction and between the sentencing. And so Kim Potter's defense attorneys are saying, judge, look, this conviction just happened. It December 23rd, we've got Christmas in two days. Can we just have her, you know, stay out of custody, at least until we have the sentencing proceeding, she's a police officer. She's not a flight risk. She's not gonna leave. Has no criminal history is not gonna abs gone, not, you know, no warrants or anything like that out for her arrest. She'll come back. Can we have least send her home so she can spend some time with her family. Here's what the judge says.

Speaker 2: 16:39

Uh, the presumptive, uh, sentences in this case are convinced. Um, and I am going to require that she be taken into custody and held without bail. And I recognize your arguments, Mr. ING and Mr. Uh, gray, but I cannot treat this case any differently than any other case. So, um, I think we should prob

Speaker 1: 17:13

All right, so you can see, oh my goodness. All right. So you can see that was, uh, judge Regina Chu and she is, um, denying the request that Kim Potter stays out of custody. Nope. Kim Potter, you've gotta go into custody. And so of course that happens says I'm gonna treat his case, like any other case and what you heard the judge say there was right. The presumptive is commits. The presumptive is commits is what she said. And so we don't use that type of Lang. We do use the language presumptive, but we, we don't say commits typically. But what she's talking about, there is the same type of language that you go into custody, meaning you get committed, you have to self-surrender, you're going into custody. So the presumptive sentence, meaning doesn't really matter what I decide at sentencing. More or less, we're all starting on at the baseline that she goes into custody. That's where we start. It's the presumptive. You'll see more about what I mean when we turn to the sentencing guidelines here in a second. Okay. We also have, now this is the moment where Kim finally says, okay, uh, ju judge denied my request to be on my own recognizance or be released on bail. Here is her now walking over to the bailiff, turning herself and being escorted off, listen off into the background. Somebody shouts out, love you, Kim, love you, Kim. She says, love you. Okay. So then she's taken out. Now she's going to be, you know, we, we don't know what the ultimate sentence is, but we can get a little bit of guidance here from the AP. Before we take a look at the sentencing guidelines, second degree manslaughter or charge. We see that that was the government having to prove that she was, uh, guilty by her culpable negligence. We can kind of skip over that. All right. Under Minnesota law defendants, like Kim Potter, they're sentenced only on the most serious conviction if multiple counts involved the same act and the same victim. So it sounds like we're probably only gonna be talking about really a penalty for that first count. Prosecutors had said that they would seek to prove aggravating factors that would merit. What's called an upward departure from sentencing guidelines. Excuse me. And we're, we are gonna take a look at these sentencing guidelines here in the next slide. In Potter's case, let's put a pin in these things, govern it pro shooters are alleging that her actions were a danger to others. They're gonna say that's an aggravating factor. She was a danger to her fellow. Officer's aggravating factor that Wright's passenger was there aggravating factor. And that there was a couple whose car was struck by right after the shooting. Right? So another aggravating factor, they're also going to allege that she abused her authority as a police officer. Okay? So these are all gonna be aggravating factors. And we're gonna take a look at what that means. So if you actually go over to the Minnesota sentencing guidelines, here is a chart that is a sentencing guidelines grid. Now, wherever you're watching this, there's a lot of details on the us. And I don't want you to pay too much attention to the details. We're gonna talk about this in just the, the baseline mechanics about how this all works. And we're gonna plot where Kim Potter is more or less on this chart, cuz we don't know exactly where she is because she hasn't gone through the presentence process. She hasn't gone through this entire analysis yet. She was just convicted. And so what's gonna happen now is she's going to go and she's going to actually meet with somebody who is part of a pre-sentence report, probation department, something along those lines. And they're going to interview you her and ask all these questions and they're gonna do their own independent analysis and they're gonna come up with some scores or, or, or basically their opinion on where Kim Potter should fall in this scale. And so I'll show you where, where we see that at the end of this segment, but we go back to the, to the sentencing guidelines, the criminal history score. And you can see here that in the first left most call, we sort of have a list of different crimes. Now these are all examples, but really what we're focusing on is this second column where we see the severity level of the conviction offense. So here you can see sort of at the low level, you know, fleeing a peace officer, that's gonna be a low severity penalty. That's gonna be a, a sort of a severity level, one<affirmative> whereas murder. In the second degree, it's gonna be at the very top. So that's gonna be a severity level 11. So you can kind of see it just scales up from bottom to top one to 11 Kim Potter, based on what she's been charged with. She is gonna be right here as a category nine. I think I have a take my word for it that this is the category that she's in. I think, I think I've clipped this out, but this is where she's at. You can see she's at, at a severity level nine. She is not at a severity level eight. That's gonna be crimes like first degree burglary, first degree weapons or assault, aggravated robbery, those types of things. Somebody died in this case. So she has one level above that at a level nine. Now you can also see that within these charts, within this chart, that every single one of these boxes that Kim Potter is in is a white box, which means that she is not probation eligible. Okay? So you can see these gray boxes. These are for lower level offenses. And these are also for lower level offenses for people with lower criminal history scores. So on the X axis, the criminal history score, you can see that as we go up the Y axis, it goes from low severity to high severity. As we go from left to right on the X axis, it goes from low criminal history score to higher criminal history score. So sort of the, the top right of this chart is gonna be somebody who has the most serious crime and the most serious criminal history. Whereas the bottom left is gonna be somebody that has the least serious crime and the least serious history. And so you can see these are all just boxes. And so depending on what you're charged with, depending on what your criminal history score looks like, depending on a bunch of different factors, you're just trying to identify where somebody falls in on the box. And this is how prosecutors and defense attorneys and judges and everybody are negotiating a lot of these different outcomes. And so Kim Potter, we can see, as I mentioned, she's at a severity level nine. And so she's going to be right here in this category. And you can see that every single one of these boxes, like I said is white. It's not gray out, which means she doesn't have the ability to have that sentence stayed if she stays in this category. Okay. If she stays in that box, now, let let's say, for example, that Kim Potter, she goes through the pre-sentencing report and they come back and they say, look, she's a police officer. She's got no criminal history at all. She's in a category, zero for criminal history score. And so she's gonna fall right in this box right here. 86 is the presumptive number of months. She spends in prison because she's in this category, severity nine, zero criminal history. Now you'll notice that there's also a number that's right underneath that 74 to 1 0 3. And so what does that mean? Think about breaking this one box up into three separate boxes. 74 is going to be the minimum number of months. One hun 1 0 3 is gonna be the maximum number of months. 86 is gonna be right in the middle as the presumptive term. And so I know this is getting kind of, you know, into the weeds and complicated a little bit, but you can see here, this is what the judge is allowed to sentence Kim Potter to, and they tell us this right at the top italicized numbers at the bottom, the 74 to 1 0 3 that are within the grid are the discretionary range within which a court may sentence without the sentence being deemed a departure. Okay. In other words, if the defendant, if the defense attorney, I'm sorry, if this judge sentences Kim Potter outside of the 74 to 1 0 3 range, if they sentence Kim Potter over 1 0 3, they need an upward departure. They need to aggravate it. If they sentence it below 74, then they need a downward departure. She needs mitigation, something that's going to make it, you know, convince the Joe that you are allowed to get out of that range. So the defense right now is doing everything they can possibly to justify a downward departure to break outside of that 74 month limit that bound, reduce it all the way down. And so a downward departure would sort of break out of this box and the, and, and both sides would need to justify it. Now, remember the Def. So we start here at the middle, the prosecution wants to aggravate it. They wanna make it worse. We start at 86 months, everybody, all the courts and all the judges and everybody has come to terms. And they agree. That sounds about right. As a starting point, prosecution says, no, we already went through the laundry list of, of things. They said. She, uh, was a danger to Dante's passenger. She was a danger to the couple that other, that were, uh, hit by Dante's vehicle. She was a danger to her fellow police officers, and she abused her authority as a, her discretion as an officer. So they're gonna ask for a lot, they won more than 86 months. The defense is doing the opposite, no criminal history, absolute accident. Dante Wright had a warrant. He was instigating the whole thing. She was, you know, sort of, sort of justified, but not enough to, to, to, to justify a, a justified defense in the shooting, no criminal history served or community. All of those things, mitigation downward. You can see here that the actual statute under which Kim Potter was convicted a 6 0 9 0.20 subsection two mans slam ladder in the first degree. Yeah. So I did connect this here, manslaughter in the first degree. So if you say 6 0 9 0.2060 9.20, we find that down here, uh, here it is 6 0 9 0.201, subsection two. So this is the, the, the statute that Kim Potter was convicted of right here. And you can see this is severity level nine. Okay. So you go back over on the sentencing chart, severity level nine, she's going to be in this category nine range. And so she's operating here now. I, I, again, she's gonna be closer to the left of this chart, cuz I'm gonna guess that her criminal history score is very low. And so we can see now she's also got, uh, you know, potential for aggravators and things like that. I'm not sure exactly if they're, you know, if they're going to be using this, the fact that she was using a firearm oftentimes can aggravate the penalty. And so let's talk about this now let's talk about these downward departures, Kim potters convicted. She wants to mitigate this as much as possible. She wants to reduce her sentence. Now, how can she do that? The Minnesota sentencing guidelines give us some guidance here. They tell us departures in general, if you are going to be departing from the, the mandatory sentence, here's how that's going to work. The court needs to announce it and they have to a substantial, identifiable and compelling circumstances to support the departure. You actually have to justify it. If they're gonna break outta that range, you gotta make sure you've got some good explanation as to why they say here, when imposing a sentence that is an aggravated depart, it's recommended the court pronounce a sentence proportional to the severity of the crime and the sentence that is being imposed. Okay. So what does this mean? Let's let's take a look how this works in practice. Okay. We take an individual like Kim Potter, she's been convicted of a bad charge. We know she's gonna be sentenced. And so what our job, as, as a defense attorneys to say, listen, we've gotta make Kim Potter look like mother Teresa, somebody who is so such a good human, and we're gonna layer on levels of mitigation, but we gotta know what the rules are. How do we, how do we dress him up? How do we dress a defendant up to make sure that we can present them in a light, most favorable to the court so that we can get the best deal. Can we say, she's a police officer. This is somebody who served her community as a police officer for 25 years or however long it was. Can you say, she's got a badge, judge look how much she cares about her community. Can you say that? Does that justify anything? Let's take a look and see what Minnesota says. Factors that should not be used as reasons for departures. You should not give Kim pot a better deal based on her race. It's kind of obvious, right? You don't want to give white people a better deal than a black person, would you? No. So you shouldn't use that as a reason. Also sex should not be used as a reason for a departure. You wouldn't wanna give a man a better outcome than a or a harsher sentence than a woman would you? Of course not. But here you see it as well. Employment factors, including things like employment, history, employment at the time of the offense employment at the time of sentencing occupation or the impact of the sentence on a profession or occupation. So the fact that she's a police officer, her is not worth anything for a departure. Now shouldn't be a departure upward either, right? So the, the prosecution shouldn't be able to come back. If, if the defense can't use this to deviate down, if the defense can't come in here and say, yeah, she's a law abiding, lawful police officer, serving your community for a decade. She can't use that to, to get a better deal, but neither should the government be able to use it, to give her a worse deal. And why do we have this in the law? Right? This is not just for police officers, but you don't want somebody to come in and say, yeah, I mean, I killed that kid in a hit and run, but I'm a surgeon. So if I go to prison, I can't do brain surgery on all those little Johnny's and Susie's out there and save their lives. Justice says, well, I don't care if you're a surgeon, you broke the law. So you did what you did. You don't get a benefit if you're what a, a Senator and you run over a woman in the middle of nowhere, rower body in the bay,<laugh>, you know, you shouldn't be able to get away with that stuff just because you're a Senator employment factors don't matter. Same with social factors, okay? Somebody went to Harvard, even Oxford, even Jake Sullivan from Oxford. Can't use that for a departure or the length of your residence, your marital status, any of that stuff is not a justification for a departure. So lastly, we have subsection E the defendant's exercise of their constitutional rights is also not enough to justify any departure, gotta find some other reasons to do that. So the fact that Kim, Potter's just a police officer, it's a neat detail, but that's not really anything. That's gonna justify a downward departure. Now, what might, what might be used to mitigate this? And remember, we start at the middle defense wants to mitigate it and reduce it from 84 months down to as low as humanly possible, even asking for a departure outside the range, if pop possible, mitigating factors, sentencing guidelines. Tell us number one, the victim was an aggressor in the incident. How about that? Sounds like that might be a pretty good one to justify a downward departure. Many people saw the body camera footage. I think that to judge could easily check that one and say, yep. Dante was absolutely an aggressor in this case. And therefore that is a mitigating factor that justifies not only a downward deviation within the range, but something that justifies a departure outside of the range. Number two, the offender played a minor or passive role in the crime. No, I wouldn't say that. But how about this one or participated under circumstances of duress? Yeah, I would say she was under Dures. Now the corollary to that, the response by the prosecution would say, she's not under Dures. This is part of her job, but I still think from a human sort of physiological standpoint. Yeah. Kim Potter was absolutely under Dures. She was in the middle of a fight with a young man. So I think that that one goes in her favor. So I'd give her a check on that one. How about the next one? The offender, because of physical or mental impairment, lack capacity for judgment. No, no, I don't think so. Kim Potter was competent in capable, voluntary use of I intoxicants no, that doesn't count either. So no on that one. How about this one other substantial grounds exist that tend to excuse or mitigate the offenders culpability? Although not amounting to a defense. I like that one as a mitigator. So what does this say? Substantial grounds exist to excuse Potter's conduct, but not enough that it would justify a legal defense. How does that sound? I think that sounds pretty good. I think in fact, one of the arguments, one of the main arguments in the defense was that Kim Potter was legally allowed to shoot him because he was in fact, a threat to other people. His car actually hit somebody else after he was shot. And the vehicle cored off the road. So substantial grounds exist to mitigate the offenders culpability, but not enough that the jury believed that she was 100% innocent. So it's, uh, it's a lot, but not enough, but a lot. And so I think I'd give that to Kim Potter. I think that's, I think that weighs in her favor, subsection five. I think there's a strong argument. And I think even the judge would recognize that argument, the jury didn't buy it, but that does doesn't mean that a judge won't buy it at sentencing six. The court is ordering an alternative placement with, for somebody that has serious or persistent mental illness. No, I don't think that applies. And how about this? What would justify a very strong reason for a downward departure? The offender in this case, Kim Potter of course, is particularly amenable to probation, right? Cuz she's a police officer. Probation is better than prison for a police officer. This factor may but need not be, be supported by the fact that the offender is particularly amenable to a relevant program of individualized treatment in a probationary setting. Okay. So like could Kim Potter take, you know, firearms training, you know, or some sort of a relevant program about, you know, responsibility or whatever. Is there something that she could do in lieu of going to prison? It makes sense for somebody who is particularly amenable to probation to allow her to do that. And so as a defense attorney, I am jumping all over that one all day. Heck yeah. Find some program for Kim Potter. No question about it. So you go down this, I'd say you've got one, two. I think I act cut out four. Uh, cuz it wasn't applicable at all. So yeah, you've got four good factors here outta seven. That looks pretty good. Let's see what else we have over here. Not sure that either one of these apply, Kay Kim Potter was not convicted of anything that was, uh, a substance abuse crime. And I don't know if she's a veteran or anything like that, but if she did have any experience in the armed services, she could see where some of, of those mitigating factors would come into play. So the good news for Kim Potter victim, Dante definitely aggressor offender played a minor role now, not so much, but she certainly was under duress and that's part of the guideline. So I would latch onto that other substantial grounds exist to mitigate her culpability 100%. And lastly, she's very amenable somebody who's very, very well suited for probation. So those are what you can expect to see her defense attorneys to jump all over. Rightfully so what is the government gonna do? The prosecutors are gonna do basically the exact opposite of this. They're gonna say Dante Wright was a very vulnerable victim. He was a young man and Kim Potter shot and killed him. He was particularly vulnerable because he was so young. He didn't know what he was doing. And as a police officer, she knew, or she should have known about that. She should have seen that this was just a kid and that something like this could have happened. She's an officer. She has intelligence. She has street smart. She has training. So I think that the prosecutors will try to latch on that one. He was young and she should have known better. Number two, the victim was treated with particular cruelty for which the offender should be held responsible. Uh, you know, I'm not so sure about that one. I don't think that one applies. Of course I'm a defense attorney. I think that a prosecutor would probably say that. Yeah, she shot him instead of tased him, which was the underlying offense. So I don't think that, I don't think you can say that. I think that the cruelty would have to come sort of parallel to the offense or subsequent to the offense. You know, she shot him. She didn't shoot him cruelly. She shot him, which includes cruelty, but she didn't shoot him 17 times. Officer Remington, who shot the gentleman in the wheelchair nine times. Right? That was a cruel, I think cruelty in shooting. That's not the case here. So I don't think that one actually applies if I were a judge, I'd say no, the current conviction is for a, uh, uh, sort of a Jeffrey Epstein type of offense. No, the offense was a major, no like stealing money concealments uh, of property, anything like that? The offense involved, a controlled substance. Nope. You can see a whole big slew of uh aggravators there, whether, you know, so, so if you're in Minnesota and you're worried about drug crimes, if you've got three separate transactions, that it's gonna be an aggravator. Okay. So three that's how they get, they do that in Arizona. 2, 3, 3 different, uh, Sales. They'll get you for three different dates of offense. Boom, three different charges. Boom aggravated. You can see. And so you'll have one undercover officer who buys from you three different times and they'll typically do it over the course of a week. And then they arrest you, uh, the offender? No. Okay. So all, none of that applies. That's all for drugs. How about another one? Subsection six. Did Kim Potter commit a crime for hire? No. The offender is being sentenced as an ingrained offender. Somebody who has Reed, he multiple things. No. Is she a repeat offender? Third or more violent crime? No. Is she a career offender? No. Is she part of a group of three or more offenders who all actively participated in the crime? No. Did she intentionally select the victim? No. Did she use somebody's ID? No. Was it committed in the presence of a, I don't know how old the other person was and it was a passenger in the vehicle, but maybe the offense was committed in a location in which the victim had an expectation of privacy again? No, it was in a car. Supreme court has found that to be pretty, uh, pretty public. So not too much here in terms of aggravating factors that we can see from the sentencing guidelines, the government of course is going to try to made this aggressively. They've already communicated as such. In fact, these are the factors that they are saying they're going to be using danger to others, danger to who are fellow officers. Passenger was struck and she abused her authority as a police officer. So sentencing will come back and will see what that looks like. Like you can see here that, uh, today the court docket was updated. Both verdict orders came in at 1223. We already talked about those. We also see here that this, this pre-sentence investigation report was ordered by the judge. And then we have a number of these other orders, temporary commitment. We can see that, right? This is Kim or she's going into custody. Jury instructions, all got filed, probation, referral notification. So they're now notifying everybody. The presentence department that, Hey Kim, Potter's coming over. They're notifying probation. Hey Kim, Potter's coming over and they're notifying the jail. They gave him a jail order. She's coming over. She has a court order to be committed. This is what it looks like. This is the actual interim order. Earl gray appeared for counsel Matthew Glenn, Frank appealed for the government defendant convicted of a felony guidelines, presume that the defendant is gonna be committed to the commissioner of corrections under an executed sentence. Therefore it is or order that she is in fact committed to the commissioner of corrections ordered that the Hennepin county sheriff shall transport the defendant and that the Hennepin county sheriff shall return her back February 18th, 2022 at 9:00 AM. That's gonna be four sentencing. And so when Kim Potter comes back, we're gonna see what the arguments are. We know that the defense is gonna be asking for a mitigated sentence. They're gonna be asking that the court sentence, her to the absolute lowest possible sentence within that range. But even beyond that, a downward departure asking the court to say, Hey, break the confines of your legal guidelines, go outside the rules. Here's why. And they're gonna go through all of those mitigating factors and on balance. I think that there's a lot more of those that support Kim Potter than there are that don't the aggravating factors that we just went through, that the prosecutors have. I just think don't outweigh the mitigating factors. And so let's pause for a moment and see what you have to say about this over from watching the watchers.locals.com and from our friends on YouTube, Erin Whitlow says, will her new mugshot help or hurt her sentencing? So I don't know, Erin, I actually haven't seen it. I can't imagine it's gonna change it too much, but I haven't seen it yet. So it's a good question. Thanks for the support though. I'll look it up now. I kind of wanna look it up, but let's see what locals has to say. Oh, and we have the poll form. Let's see what the poll says. Oh my goodness. Yeah, here we can see, uh, pretty obvious. Uh, the question of course was Kim Potter, uh, was the verdict right or wrong? We've got 474 responses and uh,<laugh> 96% say yeah, is wrong. All right. So I should have asked a better question. Let's see the penalty also. I should have asked a better question. I'm not, I'm not very good at this.<laugh> what should the, what should the penalty be for the Kim Potter case? And uh, yet again, 94% say the absolute minimum. There are nine of you out there that say, give her the maximum or Rob. And then there's, uh, 21 people who say give her the presumptive. So that means, you know, right in the middle, it's fair. That's all that we need. Whereas everybody says, give her the minimum. And of course I completely agree with that. Downward departure is something that is well served. All right. And let's take a look@thequestionsfromwatchingthewatchersdotlocals.com. Vient prime is here. And he says, my problem in these situations is not the investigative in the trial processes on their faces, but rather this culture we've changed into where people have to pay for honest mistakes. I think it's clear that Potter didn't intend to pull the gun and we become so ingrained in this culture that of someone always having to pay, who does this attitude ultimately serve? Who does it ultimately hurt? Call me crazy, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say the whole point is, so that average people like you, all of the wonderful people watching this video and me are always put in positions where we are easily made to suffer. That is from ENT kiss prime. Good comment there, ENT cuz thanks for sharing that. Yeah. You know, it is sort of that society, you know, our just our, our system is very much like that. And it's something that I have a big problem with. I rail against it all the time. You know, we, we all, all human, we all make mistakes. We all screw up. We've all broken the law. There are many studies and analyses and books and articles and essays that they, you could be convicted. Everybody could be convicted, just waking up and going into work in the morning. Right. They could find something because the criminal code is like this thick everywhere you look. So why are we celebrating when, when people are being arrested, you know? And there's, there's still kind of this, this, uh, this aura out there in the world's like, well, there are criminals. I'm not a criminal. Well, they shouldn't be drinking and driving. Should they? And you go, well, yeah, that's true. They shouldn't. But you know, maybe they have a problem and maybe, you know, there's other things that we could do rather than just throw'em in prison for 60 days. Do you think that's gonna fix it? Do you think, do you think that if you're gonna put somebody in jail for 60 days, that has a serious alcohol problem that they're gonna come out and they're gonna go, oh duh, got it. Thanks. But no, we still have politicians and we have, you know, coalitions, we have mothers against drunk driving. We have people that all they do, they wake up every day and they want to villainize people, humans. They wanna categorize them as criminals and just say, these are bad people cuz they broke a lot. And do you know anything about them? Does the judge know anything about any of these people? A lot of the times. No they don't. And so we see people outside of courthouses cheering and jumping with Jubilee and glee because somebody's going to prison. Does that bring back Dante Wright? No. Do, does, does that uh, make the city of Minneapolis safer? I don't think so. I think it's probably gonna cause a pretty big disincentive and cause a lot of officers who were already leaving in droves to continue to leave in droves because after what happened with Chauvin now we've got Kim Potter, we've got Minneapolis that like defunded and then refunded the police. We see crime waves breaking out all over, over across this country. And we still have people that are sort of, you know, celebrating a tragedy as though the super bowl was one. You going that's this is a horrible thing is horrible. What happened? And I'm not saying that Kim Potter is somebody who should, you know, escape without any consequences. She was negligent and somebody died as a result of it. There be consequences for that. But should she be convicted to 15 years in prison for this? We're gonna find out aren't we very, very soon zero says tough break for Kim. Two families are in for a rough Christmas. Think the defense will have any success on appeal. Hard for me to comment on that zero. You know, I see her, I honestly have not watched much of the underlying trial and that's what the appeal would be based on. So I don't know enough of the nuances. What I know is from checking in with RADA, checking in with the attorneys on Twitter, also reading the news articles and just sort of topically observing it. But I, I don't think I know enough to dial in on a specific, a appealable issue that might be worthwhile. I think the Arcata crew and those people would be better suited to answer that black cat Meow says Rob I'm saddened by the Kim Potter verdict. It's sad that someone lost a life, but I don't see how sending her to prison helps anything. It was a tragic, honest mistake. Also wanna wish you a very Merry Christmas and thank you so much for all that you do. I'm fairly new to this community and I just love it. Well, we love you back black cat Meow, welcome to the community. I'm glad that you're here. And I agree with you. You know, I think that there are, and there are, and there should be consequences when people are negligent and people die, but a prison sentence for a police officer who was, was absolutely absolutely. Uh, this was an accident. Obviously we could see it in the video. Doesn't seem like it is, uh, the right, the right outcome. Ghost gunner says the Potter defense was based on that. She was legally justified to use deadly force. I've had no luck finding a clear statute that gives her justifiable use of deadly force. I would love it if you could shed light onto that. I live in this country and if I were a police officer, I would walk off the job, take my badge, take my gun. I'm over it. How the hell are we supposed to apprehend violent suspects, want if a firearms charges anymore? And why do they capitalize black but not white? Well, I think, you know the answer to that one they're ghost gunner<laugh> because, uh, one is proper to them and the other is not. So they capitalize it, I guess, ghost gunner. Yeah. I, I agree with you. And I've been saying this for a long time. I've man, I've been saying this for, uh, basically since CHN happened, you know, since Chauvin happened, the story was that yep. The pendulum is gonna swing into this defund, the police movement. And there's gonna be consequences for that. And here they are, they're everywhere. You see what's happening. Even the mayor of San Francisco is changing her tune because she's seeing what wreckage her stupid policies cause. And I'm a defense lawyer. I've been very consistent about wanting to keep pressure on law enforcement and police. But what came out of this as anti-police vitriol, this idea that, that you can sort of, uh, demand that law enforcement take the pressure of the entire country's racial, uh, animus on their backs is nonsense.<laugh> it's absolute nonsense cuz it's not anybody's soul burden to carry that thing. You can't demand that of the poll lease. Didn't I think we covered a story here on this channel, where in Portland, they, they wanted to create a special unit out of the Portland police and it's they, everybody was leaving because they were gonna defund them. And so they created this little unit that was supposed to also, in addition to all your police duties also go out there and repair racial relations, uh, in the communities or something like that. Like there were line items in the job description, bullet point here solve racial, uh, animus throughout Portland. And these guys are going, what the hell are you talking about? How are we supposed to do that? You know, because if they go out and they, and they engage in the community and an accident happens and something like this goes down, right? They're they're, they're instantly prosecuted and they're defunded. And so I, I don't disagree with you ghost gunner. If you're not respected and appreciated in your position, there are other places you can go and that's gonna happen. It is happening. It's already happening. And I think it's gonna continue. And so I, I think at these people, celebrating are gonna be looking around their own cities and saying, you know, it'd be really nice to have some police officers around here. I wonder why all this is happening. Well, all right. Leafy bug says, it seems like trials have become like a football game and you cheer when your team wins. Yeah, 100%. And we see it's like a political activism thing going on on here. We saw that in the George Floyd case with against Derek Chauvin, when Brandon Mitchell, the juror said, we gotta get onto jurors, juries like this so that we can make our voices heard or whatever the paraphrase of that was. If you're gonna make the, if you're gonna turn this into a political battle on every trial that is not good for the justice system, not at all, Kenny one B says it's all about money. They are happy and celebrating because a guilty verdict makes it easier for them to get rich from lawsuits against the police department. Yeah. I think there's probably some truth to that.<laugh> I think there is true to that, right? Yeah. It's gonna get a big payday. They, they pay it out. George Floyd's family. What was it? 23 million bucks. Same government. So yeah, probably having a big payday coming up V antique is prime says what benefit is bestowed upon society? When honest powerless people are punished for honest acts. Yeah. Yeah. And listen, I'm not, look, I am not saying that Kim Potter should escape any consequences for this thing. Okay. I said this and, and listen, you have to hold the standard on this. If there's an accident and somebody dies, there are consequences for that. If you were negligent in the commission of that accident and somebody dies, that's the better way to phrase it. If it's a general accident, somebody dies. Not everybody has to go to prison, but if you were so, so then you back outta that a little bit. And the next question, well was Kim Potter negligent. And so I think even by her own admission, yes she was. And so legally, maybe there should be some consequences is manslaughter in the commission of a misdemeanor, the appropriate one. And we're still a little bit premature on this. We're gonna see what the judge does. Right? If the judge comes back out here on this whole case and says, yeah, I am gonna grant a, a departure. I am gonna deviate down on the sentence and I'm gonna give Kim Potter, you know, an absolute minimal sentence. That's a lot easier to swallow than if the judge comes back out and gives her the max. And remember what happened with Derek Chauvin, right? He got, he got, got a, a actual, an aggravated penalty. He did not get the minimum. The judge increased the penalty on him. So we'll see what this judge ultimately does. Uh, let's see, VE, but it's a good point. Ticus Sergeant Bob says, judge Grinch. Yeah. I don't know how everybody was listening to that, to that judge for, uh, two weeks or three, three weeks. Thunder seven says justice is dead in America. Woke is, has destroyed the legal system. I thought the country was getting back on track with written house verdict, but this has destroyed my faith. A cop without a complaint in 26 years, makes an honest mistake. And the moronic jury vote to convict her of manslaughter. And the judge is not only moronic, but a demonic to treat P like she's a criminal, like the one she used to arrest a sad day. Indeed. That's that's from thunder seven in the house over@watchingthewatchersdotlocals.com. We've got a couple more Lee Febu says, I hear that multiple victims of Dante Wright have already filed claims against the payout. His relatives are all expecting to receive from the city. How much chance do you think they have of receiving any or all of that money? Do you think lawyers will end up pocketing most of it if it's heavily contested? Uh, uh, no, I can't imagine that. So they're filing lawsuits against the family to sort of secure their line and getting paid out. I'd have to know what the payouts are. I mean, what do they, I mean like, yeah, like if, if the Dante right family has like, you know, back due child support or something and they get, you know, hit with money and the court sees that in their can count, they're gonna go get that. But, you know, do they have all sorts of past debts and you know, old business obligations? I, you know, I'm not sure that's a good question. Leafy bug probably better for a civil lawyer. Zero says, Rob, I forgot Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas to you, sea rose and to your family, to everybody else out there, we are right around the corner from that lovely holiday. Aren't we, Sergeant Bob says speaking from my 31 years as a police officer and supervisor, this will reaffirm that police should only take assigned calls, not do self-initiated activity, which has helped keep community safe. Criminals will be let go, rather than an officer trying to take the bad guy into custody. This is not what cops want, but they must entertain the risk management idea of choosing the alternative with the least potential risk. This is already being seen in communities that do not support police a bit less. So in more conservative areas, look for the trend to continue sad. I had a lot of good times, interesting cases and fun in 31 years, what would I encourage a young to become a cop today? Hell no sad commentary on what it is today. You know, Sergeant Bob, thank you for sharing that. And, and I think what you're describing is is the idea that, you know, police are gonna see the consequences of their actions and they're gonna, they they're gonna make adjustments on their own. In a case like this, you can make the argument that Kim Potter was, was trying to do something for the benefit of the community approach. This guy was gonna make an arrest. He had an warrant out for his arrest supposed to go lawful. I think what you're saying, Sergeant Bob is, they're just not gonna care about that stuff anymore. Run free. Then if I'm gonna arrest you and expose myself to potential criminal liability or potentially risk an altercation, I'm just not gonna risk it. Cause I'm not gonna go to jail for 15 years. Like Kim Potter did, what are you nuts? Right. Got a warrant out and go, go wild, have fun. What do I care? Which is sad. And I, and I can, I can understand that not being fulfilling, you know, it's like, Rob, go be a defense lawyer, but you can't actually defend anybody. I'd be like, what are you talking about? Why would I do that? That's nuts. You want me to go, uh, uh, be a musician, but I can't play any instruments. That's insane. How can I be a police officer? And I can't go and serve and protect my community against the bad guys. Feel very frustrating. I, I can understand that. And so if you're, if your own community won't support you and they say, get outta here. Well, there's a lot of places that you can go. I think Florida's one of'em they're offering 5,000 bucks to relocate over there. Monster one says absolute travesty of justice. Kim Potter was a 25 year veteran. Never had a single complaint against her. No, she wasn't a desk cop. Ever as some people thought she was a street cop, no complaints. Imagine that the prosecutions literally argued that she was guilty because she carried a gun that the simple act of her carrying a gun was reckless. I sincerely hope every cop in that area quits and people get what they deserve. Ooh, one, that's a spicy one right there. Thanks for sharing it. And so yeah, more on Kim Potter. Let's see, Sergeant Bob says Senator 10 Kennedy got away with killing Mary Jo Cappe. Yeah. That's the one that I was thinking of as I was running through that little<laugh> that little tirade there. Yeah, it didn't. They crash into a lay and he just like left her allegedly ghost gunner says talking about senators, running over people and throwing them out on the road. Paging Jason RAVs, Bo LOL, no jail time. Attorney general of South Dakota walks. It's a joke. Yeah. We covered that case pretty in depth. It was a joke. And that whole thing was as corrupt as anything I've ever seen. Jason RAVs, Borg driving down the road and just take somebody off. Who's walking down the side of the street kills the guy, Jason RAVs, Borg. The attorney general of South Dakota just drives home. I don't know what it was. I have no idea.<laugh> he calls the police the next morning after, uh, he has slept off all the alcohol, maybe very convenient, very, very convenient, no investigation, nothing going on there. It's corrupt as hell everywhere you look, folks. I, I hate to say it. Red Jersey says, Hey, Rob, I'm surprised by the guilty verdict of Kim Potter, but I was concerned during jury selection. I was surprised the defense didn't reject more of them. They sounded like a bunch of lit looking to prove their wokeness. It's a mind virus right now. This wokeness disease. Did you see Elon Musk was talking about that? Yeah, he was over on Babylon B. I haven't listened to the full interview yet, but Elon is coming out of the woodwork. He's not very, uh, happy with his current administration, apparently Biden and co they're holding these EV summits for these electric vehicles. And they invited everybody except for Tesla, which happens to be kind of the only car manufacturer, doing anything meaningful with electric vehicles. And so Elon was out there and said, don't pass, build Beck better. And then he was talking to the Babylon B and he said, yeah, the real buyer that you have to worry about is this woke mind virus, which is true. It's pernicious gotta be careful. NY renal said if Kim Potter had not said taser, taser, taser, would she have been charged? Dante was a fleeing felon. Very interesting that you mentioned that good doctor, because we were talking about that today. We had a little holiday thing here at our office and that's what we were talking about. We were saying specifically, had she not said that? And she had a different statement. I, no, he was flinging in a view. I shot him. I'm not sure. I'm not sure how this would've gone. I think she would've had a better shot. Ghost gunner says that prosecutor, Keith Ellison is a gigantic piece of garbage and he's also a moron. They let violent criminals run around Minneapolis and with no repercussions, but God forbid a police officer better get him from trying to apprehend an adult out with a warrant. Yeah, you get those police. The police are a big problem out there in many, many DJ McBride says that stampeding noise you hear is the sound of the twin cities, police officers heading out the door to retirement. I can't imagine any cop wanting to work there, given the verdict in the Potter case. I couldn't agree with you more. I, I think that if you were on the fence over there, this is kind of a, a good nudge. All right. Sounds good. We're out. Sergeant Bob says nothing to be served by incarceration, bad mistake, probation, a political prosecution with a race card played yet. Again, I'd be perfectly okay with probation. I think that that would be reasonable. We have Kenny one B says, trying to wrap my head around this one. How does a texting and driving resulting in vehicular homicide analogy fit? Uh, I'm trying to wrap my head around this one. Well, so, so there's a couple things that you could analogize there. Can anyone be, you could say it's not quite the same, right? You have negligence, but you have D standards of care here. She's a police officer. A firearm is a deadly weapon. So it's a little bit different than a vehicle firearms have, you know, special rules as we're gonna talk about, oh actually, no, I have that for my I'm working on an Alec Baldwin video. I was conflating the stories, but uh, yeah, firearms have a special category. So it's different than a vehicle. And I'm not sure that it fits in terms of, uh, a one to one comparison monster. One says at Vient kiss, the prosecution admitted it was an accident. Their argument was, she couldn't have pulled the gun if she didn't carry a gun. So that the entire act of even carrying the gun was negligent. Grouchy old cat lady says whatever happened to rehab for criminals instead of throwing the key away, at least for those that can be, yeah, well, our society has sort of shifted against that. You know, there's a, there's several different theories of criminal justice. One is retribution. You know, when you go into school and talk about political science and you ask yourself, well, why do we have a criminal to system in the first place? And you know, you have to start asking yourself some hard questions. Well, I wanna live in a society that has order. Well, what do you consider order to be? Well, I guess it's this well, how do you define what that is? Well, it's people who don't know, do things that are outside of the norms of society. Well, how do you codify those things and what are the consequences and, and what are the incentives that are created the laws and the consequences that you impose. And do you want to incentivize that type of behavior? Because it might have unintended consequences and blah, blah, blah. So, because it is complicated and because sending people to rehab and giving two wits about'em is a lot of work. It requires empathy requires humanity. It requires sitting down with people funding and having conversations and putting together rehabilitation, PR plant, all these things. It's, it's a lot of work. It's very hard. You ever work with an addict, you ever work with somebody who's in, in a difficult spot. It's a lot of work. So it's a lot easier to shift our justice system away from any of that stuff. From rehabilitation, treatment, empathy, concern, compassion, humanity, eliminating, recidivism, any of those things we can just go. That's really complicated. Plus those are bad people over there anyways. And so let's just focus here on punishment. Retribution. Very easy. All we have to do is just, uh, look at a little box, look at a little chart that I just showed you here that we actually do look at regularly and just say, oh, well, we don't even have to care about this person's name or their background. All we need to do is know what their criminal history score is and just get a nice clean number that says, uh, one through seven, and that's gonna define that person for us. And then we're gonna go to a little spreadsheet and we're gonna identify what crime they got charged with and we're just gonna go like, and then that's what we're gonna do to, uh, decide what to do with a human. And that's the process. And then we just, uh, say, okay, they, they go in this by and um, sign these orders and give'em some restitution payments and send'em to prison for 15 years. Oh great. And then they go through D uh, you know, minor integration when they come back out and that person's life is, you know, more or less permanently damaged. And we as a society, just go, good job. How many convictions did you get? Uh, da. And they go out there, we're reducing crime and we're, and they, and they go out and they say the same stupid numbers, every stink in election season, promising that they're gonna do a bunch of stuff and nothing ever gets done. And so we continue to see this system that has zero empathy function, and you're seeing it and Potter right here, right? You might say, yep. This was a mistake. This was a, this was an, a, an illegal thing. Maybe she should even be convicted of something. We're gonna see what the penalty looks like. If the penalty is anything that is, you know, overly aggressive we're we have to continually ask ourselves if we want empathy for Kim Potter, Kyle written house, Derek Chauvin, or anybody else who's charged with crimes. As I scream about all the time, the Waka shot guy, right? All of these, anybody, the presumption of innocence due process, people should be treated with empathy and dignity as they're going through the system. But too many people have decided it's a lot easier to just say, uh, you're a bad person and you're a criminal. And so we're just gonna be done with you. Ghost gunner says, Rob, I live in this county, Hennepin county, not country. You're writing the thick of it there. Ghost gunner monster one says, Rob, the defense use of force expert literally wrote the manual for the taser. LOL. He testified that Kim was justified. Dude flies to Africa to feed orphans and does expert testimony for free and seven outta 10 times testifies against the police. Yeah, it's pretty.<laugh>, that's a pretty compelling expert witness. Isn't it? But the jury didn't buy it. Maybe it's that woke mind virus who knows we've got never sign on for taser. Training is here, says, Rob, this is just the wrong verdict. And I don't think it's possible to get a fair and impartial jury ever in Hennepin county cops should be sending in resign letters. The recal panel regat panel said, this is going to become worse and worse in the twin cities. If this type of jury you're gonna get, they sent a note as hung. How many do you think got railroaded into a guilty verdict? Two to three. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know a lot of pressure in that courtroom. Never sign on for taser training that from never sign on for taser training. Good call Lama. Brad is here. Lama. Brad says, seems suspicious. The timing of the verdict last day before the holiday, several days mulling only two charges. They wanted to get home for Christmas. Sergeant Bob says thanks to the Watchers community and you sure cops are not perfect. And real misconduct needs to be dealt with. Most cops try to do a good job and go home to their families every night. And now for Christmas prayers are most welcome. And that's for Sergeant Bob. We do pray for you guys. Sergeant Bob, all, all the good people out there doing good work. That includes police officers. Why would they be excluded the antique? Cuz prime says what you said while responded to my first question reminded me of a situation. When I was in the Navy, I asked my chief, I said, quote, why is it that when I have to go to alcohol training that I have to go to alcohol training with every new command I go to. He says, well, what does it take? Ticus said, what, what do you mean? He says, what does it take for me to no longer need to bail young, sail outta jail for you for doing something stupid anymore. What does it take for me to no longer have to call up parents? Because a young, inexperienced sailor drank too much and died in an accident, thought about it for a while. And I decided that people make decisions and people make mistakes. The challenge is determining which one is which I just thought that little story might help drive the point home a little more. Well, thank you for that V kiss. It's an interesting story. And yeah. Uh, you know, I, I'm not sure that I'm not sure what the lesson there is, but it is an interesting story because I, I could see that in, in two different ways, I can see what your commander was doing as being a good thing, but also maybe not such a good thing. Spawn dog says just another cat casualty of BLM, the jurors feared the backlash, or maybe they were them. Maybe they were, maybe they were on the panel. Remember in Derek Chauvin. Remember that juror Brandon Mitchell wrote on the form. I did not participate in any protests. Yeah, you did. You were out there at a George Floyd protest and you were on the George Floyd jury panel. Maybe they were on this one who knows. Right. And he said specifically that we have to go get onto juries. So maybe they did it on this case. Maybe that's why it was hung. And then not so hung anymore. Cora says, this is crushing. She is innocent. I'm a mixed race person. I'm livid at this verdict. Race should never have entered this matter at all. Jury should have stuck with the facts and left their emotions at home. That's for Cora. From Cora. Yeah. I think a lot of people are feeling that right now, Cora, my monster one says as to the lawsuit money Dante's victims have no claim because it's not Dante's money. The family is suing for their loss. If they were suing on behalf of Dante, the victims might have a claim. Yeah. So I'm not sure what bucket of money we're talking about or why anybody thinks they're entitled to it. But if they're entitled to a bucket of money and somebody that that's empty and then it fills and they're entitle to that bucket, they could probably get some of it. Greg Mora says, Hey Rob, since when did these court cases become so political? Was it since OJ? I feel like some people on the left think every time a police officer goes to jail, it's a point against the right when it's not feels like they think it, it helps perpetuating their narrative of all cops are bad and defunding the police. Yeah. You know, I, I'm not real sure when I think that it's probably always been something that's political. I mean, I think if you go back to, you know, you can go back and make the argument that, that a lot of policing I've seen these argument made that a lot of policing agencies were created out of, you know, this, the slave reconstruction era type of a type of an argument. And that there's, you know, there's there's, as a result of that, you have differences between communities. You've got people who, who sort of see law enforcement differently. Some people see them as an occupying force in their communities. Some other people see them as heroes in their communities. And that, and that's just as a, you know, that's just a normal operational day to day business. Now you get an election season, you get a Derek Chauvin situation, you get a, a political party that wants to rally a bunch of these, you know, various subgroups into, into one unified cohesive group. You've got a strong election coming up. You need a narrative about racist, white supremacists. And we, we watched it all unfold. Right. Many may any times. And so I, I think that I, I think that it's always been political. I think that sometimes cases become ultra political because people latch onto them. And you can even say the same thing about written house, you know, written house was some was, was one of these things that, that people latched onto because they were identifying a fundamental, right. That was at issue the right to protect yourself, the right to keep in bear, arms, the right to self-defense critical. And so when that is feeling threatened or jeopardized, you're gonna stand up and rally around it. And so I'm sure that those people outside the courthouse, maybe they're feeling the same thing. This is justice. Kim Potter is gonna go to prison and somehow things are gonna get better for them. I don't understand that. But Sergeant Bob says, Rob, you know, I'm with you on many issues about trial and dispositions. Have a great weekend of Christmas with your family. That's Sergeant Bob. Thank you, Sergeant Bob. And we, you do the same Sergeant. We've got another, no name says, what about jury tampering? Didn't a BLM activist show up to the judge's former apartment. Wouldn't a reasonable juror. Be afraid for their lives, given the rhetoric. I'm not sure if that happened. It, it may have, you know, I'm not sure that it happened or, or that necessar that it would impact the verdict. What I was talking about was BLM being on the actual juror, jury panel. Now, if they're actually out there threatening jurors. Yeah, of course. That's a, that's a huge problem. It's illegal. John Hare is here, says the biggest impact of verdicts. Like this will be reduced recruitment. Our in public service is tanking. That's from John Haran firefighter. So he can speak with authority on that. And I don't doubt that. Why would you have a lot of, uh, energy when the people who are funding your department are basically saying that they don't want you or need you, you wouldn't monster one says, we're talking about the wrongful death, the city and the state are going to inevitably play out. So the victims of Dante are trying to get a piece of the pie from the family when they win their 30 million or so. Yeah. So I don't understand. I still don't understand that the victims of Dante from prior crimes, does he owe them, what does he owe them restitution? How is it thousand dollars? Did he steal some phones or something like, do they think that they're gonna get a third of the$30 million? Like, because the family got it, did they get a, a portion of that? That doesn't make any sense unless they have like, unless Dante, you know, uh, grand theft, OED, somebody and drove, drove their car off a ditch$20,000, you know, restitution order that he has to pay back to a victim, then yeah. They can go the, you know, the victim, I guess can, can comp can, can, can get that. I guess if you're saying the victims are just gonna go and file a lawsuit against the family for something that Dante did. I don't know why they would be entitled or why the family would be liable for Dante's actions. They're going through the family to get the family's getting compensation for, they should have brought claims against Dante secured, a judgment against Dante or his estate. And then, yeah. Okay. So I don't, I don't think it makes any sense. I don't think that they're gonna recover much, but we'll see spawn dog says as much as the government hates that we keep and bear arms. That's the only thing that keeps us free at this point. That's why they want to take'em away. That's from spawn dog. All right. And though, so those were the questions over from watching the watchers.locals.com. We have oil smoke Jones says thanks for a great show and happy holidays. Well, thank you. Oil smoke Jones and happy holidays to you and your family. I'm glad that you're here and hanging with us on this Thursday, Eve of Christmas Eve. We also have Don Trump says a murdering cop is finally found guilty. Now you want empathy F you, well, first of all, I don't know about finally, I mean, Derek Chauvin was convicted had earlier this year<laugh> for, for, for murder or, you know, homicide. So, you know, I don't know that it's like an aberration that this happened. And so, uh, you know, yeah. I am asking for empathy. I think that everybody who is in a, in a criminal situation, even by the way, the defendants on the other side of this all deserve empathy, Kim Potter, Derek Chauvin, all of them<laugh> uh, and I know that people hate that, but it's just true. I think it's true. All right. And so thank you for the support everybody over there, and we're gonna jump into the next segment. So we're gonna leave Kim Potter right there. And we're gonna talk a little bit more, what time do we have? Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna talk about Kim Fox. Now we're gonna leave Kim patine and we're gonna change gears and talk about Kim Fox, because this is a, another story that is making the rounds. So let me cue this one up Kim Fox, the former prosecutor for Jesse, the juiciest of theier is in a little bit of hot water. You remember that her office was responsible for investigating this fake hate, hate crime hoax that Jesse Small, yet foisted upon the country. And, uh, Kim Fox, her office made this whole thing kind of go away on the, the days of the entire investigation. And so we're gonna take a look because her office was recently investigated by the office of the special prosecutor out of cook county, Illinois. And he found a whole bunch of problems with the way she handled the small yet investigation. We're gonna get our bearings straight on Kim Fox. Here's what Wikipedia says about her born in 1972. She is 49 years old Democrat from Chicago took office in 2016, manages the second largest prosecutor's office in the United States. 700 lawyers. Democrat won her office in 2016 against another incumbent and was reelected again in 2020. So she sticking around for a ti a while. Now she runs this office of prosecutors, 700 lawyers, and they got a hold of this case, Jesse Small. Yet of course, we know that he was just convicted of several different criminal charges, five of the six counts that he was on trial for. And we know that Kim Fox was involved in this. Remember back when this happened, it took place on January 20th, 2019 back then Kimberly Fox was on the case. So when he was originally charged January 29th, 2019, he was, she was on the case. And then we fast forward about 20 days later and Kim Fox recuses herself. So you see here on, uh, February. Now she is removed from the case why she said that quote, there's a conflict that she has a familiarity with the potential witnesses in the case, a lot of people said that that was insufficient because here's what's happening. She is recusing herself from the case, but not recusing the office. So Kim Potter, I'm sorry. That was the, the prior case. Kim Fox is still leading the office that is managing the prosecution against Jesse Small. So there were several people who were upset about this because after that happened, so remember her office is still prosecuting him. She's no longer the actual assigned attorney, cuz she is personally recused herself, even though her office is still running the whole thing. But then we fast forward to March 26th. Her office drops all the charges against Ette. Everybody freaked out about this mayor Ram, Manuel superintendent, Eddie Johnson, Illinois prosecutors bar association, Chicago fraternal order of the police. Everybody screamed about the has said you are corrupt. This is a conflict of interest. This guy is clearly a liar, unfair to pro to drop those charges against malt. So what happened is, after everybody was crying fell, there was a special prosecutor who got appointed to investigate this whole thing. And he just wrote a report and he's calling Fox's office a disgrace. He said that the way that they handled this entire case, including the initial charges was so problematic. She said that Kim Fox and others in her office actually lied to the public about how it all went down. He was on talking to somebody in Chicago on Chicago tonight. Guy's name is special prosecutor. Dan, what ed? He says that Fox's office cannot explain how it came to the decision to dismiss the charges against Molet. He said to dismiss the entire case to require no guilty plea at all, to just give him a complete pass so that he can walk out on the street and say goodbye to Chicago, say I'm outta here. He says, it's a grace. And that's what caused this whole thing. And this woman has been reelected, right? She's the, the state attorney for cook county Webb came out and he issued this report. Let's take a quick look at it. Now this entire report is 59 pages long. We're not gonna read the entirety of it. Just gonna take a quick look at the intro because he tells us how this whole thing, but up Kim Fox, of course you can see there in the top left Chicago state attorney for cook county. After her office dismissed this, of course they brought it back and then he was ultimately convicted, but not without Kim Fox trying her damnedest to make sure that he escaped any criminal liability. There were several different director directives that came out court. Judge Toman came out and said, Hey, we're gonna hire the office of the special prosecutor to determine if there was anybody involved in wrongdoing as this was being investigated. And we go back through some analysis. The prosecutor's investigation was conducted in conjunction with a special grand jury. And we made several different reports that were gonna detail here. The first was to determine whether or not that these were false reports that were made by small. Yet prosecutor says that he conducted 53 interviews, more than 50 subpoenas reviewed 120,000 pages of documents. And then he prepared this entire detail. And so let's take a look at the major conclusions of this report. The cook county state attorney's office dismissed the original small let claim. They say that the terms were very favorable to small. Let they say they were speculation in the media regarding rather something illegal or improper had been done. Many people saying that attorney Kimberly Fox was influenced in an improper manner by prominent people who reached out to her to discuss the mult case. You see this, I wonder who reached out to her. I wonder if it was anybody else in Chicago. Wonder if it may have been, I don't know, Michelle Obama, for example, who is friends with Jesse mot? Just an idea. Thus, as part of our investigation, the office of the special prosecutor, thoroughly investigated anyone working and asked and investigated whether they committed any crime. However, although we found that there was enough here to substantiate abuses of discretion. We're not gonna see anybody charged with crimes here. We see there are several different factors and conclusions that this special prosecutor reaches first. He says, Webb says that there was plenty of evidence that establishes substantial abuses of discretion and operational failures. Specifically Kim Fox's office committed substantial abuses of discretion. There was a major failure of operations. She breached her obligations of honesty. She BLE breached her obligations of transparency. She made false claims, misleading statements. She gave false reasons and misleading reasons for the dismissal of the original case. Substantial abuse. Let's see. When she, he recused herself, she made false statements. She abused her discretion. When she made misleading statements to the public that she stopped communicating with. SMOT Mr. Molet sister. Oh my goodness. Molet okay. So here's what's happening. Attorney Fox became aware that Molet was the subject of the investigation. So you have this state attorney, Ms. Fox gets wind of the idea. Small lead is being prosecuted, JNA, JNA, and Jesse JNA. Yeah. Is a sister. And she is reaching out to Kim Fox. Who's telling the public I've recused myself. I'm close to the witnesses. We're not communicating at all. Turns out she's a liar. She was in fact talking to JNA Maier, and she was honest, dishonest and lacking in transparency. They're also saying that Kim Fox's office committed violations that rise to the level of ethical violations. Her lawyers relayed false and misleading statements to the public and to the pro<affirmative>, but we're not ethical violation, uh, violated in investigators here. They say the did did not develop evidence that would support criminal charges here, but there are three major conclusions. There were media reports that contained unauthorized leaks of police, investigative formations by Chicago PD personnel that were in violation of the CPDs written policies. So what this is saying is that the Chicago police department were leaking police investigative information out to who knows for reasons set forth in the summary report. The special prosecutor was unable to identify the anonymous C PD sources of the leak. So Chicago PD were specifically leaking documents out to who, whoever, you know, whoever. So you can see these little, two different tiers of justice, right? Hollywood actors, they kind of get a separate system a little bit. They get their sister who gets the text message with basically the attorney general of the accounting or the, the, the district prosecutor of that county cook county. Second biggest prosecutor's office agency in the country. Very convenient. If you can get that, that's a pretty good, yeah. I mean, it's, it's sort of unethical, but it's Hollywood and it's Chicago. So they reached out to Kim Fox for questions about the us. They said, Hey, you wanna respond to any of this Kim Fox, her legal counsel, Michael Bromwich on Tuesday said that this report is deeply flawed, said that they found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing and no evidence that Fox was involved in the case after she recused herself saying she didn't lie. It's disappointing. The that Mr. Webb's team suggested that very erroneous statement. He says every incorrect statement, every inaccurate statement is false and misleading. He said, you know, those statements could be attributed to quote bad information or also it could be due to her failed recollection. Can you believe this? All right. These people are just so corrupt. It makes me my blood boil. All right. Let's see if you have any questions about this over@watchingthewatchersdotlocals.com. Not sure if there's anything. There's a couple here. Monster. One says as, oh, that was on the last one. Never said it made sense. That's you're right. You didn't monster one.<laugh> I wasn't mad at you. I was just, I was just, I, I didn't get it. Sergeant Bob says it is not Thursday. It's Kim day cook county has always been full of corruption. Goes back to the days of Al Capone. So we're still on Kim. Oh no. That's on.<laugh> leafy bug says bad. Pro pro. Does that work? In other words for bad prosecutor, I think it works. What else can you call it? Spawn dog says, does anyone know why she was elected? It had something to do with an officer involved shooting where the officer was charged and convicted. Lo and behold, she was going to make a change, hold the police accountable, but Jesse didn't fit the narrative. So he gets a pass corruption all the way up and all the way down. It really is. It's kind of, it's just, and it's unfold display, and they have a special prosecutor who just wrote 59 pages about it. And guess what's gonna happen? Probably not much. She just got reelect. So she'll be there for a while. Hang on a minute. Okay. I've got a question that I can't read. It says, it says specifically, do not read this. Hold on. Oh, wow. This is pretty interesting.<laugh> this is interesting. I'm glad I didn't read this. Thank you for, uh, for sending that to me. That's very,<laugh>. That's very interesting. Uh, Hmm. Curious, very curious. All right. Sorry about that folks. Sergeant Bob says, well, Fox elected by the same people as the dysfunctional mayor, I grew up in Chicago in the fifties and sixties. True enough. Mayor Richard J Daley had a corrupt and powerful political machine. Yet. Most wrongdoers were brought to justice usually unless they had money and connections. Pendulum has swung to the left there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Most wrongdoers were still brought to justice. It's a funny comment. Sergeant Bob, it's sort of like that mob justice, you know, it's like, they just take care of things. It's like that Tony soprano justice, you ever watch, you know, you watch that show and it's like the cops, I think there's an episode right? Where they call the cops, the cops don't do anything. Oh, it was his, uh, therapist. Right? Didn't she get assaulted or something and the, nobody did anything about it. So he took care of it.<laugh> I don't endorse that, but you know, justice is justice. We have another one. John Haran says, just so everyone is reading outta the same book. Sympathy involves understanding from your own perspective, empathy involves putting yourself in the other person's shoes and understanding why they may have these particular feelings. We can all be empathetic towards anyone without ever understanding. I E being sympathetic towards them and vice versa. Kim Fox was just doing Chicago. FYI. Thank you, John Hare. It's a good point. It's a good distinction. It is important that we, I think try to empathize with people, you know, per personally, I know it's very easy for me to live in judgment. It's not a good place to be. Monster one says, Rob, this is mega kind.<laugh> are you, are you from Nigeria monster one? Do you have a$3,000 check from Jesse? Small spawn doc says, Rob, I really sincerely thank you for opening my eyes to the corruption in our judicial system. I was for years under the impression that the FBI and our justice system was honorable. Well, I was wrong. And thanks to you. I now see that when I was in high school, one of my projects was to go to a trial and make a report on it. At the time, it seemed like we had such an honest judicial system. I've learned more. Now I knoww dog. It's a bad, it's sort of a bad realization. Isn't it sort of like being ripped outta the matrix. You're like, well, I thought everything was like functional. You, it isn't. No, it isn't. It's a huge problem.<laugh> but just because it is problematic, doesn't mean it can't get better. And so even though a lot of the time we can, you know, we can sort of, you know, rip on the system. What we're doing is we're flushing it out. Sunlight is the best disinfectant by talking about out it, by bringing it out into the public, by being a part of, you know, a society that says we can do better about that by analyzing it, by being invested in it by demanding accountability and transparency and justice, things will get better. But you gotta identify the problem before you can start working on it. Awareness is key. So thanks for being here. Spawn dog. We have another one. John Hari says, sending questions you can't read is dirty pool.<laugh> I'm not sympathetic. Listen, I don't do that intentionally. Okay. I try to never do that. But that one was like a, was a, was an interesting one.<laugh> and it is probably something that's gonna pop up in the future. If it's true, I have to, if it's true, I don't know what you know, you can email, well, I, maybe you can't, maybe you don't want to email me that. Yeah. All right. I get it. All right. So, uh, those were great questions from watching the watchers.locals.com. And we've got one segment left folks before we wrap it up for the day. It's the holiday season. Many people are celebrating Christmas. Some people are celebrating Hanukah. People are celebrating a whole multitude of different holidays. Of course, we wanna be very inclusive in this channel. And so we also have to talk about ESTs that comes from Seinfeld. And there's a new ESTs report that is out. This is written every year by a Senator here in the United States guy by the name of Rand Paul. And so we're gonna go through this report, which of course comes from Seinfeld. And it's gonna be talking a lot about government spending Seinfeld, as you can see here, this is Kramer, and this is George Costanza's father with the EST poll there. Jerry, wondering what the hell is going on as usual. And so ESTs is a holiday that was created in Seinfeld. And it comes with a lot of very nice features. One is that you get to air your grievances, every holiday season, Rand, Paul has a lot of grievances towards the federal government as do I, as do many of you, I suspect. And so we can partake in this lovely celebration of EST. Here, we have Rand Paul, who is giving us a, uh, jumping off point, welcoming everybody and wishing them happy EST. He says, how can 2021 already be coming to a close? What a year it's been seems like just yesterday when they national debt was 20 trillion. But now the us has breezed past 28 trillion all in one year. So is it safe to say that some of the big changes have occurred since last year's report? Of course we've got mask mandates, travel restrictions. We've got lockdowns. President Biden was inaugurated. Inflation is skyrocketing. Ken Kardashians ended their show after 14 years bought, is it added to the dictionary? But what about the federal government? Well says Rand, it keeps spending money that we don't have. He has these platinum pig awards. And we're gonna go through and talk about all of the money that is being wasted this year. He, he says they've identified 52 billion, 52 billion,$598,515,585. Lot of money being wasted all over the place. And so this is the time for the airing of grievances about federal spending. Here's the big buckets that we're talking about. COVID of course the pandemic, Afghanistan and miscellaneous. These are the big spenders. Let's see what it means for all of us. In third place, we have the miscellaneous with$8.4 billion wasted. Now, what did this money get spent on? Let's look, shall we a border wall? And you might be saying Rob 250 million for a border wall. That sounds like a good idea, but guess what? It's not at the us Southern border. No, no, no, no, no. It's elsewhere. It's going to old borders in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and they received 26 billion in federal funding, uh, from ice. But we give another two 50 million over to Lebanon in those other countries comes out of the 2016 department of defense budget. And Congress spent 250 million all over the place in the middle east and north Africa. So there you go. 250 million airing of grievances, no border wall down here in the United States, but elsewhere seems reasonable. Four, 2 million was also given to the Wilson center. I've never heard of it. Wondering if you have probably not. It's a small nonpartisan foreign policy think tank it's located in Washington DC. And so obviously it makes sense to give them$14 million. Why? Well, because a lot of people go over there and they have parties there. 8.2 million, they got in fiscal year 21, they got 14 million in fiscal year, 20, 24 mil all over the place. And what happened here is they have these little honorary galas, former treasury secretary was there. The former head of the international monetary fund was there two current members of Congress were the there. So it's a very exclusive gala. And so you have these oligarchs and bureaucrats that just take your money and funnel it over to Washington, DC, small nonpartisan foreign policy think tanks to throw galas during the holiday season. Isn't that nice. Next up second place AF Afghanistan, we've got 3.8 billion of course wasted fiscal year, 2021. Where's that money going? Well, 773 million of it was being used to fly around other countries. Essentially. There were a coalition partners that the us government had to pay for to fly them all over the place. DOD is responsible for the billing and tracking of the country's usage of these goods and services. So for four years, foreign countries used United States government funding to fly our aircraft in Afghanistan for free. Now there's all sorts of agreements. Like the department of defense could have said, uh, you gotta reimburse us for these costs. You know, you don't just have to fly around on a bunch of aircraft for free, but they have to go and initiate the billing process. So our useless department of defense that can't evacuate a country that they've been in for 20 something years also can't invoice clients for, uh, using aircraft. Great. Due to the lack of data says, Rand, Paul, there's no way of verifying how many millions of dollars were lost. Don't you like that? Gross incompetence? The best way. The best estimate that we have is 773 million that has just been blown away all over the place. Rand Paul says, man, talk about a free ride. No question also spent, uh, 87.9 million, which is kind of a bargain. If it would've been 88 million, it would've been too much, but here you can see, they had to, uh, create a bunch of irrigation systems in Afghanistan that nobody used only 2.7% of the people in Afghanistan actually installed. And then actually used these irrigation systems. So us tax air money almost to the tune of 88 million bucks goes over to Afghanistan. They did an audit. They said, okay, all right, look, yeah, we need to get some farming systems here, built up in this new country before we, uh, I guess leave it. So they dumped in 87 million, only 25 of the 72 farmers actually installed the systems. Okay. So just over a third actually installed it of the 25 who actually did install them 92%. Didn't use them as they were supposed to.<laugh> talk about good money after bad. So what happened to the 70 farmers who actually, uh, accepted the systems and didn't use them 14, couldn't be contacted seven, never got the generator necessary to fill the tank. 21 said they didn't have enough water to even operate the system. One farmer, one of the 25 who actually installed the system, ripped it out because he couldn't afford the fuel to operate the generator. The generator needed to fill the fuel tank. So$90 million goes to a bunch of farms in Afghanistan that nobody actually uses. So federal government, they wanna raise your taxes. And here is the big Kahoona of course the pandemic first place, 40 billion and counting. Of course, these numbers seem very low to me, very low. Here's what we're spending this on. Uh, 4.2, 9 billion in bad loans through the PPP program, fraud all over the place. Our incompetent government sent as much as 4.2,$9 billion to people who weren't even eligible to receive the loan, or they just sent them double money. They just sent them duplicate loans. It's more than 3.6 billion of the loans that the SBA sent out, went to those on the treasuries, do not pay list. Why would you be on a, do not pay list? Well, you're a convicted fraudster, so you shouldn't be getting money from the government, but useless government still paid out 3.6 billion even to fraudsters. So they have a list of people that they're not supposed to pay. And it's when you're a government, the size of the United States, it's hard to keep track of everything. And so you have different lists. And if you're the size of this government, you have a lot of lists. And so they made a very clear list at the treasury department. It's called the do not pay list. The remember that scene in Apollo 13, where Tom Hanks puts that little sticky note and says, do not touch that switch, cuz you'll kill us all. It's kind of like that. Don't pay these people. Well, guess what they did. They paid them 3.6 billion of PPP loans.<laugh> it'd be so it's just sad, man. It's like what? Wow, there have been a, about 200 prosecutions, 21,000 suspicious loans. They're just printing money out and just dumping it all over the road agency was unprepared to manage this task. They said it was very complicated. The OIG has recommendations on how they can fix it. Uh, it's just embarrassing. Uh, Baltimore, they got 1.27 million. This is very low. I mean, this is like tit money. This is like falls out of the government's pockets. When they sit down on the couch and stuffed their fat disgust and faces. So they received 1.2 million in Baltimore for students who weren't even enrolled at the school.<laugh> so, uh, it's no secret that governments need better oversight. But in Maryland we had a little bit of a problem. Baltimore federal funding per student was a certain number, but they quote enrolled over 140 students with whereabouts, unknown.<laugh> 140 just Phantom students that they build the feds for. And they got$1.2 million. Nice city of, uh, Baltimore invest found some of the adminis administrators were changing grades. PAing enrollment with ghost students who were not actually attending the school in order to get more funding.<laugh> uh, what a joke. All right. You know, hopefully these people are being prosecuted. I doubt it. We'll see. Uh, cuz there's a lot of January Sixers that are still out there that they got to go get. Here is the accumulation of all the Wiss, uh, list list. That's out there. 52 billion, we see 773 million for the aircraft. Uh, us bought Afghanistan airplanes for uh, 549 million through all of those away unconstructed buildings left in Afghanistan. 2.4 billion. Good call<laugh>. We've got COVID relief grant for New York city to display art projects, 25 million for that. That's really nice. That's probably beautiful there. We've got ineligible. Duplicate PPP loans, 4.2 billion, 36 billion for cares. Unemployment constructing a border wall in the middle east. Talked about that one, 3.4 billion to replace an assault vehicle over two decades. Wonder how that's going. 400 million for planting trees in New York city. I don't live in New York city. I'm not going to New York city. What do I give a crap about their trees for? I don't know. And I love all of everybody who's watching from New York city, but I don't know what we have$400 million in the federal budget for their 4.2 billion for social security payments and others. Oh the list goes on and on. So folks, the average taxpayer pays about$15,000. If that is the truth, if that is the average and if they found only 52 billion, that means they wasted the tax dollars of 3.4 million people, which sounds pretty low. So he's asking the question, was it your money that was wasted? We could have been, uh, doing a lot of other things. 13,000 miles of highway gone across the us 5.2, six times, but no New York city needs trees and uh, Baltimore needs ghost students. We got 4.5 months of operating the VA, but no, they need border walls in the middle east. And so you can see all of that one year and eight months of funding, the department of energy. And that's all that we've for the ESTs report that came out out from Rand Paul. And so that my, oh, let's like, let's take some questions. Let's see if anybody has any thoughts on this one. Not sure that there will be any, but let's see what we've got over here. Couple que uh, Sergeant Bob, Sergeant Paul Bob says Rand. Paul is a beacon of hope and common sense. Miss lucky. And I love being in Arizona. There was hope here. Plus, we can come to your office for a good coffee and visit the best of you and your family. It was very nice. We had a nice coffee and it was very nice to catch up with you and meet you both in person. I've seen you on the monthly, local meetup, but never in person. And it's better. We've got V says how much of our money is getting wasted because of this 20 years in counting every president presidential actions notice on the continuation of the national emergency with respect to certain terrorist attacks. So this came out September 9th, 2021. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, no, you never, this that's never going away. Of course not. Why would it, we have another one from spawn dog says I'm starting to think that taking the red pill was a bad idea. Do I want the truth or do I want the narrative? Yeah, I'll take the red pill by the way. Rand, Paul is close and I say close to a combat veteran, but he didn't agree to give his life for his country. That's spawn dog. That's a, that's a nice detail there. I wasn't aware of that. Did he, did he serve in some capacity? Falcon us NY is here, says the United States is like the most luxurious hotel with no amenities. For those of us staying there, other hotels that are not nearly as nice to take care of their guests far more extravagantly. Other hotels have first class service. America is like a luxury hotel with third class service. There's some truth to that. Honestly. It's like, what do you get for your taxes? Exactly. What do you get for it? Like I'm all for participating in a society, but what are we getting out of this? That's why I think local is better because when I pay for gasoline, it goes ideally for the local roads, local sales tax goes to the local government, my federal income tax dollars that are going to build border walls in the middle east. What, how does that benefit me in any way, shape or form? I know that they're gonna come out and say, Rob, it's all about nations and international globalism, blah, blah, blah. No, I'm I'm not buying it anymore. So I don't. I agree with you Falcon. Don't get it. The Antica says just because we're talking about bad government finances and the fed and the creature from Jack island. Oh wait, the federal reserve. Isn't a government controlled institution. I totally did. And realize that. Yeah, a lot of stuff going on there. It's all just fake money. Okay. I'm not gonna read that one either. Thanks for that. Sergeant Bob says massive fraud in P P yet the government wants more IRS agents to audit us little guys. Typical go. After the low hanging fruit, I might owe them 23, 42, 20.<laugh> massive fr yeah. 2342. Yeah. Sergeant Bob, you didn't disclose that little lunch that you and miss lucky had, you know, right. That illegal IRS, John Haran says Merry Christmas, Rob, and to everyone watching and Merry Christmas to you there, John and everybody else watching as well come. Couple other questions before we wrap it up for the day. Monster one says, Rob, it's a ESTs for the rest of us. It involves wrestling matches with the airing of grievances. You've been challenged. I'll see you soon. I'm down. I used to wrestle, I know a little bit about the mats, so let's get down, do it monster one. I'd have some fun with that, but sounds fun. Be ESTs right back at you. Leafy bug says the problem with the never ending deficit spending became too big a deal with, to, to deal with politically in the mid two thousands. And the problem is far bigger today than what it was back then. And it's only getting bigger. The government won't deal with it now or ever. There are way too many votes in cutting back spending. However, something that can not go on forever. Won't a total disaster is in the future. And I think that there's a lot of true to that leafy bug. I think that's why you're seeing them freak out about cryptocurrencies. I think that's why you're seeing them talk about CBD CS. These central bank, digital currencies. It's gonna get interesting. Ty live says gotta love Rand, Paul EST one and all and same to you. Ty liven, hope that you guys have a wonderful, wonderful Christmas and EST wherever you're at. Kay bean says this is off topic, but Kevin Kleinsmith was reinstated by the district of Columbia bar. I saw that Kevin Kleinsmith was that DC lawyer. Oh, I remember his, I remember him. I think I did see that. Thanks for flagging that for me. Kay bean. Yeah. That's right. What was he involved in? What case was that? He was involved in the Trump's Trump stuff, right? Yeah. X, FBI agent. Several months in prison. Trump. Yeah, he investigated Trump's 2060 scene campaign. That's what it was. So here, former FBI lawyer admitted to doctoring an email that other officials relied upon to justify secret surveillance sentenced to 12 months. And then the bar reinstated him. Don't you like that? Don't you just love that. Oh,<laugh> my gosh. Thank you for notifying me of that. Kay bean, appreciate you being here. Let's take a look at the polls. One more time. Kim Potter verdict up to 531 responses 94% say wrong 503 people, 28 say, yeah, it was the right call. 28 people say it was the presumptive sentence. The presumptive penalty seems appropriate. Whereas 13 have, uh, demanded the maximum minimum sentence, 482 people are right. And so that my friends is it for the show for the day. And it's gonna be the last show until after Christmas. And so we're not gonna be here tomorrow. I know somebody asked me about that yesterday and I forgot that tomorrow was Christmas Eve. I thought that I don't remember what days we're on a lot of the time. And so we will not be here tomorrow. I have to attend some family affairs as I hope you do. And that we all get to unplug a little bit from, uh, the YouTubes and the politics and the legal affairs go spend time with friends and family and the people that really really matter out there before we get outta here, wanna welcome some new people who joined up on our community, big shout outs to Falcon us and Y yeah. Well re not R w not R WC. Chuck David mark on w Shindo nosy, Texas Rosie TA mom. We've got cookie monster two, AJ DHA. MoPOP Inc guitar. Terry Randy J 98, Westworld equestrian girl, Richie, DC, red Jersey, Nikki dragon things in stuff. We've got Donna 1 0 7, the VE E w we've got big do bites, Kimmy cat, Kevin AZ. Andar 24 queen of Tennessee re music box lady and big re are all in the house. And that my friends is it for us for the day. And for the rest of the week, we've got Christmas Eve tomorrow. We've got Christmas on Saturday. Then we have the weekend to enjoy and recover. And then we're gonna be back here on Monday to do it all again. And remember, Glenn Maxwell jury is back in deliberation. And so we're gonna probably pick back up with them, might get a verdict early on in the week. If we don't, we're gonna cover all of the other stuff as usual. I've got several other videos I'm working on right now that are all sort of in the, uh, prep phase, Alec ball Alwin. We have, uh, Ray S that I'm working on different mind maps for all these different projects. And so you may see some more stuff come out over the weekend, but I don't expect any live shows unless you're over on locals watching the watchers.locals.com. We may hang out if we can squeeze some in. So that is it for me, my friends. Thanks once again, for being a part of the show, have a tremendous weekend, a tremendous Christmas Eve at a very, very Merry Christmas with your friends, with your family. Thanks so much for being a part of the show and I will see you all on the next one. Bye bye.