While the anti-Trump media has pivoted back to the whole ‘Trump is crazy’ / 25th Amendment impeachment fantasy revived by GOP challengers Bill Weld and Joe Walsh, former Vice President Joe Biden’s stumbling senior moments have gotten so bad that he’s now swearing he’s sane.
“I want to be clear, I’m not going nuts,” Biden insisted on Friday, after he forgot where he was speaking from – praising Vermont when asked about his impression of Keene, NH.
Biden in NH tonight quipped that he isn’t going “nuts” because he didnt know exact location of his earlier Dartmouth speech pic.twitter.com/0y7iqiDyHi
“I love this place. Look, what’s not to like about Vermont in terms of the beauty of it? And what a neat town. This is like a scenic, beautiful town. The mayor’s been a good guy. Everybody has been really friendly. I like Keene a lot,” said the 76-year-old Biden.
Biden talks w/press in Keene, NH: “I love this place. Look, what’s not to like about Vermont in terms of the beauty of it? And what a neat town…everybody has been really friendly. I like Keene a lot.” pic.twitter.com/0hKsgiDfwM
As noted by former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, “what is he doing?”
When Vice President Joe Biden said “”I want to be clear, I’m not going nuts,” it may have been strangest campaign slogan ever. It will be interesting to see how he recovers from planting the notion in voters mind. you could ask if he isn’t going nuts what is he doing?
Days earlier, the Democratic frontrunner oddly brought up the topic of assassination – asking a Hanover, NH crowd “Imagine what would have happened if, God forbid, Barack Obama had been assassinated after becoming the de facto nominee? What would have happened in America?”
Biden’s wife is even imploring voters to just vote for Joe already or face another four years of Trumpian politics.
“Your candidate might be better on, I don’t know, healthcare than Joe is,” said Biden’s better half during a campaign event in Nashua, NH. “But you’ve got to look at who’s going to win this election and maybe you have to swallow a little bit and say, ‘Ok, I personally like so and so better.’ But your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Donald Trump.”
You know it’s bad when a candidate’s wife is telling you to just “swallow a little bit.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2L9wdT7 Tyler Durden
Last March, a number of media outlets—including The Washington Post, Business Insider, Vox, and The Hill—reported a startling figure: During the 2016 campaign, U.S. counties in which candidate Donald Trump held a political rally experienced a 226 percent increase in hate crimes over those that did not.
The Post reupped this claim in a recent article, and numerous Trump-critical politicians—including Sen. Bernie Sanders (D–Vt.) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.)—seized upon it. “Mr. President: stop your racist, hateful and anti-immigrant rhetoric,” wrote Sanders in a Facebook post that referenced the statistic. “Your language creates a climate which emboldens violent extremists.”
But much like the unsupported idea that the hate crime rate is higher than ever, the 226 percent statistic doesn’t quite stand up to scrutiny.
The source of the statistic is a study by political scientists Ayal Feinberg, Regina Branton, and Valerie Martinez-Ebers. The trio co-authored the initial Post story, which ran under the title “Counties that hosted a 2016 Trump rally saw a 226 percent increase in hate crimes.” This headline misrepresents the study’s findings. Trump’s appearance did not cause counties to suddenly experience 226 percent more hate crimes—rather, counties that hosted Trump rallies experienced 3.26 times as many incidents as other counties, a 226 percent difference.
And those incidents, in turn, were not all hate crimes. The authors’ sole source of data is the Anti-Defamation League’s 2016 report on hate, extremism, anti-Semitism, and terrorism. This lists 1,321 anti-Semitic incidents reported to the organization in 2016. There are two important things to keep in mind here: 1) the list‘s focus is anti-Semitism, and 2) many of the incidents on the list are not actually hate crimes.
The first point matters because many people have interpreted this study’s findings as proof of the notion that Trump’s odious comments about immigrants and Muslims (“shithole countries,” the travel ban, etc.) correspond with a spike in hate crimes committed against these groups. The Associated Press’s coverage of the 226 percent statistic, for instance, begins by noting that “President Donald Trump has often railed about an ‘invasion of illegals’ at the southern border, words echoed in a screed the El Paso shooting suspect apparently posted that called the attack that killed 22 people at a Walmart his response to a ‘Hispanic invasion of Texas.'” It’s certainly conceivable that Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric could prompt an increase in hate crimes against them, but this study doesn’t really test such a proposition, as it is almost exclusively focused on anti-Semitic acts.
The second point is important because “hate crime” is a very specific category that requires the perpetrator to have committed a crime—assault, vandalism, etc.—for reasons of animus toward a marginalized group. The ADL counts all sorts of anti-Semitic speech—vile stuff, to be sure, but much of it non-criminal. A great many incidents on the ADL’s list are schoolyard bullying, for example. According to this study, Trump’s political rallies are correlated with a significant spike in these kinds of incidents, but that’s not as strong a finding as the headlines suggest.
The ADL dataset, by the way, is compiled using “news and media reports, government documents (including police reports), victim reports, extremist-related sources and Center on Extremism investigations.” Greater public interest in reporting on these kinds of incidents could result in a perceived increase. The list is naturally selective, and incomplete: There are more than 3,000 counties in the U.S., and the ADL counted just 1,321 incidents in 2016. A “226 percent increase” sounds like a lot, but we’re talking about less than one hate crime per county on average.
When I reached out to the study’s authors some months ago, Feinberg explained that the study had not yet been peer reviewed, and thus he couldn’t release it to me. (This was frustrating, given that the study’s findings were already being reported as if they were unimpeachable.) But after the second round of media coverage, Feinberg’s team released it.
When I raised some of these issues with him—that anti-Semitic incidents are not necessarily hate crimes, in particular—he replied that “as a result of queries like yours,” his team would be re-running the numbers. This time they intend to use the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting database, which compiles statistics on hate crimes.
“The trump rally coefficient is both significant and directionally consistent with the ADL data,” Feinberg assured me. His team plans to release the updated findings in the near future.
The FBI’s database has a significant flaw of its own: Not all police jurisdictions participate in it, and thus its overall portrait of an ever-increasing hate-crime rate may well be misleading. Perhaps it could be a more useful vehicle for county-to-county comparisons than the ADL figures, but with the important caveat that there are some areas of the country that don’t submit data at all. While I look forward to parsing the new results, it will still be important to interpret them with the appropriate levels of salt.
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Progressives’ ghoulish glee over the death of an old man turned into barely constrained panic when, later that day, it was revealed that their heroine Ruth Bader Ginsberg was just treated for pancreatic cancer yet again. Their disgraceful joy at David Koch’s passing was yet another reminder of the harsh truth that leftists want you dead or enslaved. Koch’s sin was that he disagreed with liberals (though, in important ways, also with conservatives). For that, these cretins danced around like idiots celebrating his succumbing. And they’ll celebrate when you die too. Always believe people who tell you they hate you and want you dead.
Oh, and never disarm.
Of course, RBG is eager to disarm you, and she would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for those meddling Supreme Court kids who actually read Second Amendment. Her constitutional jurisprudence consists of disregarding what she dislikes that’s in the Bill of Rights and making up stuff that’s not in it but that she feels – not thinks, feels – should be in it. She’s a terrible justice and conservatives would love to see her step down. But our side expressed no delight in her latest suffering comparable to the giddy revelry that greeted Koch’s kicking the bucket. We’re not monsters, though how long that remains true is up in the air. When you establish New Rulesthey tend to come back and bite you on the Schumer.
Here’s a pro tip, liberal dummies. If you are going to normalize the hatred of political opponents and express open joy at their demise, the savvy play is to be the political faction that possesses and knows how to use AR-15s and not the one that agonizes over its pronouns.
RBG’s latest successful MMA bout with the Grim Reaper is a reminder that we conservatives need to gird our loins for what’s coming when she finally leaves the Supreme Court for good. But our anticipatory loin girding is merely prudent preparation.
In fact, most of us feel a grudging respect for Ginsburg as a worthy opponent and as one tough cookie. She’s like John McCain with a neck doily; he drove us up the wall too, but as a group we did not wish cancer on him.
Not wanting her to die a horrible death is not to sugarcoat the damage she has done with her utterly upside-down vision of our founding document, but to simply reaffirm a point that never should have been an issue but is an issue because of the shameful behavior of liberals like we saw with Koch. We conservatives don’t want people to die simply because they have different political beliefs.
But she’s very old and she’s very sick and facing that reality is not the same as high-fiving it. There’s a more than significant chance that before the 2020 election she will pass on to her reward despite her being the Energizer Bunny of being wrong wrong wrong about constitutional jurisprudence. She just keeps going and going and going, but someday she’s going to run out of juice and join her pal Antonin Scalia on the bench in the great beyond, and if that happens with Trump in the White House, ho boy.
You can relive the shameful saga of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings in Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino’s remarkable Justice on Trial. What will happen next time will pale in comparison. If you thought you saw frothy, mouth-foaming insanity last time — just you wait.
The elite’s message will combine “Trump is illegitimate” with “Cocaine Mitch is breaking precedent” and “They’re going to bring back slavery when they establish The Handmaid’s Tale as the law of the land” with a bit of “This will shred the fabric of the nation we love so much that we support jerks who kneel during the National Anthem.”
The Democrats are already prepping the battlespace with this cheesy narrative. Obama’s brain David Axelrod tweeted:
I responded to this tweet by observing – employing terms that were a bit salty and therefore shall not be linked – that the last time Democrats failed to get their way and tore the country apart, we patriots (paraphrasing) handily defeated them. But hey Dems, maybe the second time’s the charm!
It’s not worth the time to dissect the wrong premise about confirming justices during an election year in Axelrod’s wrong tweet. Liberals are disinterested in argument, and the Murder Turtle running the Senate gets this and won’t even play their game. This is about power. On an objective level, perhaps Justice Ginsburg should step down, but she has the power not to and therefore it’s silly to whine about her not doing it. Similarly, we have the power to shove a new conservative Supreme Court justice down the Dems’ throats, so it’s silly to argue with the libs about it (though our objective case for doing it is strong). After a short and dignified interregnum, once the impending RBG vacancy becomes actively vacant, Donald Trump should unashamedly use the power of the office he was elected to and nominate a replacement, and Moscow Mitch should start rushin’ toward confirming him – or her.
The fact is that soon we’re going to have six conservatives on SCOTUS, or actually, five-and-a-half if you count Justice Soft Serve Roberts.
And when this all goes down, the left will freak out in a festival of freaking outness unparalleled in American history. The Dem candidates will go nuts. Big Chief Warren will be on the warpath, Bernie will call for revolution, Harris will say whatever she thinks is useful, Biden will start talking about how JFK visited him in the White House, and Beto will continue to be a furry.
We’ll get lots of the “Orange man bad, orange man not nominate a judge because he bad” babble from the libs and their gimp media. Maddow will cry, Don Lemon will pound an umbrella drink and Tater Stelter will sweat profusely as he reads off the teleprompter about how Trump is literally Hitler. The Fredocons will weigh in with their patented brand of sissy submission to their elite tops. We’ll be informed how taking back the Supreme Court like the geebos of Conservative, Inc., promised for three decades is actually not who we are and how we’re better than that and how oh well I never. Can you imagine Jeb! or Mitt in this situation? They would eagerly, whole-heartedly buy into the compromise unity candidate ploy to stick some moderate muggle on the bench in order to “repair the heart of our country” and “build bridges” of bipartisan love.
Trump builds victories, and he’s going to blow up that bridge.
My money is on him appointing Amy Coney Barrett, who has the unique ability to be a Scalia-like justice and to own the libs by being a woman. And not just any woman but a female woman who has kids and goes to church and is down with originalism like a boss. It’s going to be hard to paint her as the ringleader of a teen rape gang, and while her beer-appreciation status is yet unknown, it is unlikely she will have to explain to the dummies on the Judiciary Committee her high school clique’s unique flatulence euphemisms.
But they will still try to destroy her. That’s their only move, one not unrelated to the giddy cheer that greeted David Koch’s death. All we conservatives did with whoever Merrick Garland was was tell him “No.” But if you are conservative and you oppose them, they will try to wipe you out, if not literally then at least figuratively. But that’s a desperation tactic and it does not work, not if you hold strong and refuse to back down. Clarence Thomas fought back and won. Brett Kavanaugh fought back and won. And Amy Coney Barrett will fight back and she will win.
And that means our Constitution will win.
Loins, commence girding.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/33YEkKW Tyler Durden
Though the Department of Justice shut down Backpage.com in 2018, it still activates strong scorn in some corners. (“They were selling children,” the California senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said in March.) Several founders and former executives of the company—arrested last year on federal charges of conspiracy, facilitating prostitution, and money laundering—are now awaiting a 2020 trial, as they try to fend off prosecutors eager to seize their assets and disqualify their lawyers.
“For far too long, Backpage.com existed as…a place where sex traffickers frequently advertised children and adults alike,” said then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions upon their April 2018 arrest. U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Strange alleged that Backpage made “hundreds of millions” by “placing profits over the well-being and safety” of victims.
In April 2012, two federal prosecutors sent their boss a memo about Backpage, the site that had, since 2004, been operating like a parallel Craigslist. What would unravel over the course of the 24-page document contradicts almost everything we’ve heard from federal authorities about Backpage since.
The memo—subject: “Backpage.com Investigation”—reveals that six years before Backpage leaders were indicted on federal criminal charges, prosecutors had already begun building a “child sex trafficking” case against the company. But this case was hampered by the fact that Backpage kept trying to help stop sex trafficking.
“Information provided to us by (FBI Agent Steve) Vienneau and other members of the Innocence Lost Task Force confirm that, unlike virtually every other website that is used for prostitution and sex trafficking, Backpage is remarkably responsive to law enforcement requests and often takes proactive steps to assist in investigations,” wrote Catherine Crisham and Aravind Swaminathan, both assistant U.S. attorneys for the Western District of Washington, in the April 3 memo to Jenny Durkan, now mayor of Seattle and then head federal prosecutor for the district. Vienneau told prosecutors that “on many occasions,” Backpage staff proactively sent him “advertisements that appear to contain pictures of juveniles” and that the company was “very cooperative at removing these advertisements at law enforcement’s request.”
“Even without a subpoena, in exigent circumstances such as a child rescue situation, Backpage will provide the maximum information and assistance permitted under the law,” wrote Crisham and Swaminathan.
Over the next year, their office would undertake a large investigation into Backpage’s internal processes and potential criminality.
This included a “preliminary review of more than 100,000 documents,” subpoena responses “from more than a dozen entities and individuals,” interviews with around a dozen witnesses, and “extended grand jury testimony from an additional six witnesses,” mainly Backpage employees. Still, it failed to produce “the kind of smoking gun admissions which we had hoped would propel this investigation to indictment,” wrote Swaminathan and another assistant U.S. attorney, John T. McNeil, in a January 2013 memo.
This memo—subject: “Backpage.com Investigation Update”—and the earlier one from Crisham and Swaminathan would wind up being accidently sent by federal prosecutors to Backpage defense lawyers last year. But both would be ruled off-limits for defense use, placed under seal, and only subject to public courtroom discussion last week after prosecutors tried to sanction defendants for a few paragraphs from the memos appearing in a June Wired article.
“At the outset of this investigation, it was anticipated that we would find evidence of candid discussions among [Backpage] principals about the use of the site for juvenile prostitution which could be used as admissions of criminal conduct,” wrote McNeil and Swaminathan in their 2013 update. “It was also anticipated that we would find numerous instances where Backpage learned that at site user was a juvenile prostitute and Backpage callously continued to post advertisements for her. To date, the investigation has revealed neither.”
They recommended that bringing criminal charges would be unwise. But the matter didn’t stop there.
Washington-based federal prosecutors kept trying to compel more internal documents from Backpage. A few people whose ads were posted on the site when they were underage began to sue (and lose) in civil court. In 2015, Illinois Sheriff Tom Dart threatened sanctions against credit card companies that kept doing business with Backpage, forcing the company to sue for relief. Backpage won that one too, but not before being forced to first make ads free and then find alternative payment methods, like accepting checks and bitcoin, for ad payment (moves prosecutors will later use against them in the money laundering case).
Also in 2015, Congress passed the “Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation” (SAVE) Act relying almost exclusively on anti-Backpage rhetoric, and the Senate Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations started subpoenaing Backpage records and testimony. The following year, Kamala Harris (at that point still top prosecutor for California) twice had Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer and former owners Michael Lacey and James Larkin arrested on (unsuccessful) pimping charges.
Backpage leadership started 2017 being hauled before Congress to testify on their supposed “knowing facilitation” of child sex trafficking and ended the year the subject of a propaganda film (“I Am Jane Doe”) promoted by the likes of comedians Amy Schumer and Seth Meyer and narrated by actress Jessica Chastain. Josh Hawley—then the newly-elected attorney general of Missouri and now an anti-technology crusader in the U.S. Senate—also went after Backpage that year, saying it “directly and actively promoted illegal sex trafficking.”
By the time the FBI raided Lacey and Larkin’s homes, tossed them in jail, and seized the site in April 2018, few public figures would defend Backpage or those associated with it. Years of much-hyped horror stories about the site and heinous claims about its leaders had been coming from all angles—Democrats, Republicans, women’s groups, religious groups, attorneys general, actor-activist Ashton Kutcher, state and national lawmakers, The New York Times, the McCain Institute, the FBI, movies, newspaper ads, billboards, and much more. The preferred narrative about the site was clear, and nearly impenetrable.
Which is why these memos from 2012–13 pose such a problem. They show that years’ worth of hand-wringing and hysteria over Backpage has been built on lies.
“Backpage genuinely wanted to get child prostitution off of its site”
The core claim against Backpage has always been that it enables underage prostitution. Over time, this evolved from a more modest assertion—that any site allowing adult ads would inevitably attract some posts by minors—to claims that Backpage was uniquely negligent in this capacity, indifferent to the plight of victims, and perhaps even actively encouraging sex traffickers to use the site. (“We [tried to] make them realize it was not only legally but also morally wrong to sell children,” but “they wouldn’t hear of it,” Cindy McCain toldThe Arizona Republic in 2016.)
Back in 2012 and 2013, federal prosecutors privately expressed a quite different outlook.
But first—lest anyone think the more recent rhetoric reflects changes at Backpage since 2013—it’s important to note that most of the actions covered in the Senate investigative report and much of the subsequent criminal indictment come from this 2012–13 time period or earlier. And, since then, neither civil court cases nor a variety of official investigations has uncovered anything wildly different than what was found by the Washington-based U.S. attorneys.
In 2012, Crisham and Swaminathan seemed impressed by how cooperative Backpage was with police and other members of law enforcement. Backpage data offer “a goldmine of information for investigators,” they noted. In general, staff would respond to subpoenas within the same day; “with respect to any child exploitation investigation, Backpage often provides records within the hour.” Staff regularly provided “live testimony at trial to authenticate the evidence against defendants who have utilized Backpage,” and the company held seminars for law enforcement on how to best work with Backpage staff and records.
“Witnesses have consistently testified that Backpage was making substantial efforts to prevent criminal conduct on its site, that it was coordinating efforts with law enforcement agencies and NCMEC [the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children], and that it was conducting its businesses in accordance with legal advice,” wrote Swaminathan and McNeil in 2013. Furthermore, they noted, their investigation failed “to uncover compelling evidence of criminal intent or a pattern or reckless conduct regarding minors.” In fact, it “revealed a strong economic incentive for Backpage to rid its site of juvenile prostitution.”
Ultimately, it was their assessment that “Backpage genuinely wanted to get child prostitution off of its site.”
Ernie Allen, then in charge of NCMEC, thought so too. He had told prosecutors he believed Backpage was genuinely trying to combat underage ads, although “use of the Internet to market commercial sex was so fluid that any system of moderation and reporting was destined to fail” (as prosecutors paraphrased).
Backpage executives—including CEO Ferrer and then-owners Lacey and Larkin (who sold Ferrer the company in 2015)—had been working closely with the quasi-governmental children’s group to establish best practices. They weren’t about to give up on all adult advertising, which Lacey and Larkin had been publishing in the back pages of their weekly print newspapers since the 1970s. But Backpage took to heart other steps suggested by authorities.
For instance, not only did all ads featured a “Report Ad” button, with an expedited process for folks reporting suspected sexual exploitation, but the site also featured prominent links to the NCMEC CyberTipline. And while most sections of Backpage were free for users, “Backpage followed Craigslist’s policy, initiated at the suggestion of NAAG, of charging a fee for each adult services advertisement,” something NAAG championed for its ability to reduce ad volume and yield evidentiary data for law enforcement.
In 2011, Backpage staff flagged 2,695 ads for NCMEC review, according to the NCMEC president’s testimony before Congress. He also said that at the group’s request, Backpage leaders had begun stepping up the number of reported ads
Later, Allen and NCMEC would insinuate that the increase was evidence of a spike in child sex trafficking and/or of Backpage being the biggest online proponent of it. But back then, Allen admitted Backpage had done more monitoring and proactive reporting than any other site in adult advertising.
Backpage seems to have been taking an especially cautious approach. Operations manager Andrew Padilla told moderators to flag any sex work ads where a poster looked to be under age 21, and in general to “be over-inclusive,” according to the Washington-based prosecutors. They also note that, in many cases, not even the most careful moderators may be able to discern an ad subject’s age.
Many adult ads used only partial photos. And some teens “may simply appear to look older” than they are, states the 2012 memo. “It is difficult for even trained investigators to conclude” age from photos, making it hard to say Backpage monitors should have been capable of this “extraordinarily difficult” task.
Interestingly, investigators found Ferrer had proposed authorities provide Backpage with phone numbers of those “known to be involved in juvenile prostitution,” so it could use filters to flag and automatically report attempted use of those numbers. Such a system “might be more useful than just look at the pic and saying the model looks too young,” Ferrer reportedly told Agent Vienneau in 2012. It could also help find minors no matter what part of the site—adult, services, dating, etc.—on which their ads were placed.
Authorities declined to follow up on Ferrer’s idea. (McNeil and Swaminathan do suggest moderators should have been given more “specific criteria,” whether this “be body fat, breast development, or other features,” for determining from photos if someone is under age 18—a proposal that manages to come across both creepy and clueless.)
Later, critics would suggest that Backpage was uniquely reckless in its age verification processes. (The Senate report even claims the whole point of telling users they must be 18-plus to post was so minors would know to lie about their age.) But back in 2012, prosecutors admitted that Backpage measures “were standard across the tech industry and online content purveyors.” Mandating “additional age verification protocols or procedures is both impractical” and a “limitation on free speech,” which implemented broadly “would bring online business to a halt, as it threatens the very fabric of the internet.”
Illegality of Adult ads “is not so plain”
Since child sex trafficking charges were a non-starter, prosecutors wondered if a case could be made that Backpage recklessly promoted and profited off of prostitution. While prostitution itself is not a federal crime, sex for pay is criminalized in most of the country, so using a tool of interstate commerce (the internet) with the intent to facilitate prostitution could count.
But there was a problem with this theory, too. Several, in fact.
“Remarkably,” the 2013 memo said, no one in or outside Backpage would “admit the company knowingly accepted adult prostitution advertisements.”
This wasn’t the only surprise for the investigators—who, to their credit, seemed willing to actually check their initial assumptions. In so doing, they highlighted how many supposedly illicit activities on Backpage may not have been illegal at all.
“As we are learning in this investigation, women posing in sexually suggestive poses, wearing virtually nothing and advertising various forms of sexual massage and other ‘good times'” does not necessarily imply exploitation or even illegal prostitution, noted McNeil and Swaminathan:
Upon closer analysis of the adult web market, it is clear that there are many adult services which come very close to prostitution, but which are lawful. For instance, it is legal to advertise to pay actors to have sex in a film….It is also legal to offer or solicit sex, so long as it is not in exchange for money. Thus, Backpage permitted express references to sexual acts in its adult personal section. It is also legal to offer to be a ‘sugar daddy’ [and] likewise, strippers or escorts may be paid to simulate sex for a fee, to dance or perform solo sex acts, to provide companionship, and to give ‘sensual’ massages. There are no rules which prohibit strippers or genuine escorts from posing in sexually explicit positions or from giving hands-on therapy. While someone who has little experience with the adult services market may readily conclude that Backpage’s escort advertisements offer prostitution services, such a conclusion is not so plain after one recognizes how much sexually explicit commercial conduct is lawful.
In any event, Backpage did try to ban outright illegal activity in ads. Overall, the company’s conscientiousness and cooperation on this front presented “a very substantial hurdle to any prosecution,” wrote McNeil and Swaminathan in 2013.
“In the course of introducing evidence about what Backpage did not do to monitor its site and exclude prostitutes, much evidence would be admitted about what Backpage did do to monitor its site,” they said. The court would likely hear about the “express warnings placed on the site and circulated in the company prohibiting advertisements for illegal conduct” and “all sorts of evidence about what Backpage did to work with law enforcement to stop child trafficking.”
If the Justice Department did want to claim Backpage was reckless, the memo suggested, it could possibly use Backpage’s ample responses to subpoenas and reports to NCMEC to establish the company knew that minors were sometimes advertised and that this would continue.
This is not a standard we apply to other digital platforms or to other crimes. People are robbed, assaulted, defrauded, extorted, harassed, discriminated against, and much more via digital classified ads, social media, and popular apps of all sorts. These cases wind up yielding criminal cases and suits in civil court, sometimes very serious ones. But few suggest that this means Yelp, Tinder, Twitter, Facebook, etc. should cease entirely.
It also offends on a basic level of fairness. Because Backpage worked so closely with authorities to stop bad actors, it had given the government all the goods it needed to prosecute—even as prosecutors ignored the many sex-ad hubs that weren’t working with authorities.
“reliance on this type of evidence would be extraordinary in a criminal case”
Since nabbing Backpage on knowingly facilitating illegal sex work would be a stretch, the 2013 memo suggested that the best way to prosecute might be to bring conspiracy and money laundering charges.
This is what the Justice Department did last year. And much in the current theory of prosecution against Lacey, Larkin, and other former Backpage leaders is laid out in the 2013 memo.
Money laundering charges would “not focus on Backpage as a publisher of on-line advertisements or as a co-venturer with pimps, but as a launderer of funds derived from adult prostitution,” the memo said. But, again, the authors ran into “several substantial proof issues” in showing that any promotion, facilitation, or funding from prostitution per se was intentional.
Proving “the company knew that the advertising fees being paid by adult ‘escorts’ were criminally derived property” would be difficult, they noted. So too proving that any particular $10,000 came from prostitution proceeds (as required by some money laundering statutes).
“We would be required to rely on expert testimony, statistical analysis and inferences to prove that,” they wrote. “While relying on such evidence in a civil case may be common, reliance on this type of evidence would be extraordinary in a criminal case.”
The Justice Department could try for conspiracy to commit money laundering charges, suggest the prosecutors. But again, there’s the intent problem. The state would “be left to argue inferences of a specific criminal intent in the face of evidence that Backpage was engaging in extensive monitoring” to the opposite effect.
The most concrete evidence available of intent to promote adult prostitution were two short statements made by executives. In 2011, board member Don Bennett Moon allegedly said he could not “deny the undeniable” when pressed whether the site was sometimes used to promote prostitution.
That same year, during a meeting between Backpage leadership and NCMEC, Ernie Allen was—by his own account—pressing Backpage to get rid of all “Adult” ads when Michael Lacey said that adult prostitution was none NCMEC’s business. According to the memo, “Allen responded that ‘at least you know what business you are in,’ to which Lacey did not reply.”
The memos suggested that these statements might work for proving intent but were not much to go on. Doing so would raise “substantial issues” of concern and amount to relying on “inferences drawn from obtuse statements and silences to prove an element of the offense.”
Nonetheless, these statements would find their way into the Senate investigation of Backpage and the current criminal indictment. This is the sort of iffy evidence that everyone decided to run with.
Politics Over Protection
The memos and the investigation that produced them should have tamped down enthusiasm for the crusade against Backpage. By almost all accounts, the most productive relationship between Backpage and those in power was a symbiotic one, in which the site served as a partner in preventing and punishing exploitation.
Instead, officials kept pursuing sanctions against Backpage and spreading tales of alleged depravity among its staff.
Since the time when the memos were first drafted, officials have figured out ways to frame any positive parts of Backpage operations into legal liabilities and points of public horror. The meetings with NCMEC and the efforts to help police? Proof that Backpage knew of the problem. Preventing explicit offers of sex for money? The Senate said that was just Backpage wanting to “conceal the true nature” of ads. Filtering out open-to-interpretation words? Banning underage ads? Same, said the senators. Their report portrayed the fact that Backpage used moderation at all as some sort of seedy ploy.
Requiring card payments for adult ads—as NAAG suggested, since cards can be traced—was spun as a deliberate effort to profit off exploitation. Accepting bitcoin after Dart threatened card companies? Evidence of subterfuge. Accepting checks after the Dart harassment? That let prosecutors tie specific ad buys to real identities and transactions, thus helping them fulfill a previously-lacking element necessary for money laundering charges.
In effect, everything the company did to enhance protection and legality was twisted into evidence of criminality and moral failure. And, for years, folks have promoted these topsy-turvy explanations. Yet in these 2012 and ’13 memos—in statements not made for political posturing—we see something else entirely.
Backpage lawyers in the criminal case have been barred from using the memos as part of their clients’ defense. The previous judge handling the case (who recused himself) agreed with the prosecution that the memos, which had been filed under seal in the Western District of Washington, must remain sealed and that the defense must destroy its copies.
At an August 19 hearing, Judge Susan M. Brnovich ruled that they will stay that way. But Brnovich denied the state’s request to sanction defendants over quotes from the memos appearing in the June Wired story.
At the hearing, lawyers for defendants had pointed out that there were months when the memos were not under seal and that many people had viewed or had access to them both before and during that time. In issuing her order, Brnovich agreed that the memos had “clearly been distributed to many people,” including “other people that the government was working with,” and said any suggestion Backpage defendants or lawyers had supplied the memos to Wired was pure “speculation.”
Brnovich did not rule last week on defendants’ motion to dismiss the case. For now, the trial is scheduled to start on May 5, 2020.
It’s worth noting that since Backpage was seized by the feds (April 2018), and the federal law against prostitution ads became law (later that month), we’ve seen cops across the country complain that it’s harder to find and prosecute cases involving underage prostitution. Federal “rescue” numbers are also down in recent years, as are the total number of sex trafficking of children prosecutions by the feds.
Some will call this evidence that shutting down Backpage actually did put a dent in trafficking. But research on the online ad market says that after initial an initial drop last spring, adult ads levels have rebounded. And since the vast majority of these platforms employ no more stringent age-verification tools than Backpage did, whatever amount of ads for minors got through on Backpage is also likely getting through now.
Cops can still peruse these sites, as they did with Backpage. But the adult ad market is now more decentralized and thus harder to monitor, and has also undergone some switching to encrypted or just less visible platforms (or, alternately, moved to mainstream platforms like Instagram but with more tame public posts). More importantly, many of these other sites don’t proactively report, provide data, and work with law enforcement like Backpage did.
With Backpage.com’s shutdown, “we have taken a major step toward keeping women and children across America safe,” Jeff Sessions claimed when the site was seized.
Reading these memos, it seems clear the government put the political usefulness of a crusade against a caricatured evil tech company above the genuine safety of American women and children. Soundbite salvation came at the cost of actually fighting endangerment, exploitation, and abuse.
Though the Department of Justice shut down Backpage.com in 2018, it still activates strong scorn in some corners. (“They were selling children,” the California senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said in March.) Several founders and former executives of the company—arrested last year on federal charges of conspiracy, facilitating prostitution, and money laundering—are now awaiting a 2020 trial, as they try to fend off prosecutors eager to seize their assets and disqualify their lawyers.
“For far too long, Backpage.com existed as…a place where sex traffickers frequently advertised children and adults alike,” said then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions upon their April 2018 arrest. U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Strange alleged that Backpage made “hundreds of millions” by “placing profits over the well-being and safety” of victims.
In April 2012, two federal prosecutors sent their boss a memo about Backpage, the site that had, since 2004, been operating like a parallel Craigslist. What would unravel over the course of the 24-page document contradicts almost everything we’ve heard from federal authorities about Backpage since.
The memo—subject: “Backpage.com Investigation”—reveals that six years before Backpage leaders were indicted on federal criminal charges, prosecutors had already begun building a “child sex trafficking” case against the company. But this case was hampered by the fact that Backpage kept trying to help stop sex trafficking.
“Information provided to us by (FBI Agent Steve) Vienneau and other members of the Innocence Lost Task Force confirm that, unlike virtually every other website that is used for prostitution and sex trafficking, Backpage is remarkably responsive to law enforcement requests and often takes proactive steps to assist in investigations,” wrote Catherine Crisham and Aravind Swaminathan, both assistant U.S. attorneys for the Western District of Washington, in the April 3 memo to Jenny Durkan, now mayor of Seattle and then head federal prosecutor for the district. Vienneau told prosecutors that “on many occasions,” Backpage staff proactively sent him “advertisements that appear to contain pictures of juveniles” and that the company was “very cooperative at removing these advertisements at law enforcement’s request.”
“Even without a subpoena, in exigent circumstances such as a child rescue situation, Backpage will provide the maximum information and assistance permitted under the law,” wrote Crisham and Swaminathan.
Over the next year, their office would undertake a large investigation into Backpage’s internal processes and potential criminality.
This included a “preliminary review of more than 100,000 documents,” subpoena responses “from more than a dozen entities and individuals,” interviews with around a dozen witnesses, and “extended grand jury testimony from an additional six witnesses,” mainly Backpage employees. Still, it failed to produce “the kind of smoking gun admissions which we had hoped would propel this investigation to indictment,” wrote Swaminathan and another assistant U.S. attorney, John T. McNeil, in a January 2013 memo.
This memo—subject: “Backpage.com Investigation Update”—and the earlier one from Crisham and Swaminathan would wind up being accidently sent by federal prosecutors to Backpage defense lawyers last year. But both would be ruled off-limits for defense use, placed under seal, and only subject to public courtroom discussion last week after prosecutors tried to sanction defendants for a few paragraphs from the memos appearing in a June Wired article.
“At the outset of this investigation, it was anticipated that we would find evidence of candid discussions among [Backpage] principals about the use of the site for juvenile prostitution which could be used as admissions of criminal conduct,” wrote McNeil and Swaminathan in their 2013 update. “It was also anticipated that we would find numerous instances where Backpage learned that at site user was a juvenile prostitute and Backpage callously continued to post advertisements for her. To date, the investigation has revealed neither.”
They recommended that bringing criminal charges would be unwise. But the matter didn’t stop there.
Washington-based federal prosecutors kept trying to compel more internal documents from Backpage. A few people whose ads were posted on the site when they were underage began to sue (and lose) in civil court. In 2015, Illinois Sheriff Tom Dart threatened sanctions against credit card companies that kept doing business with Backpage, forcing the company to sue for relief. Backpage won that one too, but not before being forced to first make ads free and then find alternative payment methods, like accepting checks and bitcoin, for ad payment (moves prosecutors will later use against them in the money laundering case).
Also in 2015, Congress passed the “Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation” (SAVE) Act relying almost exclusively on anti-Backpage rhetoric, and the Senate Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations started subpoenaing Backpage records and testimony. The following year, Kamala Harris (at that point still top prosecutor for California) twice had Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer and former owners Michael Lacey and James Larkin arrested on (unsuccessful) pimping charges.
Backpage leadership started 2017 being hauled before Congress to testify on their supposed “knowing facilitation” of child sex trafficking and ended the year the subject of a propaganda film (“I Am Jane Doe”) promoted by the likes of comedians Amy Schumer and Seth Meyer and narrated by actress Jessica Chastain. Josh Hawley—then the newly-elected attorney general of Missouri and now an anti-technology crusader in the U.S. Senate—also went after Backpage that year, saying it “directly and actively promoted illegal sex trafficking.”
By the time the FBI raided Lacey and Larkin’s homes, tossed them in jail, and seized the site in April 2018, few public figures would defend Backpage or those associated with it. Years of much-hyped horror stories about the site and heinous claims about its leaders had been coming from all angles—Democrats, Republicans, women’s groups, religious groups, attorneys general, actor-activist Ashton Kutcher, state and national lawmakers, The New York Times, the McCain Institute, the FBI, movies, newspaper ads, billboards, and much more. The preferred narrative about the site was clear, and nearly impenetrable.
Which is why these memos from 2012–13 pose such a problem. They show that years’ worth of hand-wringing and hysteria over Backpage has been built on lies.
“Backpage genuinely wanted to get child prostitution off of its site”
The core claim against Backpage has always been that it enables underage prostitution. Over time, this evolved from a more modest assertion—that any site allowing adult ads would inevitably attract some posts by minors—to claims that Backpage was uniquely negligent in this capacity, indifferent to the plight of victims, and perhaps even actively encouraging sex traffickers to use the site. (“We [tried to] make them realize it was not only legally but also morally wrong to sell children,” but “they wouldn’t hear of it,” Cindy McCain toldThe Arizona Republic in 2016.)
Back in 2012 and 2013, federal prosecutors privately expressed a quite different outlook.
But first—lest anyone think the more recent rhetoric reflects changes at Backpage since 2013—it’s important to note that most of the actions covered in the Senate investigative report and much of the subsequent criminal indictment come from this 2012–13 time period or earlier. And, since then, neither civil court cases nor a variety of official investigations has uncovered anything wildly different than what was found by the Washington-based U.S. attorneys.
In 2012, Crisham and Swaminathan seemed impressed by how cooperative Backpage was with police and other members of law enforcement. Backpage data offer “a goldmine of information for investigators,” they noted. In general, staff would respond to subpoenas within the same day; “with respect to any child exploitation investigation, Backpage often provides records within the hour.” Staff regularly provided “live testimony at trial to authenticate the evidence against defendants who have utilized Backpage,” and the company held seminars for law enforcement on how to best work with Backpage staff and records.
“Witnesses have consistently testified that Backpage was making substantial efforts to prevent criminal conduct on its site, that it was coordinating efforts with law enforcement agencies and NCMEC [the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children], and that it was conducting its businesses in accordance with legal advice,” wrote Swaminathan and McNeil in 2013. Furthermore, they noted, their investigation failed “to uncover compelling evidence of criminal intent or a pattern or reckless conduct regarding minors.” In fact, it “revealed a strong economic incentive for Backpage to rid its site of juvenile prostitution.”
Ultimately, it was their assessment that “Backpage genuinely wanted to get child prostitution off of its site.”
Ernie Allen, then in charge of NCMEC, thought so too. He had told prosecutors he believed Backpage was genuinely trying to combat underage ads, although “use of the Internet to market commercial sex was so fluid that any system of moderation and reporting was destined to fail” (as prosecutors paraphrased).
Backpage executives—including CEO Ferrer and then-owners Lacey and Larkin (who sold Ferrer the company in 2015)—had been working closely with the quasi-governmental children’s group to establish best practices. They weren’t about to give up on all adult advertising, which Lacey and Larkin had been publishing in the back pages of their weekly print newspapers since the 1970s. But Backpage took to heart other steps suggested by authorities.
For instance, not only did all ads featured a “Report Ad” button, with an expedited process for folks reporting suspected sexual exploitation, but the site also featured prominent links to the NCMEC CyberTipline. And while most sections of Backpage were free for users, “Backpage followed Craigslist’s policy, initiated at the suggestion of NAAG, of charging a fee for each adult services advertisement,” something NAAG championed for its ability to reduce ad volume and yield evidentiary data for law enforcement.
In 2011, Backpage staff flagged 2,695 ads for NCMEC review, according to the NCMEC president’s testimony before Congress. He also said that at the group’s request, Backpage leaders had begun stepping up the number of reported ads
Later, Allen and NCMEC would insinuate that the increase was evidence of a spike in child sex trafficking and/or of Backpage being the biggest online proponent of it. But back then, Allen admitted Backpage had done more monitoring and proactive reporting than any other site in adult advertising.
Backpage seems to have been taking an especially cautious approach. Operations manager Andrew Padilla told moderators to flag any sex work ads where a poster looked to be under age 21, and in general to “be over-inclusive,” according to the Washington-based prosecutors. They also note that, in many cases, not even the most careful moderators may be able to discern an ad subject’s age.
Many adult ads used only partial photos. And some teens “may simply appear to look older” than they are, states the 2012 memo. “It is difficult for even trained investigators to conclude” age from photos, making it hard to say Backpage monitors should have been capable of this “extraordinarily difficult” task.
Interestingly, investigators found Ferrer had proposed authorities provide Backpage with phone numbers of those “known to be involved in juvenile prostitution,” so it could use filters to flag and automatically report attempted use of those numbers. Such a system “might be more useful than just look at the pic and saying the model looks too young,” Ferrer reportedly told Agent Vienneau in 2012. It could also help find minors no matter what part of the site—adult, services, dating, etc.—on which their ads were placed.
Authorities declined to follow up on Ferrer’s idea. (McNeil and Swaminathan do suggest moderators should have been given more “specific criteria,” whether this “be body fat, breast development, or other features,” for determining from photos if someone is under age 18—a proposal that manages to come across both creepy and clueless.)
Later, critics would suggest that Backpage was uniquely reckless in its age verification processes. (The Senate report even claims the whole point of telling users they must be 18-plus to post was so minors would know to lie about their age.) But back in 2012, prosecutors admitted that Backpage measures “were standard across the tech industry and online content purveyors.” Mandating “additional age verification protocols or procedures is both impractical” and a “limitation on free speech,” which implemented broadly “would bring online business to a halt, as it threatens the very fabric of the internet.”
Illegality of Adult ads “is not so plain”
Since child sex trafficking charges were a non-starter, prosecutors wondered if a case could be made that Backpage recklessly promoted and profited off of prostitution. While prostitution itself is not a federal crime, sex for pay is criminalized in most of the country, so using a tool of interstate commerce (the internet) with the intent to facilitate prostitution could count.
But there was a problem with this theory, too. Several, in fact.
“Remarkably,” the 2013 memo said, no one in or outside Backpage would “admit the company knowingly accepted adult prostitution advertisements.”
This wasn’t the only surprise for the investigators—who, to their credit, seemed willing to actually check their initial assumptions. In so doing, they highlighted how many supposedly illicit activities on Backpage may not have been illegal at all.
“As we are learning in this investigation, women posing in sexually suggestive poses, wearing virtually nothing and advertising various forms of sexual massage and other ‘good times'” does not necessarily imply exploitation or even illegal prostitution, noted McNeil and Swaminathan:
Upon closer analysis of the adult web market, it is clear that there are many adult services which come very close to prostitution, but which are lawful. For instance, it is legal to advertise to pay actors to have sex in a film….It is also legal to offer or solicit sex, so long as it is not in exchange for money. Thus, Backpage permitted express references to sexual acts in its adult personal section. It is also legal to offer to be a ‘sugar daddy’ [and] likewise, strippers or escorts may be paid to simulate sex for a fee, to dance or perform solo sex acts, to provide companionship, and to give ‘sensual’ massages. There are no rules which prohibit strippers or genuine escorts from posing in sexually explicit positions or from giving hands-on therapy. While someone who has little experience with the adult services market may readily conclude that Backpage’s escort advertisements offer prostitution services, such a conclusion is not so plain after one recognizes how much sexually explicit commercial conduct is lawful.
In any event, Backpage did try to ban outright illegal activity in ads. Overall, the company’s conscientiousness and cooperation on this front presented “a very substantial hurdle to any prosecution,” wrote McNeil and Swaminathan in 2013.
“In the course of introducing evidence about what Backpage did not do to monitor its site and exclude prostitutes, much evidence would be admitted about what Backpage did do to monitor its site,” they said. The court would likely hear about the “express warnings placed on the site and circulated in the company prohibiting advertisements for illegal conduct” and “all sorts of evidence about what Backpage did to work with law enforcement to stop child trafficking.”
If the Justice Department did want to claim Backpage was reckless, the memo suggested, it could possibly use Backpage’s ample responses to subpoenas and reports to NCMEC to establish the company knew that minors were sometimes advertised and that this would continue.
This is not a standard we apply to other digital platforms or to other crimes. People are robbed, assaulted, defrauded, extorted, harassed, discriminated against, and much more via digital classified ads, social media, and popular apps of all sorts. These cases wind up yielding criminal cases and suits in civil court, sometimes very serious ones. But few suggest that this means Yelp, Tinder, Twitter, Facebook, etc. should cease entirely.
It also offends on a basic level of fairness. Because Backpage worked so closely with authorities to stop bad actors, it had given the government all the goods it needed to prosecute—even as prosecutors ignored the many sex-ad hubs that weren’t working with authorities.
“reliance on this type of evidence would be extraordinary in a criminal case”
Since nabbing Backpage on knowingly facilitating illegal sex work would be a stretch, the 2013 memo suggested that the best way to prosecute might be to bring conspiracy and money laundering charges.
This is what the Justice Department did last year. And much in the current theory of prosecution against Lacey, Larkin, and other former Backpage leaders is laid out in the 2013 memo.
Money laundering charges would “not focus on Backpage as a publisher of on-line advertisements or as a co-venturer with pimps, but as a launderer of funds derived from adult prostitution,” the memo said. But, again, the authors ran into “several substantial proof issues” in showing that any promotion, facilitation, or funding from prostitution per se was intentional.
Proving “the company knew that the advertising fees being paid by adult ‘escorts’ were criminally derived property” would be difficult, they noted. So too proving that any particular $10,000 came from prostitution proceeds (as required by some money laundering statutes).
“We would be required to rely on expert testimony, statistical analysis and inferences to prove that,” they wrote. “While relying on such evidence in a civil case may be common, reliance on this type of evidence would be extraordinary in a criminal case.”
The Justice Department could try for conspiracy to commit money laundering charges, suggest the prosecutors. But again, there’s the intent problem. The state would “be left to argue inferences of a specific criminal intent in the face of evidence that Backpage was engaging in extensive monitoring” to the opposite effect.
The most concrete evidence available of intent to promote adult prostitution were two short statements made by executives. In 2011, board member Don Bennett Moon allegedly said he could not “deny the undeniable” when pressed whether the site was sometimes used to promote prostitution.
That same year, during a meeting between Backpage leadership and NCMEC, Ernie Allen was—by his own account—pressing Backpage to get rid of all “Adult” ads when Michael Lacey said that adult prostitution was none NCMEC’s business. According to the memo, “Allen responded that ‘at least you know what business you are in,’ to which Lacey did not reply.”
The memos suggested that these statements might work for proving intent but were not much to go on. Doing so would raise “substantial issues” of concern and amount to relying on “inferences drawn from obtuse statements and silences to prove an element of the offense.”
Nonetheless, these statements would find their way into the Senate investigation of Backpage and the current criminal indictment. This is the sort of iffy evidence that everyone decided to run with.
Politics Over Protection
The memos and the investigation that produced them should have tamped down enthusiasm for the crusade against Backpage. By almost all accounts, the most productive relationship between Backpage and those in power was a symbiotic one, in which the site served as a partner in preventing and punishing exploitation.
Instead, officials kept pursuing sanctions against Backpage and spreading tales of alleged depravity among its staff.
Since the time when the memos were first drafted, officials have figured out ways to frame any positive parts of Backpage operations into legal liabilities and points of public horror. The meetings with NCMEC and the efforts to help police? Proof that Backpage knew of the problem. Preventing explicit offers of sex for money? The Senate said that was just Backpage wanting to “conceal the true nature” of ads. Filtering out open-to-interpretation words? Banning underage ads? Same, said the senators. Their report portrayed the fact that Backpage used moderation at all as some sort of seedy ploy.
Requiring card payments for adult ads—as NAAG suggested, since cards can be traced—was spun as a deliberate effort to profit off exploitation. Accepting bitcoin after Dart threatened card companies? Evidence of subterfuge. Accepting checks after the Dart harassment? That let prosecutors tie specific ad buys to real identities and transactions, thus helping them fulfill a previously-lacking element necessary for money laundering charges.
In effect, everything the company did to enhance protection and legality was twisted into evidence of criminality and moral failure. And, for years, folks have promoted these topsy-turvy explanations. Yet in these 2012 and ’13 memos—in statements not made for political posturing—we see something else entirely.
Backpage lawyers in the criminal case have been barred from using the memos as part of their clients’ defense. The previous judge handling the case (who recused himself) agreed with the prosecution that the memos, which had been filed under seal in the Western District of Washington, must remain sealed and that the defense must destroy its copies.
At an August 19 hearing, Judge Susan M. Brnovich ruled that they will stay that way. But Brnovich denied the state’s request to sanction defendants over quotes from the memos appearing in the June Wired story.
At the hearing, lawyers for defendants had pointed out that there were months when the memos were not under seal and that many people had viewed or had access to them both before and during that time. In issuing her order, Brnovich agreed that the memos had “clearly been distributed to many people,” including “other people that the government was working with,” and said any suggestion Backpage defendants or lawyers had supplied the memos to Wired was pure “speculation.”
Brnovich did not rule last week on defendants’ motion to dismiss the case. For now, the trial is scheduled to start on May 5, 2020.
It’s worth noting that since Backpage was seized by the feds (April 2018), and the federal law against prostitution ads became law (later that month), we’ve seen cops across the country complain that it’s harder to find and prosecute cases involving underage prostitution. Federal “rescue” numbers are also down in recent years, as are the total number of sex trafficking of children prosecutions by the feds.
Some will call this evidence that shutting down Backpage actually did put a dent in trafficking. But research on the online ad market says that after initial an initial drop last spring, adult ads levels have rebounded. And since the vast majority of these platforms employ no more stringent age-verification tools than Backpage did, whatever amount of ads for minors got through on Backpage is also likely getting through now.
Cops can still peruse these sites, as they did with Backpage. But the adult ad market is now more decentralized and thus harder to monitor, and has also undergone some switching to encrypted or just less visible platforms (or, alternately, moved to mainstream platforms like Instagram but with more tame public posts). More importantly, many of these other sites don’t proactively report, provide data, and work with law enforcement like Backpage did.
With Backpage.com’s shutdown, “we have taken a major step toward keeping women and children across America safe,” Jeff Sessions claimed when the site was seized.
Reading these memos, it seems clear the government put the political usefulness of a crusade against a caricatured evil tech company above the genuine safety of American women and children. Soundbite salvation came at the cost of actually fighting endangerment, exploitation, and abuse.
The G7 agreed on a financial package to help fight the wildfires raging in the Amazon rainforest, and will commit $20 whole million to the effort according to the New York Times.
Mr. Macron and President Sebastián Piñera of Chile said they also had reached an agreement in principle with the countries of the Amazon basin for a long-term program of forest protection and reforestation of cleared lands. They said more details might be presented next month at the United Nations General Assembly. –New York Times
President Trump did not attend the session on climate, oceans and biodiversity which included several non-G7 members. The US president was holding meetings with other world leaders at the time, while a senior member of the Trump administration attended instead according to White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.
As the Times notes, with tens of thousands of fires currently burning in the region, “it is not clear how far $20 million will go in combating them.”
Mr. Piñera said the affected countries particularly needed specialized aircraft and specially trained and equipped fire brigades.
Mr. Macron and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, have called the Amazon fires a global crisis and a significant contributor to climate change, and insisted that the Group of 7 address it. –New York Times
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro admitted last Thursday that farmers might be illegally setting fires to clear land for pasture, after previously blaming NGOs for the the 85% spike in wildfires, compared to 2018.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2LdyXir Tyler Durden
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection unveiled a stretch of new border wall on the Southern Border and said it completed at least 60 miles in all.
“Construction crews continue work on the new border wall system along the SW border near San Luis” in Arizona, the agency wrote on Twitter.
So far, more than 60 miles have been constructed “along the SW border since 2017,” and the agency is expected to “complete 450 miles by the end of 2020,” the tweet read.
Construction crews continue work on the new border wall system along the SW border near San Luis, AZ. In partnership with @USACEHQ, CBP has constructed over 60 miles of new border wall system along the SW border since 2017 and expects to complete 450 miles by the end of 2020. pic.twitter.com/ZMVqVteMUN
The wall is located in the Yuma Sector, which is among the busiest along the southern United States.
According to Arizona station KOLD 13, work on more border wall sections has started in Arizona and New Mexico. The work on the wall, which was a campaign promise from President Donald Trump, stretches 46 miles west of Santa Teresa, New Mexico, and also is on 2 miles of the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona.
The workers broke ground on the construction between Columbus and Santa Teresa in New Mexico, KOLD noted on Aug. 23. In Arizona, crews were seen installing 30-foot steel fencing to replace barriers near the Lukeville Port of Entry.
Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!
In July, the Supreme Court ruled to allow Trump to use military funds to build sections of the wall. The money had previously been frozen by the lower courts.
By executive order, President Trump redirected previously allocated Defense Department funds to be used for the New Mexico and Arizona construction, according to The Associated Press.
The administration has awarded $2.8 billion in contracts for barriers covering 247 miles (390 kilometers), with all but 17 miles (27 kilometers) of that to replace existing barriers instead of expanding coverage.
Recently-installed bollard style fencing on the US-Mexico border near Santa Teresa, N.M., on April 30, 2019. (PAUL RATJE/AFP/Getty Images)
Various forms of barriers already exist along 654 miles (1,046 kilometers) — about a third — of the border.
The construction comes as immigrant apprehensions have fallen sharply over the past two months due to the summer heat and a clampdown in Mexico.
Construction on a new half-mile section of border fence built by We Build the Wall at Sunland Park, N.M., on May 30, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Tens of thousands of people have come into the United States over the past year.
Construction is expected to take about 45 days. The government then plans to tackle two other projects in Arizona, including nearly 40 miles (64.4 kilometers) of fencing in other parts of the national monument and areas of Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.
In 1962 in a picturesque setting in Santa Barbara, California, two local entrepreneurs opened a low-cost, roadside inn where the nightly room rate was just $6.
They called it Motel 6.
And today the chain has grown to over 1,400 locations.
If you want the most straightforward explanation for why you should own gold, consider your local Motel 6.
It’s noteworthy that, today, the very same Santa Barbara location now rents its rooms for nearly $90 per night.
That’s a 15x increase in 57 years, an average increase of roughly 5% per year.
Are the rooms 15x bigger, or 15x nicer? Not really.
The reason the price has increased so much is because of inflation– the gradual erosion of the US dollar’s purchasing power over the past several decades.
This is why it’s important to have a conversation about gold.
Unlike paper currencies, gold has a 5,000 year track record of keeping up with inflation.
In fact, when priced in gold, a room at the Motel 6 has actually gotten cheaper.
Back in 1962, an ounce of gold would buy you about 6 nights at the motel. Now, despite the 12-fold increase in the price of a room, one ounce of gold will buy you 21 nights there.
That’s because the price of gold has largely outpaced the rate of inflation and the decline in the purchasing power of the US dollar.
Gold is a fantastic long-term store of value. It’s also an insurance policy– a hedge against paper currency, systemic risk, and uncertainty.
And there’s plenty of those in the world.
But there’s also a number of catalysts emerging right now that could send gold prices substantially higher in the near future, so it may be worth considering gold right now as a speculation.
There have been several times in history where gold has experienced wild swings in value against paper currency. And some people got very rich from it.
In the coming days and weeks, I’ll be writing a series of articles on different ways to own gold.
And it’s my hope that you’ll use the information to as part of your Plan B, not only to hedge against looming risks, but also to potentially profit from uncertainty in the system.
We’ll start with physical gold.
Think about your traditional savings: you probably have several deposit accounts at a number of banks. But the way the banking system works, there’s a middle man (the bank) between you and your money.
Having physical gold stored in an at-home safe is a great way to privately preserve your wealth without this sort of counter party risk. There’s no one else standing between you and your gold. No bank bureaucracy, no central bank, no regulator.
Your wealth can literally be held in your own hands.
It’s also a great idea to consider storing some gold overseas in a foreign, non-bank safety deposit box– but we’ll talk more about that soon.
When it comes to physical gold, you can buy either coins or bars. They come in a variety of sizes, from just 1/8th of an ounce (or smaller) to 20 kilograms or more.
And there are dozens of refiners and minters who produce coins and bars.
Now, I avoid buying gold bars because they are typically less uniform than coins. And here’s a great example why:
If you’ve ever seen those giant stacks of gold bars in the movies– those bars are supposed to be 400 ounces. Each.
But here’s a dirty secret few people know about gold–
According to the “Good Delivery” specifications for a 400 ounce gold bar traded on the London Metal Exchange, the bar could weigh as little as 350 ounces, or as much as 430 ounces, and still qualify as a 400 ounce bar.
Every one of those bars is different… there’s no uniformity.
That’s why my preferred way to own physical gold is to buy the most widely recognized coins (i.e. NOT bars) that have the highest purity.
The United States Mint, for example, produces a very famous coin called the “American Gold Eagle”, that contains 91.67% pure gold.
The American Gold Eagle is well-known throughout the world, and pretty much every coin dealer on the planet will buy and sell them.
However, I don’t recommend buying the American Gold Eagle. At 91.67%, its gold purity is too low.
Coins of lower purity can sometimes cause problems for international transport if you’re shipping gold from one country to another; if the purity is below a certain threshold, you might have to pay customs duty.
Also, lower purity coins could cause tax problems (especially for US taxpayers) if you want to qualify for a ‘like kind exchange’ under IRS section 1031. More on that another time.
So, instead of a American Gold Eagle, which is only 91.67% pure, I recommend the Canadian Gold Maple Leaf.
The Canadian Gold Maple Leaf is produced by the Royal Canadian Mint. And with a gold content of 99.99%, the Maple Leaf is one of the purest gold coins in the world.
It’s also just as renowned worldwide as the American Gold Eagle, but without the potential drawbacks. So it’s a better coin to own.
Here are a few widely recognized, high-purity gold coins which you could consider:
Canada Gold Maple Leaf (99.99% purity)
Chinese Panda (99.9% purity)
Austrian [Vienna] Philharmonic (99.99% purity)
Australian Gold Nugget (99.99% purity)
American Buffalo (99.99% purity)
There are plenty of other countries whose national mints produce high-purity gold coins– like Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Ukraine, etc.
But those countries’ coins don’t have the global recognition of a Canadian Gold Maple Leaf or Chinese Panda. And without the global recognition, they’re more difficult (and more expensive) to buy/sell.
I also recommend avoiding these coins (because the purity is too low) include:
American Gold Eagle (91.67%)
South African Krugerrand (91.67%)
United Kingdom Sovereign (91.7%)
You can buy coins in countless places, whether at a local coin dealer, or online– Kitco, APMEX, even eBay and Amazon.
Speaking at the close of the G7 summit in Biarritz, France on Monday, President Trump said he’s “open” to meeting with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani.
This was in response to French President Emmanuel Macron stating he hopes to arrange a meeting with the US and Iranian leaders in the “coming weeks”. Trump qualified during his surprise remarks regarding a potential meeting, “If the circumstances were correct or right, I would certainly agree with that.” Trump cited “good feelings” about Iran and its desire to escape currently escalating tensions.
“In the meantime they have to be good players,” he added. Otherwise, he asserted, Iran will be met with “violent force.” Trump said the Iranians “have no choice”.
NEW: Pres. Trump says he would meet with Iranian Pres. Rouhani “if the circumstances were correct.”
It’s not the first time the White House has invited Iran to the table following a summer of escalating “tanker wars” and boiling point tensions in the Persian Gulf, and amid a US military build-up in the region.
It was recently revealed that last month Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif had rebuffed a secret invitation to meet with President Trump in the oval office, which involved the mediation of Rand Paul. Just days following this, the US Treasury announced unprecedented sanctions against the Iranian top diplomat.
FM Zarif had made a surprise arrival in Biarritz for talks at the French foreign ministry’s invitation. However, there were no reported meetings or talks with American officials.
Reports suggest that Macron could currently be pressing Trump for a resumption of the Iran oil waiver program, which allowed up to eight countries such as China, India, Iraq and others to continue legal imports of Iranian crude without threat of US punishment. Both leaders sought to assure reporters that Macron had made Trump aware that Zarif would be present on the sidelines of the G7, and that they were strategizing together every step of the way.
When Trump was pressed at the G7 press conference over whether it was “realistic” to organize a meeting with Iran in only a matter of weeks, Trump responded “it does.”
“I think he’s going to want to meet. I think Iran wants to get this situation straightened out. Is that based on fact or based on gut? That’s based on gut,” Trump said. “But they want to get this situation straightened out, Jonathan. They’re really hurting badly.”
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, via the AP.
Macron, for his part, also sounded optimistic that talks will happen: “So, I hope that in the next few weeks based on our discussions, we will be able to achieve the meeting that happen I just mentioned between president Rouhani and President Trump, myself and the partners who have a role to play in nuclear negotiations will also be fully involved in these negotiations,” the French president said.
But it remains the case that Iran has vowed repeatedly that it would never bow to Washington pressures and threats, and likely Tehran will read Trump’s “talk with me or else…” style of rhetoric as precisely a continuation of the “maximum pressure” campaign that’s currently in the process of destroying Iran’s economy.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2NBHyhB Tyler Durden
Former Maricopa County Sheriff, failed U.S. Senate candidate, and habitual abuser of power Joe Arpaio announced he will run to regain his old office in 2020.
“Thousands want me to run for Sheriff,” Arpaio, 87, announced in a tweet Sunday. “Ready for bruising, bitter campaign. Never back down.”
Arpaio was first elected sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, in 1993 and held the office until he was defeated in 2016. He styled himself as “the toughest sheriff in America” and became known for his “tent city” jail, where inmates wearing old-timey striped uniforms were held in tents in the brutal desert heat.
He was also notorious for using large-scale sweeps of Latino neighborhoods and traffic stops of Latino drivers to round up illegal immigrants. The sweeps drained resources from his department and were abhorred by civil liberties advocates and immigration groups, but they brought the publicity-seeking sheriff to national attention.
In a statement accompanying his tweet, Arpaio said he would reopen his tent city jail and resume immigration enforcement.
“I will continue to stand and fight to do the right thing for Arizona and America, and will never surrender,” Arpaio said in the statement. “Those who break the law will have to deal with this Sheriff.”
In 2011, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division released a report finding that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office “engages in racial profiling of Latinos; unlawfully stops, detains, and arrests Latinos; and unlawfully retaliates against individuals who complain about or criticize MCSO’s policies or practices.”
For the next five years, Arpaio continued to flout orders by federal judges to improve the conditions inside his jails and cease the unconstitutional racial profiling of Latinos, leading to him being found guilty of both civil and criminal contempt of court in 2017.
Arpaio was also a vocal Trump supporter, and a month after his conviction, Trump returned the favor and pardoned Arpaio. I wrote then:
In pardoning Arpaio, Trump has given a free pass to an unrepentant and habitual abuser of power, a man with insufficient regard for the Constitution he swore to uphold or the separation of powers it enshrines. The move should come as no surprise. The two are kindred spirits.
Arpaio is quite sensitive about his problems with federal judges. Conservative attorney and noteddunce Larry Klayman filed a defamation lawsuit on Arpaio’s behalf against CNN and several other news outlets seeking $300 million in damages after the outlets labeled him a “convicted felon.” (Arpaio’s contempt offense was a misdemeanor, not a felony.)
A federal courtdismissed Arpaio’s lawsuit in August, writing that his complaint “comes nowhere close to pleading sufficient facts that plausibly establish ‘actual malice.’ Indeed, Plaintiff pleads no facts at all.”
In addition to unconstitutional immigration sweeps, Arpaio’s 24 years as sheriff were marred by numerous cases of brutality and misconduct, abuses of power, retaliation, and cover-ups.
In 2007, Maricopa County’s board of supervisors settled a lawsuit filed by the founders of the Phoenix New Times newspaper against Arpaio and the board for $3.5 million. The newspapers’ founders sued after they were arrested by MCSO deputies for publishing details of a grand jury subpoena for the paper’s notes and sources for its coverage of Arpaio. The charges against the newspaper were quickly dropped.
In 2016, after years of scandals and millions upon millions of dollars in lawsuit settlements, voters replaced Arpaio with a Democrat candidate buoyed by large infusions of cash from a super PAC connected to liberal megadonor George Soros.
“Tonight, the people have spoken,” Arpaio said in a campaign statement following his 2016 defeat. “And while Ava and I are disappointed in the results we respect their decision.”
In 2018, Arpaio came in third place in the Republican primary election for Arizona’s U.S. Senate seat, behind Rep. Martha McSally (R–Az.) and Kelli Ward.
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