It really wouldn't be to protect Democrats in any case, since the $40 million SBF gave them is all adequately reported without a need for a criminal trial, whereas the at least $40 million he gave to Republicans, as he helpfully explained https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donations/, was not: “All my Republican donations were dark,” he said, referring to political donations that are not publicly disclosed in FEC filings. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the f—k out if you donate to Republicans.”
“blinding hatred of the Democratic establishment and U.S. Department of Justice.”
At the risk of acting as an amateur psychologist, I think this is the most plausible recognition. Greenwald has over the last several years gone through what appears to be a very public mental breakdown.
From a viewpoint based on pure speculation, I think he carries enormous guilt for having contributed to Snowden’s permanent exile. An outcome he presumed would be averted because Democrats would pardon Snowden.
I think it’s tremendously sad. His writing, while always pedantic, was powerful and well-reasoned.
I suffer no delusion that I’ll change anyone’s mind, but Greenwald’s old writing is still online. He rarely wrote specifically about racism, but was always very critical of Islamophobia, in particular. It stretches credulity to consider him as “always being a white supremacist” or a life long fascist.
He was in the past a fierce defender of the 1st amendment, a leading voice in opposing illegal government surveillance, and fiercely anti-authoritarian.
From his 2011 book, With Liberty and Justice for Some:
From "the most important voice to have entered the political discourse in years" (Bill Moyers), a scathing critique of the two-tiered system of justice that has emerged in America
From the nation's beginnings, the law was to be the great equalizer in American life, the guarantor of a common set of rules for all. But over the past four decades, the principle of equality before the law has been effectively abolished. Instead, a two-tiered system of justice ensures that the country's political and financial class is virtually immune from prosecution, licensed to act without restraint, while the politically powerless are imprisoned with greater ease and in greater numbers than in any other country in the world.
Look I don't like the guy, but what evidence do you have that he's a white supremacist or was ten or twenty years ago? I'm pretty sure his (now tragically deceased) husband and adopted children are mixed race.
So, I looked this up, he represented white supremacists in civil liberties cases, which is exactly what civil liberties lawyers do. His most famous case was his attempt to reverse the disbarment of Michael Hale, who had been disbarred for his odious political views. You don't have to be a white supremacist to worry about the implications of disbarring people for fringe political views.
Ironically, Hale is now in prison for trying to hire a hitman to kill a judge, which does feel like something they ought to disbar you for.
Absolute lawyer brain lmao we don't even need to go into GG's rabid, over-zealous defense of the Nazi here, but it is worth saying that there are plenty of free speech cases worth way more to civil liberties than some Nazi's, unless you're like some completely broke, no-prospects attorney, you can simply choose not to represent the Nazis.
Jesus H Christ, the ACLU defended Nazis too, this is such a braindead take. If you're going to start impugning civil liberties lawyers for who their defendants are, I predict that Ken would agree that's stupid.
Are there, though? Like, I'd think the free speech cases worth the most are the ones where you defend the rights of the most odious speech, with which you most vehemently disagree.
"there are plenty of free speech cases worth way more to civil liberties than some Nazi's"
From the late 60s to the start of War on Terror, arguably the biggest free speech cases involved Nazis and their ilk because no one else was being censored. Brandenburg v. Ohio, Nazis v. Village of Skokie . . . the plaintiffs in these cases were horrible people but the precedents set in these cases protect all our rights. If it weren't for Brandenburg for example, it's easy to imagine a Trump era Justice Department prosecuting Antifa and BLM-types for incitement.
A lot of folks, many of them Jewish, believe Jews are white people. I guess you don't. I'm a holdout on the Jewish side myself, preferring not to be white if I can get away with it, but no reason to suppose Greenwald is.
Because what’s really called for here is more conspiracy theory.
Greenwald is a dedicated opponent of the intelligence/law enforcement state with a conspiratorial bent. Back during the Bush years, his allies in that fight were on the left, and he occasionally veered into left wing nutbar territory. These days, his allies are on the right, so he occasionally veers into right wing nutbar territory.
No need for a global conspiracy to explain it. Besides, all that Russian collusion nonsense is pretty well debunked at this point.
They definitely are not. He's a massive transmisist these days, scaremongering about how much power trans people allegedly have. There is not a factual thing about that position.
Greenwald has a long and documented history as an amoral opportunist. Within months of having direct dealings with Russian intelligence services, he performed a perfect heel turn and has become an absolutely reliable source for whatever disinformation Russia is pushing this week.
But I do find it adorable that you think “Russian collusion” – an entirely different issue than the known and documented history of Russia using blackmail to recruit agents of influence in the US press – can be debunked simply by saying “debunked” a whole lot.
Greenwald has been an antiwar kook since the Bush administration. Mostly he is unusual because he didn’t suddenly lose interest in Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as a Democrat was in the White House. He views pretty much all US foreign policy as an exercise in graft by the military industrial complex, regardless of which party is in power. It is unsurprising to anyone familiar with his writing that he would have a similar opinion about Ukraine.
So what you have is a reporter who is writing about Ukraine and Russia talking to people from the Russian intelligence service (which is part of his job) and then saying the same sorts of things about the Ukraine that he tends to say any time the US is involved in a war abroad. It is technically possible that you are correct, in the sense that it is technically possible that Oppenheimer was a communist agent, but you are going to have to come up with a better argument.
And I apologize if my lumping you in with those who accuse their political opponents of being Russian agents on flimsy evidence offends you. It’s just that you look like a duck and you quack like a duck…
Your problem is you have to go back to the Bush years to support your position. We’ve had 8 years of Obama, when Glenn made his turn, four years of Turnip, when Glenn had very little to say about government beyond what some Dems were up to, and now Biden, when Glenn merely reinforces what he’s been doing for *most* of this century.
Except Greenwald’s “turn” during the Obama years consisted of switching from blaming Republicans for bad behavior in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the security state to blaming Democrats for bad behavior in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the security state.
Given that Democrats were in charge, the odd thing is not that Greenwald made this switch, it’s that so many of his colleagues lost interest in all three entirely as soon as Bush left the White House.
I don’t follow him in any organized fashion, but I recall some aggressive articles about the security state during the Trump era too.
If you truncate your analysis to the beginning of the Obama presidency, then Democrats have held the White House for 10 of those 14 years. A habitual critic of the US government will have spent a lot more of that time attacking Democrats than he has attacking Republicans, simply because there has been more opportunity.
I don’t think I’ve seen someone use “choad” as an unironic insult since I was a 10th grader in high school. It is quite literally sophomoric.
If you are going to have a flailing, incoherent argument with the Trump supporter in your head, please try to use grown-up vocabulary. You are driving down property values.
A common feature of conspiracy theories is that if you get 95% of the way to doing something, somehow it becomes more compelling evidence that you never, ever meant to do the thing than if you had done 0%. As Ken says, campaign finance violations are the very least of what SBF stands accused of, and if the Feds had ignored that aspect and simply indicted him on a bazillion charges of defrauding the public no one would have said boo. But since they tried to indict him on that, and only backed down at the last minute, it must have been a sham all along.
There are probably plenty of political issues the US would deem important enough to strongarm the Bahamas over. This one isn't in the top 1000 though. It's not the anthill anyone should die on.
Let's see … in the world according to Glenn Greenwald, the US has the imperialist power to bend the Bahamas to its will over some minor detail of SBF's indictment. But the US has no power to speed up the l*o*n*g extradition process of Julian Assange, even though it desperately wants to give Assange a one-way ticket to SuperMax.
Even when I generally agreed with Greenwald's conclusions back in the day, I could never stand him. His prosecutor's self-righteous tone was always grating, no matter which side of the debate you're on.
Ken, awesome article. A side issue. Had an hour-long friendly conversation with a Trump supporter. What I learned is that this nice guy’s views were formed by Fox News. And he was totally vague in what he heard and now thought. For example, “Everybody keeps US secret documents, they’re all the same, why is Biden exempt but not Trump”. My point is, Glenn is still successful at undermining Biden and all Democrats by his lame assertions and his use of the “Soros” word. This person taught me that all anyone on Fox has to do is assert anything, then mention Soros for a vague “bankman-fried-corrupt-Democrats-Hunterlaptop-JoeBiden” thought to take hold. Your essay is important for those not locked into Fox thought. For everyone else, we’ll, I am despondent.
It seems obvious that GG, absolute loon/fellow traveler of Bolsonaro that he is, isn't saying "The US was bullied by the Bahamas!" or "I think the US should break its extradition treaty with the Bahamas." It's "The US has never had a problem breaking international law, why didn't they here?"
I'm not sure how else to read the second tweet other than "I do not believe that the US has dropped these charges out of respect for the extradition treaty." Do you think he needed to do a 15 tweet explanation of the treaty first?
The second tweet is meant to deceive people who aren’t familiar with the law by suggesting it’s just about “heeding” a “demand” and provides no relevant facts or law.
I guess I thought the sarcasm there was immediately recognizable. One does not have to know the full details of another country's laws/our agreements with said country to doubt the sincerity of the US' claim to respect said laws/agreements.
It’s recognizable that it’s sarcasm — about a strawman version of the government’s position.
Do you think an average Glenn reader understands that he’s saying “they should just violate the treaty” as opposed to “they should just ignore the Bahama’s request about how we run our criminal cases?”
Also, still waiting to hear a plausible theory about why the U.S. should violate a treaty over a charge that makes absolutely zero impact on the ultimate outcome.
As I've noted, it's "Why is the US, with a long history of breaking treaties, being so respectful of *this* treaty in *this* circumstance?" not "They should just violate the treaty." It's an expression of basic skepticism about the US govt's stated aims, which is in fact a good thing to have. Given that public tweets are viewable *by the entire public*, I don't think that we can learn much by speculating on the ignorance of his core audience or his supposed failure to fashion his tweet according to that ignorance.
I guess Glenn must be a fan of SBF, and doesn't think he should be prosecuted for any crime because he's a smart guy, right?
Wrong, Glenn. Our need to prosecute SBF is not outweighed by the fact that we have to abide by certain provisions of a treaty signed in good faith by both parties.
Or else we'd be going back to those days when rendition was legal and the CIA put people in prisons in foreign countries because we could.
Besides, there are plenty of other charges that he was extradited on that will more than likely (if he is convicted) put him in prison for more than a few years.
And that's without breaking any treaties at all.
I used to respect Greenwald but somewhere along the line he became a fan of Faux 'News' and drank all their kool aid. Too bad. He used to be a good journalist.
I don't care what the former President of the United States says (or the people who tell him things), but you, not he, have a better ability to "...know words, and have the best words."
Furthermore, your podcast with Josh proves you also better pronounce those best words, as well as others, better than the self-designated 'champeen of words.'
Lawyer Ken, you've also proven to have greater alacrity with longer words compared to the former President's championship level of monosylabic "best" ones.
‐‐‐----------
BTW - if you have not yet done so, view the short-lived 2017 legal mockumentary series, "Trial & Error," with John Lithgow.
It gives great insight to your continual admonition for we in need of a Defense Atty to shut the fuque up once charged with a crime.
Mr. Lithgow's character, Larry Henderson, continually offers incriminating "words" for the best reasons about his involvement with the crime.
It really wouldn't be to protect Democrats in any case, since the $40 million SBF gave them is all adequately reported without a need for a criminal trial, whereas the at least $40 million he gave to Republicans, as he helpfully explained https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donations/, was not: “All my Republican donations were dark,” he said, referring to political donations that are not publicly disclosed in FEC filings. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the f—k out if you donate to Republicans.”
Wow, how shocking that the staggeringly racist account would be a fan of Greenwald.
Same account absolutely hysterically lost its shit back when I blocked it years ago. I mean just fuckin melted down.
That tracks. He's a real bag of crap, that one.
I appreciate you linking the relevant documents, so we don’t have to hunt them down.
“blinding hatred of the Democratic establishment and U.S. Department of Justice.”
At the risk of acting as an amateur psychologist, I think this is the most plausible recognition. Greenwald has over the last several years gone through what appears to be a very public mental breakdown.
From a viewpoint based on pure speculation, I think he carries enormous guilt for having contributed to Snowden’s permanent exile. An outcome he presumed would be averted because Democrats would pardon Snowden.
I think it’s tremendously sad. His writing, while always pedantic, was powerful and well-reasoned.
I suffer no delusion that I’ll change anyone’s mind, but Greenwald’s old writing is still online. He rarely wrote specifically about racism, but was always very critical of Islamophobia, in particular. It stretches credulity to consider him as “always being a white supremacist” or a life long fascist.
He was in the past a fierce defender of the 1st amendment, a leading voice in opposing illegal government surveillance, and fiercely anti-authoritarian.
https://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com
From his 2011 book, With Liberty and Justice for Some:
From "the most important voice to have entered the political discourse in years" (Bill Moyers), a scathing critique of the two-tiered system of justice that has emerged in America
From the nation's beginnings, the law was to be the great equalizer in American life, the guarantor of a common set of rules for all. But over the past four decades, the principle of equality before the law has been effectively abolished. Instead, a two-tiered system of justice ensures that the country's political and financial class is virtually immune from prosecution, licensed to act without restraint, while the politically powerless are imprisoned with greater ease and in greater numbers than in any other country in the world.
“No, you do the research,” he’s says to other poster. You’re just telling on yourself, bro.
🤡🫅
Look I don't like the guy, but what evidence do you have that he's a white supremacist or was ten or twenty years ago? I'm pretty sure his (now tragically deceased) husband and adopted children are mixed race.
So, I looked this up, he represented white supremacists in civil liberties cases, which is exactly what civil liberties lawyers do. His most famous case was his attempt to reverse the disbarment of Michael Hale, who had been disbarred for his odious political views. You don't have to be a white supremacist to worry about the implications of disbarring people for fringe political views.
Ironically, Hale is now in prison for trying to hire a hitman to kill a judge, which does feel like something they ought to disbar you for.
Absolute lawyer brain lmao we don't even need to go into GG's rabid, over-zealous defense of the Nazi here, but it is worth saying that there are plenty of free speech cases worth way more to civil liberties than some Nazi's, unless you're like some completely broke, no-prospects attorney, you can simply choose not to represent the Nazis.
Jesus H Christ, the ACLU defended Nazis too, this is such a braindead take. If you're going to start impugning civil liberties lawyers for who their defendants are, I predict that Ken would agree that's stupid.
Are there, though? Like, I'd think the free speech cases worth the most are the ones where you defend the rights of the most odious speech, with which you most vehemently disagree.
"there are plenty of free speech cases worth way more to civil liberties than some Nazi's"
From the late 60s to the start of War on Terror, arguably the biggest free speech cases involved Nazis and their ilk because no one else was being censored. Brandenburg v. Ohio, Nazis v. Village of Skokie . . . the plaintiffs in these cases were horrible people but the precedents set in these cases protect all our rights. If it weren't for Brandenburg for example, it's easy to imagine a Trump era Justice Department prosecuting Antifa and BLM-types for incitement.
I don't think representing a client means you share their views. Everyone deserves a competent and enthusiastic legal defense.
Do you object to all (accused) criminals having good legal defense, or only the ones who say things you find objectionable?
So, I guess the ACLU is a racist org for having defended the Skokie, IL case.
Holy crap could you be any more one-dimensional about associations?
And to glean undying for support my follows is equally braindead.
You realize he’s Jewish, right?
Many self-loathers take the opposition's side in intellectual discussions.
A lot of folks, many of them Jewish, believe Jews are white people. I guess you don't. I'm a holdout on the Jewish side myself, preferring not to be white if I can get away with it, but no reason to suppose Greenwald is.
This: "Now, though, he’s more like his braying followers, portraying the rule of law as some effeminate sigil of the decline of America."
Sigil is a fine word and will bear repeating. Not used nearly enough, in my humble opinion, and I rejoiced to encounter. Thanks muchly.
These days Grima says whatever his FSB handler tells him to say.
Because what’s really called for here is more conspiracy theory.
Greenwald is a dedicated opponent of the intelligence/law enforcement state with a conspiratorial bent. Back during the Bush years, his allies in that fight were on the left, and he occasionally veered into left wing nutbar territory. These days, his allies are on the right, so he occasionally veers into right wing nutbar territory.
No need for a global conspiracy to explain it. Besides, all that Russian collusion nonsense is pretty well debunked at this point.
“Occasionally”
Touché.
He really does do some good work, and at least to my knowledge his facts are always solid. He does have a tendency to overinterpret.
"to my knowledge his facts are always solid."
They definitely are not. He's a massive transmisist these days, scaremongering about how much power trans people allegedly have. There is not a factual thing about that position.
Go away, stalker.
History and fact are what I call for.
Greenwald has a long and documented history as an amoral opportunist. Within months of having direct dealings with Russian intelligence services, he performed a perfect heel turn and has become an absolutely reliable source for whatever disinformation Russia is pushing this week.
But I do find it adorable that you think “Russian collusion” – an entirely different issue than the known and documented history of Russia using blackmail to recruit agents of influence in the US press – can be debunked simply by saying “debunked” a whole lot.
That is exceptionally weak tea.
Greenwald has been an antiwar kook since the Bush administration. Mostly he is unusual because he didn’t suddenly lose interest in Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as a Democrat was in the White House. He views pretty much all US foreign policy as an exercise in graft by the military industrial complex, regardless of which party is in power. It is unsurprising to anyone familiar with his writing that he would have a similar opinion about Ukraine.
So what you have is a reporter who is writing about Ukraine and Russia talking to people from the Russian intelligence service (which is part of his job) and then saying the same sorts of things about the Ukraine that he tends to say any time the US is involved in a war abroad. It is technically possible that you are correct, in the sense that it is technically possible that Oppenheimer was a communist agent, but you are going to have to come up with a better argument.
And I apologize if my lumping you in with those who accuse their political opponents of being Russian agents on flimsy evidence offends you. It’s just that you look like a duck and you quack like a duck…
Your problem is you have to go back to the Bush years to support your position. We’ve had 8 years of Obama, when Glenn made his turn, four years of Turnip, when Glenn had very little to say about government beyond what some Dems were up to, and now Biden, when Glenn merely reinforces what he’s been doing for *most* of this century.
Except Greenwald’s “turn” during the Obama years consisted of switching from blaming Republicans for bad behavior in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the security state to blaming Democrats for bad behavior in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the security state.
Given that Democrats were in charge, the odd thing is not that Greenwald made this switch, it’s that so many of his colleagues lost interest in all three entirely as soon as Bush left the White House.
I don’t follow him in any organized fashion, but I recall some aggressive articles about the security state during the Trump era too.
If you truncate your analysis to the beginning of the Obama presidency, then Democrats have held the White House for 10 of those 14 years. A habitual critic of the US government will have spent a lot more of that time attacking Democrats than he has attacking Republicans, simply because there has been more opportunity.
Did you have a particular point you disagreed with, or was this just an Internet drive-by?
I don’t think I’ve seen someone use “choad” as an unironic insult since I was a 10th grader in high school. It is quite literally sophomoric.
If you are going to have a flailing, incoherent argument with the Trump supporter in your head, please try to use grown-up vocabulary. You are driving down property values.
I hadn't checked his feed in a while and ... just wow. He has gone so far in with the nutter crowd it's unbelievable. And sad.
A common feature of conspiracy theories is that if you get 95% of the way to doing something, somehow it becomes more compelling evidence that you never, ever meant to do the thing than if you had done 0%. As Ken says, campaign finance violations are the very least of what SBF stands accused of, and if the Feds had ignored that aspect and simply indicted him on a bazillion charges of defrauding the public no one would have said boo. But since they tried to indict him on that, and only backed down at the last minute, it must have been a sham all along.
There are probably plenty of political issues the US would deem important enough to strongarm the Bahamas over. This one isn't in the top 1000 though. It's not the anthill anyone should die on.
Let's see … in the world according to Glenn Greenwald, the US has the imperialist power to bend the Bahamas to its will over some minor detail of SBF's indictment. But the US has no power to speed up the l*o*n*g extradition process of Julian Assange, even though it desperately wants to give Assange a one-way ticket to SuperMax.
Even when I generally agreed with Greenwald's conclusions back in the day, I could never stand him. His prosecutor's self-righteous tone was always grating, no matter which side of the debate you're on.
Ken, awesome article. A side issue. Had an hour-long friendly conversation with a Trump supporter. What I learned is that this nice guy’s views were formed by Fox News. And he was totally vague in what he heard and now thought. For example, “Everybody keeps US secret documents, they’re all the same, why is Biden exempt but not Trump”. My point is, Glenn is still successful at undermining Biden and all Democrats by his lame assertions and his use of the “Soros” word. This person taught me that all anyone on Fox has to do is assert anything, then mention Soros for a vague “bankman-fried-corrupt-Democrats-Hunterlaptop-JoeBiden” thought to take hold. Your essay is important for those not locked into Fox thought. For everyone else, we’ll, I am despondent.
Two Ken articles in a week? Must be Christmas! Appreciate the informative posts.
As usual, Popehat brings receipts. Love it!
Man, that's a herculean number of words when "This guy Glenn takes Joe Rogan seriously" would suffice.
It seems obvious that GG, absolute loon/fellow traveler of Bolsonaro that he is, isn't saying "The US was bullied by the Bahamas!" or "I think the US should break its extradition treaty with the Bahamas." It's "The US has never had a problem breaking international law, why didn't they here?"
Except that’s not what he says, he doesn’t mention the treaty, and he strawmans the U.S. position. Look at his text.
I'm not sure how else to read the second tweet other than "I do not believe that the US has dropped these charges out of respect for the extradition treaty." Do you think he needed to do a 15 tweet explanation of the treaty first?
The second tweet is meant to deceive people who aren’t familiar with the law by suggesting it’s just about “heeding” a “demand” and provides no relevant facts or law.
I guess I thought the sarcasm there was immediately recognizable. One does not have to know the full details of another country's laws/our agreements with said country to doubt the sincerity of the US' claim to respect said laws/agreements.
It’s recognizable that it’s sarcasm — about a strawman version of the government’s position.
Do you think an average Glenn reader understands that he’s saying “they should just violate the treaty” as opposed to “they should just ignore the Bahama’s request about how we run our criminal cases?”
Also, still waiting to hear a plausible theory about why the U.S. should violate a treaty over a charge that makes absolutely zero impact on the ultimate outcome.
As I've noted, it's "Why is the US, with a long history of breaking treaties, being so respectful of *this* treaty in *this* circumstance?" not "They should just violate the treaty." It's an expression of basic skepticism about the US govt's stated aims, which is in fact a good thing to have. Given that public tweets are viewable *by the entire public*, I don't think that we can learn much by speculating on the ignorance of his core audience or his supposed failure to fashion his tweet according to that ignorance.
I guess Glenn must be a fan of SBF, and doesn't think he should be prosecuted for any crime because he's a smart guy, right?
Wrong, Glenn. Our need to prosecute SBF is not outweighed by the fact that we have to abide by certain provisions of a treaty signed in good faith by both parties.
Or else we'd be going back to those days when rendition was legal and the CIA put people in prisons in foreign countries because we could.
Besides, there are plenty of other charges that he was extradited on that will more than likely (if he is convicted) put him in prison for more than a few years.
And that's without breaking any treaties at all.
I used to respect Greenwald but somewhere along the line he became a fan of Faux 'News' and drank all their kool aid. Too bad. He used to be a good journalist.
Ken,
I don't care what the former President of the United States says (or the people who tell him things), but you, not he, have a better ability to "...know words, and have the best words."
Furthermore, your podcast with Josh proves you also better pronounce those best words, as well as others, better than the self-designated 'champeen of words.'
Lawyer Ken, you've also proven to have greater alacrity with longer words compared to the former President's championship level of monosylabic "best" ones.
‐‐‐----------
BTW - if you have not yet done so, view the short-lived 2017 legal mockumentary series, "Trial & Error," with John Lithgow.
It gives great insight to your continual admonition for we in need of a Defense Atty to shut the fuque up once charged with a crime.
Mr. Lithgow's character, Larry Henderson, continually offers incriminating "words" for the best reasons about his involvement with the crime.