Argument analysis: Justices seem receptive to inmate’s juror-discrimination claims

On March 21, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

The Supreme Court heard oral argument yesterday in the case of an African-American death-row inmate in Mississippi who was convicted by a jury that included just one African-American juror. The inmate, Curtis Flowers, argues that the jury selection in his case violates the Constitution – especially because the lead prosecutor had a long history of eliminating potential African-American jurors from the jury pool. After nearly an hour of oral argument that included the first questions by Justice Clarence Thomas since 2016, there seemed to be at least five justices who agree with Flowers.

At a trial, lawyers on both sides of a case have a certain number of “peremptory strikes,” which they can use to remove jurors from the pool of potential jurors without having to provide a reason. In 1986, in a case called Batson v. Kentucky, the Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors cannot use their peremptory strikes to remove jurors based only on the jurors’ race.

When Flowers went to trial in 2010, it was the sixth time that he had been tried for the 1996 murders of four people in a Mississippi furniture store. He was convicted and sentenced to death at the first two trials, but those convictions were reversed by the Mississippi Supreme Court, which found that the lead prosecutor, Doug Evans, had engaged in intentional misconduct.

Evans served as the lead prosecutor at the next four trials. Flowers was again convicted and sentenced to death at the third trial, but the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned his convictions: It ruled that Evans had violated Batson when he used all 15 of his peremptory strikes to remove African-American members of the jury pool.

The jury deadlocked at Flowers’ fourth and fifth trials. At Flowers’ sixth trial, Evans allowed the first of six potential African-American jurors to be seated on the jury, but then he struck the remaining five prospective African-American jurors, resulting in a jury with 11 white jurors and just one African-American juror. Flowers was convicted and sentenced to death.

Arguing for Flowers, lawyer Sheri Johnson told the justices that the “only plausible interpretation of all of the evidence viewed cumulatively is that Doug Evans began jury selection in” the sixth trial “with an unconstitutional end in mind”: “to seat as few African American jurors as he could.”

Although Johnson emphasized Evans’ history of striking potential African-American jurors throughout the six trials in Flowers’ case, much of the oral argument was spent grappling with the specifics of Evans’ strikes in the sixth trial, and in particular some potential jurors’ relationships with the victims and their families and the extent to which Evans had questioned the would-be jurors about potential biases.

Justice Samuel Alito, perhaps the justice who is most often supportive of the prosecution, kicked off this discussion. Alito acknowledged that the “history of this case prior to this trial is very troubling.” But did the sixth trial, standing alone, he asked Johnson, violate Batson?

Johnson replied that it did, describing the evidence of discrimination as “clear and convincing.”

But Alito was less convinced. He pushed back with facts suggesting to him that Evans had non-discriminatory reasons to strike some of the African-American jurors.

Perhaps most crucially for Flowers, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that he regarded Evans’ track record as problematic: “We can’t take the history” of Batson violations “out of the case,” Kavanaugh told Jason Davis, who argued on behalf of the state, as Kavanaugh noted that Evans had removed 41 of 42 potential African-American jurors from the jury pool during Flowers’ trials.

Justice Stephen Breyer chimed in, reciting the history of the African-American jurors whom Evans had removed during the first four trials. In light of that history, Breyer told Davis, “I don’t think it’s going to take much” more in the sixth trial to show a Batson violation.

Kavanaugh spoke out even more strongly later. He told Davis that the “critical sentence” in the court’s opinion in Batson was that you “can’t just assume that someone’s going to be favorable to someone because they share the same race.” But given the history of this case, Kavanaugh queried, with Evans striking 41 out of 42 potential African-American jurors, “how do you look at that and not come away thinking what was going on there was” exactly what Batson said prosecutors can’t do?

Chief Justice John Roberts moved to what he clearly regarded as the bigger picture: how to establish a rule that will govern future cases. This case, Roberts observed, “is unusual because you have the extensive history” of misconduct and Batson violations by Evans. But how far back, Roberts asked, should courts look to evaluate a prosecutor’s past misconduct? If the prosecutor had violated Batson once, 20 years ago, is that something that courts should consider now?

Johnson responded that courts should indeed consider it – to a point. Courts should look at it, she argued, but they should also take into account how recently the misconduct happened, “whether it’s on a relatively similar matter, whether the person has the same motive.”

Kavanaugh also asked Davis whether the Mississippi attorney general could (and perhaps should) have decided to prosecute the sixth trial, “preferably in a different county,” which might have removed some of the problems with potential jurors in a small town knowing the victims and the defendant.

Davis explained that having the attorney general’s office take over “was not an option in this case” because the attorney general can only take over if local prosecutors ask for help – which Evans had not.

Alito picked up on this idea later, perhaps looking for a narrow way for the court to rule for Flowers. “Could we say in this case,” Alito asked Davis, “because of the unusual and really disturbing history, this case just could not have been tried this sixth time by the same prosecutor” because the history makes it too hard to “untangle what happened before from the particular strikes in this case?”

Davis didn’t want to cede this point, telling Alito that “hindsight is 20/20.”

By the time Davis sat down, Johnson apparently felt sufficiently confident in how the argument was going for her client that she planned to forgo her four minutes of rebuttal time.

But then Justice Clarence Thomas, who hadn’t spoken up at oral argument since 2016, had a question. He wanted to know whether Flowers’ trial lawyer had used any of her peremptory strikes – and, if so, what was the race of the jurors whom she had struck.

Johnson responded that the trial lawyer had only used her strikes to remove white jurors from the juror pool, adding that “her motivation is not the question here. The question is the motivation of Doug Evans.”

Sotomayor jumped in, pointing out that, as a result of Evans’ strikes, there was only one potential African-American juror in the jury pool for Flowers’ lawyer to strike anyway.

Oral arguments are not always an accurate predictor of how a case will ultimately turn out. But here, Flowers seemed to have support not only from the court’s four more liberal justices but also from Kavanaugh and perhaps Roberts – which, if true, would give him the five votes needed to reverse the Mississippi Supreme Court’s decision in the state’s favor. A decision in the case is expected by summer.

This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.

***

Past case linked to in this post:

Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986)

Editor’s Note: Analysis based on transcript of oral argument.

The post Argument analysis: Justices seem receptive to inmate’s juror-discrimination claims appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

Schwarzenegger’s Three-Step Plan for Donald Trump

On March 21, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain saw in each other a willingness to buck the Republican Party and became fast friends and political allies. Mindful of McCain’s legacy, the former California governor said on Wednesday that he couldn’t stay silent in the face of President Donald Trump’s recent spate of attacks on the late senator.

He told me that Trump’s swipes at McCain are both disgraceful and destructive. “He was just an unbelievable person,” Schwarzenegger said. “So an attack on him is absolutely unacceptable if he’s alive or dead—but even twice as unacceptable since he passed away a few months ago. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to do that. I just think it’s a shame that the president lets himself down to that kind of level. We will be lucky if everyone in Washington followed McCain’s example, because he represented courage.”

In a jab at the president’s 243-pound physique, the former world-champion bodybuilder said that Trump should turn his attention to infrastructure and immigration reform when he wakes up and starts his morning workout.

“I know he must be working out every day, because he’s so unbelievably in shape,” Schwarzenegger said.

Trump’s tirade began with a pair of weekend tweets laced with falsehoods. The first, on Saturday afternoon, scorned McCain for forwarding the now-famous Russia dossier to the FBI and casting the deciding vote that blocked Trump’s promised repeal of Obamacare:

Spreading the fake and totally discredited Dossier “is unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain.” Ken Starr, Former Independent Counsel. He had far worse “stains” than this, including thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace!

His second tweet came early on Sunday morning:

So it was indeed (just proven in court papers) “last in his class” (Annapolis) John McCain that sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election. He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage!

Why Trump had become so agitated seven months after McCain’s death was not entirely clear. One White House aide says that excoriating McCain isn’t a “winning issue,” and that officials would like to see Trump drop the subject. People close to the White House say that he might be feeling pressure from the Russia investigation, or that he was set off by something he saw on cable-TV news.

[Read: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s war on gerrymandering is just beginning]

Whatever it was, the president hadn’t exorcised those demons by Wednesday, when he spoke at a manufacturing plant in Ohio and again invoked the dossier. “What did he do? He didn’t call me,” Trump said. “He turned it over to the FBI hoping to put me in jeopardy. That’s not the nicest thing to do.”

Trump went on to say that he had “never liked [McCain] much. Hasn’t been for me. I really probably never will.” He wasn’t finished. Trump noted that he’d approved state funeral arrangements for McCain. And he said, “I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted … but I didn’t get a thank you.”

Trump wasn’t invited to the McCain funeral service, which some of his allies describe as a hurtful snub. “McCain’s funeral was calibrated to insult Trump—from not inviting him to the way the media played it up,” the former senior White House aide Steve Bannon told me before the president spoke in Ohio.

[Read: Arnold Schwarzenegger contemplates his legacy]

A former aide to McCain, Mark Salter, told me that McCain did the responsible thing and gave the dossier to law enforcement. “What would you have him do?” Salter asked. “He didn’t have his own intelligence agency. He had to give it to people who can do something with it.” As for Trump not having been invited to the funeral, Salter said, “I don’t think it’s a surprise that [McCain’s] family wouldn’t want him there.”

Only a few Republican senators have, like Schwarzenegger, condemned Trump’s attacks. Tepidly. Most have stayed silent, possibly mindful of his hold over the party rank and file. Defying the president invites scornful tweets, if not a primary opponent.

McCain’s closest friend in the Senate, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, sent out tweets Sunday that defended McCain while not mentioning Trump.

He offered a more pointed statement on Wednesday, telling reporters in South Carolina, “I think the president’s comments about Senator McCain hurt him more than they hurt the legacy of Senator McCain.”

Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who’s had an on-again, off-again relationship with Trump, tweeted on Tuesday, “I can’t understand why the President would, once again, disparage a man as exemplary as my friend John McCain: heroic, courageous, patriotic, honorable, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, empathetic, and driven by duty to family, country, and God.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky wrote a tweet Wednesday that hailed McCain as a “rare patriot and genuine American hero”—but also omitted mention of Trump.

In his recent attacks, Trump has avoided mention of McCain’s record as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. During the presidential race, Trump said he preferred people “who weren’t captured,” referring to the years McCain, shot down as a Navy pilot, spent captive at the so-called Hanoi Hilton.

Schwarzenegger described McCain as “a hero.”

“He was a great public servant, no two ways about that,” Schwarzenegger said. “He was known for his honesty, for his courage, and his patriotism and his service.”

The war hero turned politician and the movie star turned politician joined forces in 2005, when McCain helped Schwarzenegger push for a package of education and spending initiatives in California. Voters defeated the measures, but Schwarzenegger didn’t forget the favor; he endorsed McCain in the 2008 Republican presidential-nomination fight.

Schwarzenegger is busy these days. An aide says a new Terminator film is coming out in the fall. He is working to draw fairer electoral districts, ending the gerrymandering that protects incumbents. He doesn’t want to be a pundit, and the last thing he needed was a fight with Trump. But staying quiet wasn’t an option.

Trump, Schwarzenegger suggested, should shift his focus from tweeting to governing.“The president should lift people up, should lift the nation up rather than always tearing people down,” he said.

Trump, he said, should consult the first lady, who has made online bullying a cause: “Why don’t you go and sit down with your wife for just a few minutes, Mr. President, and listen to the first lady when she’s talking about stopping online bullying. That is a really great message. Which way do we go? Your way, or her way? That’s really the question here.”

Women Who Worked with Billionaire Philanthropist Michael Steinhardt Say He Asked for Sex

On March 21, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

by Hannah Dreyfus for ProPublica and Sharon Otterman, The New York Times

Sheila Katz was a young executive at Hillel International, the Jewish college outreach organization, when she was sent to visit the philanthropist Michael H. Steinhardt, a New York billionaire. He had once been a major donor, and her goal was to persuade him to increase his support. But in their first encounter, he asked her repeatedly if she wanted to have sex with him, she said.

Deborah Mohile Goldberg worked for Birthright Israel, a nonprofit co-founded by Steinhardt, when he asked her if she and a female colleague would like to join him in a threesome, she said.

Natalie Goldfein, an officer at a small nonprofit that Steinhardt had helped establish, said he suggested in a meeting that they have babies together.

Steinhardt, 78, a retired hedge fund founder, is among an elite cadre of donors who bankroll some of the country’s most prestigious Jewish nonprofits. His foundations have given at least $127 million to charitable causes since 2003, public filings show.

But for more than two decades, that generosity has come at a price. Six women said in interviews with The New York Times and ProPublica, and one said in a lawsuit, that Steinhardt asked them to have sex with him, or made sexual requests of them, while they were relying on or seeking his support. He also regularly made comments to women about their bodies and their fertility, according to the seven women and 16 other people who said they were present when Steinhardt made such comments.

“Institutions in the Jewish world have long known about his behavior, and they have looked the other way,” said Katz, 35, a vice president at Hillel International. “No one was surprised when I shared that this happened.”

Steinhardt declined to be interviewed for this article. In a statement, he said he regretted that he had made comments in professional settings through the years “that were boorish, disrespectful, and just plain dumb.” Those comments, he said, were always meant humorously.

“In my nearly 80 years on earth, I have never tried to touch any woman or man inappropriately,” Steinhardt said in his statement. Provocative comments, he said, “were part of my schtick since before I had a penny to my name, and I unequivocally meant them in jest. I fully understand why they were inappropriate. I am sorry.”

But through a spokesman, Steinhardt denied many of the specific actions or words attributed to him by the seven women.

A lifelong New Yorker, Steinhardt has given millions to city institutions. NYU Steinhardt is New York University’s largest graduate school, with programs in education, communication and health. There is a Steinhardt conservatory at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and a Steinhardt gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But he wields his widest influence in the tight-knit world of Jewish philanthropy.

Along with Charles Bronfman, a billionaire heir to the Seagram liquor fortune, Steinhardt founded Birthright Israel, which has sent more than 600,000 young Jews on free trips to Israel. He spearheaded the creation of a network of Hebrew charter schools. A new natural history museum in Tel Aviv bears his name.

While Steinhardt has been celebrated for his largess, interviews with dozens of people depict a man whose behavior went largely unchecked for years because of his status and wealth.

None of the women interviewed by the Times and ProPublica said Steinhardt touched them inappropriately, but they said they felt pressured to endure demeaning sexual comments and requests out of fear that complaining could damage their organizations or derail their careers. Witnesses to the behavior said nothing or laughed along, women said.

“He set a horrifying standard of what women who work in the Jewish community were expected to endure,” said Rabbi Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi, a Jewish scholar. She said that Steinhardt suggested that she become his concubine while he was funding her first rabbinical position in the mid-1990s.

The spokesman, Davidson Goldin, said Steinhardt had never “seriously, credibly” asked anyone for sex.

Rabbi Irving Greenberg, who was the president of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life for a decade, said he repeatedly rebuked Steinhardt for using belittling language toward both men and women. That tension was a factor in his deciding to leave the job in 2007.

Steinhardt could be harsh with men, but his comments to women focused on their appearance and fertility, Greenberg said. When Steinhardt talked to women, the rabbi said, “the implication was that they were not on par with men.”

He said that the comments were made in a bantering, not threatening, tone and that he never saw Steinhardt directly proposition anyone. Still, he said, “I understand that the women felt more shaken or threatened than I recognized at the time.”

Katz said she was hoping Steinhardt would become a funder of her work at Hillel when she met with him in his Fifth Avenue office in 2015 to interview him for a video Hillel had commissioned about Jewish entrepreneurs. But she said that as the filming got underway, he repeatedly asked if she would have sex with the “king of Israel,” which he had told her was his preferred title for the video. He then asked her directly to have sex with him, she said.

When she turned him down, he brought in two male employees and offered a million dollars if she were to marry one of them, she said. After the filming ended, Steinhardt told her it was an “abomination” that a woman who looked like her was not married and said he would not fund her projects until she returned with a husband and child, said Katz, who has not previously spoken publicly about the incident.

Through his spokesman, Steinhardt denied most of the details of Katz’s story and said he did not “proposition” anyone. Goldin said Steinhardt was not aware that Katz was courting him as a donor when they met.

Katz said she was shaken and reported the comments the next day to Eric D. Fingerhut, the chief executive officer of Hillel. He apologized and promised that she would not have to meet with Steinhardt again, she said. Hillel confirmed generally that Katz reported the incident but would not comment on specifics.

Hillel continued to accept donations from Steinhardt until last year, when it hired a law firm to conduct an investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The investigation, which ended in January, concluded that Steinhardt had sexually harassed Katz and another employee in a separate incident. The findings, which were communicated to Hillel staff in an internal memo that did not name Katz or Steinhardt, were first reported in The New York Jewish Week, a community newspaper that has reported on some allegations against Steinhardt.

A Brash Boss. A Big Benefactor.

Steinhardt, who grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, was known for his intelligence and a combative management style when he ran his hedge fund, Steinhardt Partners, which he closed in 1995. In interviews, Steinhardt’s supporters acknowledged he could sometimes be brash and crude, especially when talking about a signature interest: the survival of the Jewish people.

Some of Steinhardt’s most prominent philanthropic efforts are centered on encouraging Jews to marry other Jews and strengthen their ties to the community. He has said his efforts have been driven by the losses of the Holocaust as well as by more contemporary concerns about the effects of intermarriage and secularization.

Steinhardt, who is married with three adult children, is known to goad single Jews into kissing, dating or marrying, and to insist that Jewish women have children, sometimes offering money or the use of a Caribbean home as an incentive, dozens of people said.

“Michael is very passionate, and he is passionate in everything,” Abraham H. Foxman, a longtime friend of Steinhardt’s and the former head of the Anti-Defamation League, said of Steinhardt’s matchmaking. “Call it a passion, call it an obsession, call it a perversion. Some may. I don’t — I understand it. It’s just the way it comes out, which may disturb people.” He said he had never witnessed Steinhardt asking women to have sex and would not expect it of him.

But the behavior described by the women in interviews went well beyond matchmaking.

Goldberg, the director of communications for Birthright from 2001 to 2010, said she was used to Steinhardt being “inappropriate.” Still, she was shocked when Steinhardt suggested that she and a co-worker at a donor reception in Jerusalem join him in an intimate encounter.

Goldberg recalled Steinhardt asking for a threesome; her former colleague, who asked not to be identified, recalled Steinhardt inviting her and Goldberg to leave with him, but did not recall his referring to a threesome.

“We were working Joes, pretty vulnerable, and here he is with all his authority, coming over and propositioning us,” Goldberg, who is now 48, said.

Steinhardt’s spokesman called the account “simply not true.”

Two women who worked at a small Jewish nonprofit recalled Steinhardt using similar language in 2008. They both said that during a meeting at his office to make a pitch for funding, Steinhardt suggested that they all take a bath together, in what he called a “ménage à trois.” One of the women, the executive director of the organization, asked that her identity be withheld because she feared that people on her board would pull their donations if she spoke publicly.

Her former colleague asked that her identity be withheld to protect the executive director.

Steinhardt did not recall this meeting, his spokesman said.

Goldberg said she believed her encounter took place in 2005. She said that soon after, she shared her account with Shimshon Shoshani, who was then Birthright’s chief executive officer.

Shoshani, who later became the director general of Israel’s Education Ministry and is now retired, said in an interview that he did not recall Goldberg’s allegations. He said he had heard “rumors” that Steinhardt had made inappropriate comments, but said he never heard Steinhardt make such comments.

He praised Steinhardt for his commitment to Birthright. “I appreciate him very, very much. Even if there were some comments, about sex, about women, I wouldn’t take it seriously,” Shoshani said, “because he made important decisions in other areas concerning Birthright.”

Steinhardt has given about $25 million to Birthright, public filings show.

Out of Bounds

While Hillel and Birthright are among the nation’s most well-known Jewish nonprofits, Steinhardt also has given millions of dollars to smaller organizations. Some women who worked at these places described being particularly dependent on his favor.

Goldfein, now 58 and a Chicago-based consultant to nonprofits, said Steinhardt repeatedly made inappropriate comments to her between 2000 and 2002, when she worked as the national program director of Synagogue Transformation and Renewal, a nonprofit he co-founded in 1999 and to which he was giving about $250,000 a year, public filings showed.

Still, she was surprised when, during one meeting at his office to brief him about the organization, he suggested that he could set her up in a Park Avenue apartment and that they could have redheaded babies together, Goldfein said.

She said she felt demeaned by his treatment but tried to make light of the comments because Steinhardt was a director of her organization.

“I always felt that it was like a game to him and that I had to put up with it and play along. But it wasn’t an equal playing field,” Goldfein said. She said his behavior left her disillusioned with the job.

Steinhardt disputed her account. He denied “ever saying anything that was intended to ask anyone to have sex with him,” Goldin said.

After requesting an interview with Steinhardt, the Times received unsolicited praise for his warmth and generosity from former and current employees and some prominent friends, including Bronfman; Martin Peretz, the former owner of The New Republic; and Betsy Gotbaum, the former New York City public advocate.

Some acknowledged his tendency to make bawdy or inappropriate comments, but said Steinhardt was always speaking in jest.

“Michael has his unique sense of humour,” Bronfman wrote. “He loves to tease males and females, and certainly his very good friends. I can attest to that! Always has. But to conjure up intentions that he never had or has is more than a disservice. It’s downright outrageous!”

Shifra Bronznick, a consultant to nonprofits, said she was criticized by her colleagues in 2004 after publicly admonishing Steinhardt for commenting on a woman’s fertility at a conference. She said she believed that his comments were hurting women and their careers in a way that his supporters may not have realized.

“When people say bad things about Jews, our community leaders are on red alert about the dangers of anti-Semitism,” she said. “But when people harass women verbally instead of physically, we are asked to accept that this is the price we have to pay for the philanthropic resources to support our work.”

Steinhardt’s behavior stretches back to at least the mid-1990s, said Sabath, who recalled visiting him in his office during the 1995-96 academic year as one of the first Steinhardt Fellows at a rabbinical leadership institute.

She was 27 years old, and it was the first time she had met Steinhardt. He harangued her about being unmarried and said she should put her vagina and womb “to work,” Sabath said. He then suggested she become a “pilegesh,” an ancient Hebrew word for concubine, she said.

Taken aback, Sabath said she tried to engage Steinhardt in a discussion about the centuries-old practice of concubinage, which he said should be reinstituted. When an associate of Steinhardt’s walked into the office, Steinhardt told Sabath she should consider having sex with him, she said. Then Steinhardt proposed that she should become his own concubine.

“I have never uttered the word pilegesh, and don’t even know how to pronounce it,” Steinhardt said, through his spokesman. He also denied saying that Sabath should put her vagina and womb “to work.”

Another woman who was a fellow at the institute at the time, Rabbi Dianne Cohler-Esses, said she did not witness that conversation. But she said Steinhardt had separately suggested, in a meeting at his office that year, that she should date a married rabbi at the institute. She said she and Sabath complained to Greenberg about Mr. Steinhardt’s comments.

Greenberg, who at the time was president of the institute, recalled the conversation. He said he told Steinhardt that his behavior was “out of bounds.”

“It doesn’t excuse it and it doesn’t justify it, but I don’t believe that he seriously was recruiting Rachel to be his concubine,” Greenberg said. “It’s typical outlandishness.”

Sabath, who is now 50, went on to become a professor of Jewish thought and director of admissions at the nation’s largest Reform Jewish seminary, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. But the experience lingered. For more than two decades, she said, she avoided being in the same room with Steinhardt and could not bring herself to teach about the Torah’s concept of concubines.

She said she did not come forward earlier because she feared for her career and because Steinhardt was a “great benefactor” who supported values in which she believed.
“But his being a megafunder can’t allow for, or excuse this behavior, and it has,” Sabath said.

External Scrutiny

None of the six women interviewed by the Times and ProPublica had ever spoken publicly about their experiences, but in recent years, Steinhardt’s behavior has faced some external scrutiny.

Though he was not named as a defendant, he appeared in two sexual harassment lawsuits filed in state court in Manhattan, in 2012 and 2013, against an Upper East Side art gallery.

Two women who worked at the gallery alleged that Steinhardt often made sexually loaded comments to them, which they were expected to endure because he was an important client. Steinhardt is a prominent collector of antiquities.

Karen Simons, an employee, said in her 2013 lawsuit that in one instance, Steinhardt asked over the phone whether her husband satisfied her and asked her to have sex with him, the suit alleged.
In a deposition taken in Simons’ case, Steinhardt said he did not remember making sexual remarks to the two women.

Court documents indicated that Simons’ lawsuit was discontinued in November 2017; the other was settled in 2014. Both suits “were resolved amicably with confidentiality agreements,” said the women’s lawyer, Jeffrey D. Pollack. A lawyer for the gallery, Electrum, which is also known as Phoenix Ancient Art, did not respond to requests for comment.

Goldin, the spokesman for Steinhardt, did not directly address the allegations in the lawsuits, but pointed out that a judge had sanctioned Simons for destroying evidence during the course of her suit. He added that Steinhardt had played no role in the resolution of either case.

Last year, as Hillel International conducted an investigation into Steinhardt’s behavior, the organization did not pursue a $50,000 donation he had pledged, and removed his name from its international board of governors, an advisory board for major donors, according to the person with knowledge of the investigation.

On Jan. 15, lawyers from Cozen O’Connor, the firm conducting the investigation, met with Katz to tell her they had found her complaint against Steinhardt justified, said Deborah Katz, Katz’s lawyer, who attended the meeting. She is not related to her client.

The investigators also said a second Hillel employee had come forward during the investigation with a complaint that Steinhardt had made an inappropriate comment to her, Deborah Katz said.

Steinhardt apologized “promptly” in 2011 when he found out he had offended this woman, his spokesman said. Steinhardt said in a statement that if he had been told at the time about Katz’s complaint, he would have apologized immediately.

“It pains us greatly that anyone in the Hillel movement could be subjected to any form of harassment,” said the organization’s Jan. 11 memo to employees, signed by Fingerhut and Tina Price, the chairwoman of the board of directors.

Katz, who still works for Hillel, said she decided to speak publicly in part because her role in the Hillel investigation had become known and she feared possible fallout. Her lawyer complained to Hillel in January that people using Katz’s name had called members of its board, upset about the investigation. Hillel declined to comment.

“I want to let other women who went through similar things to know that they are not alone,” Katz said. “And I want organizations, and in particular Jewish organizations who take his money, to consider the impact that’s had on people like me.”

The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: Mueller-ing It Over

On March 21, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

What We’re Following Today

It’s Wednesday, March 20.

‣  President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House today that he thinks Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report on his investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election should be made public.

Here’s what else we’re watching:

Mother Russia: Maria Butina, the first Russian to plead guilty to attempting to influence American policy makers before the 2016 election, has had a bad year. She’s currently being held in a Northern Virginia detention center awaiting sentencing. But she still has powerful allies: An NGO partly funded by the Kremlin is paying her legal bills, and as Natasha Bertrand reports, “One of her backers has been trying to promote fringe separatist movements in the U.S. since well before 2016.” The mystery of Russian influence operations, and Butina’s role in them, continues.

A Segregated System: When data released by New York this week revealed that out of the 952 students accepted into the city’s elite Stuyvesant High School for the next school year, just seven were black, the city erupted in outrage. Black-student enrollment at Stuyvesant peaked in 1975, with 303 black students out of 2,536 total students. In 2000, that number dropped to 109. Last year, there were 24. This is the nth verse of the same story for elite New York schools, writes Adam Harris.

Facebook Folds: In a victory for civil-rights groups across the country, Facebook just settled in a landmark case. For years, Facebook’s platform allowed advertisers to  filter home or job postings from reaching specific groups such as women, people over 55, or African Americans. Facebook was slow to change, and the groups sued. After years of negotiating, the tech giant reached a settlement and agreed to create a separate advertising portal to help prevent such discrimination. “The good news is: By the end of the year, civil-rights protections will be equal on Facebook and the media platforms that came before it,” writes Alexis C. Madrigal. “The bad news is: all the years before that was true.”

— Madeleine Carlisle and Olivia Paschal

Snapshot

Senator Bernie Sanders greets workers at a rally at UCLA. Members of a union representing research and technical workers walked picket lines Wednesday at University of California campuses and hospitals in a one-day strike amid a lengthening stretch of unsuccessful contract negotiations. (Richard Vogel / AP)

Ideas From The Atlantic

Americans Are Seeing Threats in the Wrong Places (Janet Napolitano with Karen Breslau)
“In the four years I led the Department of Homeland Security, I learned from the inside that the greatest threats to our safety play out differently from how political speeches and news reports might have us believe. True security means educating the public about which dangers are real and likely and which are not.”→ Read on.

The Art of a Monster (Caitlin Flanagan)
“Through this terrible man, this destroyer, poured a force that can only be truthfully described as art. Michael Jackson’s dancing is no mortal enterprise: James Brown’s shuffle, Fred Astaire’s precision, and some other element that exists so far beyond anything as simple as influence, or talent, that we can only say we know it when we see it. It’s not a gift; it’s the gift itself. The ancient question: What moral stain awaits us if we cannot abandon the art of a monster? None.”→ Read on.

Sometimes the Supreme Court Sticks to the Law (Garrett Epps)
“The Court granted certiorari in four new criminal-justice cases that, by and large, lack a strong partisan valence. These cases will involve the Court doing, well, you know, law, and in particular, cleaning up some loose ends of its criminal jurisprudence.”→ Read on.

What Else We’re Reading

‣This South Dakota Law Is a Gift to Bad Cops (Matthew Harwood, Reason)
‣Andrew Yang, We’ll See You on the Debate Stage (Jim Geraghty, National Review)
‣Beto O’Rourke’s Health Care Proposal Is Not Medicare for All, but It Is Ambitious (Jordan Weissmann, Slate)
‣Meet a Network of Volunteers Helping With Assisted Suicide (Katie Engelhart, The California Sunday Magazine)
‣Immigration Officials Accused of Targeting Faith Leader and Religious Groups (Jack Jenkins, Religion News Service)
‣To Revive Rural America, We Must Fix Our Broken Food System (Austin Frerick, The American Conservative)

One More Thing…

Say It Ain’t So: Why aren’t more movies made about us journalists? In author Tom Rosenstiel’s opinion, “In political fiction at least, journalists don’t make great protagonists.”

We’re always looking for ways to improve The Politics & Policy Daily. Comments, questions, typos, grievances and groans related to our puns? Let us know anytime here.

Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up for our daily politics email here. We have many other free email newsletters on a variety of other topics. Find the full list here.

Schwarzenegger Pulls No Punches in a Rare Rebuke of Trump

On March 21, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain saw in each other a willingness to buck the Republican Party and became fast friends and political allies. Mindful of McCain’s legacy, the former California governor said on Wednesday he couldn’t stay silent in the face of President Trump’s recent spate of attacks on the late senator.  

He told me Trump’s swipes at McCain are both disgraceful and destructive. “He was just an unbelievable person,” Schwarzenegger said. “So an attack on him is absolutely unacceptable if he’s alive or dead—but even twice as unacceptable since he passed away a few months ago. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to do that. I just think it’s a shame that the president lets himself down to that kind of level. We will be lucky if everyone in Washington followed McCain’s example, because he represented courage.”

In a jab at the president’s 243-pound physique, the former world-champion bodybuilder said that Trump should turn his attention to infrastructure and immigration reform when he wakes up and starts his morning workout.

“I know he must be working out every day because he’s so unbelievably in shape,” Schwarzenegger said.

Trump’s tirade began with a pair of weekend tweets laced with falsehoods. The first, on Saturday afternoon, scorned McCain for forwarding the now famous Russia dossier to the FBI and casting the deciding vote that blocked Trump’s promised repeal of Obamacare:

Spreading the fake and totally discredited Dossier “is unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain.” Ken Starr, Former Independent Counsel. He had far worse “stains” than this, including thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace!

His second tweet came early on Sunday morning:

So it was indeed (just proven in court papers) “last in his class” (Annapolis) John McCain that sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election. He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage!

It was not entirely clear why Trump had become so agitated  seven months after McCain’s death. One White House aide said that excoriating McCain isn’t a “winning issue,” and that officials would like to see Trump drop the subject. People close to the White House say that he might be feeling pressure from the Russia investigation, or was set off by something he saw on cable TV news.

[Read: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s War on Gerrymandering Is Just Beginning]

Whatever it was, the president hadn’t exorcised those demons on Wednesday, when he spoke at a manufacturing plant in Ohio and again invoked the dossier. “What did he do? He didn’t call me,” Trump said. “He turned it over to the FBI hoping to put me in jeopardy. That’s not the nicest thing to do.”

Trump went on to say that he had “never liked him (McCain) much. Hasn’t been for me. I really probably never will.” He wasn’t finished. Trump noted that he’d approved state funeral arrangements for McCain. And he said, “I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted … but I didn’t get a thank you.”

Trump wasn’t invited to the McCain funeral service, which some of his allies describe as a hurtful snub. “McCain’s funeral was calibrated to insult Trump–from not inviting him to the way the media played it up,”  former senior White House aide Steve Bannon told me before the president spoke in Ohio.

[Read: Arnold Schwarzenegger Contemplates His Legacy]

A former aide to McCain, Mark Salter, told me that McCain did the responsible thing and gave the dossier to law enforcement. “What would you have him do?” Salter said. “He didn’t have his own intelligence agency. He had to give it to people who can do something with it.” As for Trump not having been invited to the funeral, Salter said, “I don’t think it’s a surprise that his (McCain’s) family wouldn’t want him there.”

Only a few Republican senators have, like Schwarzenegger, condemned Trump’s attacks. Tepidly. Most have stayed silent, possibly mindful of his hold over the party rank-and-file. Defying the president invites scornful tweets, if not a primary opponent.

McCain’s closest friend in the Senate, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, sent out tweets Sunday that defended McCain while not mentioning Trump.

He offered a more pointed statement on Wednesday, telling reporters in South Carolina: “I think the president’s comments about Senator McCain hurt him more than they hurt the legacy of Senator McCain.”

Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who’s had an on again-off-again relationship with Trump, tweeted on Tuesday: “I can’t understand why the President would, once again, disparage a man as exemplary as my friend John McCain: heroic, courageous, patriotic, honorable, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, empathetic, and driven by duty to family, country, and God.”

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky wrote a tweet Wednesday that hailed McCain as a “rare patriot and genuine American hero”—but also omitted mention of Trump.

In his recent attacks, Trump has avoided mention of McCain’s record as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. During the presidential race, Trump said he preferred people “who weren’t captured,” referring to the years McCain, shot down as a Navy pilot, spent captive at the so-called Hanoi Hilton.

Schwarzenegger described McCain as “a hero.”

“He was a great public servant, no two ways about that,” Schwarzenegger said. “He was known for his honesty, for his courage, and his patriotism and his service.”

The war hero-turned-politician and the movie star-turned-politician joined forces in 2005 when McCain helped Schwarzenegger push for a package of education and spending initiatives in California. Voters defeated the measures, but Schwarzenegger didn’t forget the favor; he endorsed McCain in the 2008 Republican presidential nomination fight.

Schwarzenegger is busy these days. An aide said a new Terminator film is coming out in the fall. He is working to draw fairer electoral districts, ending the gerrymandering that protects incumbents. He doesn’t want to be a pundit, and the last thing he needed was a fight with Trump. But staying quiet wasn’t an option.

Trump, he suggested, should shift focus from tweeting to governing.“The president should lift people up, should lift the nation up rather than always tearing people down,” he said.

Trump, he said, should consult the first lady, who has made online bullying a cause. “Why don’t you go and sit down with your wife for just a few minutes, Mr. President, and listen to the first lady when she’s talking about stopping online bullying. That is a really great message. Which way do we go? Your way, or her way. That’s really the question here.”