Americans who follow the news have seen and heard much about Paul Manafort’s trial.  One of the remarkable takeaways from the trial was the judge’s conduct during the trial.  United States district judge Thomas Ellis II is a 78-year-old senior judge for the eastern district of Virginia appointed by President Ronald Reagan.  His courtroom demeanor is best summarized by what he said at one point: “I am a Caesar in my own Rome.”

The entire U.S. legal system is one big broken dysfunctional machine.  All courts in this country are corrupt, but this post will focus mainly on the “family” courts.  There are a number of things that can be done to change the family court system as it stands right now.  The most important step is to defund the financial incentives under Title IV-D and Title IV-E of social security, which promotes the separation of children from parents.  As long as these financial incentives exist, the racketeers controlling the system will find a way to continue to defraud the American people.  As a bonus to this step, we would make sure that elderly who have contributed to social security will have these funds available for them, instead of having them raided by government agents.

The above poll was taken earlier this year.  Citizens of Massachusetts were surveyed and responded according to the amount of corruption they felt existed in their state.  Our national network of victims of corruption in the legal system encompasses people from many different states.  No states are immune—all have some level of corruption in their legal systems, but it seems that Ohio, Washington, and the People’s Republic of Massachusetts are top contenders for the gold medal.  The following is a portion of an actual petition for interlocutory relief I filed in the Massachusetts Supreme Court, which was denied by its judge-criminals.  The named attorney, Joseph L. Michaud, also a criminal, belongs in prison but is not incarcerated because of his political connections.

When Bethany Webb’s sister, Laura, was killed in a mass shooting in 2011, she couldn’t imagine things getting worse.  But then District Attorney Tony Rackauckas of Orange County, California, took the case.  In his determination to impose the death penalty over Webb’s objection, Rackauckas used jailhouse informants to elicit damning statements from the defendant, Scott Dekraai, while he was in jail.  These informant-defendant interactions violated the constitutional right to counsel since no one is allowed to interrogate defendants without their attorneys present.

The Problem
One can look anywhere in the world where there is money or power, and corruption can be found rearing its ugly head.  This has been the case throughout history.  It is human nature. However, a legal system is possibly the least desirable place for corruption to exist because of the immense power the system wields and, at times, decides who lives and who dies.

There is an interesting—and disturbing—federal case that involves allegations of corruption in the New York state court system that is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.  Welcome to Knopf v. Esposito, 17-cv-5833 (S.D.N.Y.) and 17-4151 (Civil) (2d Cir.).

As they do annually, our beloved legislators have passed thousands of new laws that will be going into effect this year.  As we stated in 2017, instead of writing new laws, legislators should repeal thousands of existing ones, or at least erase 10 for every new one written until total laws have been reduced by at least 80 percent!  This would be a giant step towards restoring true justice in our U.S. legal system.  Many of the newly written laws will certainly reshape the political and legal landscape in the coming months.  They cover a broad spectrum, from recreational marijuana use and paid leave from work to traveling barbers and exotic pets.  What follows is a glimpse of notable new laws that we have selected for this post.