AG Howard corruption
Rayshard Brooks didn’t have to be six feet under the ground, right now. It is his own fault that he got shot. You can’t be drunk, violently resist arrest, fight with cops, grab a taser to use as a weapon, and then expect to sleep in your own bed that night. It just doesn’t add up. But something that did add up from the beginning, was that Officer Garrett Rolfe was wrongly charged with murder by Fulton County prosecutor Paul Howard Jr. It added up because Howard is running for re-election and fighting charges of corruption.
Now to add to Howard’s problems the criminal investigation into DA Paul Howard is being expanded by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), as new questions come to light concerning the grand jury subpoenas his office issued in the Rayshard Brooks case.
Chris Carr, Georgia Attorney General, asked the GBI to look further into Howard after he discovered there may be problems with the subpoenas.
Here’s what we know so far via The Daily Wire:
Howard issued grand jury subpoenas directing the Atlanta Police Department to turn over its “open investigation regarding Garrett Rolfe and the use of force incident.” Fox 5 Atlanta reports:
The subpoena required that the documents be turned over for the “Grand Jury, June/July term on the of 14th day of July.” Other grand jury subpoenas were issued for phone and surveillance camera videos.
Fox 5 reported that the subpoenas were issued while the grand jury was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The issuing of grand jury subpoenas while there is no grand jury could possibly be considered “an ethical or possibly criminal issue,” according to legal professionals interviewed by Fox 5.
“What are we doing? That is a violation of our ethical code of conduct,” says GSU law professor Jessica Gable Cino
Gable Cino is a law professor who specializes in prosecutorial misconduct. She says not only does Paul Howard face ethical questions, but potentially legal problems as well.
“It would be a violation of criminal law to make a knowingly false statement or misrepresentation in the subpoena which is a document that has been issued,” says Gable Cino.
Along with possible criminally, Howard’s action is additional proof of his rush to judgment to indict Officer Garrett Rolfe. Howard was so desperate for the election bump he would get from the Officer Garrett Rolfe inquisition, he didn’t even wait for the GBI to finish its investigation of Rolfe’s shooting of Brooks. He had his own internal investigator rush to judgment so he would get the result he wanted. And then based on the GBI investigation of his grand jury subpoenas he even crossed the line into ethical or illegality territory.
Howard is no stranger to possible corruption. The GBI had already launched an investigation into the district attorney earlier this year concerning a “mysterious salary supplement negotiated between Howard and then Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed.” The negotiation directed a whopping $250,000 over a three-year period into a non-profit organization that was headed up by Howard’s office. Of that cash, Howard allegedly took $140,000 to line his own pockets. Gee, what an upstanding guy, right?
Kind of hard to imagine this man actually be concerned with justice when he’s in the habit of doing so many shady things, isn’t it? A district attorney needs to be above reproach and have a history of ethical behavior in order to ensure justice is upheld. Howard doesn’t fit the bill. Any sort of actions or cases he’s involved with, especially the indicting of officer Rolfe for murder when he was protecting himself and fellow officers, should become suspect.
Below is a video news report about the GBI’s latest investigation into DA Howard.
Parts of this post were first seen at Flag and Cross
AG Howard corruption
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