Debbie Schlussel: BREAKING SCHLUSSEL EXCLUSIVE: Bush to Nominate PORN ADDICT, TERROR SYMPATHIZER, RACIST to Court of Appeals
If you liked the Harriet Miers nomination, you'll love the Stephen Murphy nomination.
I have known for three weeks--on the tip of a current Assistant U.S. Attorney--that FBI agents are conducting a background check on U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy III, in preparation for President Bush's impending nomination of Murphy to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
But the Bush nomination of Stephen Murphy should shock all freedom-loving Americans, let alone conservatives, because Murphy:
* Spent his days as an Assistant U.S. Attorney showing fellow U.S. Attorneys his favorite porn on the web. (Sources say he may have done the same as U.S. Attorney.)
* Broke federal law by leaking federal grand jury proceedings to Detroit News reporter (and fabricator) David Shepardson.
* Repeatedly hosted HAMAS and Iraqi Insurgent financiers and anti-Semites in his office and repeatedly praised them.
* Deliberately sat on multiple terror indictments and waited until Hezbollah terrorists were safely out of the country before he chose to do anything against them.
* Praised Hezbollah, said he didn't know why it was on the State Dept. Terrorist list, and praised and hung out with terror supporters and charities that are funding HAMAS, Hezbollah, and insurgents murdering our troops in Iraq.
* Praised far-left U.S. Congressman and "Fahrenheit 9/11" star John Conyers (who wanted Bush Impeachment and "Downing Memo" hearings), saying, "What a great lawyer and distinguished mind he is."
* Prosecuted only non-Muslims who commit hate crimes against Muslims, but recused himself from all cases involving Muslim hate crimes against others.
* Deliberately leaked, along with allies, confidential information about competitors to Detroit News Reporter Shepardson, so he could become U.S. Attorney, defeat the nomination of Judge Henry Saad to the Court of Appeals, and get the nomination for himself.
* Attacked Black Americans, asking, "Why are we letting them control the Republican Party?"
Is this the kind of man President Bush should be putting on one of the most important courts in the land?
If your answer is no--and it should be--then you should be up in arms and calling the White House and Senate Judiciary members in protest.
BECAUSE STEPHEN MURPHY IS ALL OF THESE THINGS. And More. . . .
Check out this picture. It's worth a thousand words.
The men pictured, above, with a smiling Murphy are (from left) Murphy's close personal friends Osama Siblani, publisher of the openly pro-homicide bomber Arab American News (which proudly supports, HAMAS, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Louis Farrakhan). The taller man standing in the back is Shereef Akeel, a lawyer for Islamic terrorist groups and charities. Beneath him and to Murphy's right is "former" Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist Imad Hamad (more about him below). To Murphy's left is Noel Saleh, who openly stated that he gave money to Hezbollah. Saleh is an ACLU attorney who filed the lawsuits challenging the Patriot Act and NSA wiretapping. The are pictured at their monthly love-fest at Murphy's office.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys, whom he's supervised for just less than a year on the job as U.S. Attorney, call Stephen Murphy "The Empty Suit." Worse, a few months ago, I received the following e-mail from a current Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's office:
What concerned me most about that article [in The Detroit News] is the grand jury leak. My guess is that those leaks came directly from the U.S. Attorney [Stephen Murphy] himself. He has said in conversation that [the] case [the indictment of terror prosecutor Richard Convertino] will keep him on the front page of the paper and he has ignored pleadings to just let the case go. He also has a history of leaking from his days as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and it is said that during the time he put in the first time for the U.S. Attorney position that he took confidential information from a committee member (I think from the Dean from U of D[etroit Law School, Bernard Dobranski]) and used it to give a story to the newspapers to kill the chances of a competitor who also is a former Assistant U.S Attorney [Michael LaVoie] (something about an undisclosed contribution to a Democrat) [$100 contribution to then-Michigan Attorney Gen. Candidate Jennifer Granholm, who is now Governor]. He [Murphy] ended up telling folks it was the Dean who planted the story and effectively ended that guy's influence in judicial selections, etc.You probably already know that when he was an assistant [Assistant U.S. Attorney], he used to watch pornography on his work computer all the time. . . .
During his background check last year, the legal community was abuzz that the he would never be confirmed because he liked to look at porn on his Department of Justice computer. You probably already know this but he went as far as inviting others into his office to look at the porn during work hours. Rumor had it that while it was an issue, D.O.J. probably did not have the ability to check back on computer usage in during his time as an assistant. This may have been accurate because he was confirmed.
[DS: Get a clue, FBI. Did you check his computer in the U.S. Attorney's Office for porn? He's probably already switched it and gotten a new computer.]
In light of the Ohio story, it looks as though the FBI choose to ignore his use of a department computer to watch pornography and bowed to the pressure . . . and pushed his confirmation through. . . .
It should have been easy enough for DOJ to examine the computer he used as it would be hard to believe that it would delete any information from its system.
In several years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, Murphy prosecuted only one major case. Now, we know why. He was too busy "viewing" more important things. The porn allegations are bad enough, especially since he's been traipsing around Michigan pushing a "Child Protection Initiative" against online porn. But the rest is damning, too.
It is illegal to leak Federal Grand Jury testimony and/or information obtained through a Grand Jury subpoena. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e)(2) prohibits such leaks. But that didn't stop Murphy. Several sources, including the e-mail from the Assistant U.S. Attorney, above, say that Murphy is the source of leaked information--in several Detroit News stories--about the then-ongoing proceedings of a Federal Grand Jury that ultimately did a ham sandwich indictment of former Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino for prosecuting and actually obtaining a conviction against a Detroit terror cell which apparently planned to blow up tourist sites throughout the U.S. and a U.S. Air Force base in Turkey. (See also, here.)
The rest of the Assistant U.S. Attorney's e-mail checks out. Bernard Dobranski, then Dean of University of Detroit Law School, sat on the committee that chose President Bush's selection as U.S. Attorney. Information about Lavoie, whom Murphy believed was his chief competition for the position, was leaked from the committee to the Detroit News' David Shepardson, to whom Murphy has long been a source. (See the related articles below and here and here.) Because Murphy did not get the job--he lost out to Jeffrey Collins, who is Black--he made a series of statements protesting that "Blacks control our party."
Tom Monaghan, a big Republican donor and personal friend and supporter of Murphy, has a significant role here. His paid political point man, Joseph Cella, helped defeat the nomination of Arab American Judge Henry Saad to the Federal Court of Appeals position to which Murphy will now be nominated. After first pushing through Saad's nomination, Cella, on Monaghan's behalf, spread rumors of Saad's alleged marital infidelities, saying Saad must be defeated because he is NOT a good Catholic. Those rumors made it into Saad's FBI background check file, and ultimately into David Shepardson's Detroit News articles.
Cella also lobbied, on Monaghan's behalf, to get Murphy to his current position as U.S. Attorney and, it is said, the nomination to the Federal Court of Appeals.
But even more disturbing than all of these things is Murphy's sympathies to those who support terror. And his refusal to go after Detroit area charities that fund Hezbollah, HAMAS, and INSURGENTS MURDERING OUR TROOPS. In fact, he has praised Hezbollah and wondered why it is on the State Department Terrorist List.
In September 2005, Murphy attended and spoke at a "Town Hall" Meeting he, himself, organized at the Islamic House of Wisdom Mosque in Dearborn Heights, Michigan. The mosque was founded and is led by Imam Mohammed Ali Elahi, who told The Washington Times that the Jews and Israel were behind 9/11 attacks (a statement he's never retracted), and who repeatedly praises and defends Hezbollah, HAMAS, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his Detroit News columns.
Elahi, an official of the Ayatollah Khomeini's Iranian government, was the Spiritual Leader of Khomeini's Navy. In May 2005, Elahi met with Hezbollah spiritual leader Sheikh Mohammed Hassan Fadlallah, and members of his mosque are Hezbollah funders and operatives. Elahi did not disclose his status as an agent of Hezbollah and the Government of Iran on his application and other documents obtaining U.S. citizenship. But Murphy refuses to open an investigation into that and strip Elahi of his fraudulently obtained citizenship.
In his speech to Murphy and other federal officials, Elahi told the audience that "What's going on in the South of Lebanon [Hezbollah] is not terrorism. It is legitimate resistance." Murphy applauded enthusiastically and in response stated, "Imam, we come with the humility and respect you mentioned. It's a real honor to be here." Responding to questions from the audience, Murphy joked and laughed when asked why Hezbollah, which murdered over 300 American Marines and civilians, was on the State Department Terrorist list. He joked that his friends say it is "a noble organization" that does a lot of good things for people--hospitals, etc. He started laughing.
Hezbollah tortured to death, over a number of years, U.S. Col. William R. (Rich) Higgins, who did not have a weapon because he was a member of the UN Peacekeeping force. The group tortured Navy diver Robert Stethem to death. Hezbollah tortured CIA Station Chief William Buckley to death. It worked with Al-Qaeda in blowing up the Khobar Towers and blew up the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, murdering about 100, injuring countless others. Currently, according to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, Hezbollah is working with Al-Qaeda to train insurgents in Iraq.
Does a man who doesn't seem to know why this entity is a terrorist group and jokes about it become a Federal Appeals Court Judge?
Oh, and then there's Murphy's praise of far-left moonbat U.S. Congressman John Conyers. At the mosque, he spoke just after Conyers. "I'm honored to be on a panel with Congressman Conyers. What a great lawyer and distinguished mind he is. I cannot improve upon what Congressman Conyers said." But Conyers' speech attacked the Patriot Act, prosecution of Muslims who commit terrorist acts, and virtually the entire counterterror program we have in the U.S. Conyers spoke of voting for tougher penalties for hate crimes against Muslims, to Murphy's vehement applause.
But that's the point. Murphy will only prosecute alleged hate crimes against others. He will NOT prosecute hate crimes against, say, Jews. I know this personally because, while Murphy swiftly indicted men who sent e-mails to an extremist, pro-Hezbollah Muslim cleric--one of the men is a quadriplegic veteran in a wheelchair whose "threat" was "I hope I get the opportunity to kill a Muslim"-- Murphy has recused himself and the U.S. Attorney's Office from prosecuting any of three Muslims who sent me multiple, far more serious death threats (including one by a Muslim illegal alien). Check out the threats here and here. U.S. Justice Department civil rights attorney Lisa Krigsten and other Justice Department officials told me so. And Murphy has not prosecuted any hate crimes committed by Muslims. He refuses to do it, especially when it comes to Jewish victims like me.
Then, there's the problem of Murphy's seriousness on terrorism. He isn't. For him, it's strictly about PR. Not about justice for terrorists. Murphy appointed Eric Strauss as his chief counterterrorism attorney in the heart of Islamic America. But it is well known that Strauss had a dart board in his office. The target of the dartboard: FBI Michigan Counterrrorism chief Paul George. And Strauss' incompetence and deliberate actions have led to several terrorists either going free or getting laughably short sentences.
Murphy and Strauss have deliberately allowed a number of key Hezbollah money launderers and funding sources to go free. They sat FOR TWO YEARS on an indictment of the Hammoud brothers, who ran a Black market smuggling ring garnering millions in Hezbollah funding, while most of the Hammoud brothers, on to the federal investigation of them, fled the country. Murphy did nothing to stop them. Murphy also allowed multiple raids of Hezbollah-funding restaurateur Talal Chahine without indictments. Chahine finally caught on and fled the country. Murphy did not indict him until a year later. What good are indictments of terrorists when Stephen Murphy has allowed them all to leave the country?
Murphy's close ties with supporters of terror besides Hezbollah's Imam Elahi are disturbing. LIFE for Relief and Development, a Detroit area charity, openly stated on its taxes that one of its three primary recipients is Human Appeal International, which the FBI says is HAMAS' Jordanian operation. In 2004, the group--which takes in millions of dollars and is one of the largest Muslim charities in North America--had a fundraising event in the Los Angeles area, at which speakers hinted that money was going to fund insurgents in places like Fallujah. Its first registered agent is tied to Al-Qaeda and one of its chief financiers. The group has long been under investigation by Detroit FBI and then-Customs agents, and its headquarters was raided by U.S. troops in Iraq.
But Murphy has not only praised the terror-funding charity and hung out with its chief, Khalil Jassem, and general counsel, Ihsan Al-Khatib, he hosts them at monthly meetings in his office. And he refuses to indict the group. Murphy also frequently socializes with another official of the charity, Mohammed Alomari, who hosts an anti-Semitic, anti-American Arabic radio show, hosted an anti-Semitic website, and is the author of a anti-Semitic book and articles attacking the Bush Administration for hiring Jews. Alomari has also been invited to meetings with Murphy at the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Then, there is Mr. Murphy's tight relationship with "former" Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist Imad Hamad, now a U.S. citizen and head of the Midwest Chapter of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Mr. Hamad openly supports Hezbollah, HAMAS, Islamic Jihad, and the like. In an interview with a local TV station, he praised "Children's Club"-- Palestinian Authority TV program, like Sesame Street, that urges three-year-olds to become homicide bombers--saying it is "patriotic." When asked by a Detroit radio host Mitch Albom if he was a member of the PFLP, also on the State Department terrorist list, Hamad responded, "Well . . . not really." He declined to utter a more definite "No." Because of his terror ties, the FBI revoked a planned award to Hamad in 2003.
Murphy has frequently praised Hamad. He's very tight with Hamad, and attends all of Hamad's organization's events and functions. Hamad is the organizer of the monthly meetings in the U.S. Attorney's office with the various terror supporters and money launderers.
It's no surprise that Michigan's far left U.S. Senator, Democrat Carl Levin, signed off on the Murphy nomination but blocked that of Henry Saad for several years. Levin is an ally of Hamad, pressured the U.S. government to grant Hamad citizenship, and at Hamad's suggestion, helped terror-charity LIFE for Relief and Development get millions in USAID money.
Finally, there is Murphy's attendance at meetings of the Congress of Arab American Organizations, an amalgamation of extremist Muslim groups and charities, like LIFE for Relief and Development. In October 2005, Murphy was the keynote speaker at the group's annual dinner held at the Bint Jebail Cultural Center in Dearborn. The center, named for a Hezbollah stronghold in Southern Lebanon, is well known for its alliance with the terrorist group. According to a report by one Muslim group, in his speech, Murphy "expressed [his] solid commitment . . . and mission [for] a forum of dialogue to address issues of common interest and concern to the government and community. Mr. Murphy extended his warm greetings."
As the chief official of the U.S. Department of Justice in the Detroit area, Stephen Murphy has shown an affinity for pornography, Islamic terrorists, money launderers, racism, anti-Semitism, and leaking grand jury proceedings to reporters.
Would you trust him on the Federal Court of Appeals bench?
Call the White House and Senate Judiciary Committee members. Tell them to just say no to Stephen Murphy.
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Legible version of the following article here.
Legible version of the following article here.
Posted by Debbie on June 12, 2006 08:48 AM to Debbie Schlussel