JPMorgan Chase and RAGA, who combined to steal our home of 25 years in Alabama, help dish out the cash that threatens democratic norms in Wisconsin

Thursday, December 13, 2018

Jessica Medeiros Garrison and Luther Strange

What happens when JPMorgan Chase and the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) join forces? Recent events in Wisconsin indicate it could produce signs that your democracy is on its last gasps.

The issue has particular resonance here at Legal Schnauzer because we were the targets of a wrongful foreclosure -- launched by Chase Mortgage, likely in retaliation for my reporting on GOP corruption -- that cost us our home of 25 years in Birmingham, Alabama, and forced us to live like refugees in Missouri. Jessica Medeiros Garrison, a Republican operative and glorified thief/street tart in Alabama, clearly was involved via a defamation lawsuit where my reporting never was proven to be false, as a matter of law.

We recently presented evidence that Garrison, one-time campaign manager and paramour for former Alabama AG Luther Strange, had financial ties to JPMorgan Chase during her time as executive director at RAGA -- and those ties likely made it easy for her to help launch an attack on our mortgage. Garrison, it turns out, has a habit of bouncing from place to place when the heat starts turning up under her chair, as we reported:

Until January 2016, Garrison was senior advisor to RAGA and the affiliated Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF). Before that, she was executive director of RAGA and president of RLDF. Garrison started shifting away from those positions when The New York Times exposed RAGA as a glorified shakedown outfit.

Garrison also started lowering her profile when her extramarital affair with Strange -- which former Alabama Senate President Lowell Barron, among other sources, has confirmed -- became so widely known that it made her more of a liability than an asset.

As for Wisconsin, residents have seen the democracy-crushing influence of JPMorgan Chase and RAGA, both of which seem to operate without the slightest sign of a moral compass. Lame-duck Republicans have passed a series of measures designed to weakenWisconsin's incoming Democratic governor (Tony Evers) and attorney general (Josh Kaul).

Vox.com, noting that Wisconsin-like chicanery also is under way in Michigan and North Carolina,  reports that "The Wisconsin power grab is part of a bigger Republican attack on democracy":

Michigan Republicans are currently weighing similar plans, and both are following in the footsteps of North Carolina Republicans, who passed a power-stripping bill after a Democratic victory in the 2016 governor’s race. State Republicans in three of the country’s most vital swing states are displaying open contempt for the most basic principle of democracy: that when you lose an election, you have to hand over power to your opponents. The national party hasn’t condemned these power grabs, giving the state legislatures tacit permission to rewrite the rules.

These power grabs highlight one of the most disturbing facts about American politics today: The Republican Party has become institutionally indifferent to the health of democracy. It prioritizes power over principle to such an extreme degree that it undermines the most basic functioning of democracy.

In the long run, the GOP’s turn against democracy could well be a greater threat to the American experiment than anything President Donald Trump has done.

Who is driving this train of GOP dysfunction? According to a report at The New York Times, that would be JPMorgan Chase and other corporations:

Walgreens portrays itself as the friendly neighborhood drugstore. It gives flu shots to children, helps communities after storms, donates to charity — and makes feel-good advertisements trumpeting its various good deeds. . . .

So you might think that an organization that claims to care about community values would speak up. But Walgreens has not. Neither have other corporate supporters of Wisconsin Republicans, like Microsoft, Dr Pepper Snapple, J.P. Morgan Chase or Humana. It’s yet another example — alongside soaring C.E.O. pay and stagnant worker wages — of corporations abdicating the leadership role they once played in America.

What about RAGA's role in the Wisconsin mess? It's been right there, with wallet wide open, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Train:

This Washington, D.C.-based group, which raises unlimited amounts from special interests to help elect state GOP attorneys general throughout the country, has been the biggest spender in the 2018 Wisconsin attorney general’s race.

The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) made reported independent expenditures through the Wisconsin Freedom Political Action Committee (PAC), which doled out more than $2.8 million to support GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel’s reelection bid.

Most of RAGA’s spending was for three television ads which attacked Schimel’s Democratic opponent, Josh Kaul. The ads claimed Kaul had not prosecuted serious crimes in Wisconsin and had plea bargained for light sentences for drug dealers as a federal prosecutor in Maryland.

When RAGA's guy (Schimel) lost, JPMorgan Chase helped fund an effort to undermine democracy in Wisconsin. Can we say "sore losers"?

None of this surprises my wife, Carol, and me -- given our experiences with the same forces in the theft of our home. Is it a big step from stealing a mortgage to cheating he voters of Wisconsin?

For JPMorgan Chase and RAGA (with affiliated scum suckers like Jessica Garrison) the answer apparently is no.

Originaql post link: https://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2018/12/jpmorgan-chase-and-raga-who-combined-to.html

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Time honors "guardian" journalists as Person of the Year, but the recognition comes five years late and largely ignores abuses right here on our home turf

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

A group of journalists it calls "The Guardians" are Time magazine's 2018 Person of the Year, according to an announcement yesterday. The award, specifically, honors those who, via hard-nosed, challenging reporting, "have taken great risks in pursuit of greater truths."

Leading the list is slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and he is joined, among others, by five staffers who were killed in a newsroom shooting at Annapolis, Maryland. We certainly view the award as appropriate, but based on our personal experiences in Alabama, it's a case of "better late than never" -- and it largely ignores the risks taken by those who dare report uncomfortable truths about the powerful via non-traditional media, such as blogs, here in the United States.

From the Time article, titled "The Guardians and the War on Truth":

The stout man with the gray goatee and the gentle demeanor dared to disagree with his country’s government. He told the world the truth about its brutality toward those who would speak out. And he was murdered for it.

Every detail of Jamal Khashoggi’s killing made it a sensation: the time stamp on the surveillance video that captured the Saudi journalist entering his country’s Istanbul consulate on Oct. 2; the taxiway images of the private jets bearing his assassins; the bone saw; the reports of his final words, “I can’t breathe,” recorded on audio as the life was choked from him.

But the crime would not have remained atop the world news for two months if not for the epic themes that Khashoggi himself was ever alert to, and spent his life placing before the public. His death laid bare the true nature of a smiling prince, the utter absence of morality in the Saudi-U.S. alliance and—in the cascade of news feeds and alerts, posts and shares and links—the centrality of the question Khashoggi was killed over: Whom do you trust to tell the story?

Those are powerful words, straight from today's headlines. But how late are they? Well, sheriff's deputies beat and doused me with pepper spray inside my own home outside Birmingham, Alabama, on the evening of Oct. 23, 2013, and abducted me for a five-month stay in jail -- all with no warrant or any other form of legal process. I became the only journalist in the western hemisphere to be imprisoned that year. In other words, an attack on a free press happened in Alabama, while nothing of the sort happened in places like Venezuela, Paraguay, Honduras, and Mexico.

Time's Person of the Year article is important reading, but it's about five years late -- long after abuse of a journalist appeared right on our doorstep. Like Jamal Khashoggi, I faced retaliation for reporting on matters of critical importance -- rampant corruption in state and federal courthouses throughout Alabama, Mississippi, and the Deep South.

How is this for irony? The Time article comes eight days after a Legal Schnauzer post that asked, "Could something like the Jamal Khashoggi murder happen here?" The answer is, without a doubt, yes. From that post:

The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi --which Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered, according to the CIA --might be the most barbaric act against an individual in most of our lifetimes. But if you compare events leading to the murder with events surrounding my kidnapping and five-month incarceration in Shelby County, Alabama, you see enough similarities to think maybe the Khashoggi murder wasn't so "out there," after all.

In one respect, the Khashoggi incident was less radical than what happened to a U.S. journalist (me) in the Deep South: At least the Saudi criminals had the decency to abduct Khashoggi in a public place; Shelby County deputy Chris Blevins broke into our house, in broad daylight, to nab me -- an act unlawful on so many levels that it's hard to list all the state and federal laws it violates. And yet, U.S. Judge Virginia Emerson Hopkins (Northern District of Alabama) has found sheriff's deputies under the state constitution, have immunity to commit such acts, as being within "the line and scope of their employment." (No kidding.)

On top of that, we've pointed to evidence that suggests Republican thugs who orchestrated my abduction included my wife, Carol, in the Rob Riley-Liberty Duke lawsuit because the plan was to kidnap and murder both of us. If so, Carol's ability to remain free and get word out to the press -- plus the thugs' apparent reluctance to break into our house a second time -- probably is all that saved us.

Were we slated to be beheaded and dismembered, as Khashoggi reportedly was? Likely not, but who knows, maybe the Saudis have given Alabama thugs ideas to implement in their future endeavors.

American politicians are seeking some kind of sanctions for Saudi Arabia's crown prince over the Khashoggi murder , but what about American criminals like Rob Riley and Liberty Duke who sought arrests for Carol and me without the slightest legal grounds for doing so. Time's report gives the false impression that journalists face dangers mostly overseas:

And in prison in Myanmar, two young Reuters reporters remain separated from their wives and children, serving a sentence for defying the ethnic divisions that rend that country. For documenting the deaths of 10 minority Rohingya Muslims, Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone got seven years. The killers they exposed were sentenced to 10.

This year brought no shortage of other examples. Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam was jailed for more than 100 days for making “false” and “provocative” statements after criticizing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in an interview about mass protests in Dhaka. In Sudan, freelance journalist Amal Habani was arrested while covering economic protests, detained for 34 days and beaten with electric rods. In Brazil, reporter Patricia Campos Mello was targeted with threats after reporting that supporters of President-elect Jair Bolsonaro had funded a campaign to spread false news stories on WhatsApp. And Victor Mallet, Asia news editor for the Financial Times, was forced out of Hong Kong after inviting an activist to speak at a press club event against the wishes of the Chinese government. Worldwide, a record number of journalists—262 in total—were imprisoned in 2017, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which expects the total to be high again this year.

It's important for Time's readership to know about these abuses. The reference to a journalist in Sudan being detained for 34 days and beaten with metal rods sounds familiar -- except I was detained for 154 days and beaten (inside my home) with fists and covered in pepper spray. I still suffer serious health fallout from that assault, and that likely will not change in my lifetime. The same applies for Carol.

Why is it news when a journalist is beaten and jailed in Sudan, but not when something much worse happens in Alabama? Is Time afraid of upsetting the conservative political criminals -- including former Trump AG Jeff Sessions and current federal judge Bill Pryor -- who are behind the attacks on Carol and me?

Is it only an atrocity when it happens under a black regime in a "third world country," but it's not worth reporting when thugs who reek of white privilege carry it out in Alabama?


(Note: Legal Schnauzer needs your help. Loyal readers have sustained this blog for years, and support is urgently needed now that my wife, Carol, is recovering from a fainting spell, which led to a recent broken arm. The healing process has started for Carol, but statements from her doctors indicate this likely was fallout from political thugs cheating both of us out of our jobs [and health insurance] in Birmingham -- and the stress of dealing with financial wreckage that comes from being targeted for right-wing attacks.  If you are able to help along our journalism journey, please click on the yellow donate button in the upper right corner of the blog, under the "Support the Schnauzer" headline. We are deeply grateful for your support through the years.)

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Michael Flynn memo from Mueller investigators suggests Jeff Sessions and other members of Trump Transition Team could be in "deep trouble"

Tuesday, December 11, 2018By Roger Alan Shuler

Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions

Recent soul-rattling developments in the Robert Mueller investigation produced headlines over the weekend such as "Trump implicated in two felonies." That is big news, of course, and it came from Mueller's court filing last Friday on former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen. If you have strong ties to Alabama, as we do, the most intriguing news might have come three days earlier when Mueller released filings about former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. The Flynn sentencing memo suggests the Mueller probe could be taking a south-bound turn, in the direction of former Trump attorney general and U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

An article at lawandcrime.com -- titled "Here is what could be under some of those redactions in the Flynn memo" -- points a finger heavily in Sessions' direction. According to reporter Ronn Blitzer, much of the hidden material clearly refers to members of the Trump Transition Team, and that gets into Sessions territory. Prominent members of the Transition Team included Sessions and his former chief of staff, Rick Dearborn, along with Michael Flynn. Blitzer writes:

The release of the heavily redacted sentencing memo that Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s office filed in the case of Michael Flynn has had the political world abuzz, not just over what was revealed in the memo, but what was not. Pages worth of text were blacked out, leaving people to guess what they’re about, but a look at context—and not-too-distant history—may shed some light on the mystery.

Page 3 of the memo’s addendum includes the following sentence: “The Defendant assisted the SCO’s investigation on a range of issues, including interactions between officials in the Presidential Transition Team and Russia, [REDACTED].”

The next paragraph is under the subheading Interactions Between the Transition Team and Russia. The last three lines or so of that paragraph are blacked out with redactions.

Clearly, some of this hidden information has to do with members of the Trump transition team. Now, as Law and Crime Network legal analyst Linda Kenney Baden said in a segment Wednesday afternoon, “When you give substantial cooperation or substantial assistance, you’re not giving it to get the person that’s underneath you, you’re getting the person that’s above you.”

Who on the Transition Team was most likely to have had interactions with Russian officials -- and was high-level enough that Flynn would have known about them? Blitzer provides insight:

In that same segment, former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi named one person who was on that transition team who fits the bill.

“That filing is incredibly telling. There are a lot of red flags and loud gongs that suggest that the president of the United States and other senior officials are in deep trouble, including former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.”

In a separate statement to Law and Crime, Rossi specified that he was referring to the question of, “Did Sessions lie and omit contacts with the Russians that Flynn knows about[?]”

The now-former Attorney General had recused himself from the Russia investigation due to his connection with the Trump campaign, but recall that he was also accused of covering up his own contacts with Russia. During his Attorney General confirmation hearing, Sessions said he did not have any contacts with Russian officials. It later came out that he had meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign. Sessions later said that the meetings were in the context of his role as a Senator, and had nothing to do with the Trump campaign. Former officials said otherwise, telling the Washington Post that intelligence revealed that Sessions and Kislyak discussed Trump’s policies on Russia and U.S.-Russia relationships under a Trump administration.

If Flynn told Mueller’s office about other communications that Sessions may have had during the transition period, that would certainly fit the bill for a higher-level official’s conduct that Mueller would not want public at this time.

USA Today, in a piece titled "Michael Flynn re-emerges as a major witness in Robert Mueller inquiry -- and at least two others," also says the Flynn documents have ominous tones for members of the Transition Team. Write Kevin Johnson and Bart Jansen:

Mueller's conclusions, legal analysts said, probably served as a blunt warning to members of the administration who worked closely with the national security adviser and were consulted on his Russian contacts, specifically involving Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. 

Flynn's cooperation was secured last year as part of his guilty plea to lying to the FBI in part about his pre-inaugural contacts with Kislyak related to sanctions imposed by the Obama administration for Russia's interference in the 2016 campaign. 

"The message that this sends, given Flynn's central role in the transition (to the Trump administration), is that if transition members are not fully lawyered-up yet, they should do so now," said Ilene Jaroslaw, a former federal prosecutor who once worked closely with Mueller's top aides in the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's Office. "This document, even though it is heavily redacted, speaks louder than any public statement or press conference could ever accomplish."

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Original post link:  https://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2018/12/michael-flynn-memo-from-mueller.html

Could something like the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi happen here? Our experiences in Alabama and Missouri suggest the answer is "Yes"

Monday, December 3, 2018

Could something like the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi happen here? Our experiences in Alabama and Missouri suggest the answer is "Yes"

Roger Alan Shuler

Jamal Khashoggi

The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi --which Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered, according to the CIA --might be the most barbaric act against an individual in most of our lifetimes. But if you compare events leading to the murder with events surrounding my kidnapping and five-month incarceration in Shelby County, Alabama, you see enough similarities to think maybe the Khashoggi murder wasn't so "out there," after all.

In one respect, the Khashoggi incident was less radical than what happened to a U.S. journalist (me) in the Deep South: At least the Saudi criminals had the decency to abduct Khashoggi in a public place; Shelby County deputy Chris Blevins broke into our house, in broad daylight, to nab me -- an act unlawful on so many levels that it's hard to list all the state and federal laws it violates. And yet, U.S. Judge Virginia Emerson Hopkins (Northern District of Alabama) has found sheriff's deputies under the state constitution, have immunity to commit such acts, as being within "the line and scope of their employment." (No kidding.)

On top of that, we've pointed to evidence that suggests Republican thugs who orchestrated my abduction included my wife, Carol, in the Rob Riley-Liberty Duke lawsuit because the plan was to kidnap and murder both of us. If so, Carol's ability to remain free and get word out to the press -- plus the thugs' apparent reluctance to break into our house a second time -- probably is all that saved us.

Were we slated to be beheaded and dismembered, as Khashoggi reportedly was? Likely not, but who knows, maybe the Saudis have given Alabama thugs ideas to implement in their future endeavors.

How similar were the Khashoggi murder and the Schnauzer kidnapping? Let's examine some of the underlying issues in both:


The judiciary as an "entry drug" for corruption

Over 11-plus years, this blog has provided details -- the kind that probably have never been reported before -- showing that American courts are awash in sewage. My research indicates perhaps the No. 1 indicator of a backward, third-world country is a corrupt judiciary -- specifically, the lack of due process, equal protection, and the rule of law. Our reporting shows the world's foremost democracy is becoming more and more like a banana republic.

Mugshot of U.S. journalist Roger Shuler

Jamal Khashoggi recognized similar, deep-seated problems in Saudi Arabia -- and speaking out about the entrenched judiciary likely contributed to his demise. Here are some of his quotes from a recent report at Newsweek:

[We shouldn't] minimize the issue of judicial reform to women only, even though it is important. . . . Since the time of King Abdulaziz, they have refused codifying the laws. And they think codifying the laws is secular. . . . This is what I mean by reform, by true reform of the judiciary, is to codify the law, introduce due process in the court system and make judges [obey] --what is the word? --a codified law…. This is the reform that is needed.

Making judges obey a codified law? Heck, Khashoggi was talking about judicial reform that would be way more advanced than anything we have in the United States. We have a codified law in America, but no one makes judges obey it. We've seen multiple instances where judges clearly have not even read the applicable law and/or did not consider it in their rulings.


Attacking your job -- your ability to make a living -- as a form of retaliation

We've written numerous posts about the cheat jobs Carol and I experienced in the Alabama workplace -- her at Infinity Insurance, me at UAB -- and evidence makes it clear they were political hit jobs, payback for my reporting at Legal Schnauzer, especially about the Don Siegelman case. Khashoggi had similar experiences in Saudi Arabia. From a report at Bloomberg:

In the 2000s, [Khashoggi] was twice fired from his post as editor-in-chief of theSaudi Al-Watan daily newspaper, which under his leadership ran stories, editorials and cartoons critical of extremists.

Yet he didn’t stay long without a job. In between, he served as an adviser to the Saudi ambassador to London, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, a former long-serving intelligence chief, and stayed on as the prince’s media aide after he was appointed the Saudi envoy to the U.S.

“I got fired from my job twice because I was pushing for reform in Saudi Arabia,” Khashoggi said in a March appearance on Qatari-run Al Jazeera’s“Upfront” program as he explained the worsening environment for journalists under Prince Mohammed. “It wasn’t that easy but people were not being put in jails. There was a breathing space.”

Of thugs and jails

Alabama thugs targeted me for jailing -- essentially arresting me for blogging. Statements from the last days of his life indicate Khashoggi spent a lot of time looking over his shoulder, as any "breathing space" dissipated under the regime of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. From a report at the UK Daily Mail:

Khashoggi also criticised Prince Mohammed's lack of 'proper advisers'.

'He is moving toward a Saudi Arabia according to him, a Saudi Arabia according to Mohammed bin Salman only,' said Khashoggi, who was himself a contributor to the Washington Post newspaper.

Khashoggi described two of the prince's aides, including the since-dismissed media adviser Saud al-Qahtani, as 'very thuggish'.

'People fear them. You challenge them, you might end up in prison, and that has happened,' he said.

Lies, lies, everywhere there's lies

Almost from the moment Khashoggi's disappearance hit the press, Saudi officials produced a string of lies -- finally admitting it was a case of premeditated murder. A recent unmasking of Saudi lies came when a Turkish official said Khashoggi was strangled as soon as he entered the Saudi consulate. So much for Saudi claims that Khashoggi was the victim of a rogue extradition mission that turned into a "brawl." Can't have much of a brawl when one of the participants already is dead from strangulation.

Rob Riley and his daddy, former Alabama Gov. Bob Riley

Alabama GOP thug Rob Riley took a similar tack after I was thrown in jail. In an interview with Sara Rafsky, of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Riley told lies of Trumpian proportions. Here is a memorable whopper from Rafsky's article, titled "Censorship in Alabama's Shelby County":

Riley said in a telephone interview he has a right to seek injunctive relief in a defamation case and there is legal precedent for doing so. He said someone who decides "to make up a lie, destroy someone's reputation, that's not journalism."

Riley told CPJ: "Shuler has a history of making up things and writing things that are outlandish lies...I am going to pursue every avenue possible to me in the courts to defend my name, my family and my business...He has no proof this is true. He has just decided to be a cyber-bully and make stuff up and I've had enough."

Is any of that true? Not one word of it. Notice that Riley does not cite any case to support his claim that the law allows for a preliminary injunction in a defamation case -- in a matter where the complained of article has not been proven to be defamatory before a jury trial, as required by law. Riley can cite no such law because there is no such law.

Notice that Riley tells a reporter that my reporting consists of "outlandish lies." Did he ever say -- under oath, in a court of law -- that my reporting on his relationship with lobbyist Liberty Duke was false. Anyone can check the public record and find the answer is "No."

Is there much difference between the oily Rob "Uday" Riley and lying royal officials in Saudi Arabia? Not that I can see.


(Note: Legal Schnauzer needs your help. Loyal readers have sustained this blog for years, and support is urgently needed now that my wife, Carol, is recovering from a fainting spell, which led to a recent broken arm. The healing process has started for Carol, but statements from her doctors indicate this likely was fallout from political thugs cheating both of us out of our jobs [and health insurance] in Birmingham -- and the stress of dealing with financial wreckage that comes from being targeted for right-wing attacks.  If you are able to help along our journalism journey, please click on the yellow donate button in the upper right corner of the blog, under the "Support the Schnauzer" headline. We are deeply grateful for your support through the years.)

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Ice Nucleation: How it works! Geoengineering: weathermen speaking out!

Shane Rogers-Mauro, a classmate of Bill Pryor's at Northeast Louisiana U, says the future judge outed him in college -- pointing to a Kavanaugh-like tendency to abuse others and act in devious ways

Bill Pryor, as a drummer at Northeast Louisiana University

After a raucous confirmation process, Brett Kavanaugh stands as Exhibit A of a federal judge who lacks the temperament, integrity, and impartiality to sit on the federal bench.

Consider Bill Pryor, who sits on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals (Alabama, Georgia, Florida) and has an office at his "duty station" in Birmingham's Hugo Black Courthouse, as Exhibit B. In essence, Pryor is a closeted-gay version of Brett Kavanaugh, perhaps even more far to the right politically -- and both were on Donald Trump's short list of U.S. Supreme Court nominees. Pryor apparently fell out of favor -- opening the door for Kavanaugh -- and that likely is because of our reporting about his forays into gay pornography, with nude photos appearing at badpuppy.com in the late 1990s.

Shane Rogers-Mauro, a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, man who says Pryor sexually harassed him while the two were classmates at Northeast Louisiana University (NLU, now University of Louisiana Monroe), uses terms like "cruel" and "evil" to describe the Pryor he knew in college and read about since the judge's rise to political infamy as a closeted gay who is virulently anti-LGBT in his public statements. Rogers-Mauro says he has notes about others who have told him Pryor sexually harassed them at NLU.

Shane Rogers in the NLU Marching Band

In fact, Rogers-Mauro has seen Pryor's cruelty in a most personal way. Jealous over a relationship Rogers-Mauro was having in college (he was Shane Rogers then, and Rogers-Mauro is his married name), Pryor outed his classmate. Says Rogers-Mauro:

I was in a band fraternity -- Kappa Kappa Psi -- when Bill discovered I was seeing someone else, and he decided to out me to the rest of the band. Back then, outing was rotten thing to do because people were pretty much in closet. In fact, I would say that outing me, alone, was a form of sexual harassment. I was ostracized in the fraternity, and it pretty much ended my time in that organization.

Bill has a self loathing outlook, with his anti-gay opinions in court and in his public statements. That is so old school and disgusting to us all.

Rogers-Mauro said Pryor was an annoying, abrasive presence on the NLU campus, especially in the close-knit band community:

I don't have a lot of dirty stories about Bill; I never had any sexual interaction with him. He's got a wife and kids, which is pretty shocking. That is him in Bad Puppy. He was known as gay -- he was in percussion, a drummer -- and he had a mouth on him, saying things, about politics and other subjects, that he shouldn't have been saying. We worked together in work-study, so we got to know each other pretty well.

I'm surprised he's an appellate-court judge. Not only is he not the right person for the job, with all of his prejudices, but I've never seen someone so conservative and cruel. We wrote Bill off as a pure radical; he was always glorifying Reagan. His views are so far right -- he was Republican this and Republican that. 

This guy's evil. I've had no contact with him since college. From opinions and statements of last 20 years, I can see it's only gotten worse. How can he be a judge of others when he's so prejudiced in one direction. That goes beyond homosexuality or anything like that. He will try to get as high as he can. He's one of those power grabbers. You can't make judicial decisions in the right way when you are so far on the fringe.

As a federal judge, Pryor appears to be a successful individual -- on the surface -- and Rogers-Mauro did not see that one coming:

I never thought twice about him being successful in anything. People would walk the other way when he was coming toward them because they did not want to deal with that kind of aggressiveness. I'm 53 now, and I've never seen anyone so radical in entire life.

He's gotten higher than he ever should have. I find it hard to believe Bill could be impartial in anything. And others who know him can't believe he's a judge. He's just very aggressive, very evil.

Original Post here: https://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2018/11/shane-rogers-mauro-classmate-of-bill.html
Done as a journalistic favor to Roger and Carol Shuler since FB links are being censored containing Legalschnauzer.blogspot.com

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