When my book (with Lawrence Stratton), The Tyranny of Good Intentions, was published, progressives and the left-wing refused to believe that the rich suffer frame-ups from prosecutorial abuse. Their response was that law is controlled by the rich and functions in their service. Only the poor and minorities suffer at the hands of the law.
The political left knew that Michael Milken was guilty, because the rich “junk bond king” financed takeovers of corporations that threw workers out of jobs. Leftists accepted the Justice (sic) Department’s fanciful claim that the Exxon Valdez oil spill was a criminal act, not an accident for which civil damages were the remedy. Leona Helmsley was guilty, because she was a rich bitch. So was Martha Stewart. The left-wing was firm: all rich white people in prison are guilty, and the only reason they are in prison is that they are so obviously guilty that the system couldn’t let them off. In other words, they were so audacious in their crimes that the crimes couldn’t be covered up.
The same mentality now dominates discussions of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case.
Strauss-Kahn, who was at the time of his highly publicized arrest the head of the International Monetary Fund and the expected winner of the next French presidential election, was arrested on sexual abuse and attempted rape charges on the word of an immigrant hotel maid in New York.
Whereas the police are required to respond to charges by questioning the accused, they are not supposed to make a public spectacle of him in order to create the impression that he is guilty before he is even charged. Yet DSK was arrested aboard an airliner as it was about to depart for France and portrayed by the police as a fleeing criminal. Photos were released of him in handcuffs and stripped of his business attire.
The judge refused bail to one of the West’s most high profile persons on the basis of the prosecutor’s statement that DSK would flee the country and hide out abroad. All of this quickly was passed to reporters, who obliged the prosecutors and police by portraying DSK as obviously guilty as he was apprehended fleeing from the country.
The police even planted the story that DSK was in such a hurry to flee that he left behind his cell phone and that that is how they found him. This was a bald-faced lie. The fact of the matter is that when DSK arrived at the airport, he discovered that he had left his cell phone and called the hotel, the scene of the alleged crime, to ask that it be retrieved and brought to him at the airport. When the police boarded his flight, he asked them, “Did you bring my cell phone.” He had no idea the police were there to detain him for questioning.
DSK’s treatment raises serious problems for the leftist myth that law serves the interests of the rich and powerful. If law was the preserve of the rich and powerful, DSK would never have been taken off a departing airliner and made a public spectacle on the basis of an immigrant hotel maid’s accusation. The airliner would have been allowed to depart and the case would not have been pursued. If the maid’s story was ever reported, the police would have dismissed it as the story of a hysterical person or a person out for money. In the unlikely case that the police were pressed by reporters, the police would say that DSK had left the country before they could find him and that they were arranging to question him in France. In the very least, DSK’s detention would have been very discreet, and he would have been given the benefit of “innocent until proven guilty” and granted bail.
Clearly, in DSK’s case, the law is not serving the rich and powerful. Moreover, there are powerful biases against him. Feminists “know” that DSK is guilty, because “all men are sexual predators.” Progressives and leftists “know” that DSK is guilty, because “as a person of wealth and power, he is used to getting away with everything.”
When it became known that the police had “found” DSK only because the alleged fleeing suspect telephoned the hotel and asked for his cell phone, leftists did not wonder why the police had painted DSK guilty with a false story. Instead, they explained the alleged criminal’s revelation of his whereabouts on the basis of their myth that as one of the rich and powerful, he expected to be able to rape women at will with nothing ever done about it. Soon the story was that attempted rape was ordinary behavior on DSK’s part. But leftists did not explain why this time the law failed to protect him from a hotel maid when it had protected him from higher placed women.
As readers know by now, I have little patience with those who let their emotions determine their analysis. Let’s look further at this case. It is a known fact that Sarkozy’s political operatives in France knew of Strauss-Kahn’s arrest before it was announced by the New York police. French, but not American, newspapers have wondered how this could be.
Perhaps the hotel maid thought to call up Sarkozy’s people and tell them.
Note also that the alleged victim has a very high-priced major league lawyer representing her that she not only does not need but also obviously cannot afford to pay. It is not up to the maid to prosecute the defendant. That job is done at public expense by the New York attorney general. The alleged victim has another high-priced lawyer in France whose job is to round up Strauss-Kahn victims among French women with the prospect of sharing in a settlement.
These facts mean one of two things: The “victim” is after money, not justice, and the lawyers are operating on contingency with shares in a settlement between DSK and whatever the collection of women turns out to be. Alternatively, Strauss-Kahn was set-up, as he predicted that he would be, but there is no evidence other than a disheveled woman performing for the hotel security camera. Therefore, whoever is behind the set-up sent the fancy lawyer to the maid–certainly the emigrant maid would not have known how to find such a lawyer–with the instructions to drive the case toward settlement.
The public regards large financial settlements as evidence of guilt, and thus a settlement is all that is needed to terminate Strauss-Kahn’s career. The left-wing would scream that money again had defeated justice. As DSK has already been convicted in the media, he no doubt would welcome a settlement rather than risk a trial by jurors prejudiced by the media.
A settlement, of course, has to be blamed on DSK, not on the maid or her attorneys. This is impossible to do, because if the maid was not after a settlement, she would not have two attorneys driving the case in that direction. How to pull this rabbit out of the hat?
If CounterPunch’s accounts are correct, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has stepped up to frame the story. If a crime actually occurred, a settlement between the two sides’ lawyers would be obstruction of justice, itself a crime, and the lawyers know it. But the maid’s attorneys know that the big money belongs to DSK’s wife, not to DSK.
This rules out the maid getting much out of a civil suit for damages following a felony conviction of DSK. To get a settlement, the maid needs to get money from DSK’s wife by agreeing not to testify, thus collapsing a trial. The path to a settlement, Dershowitz, says, is for DSK’s lawyers not to negotiate with the maid or the maid’s lawyers, but with the maid’s family, as long as it is done outside of New York and her home country of Guinea.
Notice that in Dershowitz’s explanation, it is DSK who initiates the settlement talks. Dershowitz says that the maid’s lawyer “may want to see justice done, but ultimately, money is more important.” If justice were the goal, the maid would not need a lawyer.
So who is using the law against who? In the event of a settlement, the left-wing will say that DSK or his rich wife bought his way out of a crime. They will not consider the possibility that the law served an immigrant maid who bilked a wife out of millions of dollars and destroyed the reputation of a member of the establishment who was in the way of those more powerful than he.
The only way the left-wing’s myth about law being the servant of the rich can be saved is by seeing the case as a set-up of DSK by someone who is richer and more powerful than he is. This someone could be the current president of France and the financial and political forces behind him, which includes the US government for which Sarkozy has been a reliable puppet.
Regarding the attorney, many attorneys work pro bono on high profile cases, because the publicity surrounding them garners additional paying clients. Also, in this case, the maid has a union backing her, and they may be footing her legal bills. I do not believe an accuser can be assumed to be false, just because she hires an attorney to protect her interests. The media in NYC, and politically motivated DA, the “win at all costs” motivated ADA on the case, and the “get him acquitted at all costs” legal team for DSK…none of them have the accuser’s best interests at heart.
I also feel the media got it wrong on the facts as things were unfolding. This may not have been a constructed lie by the police, but rather the media jumping to olympian conclusions (as they so often do).
In conclusion, let’s wait for the facts to come out at the trial and reserve judgements of the accuser and DSK when the trial is over.
Most often, the only “facts” that come out in a trial are the ones that the prosecutor permits, that is, the “facts” that prove his case. The real fact is that trials are loaded against the defendant, and that is why less than 5% of crimes go to trial. Defendants, innocent or guilty, accept the prosecutor’s plea deal, which brings a lighter sentence than results from conviction. Prosecutors and judges prefer deals because they save time, increase the conviction rate, and unclog court dockets.
The defendant prefers a deal because the defendant knows a fair trial is impossible.
post script – the author states DSK is “high profile”, and yet 99.9 percent of Americans had ever heard of him. I know who he was by name because I pay attention to economic articles, but I had no idea what he looked like. The whole idea that his “high profile” justified granting bail in NYC is not logical. He could easily have fled, and no one in the US would have recognized him to stop him.
This article does not add up either. Too many assumptions without factual evidence. DSK is presumed innocent by law. Presumed does not mean he did not do it. It means he is “believed” to be innocent until proven guilty. The housekeeper, it should be noted, should in the same way be presumed innocent in her accusation, unless she cannot prove the accusations.
The author suggests that “emotion” has played a key role in the views of the media as well as public. While it may be true that people do become emotional over rape charges (understandably), most still believe in fair trials. However, the author tends to get a bit “emotional” himself and appears to try to cover this up which only makes many of his words he chooses to use seem laced with contempt.
Rape trials are a drain on the alleged victims. I think if this housekeeper has the opportunity to settle up out of court, she is smart to do it. Otherwise, she will be racked over the coals in court. She wins in two ways, she attains some badly needed money and DSK will likely think twice before doing it again (if he is guilty). The other scenario, it was a massive conspiracy against DSK? Notice he already has a troop of buds helping him out.
From my work in social services, I have never yet seen a rape case that did not have merrit to it, although I do know this does happen.
DSK has already been convicted by the police in the media. A fair trial is impossible.
Among the many unasked questions is: What was the maid doing in
an occupied room.? Was she deaf and did not hear the water running in the shower? She didn’t see his personal effects and conclude that the room
was still occupied?
The normal practice of hotels is not to have housekeepers or maids present in occupied rooms.
The Pam Martens article referred to in this article is an excellent analysis of the case. It is at Counterpunch dot com.
“Dershowitz Promotes Settlement for Strauss-Kahn as Hotel Housekeeper Lawyers Up – by pam Martens”
The time factor does not add up . Maid entered suite at 12.00 then cleaned 2 rooms before moving on to bedroom where she encountered a naked DSK. He sexually assaulted her- then dressed, packed and descended 28 flours to the hotel foyer where cameras timed his exit at 12.28. Whovere made this story up and for whatever reason should have done a lot better – pathetic.
And don’t forget, the “fleeing criminal” called the hotel to tell them where he was, and Sarkozy’s political operatives in France knew of DSK’s arrest before the New York police announced it
It’s great that someone is finally sticking up for the rich and powerful. The rich and powerful are being seriously oppressed by this whole democracy situation, but recently it finally seems that things are moving in their favor. Forget the fact that 2% of our adult male population is currently in prison. Forget the fact that most of these people are guilty of non-violent crimes and are subjected to human rights abuses within the prison system. But you can write all you want about the monstrous inhumanity of those people’s plight and the inhumanity of the system and it won’t put you in the good graces of those with money and power. Taking a stand and putting your neck out for the rich and powerful is a bold and–well, certainly not brave or thankless–move. Kudos to you, Sir Roberts. I hope the nobles find you useful.
What I am sticking up for is the majesty of law, not for one class or the other. My book demonstrates that neither rich nor poor have the protection of law.
Bentos, as to the time factor, the Drudge Report has posted documents related to the grand jury’s decision and the time line. The accuser states he surprised her, she covered her eyes and prepared to back out of the suite, he then grabbed and dragged her back into the suite. She stumbled and he forced her head to his genitals, she pulled away, and tried again to escape. He pushed her down on the bed and attempted to sodomize her. Again, she escaped and left the room. All of this could happen in a very short period of time. Rape only requires initial penetration, not completion.
I think there Bentos is making an assumption this is a sensual sexual encounter, and a consensual sexual encounter would include foreplay, possibly a conversation, and then an extended sexual encounter where the man tries to last as long as possible to please the woman.
Jayne – I am well aware of this – she actually claimed she stumbled after the attack had started – initially there was also a sodomy claim – although this now seems to have disappeared – why? DNA can very easily confirm sodomy. The initial statement of having cleaned two rooms before the attack also seems to have disappeared. There is a lot going on here for 28 minutes – nevermind getting dressed, packed and descending 28 flours. Rape is possible – of course – Im just saying its more probable that something simple happened – like DSK finding her going through his laptops and stuff and trying to arrest her – hence a scuffle. Whatever happened as the Slogs comments DSK seems to be getting a very raw deal – why?
It is all a game of illusion.
The article implies that Strauss-Kahn scores high in the probity stakes because he was ‘the head of the International Monetary Fund’, rich and famous. The maid, given her poverty and lowly status is morelikely to be the tool of a Machiaveli.
A mere glance at Strauss-Kahn’s carrer in French politics would straightway prove the opposite. He has been involved in a series of corruption and theft of public funds cases. His election campaign right hand man, Campadelis, has been imprisoned twice for corruption and fraud.
After the Mery scandal,Strauss-Kahn’s fellow socialists ostracized him, stating that his mafiaesque manipulations should have no place in politics.
With Strauss-Kahn we are lookin at a cynical Nixon like ‘statesman’. Whatever his qualities, probity is not included.
The question is, if it had been a post Watergate Nixon in Sofitel, would this article still have been written?
My article implies no such thing. My article shows that the left-wing belief that law serves the rich is false. It is also a false belief that law serves justice. Law serves the prosecutor’s success indicator–his conviction rate.
@ Ruppert
This is totally untrue. DSK was entirely cleaned after the corruption trials. Even his political adversaries wouldn’t even mention it now. Bad argument, sorry.
This article is as good a summary of the atrocious behaviour of the NYPD in the Strauss-Kahn case. The only thing I would add is that the incessant interviews granted by the maid’s brother are a very obvious case of a family on the make.
I hold no brief for Strauss-Kahn, who is just another Establishment bombast; but everyone deserves a fair trial.
http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/the-strauss-kahn-waltz/
I see from most of these comments that my conclusion is correct that most people go with their emotional predilections.
Making sweeping generalizations based on one case seems a bit of a stretch. To say that wealthy people don’t have better access to legal representation than non-wealthy seems absurd. Not to argue that the wealthy don’t also suffer at the law’s hands, but surely the Simpson case would seemingly refute your argument.
My statements are based on an unemotional look at the facts that stand out screaming about the DSK case and on my book, which has had two editions and a number of printings. It is not based on one anything.
***”Dershowitz says that the maid’s lawyer “may want to see justice done, but ultimately, money is more important.” If justice were the goal, the maid would not need a lawyer.”**
WHAT??
Excuse me while I gag. DSK’s “first rate team of lawyers” was making this maid out to be “a whore who consented” to being attacked before DSK was on his first perp walk. They have sperm, remember? Sperm doesn’t lie, so they had to make the woman out a liar. If I were his attorney’s I would do the same thing, but for defense attorney Dershowitz to say such a stupid thing and for an author with such august credentials to cite them, is amazing at best, frightening at worst.
The author probably agrees with DSK’s buddy, leftist-nationalist activist, Jean-François Kahn, that the offense was minor and amounted to nothing more than “troussage de domestique” (literally, stripping or having casual, forced sex with a servant),” With this lovely sentiment, his best friend even agreed that he probably did it, but it was nothing because the victim was a lowly maid. Well, “domestique’s” in America don’t have to put up with being attacked, regardless of whether they are maids at the Four Seasons or Motel Six–or former IMF executives.
The author is correct in stating that the perp walk can be damaging and is probably wrong–but other than that, the article is off base.
There is no public evidence that supports these claims by whoever this person is.
Dershowitzs statement that if the maid was really looking for justice she didnt need lawyers was certainly inappropriate – but apart from that I cant agree with Murphys comment.
DSKs lawyers only comments to date regarding the maid is that they have substantial evidence that would seriously undermine her credibility – and this was a long time after the perp walk. They also intimated that any sex would not have been forced – this isint an acknowledgement that sex even happened – he is merely keeping his options open – he doesnt know what accusations the maids lawyers are going to throw at him – this is all standard procedure.
DNA let alone sperm has not been officially cinfirmed. NYPD insists they will not release information until trial – what we have are rumours and leaks – leaks regarding DNA could only come from DA or NYPD – practically every leak regarding this case from these two bodies has proved false.
Yes, what we have is police disinformation meant to convict a person against
whom there is no evidence. If there waa any evidence, it would not be necessary to convict DSK in the media on the basis of disinformation.
Again, to repeat myself, most of the comments prove that I am correct in my conclusion that people decide on the basis of their emotion predilections. Most people are incapable of thought or analysis. If they don’t like the rich and the powerful, their gut decides. If they don’t like immigrants their gut decides. If they
don’t like guns their gut decides. Most people have no brains, only the gut.
@ Murphy
“The author probably agrees with DSK’s buddy, leftist-nationalist activist, Jean-François Kahn”
jean-François Kahn is certainly not an “activist”. He holds no political career, he is a journalist (actually he was, as he resigned after the comments you mentioned) and founder of Marianne, wich is more “center” than “left”.
Interesting article, and appears quite on the mark after the multiple revelations today:
– procedural abnormalities in line up identification (alleged victim shown photos of DSK before picking him out in line up)
– desire to profit out of pressing charges (taped conversation reveals this)
– alleged victim receiving large payments from a drug criminal
The prosecution in this case should be somewhat red faced after this, as should a lot of the media that have allowed this to become a parody of justice…. guilty until proven otherwise seems to be the US approach to justice, whether one is rich or poor.
Bravo, Mr. Roberts! You called it. I knew it myself because an accusation of non-consensual oral sex just doesn’t hold water. I, however, failed to write a spot-on article about it three days before evidence exonerating DSK came to light.
Nothing ever added up on the prosecutions side in this case – absolutely nothing – it wasnt rocket science – what bugs me are papers like the New York Times who “investigated” the maids family in Guinea and came up with a feature article more suited for an 8 years old geography lesson.
The only thing that adds up is Christine Lagardes appointment to the IMF just before the news brakes.
@dmoulin
‘Cleared’ is not the term I would use. Getting off by claiming that claiming his backdating of his ‘bill’ for services by several years was a ‘mistake’ does,not, in my view mean ‘cleared’.
Claiming he did not know the mery video tape was in his posession and that he had never viewed it does not imply ‘cleared either.
Anyway, legal question
The assumed victim has been smeared by the New York Post as a prostitute. This has had a servere effect on people’s perception of the case.
The New York Post obviously has no proof because having been slapped with a ‘plainte’ they now call her ‘maid’.
According to the New York Post this information came from sources close to thedefence. If this is thecase this is a criminal slander/libel and a criminal conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
Why have DSK or PT or Guidepost or Brafman not taken action against the New York Post to clear their names as the originators of this slander?