Hurricane Michael slammed into Panama City, Florida yesterday as a Category 4, with winds of 155 mph before moving inland to Georgia and South Carolina. Two people are dead and more than a 800,000 are without electricity. Hurricanes are getting stronger and more frequent-that's a fact of climate change-but can governments and citizens keep up?
Thursday's weekly series "Criminal Injustice" is about the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country. Paul Wright, the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News (PLN), and Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, join the show.
Days after Special Counsel Robert Mueller's appointment, he was drawn into a heated dispute between Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and then-acting FBI director Andrew McCabe over who would ultimately oversee the investigation. McCabe argued that Rosenstein's memo justifying the firing of former FBI director James Comey implicated him in a potential obstruction of justice case against President Trump. McCabe lost that fight and was later fired. Brian and John speak with Daniel Lazare, a journalist and author of three books-"The Frozen Republic," "The Velvet Coup," and "America's Undeclared War."
A senior Chinese intelligence official was arrested in a sting operation and extradited yesterday to the United States to face espionage charges. Yanjun Xu, a deputy division director in the Ministry of State Security is the first Chinese intelligence officer ever to be extradited to face trial in open court. He is accused to trying to procure intelligence related to the design of jet engine fan blades. Meanwhile, a Bloomberg story about Chinese efforts to clandestinely install spy chips in US computers servers appears to be fake news. Web developer and technologist Chris Garaffa joins the show.
The US military has grounded its entire fleet of F-35 fighter jets in the wake of a crash last month in South Carolina. The F-35 has been dogged by cost overruns, poor performance, and engineering problems virtually since its inception. Pierre Sprey, a special assistant to the Secretary of Defense and a former defense analyst who is considered to be one of the fathers of the F-16 and A-10 fighter jets, and one of the country's foremost critics of the F-35, joins Brian and John.
US intelligence services apparently have intercepts of Saudi government communications indicating that Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman ordered the kidnapping of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who has been missing for more than a week since entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Turkish officials believe that Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered inside the consulate. The Saudis are denying any wrongdoing. Massoud Shadjareh, the founder of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, joins the show.
Federal court judges are balking at what they call unlawful efforts by US immigration authorities to continue to detain people charged with entering the country unlawfully, even after they had been granted bail. The rulings complicate the Trump Administration's "zero tolerance" policy against defendants charged with crossing the border illegally. Brian and John speak with Jorge Barón, the executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.
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