On Monday, I posted, The Brooklyn DA Inflates Recovered Costs of Prosecution in Exchange for Not Reporting Tax Violations. A comment came in from RationalFaith which ended with a request: “can we get an official Frum Follies countdown to Election (a.k.a. Bye Bye Charlie) Day?”
I replied:
Charles J Hynes after he lost reelection
photo by Arthur DeGaeta in The Brooklyn Paper
There is no point in counting down to November. The race was over when Hynes lost the Democratic primary in September by 11%. It is about a half a century since a Democrat lost a county-wide race in Brooklyn. It is especially unlikely this year. The Republican ticket is headed by Mayoral candidate Joe Lhota who is down 50% in the polls.
The Hynes campaign is the dying gaseous gasp of a demented has-been who can’t admit that voters own the office of the District Attorney.
To dignify it with a count-down is giving this farce of a campaign more credit than it deserves.
Charles Joe Hynes is already politically dead. Suit yourself if you choose to dance on his political grave in November when his political death certificate is signed by the election officials.
I favor the Jewish approach to the dead: no embalming and rapid burial. But if Joe’s declining clique of cloying sycophants insists on an extended wake, so be it.
FRUM FOLLIES by Yerachmiel Lopin 
big ad in this week’s flatbush journal signed by the flatbush rabbonim telling the community to vote for Hynes and how he has done so much for us. Disgraceful
The first signer is Yisroel Belsky. Hynes has done a lot for Yisroel Belsky. Vecchione who dealt with the victim of the kidnapping and torture conveniently decided not to prosecute the case or to set up a sting. If they had, Belsky, who was involved in that beit din would have ended up in prison. Hynes also gave Belsky’s beloved Flatbush molester, Rabbi (sic) Yehudah Kolko, a sweetheart deal of no jail time, no felony conviction, no registration as a sex offender. The disgrace is that Belsky is still considered a respectable rabbi in Flatbush.
Hope you’re right, but to adapt an old saying, don’t count your corpses until the funeral. I assume Hynes wouldn’t have morphed Republican unless people put up money to pay for a campaign, and people wouldn’t have put up the money unless they thought he could win.
The ad “horse” refers to was posted on Failed Messiah. Also posted was the Flatbush Jewish Journal’s endorsement of Hynes, containing this interesting language:
“While it will never be revealed who you vote for it is easy to know if you voted, The day may come when you or someone close to you will need help and you will reach out to either your city councilman’s office or the DA’s office or to any other elected official. They can check to see how many registered voters live in your home and how many voted. If you are a voter they will know. If you didn’t they will also know.”
Interesting political philosophy, as accepted by the FJJ — elected officials don’t serve residents, they serve voters. No vote, no service. I seriously doubt that any elected official’s office actually takes the time to check the voting records, but it’s a get-out-the-vote tactic that would do the old Chicago Regular Democratic Organization proud.
Kevin, you write, ” I assume Hynes wouldn’t have morphed Republican unless people put up money to pay for a campaign, and people wouldn’t have put up the money unless they thought he could win.”
Actually, his money has been raised by his old Irish buddy, NYS Senator Martin Golden from South Brooklyn. The motive for this support is to use an inflammatory racist campaign to boost local republican voting in a few local contests for the state legislature and the City Council. South Brooklyn neighborhoods such as Bay Ridge and Brighton Beach are overwhelmingly white and somewhat conservative. Brighton Beach is also home to many Russian Jews. Their memories of the Soviet Union have soured them on Communism and incline them to its opposite, which means the Republican party in NYC.
On the other hand, the more pragmatic Satmar Hasidim, who endorsed Hynes in the primary, have now switched to Thompson. Satmar preferred Hynes, but their chevrah kadishah is not sentimental. They never favor losers. There is no political capital in endorsing losers. Insead, they have reconciled themselves to trying to find some accomodation with Thompson.
Hynes will most definitely lose with non-whites who are the majority of the county. He lost them in the primary and that was before his campaigning went racist. He also lost the primary heavily in white, gentrified and hipster, north west Brooklyn. Even his loyal friends begged him not to further destroy his legacy by mounting this campaign.
I agree, it ain’t over till its over, and I will sigh a breath of relief when the November vote is counted. But this is darn close to a sure thing.
The professional pollsters expect Hynes to lose the election by a 35% margin.
Thanks, YL, for the explanation of why money might have been put into Hynes’ campaign with no expectation of victory. Makes me think even less of Hynes for taking it under those circumstances.
I want to say something about the entire Kol Tzedek program, the media coverage, and reality. And I really hope that it isn’t censored Lopin. And it isn’t shtupping for the DA as you will see.
I left the KCDA Sex Crimes bureau very recently. The perception on this site is that the DA has been going easy on sex offenders in order to curry political favor. Like any scandal there is some truth to this.
The obvious reality is that sex abuse victims in the Orthodox community have been historically and systematically intimidated from coming forward.
But the sad truth is that if the Orthodox community were not politically powerful the child molesters who live in it would not have been treated differently than other child molestors in Brooklyn. Critics of the DA are right about that. (My personal beef with the program is that I have a visceral repulse to any government agency in this country treating one group of people different than another on the basis of religion.)
I don’t blame people for knowing that the DA, an elected official, is treating one politically powerful community differently from another and assuming that it means that he is going easy on the criminals who live in that community. But that is where the accuracy of the public perception ends.
Because the truth is that those cases, and I am not saying this is right, are given more time, more resources, and higher level people, than any other type of case in that bureau. The amount of child sexual abuse I encountered when I was transferred to the bureau astounded me. I had no idea it was so widespread. And it really offended me that the Kol Tzedek cases got so much more attention than those that took place in East New York.
But more amazing still, having worked in that bureau, is to come into a web site such as this and hear that Orthodox child molestors were given a free pass by Mr. Hynes. When just the opposite is true.
A very few cases got a lot of attention. This made up for the many cases that were deep sixed. The Weberman case got extensive attention because the media, led by the NY Times was nipping at Joe’s heels and Mayor Bloomberg and ex-mayor Kotch joined in the chorus. When you have a large unprotected population where very few come forward because of intimidation, you go after intimidation (which would make other cases easier to prosecute). Joe never did that except in the Weberman case where a witness (the victim’s) boyfriend recorded all the threats and bribe offers and handed it over to the DA. Still they sat on it for six months until they got external heat. Then they made dramatic arrests, which culminated in no time in jail. In 24 years Joe has managed not to get any jail time for an ultra orthodox witness intimidator. No wonder the cases are so hard to prosecute.
Con-is-the-way,
It’s nice of you to disclose that you worked at the KCDA office until recently (if it’s in fact true).
It’s a shame you didn’t have the courage to make that disclaimer all those months that you where defending Hynes on this website, and presumably still working for him!!!
I have been defending Hynes on this website for about 40 days. I left his employ over a year before that.
Conway – no one on this site wants to hear that. They want to hear that well-meaning ADA’s like yourself were pressured to dump Hasidic cases with non-jail dispositions, or misdemeanor Endangering charges so as to avoid the sex registry, etc. They want to hear how there was some mystical apparition who appeared in your office on the eve of a Hasidic defendant’s court date, and who directed you to offer probation on a case where you had been insisting on prison (the apparition could be Henna White, Rhonnie Jaus, or some other Hynes crony). They want to hear how you had cases with perfectly viable and cooperative Hasidic victims, but, because of the “fixers'” efforts, you forced probation down a willing victim’s throat and then told the public that the victim was “uncooperative.” They certainly do not want to hear that these cases fall apart solely because of the community itself, not because of fixing by DA Hynes.
Still, I and other veterans of the office thank you for your comment.
As YL pointed out GO AFTER THE INTIMIDATORS!!!
I hope Thomson reads this site. He’s not in the DA’s office yet so he has access to FrumFollies!!
No need to throw extra money at it. Go after one intimidator, and make it clear that you’ll be upholding the law for witness intimidation in the future, and we’re in business!!!
Lopin has been censoring my comments for a month. But that means that we also have to acknowledge his ability to do this and still let dissent be heard. He deserves credit for that.
Lopin, in response to your last comment: That can’t possibly be true. I haven’t spoken to everyone in the bureau about every case, but I have spoken to enough that I am confident that no one in the bureau is talking to you? In any case, just cite the name of the case and the reason you think that he was let off, and, I swear to Jesus, I will tell you if that is accurate. I swear.
BTW, “concerned”‘s way of dealing with this community is right. If they intimidate people, hit them. Then go after the child molestors. That’s the only way to end this, go after the community itself. I agree with Lopin that the DA handled the situation in an unfair, un-American way.
What makes you think my source(s) would disclose their leaking to someone who is a died-in-the-wool Hynes loyalist.
I have blocked comments not for ideas but for obnoxiousness, or incessant repetitious hectoring with no value-add to the debate.
So Conway, if the DA is so concerned about abuse, why has he never gotten an ultra orthodox intimidator sentenced to one day of jail in 24 years. Actions speak louder than words.
Conway – you are pretty spot on. I’m surprised your post wasn’t edited out because it doesnt jibe with the narrative of this blog. An unusually high amount of resources are thrown in the direction of these cases…that is an undeniable fact
Assuming that by “resources” you mean attorneys’ and investigators’ time, a skeptic can still ask, “time doing what?” It could go either way.
The point, Kevin, is that the time is most certainly NOT being put into “fixing” these cases, which is the core premise of this blog.
Truther, so you say. Many of your colleagues in the DA’s office including in sex crimes, say otherwise.
Truther- :SIGH: Again, you are dead wrong. Cases are fixed in sex crimes. That’s just a fact. It is also a fact that as we both can agree, many of these cases simply fail due to the nature of them. Regardless of how good or normally ethical an ADA might be, the fact is, none of them like to lose cases. They will convince themselves that they are doing the right thing time and time again even when they clearly are doing the wrong thing. It’s what they must tell themselves to sleep at night.
Lopin, its simply not true. No shot any real ADA in sex crimes is saying they are fixing these cases… its total nonsense. Conway, a former sex crimes prosecutor is telling the truth when he says that the top adas get assigned to these cases….more investigator hours and all resources are given to these cases at a disproportionate level. Those are facts. YOu dont like Hynes. We get it. But you dont have to stretch the truth to gain traction. its a fair commentary to say that you dont like how these cases are handled. Many agree with that position. But you lose credibility when you say the fix is in..and that regular line adas are fixing cases, or stealing money, like you insinuated in another post. pure nonsense.
Those cases go to Liz Doerfler, Miss Gregory, and Kevin O’Donnell, three of the smartest and most capable prosecutors in the building.
So why did Miss Gregory commit a Rossario violation that left the Lebovits conviction vulnerable to appeal. Also, why did she not use a recording of a police supervised encounter between Lebovits and victim where he all but confessed. Defense attorneys outside the case are mystified by the decision. And yes, they saw the transcript of the recording. And, yes, other defense attorneys cannot believe that the prosecution failed to turn over the police notes that led to the appellate overturn. She may have worked hard. But in some cases, higher authorities or Henna interfered.
I have no idea Lopin. That was above my pay grade. I can promise you this: Miss Gregory isn’t in the business of protecting child molestors, that I know personally. Why would she need that headache? She doesn’t need that job at all. She does it because she loves it and because she cares about those victims. Your entire premise us flawed. Not purposely.
Loads of good people did bad things under pressure from up high, sometimes delivered via Henna White. We will find out the bad news on the failed Lebovits conviction come January unless Miss Gregory pulls a rabbit out of the hat and gets Lebovits convicted before then or gets a 5-7 year plea bargain.
YL – Seems yoir record of laying bare their moral and ethic decay has more than one person in the KCDA ‘s office worried enough to organize a full court press against you.
I for one will not be surprised when some extreme efforts to identify and /or silence you by the KCDA become public knowledge.
Not worried. They are on their death watch. What energy they have is being directed at futile get-out-the-vote efforts and trying to rejoinder criticism from much more consequential sources than me, like the major media organizations. They are also mired in campaign incompetence hiring the likes of Brad and David for their Twitter efforts and using a washed up press secretary, Jerry Schmetterer, who burned many of his bridges over the years by just not responding to press inquiries to the office of the DA. At this the Hynes campaign is down to support by the NY Post whose managers hate Ken Thompson, because of his successes suing them and his ongoing employment discrimination lawsuit.
I expect a few more humdinger press exposes of Hynes in major media between now and election day. I predict Hynes will lose in November by about 40%.
I think that that electoral prediction is accurate. If the DA gets 30 percent I will be happy. I’m not here for him to win the election. I’m here to set the record straight. I believe Lopin honestly thinks the DA is a bad guy and let molestors in the community go. But It just ain’t so. He did what he did to make that community better. He succeeded. People’s lives are better because of it. But you are right, it is over. The only thing that he has to be ashamed of is not helping Thompson in to learn the ropes.
If you are convinced that the DA was working too hard prosecuting ultra orthodox sex abuse, how do you account for his electoral support by Satmar. If you worked in sex crimes you must know that everyone resented interference by Henna White who was paid a handsome $140k (not even a B.A. degree). She routinely brought in askanim (ultra orthodox movers and shakers) who tried to dissuade prosecutors. Conway, can you really have worked in the office and not known any of this? Something is not right. Either you did not work there or you are not levelling, or you were out of the loop on the real story of ultra orthodox proseuctions.
Oh come on!!
“The only thing that he has to be ashamed of is not helping Thompson in to learn the ropes.”
Even you must agree the Kellner saga is at least something to be ashamed of?!??
Even if you believe he honestly thought Kellner was guilty in the onset, any self respecting man would be looking for a cave to hide in, for blowing it big big time!!
And he didn’t go after all the intimidators, blew the Lebovitz conviction, and didn’t clear him YET!!!
BTW I believe it was this story that sealed his fate.
First of all Lopin, you have blocked my comments because of content. If you disagree, show them now.
Second, I can’t deny that I was a low level guy and wasn’t in on big decisions.
Third, it is not my aim here to defend Joe Hynes, no matter how many times you and your ilk repeat that it is.
My aim here has been to dispel the notion, perpetuated by you, that Hynes’ Kol Tzedek program was designed to let monsters out easy, instead of ending their behavior. And also to defend the ADAs who worked on those cases from your constant insinuation that the were part of, what can only be described as, a criminal enterprise.
They were not. The DA and those hard-working underpaid attorneys were doing their best to deal with a bad situation not of their own creation, which is that the Orthodox community was intimidating children and the families of children who were being molested. I am not saying that I would have dealt with it the same way. But I want to make it clear that it was Hynes’ intention to end that. That he had good results. And that the premise of this website is a fallacy.
Conway, you are free to create your own site. By your own admission, this site has afforded you quite a bit of leeway to argue your case. I am sure you will also agree that when I let through your arguments, I did not alter them. I will use my discretion at deciding when argument has degenerated into repetitious hectoring.
Re Kol Tzedek: read NY Times and Jewish Week. Both offer solid evidence it was a sham.
Conway, I like your loyalty. However, you just are unaware of how things work in the office at the highest levels. The DA is in general a very good man in my opinion. However, he is also a man motivated by political gain. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Let us not forget Michael Vecchione with his wrongful conviction of Jabbar Collins.
Conway, you can’t win. It’s Lopin’s site. The good you’re doing is to make known that Lopin’s pronouncements aren’t fact, supported by all. When he starts maligning someone like Miss Gregory you know that fighting him is futile. They don’t come any straighter or more professional then her, even if she did make a mistake in the Lebovitz case (not that I’m saying she did – I don’t know enough about it to say – but I’m certain she did nothing malicious. I’ll also bet anything that Lopin doesn’t have one source saying otherwise. No one who really knows her or the office would).
Truther, we can agree on something else. I highly doubt that Ms. Gregory would engage in any wrongdoing intentionally. Therefore, if it wasn’t intentional, it does beg the question as to how those mistakes could’ve been made. The failure to present that tape into evidence is egregious to say the least. It’s hard to believe that any supervisor in that office would not have taken her to task about not playing that tape. I think its more than fair commentary and YL and others can legitimately question the failures of the office in this matter. If this had been a junior line assistant trying the case with no one watching, then perhaps one could understand. That however was not the case here.
Exercising my power to avoid needless hectoring is way different from a lack of integrity. Commenting policy includes staying appropriately on-topic and contributing substance to the discussion.
Let’s add on another failure. Miss Gregory was ready to prosecute Victim #2 against Lebovits. She was also involved in aborted plea negotiations. She assumed that Lebovits was guilty or she would have been unethical to pursue the case. Then Victim # 2 showed up with a high priced lawyer (John Lenucci) to say he did not want to testify. She just let that witness go away because she assumed he had been intimidated or bribed into not testifying. As far as anyone knows she did not attempt to have witness intimidation prosecuted. Yet when Kellner was arrested, part of the indictment was premised on the claim that this Victim # 2 (not the witness in the trial) perjured himself in grand jury testimony where he claimed Lebovits had raped him. Miss Gregory gave grand jury testimony to indict Lebovits but there is no record of her protesting based on her belief (which she still holds) that the original grand jury testimony was truthful. So how could she not protest that indictment? but she didn’t. I know, there was no way to fight Vecchione. But however hardworking, smart and well intentioned, Miss Gregory failed in her responsibility. Allowing the Kellner indictment to hang out there till now has complicated the re-prosecution of Lebovits.
I grant you that elements in the orthodox community complicate proseuction. But that is especially true when the Office of the DA lets Lebovits manipulate Rackets into messing with his case by indicting Kellner.
I don’t know enough about the case to give you a specific reason for the “failures” you cite (if they were failures at all. I really don’t know) but there are things that you say that are so outlandish that it calls into question the accuracy of your reporting in general. For example, you casually yet conclusively state, “She (Miss) just let that witness go away because she assumed he had been intimidated or bribed into not testifying. As far as anyone knows she did not attempt to have witness intimidation prosecuted.” How on Earth do you know that? How about this for an alternate and much more rational possibility: that victim hired a lawyer in order to get out of cooperating, as happens SO often in these cases, and there was nothing that Miss could do about it. She can’t force someone to give detailed testimony, and she can’t catch “intimidators” without any evidence of who they may be. How the hell do you know if that victim gave Miss any names of people intimidating him/her? How do you know that victim was even intimidated, as opposed to just wanting to avoid violating Mesirah or something? You DON’T. Yet, in the absence of any facts, you leap to the most nefarious conclusion and then pass it off as accepted fact. If people reading this are dumb enough to swallow whole what you’re dishing without questioning or analyzing, then you should re-name this blog “Lopin’s Follies’ starring his Loyal Herd of Sheep.”
You can discuss this persons reputation and that persons integrity, till the cows come home…
YL is talking for all of us that have to live with a monster in our midst, due to that office.
I’m very sorry concerned. There is no way to express how sorry I feel. The language doesn’t have a word for it. I’m so sorry.
You repeatedly strike a false note. When we speak of monsters we don’t want crocodile tears or even sincere sympathy. Nor do we want any special favors or coddling. We just want old fashioned justice.
Of course I agree that you have never altered them. I disagree that you allowed me to argue my case. For the last three weeks you have prohibited me from speaking. But, as we don’t seem to have any disagreement over the ultimate political outcome, It doesn’t seem that your removing my comments has had any consequence to either of us. I just wish to plea my case regarding Kol Tzedek and the young ADAs that you keep maligning (whether you are doing so on purpose or not). I hope you keep displaying the integrity you have shown in these last few hours and not the absence of it that you have displayed for the last three weeks.
>How on Earth do you know that? How about this for an alternate and much more rational
>possibility:
Perhaps Truther/Spinner you could do some basic research on the Lebovitz case before spinning?
1) http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york-news/kellner-lawyers-call-independent-investigation-chasidic-whistleblower-case?utm_source=2013-07-07-JW+Kellner+DA+Discovery&utm_campaign=2013-07-07-JW+Kellner+DA+Discovery&utm_medium=email
…
In his recent interviews with prosecutors, Yoel also acknowledged that community activist Zalmen Ashkenazi — who Yoel initially told prosecutors he did not know — has paid for his flights to and from Israel (where he is currently living) as well as his school fees, apartment and lawyer. He also said that he needs Ashkenazi’s “permission to return to the U.S. when he’s in Israel.” Credit card and travel records obtained by prosecutors and supplied to Kellner’s defense attorneys confirm that Ashkenazi has paid for several of Yoel’s flights.
The DA also confirmed that Lebovits’ attorney made several unsuccessful attempts to obtain a plea deal on charges related to Yoel, something Kellner’s lawyers see as evidence that Yoel was in fact a true victim of Lebovits. As a result, they believe that the DA, in essence, colluded with Lebovits’ defense attorneys to suborn perjury in presenting Yoel to the grand jury to testify against Kellner.
This new information lends significant weight to suspicions Kellner’s attorneys have harbored all along: that Yoel was intimidated out of testifying against Lebovits at trial and then further manipulated to make false allegations about Kellner in order to hinder the DA’s ability to retry and convict Lebovits. (Lebovits was convicted of child molestation in 2010 and sentenced to 10 to 32 years in prison; his conviction was overturned on a technicality and he is now free, pending a new trial.) That the DA possessed so much circumstantial evidence to this effect before Kellner’s arrest in 2011 has led them to question how and why their client was ever indicted.
…
2) http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york-news/abuse-whistleblower-battling-both-haredi-community-da
Hynes is the tool of the fixers who protect pedophiles and silence survivors of abuse:
1) http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2013/10/hynes-yiddish-ads-falsely-claim-satmar-endorsement-234.html
2) Read Truther’s poor spin on Hynes’ connection with a convicted/confessed pedophile:
Oh, right! The sum total of your sources is Failed Messiah and The Jewish Week! How could I have ever doubted you?
Truther the spinner can’t attack the facts so he spins and attacks the messenger (without any substance of course to the attacks, it is just Truther’s standard desperate spin). The problem is the other media outlets confirm the facts:
1) Extortion case vs. Hasid Samuel Kellner is in disarray
By Oren Yaniv (New York Daily News)
July 9, 2013
http://www.sfjny.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2077:extortion-case-vs-hasid-samuel-kellner-is-in-disarray&catid=2:news&Itemid=57
2) Raising Questions of Professional Conduct as Brooklyn’s Prosecutor Pursues Votes
By Michael Powell (The New York Times)
July 29, 2013
http://www.sfjny.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2125:raising-questions-of-professional-conduct-as-brooklyns-prosecutor-pursues-votes&catid=2:news&Itemid=57