What A Day - The Persecution Of Prosectors

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

A white gunman shot and killed three Black people in a racist attack at a Dollar General store on Saturday in Jacksonville, Florida. The attack is the latest incidence of racist gun violence perpetrated by a young, white gunman in the United States, and it is being investigated as a hate crime.Georgia Republicans have expedited the passing of a new state law that would allow the legislature to remove local prosecutors — particularly Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who recently indicted Donald Trump. This is the GOP’s latest attempt to remove prosecutorial power from DAs across the country.And in headlines: Russian officials finally confirmed that Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash outside of Moscow, at least seven people were shot and killed just outside of Haiti’s capital, and members of the United Auto Workers union overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike.Show Notes:What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastCrooked Coffee is officially here. Our first blend, What A Morning, is available in medium and dark roasts. Wake up with your own bag at crooked.com/coffeeFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Monday, August 28th. I'm Priyanka Arabindi. And I'm Josie Duffy Rice. And this is What A Day, where we want to congratulate Simone Biles for scoring her eighth national gymnastics title. And you are welcome, Simone. We would have given you a real run for your money if we had been competing. You know, you may be the best athlete in the world, but Priyanka and I haven't tried

athleeting yet. Right. We'll never know. Our potential will just lie dormant within us. And you're welcome for that. On today's show, Republicans are working to unseat Fannie Willis before the DA's case against Trump in Georgia can even start. Plus, tens of thousands marched on D.C. last weekend

to commemorate the 60th anniversary of MLK's speech, I Have a Dream, including his son. Instead of moving forward, it feels as if we are moving backward. We've got more coming up. But first, a white gunman shot and killed three Black people in a racist attack at a Dollar General store on Saturday in Jacksonville, Florida. The victims were identified as 52-year-old Angela Michelle Carr, 19-year-old Anolt Joseph Legare, and 29-year-old Gerald Galleon. The 21-year-old gunman has been identified.

We will not be naming him here to avoid giving him any additional notoriety. He died after turning the weapon on himself. The attack, which is the latest incidence of racist gun violence perpetrated by a young white gunman in the United States, is being investigated as a hate crime. This is a really, really devastating story. Yeah. And a reminder that these people are willing to die for their racist beliefs. Right. He's dead because he was racist, not just other people, which obviously is just such a tragedy.

So let's start with the other elephant in the room, other than the racism, the guns. So what was he armed with here? How did he get them? Tell me a little bit more about that. Yeah, so this gunman was armed with an AR-15 style rifle and a Glock handgun, both of which he purchased legally in Florida. According to authorities, he had drawn swastikas on his AR-15. Though he had no official criminal history, police said that he had been involved in a domestic call back in 2016

and he was temporarily held involuntarily under Florida's Baker Act for mental illness examination in 2017. In Florida, the Baker Act involves temporary detention for up to 72 hours for mental health and emergency services. Typically, a person who has been detained under the Baker Act isn't eligible to buy firearms, so it is not yet clear how or why this man was able to. That's what happens, right, when there are a gazillion loopholes to your regulations. Yeah, because one thing we do know for sure is that he certainly did buy these guns, I believe in April and in June. Right. We know that the shooter specifically targeted Black people. You mentioned the swastikas on his gun. He had manifestos. Like, this was racist, right? But what else do we know about

his motivations? Yes, definitely racist. As you mentioned, he had written several manifestos before leaving his parents home to commit the killing spree. Take a listen to Sheriff TK Waters of Jacksonville County describe what they found. The shooter had authored several manifestos, one to his parents, one to the media, and one to federal agents. Portions of these manifestos detailed the shooter's disgusting ideology of hate. Plainly put, this shooting was racially motivated, and he hated black people. Devastating.

Yeah, according to authorities, before shooting up the store, he went to Edward Waters University, which is a historically black university in Jacksonville. He was wearing a bulletproof vest. He refused to identify himself to an on-campus security officer, was then asked to leave, but then he did so without, you know, any more incident. But he headed straight from there to the Dollar General store. Before the police arrived on the scene, the gunman texted his father to go into his room where his father found these manifestos. His father then called the neighboring county's sheriff's office shortly afterwards. The police were already at the scene at the Dollar General by that point. Yeah. The shooting was five years to the day after a 2018 mass shooting in downtown Jacksonville at a video game tournament.

That was a fact that the gunman specifically referenced in his writings. It also happened to coincide with the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, which is just cruel timing. Yeah, the timing is devastating and a reminder that like 60 years is not actually that long. Certainly not. remembrance and commemoration ended with yet another American community wounded by an act of gun violence, reportedly fueled by hate-filled animus and carried out with two firearms. Even as we continue searching for answers, we must say clearly and forcefully that white supremacy has no place in America. We must refuse to live in a country where black families going to the store or black students going to school live in fear of

being gunned down because of the color of their skin. Obviously, everything he's saying is just true. That's just the way it should be. But it is sad to think that you and I, Josie, will be sitting here in a month's time, two months' time, six months' time doing another story just like this. This happens all too often in this country. Yeah, it really does. And it's a reminder that we're actually not addressing the root of the problem, right? I mean, we're not addressing either part. We're not addressing the racism.

We're not addressing the guns. Exactly. Now we're going to turn to the criminal case against Donald Trump in Georgia, but this time with how Republicans are trying to stop it before it starts. The Republicans in the state have expedited the passing of a new state law that would allow the legislature to remove local prosecutors. The target of the law is Fannie Willis, the Fulton County DA, who recently indicted Donald Trump.

It's the latest in the Republican effort to remove prosecutorial power from those who they don't agree with, a move that is sure to hurt progressives across the country. Also the latest Republican effort to keep Donald Trump from ever facing any consequences, civil, criminal, personal, electoral, for trying to overthrow an election. Yeah, what a convenient coincidence that the target of this specific law is Fannie Willis, the DA, who is indicting Donald Trump. That feels a little politically motivated, one might say.

Let's start with this Georgia law in particular. Give us some context there, please. Earlier this year, state Republicans passed Senate Bill 92, which establishes a commission that can discipline or remove any elected prosecutors for pretty outrageous reasons, which include, quote, failing to review every individual case for which probable cause exists. That might sound reasonable, but it's the farthest thing from reasonable. There's not a prosecutor in America who pursues every crime. Right. None.

Zero. Zip. Zilch. You can't. It's their job, right? To decide what they're doing. Exactly. Prosecutorial discretion is a huge thing, right? And like, there's so many crimes. Like,

a couple years ago, someone tried to count all the federal crimes and they couldn't. They spent two years doing it and they couldn't do it all, right? Like, there is no possible way to investigate and review every one. For example, if someone says, hey, my lunch was stolen from the fridge at my job, maybe that's technically a crime. Should the cops come out and should prosecutors spend their resources investigating your lunch? Depends what they're having for lunch, but probably not. Depends what they're having. Probably not. It would be crazy for any prosecutor in America to waste resources pursuing that, prosecuting that, because resources are limited and priorities matter. If a prosecutor is clear that they don't want to spend their limited time pursuing a certain

crime, they have the right to do that, right? Maybe they'd rather pursue murders than the lunchtime keeper. So this idea that these prosecutors are doing something out of the ordinary is just wrong. And all prosecutors have made cost-benefit analyses about what they pursue. So these are basically political removals because here in Georgia, under this new law, the governor can appoint commission members. The governor is, you may remember, Brian Kemp. Right. Solidly Republican. He can give state Republicans a very clear way to punish Fannie Willis.

And they can choose not to pursue a Republican DA who's not pursuing all crimes. Yeah. There's nothing else to say if they punish everybody. It's up to them. Yeah, totally their discretion. Totally their discretion. This is, like, not a theoretical problem. Like, multiple state Republicans have already filed complaints or taken steps to remove Willis.

And so, as a result, in early August, four DAs in Georgia filed a lawsuit to strike the Senate bill down, saying that it violated the right to discretion, as we discussed, in prosecutorial independence. And similarly, last week, the Public Rights Project filed to stop the law from going into effect. So we will see. But as of now, the law has passed. It's wild because the same way like they would have discretion to apply this to whoever they want, that's the same discretion that they're like getting upset at these prosecutors for using. So it's all very hypocritical. Exactly. But you also mentioned there have been similar efforts in other places around the country. It's not just Georgia. Tell us more about those. Where else is this happening? Yeah,

so the primary example is Florida. Of course. Governor Ron DeSanctimonious or whatever, what are we calling him these days? Ron DeSanctimonious. It's just catchy. It just is catchy. Whatever he lacks in personality, he makes up foreign authoritarian laws that he passes. Precisely. In Florida in the past six years or so, three prosecutors have been removed by the governor in Florida, two of those by Ron DeSantis. They've been removed for not being punitive enough, according to the governor, not according to voters, right? So in Orlando, Aramis Ayala,

the first black elected prosecutor in Florida, was removed from many cases a few years ago for saying that she wouldn't seek the death penalty, which is a perfectly acceptable thing to do as a prosecutor. 99.5% of all prosecutors don't pursue the death penalty, which is a perfectly acceptable thing to do as prosecutor. 99.5% of all prosecutors don't pursue the death penalty, right? A very small percent of prosecutors go for the death penalty. She was removed from office for saying that she wouldn't do it. And then Andrew Warren in Tampa was removed within just the past few years, in part because he said he wouldn't prosecute women seeking abortions, and he said he wasn't going to prosecute the parents of trans children under the new kind of anti-trans laws in

Florida. And then just a few weeks ago, the subsequent Orlando prosecutor who came after Eremes Ayala, another Black woman, Monique Worrell, was removed. And it's worth noting that these two Orlando prosecutors, Eremes Ayala and Monique Worrell, both Black women, the first and second Black women ever elected as prosecutors in Florida, and they've both been removed by the governor. What a weird coincidence there. Yeah, it's very strange. But also, another thing worth noting here. Yeah.

All of these prosecutors are elected by voters, correct? Correct. So basically, like, voters have been like, hey, this is what we want. Yeah, like, we're on board with what you're saying. Right. And that's why we elected you. Right. You don't get to choose, Governor. That's the whole bit. We vote. Interesting. Yeah. It's very bad.

Anyway, so how does Fannie Willis fit into the narrative here? Is she as progressive as these Florida DAs? Is this just about her indicting Donald Trump? What is this about? Yeah, it's a very good question because if you've been listening to the show recently, you know I've been pretty tough on Fonny for this exact reason. She's not progressive. She's pretty draconian. She's pretty tough on crime. That's how she ran. She prosecuted the teachers in the Atlanta cheating scandal here a couple years ago, which I find to be one of the biggest violations of justice in the state history. Like, I don't agree with her on almost anything. And this is pretty different than the Florida prosecutors who ran on these very progressive platforms. Like,

they're being persecuted for what they won't pursue. And she's being persecuted for who she has chosen to go after, which is the former president, right? Yeah. Which, like, I don't agree with her on a lot of things, but I do agree that you can't just subvert democracy. Not that part. Of all the decisions she made, this is not in my top 50 of disagreements. It's very obvious that she's a frustration for Republicans because they are sycophants for Donald Trump and they have this ideological agenda and they even want independent elected public officials to follow it. Right.

Including elected officials that normally I think they probably agree with. Like, she's been pretty tough on crime. Like, normally they're probably right aligned with her, but they don't want her to prosecute Donald Trump. Okay. At our max, we had like two and a half million people in this country in prison and jail. We had like another six to ten million in some form of correctional control. Mass incarceration, we had more people incarcerated in this country

than any other country in the world. Prosecutors were prosecuting more and more crime. They were calling for more and more time served. They were driving this trend, and they weren't being removed from office. Right. Mass incarceration was destroying communities, and they weren't being removed from office. And suddenly, now that there are some prosecutors who are willing to say, like, maybe we don't put everybody in prison, or maybe if we're going to put a bunch of people in prison, we should also consider the powerful as, like, targets.

Right. They're considered the threats. anti-democratic. It's not surprising in any way. Republicans have pursued so many anti-democratic rules, laws, things on every level of government over the past few years, especially. But it's very blatant here why they're trying to do this. It's really blatant. And people think, oh, well, if they won't pursue crime, they shouldn't be a prosecutor. But I'm here to tell you, your prosecutor is not pursuing all crime. Republican, Democrat, whatever. They're not pursuing all crime. They're not.

All of this is political. And they are going after these people for political reasons. So we will keep following Fannie Willis' case against Trump and his alleged co-conspirators, which has a hearing today, in fact, down the street from me. That is the latest for now. We will be back after some ads. let's wrap up with some headlines headlines Russian officials have finally confirmed that Yevgeny Progozhin died in a plane crash outside of Moscow last week. He was the head of the paramilitary Wagner Group and had led a brief mutiny on the

Kremlin this June. Progozhin was listed as aboard the crashed jet, but it wasn't until genetic testing came back that authorities verified yesterday that he was among the 10 passengers killed. Meanwhile, the Kremlin has still not come up with what it believes to have caused this deadly crash. At least seven people were shot and killed on Saturday just outside of Haiti's capital. A powerful gang that controls the northern suburb of Canaan opened fire with machine guns on a church-led protest and several more victims were wounded and kidnapped. Canaan is a squatter community formed by survivors of the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and is actually controlled by the Five Seconds Gang.

Before the shooting, the protest was actually against the Five Seconds Gang, organized by an evangelical church leader. The shooting is part of a sharp increase in violence in Haiti, particularly after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. Since then, gangs have taken over large swaths of the country, using random killings, rape, and kidnappings to gain control. A citizens' defense movement has risen in response, which has included executions of suspected gang members. Amid the growing violence, the U.S. embassy recently ordered the departure of non-emergency personnel from Haiti. The city of Chicago is suing Kia and Hyundai, accusing them of straining the city's resources by failing to equip their cars with basic anti-theft technology.

Mayor Brandon Johnson's administration is just the latest plaintiff in a number of lawsuits demanding accountability from the two automakers. Friday's lawsuit comes just months after Illinois' attorney general called for a federal recall of their cars when it was reported that 7,000 Kias and Hyundais had been stolen in Chicago in the year 2022 alone. According to the complaint filed by Johnson's administration, Kia and Hyundai knowingly lied to customers by promising that their vehicles had advanced safety features. The city hopes to reclaim the expenses incurred from responding to so many incidents of theft and to force Kia and Hyundai to fix the security features on their vehicles. Hell yeah. This is something that will make an actual difference for many people and the city.

We love to see it. Yeah, it's great news, especially for people who may or may not own Hyundais, like maybe me. And my insurance went up because my car is easier to steal. So I would love for some better anti-theft technology. And speaking of cars and automakers, members of the United Auto Workers Union, or UAW, overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike if they don't reach an agreement with their employers by September 14th. You'll remember that negotiations for a new labor contract began last month between the UAW and the big three Detroit automakers, Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors. And talks have been contentious

from the start when union leaders made it clear that 150,000 workers were prepared to walk off the job if their demands for higher wages, but our health benefits and stronger job security were not met. Friday's strike authorization, which had a 97% approval rate for members, just emphasized how fed up workers are with their current working contract. And in other labor news from this past weekend, the National Labor Relations Board just made it easier for workers to unionize. The board ruled on Friday that if an employer is caught committing an unfair labor practice in the lead-up to a union election, the employer will be ordered to immediately recognize the union and begin bargaining.

So as long as a majority of workers support unionization, they don't have to go through the lengthy process of hosting an election to gain recognition. They win it by default if their employer tries to subvert them. It's pretty badass, I would say. We love it. They win it by default if their employer tries to subvert them. It's pretty badass, I would say. We love it. I love it. FIFA has suspended Spain's soccer chief, Luis Rubiales, and other coaching staff

after his unwanted kiss with World Cup winner, Jenny Hermoso. Rubiales has maintained that the kiss was consensual and refused to resign. But in a statement posted to social media over the weekend, Hermoso spoke publicly and said,

I did not like this incident. I felt vulnerable, any victim of an impulse-driven, sexist, out-of-place act without any consent on my part. Let's also note that the Royal Spanish Football Federation, the organization that runs

Spain's national soccer program, has stood by Rubiales. Ooh, bubber. Bad call. They did that. They also accused Hermoso of lying and threatened legal action against her, of all people, which to double down on a bad take there, that's real rough. All 23 members of Spain's winning World Cup team and almost 50 other professional women

soccer players have said that they would not play for the country unless Rubiales is removed from his position. There has also been a mass exodus of coaching staff from the national team, citing their quote, strongest and deepest condemnation of Rubiales' behavior. Oh my God. Like. I also got to say, it screams this isn't the first time. Like this is not people being like, oh, that was totally out of line and very out of character. People are like, I refuse to work for this guy. Putting my job and my livelihood on the line. 100%. It's just not a testament to like, oh my God, I had one moment of bad judgment. Oh my God, I got caught up in the moment. Yeah, no. Yeah. I mean, even if he did, it would have been fucking weird and bad, but like, this is, no. Right. Tens of thousands of people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Saturday to honor 60 years since Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his I Have a Dream speech in that very same place.

One of the speakers from this weekend's event was his son, Martin Luther King III. Instead of moving forward, it feels as if we're moving backward. The question is, what are we going to do? Dad would probably say, now is the time. We must preserve, protect, and expand democracy. The five-hour event was called, quote, not a commemoration, but a continuation of King's vision, particularly after the past year of rulings and laws

that have rolled back civil rights and racial progress. Black civil rights leaders and a host of other multiracial interfaith groups led the event, with speakers addressing systemic racism, police brutality, gun violence, and other prevalent social justice issues. Organizers of the 60th anniversary march also met with Attorney General Merrick Garland to discuss issues of redlining, policing, and voting rights. It's depressing how little has changed.

It really is. The 60th anniversary, especially with the context that you gave of the past few years, like, it It really is. It's the 60th anniversary, especially with the context that you gave of the past few years. Like, it's really sad. I fully agree that this is not the direction of progress

that one thought we might be on. One hoped, maybe. It would be wrong to say nothing has changed. Some things have absolutely changed. But this weekend,

we're seeing a guy with swastikas on his gun kill a black people because he hates black people. This weekend. Yeah. Maybe we still have a ways to go here, guys. Yeah, we're not there yet. We are not to the promised land yet.

No. That is absolutely true. And those are the headlines. Two more things before we go. The Crooked Store's Labor Day weekend sale just started. So now is the perfect time to snag that merch that you've been eyeing. Everything in the store is 15% off, and a bunch of new stuff was just added to the sales section. Personally, I am going to take this opportunity to buy

50 bros for row koozies and sprinkle them across college campuses, all the college campuses that I frequent in New York City. That's what I was going to say. Shop the sale at crooked.com slash store. Second, we want to give a huge congrats to our former WOD squatter and someone we adore, Jazzy Marine, who just got engaged. We are so excited for you. Yay! We love Jazzy. We love Alan.

We love Jazzy. We love Jazzy. We love Alan. We're so happy for you. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, keep MLK's dream alive, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just a list of labor wins as Labor Day approaches like me, what a day is also

a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at cricket.com slash subscribe. I'm Josie Duffy Rice. I'm Priyanka Arabindi. And congrats, Jazzy! Listen, Jazzy's are good news of the day. We are hanging on to that tight. Yeah. Jazzy always brought the good vibes. So good vibes to Jazzy forever. Always.

Jazzy, come back. Jazzy, marry us. We're trying to marry you. That's what we're saying. What a Day is a production of Cricket Media. It's recorded and mixed by Bill Lance. Our show's producer is Itzy Quintanilla. Raven Yamamoto and Natalie Bettendorf are our associate producers. And our senior producer is Lita Martinez. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.