becomes one of fear and devastating violence and tragedy. the latest in the never-ending epidemic of gun violence in america, the 33rd mass shooting to happen so far this year, at least 11 people were killed at a lunar new year celebration at a billion room in monterey park, california. it is a predominantly asian american suburb of los angeles. the deceased are all in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. officials say that the shooter, 72-year-old asian male, attempted a second attack at another ballroom nearby. that attack was stopped by two patrons. here s how one of them describes what happened. i lunged at him with both my hands, grabbed the weapon, and we had a struggle. we struggled into the lobby, trying to get this gun away from each other. he was hitting me across the face, bashing the back of my head. i was trying to use my elbows to separate the gun away from him, create some distance. finally, at one point, i was able to pull the gun away from him, shove him aside, create
housekeeping seal of approval. and no offense to michael chertoff but he s a buddy of sam alito. he served with him on the 3rd circuit court of appeals. he s hardly an aindependent arbiter. at the very least you should have brought in a former democratic and a former republican appointee if you wanted to give some cover to this investigation. this was really a ham fifted attempt to shove this out there and get rid of this. and the last thing they do in the report they propose all these steps to further lower the veil of secrecy on the court s activities when what they need is more transparency if they have any hope of restoring confidence in the institution, what they need is to have more daylight brought to this institution, have more openness, more transparency. john roberts instincts seem to be the opposite. and so i think this time the buck stops with him and the failure is his in terms of the eroding legitimacy of the court. let s stick with the head of household analogy for a
pointing, they said, with many conservatives convinced that a liberal had engineered the breach and vice versa. just as the justices have grown more divided, so has their staff, eroding trust. voices are more hushed now, the employees said, and doors that used to be open are closed. the most glaring take away from the court marshal s investigation was who was not put through the rigorous interview process. you guessed it. the nine justices themselves. a day later the court was forced to issue a second statement saying that the marshal had in fact conferred with the justices but on he very different terms from others of the institution. lower-level employees had been formally interrogated, recorded, pressed to sign affidavits denying any involvement and warned that they could lose their jobs if they failed to answer questions fully. that s according to interviews and the report. in contrast, conversations with the justices have been a two-way, quote, iterative
after the opinion leaks and you re the head of the household, what is your obligation in terms of protecting the rest of the parents in the household? what do you do with the event, the leak in alito s words, that was going to potentially lead to the, quote, assassination of the six conservatives? what was roberts if that is true and we have to accept alito believed that and that it remained true. what should roberts have done if that was the concern of the other parents or grown-ups in the household? carry out an investigation that even if at the end of the day it proved impossible to solve the whodunit and actually find somebody that met the preponderance of an evidence standard, carry out an investigation that was going to be at least unassailable in how it was conducted. and from the get-go when you appoint somebody that is basically the marshal of the court, a lawyer yes, but not somebody with any sort of of investigative chops, from the get-go it was clear that john roberts
claire mccaskill, brandon van gak and frank figliuzzi. is this a story about a dirty former fbi agent? is this a story about the corruption of private investigations? is this a story about russia? i think it s definitely the story o number one and perhaps number three. specifically, i think it s yet to be determined, though i m of two minds of this, one, something frank alluded to earlier. this was a compartmentalized investigation in l.a. he knew so many people between the d.c. field offices and some of the fbi s capabilities and the d.c. area from a technical standpoint as well as his what does that mean? like they were operating like internal affair? he was a section cheech focusing on cyber and intelligence issues. when those two are intertwined, you can imagine. he knows a lot of people between d.c. and new york, so they moved this investigation to los angeles is our understanding and reporting. in a way that makes sure when