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As Marci was saying, we're all old enough to remember the republicans screaming about Hunter not being qualified for his job and shouts about nepotism in the Biden family. Of course every accusation is a confession with the republicans. Jarad, Ivanka, and Lara are the epitome of nepotism to the max degree not being qualified for anything other than being family of traitor trump.
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Maybe it isn't set in stone. Carroll's attorney will check to see if all of their i's and t's are in order. Can't trust anything and everything that criminal trump does. Find out Monday.
JUST IN: Judge Kaplan in @ejeancarroll’s case files this order slamming Trump for his delays and allowing E. Jean to object to the motion to approve the bond, the amount, the other language in Trump’s proposed order, etc.https://t.co/Zs5tDGBozJ
— Katie Phang (@KatiePhang) March 8, 2024
Russia, Russia, Russia. Exactly right, we are definitely at war with Putin and his republican party that through trump, has taken over. We've been at war but the last few months have been extremely heavy on the cyber front. It's getting so heavy, they can't hide it very well anymore. All over the financial news today the hacking going on.
Both my wife and I work from home, have computer systems hooked up to one of the largest institutions, and can attest personally that we are in a major battle and constant work and time going into our defense with projections to be a lot worse as the election year progresses. Republicans doing about anything they can to support Russia and Putin. I would say that we are in the most dangerous time in history, and I don't say that lightly.
It's still ongoing and unprecedented.
Russian state-backed hackers breached Microsoft's core software systems, company says
Microsoft said it first detected the attack in January.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/microsoft-russian-state-backed-hack-update/story?id=107927553
ByMeredith Deliso
March 8, 2024, 10:31 AM
China is no friend either.
The Democrats;
https://twitter.com/DrKatEpi/status/1766165949613293656
The Republicans;
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Maybe this guy will get a few years in prison, he doesn't seem to be a clergy member or a leader in a church giving him a free pass. He should get life with no chance of parole. His 11 year old step daughter has a very horrible life sentence, being one who was raped by him and the star in one of his child pornos as it was being filmed. William Pettry was the 11 year old girl's only guardian due to the girl's mother and her little 3 year old sister was killed in car accident earlier in the year.
If the little girl got pregnant, republicans would just give her a white hood, take her shoes, and tell her she's on her own.
Former firefighter faces 130 years in prison after pleading guilty to sexual assault of a child
by: Jessica Farrish
https://www.wvnstv.com/news/crime/former-firefighter-faces-130-years-in-prison-after-pleading-guilty-to-sexual-assault-of-a-child/
Posted: Mar 7, 2024 / 11:38 AM EST Updated: Mar 7, 2024 / 12:04 PM EST
BECKLEY, WV (WVNS) — A former member of the Coal River Volunteer Fire Department faces more than 100 years in prison after pleading guilty to multiple sexual assault charges.
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Back story;
https://www.wvva.com/2023/10/04/former-raleigh-county-firefighter-accused-hundreds-sex-crimes-is-arraigned-court/
Project 2025 is a horrifying manifesto, undeniably designed to dismantle democracy to force everyone in the US to submit to extreme religious beliefs.
— Rep. Jared Huffman (@RepHuffman) March 8, 2024
Anyone who can still say Christian Nationalism isn’t a threat has their head in the sand. We NEED to be talking more about this. https://t.co/iQJxwlej5N
Those of you who found this odd + funny should really listen to those of us who found it terrifying bc it’s rooted in #ChristianNationalist imagery + ideology, from her diamond-encrusted cross necklace to her demonization of the scary brown man. #SOTUResponse pic.twitter.com/502M0CpL0d
— Rev. Angela Denker (@angela_denker) March 8, 2024
Ali Velshi breaks down #Project2025 the Republicans radical, far-right agenda that will strip freedoms and liberties away from Americans. Take 4 minutes to watch so you know exactly what's coming if a Republican is elected President.🗳️ #wtpBlue #DemVoice1 pic.twitter.com/I9wWCh9iqB
— Brian Cardone 🏴☠️🇺🇦 (@cardon_brian) March 6, 2024
Looks like the E Jean Carroll bond was guaranteed by a subsidiary of the Chubb Group. Trump appointed Chubb Group CEO Evan Greenberg to the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations in 2018. So I guess he owes him one. pic.twitter.com/ddQvmYl5VL
— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) March 8, 2024
Ankle monitor, no prison time. Sad.
Ex-SC church volunteer pleads guilty to felony child sex crimes. Gets no prison time.
BY ANDREW DYS UPDATED MARCH 08, 2024 8:55 AM
https://www.heraldonline.com/news/local/crime/article286369545.html
Not even his first time, being caught that is.
Back story;
South Carolina baptist church youth leader, William Carpenter, who was arrested last year for multiple sex crimes against children, has been arrested again for molesting a little girl on a church bus. pic.twitter.com/9r8wyVgQQB
— 𝐁𝐞𝐤𝐬 (@antifaoperative) September 25, 2023
CHUBB is incorporated in Switzerland and connected to the banks and bankers there that have been indicted and connected to billions of fraud, money laundering, and hiding funds for Putin amongst other nefarious criminals like North Korean leader, Orban, etc. They are just the vehicle in which trump's transactionactional bond can take place. Somebody is owed a lot more than what was given to trump and none of it is good for the US.
Blood money and proceeds from the sale of the USA. That's the only money the criminal Traitor trump has been able to get.
Viktor Orbán will meet with the Heritage Foundation today and Trump tomorrow.
— Ian Bassin 🇺🇦 (@ianbassin) March 7, 2024
The European Parliament calls him an autocrat. Trump and Heritage see him as their model to emulate.@amandacarpenter explains what he’s done that they want to copy here. https://t.co/g0Ayb9pnm5
ICYMI, Angela Chao, Elaine’s sister, CEO of a large transportation company, drowned after her Tesla suddenly drove into a lake and apparently none of the windows or doors would work.
— Jim Stewartson, Counterinsurgent 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙🎈 (@jimstewartson) March 6, 2024
I’m sure famously ethical TX AG Ken Paxton will get to the bottom of it.https://t.co/hM0hyYE1qw pic.twitter.com/Z1XrkKuGfZ
The Indiana Senate has passed legislation letting 14- and 15-year-olds be put to work instead of going to school.
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) March 6, 2024
Sen. Greg Taylor spoke powerfully against the bill, reminding the Senate that kids are already getting hurt in Indiana factories.
The bill passed along party lines. pic.twitter.com/vDG7W1kkmG
2. Musk is referring to a parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans.
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 6, 2024
THIS IS NOT A SECRET!
Biden announced it in a speech on 1/5/23. It was covered extensively in the media. It was promoted in press releases. It is featured now on the @USCIS homepage! pic.twitter.com/IamEeHz0l3
Even the judges are referencing George Orwell lately.
‘Greatest first amendment sin’: appeals court condemns Florida’s Stop Woke Act
Three-judge panel blocks Ron DeSantis’s 2022 act banning employers from mandatory diversity training in scathing ruling
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/05/florida-stop-woke-act-court-ruling-desantis
As she should. Meanwhile Hobbs does her thing.
Hobbs to use federal funds for program to erase medical debt of Arizonans
Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services//March 4, 2024//
https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2024/03/04/hobbs-to-use-federal-funds-for-program-to-erase-medical-debt-of-arizonans/
Arizona will use up to $30 million in federal Covid relief funds to pay off up to $2 billion in medical bills owed by state residents.
Jeff Smedsrud, a board member of RIP Medical Debt, said Monday his charity will use the state dollars to buy up the unpaid medical bills from hospitals, health care providers and debt collectors.
More to the point, Smedsrud, a Scottsdale resident, said his organization can usually do that for pennies on the dollar. And that, he said, means the state’s money effectively is multiplied.
The program, announced by Smedsrud and Gov. Katie Hobbs, is designed to benefit anyone with medical debt whose income is less than 400% of the federal poverty level. That is currently $124,800 for a family of four.
Also eligible are those whose debt is 5% or more of their annual income. That would aid those who have higher income levels than the cutoff but much higher debt than they may be able to handle.
Those, said Smedsrud, are the only qualifications.
“We don’t pick elderly people versus younger people, people of color versus not,” he said.
Most significant, no one actually needs to apply.
In fact, you can’t.
“We work with FinThrive, a subsidiary of TransUnion, one of the main reporting agencies,” said Daniel Lampert, a spokesman for RIP. “We buy relevant income data from them to confirm who qualifies for our program in the files we review from providers of past-due medical debts.”
Smedsrud said only after the debt is paid off does the patient get a note that the debt is gone and that the credit bureaus have been notified.
He also said that the patients are not told who has provided the money. That anonymous donation, Smedsrud said, means that the debt relief does not become a taxable event for the recipient.
And it is at that point, he said, that “a beautiful thing happens.”
“Those for whom the debt is erased begin to engage in preventive care, which saves money,” Smedsrud said.
“They begin to lead a healthier life,” he said. “They become more likely to start a business, which is good for the economy.”
Smedsrud said that since the organization was founded in 2014 it has erased nearly $11 billion in medical debt owed by about 7 million individuals, some through individual donations and some through partnerships with local governments like Cook County, Ill., where Chicago is located. The Arizona deal, he said, is the largest in the organization’s history.....
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Just heard that on the news. Makes a two way now doesn't it? Lake just gave up her last "deny the vote and her loss" court case. Going to have to focus on the coming election before taking her loss to court again.
https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2024/03/04/lake-gives-up-on-legal-effort-to-overturn-election-loss/
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Republicans favoring and supporting drug dealers. Why not help the fentanyl trade into the US, the republicans supply all the guns to the Mexican drug lords that they want, makes sense.
Scanners that spot smuggled fentanyl at the border sit unused because Congress hasn't provided the cash to install them
The money to install the screeners was in the supplemental funding request Republicans blocked.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/border-fentanyl-scanners-unused-congress-provided-no-money-rcna141432
March 5, 2024, 4:30 AM MST / Source: NBC New York
By Laura Strickler, Julia Ainsley and Didi Martinez
Customs and Border Protection has spent millions on the most up-to-date high-tech scanners to spot fentanyl crossing the southern U.S. border, but many scanners are sitting in warehouses unused because Congress hasn’t appropriated funds to install them, acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller told NBC News.
Miller gave NBC News a tour of a port of entry in Nogales, Arizona, where half of all fentanyl seized at the border is stopped on its way into the U.S. from Mexico.
Officers in Nogales have found fentanyl hidden inside crates of Coca-Cola, where bottles are painted black to look like liquid, sawed in half and filled with fentanyl pills; they’ve confiscated millions in fentanyl pills stuffed inside the water barrel of a commercial bus’ bathroom; they’ve even found fentanyl in cars carrying young children in the back in car seats. More than 95% of fentanyl seized at the border, Miller said, is actually brought into the U.S. in personal vehicles...................
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Cannot overstate how at the ground level of policy-making this is the kind of thing conservative politics and Republican governance is really about. https://t.co/abAMGQq8Q6
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) March 5, 2024
Heartbreaking.💔 So brave and now…
— Vince Scafaria 🇺🇸☮️🌻 (@scafaria) March 5, 2024
The world has never seen a police state merged with the NSA merged with surveillance capitalism (and will strong-arm even Apple).
If Trump wins and Project2025 kicks in, burn your phone and stay indoors. https://t.co/XDPEJgEeuK
Me also. Days of really slow or no go. Yesterday the site returned a bit better, but then again today problems. Makes site pretty much unusable for me, takes too much time and waiting for page, reset, etc. Regularly clear my memory and history. Three different pc's, different browsers, even different ip locations, doesn't seem to make any difference and this is the only site that I'm having issue with. Maybe they will get it straightened out, lot of hacking taking place right now from Russia and other enemy countries.
Mother Nature and fossil fuels still doing their damage.
For those needing a reminder that 365 days of continuous record shattering of an ocean area covering 40 million square kilometers doesn't usually happen, see this: https://t.co/I1o195g0P3 pic.twitter.com/o12wn3SfbY
— Leon Simons (@LeonSimons8) March 4, 2024
Let that sink in. pic.twitter.com/KlnsIpZv1m
— 𓂀 𝕋𝔼𝔸ℍ 𓂀 (@TeahCartel) March 3, 2024
Interesting. How was it good for PLUG? One month ago, the date on the article, 2/1 PLUG closed at 4.70, yesterday it closed at 3.53 with a gap down expected this morning. Yesterday's close was 25% down from the article printing, with a lot more dilution this last month and more dilution in the future set in stone to pay the bills. It's still costing PLUG money for their sales and the insiders salary and will be that way for some time in the future, so the more product they sell and the longer management continues to get their cut, the more shares they're going to have to sell to pay for it all. This stock is trader's dream and investor's nightmare.
Blast from the very recent past. That's a heck of lot of cash to lose in a week. Got to kick the Adderall habit, or tell his son that his cocaine allowance is stopping. lol
Question: Judge Engoron says that he wants this $350 million within 30 days. Does Donald Trump have that kind of money sitting around?
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 20, 2024
Habba: I mean, he does. Of course he has money. You know, he’s a billionaire. Um, we know that pic.twitter.com/O6HRd4lBXi
Amazon lobbyists to be barred from European parliament
Move comes after pressure from activist groups over transparency and working conditions at ecommerce group
https://www.ft.com/content/11d20273-71e8-433d-bcac-c66d919a203a
Ecommerce giant Amazon’s lobbyists are to be banned from the European parliament as part of an escalating dispute over transparency and working conditions.
The European parliament confirmed on Tuesday that the access badges that give Amazon lobbyists permission to be on its premises will be withdrawn after a group of MEPs called for the move, saying the company had repeatedly refused to engage with it about its approach to workers’ rights and labour conditions.
It is only the second time that a company’s lobbyists have been banned from entering the European parliament, after agrochemical company Monsanto’s representatives were barred in 2017....................
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Courtesy of the Republicans, encouragement for the abuse.
So, let's recap:
— Dr. Ann Olivarius (@AnnOlivarius) February 27, 2024
you can’t easily say no to sex with an abusive husband in those states, but equally you can’t get an abortion if he gets you pregnant, and if you’re pregnant you can’t divorce him.
That's a closed circuit of abuse, courtesy of the state. https://t.co/eaoLTDyFdh
As Boebert is twitting and lying about Biden being a crime family again (projecting as a confession about Traitor trump), her family moves up on the "crime family" ladder.
Rep. Lauren Boebert’s teen son arrested after rash of robberies in her district, faces 22 charges
BRANDI BUCHMANFeb 28th, 2024, 9:28 am
https://lawandcrime.com/crime/rep-lauren-boeberts-teen-son-arrested-after-rash-of-robberies-in-her-district-faces-22-charges/
The 18-year-old son of U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert was arrested Tuesday and hit with 22 criminal charges, including several felonies, following a rash of robberies in Rifle, Colorado, an area within the Republican lawmaker’s district.
In a statement posted to Facebook, the Rifle Police Department said officers arrested Tyler Boebert at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday “after a recent string of vehicle trespass and property thefts in Rifle.”
He faces four felony counts of criminal possession of ID documents targeting multiple victims, a single felony count of conspiracy to commit a felony and more than 15 misdemeanor and petty offenses. Some of those misdemeanor charges include first-degree criminal trespass and at least three counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Several misdemeanor charges also involve petty theft of less than $300.
Police are not commenting any further on the matter since an investigation into the robberies plaguing Rifle is still ongoing...........
Then of course Tuberville comes along and tries to project his crime state on to NY.
This Community Note is 🔥 pic.twitter.com/tHs6XPFU3z
— Mark D. Levine (@MarkLevineNYC) February 28, 2024
Only the best people.
Trump clemency recipient Philip Esformes pleads guilty in Medicare fraud case
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/22/trump-clemency-recipient-philip-esformes-pleads-guilty-in-medicare-fraud-case.html
KEY POINTS
Convicted Medicare fraudster Philip Esformes pleaded guilty to a criminal charge as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors.
In 2020, then-President Donald Trump commuted Esformes’ 20-year prison sentence on charges related to what the Justice Department described as a massive Medicare fraud scheme.
The DOJ wanted to re-try the Florida nursing home owner on six criminal counts that his original jury failed to reach a verdict on.......
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I'm wondering about the people that will be showing up in tax court trying to claim their frozen embryos as dependents. The "living at home" might be an issue, but I can see people trying at least on their state return in the states that are making these laws. There already are some that lie about the number of dependents and never get audited for years, I'm sure this will increase the number of violations.
Trump brags about overturning Roe V. Wade and says ‘everybody on both sides’ agrees with The Supreme Court decision pic.twitter.com/7rhBVJzXSx
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 23, 2024
The annual CPAC conference is officially underway.
— CNN Early Start with Kasie Hunt (@EarlyStart) February 23, 2024
“Welcome to the end of democracy. We're here to overthrow it completely," said one speaker last night.@ShelbyTalcott and @kasie unpack. pic.twitter.com/iqL6Zal2nj
Told ya. Heritage is the lead organizer of Project 25. They want the next Republican president to give them control over approving and withdrawing approval of drugs. They are coming for birth control via the FDA, regardless of the courts. 1/ pic.twitter.com/z2T3TSJQof
— jennycohn@toad.social ✍🏻 📢 (@jennycohn1) February 18, 2024
3/ Here’s the article. https://t.co/M6iV1asldK
— jennycohn@toad.social ✍🏻 📢 (@jennycohn1) February 23, 2024
MAGA operative introducing Trump says Trump will enact their Project 2025 agenda, which includes a de-facto national abortion ban, puts Medicare on a path to privatization, and seeks to end marriage equality pic.twitter.com/7TbAhhATHb
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) February 23, 2024
The republican christian nationalists at work again. Frothing at the mouth to fornicate with egg children.
Seaford children's pastor arrested for possession of child sex abuse material: state DOJ
Isabel Hughes
Delaware News Journal
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/crime/2024/02/23/seaford-childrens-pastor-arrested-on-child-porn-charges-doj-says/72711257007/
A former Seaford children's pastor has been arrested on 10 felony charges after admitting to possessing and viewing child sexual abuse material, the Delaware Department of Justice said Friday.
James Dryden, 74, was charged last week following an investigation by the state's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, which includes Delaware State Police and the state justice department. The investigation began in July 2022 after the task force received cyber tips that Dryden's IP address had accessed the material, court documents say.
After receiving the tips, law enforcement contacted Dryden at his home and seized his devices. A forensic examination of the items showed he had additional material, the justice department said.
According to the justice department, Dryden had been a children’s pastor at Stein Highway Church of God in Seaford for more than 20 years. In a Friday morning statement, Pastor Dan Southern defined Dryden as a "volunteer children’s worker."........
Church camp assistant director charged with indecency with a child
Lynn Walker
Wichita Falls Times Record News
https://www.timesrecordnews.com/story/news/local/2024/02/22/church-camp-assistant-director-charged-with-indecency-with-a-child/72687486007/
The assistant director of Chaparral Baptist Assembly Camp in Iowa Park has been jailed on charges of Indecency with a Child through Sexual Contact.
Nathan Lee McDonald was arrested Wednesday by Wichita County Sheriff’s deputies...........................
Jasper County jury convicts former youth group leader
by: Bobbie Pottorff
https://www.fourstateshomepage.com/news/crime/jasper-county-jury-convicts-former-youth-group-leader/
Updated: Feb 22, 2024 / 09:36 PM CST
JASPER COUNTY, Mo. — A Jasper County jury took just four hours to convict a former youth group leader of a sex crime.
After a three-day trial, 29-year-old John Estes was found guilty of first-degree statutory rape of a child under the age of 14.............
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A pastor laments women wearing shorts, then says:
— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) February 21, 2024
"If you dress like that & you get raped & I'm on the jury, he's going to go free...because a man's a man." @reachjulieroys
pic.twitter.com/LJQXj9grNz
Reminder: Senator Graham
— Senate Democrats (@SenateDems) February 20, 2024
Voted no on bipartisan border legislation *he helped negotiate*
AND voted no on support for Ukraine a few days ago. https://t.co/E1gWM0Rg3v pic.twitter.com/wyJqBVC5Od
Anyone surprised? Yeh, he's definitely up for sale. From a can of beans sitting in the president's chair to pieces of America to our adversaries, as long as he thinks he can get something for him.
Russian CEO wins autographed golden Donald Trump sneakers after $9K bid
By Brielle Burns, News.com.au
Published Feb. 18, 2024
Updated Feb. 19, 2024, 12:03 p.m. ET
https://nypost.com/2024/02/18/us-news/ceo-wins-autographed-gold-donald-trump-sneakers-after-13k-bid/
Navalny's Widow Vows To Continue His Work
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-eu-navalny-navalnaya/32826162.html
Documents reveal Abraham Lincoln pardoned Biden’s great-great-grandfather
By David J. Gerleman
February 19, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EST
https://wapo.st/3T7b68o
Every new president selects personalized Oval Office decor to suit his tastes and pay homage to admired predecessors. President Biden’s Oval Office boasts both a portrait and a bust of Abraham Lincoln. But his family’s connection to the 16th president extends far beyond workplace ornamentation.
It dates to a late-night brawl during the Civil War.
On the evening of March 21, 1864, the quiet of a small corner of the Army of the Potomac’s sprawling winter camp along the Rappahannock River near Beverly Ford, Va., was disturbed when a fight broke out in one of the mess tents between Union Army civilian employees Moses J. Robinette and John J. Alexander.
The scuffle left Alexander bleeding from knife wounds, and Robinette was charged with attempted murder and incarcerated on a remote island near modern-day Florida. It would also cause an unexpected intersection in the histories of two American presidents, Lincoln and Biden — a story that has waited 160 years to be told.
Robinette, who received a pardon from Lincoln, was Biden’s great-great-grandfather.
Joseph Robinette Biden’s ancestral line has long been established and lists Moses J. Robinette among his paternal ancestors hailing from western Maryland, but very little has ever been chronicled about the man. Robinette’s court-martial records, discovered at the National Archives in Washington, show how the current president’s story is intertwined with that of the man who was president at the most perilous junction in U.S. history.
In 1861, Robinette was 42, married and running a hotel near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad junction at Grafton, Va. Union sentiments ran high in Virginia’s mountainous western counties, which soon broke off to form the new state of West Virginia. As the nation lurched toward armed conflict that spring, smoldering resentments against Virginia’s politically dominant slaveholding elite flared into open defiance after northwestern delegates tried to block the secession movement and were expelled from the Virginia Convention.
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Western Virginia became an early battleground as both sides fought to control the railroad. Union troops occupied Grafton in mid-June 1861 and drove Confederate forces out of the region within six months. The Robinette family suffered setbacks in the war’s early years: Moses’s wife, Jane, died, and his hotel was destroyed, allegedly by Union soldiers. Seeking safety for his youngest surviving children, Robinette appears to have left Virginia and returned to his extended family in Allegany County, Md.
Robinette was hired as a civilian veterinary surgeon by the U.S. Army Quartermaster’s Department in late 1862 or early 1863. He was assigned to the Army of the Potomac’s reserve artillery and tasked with keeping healthy the horses and mules that pulled the ammunition wagons. His qualifications for the position, as someone without formal medical training, were unstated, but such an appointment was not unusual in Civil War armies. Few veterinary colleges existed outside Europe in the 19th century, and Congress refused to authorize the creation of an official army veterinary corps until the First World War.
On that March evening near Beverly Ford, Alexander, a brigade wagon master, overheard Robinette saying something about him to the female cook and rushed into the mess shanty to demand an explanation. Tempers flared, expletives followed, and Robinette drew his pocketknife. A brief scuffle left Alexander bleeding from several cuts before camp watchmen arrived to arrest Robinette.
Nearly a month passed before Robinette’s military trial began. The charges specified that he had become intoxicated and incited “a dangerous quarrel,” violating good order and military discipline. Because a drawn weapon was involved, assault with “attempt to kill” was included among the charges.
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Witnesses described Robinette as “full of fun, always lively and joking,” and testimony varied on whether either man had consumed alcohol before the fight broke out.
According to the trial transcript, Robinette stated in closing “that whatever I have done was done in self defence, that I had no malice towards Mr. Alexander before or since. He grabbed me and possibly might have injured me seriously had I not resorted to the means that I did.”
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The military judges were not convinced. The next day, they rendered a unanimous verdict: guilty on all counts with the exception of “attempt to kill.” The punishment was two years’ incarceration at hard labor.
After his conviction, Robinette again had to wait nearly three months for his case to churn through the army’s bureaucratic channels. Occupied by active military operations, the commander of the Army of the Potomac, Gen. George G. Meade, did not confirm Robinette’s sentence until early July, when he was sent to the Dry Tortugas islands near Key West, Fla.
The islands were home to Fort Jefferson, a giant brick structure designed to protect the southern coast and Gulf of Mexico shipping lanes. The massive increase in U.S. forces needed to fight the Civil War correspondingly ballooned the number of military trials and convictions. When mainland prison space ran short, Fort Jefferson became a military prison, one described by Lincoln’s opponents as “American Siberia.” When Robinette disembarked there, the growing prison population numbered more than 700.
A portrait of President Abraham Lincoln on Jan. 8, 1864. (Library of Congress)
Around the time Robinette arrived on Dry Tortugas, three army officers who knew him petitioned Lincoln to overturn his conviction. John S. Burdett, David L. Smith and Samuel R. Steel wrote that Robinette’s sentence was unduly harsh for “defending himself and cutting with a Penknife a Teamster much his superior in strength and Size, all under the impulse of the excitement of the moment.”
They testified that Robinette had, from the outbreak of the war, been “ardent, and Influential … in opposing Traitors and their schemes to destroy the Government.”
The letter concluded with an emotional flourish: “Think of his motherless Daughters and sons at home! … [Praying for] your interposition in behalf of the unfortunate Father … and distressed family of loved Children, Union Daughters & Union Sons.”
The missive did not go straight to the White House, but first landed on the desk of Waitman T. Willey, a newly elected senator from the recently admitted state of West Virginia. He endorsed the plea, calling Robinette’s punishment “a hard sentence on the case as stated.” Lincoln’s private secretary, John G. Nicolay, promptly requested that the judge advocate general, Joseph Holt, send over a report and the trial transcripts for presidential review.
Holt’s report arrived in late August, and Lincoln made his decision, writing, “Pardon for unexecuted part of punishment. A. Lincoln. Sep. 1. 1864.” Shortly thereafter, the War Department issued Special Orders No. 296, freeing Robinette from prison.
After more than a month on sweltering Dry Tortugas, Robinette returned to his family in Maryland, where he took up farming again. He lived into the 20th century, dying at his daughter’s home in 1903. While his brief obituary eulogized him as a “man of education and gentlemanly attainments,” no mention was made of his wartime court-martial or his fleeting connection to Abraham Lincoln.
But the slender sheaf of 22 well-preserved pages of his trial transcript, unobtrusively squeezed among many hundreds of other routine court-martial cases in the National Archives, reveals the hidden link between the two men — and between two presidents across the centuries. Those few pages not only fill in an unknown piece of Biden family history, but also serve as a reminder of just how many Civil War stories have yet to be told.
David J. Gerleman is a 19th-century historian, Lincoln scholar and history instructor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.
A little bit of good news;
BREAKING: WI Gov. Tony Evers (D) breaks a Republican gerrymander, signs new legislative maps into law:
— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) February 19, 2024
"Wisconsin, when I promised fair maps, I damn well meant it ... People should get to choose their elected officials, not the other way around.” pic.twitter.com/MwHTJT4YEM