Yesterdays News 10/9

Monte Mader (0:01)

Happy Friday, everyone. Welcome to Yesterdays News, where I cover Yesterdays News in 10 to 15 minutes. I know that the news is a lot this week, but hopefully this will help you stay informed, a little less overwhelmed, and help us stay strong to keep fighting back against the insanity that has happened. I was reminded of how insane this all is. I've been speaking at colleges the last week, and I'm talking to people whose only political experience is Donald Trump and his administration, and the chaos that all of this is. I just want to validate for just a second that none of this is normal. I'll give you an example. On this day, October 10th, 1973, the Vice President resigns in a Baltimore courtroom. Spiro Agnew, who had spent the summer insisting he would not quit if he was indicted because federal prosecutors in Maryland had evidence he'd taken cash bribes from contractors as Baltimore County Executive, as governor, and in envelopes delivered to the Vice President's office. On October 10th, he walked into federal court, pleaded no contest to a single count of tax evasion, accepted a $10,000 fine and three years probation, and minutes before entering the plea had his resignation letter delivered to Secretary of State Kissinger so that he was a private citizen by the time the judge spoke to him. He was the first Vice President forced out of office. Nixon named Gerald Ford two days later and was gone himself within ten months because birds of a feather do in fact flock together. Fraud should remove someone from office, not enrich them, become a news headline about the fraud, and then they keep their job.

Pushing somebody out for that kind of behavior, Nixon getting removed from Watergate, those are normal. That's normal. That's how this should be handled with our leaders because what our leaders do obviously not just impacts us, but it impacts what people think is acceptable behavior. Jane Doe from Cornell was swatted. Police put guns on her father, her brother and her boyfriend. If you're not familiar what being swatted is, it is a report filed by someone that wants to send armed officers to your house as a form of intimidation. Also, keep in mind that the only people that know Jane Doe's name are the seven and the 57, the men that attacked her, the frat. They know who she is because the totally innocent acts of innocent people are to call a person threatening to murder them and their family because of the charges they're bringing, swatting them by filing reports with police and fleeing the country.

Are those the behaviors of a totally innocent group of people? I wonder. On the evening of October 6th, someone called 911 reported that a man inside Jane Doe's family home in Ithaca had shot and killed his mother, turned the gun on his sister. Officers arrived in force. According to her attorney, Thomas Jufra, the two police reports were viewed by CNN. They pointed weapons at her father, her brother, her boyfriend. The boyfriend was thrown to the ground. There was no shooting. There was no gunman. The call came minutes after Doe received a phone call from someone using the first name of one of the seven men.

Again, behavior of a totally innocent person, clearly. The FBI investigation alongside the local police into this call, Jufra counts dozens of threats since mid September, including a text containing three gun emojis. Doe has taped paper over the windows of her parents' home. Again, swatting is a emergency report by the people who claim she's not telling the truth, who have also threatened to murder her and her family over this report, instead of, hey, if you're totally innocent, brother, let that investigation come out, let her be humiliated. But I think they're extremely worried about what a criminal investigation is going to find because I think Jane Doe is the tip of the iceberg.

These are not the behaviors of innocent people. And now, when they find out who's making these calls and these threats, they can add some more charges to what's going to happen. Attorney General Letitia James, criminal investigation of the original assault continues. Sally Yates' review of Cornell continues, the seven men named in the civil suit have not been charged yet. The woman who accused them has armed police at her door, sent by someone who wanted to understand, her to understand what could happen to her next. This was a threat, this is to make her, oh, I don't know why, why don't women report? Why don't women report? Because women have to be the perfect victim in order to be taken seriously. She has to have absolute proof for an investigation while a man can say, nuh-uh, and that is taken as absolute truth. And then if she comes forward and she pursues it anyway, and she knows she's not going to get justice, so she pursues civilly, they'll fucking send armed police officers to her house and threaten her life. That's why.