Sholom Rubashkin is Factually Innocent

For my dear friends who have embraced darkness at a time of great joy, understand that your scary swan song is reminiscent of one who greets the news that a 95 year old has survived a quadruple heart attack (may Hashem protect all) with a loud “he's not worth celebrating. I remember him when he was six months old and he once spat up on his grandmother.” The only difference here is that the only vomit in this case are the lies and negativity themselves.

Before jumping head first into the mud (we will, for those who can't wait), let's first and foremost deal with who Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin is. Anyone who knows him will tell you that he never legitimately turned away anyone who needed anything. Of his income, he did not give 10%. He did not give 20%. He gave far more and everyone who came to him was well received. May Hashem bless him to give and nurture the world.

Even his business was centered around helping people. He and his father single-handedly lowered the price of kosher (Biblically mandated) meat throughout North America. His whole live revolved and revolves around helping people. He is also a deeply spiritual man. On top of this, he has given countless donations and sponsorships to youth teams, assistance centers, etc. regardless of religion, race or creed. This is all fact and has been attested to by said organizations.

“Oh, but he committed a crime.” No, not to any sane person who actually looks at the facts, HE DIDN'T.

He did not do anything untoward with regard to banking – which we'll get to. He did not bring in illegals, as two levels of prosecution both lost in this regard, one having to withdraw and the other resulting in acquittal at trial. His HR staff didn't double/triple vet them, but the same can be said for any slaughter house (the only difference is that Rubashkin treated these stable hands far better than any of his competitors, even giving them money to pay their medical bills and other serious needs). And he was not even cruel to charging bulls, which was the opening salvo in the public relations war against him.

He did sell Biblically sanctioned meat at a low price. But that was only a crime in the now defunct USSR – and to the great beacons of a light at PETA. A close look at the facts shows that that's about all he did, aside from his charitable work.

No one disputes that his slaughter house was targeted only after AND AS A RESULT of PETA's persistent harassment campaign. For those who don't know who PETA is, while their no longer associated founder seems like a decent person, they are now the group that holds memorials for the 6 Million Chickens “murdered” before Yom Kippur, complete with Holocaust-mocking/”wanting another one” (ch”v) undertones. Some of their other acts of glorious wonder include encouraging parents to give their kids beer instead of milk (because beer isn't “stolen from cows without permission”) and, more recently, kidnapping dogs from people's porches and euthanizing them well before the mandatory wait time for owners to reclaim them.

In short, they'd be up for the Humanitarian of the Year if they didn't so disdain humankind. So let's make them happy and give them the Braying Mule of the Year Award instead.

These PETAites, complete with quite contagious PETAitis, placed hidden cameras in Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin's barns. And lo and behold, wild animals acted like wild animals. One cow, out of thousands, even jumped up and caught its neck on a hook, or something like that.

So they raised a cry of outrage to everyone who didn't stop and think for a second. Never mind that weekly government visits showed that all storing conditions were met, that the animals needed to be kept in good shape in order to produce marketable meat and that independent ritual slaughterers who could have worked anywhere were there on a daily basis and are generally loathe to work under dire circumstances. No, no, one cow jumped up and had an accident and everyone from the CEO on down is now Heinrich Himmler with peiyos.

Now, Rubashkin did slaughter a lot of cows – and he ate them too! So if we go with PETA's motto that “Chickens Are People As Well,” then Sholom Rubashkin is a mass murderer and a cannibal, as are 95% of Americans.

Even then, one has to wonder: a) why not go after the makers of Barbecue Sauce, the real enablers in this situation, instead and b) doesn't all this take away from effecting real positive change, like finally giving disenfranchised wild wombats the right to vote?

Now the genocidal murder of raging bulls is not an official crime. Nor is the general safe herding of animals. In fact, the biggest proof that the living conditions of Rubashkin's animals were above board is that if any laws were actually broken, even local ordinances, the kind folks at PETA would have been on it like a piranha let loose in PetSmart. They weren't because there was nothing there.

So what was PETA to do when their hours, upon, hours, upon hours – enough to fill a whole mental ward and its bedpans – of footage ended up producing diddly squat on toast? Well, let's look for other crimes. And as it happens, those valiant saviors of “chickenkind” didn't care much for migrant working Mexican people.

Now Rubashkin's meat packing plant did have workers who were not allowed to work in the country. He did not hire them. His HR actually did vet them and they provided bogus socials, and in many cases bogus ID. He did not bring them into the country. He did not seek them out. He also factually had no way of knowing that they were illegal.

So his HR team didn't vet all employees with extra care and scrutiny. I'm not going to say that's right. I am going to say that:

a) this is the case with almost every single meat packing plant in the nation, none of which were raided by ICE with the owners arrested b) these were people who were already here and would have likely turned to robbery had no menial jobs been available c) it may not be right, but you don't shut down a plant that legitimately employs hundreds while doing nothing to any of its competitors d) this does not warrant cooking up a charge with which to give the owner a 27 year sentence, may no one know of such things e) no one disputes that the plant was shut down after being targeted by PETA and made fodder of in the press, mostly over the cow that jumped up onto (or fell back on, or danced musical chairs around - whatever) a hook in the barn

Moreover, neither he nor his then 80 plus year old father, who was dragged into court and tried over this as well, were directly involved (or even indirectly involved) in hiring. This also seems to be the one and only issue that no one involved quite cared about, other than to use as an excuse to shut down the plant, close Rubashkin's business and drive up the price of kosher meat.

His plant raided and him charged with flimsy immigration violations in spite of the above, the now temporarily defunct plant could no longer repay its loans. And looking at the fine print that no one looks at on a revolving line of credit is how they finally stuck it to him.

This becomes more complicated. This is also why Sholom Rubashkin went to trial on the merits, yet the accusation of “white collar” crime has poisoned many a jury, and has caused them to convict based on the principle of “there must be something here.” To understand what happened here one has to understand the nature of such a charge and such a dog fight.

If someone takes out a home mortgage and is specifically prohibited from transferring the property to a company, this can be “bank fraud.”

If someone writes a check or uses their debt card in such a way that causes an account to be overdrawn, the case can be made that one has engaged in “bank fraud.”

In none of these scenarios is the person seen to be the living, breathing, reincarnation of Al Capone. In none of these scenarios should the person be prosecuted or did the person have intent to commit a crime. And if such a person has received a 27 year sentence, then they are the victim of abject cruelty beyond belief on the part of the judge.

The True Judge has reasons and “All of His Ways are Righteous” and much has been written of the suffering of the righteous. It is for this reason that Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin has so merited to awaken the collective Jewish heart and to awaken goodness and kindness among the leaders of the nation. It does not for one second excuse the cruel, callous and contemptuous acts of Linda Reade, the true criminal in this case.

Rubashkin's CFO had opened a revolving line of credit. It was used whenever an order was placed. It was maintained in good stead for years. But officially it was to be used only after an order had been delivered, not once it had been placed. And therein lies the “bank fraud.” A ridiculous technicality that the bank did not care about and that the credit holder would not pay attention to.

Not that it matters, due to the sheer ridiculousness of the case, but Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin himself had nothing to do with the bank loan, its draws, the receivables or anything of that nature. He was charged and sentenced because his financial manager arranged and utilized the loan, in a way that the bank had no problem with and in a way that few would think twice about. If not for the plant closing, the revolving line of credit would naturally have been maintained in an up to date manner unto this day, just as it was for years.

Rubashkin was sentenced to much extra time due to the Packers and Stockyards Act. This Depression Era law stipulates that one may not purchase livestock on credit. In other words, one may not buy and receive a cow on Wednesday and pay for it on Thursday. Rubashkin's company often did this. While this ordinance has been used (usually maliciously) to shut down and fine companies, no one other than Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin has been prosecuted and sentenced for it. Certainly it doesn't sound like something worthy of prosecution.

In short, all creditors were paid except for the revolving line of credit, which was also paid off reliably for years – until the company was singled out and shut down by immigration enforcement on charges that were only brought against it and not against 30 companies that did worse.

Linda Reade's husband profited mightily from the forced sale of Rubashkin's company, Agriproccessors. She was also found to be the judge who signed off on the immigration raid against the plant, something she never disclosed when presiding over the trial over the “financial crimes” (using the line of credit after an order was placed instead of when the goods were received one or two days later – there were no other “financial crimes”). This is the same judge who held up appeal after appeal totaling a span of years, all out of pure spite. And is she usually a tough sentencer? No, she recently sentenced a terrorist collaborator to 5 years, less than a fifth of Rubashkin. The words “may the name of the wicked rot” apply to her, and may she meet the True Judge speedily in our days, who alone decrees – and may He do so.

When the USSR of old rounded up shochtim, ritual Biblical slaughters, took them into a forest and shot them in the middle of the night (I'm not exaggerating and have met many of their descendants, may they live long), people decried their actions. The KGB were fools. They should have given them a bank loan and found a contractual violation on Page 57B, Subsection F, Paragraph 2. That would have taught them.

The Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin case is nothing more and nothing less than a case in which a religious person selling religiously mandated meat was targeted, hounded and made fodder of by PETA and their friends in the media. Yes, the same PETA that ridicules the Holocaust every year, seeing it as a joke with which to deride the descendants of its survivors on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year.

Let's not help them. Let's actually do what any decent person would do. There's a reason why 6 former US Attorneys General, spanning the entire ideological spectrum of the nation, saw fit to stand up for Sholom Rubashkin.

In 1952-53, the Soviet Union accused Jewish doctors of trying to kill Stalin. This “Doctor's Plot” was about to be used as a pretext to send Jews throughout Russia to Bessearabia, on what would have been a trail of suffering. The plot was only abandoned after Stalin died on the Jewish holiday of Purim 1953. Mapam, a communist party in Israel, wholeheartedly announced its support for the Kremlim during that terrible time. “If the Soviet Union says so, it must be true.” The only difference between PETA and the Soviets is that one was a country and the other are wannabee lunatics. In over 60 years, we should have learned better than to take either at face value.

From the U.S. Attorney Northern District of Iowa:

Evidence at trial showed Rubashkin inflated Agriprocessors’ sales in order to fraudulently obtain millions of dollars in loans that were not backed by any collateral. Rubashkin also diverted millions of dollars in customer payments that were supposed to go to Agriprocessors’ primary lender. He committed money laundering by running tens of millions of dollars through bank accounts at a Postville grocery store and a religious school.

The trial evidence showed Rubashkin was personally involved in harboring hundreds of undocumented worker at Agriprocessors and illegally delaying payments to Agriprocessors’ cattle suppliers. He paid for the purchase of fabricated IDs for undocumented workers and personally inspected those documents. Evidence showed Rubashkin’s fraud resulted in over $26 million in actual loss to Agriprocessors’ lenders.

Over a two-year time period when money was being fraudulently obtained from a lender, Rubashkin funneled about $1.5 million from Agriprocessors’ accounts to his personal bank accounts. The money—approximately $663,000—was used, in part, to pay for his credit card bills, the remodeling of his residence, his personal state and federal income tax, his mortgage payments on his personal residence, jewelry, and sterling silver.

Full U.S. Attorney Summary:

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/omaha/press-releases/2010/om062210.htm

Re: “He did not do anything untoward with regard to banking...”

Actually, he borrowed $27 million from two banks, after presenting fraudulent financial statements. And, he never paid the money back.

Re: “He did not bring in illegals, as two levels of prosecution both lost in this regard, one having to withdraw and the other resulting in acquittal at trial.”

Rubashkin was acquitted of state criminal charges involving child labor. That trial had nothing to do with illegal immigrants.

However, the state of Iowa, in a civil procedure, fined Rubashkin $10 million for state labor violations. Rubashkin has not paid that fine.

The federal immigration charges against Rubashkin were dismissed “without prejudice.” That means that Rubashkin agreed that the immigration charges can be re-filed against him at some point in the future.

The reason the U.S. Attorney dismissed the federal immigration charges was because Rubashkin was convicted on 86 fraud related charges that carried a heavier sentence.

In exchange for the dismissed charges, Rubashkin also agreed that the judge in the fraud case could examine and consider the evidence in the immigration case before she determined Rubashkin’s prison sentence in the fraud case.

By the way, almost 400 illegal workers were found at Rubashkin’s processing plant.

It was, and remains, the largest illegal immigration bust in American history.

The Rubashkin Case: A Mockery of Justice

by Conrad Black August 28, 2013
http://www.conradmblack.com/160/the-rubashkin-case-a-mockery-of-justice

As cases bubble up almost every week illustrating the Gonzo-draconian constant miscarriage of the U.S. justice system, the Sholom Rubashkin case has become particularly notorious. Sholom Rubashkin underwent rabbinical training and was a Jewish educator very active in many charities and universally regarded among his acquaintances as a man of great generosity and unblemished ethics. He and his wife have been married nearly 30 years and have raised 10 children. His father, Aaron Rubashkin, bought a derelict plant in Postville, Iowa, and turned it into a kosher slaughterhouse called Agriprocessors Inc., and his son, Sholom, as well as several siblings, joined him in the management as the business grew to employ over 1,000 people.

Sholom Rubashkin’s legal travails arose on two fronts: first, on the financial front. The business was financed with a conventional line of credit from First Bank Business Capital Inc., a subsidiary of St. Louis-based First Bank. The line was secured by an assignment of Agriprocessors’ inventory and receivables, with a right to draw up to 50 per cent of the book value of inventories and 85 per cent of the quantum of outstanding receivables, percentages that were realistically well secured on the company’s history of sales and receivables collection. Every day the company controller reported the current balances of the pledged assets to the bank, and cash as it came in was regularly deposited in an affiliated bank.

In 2008, nine years after these banking arrangements were made, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency staged a brigade-sized raid by 600 agents, with helicopter accompaniment, on the Agriprocessors plant and arrested 389 allegedly undocumented and mainly Hispanic workers. This naturally had a negative impact on the company’s business, but banking arrangements continued for five months until the loan was called in October 2008. A month later, Agriprocessors filed for bankruptcy protection, five days after Sholom Rubashkin was arrested on a complaint based on alleged immigration-related offenses.

It was at this point that the rabid dementia so pandemic among American prosecutors began to erupt. There were an unheard of seven superseding indictments, including the first ever prosecution under the 90-year-old Packers and Stockyards Act, for paying a cattle dealer eleven days late. Following his second indictment, Mr. Rubashkin was detained for 76 days because he was Jewish and the prosecutors were concerned that he might flee the United States for Israel to take advantage of that country’s right of return. This flourish caught on infectiously with other prosecutors around the country, and it has been insistently protested by a wide alliance of Jewish and other organizations as clear sectarian discrimination.

The financial case against Mr. Rubashkin was based on allegations that when business became difficult, he forged some invoices to exaggerate receivables, and sent some incoming cash to cover trade payables in preference to paying down the lender. There was no suggestion that he pocketed a cent for himself, but he was apparently guilty of a relatively minor commercial fraud which did not in itself cost the lender and assisted in keeping the business going. However, prosecutiamania now possessed the local authorities, and the financial prosecution was reinforced by the second half of the pincers operation, a preposterous 9,311 counts of child labour. This helped sink the business and put almost everyone out of work, but almost all the charges were dropped on the eve of trial and the rest were thrown out by the jurors. This entire onslaught on the subject of child labour was completely spurious.

Only after the trial ended did it come to light that Sholom Rubashkin’s judge, Linda R. Reade, had cooperated completely with, and was effectively an important member of, the prosecution.

A herniating mass of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memoranda and emails were eventually adduced to show that starting more than a year before the military-scale descent on the Agriprocessors plant, Judge Reade started meeting with prosecutors to plan the attack on Mr. Rubashkin. In the ensuing year, she repeatedly met with prosecutors, was involved in many aspects of the case, and was even referred to in one ICE email as a “stakeholder” in the case.

Judge Reade did not disclose her involvement in the prosecution and did not follow clear guidelines that I believe required her recusal on the trial itself. Instead she sat through the trial and the sentencing hearings, and then strained the guidelines and even the prosecution’s requested sentence and gave Mr. Rubashkin a staggering 27-year sentence for a first-time, non-violent commercial offense designed exclusively to save his business and its employees, and of which there was no victim. There is no modern American precedent for such severity.

This case has understandably caused widespread outrage in legal circles in the United States, as has the judge’s apparent bias and her dragging American justice into disrepute, if that is still possible, by being an active member of the prosecution as the case was being put together and then imposing a pitiless prosecution on the facts and on any questions of proportionality or mercy for a widely admired and generous member of the community.

The sentence, which may well effectively be a life sentence for an offense that does not normally carry remotely as heavy a penalty, by a scandalously compromised and biased judge, has been strenuously protested by 75 law professors and former prosecutors, 51 U.S. congressmen, six U.S. senators, 86 attorneys general, U.S. attorneys, and federal judges, including former attorneys general of the United States Ed Meese and Dick Thornburgh and FBI directors William Sessions and Louis Freeh. Scores of thousands of people have attended rallies for Mr. Rubashkin, 52,000 people signed a petition for mercy on his behalf sent to the White House, three million dollars has been raised and donated pro bono to pay for his legal defense, and Attorney General Holder was questioned closely about the case and agreed to look into it when he appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on May 3, 2011.

This is unfortunately not a particularly unusual phenomenon, but is a glaring case of the judge just being a member of the prosecution and of the workings of the American kangaroo system that secures guilty verdicts in 99.5 per cent of cases, 97 per cent without trials, and has created a carceral state whose prisons bulge with the innocent and the over-sentenced. Even scores of people who have served prominently in that system are shocked by this mockery of justice and it will be a virtual self-judgment that the United States is not now in any relevant sense a society of laws at all in criminal matters if this result, which would appal Draco himself, is allowed to stand.

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