Posted on 10/09/2014 1:20:15 PM PDT by smoothsailing
October 9, 2014
Democratic Nebraska Senate candidate Dave Domina, in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, stood by his work defending a former Nazi police officer stripped of his U.S. citizenship.
Domina, who is trailing Republican Ben Sasse, said he did not balk when John Kalymon hired him in 2006 to fight the U.S. government, which was seeking to deport the former German-occupation police officer for lying about his past.
“Mr. Kalymon lived an honorable life in the U.S.,” Domina said in an interview Wednesday.
Domina touts his work defending Kalymon, citing it on his law firm’s website.
“I am a person without biases against other people and in this instance, my own beloved grandchildren are Jewish people and their mother is a student of Jewish history and a professor of it,” said Domina, who is not Jewish. “I am a firm believer in the legal process and I believe that lawyers with gifts in that profession should share their gifts, and that’s what I did.”
The case began in 2006 when the U.S. government charged the octogenarian Chrysler engineer, now deceased, with lying on the immigration forms that allowed him to come to this country from his native Ukraine some 60 years earlier.
Kalymon’s real name was Ivan, the government said, accusing the Detroit resident of covering up his membership in the Nazi-backed Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (UAP), participating in pogroms against Jews, and of killing at least one in the woods nearby the Jewish ghetto in L’Viv.
Kalymon “repeatedly shot at Jews who tried to escape during roundups,” according to the government records recounted in a 2006 Detroit Free Press report on the deportation proceedings. “Kalymon killed one Jew and wounded another.”
The UAP, which Kalymon admitted to being a member of, was documented to be complicit in Nazi crimes.
“During the first week of the German occupation of the Ukraine, members of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police took part in pogroms against the Jews,” according to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum. “Later, they escorted Jews to their forced labor sites and guarded the ghettos.”
Kalymon was ultimately stripped of his U.S. citizenship and ordered to be “removed from the United States because of his participation in Nazi-sponsored acts of persecution while serving during World War II as an armed member of the” UAP, the Department of Justice announced in 2011.
“Ivan Kalymon was part and parcel of the Nazi machinery of persecution that ended the lives of more than 100,000 men, women, and children in L’viv,” Eli Rosenbaum, director of human rights enforcement strategy and policy for the Criminal Division’s Human Rights and Special Prosecution Section (HRSP), said in a statement at the time.
Domina, who helmed Kalymon’s defense, told the Free Beacon that while the Ukrainian immigrant had concealed his true identity while applying for U.S. citizenship, the evidence presented against him was unreliable.
“The evidence consisted of these historical documents, and the evidence about the genuineness of his signature on the critical document was contested, and the efforts proving or disproving the authenticity of proving the signature as his, which he denied, was inconclusive,” Domina said.
However, “the court made a judgment and that withstood,” Domina said. “I’m not at all inclined to quibble with the court’s judgment. [Kalymon] denied his involvement and the court found against him.”
Asked if he has any qualms about defending a man accused of Nazi war crimes, Domina stood by his work.
“It has not been an issue. I’ve raised it and disclosed it when appropriate,” he said.
“I was involved on a professional level and did my best professionally for a person who, decades after these events, needed help,” Domina said. “I performed a professional service. … It was a service I rendered without making a judgment on a person.”
Kalymon died in Detroit earlier this year while under deportation order, according to the AP, which noted that German authorities also had filed an arrest warrant for the former Nazi as a result of his war crimes.
Domina told the Free Beacon that he should not be criticized for defending Kalymon.
His critics “have a very weak understanding of the responsibilities of a lawyer to provide professional services with objectivity,” he said.
Why do labs prefer using lawyers than rats for experiments?
There are some things that rats won’t do.
And Mengele lived a quiet life in SA not selecting anyone anymore for extermination.
In the larger cities they would raid homes to seize Jews and herd them into ghettos until the time came to ship them out to a death camp.
I suppose in our system every defendant is entitled to representation, but if this guy came to me, I would pass, for sure.
A democrat supporting a national socialist, and having no qualms about it. Color me surprised...
I can’t imagine why a Democrat would find common ground with a Nazi. I’ll bet he supports Israel, just to be balanced.
Yes, as an abortionist. Yet another shocker!
Domina also expressed ultraleft views on the Keystone pipeline, immigration reform, and Islamic radicalism. At the end, as you might expect, things got testy between him and Hannity.
The good news is that I don't think we have to worry about Domina as another Al Franken in the Senate, since he is 29 points behind his GOP rival in a recent New York Times poll.
That gleep Domina never had a chance to a win.
Mountain out of a molehill. Regardless of how scummy the defendant is, he’s entitled to a competent and vigorous defense. I’m 100% in favor of making the government have to prove their case, no matter what I think of the criminal.
Exactly... Domina might fit in somewhere in the northeast, but he won’t play in Nebraska.
You are right the gov has to prove its case. But if you’re running for office your past choice of defendants is fair game.
Al Franken ‘s election likely as not came about as the result of VOTE FRAUD.
if this rube gets elected we can pretty much suspect that vote fraud was the reason.
Only to a point. If your history shows you take on an inordinate number of cases of a particular type, that's one thing. But a single defendant? Hardly shows a predisposition to, in this case, a pro-Nazi sentiment.
Of course, politics don't have to be rational, but dinging a lawyer for his or her clients (barring a clear, recurring theme) harms the system, in my opinion.
Yes, he lied about his identity but your evidence of that is faulty.
lol
They will be finding ballots in hotel room closets to count if it is close.
I remember a few years ago....there being an incident in the San Francisco Bay Area...where a missing Vote Machine was found in the trunk of someone’s car....just after one election.
Good point.
Yes, we know that in the 2008 Franken vs. Coleman Senate election, more than enough votes to change the outcome were cast by individuals who weren't eligible to vote under state law.
But the real farce was the recount of the already optically scanned ballots by visual inspection and arbitrary criteria under the aegis of the 'rat Secretary of State's office. That turned a narrow Coleman victory based on the optically scanned ballots into a phony Franken "win." The fact that the 'Rats had a majority on the state Supreme Court was important as well.
Coleman's lawyers were remiss in not appealing to the SCOTUS based on the precedent of Bush v. Gore re the Florida recounts in 2000.
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