Category Archives: Gangs and Crimes

H.R. 1987 versus President Trump

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Primer: Try performing an internet search of any of the names below as an introduction to their own individual scandals. Two congressional committees are assigned to this bill, they are the House Rules Committee and the House Judiciary Sub-Committee on the Constitution and Civil Justice.

The Washington Post is ‘all-in’ on advancing this legislation and is likely aiding the committees with alleged facts, all yet to be proven true or accurate. This is tiresome and impedes the people’s business of that of representatives of the House…continuity of government and the transfer of power means nothing to these people. America suffers. Additionally, these democrats are using taxpayer dollars and legislative time to do this.

Further, there is already a lot of chatter inside the Beltway about the 25th Amendment. So, here it is for your use and reference.

25th Amendment

The 25th Amendment, proposed by Congress and ratified by the states in the aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, provides the procedures for replacing the president or vice president in the event of death, removal, resignation, or incapacitation.  The Watergate scandal of the 1970s saw the application of these procedures, first when Gerald Ford replaced Spiro Agnew as vice president, then when he replaced Richard Nixon as president, and then when Nelson Rockefeller filled the resulting vacancy to become the vice president.  Read more from the Congressional Research Service here….

Amendment XXV

Section 1.

In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

Section 2.

Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

Section 3.

Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

Section 4.

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

H.R. 1987 was introduced in April and the co-sponsor list of signatories is growing:

Mr. Raskin (for himself, Mr. Conyers, Mr. McGovern, Ms. Lee, Ms. Jayapal, Mr. Blumenauer, Mr. Doggett, Mr. Soto, Ms. Jackson Lee, Mr. Cohen, Mr. Gutiérrez, Ms. Judy Chu of California, Mr. Grijalva, Ms. Lofgren, Mr. Brown of Maryland, Mr. Cicilline, Mr. Takano, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, Mr. Evans, and Mr. Nadler) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and in addition to the Committee on Rules, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned…

A BILL

To establish the Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. Short title.

This Act may be cited as the “Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity Act”.

SEC. 2. Establishment.

There is established a commission in the legislative branch to be known as the “Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity” (in this Act referred to as the “Commission”). The Commission shall serve as the body provided by law by Congress to carry out section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

SEC. 3. Duty of Commission.

(a) In general.—If directed by Congress pursuant to section 5, the Commission shall carry out a medical examination of the President to determine whether the President is mentally or physically unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office, as described under subsection (b).

(b) Determination.—The determination under subsection (a) shall be made if the Commission finds that the President is temporarily or permanently impaired by physical illness or disability, mental illness, mental deficiency, or alcohol or drug use to the extent that the person lacks sufficient understanding or capacity to execute the powers and duties of the office of President.

SEC. 4. Membership.

(a) Number and appointment.—The Commission shall be composed of 11 members, appointed as follows:

(1) Two members appointed by the majority leader of the Senate.

(2) Two members appointed by the minority leader of the Senate.

(3) Two members appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

(4) Two members appointed by the minority leader of the House of Representatives.

(5) Two members—

(A) one of whom is appointed jointly by the two appointing individuals under paragraphs (1) through (4) who are members of, or caucus with, the Democratic party;

(B) one of whom is appointed jointly by the two appointing individuals under paragraphs (1) through (4) who are members of, or caucus with, the Republican party; and

(C) each of whom has served as President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Attorney General, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, or Surgeon General.

(6) One member, to serve as Chair of the Commission, appointed by simple majority vote of the 10 members appointed under paragraphs (1) through (5).

(b) Criteria for appointment.—

(1) IN GENERAL.—Each member appointed to the Commission under paragraphs (1) through (4) of subsection (a) shall be a physician. Of the two members appointed by each individual under such paragraphs, one shall be a physician with a specialty in psychiatry. The Chair shall be either a physician or an individual appointed under paragraph (5) of subsection (a), or both.

(2) LIMITATIONS.—A member appointed under subsection (a) may not, at the time the member is appointed or serving as a member on the Commission, be—

(A) an elected official to any Federal, State, or local office;

(B) an employee (as that term is defined in section 2105 of title 5, United States Code, including any employee of the United States Postal Service or the Postal Regulatory Commission); or

(C) a member of the Armed Forces, including reserve components thereof.

(3) PHYSICIAN DEFINED.—In this subsection, the term “physician” means a doctor of medicine licensed to practice medicine, surgery, or osteopathy in a State.

(c) Travel expenses.—Each member shall receive travel expenses, including per diem in lieu of subsistence, in accordance with applicable provisions under subchapter I of chapter 57 of title 5, United States Code.

(d) Terms.—

(1) IN GENERAL.—Each member shall be appointed for a term of 4 years. A member may serve after the expiration of that member’s term until a successor has taken office.

(2) APPOINTMENT.—Each member shall be appointed during the period beginning on the date that a Presidential election is held and ending on the date that is 30 days after such election date.

(3) VACANCIES.—A vacancy in the Commission shall be filled in the manner in which the original appointment was made, not later than 30 days after the vacancy occurs. Any member appointed to fill a vacancy occurring before the expiration of the term for which the member’s predecessor was appointed shall be appointed only for the remainder of that term.

SEC. 5. Examination of the President.

(a) In general.—A concurrent resolution described in this subsection is a concurrent resolution directing the Commission to conduct an examination of the President to determine whether the President is incapacitated, either mentally or physically, the title of which is “Directing the Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity to conduct an examination of the President”, and the text of which consists solely of a directive to the Commission to conduct the examination.

(b) Procedures.—The provisions of section 2908 (other than subsection (a)) of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 shall apply to the consideration of a concurrent resolution described in subsection (a) in the same manner as such provisions apply to a joint resolution described in section 2908(a) of such Act.

(c) Special rules.—For purposes of applying subsection (b) with respect to such provisions, the following rules shall apply:

(1) Any reference to the Committee on Armed Services of the House of Representatives shall be deemed a reference to the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives and any reference to the Committee on Armed Services of the Senate shall be deemed a reference to the Committee on the Judiciary of the Senate.

(2) Any reference in subsection (c) to a “20-day period” shall be deemed a reference to a “48-hour period”.

(3) Any reference in subsection (d) to “the third day” shall be deemed a reference to “the first day”.

(4) Any reference to the date on which the President transmits a report shall be deemed a reference to the date on which a Member of Congress introduced a concurrent resolution described in subsection (a).

(d) Examination.—Not later than 72 hours after the adoption by Congress of the concurrent resolution described in subsection (a), the Commission shall conduct the examination described under such subsection.

SEC. 6. Report.

(a) In general.—Not later than 72 hours after completing the examination under section 4(d), and notwithstanding the HIPAA privacy regulations (as defined in section 1180(b)(3) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1320d–9(b)(3))), the Commission shall submit a report to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate describing the findings and conclusions of the examination.

(b) Consideration.—Any refusal by the President to undergo such examination shall be taken into consideration by the Commission in reaching a conclusion in the report under subsection (a).

1 Wiretap Order for 3.3 Million Calls, Probable Cause?

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Wiretaps are nothing new and for law enforcement it is a top investigative tool to solving cases. All wiretaps must have a well define probable cause in order for the application to be approved. This particular case however is a head-scratcher where real answers are still not forthcoming.

***

With a single wiretap order, US authorities listened in on 3.3 million phone calls

The order was carried out in 2016 as part of a federal narcotics investigation.

NEW YORK, NY — US authorities intercepted and recorded millions of phone calls last year under a single wiretap order, authorized as part of a narcotics investigation.

The wiretap order authorized an unknown government agency to carry out real-time intercepts of 3.29 million cell phone conversations over a two-month period at some point during 2016, after the order was applied for in late 2015.

The order was signed to help authorities track 26 individuals suspected of involvement with illegal drug and narcotic-related activities in Pennsylvania.

The wiretap cost the authorities $335,000 to conduct and led to a dozen arrests.

State Wiretap Authorizations in 2016 See the full report here.

But the authorities noted that the surveillance effort led to no incriminating intercepts, and none of the handful of those arrested have been brought to trial or convicted.

The revelation was buried in the US Courts’ annual wiretap report, published earlier this week but largely overlooked.

“The federal wiretap with the most intercepts occurred during a narcotics investigation in the Middle District of Pennsylvania and resulted in the interception of 3,292,385 cell phone conversations or messages over 60 days,” said the report.

Details of the case remain largely unknown, likely in part because the wiretap order and several motions that have been filed in relation to the case are thought to be under seal.

It’s understood to be one of the largest number of calls intercepted by a single wiretap in years, though it’s not known the exact number of Americans whose communications were caught up by the order.

We contacted the US Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, where the wiretap application was filed, but did not hear back.

Albert Gidari, a former privacy lawyer who now serves as director of privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, criticized the investigation.

“They spent a fortune tracking 26 people and recording three million conversations and apparently got nothing,” said Gidari. “I’d love to see the probable cause affidavit for that one and wonder what the court thought on its 10 day reviews when zip came in.”

“I’m not surprised by the results because on average, a very very low percentage of conversations are incriminating, and a very very low percent results in conviction,” he added.

When reached, a spokesperson for the Justice Department did not comment.

Seventy-seven federal jurisdictions submitted reports of wiretap applications for 2016. For the third year in a row, the District of Arizona authorized the most federal wiretaps, approximately 9 percent of the applications approved by federal judges.

Federal judges and state judges reported the authorization of 600 wiretaps and 177 wiretaps, respectively, for which the AO received no corresponding data from prosecuting officials. Wiretap Tables A-1 and B-1 (which will become available online after July 1, 2017, at http://www.uscourts.gov/statistics-reports/analysis-reports/wiretap-reports) contain information from judge and prosecutor reports submitted for 2016. The entry “NP” (no prosecutor’s report) appears in these tables whenever a prosecutor’s report was not submitted. Some prosecutors may have delayed filing reports to avoid jeopardizing ongoing investigations. Some of the prosecutors’ reports require additional information to comply with reporting requirements or were received too late to include in this document. Information about these wiretaps should appear in future reports.

Revoking U.S. Citizenship, it Does Happen

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FNC: A  Mexico native serving time in a prison south of the border for rape had his naturalized U.S. citizenship revoked by a federal judge Tuesday after authorities discovered the man failed to disclose a previous child sex assault conviction dating back more than 20 years.

The decision to denaturalize Jose Arizmendi, 54, made him the 88th person in the last eight years to have his citizenship revoked, according to a review by SeattlePI.com. Arizmendi had been living in Texas, making him the ninth person from the Lone Star State in eight years to be denaturalized.

imm

Jose Arizmendi, seen in a 1996 mug shot.

“The Justice Department is committed to preserving the integrity of our nation’s immigration system,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Chad A. Readler said in a statement. “We will aggressively pursue denaturalization in cases where individuals lie on their naturalization applications, especially in a circumstance like this one, which involved a child sex abuser. Civil denaturalization cases are an important law enforcement tool for protecting the public, including our children.”

Arizmendi, who is currently serving an 18-year sentence in Mexico for the rape of a minor there, did not tell officials at his immigration interview in October 1995 about his conviction six months earlier for the aggravated sexual assault of a child, according to a Department of Justice news release. Arizmendi was given 10 years of probation in that case, The Houston Chronicle reported.

When officials approving his immigration request asked if he had ever been arrested or convicted of a crime, Arizmendi told them: “No.”

Partly based on that answer, Arizmendi became a U.S. citizen in 1996. But immigration officials eventually uncovered the child sex assault conviction and alerted the DOJ, which initiated proceedings to strip Arizmendi of his citizenship in February 2015.

Because of a 10-year statute of limitations, U.S. authorities couldn’t revoke the citizenship based on the criminal conviction alone – but due to Arizmendi’s lie to immigration officials, they were able to strip it as a civil denaturalization.

“Applications for naturalization must be candid with all material facts,” Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas Abe Martinez said in a statement. “Like in this case, failing to disclose material data should result in denaturalization.”

*** Meanwhile, other cases such as that posted below are still common and daily criminal cases.

From left, rape-home invasion suspects Francisco Palencia, 17, and Josue Ramirez, 19. Ramirez has an immigration hold from ICE at the Gwinnett County Jail near Atlanta.

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. – It’s easily one of the most horrific crimes of the year in the Atlanta area, and now WND has found that the lead suspect is an illegal alien from Latin America.

On June 15, police arrested three Hispanic teen agers accused of raping a 23-year-old Gwinnett County mother in front of her 4-year-old son.

The suspects are Josue Aguilar Ramirez, 19, Francisco Palencia, 17, and an unidentified 15-year-old girl. All three face charges of kidnapping, rape, cruelty to children, aggravated sodomy and aggravated battery.

The oldest, Ramirez, is an illegal immigrant who is subject to an immigration hold at the Gwinnett County Detention Center, according to online jail records.

According to the police report, the young mother arrived home from work with her two small children just before 3 a.m. on May 12 and found two armed men inside her kitchen, each wearing black jackets and ski masks. They were armed with Taser stun guns.

“The two males were armed with Tasers and approached ( her),” according to the police report.

The incident occurred at the woman’s apartment in unincorporated Tucker, Georgia, within Gwinnett County, a suburb of Atlanta that has one of the state’s highest populations of illegal immigrants.

The mother initially tried to fight back, but one of the men threw two pots of boiling water on her, severely burning her shoulder, neck and arm, according to the police report. Even though badly burned, she still struggled to get away from her attackers and back to her children.

That’s when the men shocked the woman with the Taser and forced her into the bedroom. One of the teens asked her if she had HIV, and she said “no.” They demanded she take off her clothes and forced her to perform oral sex before raping her, the police reports state.

She told police that she “complied wit h the male’s demands out of fear for what could be done to her children.”

Peter Smith and Hillary’s 30,000 Missing Emails

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Peter Smith and Michael Flynn knew each other and communicated often. Peter Smith was 81 years old when he died, but what does Flynn have when it comes to 30,000 emails that Hillary deleted? Once Smith was able to located Russian hackers that admitted hacking Hillary’s emails, the question is where are they and why were they never published?

Performing attribution, ensuring they are real, confirming they have not been doctored is the challenge, after all Russians are in the equation. However, cyber experts performing the review have an above 90% certainty. Peter Smith was not associated at all with any part of the Trump camp but did support his race for the White House.

Meanwhile, special council Robert Mueller and his team are likely passing out subpoenas to get all the pieces of the electronic trail on this.

Image result for peter smith hackers Peter Smith/NYDailyNews

Humm…let’s go deeper for background and context. Once you read below, you will have thousands of questions and some are answered here in the follow up podcast with the WSJ journalist that broke the story.

***

A new report raises some big questions about Michael Flynn and Russian hackers

The Wall Street Journal describes how one Trump supporter reached out to hackers — and dropped Flynn’s name.

A tantalizing new report from Shane Harris of the Wall Street Journal gives the strongest indication yet that collusion may have occurred — or was at least attempted — between supporters of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russian hackers who targeted Democrats’ emails.

And it raises serious questions about whether fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was involved in these efforts to contact hackers.

Harris describes an effort by Peter Smith, a Trump-supporting GOP operative and private equity executive, to track down Hillary Clinton’s infamous 30,000 or so deleted emails during the fall of 2016.

The effort, described on the record to Harris by Smith (the 81-year old man died a week and a half after their interview), entailed outreach to several hacker groups, including at least two that Smith believed to be Russian-tied, to see if they had hacked the emails and could release them.

The emails — which Clinton said she deleted because they were personal and unrelated to her work as secretary of state — never surfaced. And Smith didn’t work for the Trump campaign.

But this new report could be especially significant because of one name that keeps coming up: Michael Flynn, who at the time was advising the Trump campaign.

Smith repeatedly claimed that he was in contact with Flynn about the effort to find Clinton’s emails, per Harris’s sources.

“He said, ‘I’m talking to Michael Flynn about this — if you find anything, can you let me know?’” said Eric York, a computer-security expert from Atlanta who searched hacker forums on Mr. Smith’s behalf for people who might have access to the emails. …

… In phone conversations, Mr. Smith told a computer expert he was in direct contact with Mr. Flynn and his son, according to this expert. … The expert said that based on his conversations with Mr. Smith, he understood the elder Mr. Flynn to be coordinating with Mr. Smith’s group in his capacity as a Trump campaign adviser.

Furthermore, Harris describes, apparently for the first time, US intelligence reports claiming Russian hackers discussed how to get hacked emails to Flynn through a third party.

Investigators have examined reports from intelligence agencies that describe Russian hackers discussing how to obtain emails from Mrs. Clinton’s server and then transmit them to Mr. Flynn via an intermediary, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the intelligence.

If accurate, all this is enough to raise serious questions about just what Flynn knew about this or any other attempted outreach to Russian hackers.

How this story fits into the timeline of the hackings

It’s no secret that Trump wanted someone to find Clinton’s deleted emails — he said as much publicly.

To recap: When word got out that Clinton had used a personal email account for all her work at the State Department, she agreed to hand over the work-related emails on that account to government investigators. But it turned out that she had previously deemed about 32,000 emails (about half of the total) to be “personal” rather than work-related, and deleted them.

Many conservatives didn’t take Clinton’s explanation for why she deleted the emails at face value, and questioned whether the deleted emails could have included some incriminating information that might reveal scandalous behavior of some kind. One of those Republicans was Trump, who repeatedly referenced the deleted emails on the campaign trail.

In July 2016, hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee were publicly released, and the hacks were thought to be the work of Russia. And at the time, Trump said in public that he hoped there would be email releases to come — including Clinton’s deleted ones.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re about to find the 30,000 [Hillary Clinton] emails that are missing,” he said at a press conference. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens. That will be next.”

A few months after this, in fall 2016, Peter Smith launched the effort reported by the Journal to try to get the emails from hacking groups that he thought might have them — including hacking groups he understood to be tied to the Russian government.

Again, though, it seems that no one did have Clinton’s deleted emails. The biggest Russia-linked email hacks and dumps involved the DNC accounts (released in July 2016) and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s emails (released in October 2016), but no emails from Clinton’s own server.

Michael Flynn’s potential involvement could be highly significant

Still, one major question has always been whether any Trump associates were involved in these or other hacking efforts.

There’s been a whole lot of evidence that several Trump associates (including Flynn) had ties to Russian officials, and of course it was clear that Trump’s public policies were far more pro-Russia than the Republican norm.

But there really hasn’t been very much evidence tying anyone in Trumpworld to any hacking — making it plausible that the hacking operations were carried out without any coordination or contacts with anyone in Trump’s camp.

Harris’s story changes that somewhat. Now we know of Smith’s outreach to Russian hackers — and, more importantly, his claims that Flynn (who was close to Trump) may have known too. And there’s that other claim that US intelligence suggests Russian hackers were discussing giving hacked emails to Flynn. Where would they get that idea?

Any involvement from Flynn could be quite significant. He’s known to have had many contacts with Russian officials, and he advised Trump on foreign policy matters during the presidential campaign.

Afterward, Trump named him national security adviser. But he didn’t last long in the post, resigning in February due to controversy over whether he falsely described his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition.

By then, the White House had been told that Flynn was under federal investigation. And then-FBI Director James Comey has since testified that the day after Flynn’s firing, President Trump took him aside and told him, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

So Trump has already been trying to shield Flynn from investigators — making the question of just what Flynn might know ever more interesting, and one that will certainly be on special counsel Robert Mueller’s mind.

SCOTUS: 2 Judges Blasted 2nd Amend Challenge

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Well, at least two Supreme Court judges were angry enough to write an opinion blasting the court’s rejection to hear the challenge to the 2nd Amendment regarding the right to carry a weapon outside the home.

FNC: Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch issued a scathing dissent Monday to a Supreme Court decision turning away yet another gun rights case.

On a busy morning of decisions, the court on Monday rejected a challenge out of California regarding the right to carry guns outside their homes, leaving in place a San Diego sheriff’s strict limits on issuing permits for concealed weapons.

But Thomas, in a dissent joined by Gorsuch, countered that the case raises “important questions” – and warned that Second Amendment disputes aren’t getting the attention they deserve from the Supreme Court.

“The Court’s decision … reflects a distressing trend: the treatment of the Second Amendment as a disfavored right,” they wrote.

The case in question involved a San Diego man who said state and county policies requiring “good cause” — a specific reason or justifiable need to legally carry a concealed weapon — were too restrictive. A federal appeals court had ruled for the state, and now those restrictions will stay in place.

A LOOK AT CALIFORNIA GUN LAW

But Thomas and Gorsuch – the court’s newest member – called the appeals court’s decision to limit its review only to the “good cause” provision “indefensible.”

“The Court has not heard argument in a Second Amendment case in over seven years,” they wrote. “… This discrepancy is inexcusable, especially given how much less developed our jurisprudence is with respect to the Second Amendment as compared to the First and Fourth Amendments.”

The justices concluded by warning the court is in danger of acting dismissive toward the right to bear arms:

“For those of us who work in marbled halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force, the guarantees of the Second Amendment might seem antiquated and superfluous. But the Framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense. I do not think we should stand by idly while a State denies its citizens that right, particularly when their very lives may depend on it. I respectfully dissent.”

The high court decided in 2008 that the Constitution guarantees the right to a gun, at least for self-defense at home.

But the justices have refused repeated pleas to spell out the extent of gun rights in the United States, allowing permit restrictions and assault weapons bans to remain in effect in some cities and states.

More than 40 states already broadly allow gun owners to be armed in public.

The high court also turned away a second case involving guns and the federal law that bars people convicted of crimes from owning guns.

The Trump administration had urged the court to review an appellate ruling that restored the rights of two men who had been convicted of non-violent crimes to own guns.

The federal appeals court in Philadelphia ruled for the two men. The crimes were classified as misdemeanors, which typically are less serious, but carried potential prison sentences of more than a year. Such prison terms typically are for felonies, more serious crimes.

The administration says that the court should have upheld the blanket prohibition on gun ownership in the federal law and rejected case-by-case challenges.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have heard the administration’s appeal.

*** Image result for justice thomas gorsuch Image result for justice thomas  BusinessInsider

The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied. 

JUSTICE THOMAS, with whom JUSTICE GORSUCH joins, dissenting from the denial of certiorari.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arm[s] shall not be infringed.” At issue in this case is whether that guarantee protects the right to carry firearms in public for self-defense. Neither party disputes that the issue is one of national importance or that the courts of appeals have already weighed in extensively. I would therefore grant the petition for a writ of certiorari.

I California generally prohibits the average citizen from carrying a firearm in public spaces, either openly or concealed. With a few limited exceptions, the State prohibits open carry altogether. Cal. Penal Code Ann. §§25850, 26350 (West 2012). It proscribes concealed carry unless a resident obtains a license by showing “good cause,” among other criteria, §§26150, 26155, and it authorizes counties to set rules for when an applicant has shown good cause,§26160.In the county where petitioners reside, the sheriff has interpreted “good cause” to require an applicant to show that he has a particularized need, substantiated by documentary evidence, to carry a firearm for self-defense. The sheriff ’s policy specifies that “concern for one’s personal safety” does not “alone” satisfy this requirement.

(internal quotation marks omitted). Instead, an applicant must show “a set of circumstances that distinguish the applicant from the mainstream and cause him to be placed in harm’s way.” Id., at 1169 (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). “[A] typical citizen fearing for his personal safety—by definition—cannot distinguish himself from the mainstream.” Ibid. (emphasis deleted; internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). As a result, ordinary, “law-abiding, responsible citizens,” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 635 (2008), may not obtain a permit for concealed carry of a firearm in public spaces.

Petitioners are residents of San Diego County (plus an association with numerous county residents as members)who are unable to obtain a license for concealed carry due to the county’s policy and, because the State generally bans open carry, are thus unable to bear firearms in public in any manner. They sued under Rev. Stat. §1979, 42

U. S. C. §1983, alleging that this near-total prohibition on public carry violates their Second Amendment right to bear arms. They requested declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent the sheriff from denying licenses based on his restrictive interpretation of “good cause,” as well as other “relief as the Court deems just and proper.” First Amended Complaint in No. 3:09–cv–02371, (SD Cal.) ¶¶149, 150, 152. The District Court granted respondents’ motion for summary judgment, and petitioners appealed to the Ninth Circuit.

In a thorough opinion, a panel of the Ninth Circuit reversed. 742 F. 3d 1144. The panel examined the constitutional text and this Court’s precedents, as well as historical sources from before the founding era through the end of the 19th century. Id., at 1150–1166. Based on these sources, the court concluded that “the carrying of an operable handgun outside the home for the lawful purpose of self-defense . . . constitutes ‘bear[ing] Arms’ within the meaning of the Second Amendment.” Id., at 1166. It thus reversed the District Court and held that the sheriff ’s interpretation of “good cause” in combination with the other aspects of the State’s regime violated the Second Amendment’s command that a State “permit some form of carry for self-defense outside the home.” Id., at 1172.

The Ninth Circuit sua sponte granted rehearing en banc and, by a divided court, reversed the panel decision. In the en banc court’s view, because petitioners specifically asked for the invalidation of the sheriff ’s “good cause” interpretation, their legal challenge was limited to that aspect of the applicable regulatory scheme. The court thus declined to “answer the question of whether or to what degree the Second Amendment might or might not protect a right of a member of the general public to carry firearms openly in public.” Peruta v. County of San Diego, 824

F. 3d 919, 942 (2016). It instead held only that “the Second Amendment does not preserve or protect a right of a member of the general public to carry concealed firearms in public.” Id., at 924 (emphasis added).

Read more here of the decision start at page 32.