Harry Dunn Case Update: Demands to Meet Bo-Jo in Person After Loss at Judicial Review

Another Harry Dunn case update, just before the holiday lull sets in, which should last until late January when the family's civil suit in the U.S. has its next milestone. Anyway, the issues in that case captivate me, whereas Joe Biden does not, so it's the Dunn case again. 

Last Saturday we learned from the UK Mirror that the mother of the victim wants Boris Johnson to meet her following the dismissal of the family's judicial appeal:

The mother of tragic Harry Dunn wants Boris Johnson to meet her following a High Court ruling that his alleged killer has diplomatic immunity.

-- snip --

Charlotte said: “We still haven’t been able to meet the Prime Minister. We’ve asked him on no end of occasions to meet with us, but because he refuses, we’ve never been able to ask him questions directly and get an honest answer. Boris just will not meet us. It’s bizarre. We’ve met President Trump half-way around the world, but we still haven’t met our own Prime Minister who is an hour up the road. It makes no sense to me," she added.

You have to meet him in person in order to ask him a question? I’m not so sure that’s really necessary.

That aside, I have an idea why her own PM won’t meet with her. If you want to have private meetings with a head of state, it helps if you do not rely on a maniac ‘advisor’ to do all your reading-writing-speaking-and-listening for you, which is the role she allows him to play. 

The problem is, that guy is bad!, as the PM's staff knows, and no head of state will be caught in the same room as him. 

His recent over-the-top reaction to U.S. Embassy London's disinclination to include him in a private meeting that the mother had requested pretty much defines the word "manic." 

Speaking of that bad advisor, The Mirror's story included this latest announcement from him:

The family’s spokesman Radd Seiger has already spoken to officials from the US Embassy in London and the foreign office since Monday’s high court verdict.

“Officials.” Really? What officials are those? He did not disclose that information to The Mirror, so let me guess. It was the telephone operator at the embassy, and whichever Foreign Office duty officer got stuck with taking calls from random crackpots on Tuesday last week. 

It's hard to believe how thoroughly in thrall the family is to an obvious blowhard bullshitter, but see for yourself. Watch the video clip in which the mother - responding to that same embassy invitation which did not include her Svengali - describes how completely he interprets for her everything she sees and hears. 

Maybe someday the mother and the rest of the family will look back and see that everything he has told them about international law was wrong, that none of his assurances have ever worked out, and that none of the government agencies and officials who receive his frequent demarches care in the least about the demands he makes of them. 

"Come on, man!," to allow myself one small Bidenism. Get red-piled on that guy. Until then he’s keeping you out of discerning circles.

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Further Update as of December 1

The Dunn family announced today that they have dropped their legal dream team and are going with new representation for the appeal. 

Makes sense to me. If your legal dream team had been shot down as badly as their legal dream team was shot down at the judicial review, you'd want a new team, too. 

To recap, this is what the High Court justices thought of the old dream team's arguments:

Creative though they are, the Claimants' arguments under Ground 1 [whether diplomatic immunity existed] ultimately amount to playing with language in order to address the weakness in the case arising from the lack of an express waiver. This play is easily identified: they seek to avoid the effect of the VCDR [Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations] by re-classifying the advance waiver of Mr Sacoolas' immunity as a new creature ("limited immunity") and then arguing that this limited immunity, by implication, has also silently attached to the family members (whose full immunity has never been in fact waived expressly in accordance with the mandatory language of Article 32).

For completeness we should record that there was nothing in the case law and textbooks relied upon by the Claimants in relation to the so-called "derivative" nature of a family member's immunity which affects this conclusion.

 Yeah, I'd switch horses in the middle of the stream, too.

Judicial Review Decision in Harry Dunn Case Handed Down: Diplomatic Immunity Upheld

The UK High Court has ruled on the judicial review brought by the family of Harry Dunn in which they asked the court to find that the American driver did not have diplomatic immunity. The court concluded that the driver, in fact, was covered by immunity from UK criminal jurisdiction, affirming the position of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office. Read the decision here. 

In short, the justices found: “Our conclusion is that Mrs Sacoolas enjoyed immunity from UK criminal jurisdiction at the time of Harry’s death. We do not come to this conclusion with any enthusiasm for the result, but it is compelled by the operation of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations.” 

Regarding the merits of the case brought by the family, the justices said this:

114. Creative though they are, the Claimants' arguments under Ground 1 [whether diplomatic immunity existed] ultimately amount to playing with language in order to address the weakness in the case arising from the lack of an express waiver. This play is easily identified: they seek to avoid the effect of the VCDR [Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations] by re-classifying the advance waiver of Mr Sacoolas' immunity as a new creature ("limited immunity") and then arguing that this limited immunity, by implication, has also silently attached to the family members (whose full immunity has never been in fact waived expressly in accordance with the mandatory language of Article 32).

115. For completeness we should record that there was nothing in the case law and textbooks relied upon by the Claimants in relation to the so-called "derivative" nature of a family member's immunity which affects this conclusion.

120. We grant permission to apply for judicial review in relation to Ground 1, but we dismiss that ground on the merits.

Is that the end of the matter? Of course not, because the family have refused all along to acknowledge the operation of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations. Because, you know, they only listen to their ‘advisor.’ 

The mother of Harry Dunn was quoted today saying "Right from the start our team have advised us that Anne Sacoolas did not have diplomatic immunity when she killed Harry and that advice is just (as) strong now as it was at the start of our campaign.” 

And there it is. Exactly that, that right-from-the-start denial of legal and political reality on the part of her shady advisor in his encouragement of her wish fulfillment, is the cause of this tragic woman’s refusal to acknowledge the fact of diplomatic immunity. 

In the callous fantasy land that her ‘advisor’ has created for the family, there will be no grieving or acceptance until international law is overturned and diplomatic immunity denied. In other words, until they get the one thing they cannot get. 

The judicial review by the High Court was the deus ex machina wherein the family had invested all its hopes, until today. Now, the firm rejection by the High Court of the family’s weak arguments is "just a blip along the way" according to the victim’s mother. Now, they’ll appeal and make the same losing arguments to a Higher Court, where presumably they will lose again and then appeal again to the Highest Court in the UK. And after that to the Higher-than-the-Highest Court, if such a thing exists, and then to the World Court and beyond. It will never end. 

Here are the predictable further plot points in this tragedy.

January 20, 2021 – The family will now invest all its new hopes in President Joe Biden being more than happy to reverse the USG’s position and create a precedent by violating the diplomatic immunity of the spouse of an Administrative and Technical staffer. 

January 29, 2021 – The family’s civil lawsuit against the American driver will be challenged by the defendant in U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The suit was filed there under the very inventive premise that a U.S. court could have jurisdiction over a UK traffic accident. We’ll see. If not laughed out of court, a civil suit could end in a financial settlement, which is an outcome that might buy some temporary peace. However, a civil case cannot end in extradition and trial, and that is the one and only thing that will end this drama, or so the family has been convinced. 

February, 2021 – Biden’s presumptive SecState Antony Blinken will probably be asked by the UK to approve a new extradition request. My odds on that request not being approved are 99 to 1. When has the USG ever waived diplomatic immunity and allowed an employee to be tried overseas? The answer is once (here), and that was in a war-time espionage case that had profound political consequences for FDR’s 1940 reelection if the employee in question had not been locked up abroad. 

TBD, 2021 – When a new Ambassador to the UK is confirmed by the Senate, the family will have a new shuffle of the cards at Embassy London and a new clutch of long-suffering embassy people to approach with more demands for in-person meetings featuring their omnipresent ‘advisor’ in the role of stage manager, interpreter, and press release writer. 

Can we really be so sure Biden won't cave? Well, consider this Presidential statement which summed up the USG’s position on immunity during a particularly trying case in the recent past:

"We've got a very simple principle here that every country in the world that is party to the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations has upheld in the past and should uphold in the future, and that is, if our diplomats are in another country, then they are not subject to that country's local prosecution," Obama said in a press conference today. "We expect Pakistan, that's a signatory and recognizes Mr. Davis as a diplomat, to abide by the same convention... I'm not going to discuss the specific exchanges that we've had [with the Pakistani government], but we've been very firm about this being a priority."

That was Obama. But now, you may wonder, will the Biden administration have the nerve, or better yet the bottle, to say “no” to emotional coercion from the Dunn family? 

I can easily see Biden's people trying to find some sneaking half-way compromise that would placate the family. But then, the family insists on all or nothing. All is not possible, short of POTUS and the SecState breaking faith with our covered employees abroad, so it will be nothing. 

Lastly, an unseen actor in this drama is the American driver, who for over a year has been subjected to a constant stream of threats, insults, harassment, and obnoxious psychoanalyzing by the British tabloids and those U.S. media that are following along. She is the target of a daily Two Minutes Hate led by the victim’s family and joined in by the kind of online spectators (some of whom live in our common Northern Virginia neighborhoods) who are always eager to take a gratuitous wallow in someone else’s misery. 

Moreover, all of that abuse is directed at her, personally, as if there were no national interests involved. But the matter of diplomatic immunity is far from personal; asserting immunity is a matter of international law and diplomatic practice between nations. It is, as Obama said, a principle that every nation in the world has adopted in their mutual interests. It is not a personal choice by the covered individuals, it cannot be surrendered by them, nor does it depend on their wishes. 

The American driver in this case is receiving all that abuse because the U.S. government, and not her personally, is upholding the principle of diplomatic immunity in our national interest. It is upholding that principle even regardless of what she may, in fact, wish. 

I’ll say this: all of you USG employees and family members who are now abroad and covered by diplomatic or consular immunity, or will be in the future, ought to hope that President Biden will hold firm to the “very simple principle here that every country in the world that is party to the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations has upheld in the past and should uphold in the future.” 

What is happening to one family member now might well happen to any of you next, and it is more likely to do so if the incoming administration compromises on that very simple principle.

Another Former Embassy Employee Prosecuted; Limits of the Polygraph Exposed Yet Again

A former U.S. Embassy employee from Mexico City has been charged with a string of sexual predator offenses, as detailed in today's NYT story. The circumstances are highly reminiscent of a similar case from 2010, including the fact that both employees had been polygraphed multiple times without the exams detecting any criminal behavior. 

From the NYT story:

In a petition arguing that Mr. Raymond should not be held in custody, Mr. Kirby said that Mr. Raymond had taken more than 10 polygraph tests and had passed every one of them, including a recent one, which addressed the allegations against him.

So, what's the problem with the polygraph? It's almost like it doesn't work, or something. 

The polygraph was the invention of one William Marston, psychologist, lawyer, and cartoonist, who created both the polygraph and Wonder Woman - with her Golden Lasso of Truth - out of a stew of bondage fetishism, woman's suffrage, birth control, moral panic, feminism, and polyamory. 

It's a story far too strange for fiction. Please read The Secret History of Wonder Woman by the fine historian Jill Lapore, which also has a movie version. You can thank me later. 

Does Wonder Woman's Golden Lasso of Truth really work? Let us say that it works as well as the polygraph.

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P.S. I'd forgotten just how good The Secret History of Wonder Woman really is, but this blurb sums it up nicely:

“Even non-comix nerds (or those too young to remember Lynda Carter) will marvel at Jill Lepore’s deep dive into the real-world origins of the Amazonian superhero with the golden lasso. The fact that a polyamory enthusiast created her partly as a tribute to the reproductive-rights pioneer Margaret Sanger is, somehow, only the fourth or fifth most interesting thing in Ms. Woman’s bizarre background.” — New York Magazine

  

Harry Dunn Case: You Can't Get Elvis Without Colonel Parker

That's right, the latest twist in this sad story made me think of the disasterously bad manager of Elvis Presley, the one who dictated every step Presley made and pretty nearly destroyed his career. Parker was summed-up thusly: "The Colonel was often described as a cross between P.T. Barnum and W.C. Fields; in the King's court, he was combination court jester, Svengali and Robin Hood." 

Wow, that sure does resemble someone I've blogged about quite a bit. He even has a physical resemblance to Parker.

I'm prompted to blog about him yet again because this week he and the family of the victim have whipped themselves up into a state of outrage that looks unprecedented. The cause of it all was the refusal of the U.S. Embassy in London to include the family's spokesman/adviser/lawyer in a personal meeting the family had requested with the Embassy's Deputy Chief of Mission. Compounding this alleged offense, the embassy directed its emails on the matter to the mother of the victim, the requestor of the meeting, and pointedly not to her spokesman. 

The Embassy responded today:

      

The US Embassy have denied they’ve been disrespectful to Harry Dunn’s family after allegations of bullying. The parents of the Oxfordshire teen asked to meet with US Government reps but were told over email that their family spokesman could not be present #CapitalReports pic.twitter.com/IfdKpO990u

— Capital Midlands News (@CapitalMidsNews) September 22, 2020

Here's a sample of the family spokesman's unbalanced response to this perceived slight:

    

Seriously, having heaped misery upon misery upon a grieving family, who would even think to get grieving parents into a room on their own when they are the very monster responsible for it? Beggars belief. And their reaction?! No self awareness? No apology?! They are poisonous. https://t.co/eVRRMAZrBP

— Radd Seiger (@RaddSeiger) September 22, 2020

"Misery upon misery ... monster ... poisonous" etc. It's enough to make me wonder why they sought a personal meeting in the first place. Such aversion to the DCM seems to have escalated all at once. 

Here's the mother citing what she believes is her legal right to have her spokesman present and managing every aspect of her engagement with the Embassy: 

When you seek to bully and intimidate a grieving mother into getting her into a room on her own when you were the one who added to her misery, are caught in the act and exposed, and then try to gaslight you’re way out of it. This tactic may work in the 🇺🇸 but not here. Be gone! pic.twitter.com/MFZDjoZZV0

— Radd Seiger (@RaddSeiger) September 22, 2020

Note she says "the Embassy is based in the UK ... I know my rights and I'm sticking to them." That refers to the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime (the Victims' Code), which is the statutory code that sets out the minimum level of service that victims should receive from the UK criminal justice system. It does not, of course, apply to the U.S. Embassy in London, or impose any obligation on the USG to address the family through their chosen representative. 

That's the problem when you're managed by a Colonel Parkeresque pitchman whom you let dictate everything you do and say. He just isn't reliable. Only last week he was pitching a virtual trial of the American driver if she would do it from the UK Embassy in Washington because - as everyone who watches a lot of television knows - an embassy is the sovereign soil of its government. It isn't really, since the 'embassy as sovereign soil' thing is a myth. But, if only last week he believed that myth, then why doesn't he now believe that the U.S. Embassy in London is the sovereign soil of its government and therefore not bound by the UK Victims Code? 

Sovereign or not, the U.S. Embassy in London may be on borrowed time, since Colonel Parker's Twitter feed is full of calls for nothing less than a break in U.S.-UK relations. Oh, you embassy swells will rue the day you trifled with him.   

    

 

Harry Dunn Case Update: A Civil Suit is Filed, A Bad Guy Talks a Lot, UK Government Contradicts Itself, and Virtual Nonsense Abounds

The UK authorities held a meeting with the Dunn family last week, billed as an update on what they've been doing in the months since they charged the American driver with reckless driving but were denied her extradition back to the UK by the U.S. Secretary of State. As usual, no one was satisfied with anything and we are no closer to a resolution then before. In fact, the events of last week most likely will ensure a couple more years of futile activity. The BBC reports:

Harry Dunn's family say they have been told prosecutors do not believe the woman accused of killing the teenager in a crash had diplomatic immunity.

Commenting after the meeting, Greg McGill, the CPS [Commonwealth Prosecution Service] director of legal services, said "Today we have met with the family of Harry Dunn to update them on the various steps the CPS has taken over the last 10 months to secure justice in this tragic case.

"The challenges and complexity of this case are well known, but the CPS and other partners have been working tirelessly to do all they can so that Anne Sacoolas faces the charge we have brought - causing death by dangerous driving.

"We know this is a very difficult process for the family, which is why we wanted to assure them personally that we continue to seek justice for them and for the public."

Now, since the UK Foreign Minister has repeatedly told the public and the Parliament that the accused did indeed have diplomatic immunity, a position which is apparently unchanged, the UK government is now taking two different positions on that critical matter. So far, it seems happy to live with that dissonance. 

In a side note, the family disclosed the record of an internal email from the Prime Minister's office in which some perceptive person exclaimed "this guy is bad!" in reference to the family's spokesman / grifter / Svengali / ringmaster and all-round hustler.

I like the exclamation point. Not merely "bad" but "bad!" So we know that No. 10 employs at least one staffer of discernment. 

Of course, the bad guy in question, instead of owning the bad guy label, immediately hid behind the parents, just as he did a few months back when the Northants Police called him out for misrepresenting something they told him about international notices.

“So to see that I am being referred to as a ‘bad guy’ is clearly a problem, but I do whatever the parents ask me to do, so any attack on me is an attack on these parents."

Actually, it's an attack on just him, and one that's thoroughly justified. 

Ahead of the meeting with CPS, the family announced that it has filed a civil suit for damages (here) in United States District Court, Eastern District of Virginia. That will ensure time-consuming back-and-forth actions on jurisdiction, etc., before the suit can be tried, if it ever is, as well as provide a good reason to further delay cooperation with any UK court action. 

The summary of the law suit, which you can read at the above link, contains the absolutely scurrilous allegation that the American driver did not call for assistance after the accident, but rather "left Dunn to suffer" and ultimately to die. In fact, as the driver's attorneys announced in a statement released to the public this busy week, she did in fact call the RAF Croughton police, who responded right away and assisted Dunn; a passing motorist she flagged down had already called for local emergency services. If anyone left Dunn to suffer and ultimately to die, it was the ambulance service, which took 43 minutes to arrive at the scene due to a dispatching mistake, and took two hours to get him to a hospital. The American driver stayed at the scene until police told her to go home. 

The last word for this week goes to the family spokesman, always as voluble as he is ignorant of international law. A few months back he was surprised to learn that international law is not made by the United Nations. Now, he's telling the news media "Harry Dunn's alleged killer could be tried on British soil by holding virtual proceedings in the British embassy in the US, according to his family’s lawyer." 

Only if you get your information about diplomatic immunity from movies like Lethal Weapon II is a foreign embassy the 'sovereign soil' of its country. In the real world, a foreign embassy is only a diplomatic premise which the host country recognizes as having certain privileges under international law, including legal inviolability. 'Sovereign soil' is a movie and TV trope. 

Anyway, regarding that proposal of a virtual trial as a way to work around the refusal of the USG to extradite its diplomatically immune persons abroad and subject them to real trials, it's a non-starter. The same international convention that makes them immune to the criminal jurisdiction of a host country also makes them immune to having to give testimony in the court of a host country. The SecState would have to waive immunity in order to allow a trial in which the accused could give testimony, and he appears to have made his refusal to waive immunity absolutely clear. 

Next up is a protest march on the U.S. Embassy in London on Tuesday, the first anniversary of the departure from the UK of the USG family member who was subsequently charged in the case. I do not anticipate any news being released then, since all the parties involved seem to have fired all their ammo last week.

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Update as of Monday, September 14. The rally-protest at the U.S. Embassy which had been planned for tomorrow is now cancelled. The family cited COVID-19 concerns as the reason.   

Watch While Hillary Says "the Russians" Three Times in Twenty Seconds

The Russians are behind everything, even that bad lighting. https://t.co/fB314q58ur

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) September 5, 2020

For fans of Hillary, you can watch the full Instagram video here.

By the way, Hillary misspoke about those Congressional briefings. According to CNN, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has informed members of Congress that "the ODNI will primarily meet its obligation to keep Congress fully and currently informed leading into the Presidential election through written finished intelligence products" instead of in-person briefings, in order to ensure the briefings are not misunderstood or politicized, or selectively leaked.

I never feel at all sorry for Bill Clinton, but if I ever were to, this would be the time. Buster Keaton knew what I'm talking about.

Hatch Act Exception for High-Ranking Officials; Too Late for Outrage

I expect that Swaggerin' Mike will slip through the the aghast & outraged mob after his remote address to the Republican convention.

"It's all just shredding the Hatch Act," a current U.S. diplomat said, referring to the federal law that prohibits government employees from political activity on the job or in their official capacities.

But, is it? Not according to the Congressional Research Service report titled Hatch Act Restrictions on Federal Employees’ Political Activities in the Digital Age (2016):

The Hatch Act provides an exception to allow certain high-ranking officials to “engage in political activity otherwise prohibited ... if the costs associated with that political activity are not paid for by money derived from the Treasury of the United States.” The exception is available to employees who hold positions with responsibilities that “continue outside normal duty hours and while away from the normal duty post,” such as presidential advisers or cabinet officers appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. In other words, these officials may engage in political activities during what would be considered official working time, as long as federal funds are not used for such activities. Any such official must reimburse the U.S. Treasury for the federal resources used in campaign activities.

You can look it up in 5 U.S.C. §7324(b)(1), and 5 U.S.C. §7324(b)(2). A SecState is, in fact, free to engage in political activities which would otherwise be prohibited to lesser officials. Quod licet Jovis, non licet bovis.

That is perfectly plain in law. Like I always wondered in school, why does no one do the reading?

Of course, there  is also the argument about long-standing traditions:  

[Pompeo is] breaking with long-standing traditions aimed at isolating American's foreign policy from partisan battles at home.

But, is he? I'd like to know when, exactly, we observed any such tradition. In recent years we've had a SecState who had just finished running for President and another who was preparing to run for President. Folks, the position is far from being isolated from domestic politics. 

Everyone knows that 'politics stops at the water's edge,' or at least that's what Senator Vandenberg said back in the 1940s, right? Considering that he was a Republican who was in office throughout five consecutive Democratic administrations, that statement always struck me as his wish rather than a description of reality. Truman and Roosevelt never expressed any such sentiment, and they were the ones in charge of foreign policy, not Vandenberg. 

It's rather too late and far too unrealistic to be aghast and outraged about domestic politics creeping into the SecState's role.