At a press conference at which four members of the current City Council endorsed Kristen Dart in the race for Saratoga Springs Public Safety Commissioner, Ms. Dart attacked one of her opponents, Tim Coll. In her most unfortunate accusation, she quoted a judge regarding the prosecution of four men convicted of terrorism. The judge slammed the investigators and prosecutors for entrapping the men.
Regrettably, Ms. Dart failed to mention that Mr. Coll had no role in that case. He did head a different investigation of two men in Albany who were convicted of terrorism, and that conviction was unanimously reaffirmed in an appeal to the Federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
Saratoga Springs Politics 
While armchair lawyers like to pick apart the Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain case, the bottom line is that the US Attorney prosecuted the case, the defendants had extremely competent counsel, the jury sat through days and days of evidence and testimony and voted unanimously to convict. That conviction was appealed by the defendants and unanimously upheld by a three judge panel on the federal court of appeals, the second highest court in the country. The defendants then attempted to get the case to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court declined to hear it.
I think I trust the unanimous jury and judges who poured hours into deciding this case fairly more than I trust Dart and whatever paid consultant is whispering these lines in her ear.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Kristen Dart, Ronald Kim and Donald Trump have at least two things in common. They each have three syllable names and they each have little regard for facts.
Chris Mathiesen
LikeLiked by 4 people
How did you reach such an advanced age without being able to write something funnier than this?
LikeLike
I forgot to include Gordon Boyd in that three syllable group. Same affliction.
Chris Mathiesen
LikeLiked by 3 people
I believe it would show proper editorial integrity if each time you wrote about Tim Coll you noted that your wife is Tim Coll’s co-campaign manager.
LikeLike
This aggressive campaign path of disinformation that Dart has chosen is disturbing and disappointing but not surprising given that she has embraced and is embraced by both BLM and some of the most dysfunctional City Council members this city has ever seen.
LikeLiked by 3 people
In his appearance on the 9-20-23 episode of The Saratoga Podcast, Tim Coll said something so ignorant and biased I could hardly believe it. Coll said “the theory’s absurd, that the FBI has the power to put innocent people in jail is absurd.”
Of course they have that power. Just about every police agency has that power. As has long been noted even by prosecutors themselves, grand juries are now nothing more than a rubber stamp for the prosecution, that as is said a grand jury “would indict a ham sandwich” if a prosecutor asked it to. And also now the vast majority of criminal cases are settled not by a jury trial but by plea bargaining, possibly by innocent people afraid to face the overwhelming power of the state, and advised by lawyers they couldn’t afford to hire to accept a lesser punishment for what they didn’t do.
Does Coll believe that there are no innocent people in jail? If not, how did those innocent people get there, except by police and the court system? If local police departments can put innocent people in jail, can we really believe that the FBI can’t?
LikeLike
Jim C.-
The FBI is an investigative agency and does not make charging decisions. Those decisions rest solely with the various United States Attorney’s Offices throughout the country. Additionally, the FBI does not make arrests without concurrence or approval from the United States Attorney’s Office. In terrorism cases, in addition to the United States Attorney’s Office, the Department of Justice’s Counterterrorism Section must also concur with all prosecutions in the United States.
LikeLike
So if an innocent person the FBI investigates is sent to prison, the FBI isn’t responsible in any way, since as “an investigative agency” they aren’t responsible for “charging decisions”? Don’t the charging decisions made by the US Attorney’s Office result from an FBI investigation? Don’t arrests depend on investigations? Yet you say it’s “absurd” to believe the FBI has “the power to put innocent people in jail.”
When I mention “innocent people”, you say the FBI has no authority (and it seems therefore no responsibility) for arrests. But in terrorism cases for the past decades, the FBI loudly declares its responsibility for people being arrested, boasting of arrests uncovering “terrorist plots.” So is the FBI responsible for having people arrested only when it looks good in the media?
Your reply seems an attempt to shift responsibility from the FBI (your former employer) to the US Attorney’s Office in the question of whether or not innocent people can be arrested. If you are elected Public Safety Commissioner, will we see more of this? Will you just make it a practice to blame the Saratoga County District Attorney’s Office? Will you say it’s someone else’s fault?
LikeLike
Jim C.
The point I am trying to make is that the Federal system has checks and balances. The FBI investigates and partners with the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) on all criminal cases but clearly, the USAO makes the ultimate decision on prosecutions. If the FBI made up evidence, the USAO would catch that and not move forward with a prosecution. If the FBI and USAO made up evidence, the District Court Judge would catch that and not move forward with the case. If the FBI, USAO, and the District Court Judge all made up evidence, the Circuit Court of Appeals would catch that and the case would be dismissed. Hope that helps.
LikeLike