BY LINDA BENTLEY | MAY 13, 2015
Snow must go
‘His clear contempt for Sheriff Joe … is cause for removal from office and certainly his need to recuse himself from this case’
PHOENIX – Late yesterday afternoon, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied an emergency petition for a writ of mandamus for recusal of U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow (l) filed by attorneys Larry Klayman and Jonathon Moseley of Freedom Watch on behalf of Dennis Montgomery, NSA and CIA whistleblower regarding unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens, and intervener-petitioner in ACLU v. Arpaio, a case filed in 2007 accusing the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office of racial profiling.
The Ninth Circuit instead remanded the case back to Snow.
As Snow presides over hearings to determine whether or not Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and others under him should be held in contempt of court for violating orders to stop conducting immigration patrols, Arpaio’s Attorney Tim Casey hired a private investigator to investigate Snow’s wife, Cheri Snow, whom they were told, while dining at Someburros in 2012, told Dale and Karen Grissom that her husband wanted Arpaio out of office and wanted to make sure he didn’t get reelected.
The Grissoms apparently didn’t think much of her statement until 2013 when Snow ruled against Arpaio, stating he and his deputies violated the constitutional rights of Hispanics.
Karen sent a Facebook message to Arpaio in August 2013 to tell him of her conversation with Cheri Snow, whom she said told her that her husband hates Arpaio and will do anything to get him out of office.
According to MCSO Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan, Casey hired a private investigator to look into her allegations.
Sheridan said he had no intention of doing anything with that information because it would be “unethical for us to make a complaint on third-party hearsay.”
However, the subject came up when Arpaio was on the stand.
Arpaio, under direct questioning by Snow, indicated the investigation revealed there were three or four witnesses that confirmed Snow’s wife stated her husband “wanted to do everything to make sure I’m not elected.”
Klayman (r) stated, “Judge Snow has unethically turned the case into a personal vindictive ‘witch-hunt’ over his wife’s statements quoting the judge as intending to harm Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s chances for reelection in 2016 as sheriff of Maricopa County through the contempt proceedings which Judge Snow has been holding.”
Klayman noted neither Snow nor his wife have ever denied making the statements, nor have they offered an apology for “making these unethical and prejudicial statements.”
According to Klayman, Snow instead continued to pursue his own personal interests and agenda by improperly questioning Sheridan and others about Montgomery on issues that have nothing to do with the ongoing contempt proceedings.
As the case proceeds under Snow, who refuses to recuse himself from these proceedings, former Senator Russell Pearce had a few things to say about Snow in an editorial he penned last week titled, “A Snow Job.”
Pearce opens by saying Snow “exhibits a clear and convincing cause for judicial reform” as he continues to exercise “unconstitutional abuse from the bench … the assault on the rule of law and states’ inherent authority to enforce our immigration laws by the judiciary must be stopped.”
Pearce stated, “Illegal is a crime, not a race,” adding, “Enforcement actually works.”
Citing Phoenix Law Enforcement Association Press Release September 2011, Pearce stated, “Since SB 1070 (which was authored by Pearce), Phoenix has experienced a 30-year low crime rate … the deterrence factor this legislation brought about was clearly instrumental in our unprecedented drop in crime … without a single civil rights, racial profiling or biased policing complaint.”
Pearce goes on to state, “Judge Snow has no authority to put monitors in the sheriff’s office. We the people are his monitors. Judge Snow is simply an attorney with a robe who is abusing his authority and should be removed from office.
“Our Founders knew that those who gain positions of authority would exercise unrighteous dominion and abuse their authority. Judge Snow and Obama are two great examples of this.”
Pearce said, “Our elected officials must have the courage and fortitude to enforce, with compassion but without apology, those laws that protect the integrity of our borders and the rights of our lawful citizens.”
He reminded Snow of his oath of office and the damage caused to citizens by illegal entry into the United States.
Pearce stated, “The annual cost in Arizona is over $2.6 billion to educate, medicate and incarcerate illegal aliens.”
He said the victims of murder, maiming, deaths, disease, job loss and the destruction of the rule of law are just “collateral damage to this open borders judge, the open border and the profits over patriotism crowd for which Snow works.”
Pearce reminds Snow that SB1070 was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court and quoted Justice Antonin Scalia, who stated in his disagreement on three of the sections, “There is no federal law prohibiting the states’ sovereign power to exclude [illegal aliens].
“[T]he federal government must live with the inconvenient fact that it is a union of independent states, who have their own sovereign powers.
[T]he states have the right to protect their borders against foreign nationals, just as they have the right to execute foreign nationals for murder.
“But to say, as the court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of [federal law] that the President declines to enforce boggles the mind.
“What I do fear – and what Arizona and the states that support it fear – is that ‘federal policies’ of non-enforcement will leave the states helpless before those evil effects of illegal immigration that the court’s opinion dutifully recites in its prologue but leaves unremedied in its disposition.”
In conclusion, Pearce pleads with Congress to do its job and states it has the authority to fix the runaway appellate courts, including the Ninth Circuit, the most liberal and overturned court in the nation.
He ends with his oft-used tag line, “Enough is enough.”
Meanwhile, Mongomery, who filed to intervene in the case, claims Snow, by order, not requested by any party during discovery, seized documents relating to Montgomery, including work product and intellectual property he provided to the sheriff’s office under contract, which preserved his ownership of proprietary information, trade secrets and other information.
The motion states his work with the sheriff’s office had nothing to do with Snow’s attempts to cover up Cheri Snow’s statements.
However, it is pointed out now that she is involved, his objectivity is decidedly compromised.
Pearce stated, “His clear contempt for Sheriff Joe and efforts to enforce our laws is cause for removal from office and certainly his need to recuse himself from this case.”
