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| Larry Krasner realizes he can't handle the truth |
for BigTrial.net
At his regular Monday morning press conference today, District Attorney Larry Krasner refused to answer my questions about his office's high-ranking trio of carpetbaggers.
We're talking about three top supervisors in the D.A.'s office who earn a total of more than $500,000 annually, but have been outed by Big Trial for flagrantly violating the City Charter's residency requirement.
That's an offense that before Krasner became D.A., used to be grounds for getting an employee fired. But since we have a D.A. who picks and chooses which laws he wants to enforce, doesn't pay his taxes, and ignores subpoenas from the state legislature, it's not much of a stretch for Krasner to act like the City Charter's residency requirement doesn't apply to his office.
Because as D.A., Larry Krasner believes he's above the law.
At the podium today, Krasner tried to insist on a format of calling on individual reporters so he could continue his unconstitutional practice of taking questions from every other reporter in town except your Big Trial correspondent. But this week, I decided I wasn't gonna play along.
"Mr. Krasner, Mr. Krasner," I began by interrupting him when he was trying to call on another reporter.
"Excuse me, no outbursts, sir," Krasner lectured, while sternly wagging a finger at me. "We are going in order."
An order that always excludes me.
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| Larry Krasner wags a warning finger |
"I have no other opportunity," I said, before informing him that by freezing me out of his press conferences, he was violating the First Amendment by committing viewpoint discrimination.
When cornered, the district attorney of Philadelphia dug in his heels, and for once, something truthful actually spilled out of his mouth.
"I am not calling on you," Krasner flatly stated, to indeed confirm that he was in the act of discriminating against me, before he issued a threat. "If you're not gonna stop now we're gonna have to ask you to leave."
But I had no intention of stopping.
"Robert Listenbee, Nancy Winkelman and Greg Holston, are you going to fire them for violating the City Charter's residency requirement," I asked. "Are you going to fire them, Mr. Krasner?"
When confronted with questions that he doesn't want to answer, because he has no answers, Krasner, who always considers himself the smartest guy in the room, has only two options in his rather limited playbook.
When stonewalling doesn't work, he has to run away.
"All right, were gonna call a break in this press conference," the D.A. announced. "I'll be taking questions in the back one at a time. We'll take them from channel 3, we'll take them from Mr. [Matt] Petrillo, we'll take them from Channel 6, and then WHYY."
Here, Krasner was explicitly stating, while the cameras were rolling, that he would take questions from every other reporter in the building, except me.
It was a second bold-face admission within minutes by our witless D.A. that yes indeed, he was actively practicing viewpoint discrimination against me. It's a tactic that the courts all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court have repeatedly held to be a flagrant violation of the First Amendment.
Krasner then turned tail and fled the podium past his surprised aides and press conference guests standing behind him, such as Council Member Kendra Brooks. They were all left to wonder what the hell was going on.
Then, after they started taking down the mikes, all the staff members and invited guests scattered for the exits.
Krasner, of course, was the first to go. But as the D.A. headed for a back room, and his private confabs with other reporters, I had one last message for him.
"You are violating my constitutional rights, sir," I said loudly. "As a civil rights lawyer, you should know that."
Frankly, I don't know why anybody goes to Krasner's press conferences because they're such a waste of time. Krasner holds them every week to keep the spigot of free publicity flowing, and the media lets him get away with it.
The topics of Krasner's press conferences are often mundane arrests, which Krasner uses to pretend he's tough on crime. Or Krasner gets on his soapbox to promote a Mom-and-apple pie issue such as community swimming pools, or the benefits of bicycling.
Since the topics of Krasner's press conferences are so dull, however, many first-string reporters in town are off doing other stories. Even the relentlessly pro-Krasner Philadelphia Inquirer hasn't bothered to send a reporter to several recent D.A. press conferences.
Fox 29 has taken to just sending a camera person, so that the TV station can live-stream the equivalent of government-run TV emanating from the D.A.'s office, without Krasner having to deal with any tough questions.
Krasner started today's press conference by trying to keep everybody in line.
"Alright, so we are happy to take questions," he said. "I will be calling on members of the media for their questions," he said, before issuing a stern warning that was directed only at me.
"We are not going to tolerate outbursts here," Krasner said. "We are going to have an orderly conference as usual."
So, once he ran away from me, Krasner did have another orderly press conference where he presumably wouldn't have to deal with any questions he didn't want to answer. And, like trained seals, the other reporters he called out dutifully lined up in the hallway to have their private, one-on-one confabs with the D.A.
But there are some big issues out there that the rest of the media continues to practice journalistic malpractice on by not holding Krasner accountable.
Such as the residency requirement that Krasner is blatantly ignoring in his office, an issue that has upset many of the low-paid young ADAs in his office because they've been told they have to live in the city.
It's a flagrant double standard brimming with hypocrisy.
The high-ranking carpetbaggers in Krasner's office include Nancy Winkelman, who's paid $176, 171 as the supervisor of the D.A.'s law division. Winkelman twice claimed on campaign finance reports last year that she lives in a rundown rental property in West Philly with a coffin in front. But where she really resides is in a house on a scenic lake in scenic Medford Lakes, N.J.
Meanwhile, while Winkelman is flagrantly violating the City Charter, her old law firm, Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis LLP has been raking it in. According to records released today by the city Solicitor's office under the Right To Know law, the city of Philadelphia has hired the Schnader firm 31 times since Krasner took office after Jan. 1, 2018, earning the firm a total windfall to date of $2,966,133.
Nice work if you can get it.
The second high-ranking carpetbagger in Krasner's office is Gregory Holston, a disbarred lawyer who earns $140,000 as Krsaner's senior advisor on advocacy and policy, and lives in Sicklerville, N.J.
The third high-ranking carpetbagger is Robert Listenbee, who, as Krasner's First Assistant D.A., uses as a phony address an apartment in East Mount Airy where his daughter lives. Listenbee earns $187,171 annually while he goes home every night to his home in Glenside.
Since Listenbee is registered to vote in East Mount Airy, he's also committed voter fraud by voting in the last two elections. A spokesman for the state attorney general's office, however, which is tasked with investigating voter fraud, did not respond to a request for comment.
With AG Josh Shapiro running for governor, apparently no one in his office wants to deal with voter fraud in the D.A.'s office.
Meanwhile, First Assistant District Attorney Listenbee has gone into hiding.
On the press release promoting today's press conference, Listenbee was listed as one of the attendees. But today, Listenbee, who usually stands right behind Krasner at these weekly press conferences, failed to show up.
In fact, Listenbee, who was out of work last Thursday and Friday, hasn't shown his face at the office since he was outed by Big Trial.
Another big issue that the media has been too timid to call Krasner on -- last month, state Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty publicly accused Krasner of abusing the grand jury process and hiding relevant case law so the grand jury would falsely indict former police officer Ryan Pownall for murder.
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| Larry Krasner exits stage right |
Then, of course, there's the matter of Krasner, allegedly the top law enforcement officer in town, being a habitual tax deadbeat.
Big Trial outed Krasner on April 29th for his latest deadbeat behavior in stiffing the city and the city school district. But in the past four months, no reporter has had the nerve to ask the D.A. when he's going to pay his back taxes, which as of today, amount to $79,521.06.
And finally, there's the matter of the historic murder spree that's been going in this town for the past two years. It's a murder spree that Krasner continues to insist has nothing to do with his policy of routinely granting lenient sentences to those caught illegally carrying guns.
Or his incompetent and poorly trained prosecutors who have a deadly habit of allowing armed and dangerous felons to slip through their hands. So they can go right back out on the street again and become repeat violent offenders.
Yet the media continues to let Krasner get away with claiming that none of the gun violence is his fault.
No wonder he's so eager to call on all of his favorite reporters at his weekly press conferences. While the citizens the media is supposed to inform are getting shot, carjacked and murdered in record numbers.