From the Daily News Washington Bureau, by Alison Gendar, titled “Kosher king Sholom Rubashkin asking influential politicians to help lower 27-year jail sentence:”
Daily News Writes Not-So-Friendly Editorial on Sholom Rubashkin’s Attempts at Reducing His Sentence
From the Daily News Washington Bureau, by Alison Gendar, titled “Kosher king Sholom Rubashkin asking influential politicians to help lower 27-year jail sentence:”
A well-connected kosher slaughterhouse king convicted of fraud at his Iowa plant has rustled up a herd of New York pols to try to win him a reduced sentence.
The prominent Lubavitcher from Brooklyn, Sholom Rubashkin, was sentenced last summer to 27 years in prison for 86 counts of financial crimes as well as lying on the witness stand.
Yet the disgraced businessman has friends in high places, including Reps. Anthony Weiner, Jerrold Nadler, Eliot Engel, Carolyn McCarthy, Edolphus Towns, Carolyn Maloney, Steve Israel and Yvette Clarke, who have lobbied for a review of his case.
Rubashkin has also enlisted more than 30 other lawmakers from New Jersey to California to voice outrage, along with several former U.S. attorneys general.
The head of the Democratic National Committee, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, used part of her time at a recent hearing with Attorney General Eric Holder to remind him to review Rubashkin’s sentence.
Clarke said Orthodox Jewish constituents in her Brooklyn district raised concerns “the punishment did not fit the crime here.”
The possible injustice, coupled with fears Rubashkin’s imprisonment would hike the costs of kosher food, prompted Clarke to ask Holder’s office to review the case.
“It seemed the sentence was sort of extreme when you look at similar types of cases,” she told the Daily News.
Nadler said Iowa prosecutors argued against bail for Rubashkin “because he was a Jew and eligible to immigrate to Israel….Under that standard, no Jew would ever be eligible for bail.”
Rubashkin is a member of a large and influential Hasidic family that ran the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse, Agriprocessor, sending turkey, chicken and beef across the country.
“This case is troubling on many levels to me and many of my colleagues,” Weiner said. “From the propriety of the judge, to the possible concealment of information from Rubashkin and his attorneys to the overly harsh sentence. It deserves a second look.”
The Brooklyn businessman was at the pinnacle of the lucrative kosher food world, and through business and marriage is connected to huge swaths of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic community, a reliable and sometimes pivotal voting bloc.
“He is an influential man in the community, and people believed he was being persecuted,” said Shmarya Rosenberg, whose blog, FailedMessiah, has blasted Rubashkin.
Supporters say mob hit men and pedophiles don’t even get 27 years, let alone a businessman convicted of a nonviolent crime.
“People familiar with the case and its history have felt this was really a case of outrageous treatment of a defendant,” said Rubashkin’s lawyer Nathan Lewin.
Rubashkin was arrested in October 2008, five months after the Department of Justice and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers raided his Iowa plant and arrested nearly 400 illegal immigrants.
An Iowa state jury cleared him of criminal charges he knowingly used underage immigrants. Jurors said Rubashkin couldn’t be held responsible if teens, some as young as 15, lied and got jobs with fake IDs.
Then an Iowa federal jury found him guilty of a $26 million financial scheme of inflating accounts and laundering money.
His supporters argue not only was the federal sentence excessive, but that Linda Reade, the judge who issued it, never should have heard the case.
She had met numerous times with DOJ and ICE officials before the raid, but did not disclose the extent of the conversations until Rubashkin’s appeal team filed a Freedom of Information request.
Rubashkin, 51, is being held in a medium-security prison in Otisville, N.Y. His appeal is to be heard next month.
not so friendly...
why should they be? only yidden understand this atrocity!
huh?
it may not sound overly sympathetic but why would you call it “a not so friendly editorial”?
First of all, it’s not an editorial rather a news piece and secondly, there’s nothing too unfriendly in there, just reporting the facts?!?
Lets not be hypersensitive because that damages our cause when we have genuine concerns!
disappointed
reporting only some of the facts! We should be much more concerned with the fact that” coincidentally Judge Reade will be sitting with 2 of the 3 Judges scheduled to Hear Rubashkin’s appeal on the day before & the day of the appeal!
TR
maybe he should live as a Jew and experience it.
Its easy and convenient to slam someone when they haven’t lived in the others’ shoes. That is a 2nd rate writer, who can take something and make it negative without understanding the Jew in the world. He does not ensure his success forever for being insensitive and writing about something of which he may THINK he knows all about, but DOES NOT.
Big mistake…..
Uncle Mendel
I find the Daily News to be antisemitic very often.
We will not sell that newspaper at Arlans.
POP
we know the problem lies with new york states need to involve itself in federal affairs and the kosher business
it was new york’s need to be involved in kashrus affairs that cost rubashkin his success at having a business without paying taxes to NYS and most likely didnt pay the “right people” ( blackmailers )
The problem lies with the laws, lawyers, who there are to many of in NYS as well as places like Iran, Israel,
New York is extraditing Mr. Schochat yet fails to hold itself responsible for the many laws broken daily within it’s borders.
Yes that’s right New York Law has to stay in New York
Keep New York Law out of Florida, Illinois, California, Israel, and many other places.
Enough is Enough and New York cost to many people to much including my friend Mr. Rubashkin
to#6
im sorry, your comments make zero sense! what the heck are you talking about?
Mendy Hecht
The Post (and the Daily News) fancies itself as a crusading, common-sense-justice and law-and-order paper fighting for the little guy against the corrupt big guy. Unfortunately, Ms. Gendar here hasn’t yet educated herself on the difference between Sholom Rubashkin and his high-placed connections and a truly corrupt big businessman and his high-placed connections. The reason our community is so concerned about Rubashkin is simply because his case represents the creeping criminalization of shechita. That’s why we’re using every connection possible–not to get him off the hook completely but to send the message that if you want to go into the shechita business in the United States today, you need not be afraid of persecution. By fighting for Sholom Rubashkin, we are fighting for shechita. Corrupt businessmen, on the other hand, use and abuse their power, money and influence to do whatever they want and get away with it. That’s not what’s happening here.
Txs for the publicity - realy needed
27 years for overstating the worth of collateral to a bank?
Most homeowners and bankers did that across America!
Allowing in 3 days of evidence of immigration without rebuttle in a bank fraud trial. Planning and executing the raid and now hobnobbing with the judges deciding the appeal. This Read really thinks she is above all.
If any case is going to be overturned, this is the one.
nota feinstein
The article itself refutes the newspaper that printed it and shows the validity of Sholom Mordechai’ plea. How could so many politicians and legal authorities make a mistake by supporting Rubashkin’s case. Get serious, Financially he is ruined, the business is lost at this time. What do they have to gain by supporting him?! Could it be that they know what they are talking about. What a white-wash of significant and wide support that needs to be recognized rather than ridiculed. The article only touched the surface of significant support that is out there.
concerned
I understand the serious impact of this case, and that the sentence is unduly harsh. I understand trying to do everything possible to help a fellow Jew in trouble. All these efforts should continue full force to help. What I don’t understand is the need to hold him up as a standard – the events held in his “honor”, having his wife speak at the women’s convention…last year an event was dedicated to him? He WAS convicted of 86 counts of fraud – is this what I want to teach my kids – that it’s viewed as okay? Urgent efforts to HELP him, yes; but let’s stop glossing over the facts, or making him seem like a hero. And, again, I truly believe in the efforts to help him and my is with him and his family – it could happen to anyone, and it is tragic…but, I don’t think that the whole thing should be held up as some kind of standard – I don’t want my kids to think it’s okay to break the law…as frum Jews aren’t we supposed to set a higher standard than the rest of the world? It isn’t easy, and we don’t always succeed, but THAT is the standard that we aim for; am I alone in thinking this?
wheres the govt when you want it
was your order delivered by someone with legally working or a underage dollar hungry border jumper