----- Original Message -----

From: KM

To: bellringer@fourwinds10.com

Sent: Thursday, July 09, 2009 10:01 AM

Subject: Judge Sotomayor with holds earnings

 

Judge Sotomayor

earned $3,773,824 since 1988 + received $381,775 in loans =

$4,155,599 + her 1976-1987 earnings,

yet disclosed assets worth only $543,903 in

her answers to the Questionnaire of the Senate Judiciary Committee

and

likewise withheld from it the DeLano Case,

which reveals her participation in

a cover-up of concealment of assets as part of

a judicially run and tolerated bankruptcy fraud scheme

By Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.

Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org

Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@gmail.com

NOTE:  This article with all its supporting endnotes and the copy of the summary order that Judge Sotomayor withheld from the Senate Judiciary Committee can be downloaded through http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/SCt_nominee/JSotomayor_integrity/11DrCordero-SenJudCom.pdf

 The figures in the title are the totals of the figures in a table that collects her financial information. It is supported by meticulous endnotes that provide for each figure a link to either the materials that Judge Sotomayor produced to the Committee or to official government documents. The table with its endnotes is at http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/SCt_nominee/JSotomayor_integrity/12table_JSotomayor-financials.pdf

 You can make up your mind on Judge Sotomayor by applying your own judgment to information in the original sources available to the Committee.

The Senate Judiciary Committee required Justice Nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor to “Provide a complete, current financial net worth statement which itemizes in detail all assets  all liabilities”.

Judge Sotomayor was also under an independent duty imposed by the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to file “full and complete” annual financial disclosure reports.

Her discharge of such obligations or failure to do so reflects her respect or lack thereof for the law applicable to her. By the same token, such respect determines how she applies the law to others and the quality of justice that she dispenses to them. Hence, examining her handling of such obligations is warranted by the need to ascertain her personal and judicial integrity as an indispensable qualification to her being confirmed as a Supreme Court justice…and to remaining as a judge.

A table with links to its sources has been drawn up based on both the answers that Judge Sotomayor submitted to the Committee and documents issued by the government; its reference is below. It shows that she failed to disclose the whereabouts of her earnings, as summarized in the title above.

Money does not simply disappear. It is either spent or saved. To some extent, how a person spends money can be determined from her appearance and public conduct. How she saves it, e.g., by investing it, requires mostly disclosure or subpoenas. Failure to disclose financial information when under a duty to do so is a violation of the law.

Nondisclosure by a bankruptcy petitioner constitutes concealment of assets and perjury. It is a crime punishable by up to 20 years imprisonment and a fine of up to $500,000.

In the DeLano case, 06-4780-bk, Judge Sotomayor, presiding, and her colleagues on a panel of the Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit (CA2), issued a summary order to protect, not the rule of law, but rather their appointee to a bankruptcy judgeship, Bankruptcy Judge John C. Ninfo, II, WBNY.

He had covered up the concealment of at least $673,657 by the most unlikely of ‘bankrupts’: a 39-year veteran banker who at the time of filing for bankruptcy was and remained employed by a major bank, M&T Bank, precisely as a bankruptcy officer! Both M&T and Mr. DeLano are clients of the law firm, Underberg & Kessler, in which Judge Ninfo was a partner at the time of taking the bench.

The DeLano case was one of the 3,907 open cases, according to PACER, that the trustee in that case, George Reiber, had before Judge Ninfo.

To protect such concealment of assets by a bankruptcy system insider and her bankruptcy appointee, Judge Sotomayor violated discovery rights by denying every single document in all creditor-requests, which would have exposed a judicially run bankruptcy fraud scheme.

Worse yet, by so doing, Judge Sotomayor failed to protect the single most important Constitutional guarantee that a judge, let alone a Supreme Court justice, is required to safeguard: due process of law.

Her gross partiality toward judges and insiders and her blatant denial of due process to the creditor so indict her integrity that she withheld DeLano in all her three principal and supplementary submissions of her cases to the Judiciary Committee, despite the latter’s request for her to submit all of them. Her conduct in, and handling of, that case has been brought to the Committee’s attention in a letter with endnotes referenced below.

The table and the letter aim to have Judge Sotomayor and DeLano investigated by the Committee, which is authorized to do so, and journalists.

Their Follow the Money! investigation should determine whether over the past years she has been complying with her financial disclosure obligations and, if not, whether she reckoned that she too would be protected by her peers just as she protected them.

Indeed, as a member of the Second Circuit Judicial Council she has participated in the 100% denial of petitions for review of judicial misconduct complaints systematically dismissed by the successive CA2 chief judges during the 12-year period 1oct96-30sep08.

The investigation should also expose her and other judges’ involvement in a bankruptcy fraud scheme that aggravates the misery of millions of debtors and creditors and the extent to which withholding the DeLano case from the Committee was part of the cover-up. The ensuing public outrage should force Congress to adopt effective judicial accountability and discipline legislation that brings our legal system closer to the noble ideal of “Equal Justice Under Law”.

At the upcoming hearings, how will she defend her non-disclosure of her requested financial affairs and her role in the DeLano case as part of the practice of judges exonerating themselves from any consequences for their misconduct so that they have turned themselves into Judges Above the Law?

The Follow the Money! investigation that can begin at the hearings can provide the opportunity for a principled national politician to emerge as our generation’s Senator Sam Ervin of Watergate fame. Who will that be?

Please reply to Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@gmail.com  AND  …@cantab.net

If you email me on this article and you do not receive acknowledgment of receipt, then I never received your email. That will raise the question whether somebody is interfering once more with replies to my emails critical of the Judiciary.

If you receive a message that your email was not delivered to me for whatever reason, please forward it to the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, at senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov

©2009 Richard Cordero. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted for distributing or reprinting this article with appropriate credit to the author and the website at http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org.