{"id":2923,"date":"2021-02-11T19:54:07","date_gmt":"2021-02-12T03:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2923"},"modified":"2021-02-12T09:19:14","modified_gmt":"2021-02-12T17:19:14","slug":"an-evil-prosecution-of-the-george-soros-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2923","title":{"rendered":"An Evil Prosecution of the George Soros Kind"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story from the NYT<\/a> is making the rounds on the Internet today.\u00a0 The headline is:\u00a0 “The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired.”\u00a0 The subhead is, “Ten doses of the Covid-19 vaccine would expire within hours, so a Houston doctor gave it to people with medical conditions, including his wife. What followed was ‘the lowest moment in my life,’ Dr. Hasan Gokal said.”<\/p>\n

The lowest moment was not just that he was fired from his hospital.\u00a0 He was criminally charged<\/em> by the Harris County District Attorney, Kim Ogg, for “stealing” the vaccine.<\/p>\n

Now you might wonder, as I did, how a prosecutor could be so brain-dead as to charge a doctor for “stealing” this life-saving medicine when the alternative was to pour it down the sewer.\u00a0 And you might think, again as I did, that it was just a case of terminal hubris and stupidity.\u00a0 But it seems to have been more than that, and worse.\u00a0 A lot worse.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On Janurary 21, the NYT reports<\/p>\n

Harris County\u2019s district attorney, Kim Ogg…issued a news release that afternoon with the headline: \u201cFired Harris County Health Doctor Charged With Stealing Vial Of Covid-19 Vaccine.\u201d<\/p>\n

It alleged that Dr. Gokal \u201cstole the vial\u201d and disregarded county protocols to ensure that vaccines are not wasted and are administered to eligible people on a waiting list. \u201cHe abused his position to place his friends and family in line in front of people who had gone through the lawful process to be there,\u201d Ms. Ogg said.<\/p>\n

But Dr. Gokal said that no one from the district attorney\u2019s office had ever contacted him to hear his version of events. And when his lawyer requested copies of the written protocols and waiting list referred to in the complaint, a prosecutor told him by email that there were no written protocols from late December; nor had a written wait list yet been found.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fortunately, a local judge had the sense to toss this burlesque of a charge.\u00a0 Again, as the Times reports:<\/p>\n

Days later, a criminal court judge, Franklin Bynum, dismissed the case for lack of probable cause.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the number of words usually taken to describe an allegation of retail shoplifting, the State attempts, for the first time, to criminalize a doctor\u2019s documented administration of vaccine doses during a public health emergency,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe Court emphatically rejects this attempted imposition of the criminal law on the professional decisions of a physician.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both the Texas Medical Association and the Harris County Medical Society recently issued a statement of support for physicians like Dr. Gokal who find themselves scrambling \u201cto avoid wasting the vaccine in a punctured vial.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is difficult to understand any justification for charging any well-intentioned physician in this situation with a criminal offense,\u201d the statement said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s the kicker:<\/p>\n

Dane Schiller, the district attorney\u2019s director of communications, declined to answer questions about the case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No kidding.\u00a0 Ms. Ogg and her lackeys now have nothing to say.<\/p>\n

Now here’s the double kicker:\u00a0 No one could read this story without being mystified about how someone like Kim Ogg\u00a0 —\u00a0 someone seemingly drunk with power but bereft of even the ghost of judgment\u00a0 —\u00a0 could become a big city district attorney.\u00a0 Oddly, the NYT says not one word about that obvious question.<\/p>\n

Why not?<\/p>\n

It didn’t take me long to find out.\u00a0 The reason the Times keeps the origins of Ms. Ogg’s rise to power behind the curtain is that she’s exactly the sort of prosecutor the Times has been glorifying for months (or I suppose years at this point).\u00a0 Ms. Ogg is, to be specific, a “progressive prosecutor”\u00a0 —\u00a0 the spawn of George Soros<\/p>\n

Here’s the story<\/a> the Times doesn’t tell:<\/p>\n

Ogg is part of a wave of reform-minded prosecutors elected nationwide in 2016 in major jurisdictions including Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville and St. Louis. Many, including Ogg, had significant financial backing from liberal donor George Soros. They didn\u2019t run on identical platforms, but each promised some form of change, whether it was skepticism about the death penalty and nonviolent drug cases, or greater scrutiny when police shoot unarmed suspects.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kent and Mike Rushford have done a great job of reporting the outcroppings of “progressive prosecutors,” particularly George Gascon in Los Angeles.\u00a0 But there is an important yet hidden angle of the story that the\u00a0 Gokal prosecution showcases:\u00a0 While prosecutors like Gascon and Ogg are eager to give every break to criminals, they’re going to be tuff, tuff, tuff with citizens like Hasan Gokal, whose “crime” was helping medically at-risk people get doses of the COVID vaccine\u00a0 —\u00a0 doses that otherwise were certain to go to waste and help no one.<\/p>\n

Or to put it in one sentence:\u00a0 The real mission of progressive prosecutors is to serve criminals and subvert peaceable citizens of good will.<\/p>\n

But wait!\u00a0 There’s more!!\u00a0 You might be wondering why, specifically<\/em>, Ms Ogg would go after Dr. Gokal in such an upside-down and obviously perverse way.\u00a0 I don’t know for sure, but there’s enough here to smell the politically befouled odor of the progressive move for “equitable” distribution of the COVID vaccine.<\/p>\n

No one ever says too directly what an “equitable” distribution would be, but the suggestion has been made that distribution strictly by age would be\u00a0 —\u00a0 ready now?\u00a0 —\u00a0 racist.\u00a0 Steve Hayward found this gem<\/a> last December in that self-same New York Times:<\/p>\n

\u201cOlder populations are whiter,\u201d Dr. [Harald] Schmidt [a University of Pennsylvania ethics professor] said. \u201cSociety is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again, I don’t know that Ms. Ogg went after Dr. Gokal because he failed\u00a0 —\u00a0 albeit in an emergency where he had no choice\u00a0 —\u00a0 to give first priority to groups progressives find more “deserving” and therefore rank higher on their vaccine priority list (and groups to which Ms. Ogg owes her electoral success).\u00a0 So I won’t make that charge.\u00a0 Still, something more than mere hubris and stupidity has to account for a prosecution as perverted as this one.\u00a0 We should demand to know exactly what it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story from the NYT is making the rounds on the Internet today.\u00a0 The headline is:\u00a0 “The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired.”\u00a0 The subhead is, “Ten doses of the Covid-19 vaccine would expire within hours, so a Houston doctor gave it to people with medical conditions, including his wife. What followed was ‘the lowest moment in my life,’ Dr. Hasan Gokal said.” The lowest moment was not just that he was fired from his hospital.\u00a0 He was criminally charged by the Harris County District Attorney, Kim Ogg, for “stealing” the vaccine. Now you might wonder, as I did, how a prosecutor could be so brain-dead as to charge a doctor for “stealing” this life-saving medicine when the alternative was to pour it down the sewer.\u00a0 And you might think, again as I did, that it was just a case of terminal hubris and stupidity.\u00a0 But it seems to have been more than that, and worse.\u00a0 A lot worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notorious-cases"],"yoast_head":"\nAn Evil Prosecution of the George Soros Kind - Crime & Consequences<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2923\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Evil Prosecution of the George Soros Kind - Crime & Consequences\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This story from the NYT is making the rounds on the Internet today.\u00a0 The headline is:\u00a0 “The Vaccine Had to Be Used. 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Now you might wonder, as I did, how a prosecutor could be so brain-dead as to charge a doctor for “stealing” this life-saving medicine when the alternative was to pour it down the sewer.\u00a0 And you might think, again as I did, that it was just a case of terminal hubris and stupidity.\u00a0 But it seems to have been more than that, and worse.\u00a0 A lot worse.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2923\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Crime & Consequences\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CriminalJusticeLegalFoundation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-02-12T03:54:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-02-12T17:19:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/FB_DefaultLJ.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Bill Otis\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Bill Otis\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2923\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2923\",\"name\":\"An Evil Prosecution of the George Soros Kind - Crime & Consequences\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2021-02-12T03:54:07+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-02-12T17:19:14+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d089f7e65aa652190318c44070da5e6e\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2923#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2923\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2923#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"An Evil Prosecution of the George Soros Kind\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/\",\"name\":\"Crime & Consequences\",\"description\":\"Crime and criminal law\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d089f7e65aa652190318c44070da5e6e\",\"name\":\"Bill Otis\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?author=6\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"An Evil Prosecution of the George Soros Kind - Crime & Consequences","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2923","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"An Evil Prosecution of the George Soros Kind - Crime & Consequences","og_description":"This story from the NYT is making the rounds on the Internet today.\u00a0 The headline is:\u00a0 “The Vaccine Had to Be Used. 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