Probation, and no guns, for Zachary Cruz in Stoneman Douglas trespassing case
March 30, 2018 by admin
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Zachary Cruz, brother of the teenager who killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last month, will go free Thursday as part of a plea deal reached in his trespassing case.
Cruz, 18, pleaded no contest in exchange for a 6-month probation term saddled with conditions that include staying off drugs or alcohol, staying at least a mile away from the Parkland high school he once attended, and staying away from firearms.
“Zachary Cruz is not someone anyone needs to fear,” said his lawyer, Joseph Kimok. “He’s someone who needs our compassion.”
Cruz was arrested on March 19 at the school’s campus. A police report said he had been warned to stay away from the school. His lawyer disputed that Thursday.
“That part of it simply wasn’t true,” Kimok said. “That school was always a place where he felt safe and welcome.”
Cruz admitted to deputies he had been to Stoneman Douglas three times since his brother, Nikolas, went on his deadly shooting spree.
Nikolas Cruz is facing the death penalty if he’s convicted, but Zachary Cruz faced a maximum of 60 days in jail and a fine of $500.
Kimok read a statement expressing regret on behalf of his client.
“Zachary Cruz would like to apologize to anyone who felt scared or threatened by his presence at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School,” Kimok said. Cruz watched his mother die last November and was astonished when his brother went on the shooting spree, he said.
“He didn’t turn to drugs or alcohol or violence,” Kimok said. “He turned to his skateboard. He turned to Stoneman Douglas… He just wanted to make sense of this”
Cruz entered the courtroom at 8:45 a.m., dressed in a tan jumpsuit with his arms and legs shackled.
Prosecutor Sarahnell Murphy listed the terms of the plea agreement, which also included mental health counseling, GPS monitor tracking and a ban on setting foot on any school campus unless he is enrolled there.
Broward County Judge Melinda Brown had scheduled Thursday’s hearing to listen to arguments from both sides on the $500,000 bond originally imposed on Cruz. The debate over the bond amount was rendered irrelevant by the plea deal, but Kimok still called it “unlawful and unconstitutional.”
“A judge set a half-million dollar bond in a trespassing case,” he said. “When a judge sets a bond that is so high that you have to plead guilty to get out of jail,” with as much media attention as the Cruz case received, “they can do it to anyone,” Kimok said. “And that should scare everyone.
Prosecutors formally charged Cruz on Wednesday with one count of trespassing on public school grounds. Murphy said prosecutors considered his mental health records and a risk assessment evaluation conducted at the main jail on Sunday to help determine whether he poses a threat to himself or to others if released.
Zachary Cruz was hospitalized for mental health evaluation under the state’s Baker Act once after the Feb. 14 shooting and again after his arrest.
He told deputies before his arrest that he wanted to reflect on what his brother had done.
rolmeda@SunSentinel.com, 954-356-4457, Twitter @SSCourts and @rolmeda
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No longer muzzled, Shulkin takes on Trump’s White House
March 30, 2018 by admin
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President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced David Shulkin’s firing on Twitter. | Getty Images
The fired Veterans Affairs secretary claims he was politically knifed: ‘It should not be this hard to serve your country.’
Ousted Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin is going down swinging.
Instead of disappearing into obscurity like others who were summarily fired by President Donald Trump, Shulkin is using his dismissal as an opportunity to step into the spotlight. Freed from the constraints of serving in the Trump administration, Shulkin is publicly — and loudly — raising red flags about what he sees as a sinister plot to privatize veterans’ health care.
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Within hours of Trump’s announcement via Twitter that he is replacing Shulkin with White House physician Ronny Jackson, the newly unseated secretary had published an op-ed in The New York Times and conducted an interview with NPR.
Shulkin is flipping the script on an unspoken rule in Washington that fired Cabinet secretaries and other senior administration officials should keep their grievances to themselves out of respect for the president. But Trump’s unconventional presidency, which has spit out a string of jilted ex-staffers, is challenging that long-standing practice.
Former Trump administration officials are quick to anonymously lambaste the president and his team to reporters. And a small number have started doing it on the record.
Former chief strategist Steve Bannon infuriated Trump after his critical on-the-record comments in Michael Wolff’s recent book came to light. Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman went on the reality show Big Brother after getting fired, where she repeatedly turned on her colleagues in the White House.
In contrast, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was also fired via Twitter, has said little so far about his own disagreements with Trump, only hinting at his frustrations in farewell remarks to State Department staff in which he called Washington a “mean-spirited town.”
Shulkin, for his part, blamed his ouster on “the ambitions of people who want to put VA health care in the hands of the private sector,” something he opposes, lamenting that a political power struggle over his department made it tougher to do the work of running and improving the VA.
“They saw me as an obstacle to privatization who had to be removed,” Shulkin wrote in his New York Times op-ed, published shortly after midnight on Thursday. “As I prepare to leave government, I am struck by a recurring thought: It should not be this hard to serve your country.”
Shulkin’s firing on Wednesday came after weeks of speculation that he would be removed as VA secretary, the latest in a string of personnel changes that has included the ouster of Tillerson, economic adviser Gary Cohn and national security adviser H.R. McMaster. Shulkin was the lone holdover from the Obama administration to continue serving under Trump, having led the Veterans Health Administration for two years prior to his confirmation as VA secretary.
Shulkin, according to aides, lost Trump’s confidence and infuriated senior administration officials, who were shocked when Shulkin told reporters he had the White House’s blessing to purge his department of his internal critics. Even as they batted down rumors that Trump would fire other senior members of his administration, White House aides had long ago stopped pushing back on stories saying Shulkin was on thin ice with the president.
Trump announced Shulkin’s firing on Twitter, writing, “I am thankful for Dr. David Shulkin’s service to our country and to our GREAT VETERANS!”
Shulkin had come under criticism in recent months after a VA Inspector General’s report accused him of improperly accepting tickets to the Wimbledon tennis tournament and using his staff at the VA to arrange a sightseeing tour of Denmark and England. Shulkin repaid the VA for the alleged misconduct and hinted in his op-ed that he had been the victim of political knifing.
“I am a physician, not a politician. I came to government with an understanding that Washington can be ugly, but I assumed that I could avoid all of the ugliness by staying true to my values,” he wrote. “I have been falsely accused of things by people who wanted me out of the way.”
The former VA secretary laid out in his op-ed his argument against the privatization of healthcare for the nation’s veterans, a goal he said exists within the Trump administration. The private sector, Shulkin said, is “ill-prepared” to deal with healthcare for veterans, who are numerous and have specific needs different from the general population. The VA, on the other hand, has an understanding of the health problems faced by veterans and has done “groundbreaking research” that, taken together, cannot be easily replicated by the private healthcare system.
“I believe differences in philosophy deserve robust debate, and solutions should be determined based on the merits of the arguments. The advocates within the administration for privatizing V.A. health services, however, reject this approach,” Shulkin wrote. “That is because I am convinced that privatization is a political issue aimed at rewarding select people and companies with profits, even if it undermines care for veterans.”
In the interview with NPR, Shulkin lobbed even more pointed criticisms at the administration, alleging that he wasn’t permitted to defend himself in the aftermath of reports about his trip to Europe.
“There was nothing improper about this trip, and I was not allowed to put up an official statement or to even respond to this by the White House,” he said. “I think this was really just being used in a political context to try to make sure that I wasn’t as effective as a leader moving forward.”
And he referenced reports that White House political appointees were working against him from inside his own department.
“We’ve gotten so much done, but in the last few months, it really has changed,” Shulkin said. “Not from Congress, but from these internal political appointees that were trying to politicize VA and trying to make sure our progress stopped. It’s been very difficult.”