Judge Andrew Napolitano wishes the Department of Justice would hurry up and bring charges against Hillary Clinton already.
Yesterday, almost a dozen Republican congressmen signed a criminal referral asking the DOJ to launch new investigations into a host of former Obama officials and other fresh GOP foes. Clinton is the prime target of the referral, though the GOP is also demanding probes on figures like Loretta Lynch, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe.
In terms of whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions will take action, Napolitano joined Fox & Friends on Thursday to say “I wish he would.”
“The evidence of Mrs. Clinton’s guilt of espionage, failure to safeguard state secrets – that’s the 22 or 23 top secret pieces of information that were on her private server – the failure to do that, the evidence of guilt is overwhelming.”
Napolitano went on to talk about the “serious felonies on [Clinton’s] part” and how she shouldn’t be immune from prosecution. He also said that Comey has undermined his rationale for not bringing charges against her over the course of his ongoing media tour.
In the end, however, Napolitano says he doubts the DOJ will go after Clinton “contrary to all reason.”
Watch above, via Fox News.
[Image via screengrab]
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Intolerance towards conservative speakers on college campuses often follows the same story line: A small cadre of student activists and professors shout down or disrupt the appearance because they have determined that ideas themselves are akin to physical violence. But the suppression of speech also comes in quieter forms with even graver consequences.
At Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisc., the climate of campus intolerance towards conservative voices has done more than ruin a speaking event. Tenured political science Professor John McAdams, who also happens to be a conservative, has been placed square in the crosshairs by his faculty peers and an administration that has decided their contractual commitment to academic freedom shouldn’t have to cover the free expression of viewpoints they don’t like. McAdams’s livelihood, career and reputation hang in the balance of a Wisconsin State Supreme Court case, the most important academic freedom case in the country.
Marquette University fired McAdams in 2015, after he wrote a blog post about an incident between a student and a graduate instructor. Following a classroom discussion on John Rawls, philosophy instructor Cheryl Abbate told a student that she would not permit opposition to same-sex marriage in her classroom because such views would “come off” as “offensive” and “homophobic.” When the student complained to the department, he was told to change his attitude and that he would be “watched.”
The matter might have ended there, but the student had recorded the conversation and brought it to McAdams, who has long enraged the campus left and bothered administrators with his personal blog, The Marquette Warrior. He frequently comments on what he sees as the university’s commitment to intolerant forms of political correctness on the blog. McAdams believes that a teacher who tells a student that his views on marriage are out of bounds has acted to stifle the open discourse that ought to be encouraged on a college campus.
His post went viral. Local and national outlets highlighted the story. Abbate did receive a number of hateful and ugly emails and letters following the blog post, although McAdams had nothing to do with them.
Alarmed by what it regarded as bad publicity, Marquette University administrators quickly determined that Abbate, despite her role as the instructor who prohibited debate in her classroom, was a victim and that McAdams’ blog post criticizing that position meant that he had to go. According to Marquette, it was an attack on a student – even though Abbate was acting as a paid instructor imbued with the authority of the university – and proudly noted that she was teaching the student that “oppressive discourse” would not be tolerated. McAdams was banned from campus and awaited a pro forma faculty review whose clear intent was to set the stage for his termination.
The panel – which included at least one professor who had publicly condemned McAdams at the time of the post – acknowledged that there was no prohibition, either in university rules or commonly accepted notions of professional conduct and academic freedom, against criticizing a colleague (or even a student) and identifying the person that one is criticizing. Nevertheless, the panel concluded that he should not be fired, but suspended for two semesters because he “should have” known that his actions would “harm” Abbate.
Marquette University President Michael Lovell proceeded to terminate McAdams anyway by making his reinstatement contingent upon a Soviet-style admission of wrongdoing. McAdams refused to engage in such coercive speech, and in May 2016, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty sued Marquette University on McAdams’s behalf for breach of his employment contract. The case is now before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which agreed to an original action to bypass the Court of Appeals, after a trial judge in 2017 ruled in favor of Marquette. Oral argument is scheduled for April 19, 2018, with a decision expected in June or July.
Marquette University is a private institution. Nevertheless, like most such institutions, Marquette chose to guarantee academic freedom and the right of “legitimate personal expression” to their faculty. McAdams was promised that he would not lose his job over First Amendment protected speech. But that is exactly what took place.
Marquette is attempting to fire a tenured professor for public comment on a matter of great public and institutional concern. While Marquette argues that he did not “need” to identify the person he was criticizing or link to her public website, both are common features of public discourse. The university held him responsible for how others reacted to the accurate description of Abbate’s decision to tell an undergraduate that his views would not be tolerated. But if the measure of a professor’s right to speak is the reaction of others, no one will ever know what he or she can safely say.
Marquette violated their contract with McAdams and our lawsuit on his behalf intends to right that wrong. But this case is about more. In our divided and fractured culture, tolerance for opposing viewpoints is more important than ever. Universities may see themselves as the vanguards of intellectual rigor and free expression. But tolerance requires respect for opinions we don’t like and free expression a wide berth for the often-messy exchange of ideas. Courage, consistency and commitment to ideological diversity are worth protecting, for without them education only becomes indoctrination.
Journalist Mike Allen of Axios recently said that one word described Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and that word was “unafraid.”
The context for his remarks on Fox News’ “Special Report” was that Mueller had just spun off to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York a bit of his limitless investigation into President Donald J. Trump. Allen’s comment was like so many others from media and pundit types since the special counsel was launched. If there’s one word to describe the media’s relationship to Mueller, it’s “unquestioning.”
Pundits and politicians have said, repeatedly, that he is “somebody we all trust” with “impeccable credentials.” No matter what his office does, from hiring Democratic donors to run the Trump probe to aggressively prosecuting process crimes, he is defended by most media voices. Criticism of Mueller by people who aren’t part of the Trump Resistance is strongly fought, with claims that disapproval of anything related to Mueller and how he runs his investigation undermine the rule of law.
The media and establishment DC who reflexively defend Mueller haven’t explained how they came to trust him so completely. It’s a question worth asking given the bumpy historical record of Mueller’s tenure as FBI director from 2001 to 2013.
For instance, as I noted to Allen, Mueller was also “unafraid” at completely botching the anthrax killer case, wasting more than $100 million in taxpayer dollars, destroying the lives of multiple suspects, and chasing bad leads using bad methods. Let’s look at that and other cases involving how Mueller and those he placed in positions of power used their authorities and decided what charges to pursue.
Shortly after the terrorist attacks in 2001, letters containing anthrax were mailed to media outlets and the offices of Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., killing five people and infecting 17 others. The FBI quickly focused on an innocent man named Steven Hatfill, relentlessly pursuing him for years while the real killer walked free. As Carl Cannon wrote about the botched case, ridiculous and aggressive methods were used to go after the wrong man:
So what evidence did the FBI have against Hatfill? There was none, so the agency did a Hail Mary, importing two bloodhounds from California whose handlers claimed could sniff the scent of the killer on the anthrax-tainted letters. These dogs were shown to Hatfill, who promptly petted them. When the dogs responded favorably, their handlers told the FBI that they’d ‘alerted’ on Hatfill and that he must be the killer.
Mueller and his deputy James Comey were certain they had the right guy. They didn’t, and taxpayers had to pay Hatfill $5.82 million for the error. When that settlement was announced, Cannon noted:
Mueller could not be bothered to walk across the street to attend the press conference announcing the case’s resolution. When reporters did ask him about it, Mueller was graceless. ‘I do not apologize for any aspect of the investigation,’ he said, adding that it would be erroneous ‘to say there were mistakes.’
The man the FBI decided was responsible for the anthrax killings killed himself as the FBI pursued him, but reports from the National Academy of Sciences and the Government Accountability Office were critical of the bureau’s scientific conclusions used to determine the man’s guilt.
Mueller placed Special Agent Van Harp in charge of the initial investigation. He had been “accused of misconduct and recommended for discipline for his role in a flawed review of the deadly Ruby Ridge standoff,” according to a Washington Post report. He had helped “prepare an incomplete report on the 1992 Ruby Ridge siege that had the effect of protecting high-level FBI officials, according to a confidential 1999 report by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.”
After Hatfill sued the FBI, Harp admitted that he talked to the media about the anthrax case due to political concerns at the bureau. According to The Atlantic:
Special Agent Harp, who initially headed the anthrax investigation, conceded after Hatfill sued the government in August 2003 that the FBI had been sensitive to accusations that it had stumbled in other high-profile investigations, and that it had consciously sought to assure the public that it was working hard to crack the anthrax murders. Part of providing such assurance involved actively communicating with news reporters. Questioned under oath, Harp admitted to serving as a confidential source for more than a dozen journalists during the case, but he insisted that he had never leaked privileged information about Hatfill, or anyone else for that matter.
Hatfill’s attorney’s found the latter claim highly improbable.
As aggressive as Mueller can be about pursuing the wrong man, he showed surprising leniency and laxity when it came to the case of Samuel “Sandy” Berger, a Clinton White House national security adviser. In the run-up to testifying before the 9/11 Commission that sought to examine the failures that led to those terrorist attacks, Berger visited the National Archives to review classified documents with his notes on them.
But instead he intentionally removed and destroyed multiple copies of a classified document the commission should have reviewed for national security purposes, and lied to investigators about it. He was found to have stuffed the documents in his socks and otherwise hidden them. His punishment was that he was allowed to plead guilty in 2005 to a single misdemeanor. He served no jail time but had to give up his security clearance for three years.
The staff of Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., authored a 60-page report about the theft of the documents, in which he said “The Justice Department was unacceptably incurious about Berger’s Archives visits.”
As lax and lenient as the Department of Justice was with Berger, the opposite was true in other cases. After Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA employee was leaked, a special counsel operation was set up to investigate the leak. Mueller’s deputy Comey pressured John Ashcroft to recuse himself from the case on the grounds he had potential conflicts of interest.
Comey named Patrick Fitzgerald, his close personal friend and godfather to one of his children, to the role of special counsel. Mueller, Comey, and Fitzgerald all knew the whole time that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the leaker. Yet they set things up so Fitzgerald would aggressively investigate the Bush administration for three years, jailed a journalist for not giving up a source, and pursued both Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.
Comey even expanded the investigation’s mandate within weeks of setting up the special counsel. Libby, who was pardoned by President Trump last week, was rung up on a process charge in part thanks to prosecutorial abuse by Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald encouraged a witness to give false testimony by not providing exonerating evidence to her and Libby’s attorneys. The Wall Street Journal and Commentary have write-ups on the saga.
In 2016, the FBI kept getting involved in the presidential election. Political considerations rather obviously played a role in Comey showing deference to Clinton in July 2016 in the investigation into her mishandling of classified information. Political considerations also played a role — he says subconsciously — in Comey’s decision to announce a probe into Clinton’s mishandling of classified information had been reopened shortly before the election.
It wasn’t the first time the FBI meddled in a U.S. election. In 2008, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, was indicted by a federal grand jury following a lengthy investigation by the FBI and found guilty eight days before Election Day. Stevens narrowly lost his re-election bid as a result and died in a plane crash a couple of years later.
The prosecutors in that case repeatedly withheld exculpatory evidence that would have yielded a different verdict. The convictions were voided by U.S. District Court Judge Emmett G. Sullivan, who called it the worst case of prosecutorial misconduct he’d ever seen. Stevens’ attorney complained about FBI abuses and said:
‘To us, while this is a joyful day and we’re happy that Sen. Stevens can resume a normal life without the burden that he’s carried over these last years,’ he said, ‘at age 85, it’s a very sad story too. Because it’s a warning to everyone in this country that any citizen can be convicted if the prosecutor ignores the Constitution of the United States.’
Another black mark on Mueller’s record at the FBI was the pursuit of what the bureau dramatically claimed was an Israeli spy ring operating out of the Pentagon. The news broke in August 2004 that a spy working for Israel was in the Department of Defense.
It turned out that the bureau had gone after a policy analyst who had chatted with American lobbyists at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Charges were also pursued against two AIPAC employees. Those charges were later dropped and the sentence of the first person was dropped from 13 years to 10 months of house arrest and some community service.
The Washington Post wrote:
The conspiracy case against two former AIPAC lobbyists came to an inglorious end in May when the government dropped all charges after 3 1/2 years of pre-trial maneuvers.
It was a curious case: First, the lobbyists, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, were charged under an obscure section of the Espionage Act of 1917, a law that had been used only once before — unsuccessfully and never against private citizens for disclosing classified information. Second, they were targets of a bizarre sting in which they were fed false information suggesting that the lives of U.S. and Israeli operatives in Iraq were at risk and that American officials were refusing to take steps to protect them. The accusation was not that they brokered this information to some foreign enemy but that they offered it to everybody they could, hoping, among other things, to get a reporter from The Post to publish it so that it might draw the attention of the right U.S. officials and save U.S. lives. In short, even if the two were guilty as charged, they look more like whistle-blowers than spies.
It turned out the probe was led by David Szady, the same man who notoriously missed Russian spy Robert Hanssen in his midst while he spent years targeting an innocent man named Brian Kelley, an undercover officer at the CIA. For this good work, Mueller named him assistant director for counterintelligence.
Many of these examples of prosecutorial misconduct and abuse were done not by Mueller but by underlings. He should have been aware of what they were doing, which means he should take responsibility for the errors. If he wasn’t aware, that’s a very bad sign regarding his competence to supervise his special counsel deputy Andrew Weissman.
If Mueller had no effective supervision against the abuses of the above underlings, why would anyone trust him to supervise his good buddy Weissman, whom he picked to run lead on his probe of Trump? Weissman destroyed the accounting firm Arthur Anderson LLP, which once had 85,000 employees. Thanks to prosecutorial abuse, jurors were not told that Arthur Anderson didn’t have criminal intent when it shredded documents. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned the conviction, but it was too late to save the company.
Weissman also “creatively criminalized a business transaction between Merrill Lynch and Enron,” which sent four executives to jail. Weissman concocted unprecedented charges and did not allow the executives to get bail, causing massive disruption to the families before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed most of Weissman’s case.
One could also argue that the above failures, save the Stevens case, were actually Comey’s responsibility. That’s arguably true as well, but it also shows just how bizarre it is that Mueller was named to investigate a situation in which his friend and partner in prosecutorial abuse is so intimately involved.
The media scoff in feigned outrage at President Trump’s claims that the FBI has a reputation that is in tatters. But the last 15 years of leadership of the FBI under Mueller and Comey have largely shown that to be true because of how the FBI handles it cases.
In recent months, the FBI lost a high-profile case against Omar Mateen’s widow Noor Salman, who was charged with material support of ISIS and lying to the FBI about it. The case was an absolute mess. The jury foreman said, “I wish that the FBI had recorded their interviews with Ms. Salman as there were several significant inconsistencies with the written summaries of her statements.” The jury felt that the widow had been bullied into signing a false confession.
On the day after the Pulse shooting, Comey promised the bureau would provide transparency as the case was handled. Almost immediately, the claim of transparency was shown to be false when the FBI redacted the killer’s statements about his Islamist terrorism beliefs in a transcript of his calls with Orlando 911. The bureau was also less than transparent about the fact that Mateen’s father was a long-time FBI informant. James Bovard has much more.
Or what about the recent mistrial declared in the Cliven Bundy standoff? Here’s The Oregonian:
A federal judge Wednesday declared a mistrial in the prosecution of Nevada cattleman Cliven Bundy, his two sons and a co-defendant, citing the government’s ‘willful” failure to turn over multiple documents that could help the defense fight conspiracy and assault charges in the 2014 Bunkerville standoff…
The judge listed six types of evidence that she said prosecutors deliberately withheld before trial, including information about the presence of an FBI surveillance camera on a hill overlooking the Bundy ranch and documents about U.S. Bureau of Land Management snipers outside the ranch….
‘The failure to turn over such evidence violates due process,” the judge said…..
Yesterday, Comey told Meghan McCain on The View, “Public confidence in the FBI is its bedrock.” That’s true. And the lack of confidence in the FBI is not the result of Trump and his insults but a pattern of abuse of prosecutorial discretion going back 15 years or so. Mueller is responsible for 10 years of that.
The denizens of DC no doubt have had great interactions with Mueller and the men he put in charge of high-profile cases. But those who were wronged in the Anthrax, Libby, AIPAC, Enron, and other cases might have a different view. Those who observe how differing rules have been applied to people in seemingly partisan fashion should not be dismissed.
As former judge and Attorney General Michael Mukasey wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week, “Mr. Mueller is not a bad man, nor is Mr. Comey. It’s just that both show particular confidence when making mistakes, which makes one grateful for safeguards like the attorney-client privilege.”
The media should not be so quick to gloss over these mistakes solely because of anti-Trump animus. Journalists who take their role seriously should be skeptical of powerful government institutions and how they can abuse their authority.
Jack Hunter's usual booth, the one right up front, already was taken when he and his wife arrived at Pitt Grill for dinner on Tuesday night.
UPDATE: The IRS has extended the tax-filing deadline for all filers to midnight Wednesday, April 18, due to a glitch with agency's website.
The IRS Direct Pay system is not functioning on the last day of timely tax filing. And it appears that the e-filing system is also at least partially down.
Today is the deadline for most Americans to report their income taxes for the last calendar year and, if taxes are owed, to pay that debt.
It is unclear at this time whether the IRS internet outage is the result of a high volume of legitimate users, or is due to a coordinated external attack. The Washington Post is reporting that the IRS is planning to attempt a "hard reboot" of its system, hoping to get it up and running again.
The IRS is advising everyone to continue e-filing as planned, adding that taxpayers would not be penalized for the technical issues.
BATON ROUGE- At a meeting with parents Monday night, proposals were discussed to prevent what happened at the Greater Baton Rouge Hope Academy from ever occurring again.
The WBRZ Investigative Unit published an audio recording last week where you can hear two educators mocking a student with Autism. That student, Camden Davis, began wetting the bed and getting aggressive. It's why his mom, Milissa Davis decided to place a recording device in his backpack to hear what was going on. The published recordings led to the termination of one educator immediately and the other following national outrage that came as a result of the WBRZ Investigative Unit story.
Part of the disturbing audio clips are captioned below:
ADULT: You're just writing the word. What is hard about it?
STUDENT: grunting noise.
ADULT: mocks noise
ADULT: Camden, why don't you have anything written down? That's why you can't sit with everyone. Tell your momma that.
ADULT: Let's see what they do with him in f****** public school. He was going to go to Live Oak Middle. Uh ah, he wouldn't make it for a minute.
Today, Board President Brandon Black said a number of items were discussed with parents Monday night. Among some of them: adding cameras to the school and how to pay for them, additional sensitivity training and refining background checks.
Aidan Reynolds has a son who has Autism. He said he was flabbergasted when he heard the recordings.
"The father in me was outraged, profoundly disappointed," Reynolds said. "I was angry. The lawyer in me was, how did they let this happen. How are they screening these teachers? Are they providing them with any support or sensitivity training?"
Once again today, no one from Hope Academy would do an on-camera interview. However, at least one parent who has a child there did to support the school. Dr. Jennifer Hogan said the recording does not define the good work that is happening there for other students. Hogan's 14-year old has behavior and social issues.
"They have helped us move him along," Hogan said. "He's functioning a lot better now. He's happy. He's learning. We've had a very good experience."
Meanwhile, Reynolds said he would like to see changes on the state level so this never occurs again. Reynolds would like to see Louisiana model Texas' laws when it comes to dealing with kids with special needs.
"The Texas education law allows for parents, administrators, teachers, and guardians to request both audio and video in classrooms where they are educating special needs kids," Reynolds said.
The President of the Board at Hope Academy, Brandon Black, said he would do an interview next week to talk about the exact changes that are being made. That's when a formal plan is expected to be in place.
BATON ROUGE- A bill to allow a statewide referendum on fantasy sports betting passed the Louisiana House of Representatives without questions Tuesday night.
If lawmakers approve it during the session, the issue would be added to the ballot in November for voters to approve. Representative Kirk Talbot (R-River Ridge) is the bill's sponsor.
"I think it's fun. It's more about skill than chance," he said.
The statewide referendum would not allow fantasy sports gambling everywhere. It would only legalize it in parishes where a majority of people vote for it.
Fantasy sports websites would verify if users in Louisiana live in the parishes where it's legal.
If voters approve, then lawmakers will likely create new taxes for the industry and players during the 2019 legislative session.
The bill now heads to the state Senate.
Before the Friday night strikes on Syria, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis had encouraged President Donald Trump to seek Congressional approval for the attacks.
Yet, according to a New York Times report, Trump just couldn’t wait that long and decided to go ahead with the strikes anyhow.
As a compromise, in lieu of the “sustained response until the Syrian regime stops” that Trump talked about in his Friday night address to the nation, limited strikes on three Syrian targets were ordered instead.
According to Iraqi War veteran Jon Soltz, the Friday show of force showed just enough military might for Trump to save face without provoking Russia.
“The strike was really just enough to cover the president politically, but not enough to spark a war with the Russians,” Soltz, chairman of the liberal veterans group VoteVets, told the Times. “It was clear the military had tight constraints on the operation, and that everybody in the military seemed to know that except the president.”
Even with the smaller strikes, however, Trump’s insistence on acting without Congressional approval was immediately met by cries from Capitol Hill––even from some Republicans––that his actions were “unacceptable” and beyond the scope of his presidential authority.
While Bashar al-Assad must be held accountable for his unlawful use of chemical weapons against civilians, the strikes that are being carried out are being done without an authorization from Congress, which is unacceptable
— Senator Bob Casey (@SenBobCasey) April 14, 2018
I haven’t read France’s or Britain’s “Constitution,” but I’ve read ours and no where in it is Presidential authority to strike Syria.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) April 14, 2018
On Tuesday, Mattis met with lawmakers who continued to express concerns about Trump’s decision to act without Congressional approval.
Yet, while it now seems clear that Mattis disagreed with Trump’s decision, the Defense Secretary not only defended the raid to Congress but is also publicly dismissing the idea that the limited raid amounted to little more than a publicity stunt for Trump.
“The French, the United Kingdom, the United States, allies, all NATO allies, we worked together to maintain the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons,” Mattis said at the Pentagon, the Times reported. “We did what we believe was right under international law, under our nation’s laws.”
[featured image via screengrab]
One of the suspects in a high-profile theft that Icelandic media are calling "the big bitcoin heist" has escaped a low-security prison and fled to Sweden, the BBC and Guardian reported on Wednesday.
The man, Sindri Thor Stefansson, who is suspected of masterminding the theft of 600 bitcoin-mining rigs as escaped from custody after he climbed out his window and somehow sneaked aboard an international flight. Stefansson used another man's passport during the escape, and was not identified until security footage was examined after he was reported missing.
The stolen rigs - which are still missing despite the police having arrest more than 20 people allegedly involved in the scheme - are worth some $2 million, per the BBC.
Stefansson was among 11 people arrested in February.
Stefansson and his crew purportedly stole the computers during four raids on data centers around Iceland. Iceland has become a favorite destination for crypto miners because of its abundant and cheap power that comes primarily from renewable sources. As we pointed out earlier this year, bitcoin miners are expected to consumer more energy than the roughly 350,000 people living in Iceland during the coming year.
As one sociology professor at the University of Iceland pointed out to the Guardian, jailbreaks in Iceland, which has famously low crime rates, are extremely rare. Typically, when somebody flees one of Iceland's prisons it "usually means someone just fled to get drunk," said professor Helgi Gunnlaugsson.
What's more unusual, according to Gunnlaugsson, is that such a high profile prisoner would be held in such a low-security environment.
Professor Gunnlaugsson added that it's "extremely difficult" to flee Iceland, or to hide.
But it apparently wasn't a problem for Stefansson. Guards at his prison didn't even notice that he was gone until his flight had taken off. And what's more surprising, he somehow traversed the 60 miles of cold, hard terrain between the prison and the airport.
Yet police have made no other arrests in the case.
"He had an accomplice," police chief Gunnar Schram told local news outlet Visir. "We are sure of that."
Hmmm. We wonder what tipped them off?
Stefansson has been in custody since February, but was transferred to the low-security prison - an institution that more closely resembles what we in the US would call a "halfway house" - where he had access to his phone and the Internet (and could also apparently come and go as he pleased).
Iceland police issued an international warrant for Stefansson's arrest - but Swedish police spokesman Stefan Dangardt said no arrest has been made in Sweden.
But in perhaps the most outrageous twist in an already incredible story, Stefansson traveled to Sweden on the same plane that was carrying Icelandic Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir, who was traveling to Sweden to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Mohdi.
The "prison" from which Stefansson escaped is unfenced and and Stefansson was not considered dangerous so he was afforded many privileges.
We wonder if Iceland will ever catch Stefansson? By the looks of it, he appears to have made a clean escape. And thanks to the ease with which bitcoin can be transferred internationally, we imagine that - if he's made it this far - it won't be long until he's reunited with his ill-gotten fortune.
