Branum protests Fort Lewis

One of the IVAW refugees sent me this video last night of legal leach James M. Branum, the lawyer responsible for the imprisonment of several high profile deserters and general malcontents.

The other day, TSO wrote about Branum’s complaints and followed up with a call to the Fort Lewis Public Affairs Office. He found many of Branum’s complaints were baseless.

In the video, Branum complains that Bishop is being denied his “Sixth Amendment” rights to counsel. Here’s the Sixth Amendment;

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Yeah, if Branum is finding out all of this stuff that’s happening to Travis inside the Fort Lewis facility, they’re talking. Guards are listening to conversations Travis is having because whoever he’s talking to isn’t considered his counsel.

Besides, Travis’ counsel is what got him tossed in prison – along with Branum’s silly-assed defense that the Army should provide military members with “conscientious objector training”. In fact, every service member that Branum has represented got the maximum sentence allowable because of Branum’s stupid-ass strategies.

Travis got a year in prison because he went AWOL the day his unit deployed to Iraq and came back a week later. Whether the former sergeant understood how to apply for CO status or not, he knew going AWOL was illegal – 12 months in prison illegal.

Also in the video is chucklehead Gerry Condon. Condon is a member of VFP and Project Safe Haven which funnels money to people who’ve absconded from their military duties to Canada, encourages soldiers to go AWOL and is trying to convince the city of Bellingham, Washington to be a safe haven for the knuckleheads Canada boots.

Condon says that Leo Church “considers himself a conscientious objector”. Yeah, now he does when it makes him a sympathetic character for the Left. Church went AWOL three times, one time for a year, and now complains that the Army didn’t care about him and his family. Maybe if he’d quit going AWOL he could have got some help.

Condon also says Church has a wife and three kids – Church wasn’t married to the mother of his children – in fact she abandoned them and instead of asking for help from the Army, Church found it much easier to just go AWOL and find another job somewhere else.

What’s an alligator got to do with anything?

It just reminds me that Branum gobbles up money from his clients and, in turn, gives them shit. The word on the street is that some of his clients gave him cash and never heard from him again – he left them hanging. Yeah, he’s as scummy as he looks.

Category: Antiwar crowd, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Usual Suspects