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...despite the claim that Douglas Faneuil gave her a furtive tip to sell her ImClone stock, Stewart is not charged with insider trading.
So what is she accused of?
Despite the fact that 7.7 million shares of ImClone stock were abruptly sold on the same day that Stewart sold her 3,928 shares, it was she who was invited to the U.S. attorney’s office to explain conduct that would never have been the subject of a criminal prosecution.
Now Stewart may know a whole lot about the craft of homemaking, but she did not know what every low-level hoodlum in Bensonhurst knows: You don’t talk to the cops.
She and her then-lawyers marched into a room filled with prosecutors and FBI agents to offer an explanation that did not need to be given, and now she’s charged with lying.
Would Stewart have fallen into this prosecutorial trap if she were not a celebrity? Anyone familiar with the system knows that she would not have, because if she were not a celebrity, the trap would never have been set.
Let’s just recap this.
Kafkaesque
ADJECTIVE:
1. Of or relating to Franz Kafka or his writings. 2. Marked by surreal distortion and often a sense of impending danger: Kafkaesque fantasies of the impassive interrogation, the false trial, the confiscated passport . . . haunt his innocence (New Yorker).
It may be appropriate to juxtapose this with recent events in Massachusetts, where four judges have decided that the Massachusetts State Constitution includes the right to gay marriage, in violation of something everybody knows, namely that the authors of that Constitution, written in 1780, intended nothing of the kind.
If we continue to let judges arrogate to themselves the power of legislation; if we continue to let prosecutors misuse the awesome power of the state to destroy lives for the benefit of their own careers—we will find that the danger to freedom in this country doesn’t come from the efforts of our government to protect us from terrorist attacks—but from a justice system that is getting out of control.
