Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} His Innocent Secretary by Dee James His Innocent Secretary by Dee James. Wikimedia Commons R. Budd Dwyer warning others to stay back just seconds before fatally shooting himself in front of television cameras on January 22, 1987. In January 1987, R. Budd Dwyer’s suicide left the entire country reeling — not because R. Budd Dwyer was particularly well known outside of Pennsylvania, but because his violent death took place in the most public place imaginable: a press conference. And it was all on camera. On January 15, 1987, R. Budd Dwyer, the acting Pennsylvania State Treasurer, held a meeting in his suburban Pennsylvania home. He sat with his press secretary James Horshock and Deputy Treasurer Don Johnson to discuss setting up a press conference related to his recent legal issues. The 47-year-old was a week away from his sentencing on convictions connected to bribery, but he remained adamant about his innocence, as he had done throughout the investigation and trial. Both Horshock and Johnson left Dwyer’s home that evening assuming that their boss would resign at the press conference after making one last statement of innocence and pleading for mercy in front of the local media. Dwyer had other plans. WARNING: Some viewers might find this video disturbing. Who Was R. Budd Dwyer? Robert Budd Dwyer graduated from Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and quickly became active in local politics. In 1964, running as a Republican, he was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and served until 1970. That year, while still a sitting State Representative, Dwyer ran for a seat in the Pennsylvania State Senate and won. After winning reelection twice, Dwyer set his sights on the state office and ran for Pennsylvania Treasurer in 1980. He won reelection to the seat four years later. Around the same time, Pennsylvania officials discovered that some of its state workers had overpaid millions of dollars in Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) taxes due to errors in state withholding. Several top accounting firms across the country competed for the multimillion- dollar contract to determine the compensation to be paid to each employee. The contract was eventually awarded to a California-based firm, Computer Technology Associates (CTA), owned by a native of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Months after the contract was awarded, Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh received an anonymous memo detailing allegations of bribery that took place during the bidding process for the contract and named R. Budd Dwyer as one of the people receiving a kickback in the deal. Enraged by the allegations, Dwyer denied any wrongdoing and maintained his innocence. Nevertheless, Dwyer and several others were eventually charged. In a show of leniency, federal prosecutors were willing to cut the treasurer a deal — he’d plead guilty to a single charge of bribe receiving, resign from office, and fully cooperate with the rest of the investigation. The single charge carried a five-year prison sentence. Dwyer turned down the deal, believing his innocence would be proven in a trial. However, on December 18, 1986, Dwyer was found guilty on 11 counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, perjury, and interstate transportation in aid of racketeering. He faced a sentence of up to 55 years of imprisonment and a $300,000 fine. His sentencing was scheduled for January 23, 1987. The Press Conference And R. Budd Dwyer’s Suicide. YouTube/EightyFourFilms R. Budd Dwyer gives his last speech. After meeting with two staffers on January 22 in order to weigh his options, alone in his home with his thoughts, R. Budd Dwyer contemplated his future. He scribbled his thoughts on a piece of paper, found later by his family. “I enjoy being with Jo so much, the next 20 years or so would have been wonderful. Tomorrow is going to be so difficult and I hope I can go through with it.” The press conference in Harrisburg the next morning began with a prepared statement that left no one with any idea they were about to watch R. Budd Dwyer’s suicide. But as Dwyer reached the final page, he went off script, telling the audience: “I’ve repeatedly said that I’m not going to resign as State Treasurer. After many hours of thought and meditation I’ve made a decision that should not be an example to anyone because it is unique to my situation. Last May I told you that after the trial, I would give you the story of the decade. To those of you who are shallow, the events of this morning will be that story. But to those of you with depth and concern the real story will be what I hope and pray results from this morning–in the coming months and years[,] the development of a true Justice System here in the United States. I am going to die in office in an effort to ‘…see if the shame[-ful] facts, spread out in all their shame, will not burn through our civic shamelessness and set fire to American pride.’ Please tell my story on every radio and television station and in every newspaper and magazine in the U.S.. Please leave immediately if you have a weak stomach or mind since I don’t want to cause physical or mental distress. Joanne, Rob, DeeDee [sic] – I love you! Thank you for making my life so happy. Goodbye to you all on the count of 3. Please make sure that the sacrifice of my life is not in vain.” In front of the gathered reporters and television cameras, he removed an envelope from under the podium. Inside was a .357 Magnum revolver. The crowd immediately began to panic as the former treasurer announced, “Please leave the room if this will affect you.” Frederick L. Cusick, a journalist and friend of Dwyer’s who was sitting in the front row to cover the story, told the Los Angeles Times years later that he “should have run and grabbed him when he pulled out the envelope. I knew that was it.” As people frantically yelled for him to stop and others approached the podium to disarm him, R. Budd Dwyer quickly inserted the gun into his mouth, pulled the trigger, and fell to the floor. He died instantly. “Hey Man, Nice Shot” A number of Pennsylvania television stations showed edited footage of the press conference and R. Budd Dwyer’s suicide (although, contrary to many urban legends, Dwyer’s press conference was never broadcast live). Several stations froze the footage prior to the gunshot while the audio continued under the frozen image. Philadelphia station WPVI re-broadcast the suicide footage, in full and without warning to viewers, on their 5 and 6 p.m. broadcasts. That station’s broadcast is responsible for many of the copies of the video that are available online to this day. Harrisburg station WHTM-TV opted to broadcast uncut video of the suicide not once but twice, defending the decision by citing the important nature of the story. Many kids and adults in the surrounding area were home due to a major snowstorm and thus saw the video. “I saw the raw footage of it,” explained Richard Patrick, frontman of the band Filter, in a 2012 interview about the song he penned in the aftermath of the public suicide: “I’m from the suburbs and I don’t remember seeing a lot of things like that growing up. When you’re 22 and you see that, you’re like, ‘Wow.’ There was no Internet to watch death on … you can see anything on the Internet now. Back then, we were watching it out of fascination of like, ‘Wow. We’re all gonna die. There was a morbid curiosity. I was watching it and I was all, ‘Hey man, nice shot.'” R. Budd Dwyer’s Suicide Marks The Death Of An “Honest Man” YouTube/EightyFourFilms R. Budd Dwyer on the campaign trail. In 2010, Honest Man: The Life of R. Budd Dwyer , a feature documentary about R. Budd Dwyer’s life and the tragedy of his suicide, premiered at the Carmel Art and Film Festival in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with the Dwyer family in attendance. In the documentary, William T. Smith, a former chairman of the Dauphin County Republican Committee and one of the key trial witnesses in Dwyer’s conviction, admits that he lied under oath at his own trial about never offering Dwyer a bribe in hopes of reducing his own sentence and to spare his wife from being prosecuted for her role in the conspiracy. He expressed his regret for lying and the role it played in R. Budd Dwyer’s public suicide. Although these revelations suggest that Dwyer may not have gotten justice, he did at least secure his family’s future. Since Dwyer died while still in office, his widow, Joanne, was able to collect full survivor benefits that totaled more than $1.28 million. Many close to Dwyer feel that he may have committed suicide to preserve the state-provided pension for his family, whose finances had been ruined by legal defense costs. But Pennsylvania’s finances stayed murky even after R. Budd Dwyer’s suicide. According to Frederick Cusick, the reporter and friend who watched R. Budd Dwyer kill himself, not much in Harrisburg changed in the aftermath of the suicide. He told an editor not long after the incident, “You can see the fins breaking the water. You see the feeding frenzies when it comes to payoffs and bribes.” For more shocking stories of justice miscarried, read about George Stinney, the youngest person ever executed by electric chair. Then check out the bizarre tale of Johnny Frank Garrett — a sadistic nun-killer or an innocent man put to death? His Innocent Secretary by Dee James. I borrowed His Innocent Secretary: A Billionaire Office Romance by Dee James from the Kindle Unlimited library. It is a short book of only 82 pages. The blurb: The dashing CEO and his innocent secretary. An uncanny attraction, deep, longing kisses. Will he find out her secret? Will she be able to get away with her deception? Ashwin, a thirty-year old CEO, with a ruthless demeanor, falls for his petite, sinful-looking secretary. Is she as innocent as she looks? Or, is she hiding something from Ashwin? Will their love conquer over all the deceptions? The story: Ashwini Kumar, and MBA from US joined his father’s business four years ago and is now the CEO. His personal Anita Sharma has been acting a bit funny and he tries to find out why. not to mention the attraction he feels for her suddenly. And what comes up is that Anita has been replaced by her identical twin, Dia. And to make matters worse, Ashwin tells Dia to pretend to be his girlfriend for six months. My take: A simple story set in Mumbai, this story has realistic characters. The language is simple and the story just flows. I finished it in one sitting. Now Mattis Admits There Was No Evidence Assad Used Poison Gas on His People: Opinion. Lost in the hyper-politicized hullabaloo surrounding the Nunes Memorandum and the Steele Dossier was the striking statement by Secretary of Defense James Mattis that the U.S. has "no evidence" that the Syrian government used the banned nerve agent Sarin against its own people. This assertion flies in the face of the White House (NSC) Memorandum which was rapidly produced and declassified to justify an American Tomahawk missile strike against the Shayrat airbase in Syria. Mattis offered no temporal qualifications, which means that both the 2017 event in Khan Sheikhoun and the 2013 tragedy in Ghouta are unsolved cases in the eyes of the Defense Department and Defense Intelligence Agency. Mattis went on to acknowledge that "aid groups and others" had provided evidence and reports but stopped short of naming President Assad as the culprit. There were casualties from organophosphate poisoning in both cases; that much is certain. But America has accused Assad of direct responsibility for Sarin attacks and even blamed Russia for culpability in the Khan Sheikhoun tragedy. Now its own military boss has said on the record that we have no evidence to support this conclusion. In so doing, Mattis tacitly impugned the interventionists who were responsible for pushing the "Assad is guilty" narrative twice without sufficient supporting evidence, at least in the eyes of the Pentagon. This dissonance between the White House and the Department of Defense is especially troubling when viewed against the chorus of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) experts who have been questioning the (Obama and Trump) White House narratives concerning chemical weapons in Syria since practically the moment these "Assad-ordered events" occurred. Serious, experienced chemical weapons experts and investigators such as Hans Blix, Scott Ritter, Gareth Porter and Theodore Postol have all cast doubt on "official" American narratives regarding President Assad employing Sarin. These analysts have all focused on the technical aspects of the two attacks and found them not to be consistent with the use of nation-state quality Sarin munitions. The 2013 Ghouta event, for example, employed home-made rockets of the type favored by insurgents. The White House Memorandum on Khan Sheikhoun seemed to rely heavily on testimony from the Syrian White Helmets who were filmed at the scene having contact with supposed Sarin- tainted casualties and not suffering any ill effects. Likewise, these same actors were filmed wearing chemical weapons training suits around the supposed "point of impact" in Khan Sheikhoun, something which makes their testimony (and samples) highly suspect. A training suit offers no protection at all, and these people would all be dead if they had come into contact with real military-grade Sarin. Chemical weapons are abhorrent and illegal, and no one knows this more than Carla Del Ponte. She, however, was unable to fulfill her U.N. Joint Investigative Mechanism mandate in Syria and withdrew in protest over the United States refusing to fully investigate allegations of chemical weapons use by "rebels" (jihadis) allied with the American effort to oust President Assad (including the use of Sarin by anti-Assad rebels). The fact that U.N. investigators were in Syria when the chemical weapon event in Khan Sheikhoun occurred in April 2017 makes it highly dubious that Assad would have given the order to use Sarin at that time. Common sense suggests that Assad would have chosen any other time than that to use a banned weapon that he had agreed to destroy and never employ. Furthermore, he would be placing at risk his patronage from Russia if they turned on him as a war criminal and withdrew their support for him. Tactically, as a former soldier, it makes no sense to me that anyone would intentionally target civilians and children as the White Helmet reports suggest he did. There is compelling analysis from Gareth Porter suggesting that phosphine could have been released by an airborne munition striking a chemical depot, since the clouds and casualties (while organophosphate-appearing in some respects) do not appear to be similar to MilSpec Sarin, particularly the high-test Russian bomb-carried Sarin which independent groups like "bellingcat" insist was deployed. America's credibility was damaged by Colin Powell at the United Nations in 2003 falsely accusing Saddam Hussein of having mobile anthrax laboratories. Fast forward to 2017 and we encounter Nikki Haley in an uncomfortably similar situation at the U.N. Security Council calling for action against yet another non-Western head-of-state based on weak, unsubstantiated evidence. Now Secretary Mattis has added fuel to the WMD propaganda doubters' fire by retroactively calling into question the rationale for an American cruise missile strike. While in no way detracting from the horror of what took place against innocent civilians in Syria, it is time for America to stop shooting first and asking questions later. LeBron James faces backlash over 'YOU'RE NEXT' tweet about Ohio police officer. LeBron James accused of inciting violence with 'YOU'RE NEXT' tweet targeting Ohio police officer Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James faced intense backlash Wednesday over a now-deleted tweet targeting a Columbus, Ohio, police officer involved in the shooting death of 16-year- old Ma'Khia Bryant. Bodycam footage released late Tuesday showed Bryant being shot as she was attacking another Black teen with a knife. James suggested that the police shooting was unjustified coming on the heels of the conviction of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin on murder and manslaughter charges in the death of George Floyd. "YOU’RE NEXT #ACCOUNTABILITY," the NBA icon wrote with an hourglass emoji over an image of one of the officers at the scene of Bryant's shooting. James was accused by critics of leveraging his massive Twitter following to target the officer. "Lebron James is inciting violence against an Ohio police officer. This is disgraceful and dangerous. Is the NBA okay with this? Is Twitter?" Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked. CLICK HERE FOR MORE ON OUR TOP STORY . In other developments: - LeBron James addresses now-deleted tweet: 'I’m so damn tired of seeing Black people killed by police' - Whitlock calls out LeBron James for selective outrage - Ted Cruz rips 'grossly irresponsible' LeBron James after NBA star tweets 'you're next' at Columbus cop - Reporter ripped after asking Columbus police chief why officer didn't shoot Ma'Khia Bryant in arm or leg - Ohio State students demand university cuts ties with Columbus police after Ma'Khia Bryant shooting - Psaki calls Ohio fatal police shooting of teen who appeared to attack others 'tragic' Psaki pressed on whether Biden 'acknowledges his own role in systemic racism' in America White House press secretary Jen Psaki had an uncomfortable exchange with a reporter Wednesday after he asked whether President Biden "acknowledges his own role" in what the president described as "systemic racism" in America. During his address to the nation Tuesday evening following the conviction of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin, Biden said George Floyd's death, which he called "murder in full light of day," had "ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism in the United States." "I would say one of the president’s core objectives is addressing racial injustice in this country, not just through his rhetoric, but through his actions," Psaki said, "and what anyone should look to [is] his advocacy for passing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, for nominating leaders to the Department of Justice, to address long-outdated policies and to ask his leadership team here in the White House to prioritize these issues in his presidency, which is current and today and not from 30 years ago." New York Post reporter Steve Nelson followed up by asking Psaki whether Biden believes "it’s important to accept his own culpability" for perpetuating systemic racism. "I think I’ve answered your question," Psaki said before moving on to the next reporter. CLICK HERE FOR MORE . In other developments: - Biden, Harris slam 'systemic racism' in US, say Chauvin guilty verdict is 'giant step' toward racial justice - Ingraham slams Biden and Democrats for perpetuating 'big lie' that America is systemically racist - Leo Terrell rips Biden, Harris for systemic racism claims: 'Lying' to Americans without hesitation - GREG GUTFELD: The media game of 'us versus them' won't stop with Chauvin's conviction. Daunte Wright funeral planned for Thursday after mourners attend Wednesday viewing Daunte Wright's funeral is scheduled for Thursday at a church in Minneapolis, nearly two weeks after he was shot and killed by a police officer in nearby Brooklyn Center. The Rev. Al Sharpton is set to deliver the eulogy during the funeral, which will be held at Shiloh Temple International Ministries and is set to begin at noon CT. It was unclear whether the funeral would be a public service, according to FOX 9 of Minneapolis. On Wednesday, mourners gathered at Shiloh Temple to view the body of Wright, a 20-year-old Black man. His death sparked protests and riots that coincided with the murder trial of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin in the May 2020 death of George Floyd. The public viewing took place a day after Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in Floyd's death. CLICK HERE FOR MORE . In other developments: - Minnesota city spent over $9,000 to protect home of former officer who shot Daunte Wright - Who is Daunte Wright, the 20-year-old Black man killed in officer-involved shooting in Minnesota? TODAY'S MUST-READS: - Oregon fire sends 2 to hospital, knocks out power for 200 homes, report says - Rep. Greene wants to debate Rep. Ocasio-Cortez on Green New Deal - Caitlyn Jenner mulls challenge to California's Newsom despite spotty voting history: report - Florida's new 'anti-riot' law is unconstitutional, lawsuit claims - India reports record number of new coronavirus cases - House Dems ready to pass DC statehood Thursday, call on Senate to end filibuster to do same. THE LATEST FROM FOX BUSINESS: - Texas wind farms sue Citigroup over charges from winter storm - Walmart sidelines robots to cater to pandemic shopping trends: report - NRA to spend $2 million to counter Biden gun control push - Apple, Google come under fire at Senate antitrust hearing - Costco sounds alarm on online scams targeting their shoppers - 7 GOP lawmakers pledge to turn down donations from Big Tech firms. #The Flashback: CLICK HERE to find out what happened on "This Day in History." Book Review | HIS INNOCENT SECRETARY | Dee James. I have no other reason, except I was browsing through some recommendation on Amazon Kindle app and this one was short, only 92 pages. Alright, let’s get down to this review. Book Details. Title: His Innocent Secretary. Length: 92 pages. Published: 11 July, 2017. Price: 99 (Free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers) Link to buy from Amazon: Amazon.in. Book Description. Simple, straight, fun-filled story of a too-serious businessman and a fun-loving woman. Their chemistry was hot and tangible. Enjoyable read. The dashing CEO and his ever-efficient assistant. Why does he feel an uncanny attraction to her suddenly, when both of them least expect it? Will he find out her secret? Will she be able to get away with her deception? Ashwin, a thirty-year old CEO, with a ruthless demeanor, falls for his petite, sinful-looking secretary. Is she as innocent as she looks? Or, is she hiding something from Ashwin? Will their love conquer over all the deceptions? Plot Summary. Ashwin Kumar is surprised and turned on by his assistant Anita’s presence. They have been working together for 2 years so this sudden change of heart (lust) makes him question his feelings even though he doesn’t hesitate to make a move on her. What follows is a very detailed and graphic illustration of how their relationship moves from one stage to other. The narrative is laced with enough drama. Review. It is predictable from the get go and the effort to create mystery doesn’t work. The entire plot was unnecessarily complicated and confusing… So much that at a point even the author got confused. Dia or Anita, Anita or Dia? I also feel that every paragraph changed POV. As in, in one paragraph we read what Dia is feeling / thinking. In next, we read about Ashwin’s feelings. I think that’s what they call ‘head hopping’. It was a thinly veiled mystery in the beginning, a contract relationship in the middle and a happily ever after in the end. If it wasn’t for the initial and seemingly forced mystery slash confusion of identical twins, I would have liked it better.