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Harry E. Claiborne

Harry Eugene Claiborne (July 2, 1917 – January 19, 2004) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada from 1978 until his impeachment and removal in 1986. Appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, Claiborne was only the fifth person in United States history to be removed from office through impeachment by the United States Congress and the first since Halsted Ritter in 1936.

Claiborne was born in 1917 in McRae, Arkansas. He attended Ouachita Baptist University and Cumberland School of Law where he received a Bachelor of Laws before serving in the United States Army during World War II. After the war he settled in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he established himself as a flamboyant and well-known defense attorney representing many prominent people with ties to Las Vegas, including entertainers like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Judy Garland, and Carol Burnett, and mobsters like Bugsy Siegel, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, Joe Conforte, and Benny Binion.

Claiborne served one term as a Democratic state assemblyman and ran unsuccessfully against Howard Cannon in the 1964 Democratic primary for the United States Senate in Nevada. The two remained friends, however, and Cannon later recommended Claiborne to President Carter for an open federal district court judicial seat in 1978. He rose to Chief Judge of the United States district court in Nevada and held that position from 1980 to 1986.

Claiborne was convicted in 1984 of tax evasion and served 17 months of a two-year prison sentence before his release in 1987. In 1986 the United States House of Representatives impeached him and the United States Senate convicted him and removed him from office. His impeachment proceedings set a controversial new precedent of using a special twelve-member committee to collect and hear evidence, rather than the full Senate. He maintained that the Justice Department had a vendetta against him and improperly obtained the false testimony of brothel owner Joe Conforte, one of Claiborne's former clients.

Claiborne was allowed to begin practicing law again in Nevada in 1987 in a decision by the Nevada Supreme Court that implicitly questioned the federal prosecution. In 2004, he killed himself with a self-inflicted gunshot wound following health battles with cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's disease.

Early life and education
Claiborne was born on July 2, 1917, in McRae, Arkansas. His father was Arthur Smith Claiborne Jr., a cotton farmer, and his mother was Minnie King Claiborne, a schoolteacher in Little Rock, Arkansas. According to Harry, the Ku Klux Klan's grand wizard once criticized Harry's father, Arthur, for being the only white farmer in the region who was not a member of the organization. Arthur responded, "I won't join any organization whose members need to wear hoods over their faces." After later saving an immigrant farmer from a lynching, Arthur knew the KKK would return for retribution and waited at the immigrant's farm with a shotgun. When the KKK arrived, one of their members approached a barn with a lit torch, but Arthur fired a round of buckshot into him and knocked him from his horse. According to Harry, "Never again was a man lynched by the KKK in his community because they knew they would have to answer to [Arthur] Claiborne." The event had a profound impact on Harry's worldview.

Growing up in McRae, Claiborne gained a reputation for his speaking ability. He would often accompany his grandfather to view court proceedings at the White County Courthouse in nearby Searcy, Arkansas.

Claiborne attended Ouachita Baptist University. He was determined to attend law school at Louisiana State University so he hitchhiked to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, seeking admission. At the time one only needed two years of college for admittance to law school. After he was refused admission, Claiborne hitchhiked back home to Arkansas and caught a ride with a salesman named Schneider, who told Claiborne that he was childhood friends with Judge Albert B. Neil, the chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Mr. Schneider gave Claiborne a letter of introduction, and after visiting Neil in person, Claiborne was granted admission to Cumberland School of Law, then part of Cumberland University in Tennessee. He graduated from Cumberland with a Bachelor of Laws in June 1941 and returned to Arkansas, where he was a clerk in the Coulter Law Firm of Little Rock (Pulaski County).

Pre-judicial career
In 1942 during World War II, Claiborne was admitted to practice in his home state of Arkansas, but since the war had just begun, he enlisted in the United States Army and was sent to the Santa Ana Army Air Base. He served in the military police force. He would later say that he was inspired by his father's stand against the Ku Klux Klan and so refused to go along with the internment of Japanese Americans in camps, and was punished for doing so. Whatever happened, by 1943, Claiborne was promoted to warrant officer and transferred to what is now Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas, Nevada. His job was to investigate AWOL (absent without leave) incidents. Later, he guarded prisoners and supervised the military police who patrolled downtown Las Vegas. He was briefly stationed in New Mexico and then Massachusetts.

Claiborne was issued a train ticket home to Arkansas in 1945, but he instead opted to go to Las Vegas. Within a day of arriving, he secured a job as a patrolman for the Las Vegas Police Department. By 1947, he was admitted to the Nevada state bar and was working in the Clark County District Attorney's office. He was later the chief deputy district attorney for Clark County (1946–1948) and served as a state assemblyman in 1948. That same year he also served as city attorney for North Las Vegas.

After entering private practice Claiborne quickly became a well-known defense attorney in Las Vegas. Claiborne not only represented many police officers in legal matters without charge, but helped establish the police protective association in Las Vegas and was instrumental in securing the passage of legislation providing for civil service status for policemen and firemen by the Nevada legislature. He was considered one of Nevada's top defense lawyers, representing many prominent people with ties to Las Vegas. Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin hired him for casino licensing matters. Judy Garland, Carol Burnett, and one of Errol Flynn's wives came to him for divorces. He represented several mobsters like Bugsy Siegel and Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal. He also represented Giuseppe "Joe" Conforte, the owner of the Mustang Ranch brothel, and Benny Binion, owner of the Horseshoe Casino. All his clients, whoever they were, were advised not to fill out financial net worth statements when applying for gaming licenses; Claiborne said these could be used as evidence in possible income tax evasion prosecutions by the IRS. He said he personally would never fill one out. Claiborne was a flamboyant attorney who would frighten other lawyers by carrying in large stacks of papers that he passed off as his evidence in the case, but in reality the papers in the folders often were blank. In 1974 and 1975 Claiborne served as a special assistant to the United States Senate Committee on Rules and Administration during the historic hearings on Nelson Rockefeller's nomination to the vice-presidency.

1964 United States Senate campaign
In 1964, Claiborne launched a "quixotic, albeit short-lived, campaign for Senate at the last minute on July 15." His campaign in the Democratic primary for the United States Senate was against his friend, incumbent Senator Howard Cannon. Years later Claiborne indicated he was recruited to run by party activists concerned that Cannon's ties to Bobby Baker, the Senate secretary who was then at the center of a financial scandal, would cause the party to lose the seat. Two others entered the primary as well – Las Vegas civil rights activist James McMillan and Sparks City Councilman Bill Galt. However, Claiborne was seen as a bigger threat to Cannon due to Claiborne's high-profile in Las Vegas and his "man-on-the-street appeal" that the other contenders could not match. Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jude Wanniski wrote that Claiborne "seems forceful, animated and determined – even if less organized. He bills himself as a fighter and he sounds that way. He mispronounces words here and there, and, for a lawyer, mangles the English language to an unbelievable extent. But it's all masculine and vigorous."

Nevertheless, Claiborne's primary campaign "soon deteriorated into a piecemeal, uncoordinated exercise that almost all political analysts and journalists described as hopeless." Cannon ultimately won the nomination and received 59% of the vote. Claiborne placed third, receiving 10,807 votes compared to Galt's 12,054 votes. On primary election night, Claiborne rushed to Cannon's campaign headquarters to congratulate him and pledge support in the general election, proclaiming, "Howard Cannon is a fine man. I know he can serve us better than his opponent." Nearly forty years later, Claiborne noted, "I misjudged the Baker factor. I thought it would defeat Howard."

Federal judicial service
On July 25, 1978, Claiborne was nominated by President Jimmy Carter to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Nevada vacated by Judge Bruce R. Thompson, on the recommendation of Claiborne's former opponent, Senator Howard Cannon. During the appointment process, on August 8, 1978, a hearing was held before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary concerning his qualifications and background. At the start of that hearing, the acting chairman, Senator Dennis DeConcini, stated for the record that he had been advised that a "substantial majority" of the Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary of the American Bar Association was of the opinion that Claiborne was "well qualified" for appointment to the federal bench; a minority of the Bar Association's committee found him not qualified on the sole ground that Claiborne was, at that time, sixty-one years of age. Although not part of any official Senate proceedings, other sources note that Claiborne was unique as a federal judge, given that most federal judges had experience as Assistant United States Attorneys. He also maintained a close friendship with former client Benny Binion, a casino owner and convicted murderer; the two men frequently ate lunch together. Moreover, Claiborne was known for cashing large checks at Las Vegas casinos and had a "reputation for liking whiskey and flashy women." Claiborne was confirmed by the United States Senate on August 11, 1978, received his commission the same day, and was sworn in on September 1, 1978. He served as Chief Judge from 1980 to 1986.

Allegations of impropriety
In April 1977, Joe Conforte – one of Claiborne's former clients who owned a well-known Storey County, Nevada, brothel called Mustang Ranch – was arrested on 10 counts of income tax evasion and faced a minimum five years in prison and $10,000 fine. He appealed his conviction but fled the country in 1980 when he lost the appeal. Just before fleeing in December 1980, Conforte contacted a prosecutor and offered to become a federal witness against officials he said he had bribed. The most prominent name on Mr. Conforte's list was Harry Claiborne. Conforte claimed he paid Claiborne $85,000 in bribes to give to federal appeals judges to reverse his tax conviction and quash the subpoenas of two prostitutes in a federal investigation into voter fraud.

Joseph Yablonsky, who headed the Las Vegas FBI office from 1980 to 1983, offered Conforte millions of dollars in tax breaks for his testimony against Claiborne. Gerald Swanson, who served alongside Yablonsky as director of the Internal Revenue Service in Nevada, could not verify the allegations and therefore refused to support a grand jury probe based on Conforte's testimony. Since Yablonsky needed Swanson's help with tax breaks for Conforte, he targeted him in a phony sting to see if he would accept bribes to reduce Conforte's tax bill. Swanson did not take the bait and the sting was aborted with no charges, but Swanson was nevertheless placed on administrative leave in 1982 and later transferred to Dallas, where he became an assistant regional commissioner.

With Swanson neutralized, Yablonsky was able in 1983 to get the help of the IRS in returning Conforte to the United States in exchange for testimony against Claiborne. A federal grand jury heard testimony against Claiborne in Portland and Reno, where the Conforte bribes allegedly took place, before indicting Claiborne on bribery, fraud, and tax evasion on December 8, 1983. In April 1984, however, the jury deadlocked and a mistrial was declared, primarily because Conforte's bribery testimony did not hold up in court. Trial evidence showed that Conforte could not have been in Nevada to make one of the bribes because he was in New York renewing a passport while appealing his tax conviction. According to Swanson, "Conforte perjured himself consistently at the trial. His testimony was fabricated. I don't think there were any bribes at all. Conforte constructed the testimony to suit Yablonsky's needs."

At Claiborne's second trial in July 1984, prosecutors dismissed the bribery charges and proceeded only with the tax charges, which did not involve Conforte. Claiborne was ultimately convicted the next month for failing to report more than $107,000 on his 1979 and 1980 federal income tax returns, money he earned as a lawyer before his appointment by President Carter in 1978. Prosecutors alleged that the judge had hidden thousands of dollars in attorneys fees from the IRS after he was appointed to the federal bench in 1978. On August 10, 1984, Claiborne was found guilty in the U.S. District Court of Nevada for tax evasion, fined $10,000, and sentenced to two years in prison. He became the first federal judge ever convicted of crimes while on the bench. On March 16, 1986, Claiborne began serving his prison sentence in a federal prison at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. He was there for 17 months until October 1987.

Many lawyers and judges in the Nevada legal community regarded it as a case of selective prosecution. Swanson said that had Conforte not been brought in to testify against Claiborne and give him a bad name, the IRS would have resolved the judge's tax problems through routine civil proceedings. Claiborne long maintained he was too busy on the bench to pay close attention to his tax return, noting he never even looked at the document until his accountant brought it to him. "I asked how much I owed, and I wrote a check." Supporter Nevada State District Judge Michael Cherry further alleged in 2004, "He was very, very fair to criminal defendants to his detriment. I think that is why the government was so interested in prosecuting him and knocking him off the bench." That the money was owed, but not paid, was generally conceded.

Impeachment and removal
When Claiborne entered prison on March 16, 1986, for tax evasion, he intended to return to the bench two years later and therefore did not resign his judiciary post. As a result, he continued to receive his salary of $78,700 a year. This brought considerable controversy and pressure on some in Congress to remove him. However, the United States Constitution allowed only one method for removing a federal judge – impeachment.

Impeachment articles
On May 22, 1986, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R, WI) called for impeachment. On June 3, 1986, Rep. Peter Rodino (D, NJ) introduced H.Res 461 calling for impeachment of high crimes and misdemeanors. The resolution was referred to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties and the Administration of Justice. The subcommittee approved the impeachment articles on June 24, 1986.

"Article 1 – Claiborne willfully and knowingly filed a United States Individual Income Tax Return in 1979 which failed to report substantial income in addition to that stated on the return, making Claiborne guilty of misbehavior and a high crime and misdemeanor.

Article 2 – Claiborne willfully and knowingly filed a United States Individual Income Tax Return in 1980 which failed to report substantial income in addition to that stated on the return, making Claiborne guilty of misbehavior and a high crime and misdemeanor.

Article 3 – Claiborne was found guilty by a twelve-person jury in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada of filing a false income tax return for the calendar years 1979 and 1980, and a sentence of two years imprisonment for each violation was imposed, to be served concurrently, together with a fine of $5000 for each violation, making Claiborne guilty of misbehavior and high crimes.

Article 4 – Claiborne willfully and knowingly falsified his income on his Federal tax returns for 1979 and 1980, betrayed the trust of the people of the United States, and reduced confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary, thereby bringing disrepute on the Federal courts and the administration of justice by the courts, making Claiborne guilty of misbehavior and misdemeanors and, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial and removal from offices."

The subcommittee version of Article IV also charged that Claiborne had violated his oath of office. But several members, particularly Bruce Morrison, D-Conn., and Michael DeWine, R-Ohio, opposed this language. Morrison argued the entire article was unnecessary and preferred to rely on only the first three articles to make clear that conviction of a felony was enough to warrant removing a judge from office. However, Robert Kastenmeier, D-Wis., chairman of the U.S. House Courts Subcommittee, argued strongly for inclusion of the article, saying it alleged conduct that was an impeachable offense and was premised on the fact that Claiborne had violated the canons of judicial ethics.

Ultimately the subcommittee agreed to a DeWine amendment striking language referring to the oath of office and adding language asserting that Claiborne had "betrayed the trust of the people of the United States." The article was subsequently approved and adopted by the subcommittee on June 24, 1986. In drafting the impeachment articles, the Judiciary Committee tried to stick closely to the jury findings on tax evasion and to the conviction itself. Committee members wanted to avoid general charges that could give Goodman an opening for going beyond the findings of the Nevada jury.

Moving for impeachment
During a two-hour presentation on June 19, 1986, to Kastenmeier's subcommittee before the panel drew up articles of impeachment, future Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, Claiborne's principal lawyer, repeated his allegations that Claiborne's trial was tainted by government misconduct. But members indicated these assertions were irrelevant. Kastenmeier noted the allegations did not change the facts — that Claiborne was found by a Nevada jury to have filed false income tax returns in 1979 and 1980.

Having passed the subcommittee, the matter moved on to be considered by the United States House Committee on the Judiciary, which had last considered an impeachment in 1974, when it recommended removing President Richard Nixon from office (Nixon resigned before a House vote). Judiciary Chairman Peter Rodino, Jr., D-N.J., who presided over those Nixon proceedings, told colleagues on June 26, 1986, that judges "simply cannot act in a way that violates the public trust and undermines the integrity of the judicial office. Once public confidence in the courts erodes, our tripartite system of government fails."

Whether or not tax fraud rose to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors," or whether a convicted felon could be allowed to remain on the federal bench, were not questions discussed at great length. After only a few hours of debate, the House Judiciary Committee reported the articles of impeachment.

Impeachment vote
On July 22, 1986, the United States House of Representatives adopted H Res 461, voting to impeach Claiborne on a 406-0 roll call. As a unanimous vote. Claiborne's fellow Nevadans, Reps. Harry Reid, a Democrat, and Barbara Vucanovich, a Republican, also voted for impeachment.

Claiborne became the 14th federal official to be impeached by the U.S. House and the first of only three federal officials to be impeached on a unanimous roll-call vote, the others were Thomas Porteous and Walter Nixon. While his impeachment was historic, the debate and final action on July 22 was anticlimactic. No one really doubted that Claiborne would be impeached or that it would be unanimous. On August 6, 1986, the U.S. House presented articles of impeachment to the U.S. Senate.

Hamilton Fish IV, R-N.Y., the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, expressed his position saying, "Judge Claiborne is more than a mere embarrassment. He is a disgrace — an affront — to the judicial office and the judicial branch he was appointed to serve." Judiciary Chairman Rodino spoke of safeguarding the judicial system, noting, "If we fail to act, the confidence of the people in that system will be gravely jeopardized." Kastenmeier added that the House had "a responsibility to the public. The purpose of impeachment is not to punish the individual but to protect the institution."

Following the impeachment vote, the House selected nine Judiciary Committee members, led by Rodino, to manage, or try, the case against Claiborne in the Senate. The chief House prosecutor was William J. Hughes, D-N.J., chairman of the Crime Subcommittee and a lawyer who served for more than 10 years as a New Jersey prosecutor. The other House managers were Kastenmeier; Romano Mazzoli, D-Ky.; Dan Glickman, D-Kan.; Fish; Henry Hyde, R-Ill.; Thomas Kindness, R-Ohio; and DeWine.

Senate proceedings
When the U.S. House formally presented the Senate with the four articles of impeachment against Claiborne on August 6, 1986, it set the stage for the first U.S. Senate impeachment trial in fifty years. House Judiciary Chairman, Rep. Rodino, was joined by eight other House managers and read each of the articles "to an unusually somber Senate. About 40 senators were in their seats listening." Vice President George Bush presided over a ceremony where members of the Senate took a special oath for the impeachment trial. The only one absent was Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who was ill.

Senate procedures
On July 25, 1986, the Senate Rules Committee met to draft rules for impeachment trial and on August 12, 1986, the Senate Rules Committee approved revisions of Senate impeachment rules. On August 14, 1986, the Senate established procedures for the impeachment trial, including approving S. Res. 481 providing for the use of trial committee to hear evidence. Rather than convening the entire Senate into a High Court of Impeachment, the Senate agreed that evidence in the Claiborne impeachment trial would be heard, first, by a 12-member panel created for that purpose.

Acting upon a Senate rule adopted in 1935, but never used, the Senate Impeachment Trial Committee examined evidence and heard testimony before reporting its findings to the full Senate. All previous impeachment trials had been conducted before the full Senate. The Senate ultimately decided to use the special committee because Senate leadership did not believe there was enough time for the full Senate to hear all the testimony and wanted to avoid postponing the trial to a lame-duck session or until the next Congress.

Under Senate impeachment rules, the committee could gather evidence, summon witnesses, hear testimony, and present a report to the full Senate. However, the committee could not make a recommendation on whether to convict the impeached official. All senators would then have the opportunity to review the evidence before the chamber voted to convict or acquit. The Senate's use of a committee was controversial and some feared it gave Claiborne a basis on which to criticize the proceedings. Others defended the procedure and argued the Senate was not bound by federal courts traditions and standards.

The committee was made up of six Republicans named by Majority Leader Bob Dole and six Democrats named by Minority Leader Robert Byrd. All were lawyers. The Republicans were Orrin Hatch (Utah), Charles Mathias (Maryland), Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), Larry Pressler (South Dakota), Warren Rudman (New Hampshire), and John Warner (Virginia). Senators Hatch, Mathias, and McConnell were members of the Judiciary Committee. Rudman was a former state attorney general.

The Democrats were Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico), Dennis DeConcini (Arizona), Al Gore (Tennessee), Howell Heflin (Alabama), David Pryor (Arkansas), and Paul Sarbanes (Maryland). Heflin was a former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Bingaman was a former state attorney general, and Sarbanes had served on the House Judiciary Committee in 1974, during the impeachment process against Nixon (Nixon resigned before the House could vote to either article of impeachment).

Special senate committee
On September 15, 1986, the Senate Impeachment Trial Committee began seven days of hearings before television cameras in the Senate Caucus Room in the Russell Senate Office Building, the same room used by the special Watergate committee in 1973 for the investigation of President Nixon. Although Nixon's Watergate hearings were in the legislative tradition, the Claiborne hearings resembled more of a judicial proceeding. The House managers, acting as prosecutors, were on one side of the room, and on the other side was Claiborne, escorted by federal marshals and his lawyers. Claiborne's primary lawyer was future Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman.

The special senate committee was chaired by Sen. Charles Mathias, who tried to follow the rules of evidence and procedures used in a courtroom trial. For the first couple of days senators submitted their questions to Sen. Mathias and he put them to the witnesses. But on September 17, 1986, the full Senate quickly adopted a rule permitting each senator to ask their own questions. After seven days of testimony, on September 23, 1986, the committee finished gathering. Nearly two of the seven days were devoted to questioning Claiborne. On September 30, 1986, the Trial Committee presented its report to the Senate.

Claiborne's defense
Former Sen. Howard Cannon, D-Nev., who had helped convince President Carter to appoint Claiborne in 1978 and who was advising Goodman during the impeachment action, said on July 24, 1986, that Claiborne wanted to use the Senate trial to publicize the misconduct charges. "His objective is to try this matter of prosecutorial and government misconduct. He wants the opportunity to present that full-blown someplace. The only place, obviously, is before the Senate."

Claiborne told the senate panel he had been "chased" from the bench by ambitious federal agents and that he had been wrongly convicted for willfully filing false income tax returns. "They have been pursuing me like a pack of wolves would pursue a sick caribou. I know what they have done to my family. I know what they have done to my life. I am innocent. I don't feel innocent merely. I am innocent." Although he acknowledged his 1979 and 1980 tax returns under-reported income, he blamed his tax preparers for the "brutal errors" and said he was only guilty of "neglecting my personal affairs terribly."

During the proceedings, senators frequently asked Claiborne how his taxes were prepared and how much he knew about tax law, noting that he ruled as a judge in tax cases. Sen. Warner and Nicholas Chabraja, special House counsel for the Claiborne trial, read many of Claiborne's opinions involving tax cases and indicated skepticism of Claiborne's claims that he did not know much about tax law. But Claiborne noted when he was in private practice, he never handled tax cases and never filled out his own returns. He also countered that although some of the cases he presided over as a judge may have had tax issues, they generally rested on other legal principles.

Claiborne's 1979 tax return prepared by his accountant Joseph Wright indicated that his legal fee income for the year was $41,073.93, but the tax return only reported income of $22,332.87 from legal fees. Claiborne insisted that on April 11, 1980, he directed his secretary, Judy Ahlstrom, to send a letter to Wright correcting his fee income. Ahlstrom confirmed that she dropped the letter off at Wright's office. However, Wright and his wife, Connie, who helped manage the office, testified they never got the letter. Claiborne alleged he remembered seeing it on Wright's desk. To bolster the point Claiborne's lawyer, Oscar Goodman, produced a surprise witness, Ellen Arthur, who said in an affidavit submitted on September 23, 1986, that while she was working for Wright she received an envelope from Ahlstrom containing tax papers from Claiborne. However, Arthur's affidavit did not say that she opened the envelope nor that she saw what was in it.

For his 1980 tax returns, Claiborne stopped using Wright (whom he had used for more than 30 years) and switched to a new tax preparer named Jerry Watson, owner of Creative Tax and Business Planning, who completed the returns in pencil. Claiborne admitted he had "an impression" something was wrong with his 1980 return, but claimed he did not really look at it until he was indicted in 1983. He did not find any issues with Watson reducing the taxable income from the $725,000 sale of his house in 1980, nor was he surprised to see that he would get a refund of $20,927. Claiborne estimated he would still owe the government $25,000 for 1980 and he sent a check for that amount when he applied for an extension to file his 1980 return. The $25,000 was returned along with the $20,927 refund.

Senator Larry Pressler and several other senators questioned Claiborne about why he started cashing checks at Las Vegas casinos, especially checks as large as $37,000 and $42,000, and questioned that amount of cash could fit into pockets. Claiborne responded that cashing checks at casinos was a common practice in Las Vegas and that he did it because he needed cash for repairs on his new home. He denied that he used the money for gambling or carousing, noting, "I think I'm about as colorful and flamboyant as a cold mashed potato sandwich."

A dramatic exchange occurred on September 22, 1986, when Chabraja sought to find a motive for Claiborne's underreporting of taxes in 1980. After Chabraja suggested it was greed, Claiborne quickly responded that there was nothing to indicate in "my whole professional life or my personal life that I have been greedy. I will tell you sir, your remark wounds me and I am sorry for that. Because I think you are a very fine lawyer, and it is regrettable that you would engage in such conduct, particularly in view of the fact that I have been a good judge." When Sen. Mitch McConnell asked Claiborne why he should not be removed from office, Claiborne responded, "The biggest danger I can see to the federal court is if ever there be created a buddy relationship between the federal judiciary and the executive branch."

Trial and conviction
For Claiborne's Senate trial, the Senate was arranged to resemble a courtroom with one side featuring a table with Claiborne and his lawyers, and the other side featuring the nine House managers and their special counsel, Chabraja. A speaker's stand was between the tables for each side to make arguments.

On October 7, 1986, sitting as a Court of Impeachment, the Senate heard closing arguments, including an argument by defense that the use of a trial committee was unconstitutional. Claiborne was eager to present the witnesses that could have corroborated his defense and he and his attorneys argued that by using a special committee, the Senate had denied Claiborne his constitutional right to a full trial before the entire Senate. But both a federal district judge and an appeals court panel in Washington, D.C., determined they lacked authority to adjudicate an impeachment trial. Two hours before the final vote, Chief Justice William Rehnquist denied Claiborne's request for a stay.

The Senators were close to a recess and were therefore in no mood to extend the trial hearings further. On October 8, 1986, then-Majority Leader Bob Dole moved to prevent Claiborne from presenting witnesses and instead call for a separate congressional investigation into those alleged abuses. The Senate agreed by a vote of 61–32. However, the separate probe never took place.

On October 9, 1986, the United States Senate voted on whether to convict Claiborne on all four articles of impeachment. During a typical senate vote, senators answer "aye" or "no," but during the conviction hearings senators were told to stand and say "guilty," "not guilty," or "present." Senate President Pro Tempore Strom Thurmond put the question before each roll call: "Senators, how say you: Is the respondent, Harry E. Claiborne, guilty or not guilty?" Even John Stennis, who had lost a leg to cancer two years earlier, pulled himself to a standing position each time his name was called.

The vote on the third article of impeachment held particular significance for the history of impeachment trials. Article 3 essentially stated that Claiborne's conviction by a jury trial in the district court proved that he was guilty of "misbehavior" and "high crimes." With a vote of 46 to 17 (35 voted "present"), Article 3 was the only article not to achieve the required two-thirds majority for conviction. In voting down this article, senators expressed concern that adoption might set a troublesome precedent: by declaring that a court conviction was automatic grounds for conviction in an impeachment trial, the reverse situation – an acquittal in a court trial – might require an automatic acquittal in an impeachment trial.

Impeachment legacy
The historical importance of the Claiborne case came not in the debate over his guilt or innocence, which had been decided in a court of law, but in the procedural precedents set in the impeachment trial, particularly in the first use of the Senate trial committee authorised in 1935.

After the conviction, citing this use of a Senate trial committee instead of the entire Senate, Oscar Goodman said, "Harry Claiborne is no longer the fight. The fight is whether the Constitution is worth the paper it's written on. It is a fragile document. Today it was bruised if not broken." Goodman also went on to accuse several Senators of not properly reviewing the committee transcripts.

Life after impeachment
Claiborne was allowed to begin practicing law again in Nevada in 1987, in a decision by the Nevada Supreme Court that implicitly questioned the federal prosecution. His attorney was future Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman. Despite his tax conviction and removal from the bench, Claiborne remained respected in the Las Vegas legal community.

Claiborne was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1990 and it later spread to his groin and spine. He had a heart attack in 1991. He treated his cancer with a combination of radiation and herbs he took three times daily. By 2003, the cancer returned to his liver, he was in considerable pain, and he had progressing Alzheimer's disease. On January 19, 2004, he killed himself in Las Vegas apparently due to his health battles. His wife, Norma Ries, said they and their 22-year-old grandson, Aaron, were in the house watching American Idol "and laughing about the people who couldn't sing. Harry said his back was hurting and he wanted to go into the den to sit down. Two minutes later my grandson and I heard a gunshot. He was in so much pain, but didn't want to go to the hospital. He was in the hospital in June, and he told me he never wanted to go back there again."

Personal life
Harry Claiborne was married four times. He first married Barbara Redfield and they had three children. Claiborne later married (2nd) Lee McGuire, (3rd) Lynn O'Day, and was married for 27 years to Norma Ries.

title: Harry E. Claiborne


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Rollerball (2002 film)

Rollerball is a 2002 science fiction sports film directed by John McTiernan. A remake of the 1975 film of the same name, based on William Harrison's short story Roller Ball Murder, the film stars Chris Klein, Jean Reno, LL Cool J, Rebecca Romijn and Naveen Andrews. Unlike the previous film, it has a much greater focus on action, with more muted social and political overtones than the original, and takes place in the mid-2000s rather than in a future dystopian society.

Rollerball was released on February 8, 2002. Upon its release, the film was critically panned, receiving criticism for the lack of the original's social critique, and was a box-office bomb, grossing $25.9 million against a production budget of $70 million.

Plot
In 2005, the new sport of Rollerball, a violent extension of roller derby involving motorcycles and a metal ball, becomes popular in many countries. Marcus Ridley invites the talented sports fanatic Jonathan Cross to join him playing for the Zhambel Horsemen in Kazakhstan. Marcus refuses, hoping to try out for the NHL in some months. However, after he recklessly skates through his hometown, the police start looking for Jonathan, who is forced to accept Marcus's offer to escape them. The highly paid Marcus and Jonathan are teamed with low-paid locals, who are often severely injured in the game.

In the beginning, Jonathan, the team's star player and the poster child of promoter Alexi Petrovich, is enamored by the high-octane sport, the popularity, sports cars, and his female teammate Aurora. The two keep their relationship a secret and refuse to put a stop to rumors that Aurora is a lesbian. During one game, one of their teammates is killed by an opponent, something that is prone to happen in a match. However, the team quickly discovers that that murder might have been planned before the game, as one of the straps of the victim's helmet had been cut and the cameras filming the event seemed ready for the death to happen. Jonathan and Ridley eventually discover that Alexi and his assistant, Sanjay, have a vested interest in keeping the game as popular as possible, through planned gory "accidents" and ensuring that Jonathan and Ridley cannot quit the team and remain high-profile stars. Both the deaths and Jonathan's talent seem to generate upticks in ratings.

Jonathan and Ridley pretend to know nothing about this situation, wanting to keep their current lifestyle, but after an "accident" almost kills Aurora, the two friends decide that they need to flee the country to save their lives. Their teammates, including Aurora, cannot join them, though, as they have families there. Jonathan and Marcus are followed by Alexi and several bodyguards, who attack the two before they can reach the Russian border. Jonathan is injured and Ridley has to leave him behind. Alexi and his men capture Jonathan and kill Ridley before the latter can cross the border.

Jonathan says that he will keep working for Alexi if Aurora is traded to another team, wanting to keep her away from danger. Alexi complies, secretly transferring Aurora to the opposing team for the next match. Knowing he cannot trust Jonathan anymore, Alexi tries to stage a public execution of him by removing all the rules from the upcoming Rollerball match. The match becomes more violent than ever before, and many players die. However, Jonathan, with the help of players from both teams, starts a revolution, causing the fans to see the sport for what it really is. In a fit of rage, he kills Alexi and Sanjay before reuniting with Aurora.

Cast

 * Chris Klein as Jonathan Cross
 * Jean Reno as Alexi Petrovich
 * LL Cool J as Marcus Ridley
 * Rebecca Romijn as Aurora "The Black Widow"
 * Naveen Andrews as Sanjay
 * Mike Dopud as Michael "The Assassin" Uglich
 * Andrew Bryniarski as Halloran
 * Kata Dobó as Katya Dobolakova
 * Lucia Rijker as Lucia Ryjker
 * Oleg Taktarov as Oleg "Denny" Denekin
 * Paul Heyman as Sports Announcer
 * Janet Wright as Coach Olga

The film features cameo appearances by Pink, Slipknot, and Shane McMahon.

Production
Although the first draft of the script was considered by many to be very good and even superior to the original film, director John McTiernan didn't like it because it focused more on social commentary, while he thought that the audience would like to see more of the Rollerball scenes. He had the original script completely re-written several times and made sure that it focused more on WWE-like showmanship, including crazy costumes and stunts, while changing the film's storyline from a modern-day success story to a classic underdog story and changing the name of the main character in the film from Jonathan E. to Jonathan Cross.

The movie was filmed in about 15 weeks, between July 24 and November 2000. McTiernan's first cut, which was over two hours long, was test screened in Las Vegas around April or May 2001, and got a very negative response from test audiences. MGM pushed the release date from May to July 13, 2001 to test the movie again, hoping that they would find the right audience for it. Harry Knowles from Ain't it Cool News was invited by McTiernan for a test screening of the film in Long Island sometime after the first test screening, and in his review of McTiernan's original cut, Knowles said that the movie was bad, but was at least an unapologetic hard-R film with much nudity and some brutal violence in Rollerball scenes, but even as a workprint it was obvious how poorly the action scenes were edited, and the story was bad. "The 'Rollerball' edit I saw was one of the worst films I'd seen in my life. There was jeering in the theater," Knowles said. Knowles was also one of the people who read the original first draft of the script (the one that McTiernan rejected) and he said that it was an amazing script which solved all the problems of the original film.

Following the negative test screenings, MGM ordered massive re-shoots and re-edits to be done on the film in the middle of 2001. Shortly after the test screenings, MGM appointed a new head of marketing and distribution, Robert Levin, who convinced McTiernan to let go of the summer release date. This would give the studio more time to devise a better marketing strategy and allow McTiernan to do re-shoots and to re-edit the film for a PG-13 rating, in an attempt by the studio to get a wider audience to see the film. The release date was then pushed back again from August all the way to February 2002, due to all the post production work causing delays. McTiernan shot two weeks of additional footage in late 2001 to clarify certain scenes, especially the film's ending, and also cut down the violence and all the nudity.

On orders from the studio, around 30 minutes were cut out of the original rough cut of the film and the entire ending was re-shot and changed. Some of the cuts were made because MGM thought the movie was "too Asian". In the original ending, Petrovich gets killed by Sanjay and Jonathan and Aurora fly back to the US, during which Jonathan says that he will continue playing the Rollerball game in the US, and how he is now part owner of the game.

Some of the scenes that were cut for the PG-13 rating, but were never put back even in later DVD and Blu-ray so called R rated versions of the film, include lots more blood in all the Rollerball scenes and parts like skulls getting smashed, bones getting broken, teeth flying out, a scene where Aurora is topless and walks towards Jonathan in the locker room originally didn't have a shadow over her (this was added in post production to cover her up for the PG-13 rating), their sex scene was also longer, and so was their conversation while they are lying down in a sauna. Some of the other similar edits that were done on more graphic scenes in the film include digitally replacing blood spurts with sweat.

Some of the action scenes were also longer in the original cut and/or edited differently or re-shot, such as the opening scene in San Francisco which was partially re-shot after the original version of it was considered to be too confusing due to the editing.

The original score by Brian Transeau was also removed, purportedly because it sounded "too Arabic", and was replaced with a new score by Éric Serra. Also, some of the other music was changed or removed from the first cut of the film.

Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 3% based on 119 reviews and an average rating of 2.55/10. The site's consensus reads, "Removing the social critique of the original, this updated version of Rollerball is violent, confusing, and choppy. Klein makes for a bland hero." On Metacritic the film has a score of 14 out of 100 based on reviews from 28 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B− on scale of A to F.

Time Out's Trevor Johnson described it as "a checklist shaped by a 15-year-old mallrat: thrashing metal track, skateboards, motorbikes, cracked heads and Rebecca Romijn with her top off". Chicago Sun-Times reviewer Roger Ebert called it "an incoherent mess, a jumble of footage in search of plot, meaning, rhythm and sense". The film's lead, Chris Klein, was also a subject of criticism and ridicule, being referred to as a bland hero.

Box office
The film was a box-office flop, earning a worldwide total of $25.9 million compared to a production budget of $70 million. In 2014, the Los Angeles Times listed the film as one of the most expensive box office flops of all time.

Accolades
Rebecca Romijn was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award as Worst Supporting Actress, where she lost to Madonna for her cameo in Die Another Day. At the 2002 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, the film won the awards for Worst Director (McTiernan), Worst Remake, and Worst Female Fake Accent (Romijn-Stamos). Romijn-Stamos was also nominated for Worst Actress but lost to Madonna for Swept Away.

The creator of Rollerball, science fiction author William Harrison, said, "I've never watched the 2002 incarnation of Rollerball, and have no interest in it."

Controversy
In 2013, director John McTiernan was sent to federal prison for making a false statement to an FBI investigator in February 2006 about his hiring the private investigator Anthony Pellicano to illegally wiretap Charles Roven, the producer of the film, around August 2000. McTiernan (who was released in 2014) had been in a disagreement with Roven about what type of film Rollerball should be, and had hired Pellicano to investigate Roven's intentions and actions.

Soundtrack
The score was released, but the soundtrack was not.

 * 1) "Boom" – P.O.D.
 * 2) "Told You So" – Drowning Pool
 * 3) "Ride" – Beautiful Creatures
 * 4) "Millionaire" – Rappagariya
 * 5) "I Am Hated" – Slipknot
 * 6) "Body Go" – Hardknox
 * 7) "Feel So Numb" – Rob Zombie
 * 8) "Keep Away" – Godsmack
 * 9) "Insane in the Brain" – Sen Dog
 * 10) "Flashpoint" – Fear Factory
 * 11) "When I Come Around" – Green Day
 * 12) "Crawling in the Dark" – Hoobastank
 * 13) "Time to Play" – Pillar
 * 14) "Never Gonna Stop (The Red Red Kroovy)" – Rob Zombie

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Rollerball (2002 film)


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Warner Bros. Television Studios

Warner Bros. Television Studios (operating under the name Warner Bros. Television (abbreviated as WBTV); formerly known as Warner Bros. Television Division) is an American television production and distribution studio of the Warner Bros. Television Group division of Warner Bros. (both ultimately owned by Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD)). Since 2006, it is one of the two companies that serve as television production arms of The CW (in which WBD has a 12.5% ownership stake), alongside Paramount Global's subsidiary CBS Studios; it serves as a television production arm of DC Comics productions by DC studios and distribution arm of HBO, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim.

As of 2015, it is one of the world's two largest television production companies measured by revenue and library (along with Sony Pictures Television).

As of May 2024, WBTV is producing nearly 40 scripted series for Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max, external streaming platforms, cable, and the five U.S. broadcast networks.

Beginning and saturation

The division was started on March 21, 1955, with its first head being Jack L. Warner's son-in-law William T. Orr. ABC had approached Warner Bros. initially with the idea of purchasing the studio's film library (WB eventually sold the rights to the negatives of pre-1950 films and pre-1948 cartoons and shorts to Associated Artists Productions, or a.a.p., in 1956 ). WB formally entered television production with the premiere of its self-titled anthology series Warner Bros. Presents on ABC. The one-hour weekly show featured rotating episodes of television series based on the WB films Casablanca and Kings Row, as well as an original series titled Cheyenne with Clint Walker. The first one-hour television western, Cheyenne became a big hit for the network and the studio with the added advantage of featuring promotions for upcoming Warner Bros. cinema releases in the show's last ten minutes. One such segment for Rebel Without a Cause featured Gig Young notably talking about road safety with James Dean.

With only Cheyenne being a success, WB ended the ten-minute promotions of new films and replaced Warner Bros. Presents with an anthology series titled Conflict. It was felt that "Conflict" was what the previous series lacked. Conflict showed the pilots for Maverick and 77 Sunset Strip.

The success of Cheyenne led WBTV to produce many series for ABC such as Westerns (Maverick, Lawman, Colt .45, Bronco, a spin off of Cheyenne, Sugarfoot, and The Alaskans), crime dramas (77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, Bourbon Street Beat, and Surfside 6), and other shows such as The Gallant Men and The Roaring Twenties using stock footage from WB war films and gangster films respectively. The company also produced Jack Webb's Red Nightmare starring Jack Kelly for the U.S. Department of Defense that was later shown on American television on Jack Webb's General Electric True.

All shows were made in the manner of WB's B pictures in the 1930s and 1940s; fast-paced, much stock footage from other films, stock music from the Warners music library and contracted stars working long hours for comparatively small salaries with restrictions on their career.

During the 1960 Writers Guild of America strike, WB reused many plots from its films and other television shows under the nom de plume of "W. Hermanos". This was another example of imitating Warner Bros.' B Pictures who would remake an "A" film and switch the setting. Two of the most popular stars, James Garner and Clint Walker, quit over their conditions. Garner never returned to the Warners fold during this period, instead moving forward into a major theatrical film career. Successful Warners television stars found themselves in leading roles of many of the studio's theatrical films with no increase in salary. Efrem Zimbalist Jr. was simultaneously the lead of 77 Sunset Strip briefly overlapping with a recurring role as "Dandy Jim Buckley" on Maverick, and also headlined several films until exhaustion forced the studio to give him a rest. Many other actors under contract to Warners at the time, who despite their work conditions, did see their stars rise over time, albeit for most only briefly, included Jack Kelly, Will Hutchins, Peter Brown, Ty Hardin, Wayde Preston, John Russell, Donald May, Rex Reason, Richard Long, Van Williams, Roger Smith, Mike Road, Anthony Eisley, Robert Conrad, Robert McQueeney, Dorothy Provine, Diane McBain and Connie Stevens. Edd Byrnes and Troy Donahue would become teen heartthrobs. Another contract player, Englishman Roger Moore (Maverick and The Alaskans), was growing displeased with Warner as his contract was expiring and would relocate to Europe from Hollywood, becoming an international star on television, and eventually, in theatrical films, playing James Bond among other roles. Warners also contracted established stars such as Ray Danton, Peter Breck, Jeanne Cooper and Grant Williams. These stars often appeared as guest stars, sometimes reprising their series role in another TV series.

The stars appeared in WB cinema releases with no additional salary, with some such as Zimbalist, Walker, Garner (replacing Charlton Heston in Darby's Rangers), and Danton (replacing Robert Evans in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond ) playing the lead roles; many of the stars appeared in ensemble casts in such films as The Chapman Report and Merill's Marauders. Some stars such as Connie Stevens, Edd Byrnes, Robert Conrad and Roger Smith made albums for Warner Bros. Records. One particular recording, a novelty tune titled Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb) became a big hit for Edd Byrnes and Connie Stevens (1959). The following year, Connie Stevens had her own hit, with Sixteen Reasons.

It was during this period that series, particularly Westerns like Cheyenne and Maverick, and the crime dramas like 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye and Surfside 6 featured catchy theme songs that became just as much a part of the American pop culture landscape as the shows themselves. Depending on the particular series (in this case, the Westerns), William Lava or David Buttolph would compose the music, with lyrics by Stan Jones or Paul Francis Webster, among others. For the crime shows, it was up to the songwriting team of Jerry Livingston and Mack David, who also scored the themes for the sitcom Room for One More, and The Bugs Bunny Show.

In 1960, WBTV turned its attentions to younger audiences as they brought Bugs Bunny and the other WB cartoon characters to prime time, with The Bugs Bunny Show, which featured cartoons released after July 31, 1948 (which had not been sold to Associated Artists Productions), combined with newly animated introductory material. Also, that year saw the debut of The Roaring Twenties, which was thought to be a more benign alternative to Desilu's The Untouchables. Whether or not that was actually the case, it was, in fact, much less successful.

WBTV expanded on its existing genre of Westerns and crime dramas, and in January 1962, produced its first sitcom, Room For One More. Based on the memoirs of Anna Rose, which in 1952 WB made into a movie starring Cary Grant and his then-wife Betsy Drake (the only movie that they worked together in) about a married couple with two children of their own who went on to adopt at least two more. The TV series starred Andrew Duggan and Peggy McCay as George and Anna Rose. Acting legend Mickey Rooney's son Tim, and Ahna Capri, who would continue to do episodic TV roles and feature films (arguably, her best-known movie was Enter the Dragon starring Bruce Lee) were cast as the Rose's natural children. The show only lasted for half a season. In the fall of that year, a WWII drama The Gallant Men debuted, but lasted for only one season.

WBTV exclusively produced shows for the ABC network until 1962, when GE True premiered on CBS.

In 1964, WBTV once again tried to turn a classic film comedy of its own into a sitcom, with No Time for Sergeants. Both the sitcom and the 1958 movie were based on the 1955 Broadway play, which starred Andy Griffith (TV's The United States Steel Hour also adapted the stage play for TV in 1956). The sitcom starred Sammy Jackson as Will Stockdale, a naive Georgia farm boy drafted into the military. 1965 saw the debut of F Troop, a Western spoof taking place at a U.S. Army post after the Civil War. Despite lasting only two seasons, it is still considered a classic of its type. Forrest Tucker, Larry Storch, and Ken Berry led an ensemble cast featuring military misfits, and an Indian tribe, who, among other things, forgot how to do a rain dance.

The streak of identifiable series subsided in 1963 with a halt of using stock company contract players and Jack Webb taking over WBTV and not being particularly successful. However, many series were still filmed at Warner Bros. such as F Troop and The F.B.I.

Later years

For four years, from 1967 to 1971, the company's lone output was the existing television series The F.B.I., by 1970, several of the former talent from 20th Century-Fox Television as well as former agent writers was defected to Warner Bros., such as Paul Monash, Rod Amateau, Bill Idelson and Harvey Miller, Saul Turteltaub and Bernie Orenstein, Jerry Gardner and Dee Caruso, Hal Kanter and A.J. Carothers. By 1971, the company returned to prime-time shows after producing one show for four years. One of the first shows upon returning were the NBC shows Nichols and The Jimmy Stewart Show and the CBS show The Chicago Teddy Bears. Also that year, animation studio Filmation and Warner Bros. entered a deal to produce cartoons for film and television, with its television subsidiary having global distribution rights.

In 1975, the stars of Lynda Carter, Warner Bros. and DC Comics produced the television series Wonder Woman. National was purchased by Kinney National Company in 1967 and remained the part of the company until Kinney bought Warner Bros. in 1969. Also that year, the company secured a deal with Bill Carruthers and his production company to develop its game shows and other videotaped programming.

In 1976, the company acquired The Wolper Organization, producer of Chico and the Man and Welcome Back, Kotter. In 1978, Stan Margulies, who produced Roots, signed a three-year exclusive contract with the studio. The following week, Warner had acquired contracts with big names like James Komack, Danny Arnold, the trio of Don Nicholl, Michael Ross and Bernie West (NRW) and the duo of Alan Blye and Bob Einstein to distribute programs worldwide.

In 1979, Warner Bros. Television produced the television series The Dukes of Hazzard.

In 1980, Phillip Saltzman and his Woodruff Productions company signed a deal with the studio.

In 1982, Aaron Spelling and his production company had struck a deal with the studio to distribute the shows. The pact would continue until 1988.

On March 25, 1986, Ted Turner and his Turner Broadcasting System purchased Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) from Kirk Kerkorian for $1.5 billion, and renamed MGM Entertainment Company, Inc.  Turner immediately sold MGM's United Artists subsidiary back to Kerkorian for roughly $480 million. However, Turner was unable to find financing for the rest of the deal because of concerns in the financial community over the debt-load of his companies; thus, on August 26, 1986, Turner was forced to sell MGM's production and distribution assets to UA for $300 million. The MGM lot and lab facilities were sold to Lorimar-Telepictures. Turner kept the pre-May 1986 MGM film and television library, along with the Associated Artists Productions library, and the RKO Pictures films that United Artists had previously purchased. Warner Bros. Television has produced new productions based on Turner Entertainment's properties.

On June 1, 1986, Alan Shayne has left as president of the studio after 10 years, to start out a new production company, Alan Shayne Productions, which will be affiliated in association with the studio, in order to develop four made-for-TV movies and miniseries projects, which was developed for the 1987–88 season.

Prior to the merge with Time Inc., Warner Communications acquired Lorimar-Telepictures. The acquisition completed on January 12, 1989. Lorimar Television folded into WBTV in July 1993. Telepictures later became a television production company.

In 1992, Witt/Thomas Productions signed a television contract with Warner Bros. after the previous contract with Disney was not renewed. In 1993, two Time Warner-affiliated production companies Quincy Jones Entertainment and David Salzman Entertainment had merged their companies to form Quincy Jones-David Salzman Entertainment, which was affiliated with Warner Bros. and Time Warner. Not too long after that, Lorimar Television was folded into WBTV, taking some key members with them. In 1993, Tom Arnold and Roseanne Barr via Wapello County Productions struck a deal with the studio.

In 1994, writers-producers of Friends, Kevin Bright, Martha Kauffman and David Crane, and associated with the studio since 1992 had struck its exclusive deal with the studio. In 1996, Warner Bros. Television collaborated with Universal Television to develop the series Spy Game for ABC, with Universal alumnus Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert of Renaissance Pictures, and Warner alumnus John McNamara producing the series, but it did not last long, as it only lasted one season on the air.

In 2001, Warner Bros. Television fully took over distribution of Hanna-Barbera related properties produced by Warner Bros. Animation such as Scooby-Doo, producing a steady stream of Scooby-Doo direct-to-video films and two new series, What's New, Scooby-Doo? (2002–2006) and Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! (2006–2008). In 2006, Warner Bros. Television made some of its vast library of programs available for free viewing on the Internet (through sister company AOL's IN2TV service), with Welcome Back, Kotter as its marquee offering. Some of these programs have not been seen publicly since their last syndicated release in the 1980s.

On June 11, 2012, WBTV acquired Alloy Entertainment. On June 2, 2014, Warner Bros. Television Group purchased all of Eyeworks' companies outside of the United States, rebranding as Warner Bros. International Television Production. Eyeworks USA however, will remain independent.

In 2020, Warner Bros. Television was renamed Warner Bros. Television Studios as part of WarnerMedia's restructuring of its television divisions. The Warner Bros. Television name continues to be used on-screen, as well as the company's trade name.

On November 30, 2022, WBTV head Channing Dungey announced that they were in talks with Amazon to make animated DC content for its streaming service Amazon Prime Video.

Divisions
In addition to the main Warner Bros. Television Studios label, the company also owns and operates the following production companies in the United States:

Warner Horizon Unscripted Television
Warner Horizon Unscripted Television is Warner Bros. Television Studios' alternative television, cable and streaming production unit; founded in April 2006, it originally operated as a singular label encompassing both scripted and unscripted productions. Notable series and films produced by the Warner Horizon units include The Bachelor dating show franchise, The Voice, Pretty Little Liars (and spin-offs Ravenswood and Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists), Ellen's Game of Games, Fuller House, The Masked Dancer, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, You and the first season of Pennyworth.

On August 10, 2020, Warner Bros. Television Group separated the Warner Horizon label into two standalone companies maintaining individualized production focuses:
 * Warner Horizon Scripted Television—which combined its operations with those of Warner Bros. Television through the Warner Horizon split-up —focuses on production of scripted comedic and dramatic programs for cable networks and subscription-based streaming platforms.
 * Warner Horizon Unscripted Television—which was folded into Warner Bros. Unscripted & Alternative Television under the realignment —focuses on production of reality television programs, documentaries and other alternative programming formats for broadcast and cable networks, and subscription-based streaming platforms.

Alloy Entertainment
Alloy Entertainment is a book packaging and production company under Warner Bros. Television Studios. Notable series and films produced by Alloy include The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries, Pretty Little Liars, The 100, The Sun Is Also a Star, Everything, Everything and You.

Blue Ribbon Content
Formed in 2014, Blue Ribbon Content (BRC) is Warner Bros. Television Studios' digital series production unit. The company takes its name from the "Blue Ribbon” reissues of Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes animation shorts.

Live-action BRC productions include series such as the horror-comedy Critters: A New Binge for Shudder, comedy Play It Again, Dick and horror-comedy The Pledge for CW Seed, as well as the following original films: The Banana Splits Movie and Critters Attack! for Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and Syfy, plus Good Girls Get High for AT&T's DirectTV Cinema. BRC also produces the upcoming mixed-media series BizarroTV for DC Universe, plus the animated series Deathstroke: Knights & Dragons for CW Seed.

Shed Media
Series produced by Shed Media include Who Do You Think You Are? for NBC, Criminal Confessions and Murder for Hire for Oxygen, Huda Boss for Facebook Watch, Supernanny for Lifetime, and The Real Housewives of New York City for Bravo.

Telepictures
Telepictures is an American production company. It was bought by Warner Communications in 1988 and remains a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Television Studios to this day. Programs produced by Telepictures include The Ellen DeGeneres Show, as well as Extra, Judge Mathis, The People's Court, The Real, in addition to the NBC primetime series Ellen's Game of Games and Ellen's Greatest Night of Giveaways (both produced in association with Warner Horizon Unscripted Television). Telepictures is also producing the upcoming Elizabeth Smart-led series Smart Justice for Lifetime and the new HBO Max competition series Ellen's Next Great Designer. Telepictures also formerly produced TMZ on TV, which it sold to Fox Entertainment in 2021.

Cartoon Network Studios
Cartoon Network Studios is an American production company and the main animation studio for Cartoon Network and its associated channels. It started operating in 1994 as a division of Hanna-Barbera until 2001 when the latter absorbed into Warner Bros. Animation. Located in Burbank, California, the studio primarily produces and develops animated programs and shorts for Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Cartoonito and HBO Max. The company has only produced one theatrically released film, The Powerpuff Girls Movie, distributed by its sister company, Warner Bros. Pictures; its commercial failure prompted the company to stop theatrical releases of its films, though Regular Show: The Movie was released to theaters at a limited capacity. The studio also produces live-action series for Adult Swim and formerly Cartoon Network under various pseudonyms.

Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation Inc. is an American animation studio closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters, among others. The studio is the successor to Warner Bros. Cartoons, the studio which produced Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon shorts from 1933 to 1963, and from 1967 to 1969. Warner reestablished its animation division in 1980 to produce Looney Tunes–related works, and Turner Broadcasting System (who bought MGM/UA which owned pre-1950 Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies shorts) merged with Time Warner (later called WarnerMedia) in 1996. It replaces Warner Bros. Cartoons and Warner Bros. Feature Animation; since March 2001, it also replaces Hanna-Barbera as well.

In recent years, Warner Bros. Animation has focused primarily on producing television and direct-to-video animation featuring characters Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones, Tom and Jerry, Hanna-Barbera library, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Teen Titans created by other properties owned by Warner Bros., including DC Comics, the MGM cartoon studio (via Turner Entertainment Co.) and Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Williams Street
Williams Street Productions, LLC, d/b/a Williams Street and formerly known as Ghost Planet Industries, is an American animation and live action television production studio. It is an in-house production arm of adult animated television series for Cartoon Network until 2001 and currently operates its late-night programming blocks Adult Swim and Toonami. Former Cartoon Network executives Mike Lazzo and Keith Crofford oversaw operations for the building for most of its existence. It has produced two theatrical films, the first being Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, which was not distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures due to the failure of The Powerpuff Girls Movie; the second being Mister America, which they helped fund due to their working relationship with Abso Lutely Productions; they helped produce a majority of the company’s television shows and distributed their web series through Adult Swim Streams until the branch was dismantled by Warner Bros. Discovery. In December 2019, co-founder Lazzo retired from the company, with business partner and co-founder Crofford retiring the following year. Michael Ouweleen was named president in 2020.

Warner Bros. Kids, Young Adults and Classics
Warner Bros. Kids, Young Adults and Classics (KYAC; often known as Warner Bros. Global Kids, Young Adults and Classics), formerly known as Warner Bros. Global Kids and Young Adults, was a division of Warner Bros. Entertainment. It was established on March 4, 2019, as part of a major reorganization of Warner Bros.' now-defunct parent company, WarnerMedia.

On March 4, 2019, AT&T announced a major reorganization of WarnerMedia to effectively dissolve the Turner Broadcasting System division, which involved Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Adult Swim, Turner Classic Movies, and digital media company Otter Media being transferred to Warner Bros. Entertainment. Aside from TCM and Otter – which was transferred over to WarnerMedia Entertainment on May 31, 2019, to oversee development on an upcoming over-the-top streaming service from WarnerMedia – the newly transferred properties came under a newly formed Global Kids & Young Adults division.

The division was responsible for overseeing the parent company's family, kids, animation, and young adult properties, its properties include the former Turner Broadcasting System cable television networks Cartoon Network (including the programming blocks Adult Swim, Toonami, Cartoonito, and ACME Night), Boomerang, and Turner Classic Movies; and the animation studios Warner Bros. Animation, Cartoon Network Studios and Williams Street.

On April 7, 2020, Tom Ascheim was named president of the division, now renamed Warner Bros. Global Kids, Young Adults and Classics, overseeing Cartoon Network, Boomerang and Adult Swim, and adding Turner Classic Movies to his oversight.

On May 11, 2022, Tom Ascheim exited as President of KYAC due to Warner Bros. Discovery's leadership restructuring the organization and eliminating his role. The studios were moved under Warner Bros. Television while Kathleen Finch's U.S. Networks Group assumed oversight over the linear networks, effectively dissolving the unit.

Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution
Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution (formerly Warner Bros. Television Distribution) is the television distribution and broadcast syndication arm of Warner Bros. Television Studios.

Established on January 10, 1972, the arm was originally known as Warner Bros. Television Distribution before taking on its current name in 1989 following the acquisition of Lorimar-Telepictures. In 1991, Keith Samples, who was employee of the studio left Warner Bros., of which the employment staff inherited from Lorimar, who had joined it in 1986, to start out a TV syndication company Rysher Entertainment.

In 1999, it reached a deal with NBC Enterprises to pick up the off-net syndication rights to the sitcom Will & Grace.

Australia
Warner Bros. International Television Production Australia (WBITPA) was founded in 2004 as Eyeworks Australia before being rebranded in 2014.

As Eyeworks Australia, shows produced include Celebrity Splash, Being Lara Bingle, Gangs of Oz and Territory Cops. Following the rebrand, WBITPA began producing The Bachelor Australia from its fourth season, spin-offs The Bachelorette Australia from its second season & Bachelor in Paradise, as well as First Dates, the eighth season of Who Do You Think You Are?, the sixteenth season of Dancing with the Stars and The Masked Singer Australia.

New Zealand
WBITVP New Zealand produces some of New Zealand's most successful entertainment shows including RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under, The Bachelor NZ, The Bachelorette NZ, The Block NZ, Celebrity Treasure Island, Glow Up, House of Drag and The Great Kiwi Bake Off.

Spain
The Spanish subsidiary was acquired as part of the Eyeworks takeover in 2014. Eyeworks España was renamed Warner Bros. International Television Production España in December 2015.

Shows produced by WBITVP España include Juego de juegos, based on Ellen's Game of Games; First Dates (Spanish TV series), based on the British show of the same name; Pesadilla en la cocina (España), based on ''Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares; ¿Quién quiere ser millonario? (España), based on the British Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?; and Ven a cenar conmigo, based on the British Come Dine with Me''. Along with Mediaset España and Netflix, the company also co-produced Brigada Costa del Sol.

United Kingdom
Warner Bros. Television Productions UK

Established as Shed Productions in 1998, the company was acquired by Time Warner in 2010, before being rebranded as Warner Bros. Television Productions UK in 2015.

Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe

On April 7, 2021, it was announced that Cartoon Network Studios Europe had re-branded as Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe, The Hanna-Barbera name had previously been revived on some Warner Bros. Animation series and films based on the classic franchises, including Scooby-Doo media, like The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-WrestleMania!, the 2017 reboot of Wacky Races, and Yabba-Dabba Dinosaurs. Future plans for the studio have yet to be announced, however. The first projects to be greenlit under the new name were a new series and a movie relating to The Amazing World of Gumball.

Productions
Notable shows produced and distributed by Warner Bros. Television include Wonder Woman, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Big Bang Theory, Friends, ER, Full House, Family Matters, Step by Step, Growing Pains, Everybody Loves Raymond, The West Wing, Supernatural, Two and a Half Men, ALF, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Martin, Living Single, The Drew Carey Show, Murphy Brown, The Sleepover Club, Young Sheldon, The Middle, Abbott Elementary, Ted Lasso, Riverdale, and many others.

title: Warner Bros. Television Studios


text:
Claude Fayette Bragdon

Claude Fayette Bragdon (August 1, 1866 – 1946) was an American architect, writer, and stage designer based in Rochester, New York, up to World War I, then in New York City.

The designer of Rochester’s New York Central Railroad terminal (1909–13) and Chamber of Commerce (1915–17), as well as many other public buildings and private residences, Bragdon enjoyed a national reputation as an architect working in the progressive tradition associated with Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. Along with members of the Prairie School and other regional movements, these architects developed new approaches to the planning, design, and ornamentation of buildings that embraced industrial techniques and building types while reaffirming democratic traditions threatened by the rise of urban mass society. In numerous essays and books, Bragdon argued that only an “organic architecture” based on nature could foster a democratic community in an industrial capitalist society.

Biography
Bragdon was born in Oberlin, Ohio. He was raised in Watertown, Oswego, Dansville and Rochester, New York, where his father worked as a newspaper editor. After working for architects in Rochester, New York City, and Buffalo, Bragdon went into practice in Rochester. His major buildings include the city's New York Central Railroad Station, the Rochester First Universalist Church, Bevier Memorial Building, Shingleside, and the Rochester Italian Presbyterian Church, among many others. At Oswego he designed the Oswego Yacht Club. He designed an addition to the Romanta T. Miller House in 1914.

While Bragdon's early work reflected the revival of Renaissance architecture associated with the City Beautiful, he soon became a leading participant in the arts and crafts movement, working with Harvey Ellis, Gustav Stickley, and other arts and crafts artists. Around 1900, Bragdon embraced the ideas of Louis Sullivan and began to reorient his work toward the midwestern ideal of a progressive architecture based on nature. However, his version of organic architecture reflected different social and cultural values than those of Sullivan or Bragdon's contemporary Frank Lloyd Wright. Whereas for Sullivan and Wright a building was most organic when it expressed the individual character of its creator, Bragdon saw individualism as a hindrance to the formation of a consensual democratic culture. Accordingly, he promoted regular geometry and musical proportion as ways for architects to harmonize buildings with one another and with their urban context. From 1900 until he closed his architectural practice during World War I, Bragdon applied these principles to his buildings, and he continued to use them through the 1920s in both graphic designs and the theatrical sets he created during a second career as a New York stage designer.

Bragdon was well regarded for his ink rendering talent, his many very successful designs for both residential and institutional buildings, and his inventive geometric ornament. His most important contribution to both architectural modernism and progressive reform came in 1915 with his creation of a new ornamental vocabulary he called “projective ornament.” Projective ornament was a system for generating geometric patterns that could be adapted for use in architecture, the fine and decorative arts, and graphic design. Basing ornament on mathematical patterns abstracted from nature, Bragdon created a universal form-language to replace the variety of historical and national styles, which provided designers and clients with a vocabulary for articulating differences of class, culture, gender, nationality, and religion. By showing how his repertory of patterns could be adapted to any kind of design problem, Bragdon aimed to integrate not only architecture, art, and design, but also his divided society.

Bragdon's ornament appeared in the Rochester Chamber of Commerce (1915–17), as well as in the design of magazines, posters, and books. It spread throughout the region through its use in a series of Festivals of Song and Light that Bragdon staged with community music reformers from 1915 to 1918 in Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, and New York. These nocturnal community chorus festivals incorporated ornamental lamps and decorations into massive public events that drew tens of thousands of spectator-participants. Through its role in both civic architecture and print media, projective ornament began to integrate these distinct realms into a single public sphere visually unified by geometric pattern.

In 1917, after a dispute with photography magnate George Eastman (of Eastman Kodak fame) over the design of the Rochester Chamber of Commerce Building, Bragdon's architectural practice waned. He incorporated his own design of the hypercube in the structure of the building. He moved to New York City in 1923 and became a stage designer, and remained in New York until his death in 1946. In 1925, knowing Alfred Stieglitz and having been introduced to Margaret Lefranc (Frankel), an eighteen-year-old American studying in Paris and Berlin, Bragdon took her to Stieglitz to show her art. Bragdon and Lefranc remained friends for the remainder of his life while his influences rounded out her education. In his books on architectural theory, The Beautiful Necessity (1910), Architecture and Democracy (1918), and The Frozen Fountain (1932), he advocated a theosophical approach to building design, urging an "organic" Gothic style (which he thought of as reflective of the natural order) over the "arranged" Beaux-Arts architecture of the classical revival.

He had yet another overlapping career as an author of books on spiritual topics, including Eastern religions. These books include Old Lamps for New (1925), Delphic Woman (1925), The Eternal Poles (1931), Four Dimensional Vistas (1930), and An Introduction to Yoga (1933). His autobiography More Lives Than One (1938) alludes to both his belief in reincarnation and his varied career paths.

In 1920, he helped translate and publish P.D. Ouspensky's Tertium Organum, for which he also wrote an introduction to the English translation.

Bragdon’s work fell out of favor in the 1930s as American architects and clients embraced International Style modernism. But it left an ongoing legacy as younger architects—in particular Buckminster Fuller, who adapted some of Bragdon’s ideas and designs—found new ways of using geometric pattern to promote architectural and social integration.

Writings

 * A Primer of Higher Space (The Fourth Dimension)
 * Mathematical Abstractions
 * More Lives Than One
 * Projective Ornament
 * The Beautiful Necessity
 * The Frozen Fountain
 * Architecture and Democracy

title: Claude Fayette Bragdon


text:
User talk:Lord Misfit

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[[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]]

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If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 05:29, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

title: User talk:Lord Misfit


text:
Walid Shoebat

Walid Shoebat (وليد شعيبات) is a Palestinian American speaker, author and a critic of Islam. He was born in the West Bank to an American mother, and converted to Christianity from Islam. Shoebat has claimed to be an ex-PLO terrorist in a CNN television interview. He is a self-proclaimed expert on the dangers of Islam and is also a strong supporter of the State of Israel. Shoebat has also claimed that he firebombed the Israeli bank Bank Leumi; however, after thoroughly investigating this claim, reporters and officials have found no evidence of any attack on the bank in 1979.

Early life
According to the biography on his official website, Shoebat was born in Bethlehem, the grandson of the Mukhtar of Beit Sahour, whom Shoebat describes as an associate of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammad Amin al-Husayni. Shoebat said that he joined the Palestine Liberation Organization in his youth, and also says he was involved in an attack against an Israeli bank. There was no evidence for Shoebat's claims when investigated by journalists.

According to Shoebat, upon his release, he continued his anti-Israeli activism until going to the United States, where he became involved with the Arab Student Organization at Loop College in Chicago. Shortly afterwards Shoebat worked as a software engineer and became a US citizen. Shoebat says he converted to Christianity in 1993.

Career as activist, author and speaker
In 2004 and again in 2006, Shoebat was denied entrance to Canada on security grounds due to his self-described affiliation with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. He had been scheduled to speak in Ottawa at an event organized by the Simon Wiesenthal Center; Zachariah Anani spoke in Shoebat's place.

Showbat was a frequent, if controversial, public speaker on terrorism and Islam in the 2000s.

Shoebat has been introduced as a terrorism expert on several television programs, including appearances on CNN and its sister network HLN in 2006 and 2007. However, CNN points out that Shoebat makes errors in his presentation, including his assertion that the Transportation Security Administration could have prevented the September 11 attacks, even though the TSA was not created until after the attacks.

He is the author of three self-published books.

Books

 * Why I Left Jihad: The Root of Terrorism and the Return of Radical Islam, 2005
 * Why We Want to Kill You: The Jihadist Mindset and How to Defeat it, 2007
 * God's War on Terror: Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, with Joel Richardson, 2008

Personal views
After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Shoebat claims that he became an active advocate against Islamism and a strong supporter of the State of Israel. Shoebat is the founder of the Walid Shoebat Foundation, an organization that claims to "fight for the Jewish people". He is sometimes paid for his appearances and solicits donations for the foundation. He says he formed the foundation to educate Americans as to why the US should support Israel. Shoebat has said that he believes "in a Greater Israel that includes Judea and Samaria, and by this I mean a Jewish state". He regards the Gaza Strip as Jewish by right and believes Israel should retake the territory saying, "If a Jew has no right to Gaza, then he has no right to Jaffa or Haifa either." He advocates that Israel deport anyone who denies its right to exist, "even if they were born there".

Shoebat gives lectures to local police departments regarding his belief that "most Muslims seek to impose Sharia in the United States. To prevent this, he said in an interview, he warns officers that 'you need to look at the entire pool of Muslims in a community.'" According to The Washington Post, "When Shoebat spoke to the first annual South Dakota Fusion Center Conference in Sioux Falls ... he told them to monitor Muslim student groups and local mosques and, if possible, tap their phones. 'You can find out a lot of information that way,' he said."

Shoebat argues that parallels exist between radical Islam and Nazism. He says, "Secular dogma like Nazism is less dangerous than Islamofascism that we see today ... because Islamofascism has a religious twist to it; it says 'God the Almighty ordered you to do this' ... It is trying to grow itself in fifty-five Muslim states. So potentially, you could have a success rate of several Nazi Germanys, if these people get their way."

Criticism
On April 9, 2008, Shoebat responded to the earlier Jerusalem Post's report on that paper's op-ed page. He wrote that the Jerusalem Post had been duped. According to him, the sources who disputed his own account of his upbringing (including his relatives) were themselves involved in terrorism. He said they want to see him discredited, probably because of his conversion to Christianity. He also states that reputable witnesses who could confirm the bombing operation of Bank Leumi were not interviewed.

On July 13, 2011, CNN's Anderson Cooper 360° reported an investigative piece into Walid Shoebat's claim to authority based on being a former terrorist. The report found that according to Israeli government officials, the bank that Walid Shoebat claimed to have attacked, and his own relatives, no record of his supposed terrorist history existed. Another of Shoebat's claims, that of a two-week term in an Israeli jail, was also unsubstantiated, with Israel having no record he was ever jailed. His cousin, interviewed in the report, stated that he had never known Shoebat to have ties to any movement, and that his claims of being a former terrorist were "for his own personal reasons". According to CNN, their reporters in the United States, Israel and the Palestinian territories found no evidence to support Shoebat's claims and "neither Shoebat nor his business partner provided any proof of Shoebat's involvement in terrorism".

Omar Sacirbey's 2010 Washington Post article reports that Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American–Islamic Relations, has questioned Shoebat's motives, saying that "Ergun Caner, Shoebat, and Kamal Saleem—along with others like them—belong to an 'industry' that is often perpetuated by fundamentalist Christians" and that people are doing this "to make money or get converts or to get some personal benefit". The article also reports that skeptics have questioned how Shoebat and others have been able to retain US citizenship if their stories of terrorist activities are true.

Charitable organization status
When the Post asked Shoebat whether the Walid Shoebat Foundation is a registered charity, he said that it was registered in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Charitable Trusts and Organizations Section said it had no record of such a charity. When asked again, Shoebat said it was registered under a different name, but that he was not aware of the Foundation's registered name, nor any other details, which were known only to his manager. Dr. Joel Fishman of the Allegheny County Law Library in Pennsylvania expressed doubts about Walid Shoebat Foundation's donation process. He noted that if the money was being given to a registered charity, the charity would have to make annual reports to the state and federal government.

Family
He is the father of author Theodore Shoebat, known for his extreme anti-LGBT views.

title: Walid Shoebat