'Birther' judge Gary Kreep banished to traffic court

Gary Kreep

'Birther' judge banished to traffic court
Leader in questioning Obama's citizenship is reassigned
By Greg Moran
SDUT
Oct. 11, 2013

San Diego Judge Gary Kreep, a conservative legal activist who led a failed fight to challenge President Obama’s citizenship, has been exiled to traffic court after several Superior Court rulings favoring defendants’ constitutional rights.

Kreep, 63, was reassigned on Sept. 9 from the downtown San Diego courthouse to a Kearny Mesa facility that handles traffic offenses and small claims.

The move came after prosecutors from the City Attorney’s Office began to boycott his courtroom over his legal approach.

For instance, Kreep often declined to take away a defendant’s 4th Amendment rights against search and seizure — something prosecutors can legally request at various points during the criminal process.

No official reason was given for Kreep’s reassignment. Presiding Judge Robert Trentacosta said through a spokeswoman that the court doesn’t comment on judicial assignments.

Where should elected Judge Gary Kreep serve?
Superior Court 23% (378)
Traffic Court 3% (53)
Supreme Court 13% (213)
No court at all 61% (1019)

1663 total votes.

Kreep did not respond to numerous requests through the court and by email to comment for this story. San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith also declined to comment on Kreep’s reassignment or what role his office had in it.

On a recent morning in Kearny Mesa Department B, Kreep worked through two dozen traffic cases — speeding, driving on a suspended license, busted taillight, windows too heavily tinted. All of the people appeared without lawyers, which is not uncommon in traffic court.

Most of the Kearny Mesa facility is staffed with court commissioners, who lack the prestige of a judge and are paid $152,000 a year. Superior Court judges, who are elected or appointed by the governor, earn an annual salary of $178,789.

Judges will occasionally fill in for a few days in traffic court, but it’s virtually unheard of to have a Superior Court judge assigned indefinitely to the Kearny Mesa facility.

Apparently Kreep earned the ire only of prosecutors. The Public Defender’s office, which handles the majority of the cases in Kreep’s former courtroom, said its lawyers had no problem with the judge. Private lawyers had the same view.

The reassignment came soon after prosecutors deployed the legal tactic known as a peremptory challenge to keep cases from Kreep’s court, according to defense lawyers and courthouse sources.

Under state law, each side can exert one such challenge to the judge assigned to their case. They don’t have to state a reason. Prosecutors can create a so-called “blanket challenge” by issuing the peremptory challenge for every case assigned to the judge.

“They (prosecutors) are so used to getting their way,” said Heather Boxeth, a criminal defense lawyer who represented many clients in front of Kreep. “But they blanket-challenged him over simple misdemeanors.”

One example was how Kreep handled petty theft cases. Often defendants were given a deferred prosecution deal: plead guilty and in six months — if they had attended classes, not been arrested again, and repaid the store — the pleas would be wiped out.

Kreep would often dismiss these cases long before the six-month period, after the defendant had only attended a session or two, several lawyers said.

He also would release defendants without bail on minor charges if they had a history of showing up at court appearances, Boxeth said. And he was reluctant to impose orders of protection against individuals who had yet to be judged guilty.

Kreep was elected to the bench in an upset win last year. His campaign attracted national attention because of his prominent role in the so-called “birther” movement questioning the constitutional soundness of Obama’s birth certificate through his Ramona-based U.S. Justice Foundation.

The local bar association gave him the lowest rating of “lacking qualifications” in his race against a veteran prosecutor, and Kreep edged out a win by about 1,000 votes. Instead of trumpeting his decades of work as a conservative activist, he ran a campaign as an outsider, challenging the downtown legal establishment.

When he was on the bench downtown, several lawyers said, Kreep would occasionally make inappropriate comments, such as mentioning the appearance of a female lawyer. He could be short tempered and condescending, too, according to two lawyers who did not want to be identified.

Ironically, it may have been the defense bar that had the most concerns about Kreep before he arrived on the bench. Instead, Boxeth and other lawyers said they appreciated his adherence to constitutional principles in the often minor cases that were assigned to his court.

“None of this crazy stuff we were all concerned about would come out, ever did,” Boxeth said. “He’s been good at apologizing when he crossed a line. I found him for the most part to be very professional, and by the book.”

It’s unknown how long Kreep will be assigned to the Kearny Mesa courts.

San Diego Superior Court Judge-to-be Gary Kreep thinks City Beat is the voice of "powers that be"

Poor Gary Kreep. He's being picked-on by City Beat, one of the few progressive papers in San Diego.

Mr. Kreep says that City Beat is trying to court the favor of the movers and shakers of San Diego by writing about him. (See the last two paragraphs of the story below.) No, Mr. Kreep. City Beat is writing about you because your becoming a judge in San Diego is an affront to the constitutions of California and the United States. The June 2012 election was one of those rare occasions when progressives voted for a Republican, Garland Peed, for Superior Court judge, because you don't respect the institutions on which our country is based.

I believe Mr. Kreep should not accept the position as judge, since his judicial integrity is hopelessly compromised after he sent out deceptive mailers to fool South Bay citizens into voting for him. In South Bay, progressives did vote for Gary Kreep because he sent out a mailer linking himself to Obama.


Gary Kreep's family-law record
Birther judge-elect opposed parental rights for communists and lesbians as a lawyer, and faced allegations of spousal abuse
By Dave Maass
City Beat
Dec 19, 2012

“You give muckrakers a bad name…. Now, you’re even using the legendary ‘when’s the last time that you beat your wife’ ploy.”

—Judge-Elect Gary Kreep, Nov. 30, 2012

The signs were staked in the ground across the street from Gary Kreep’s law office in Escondido. One read “Divorce Lawyers Lie,” the other “You’re in Good Hands With Kreep—Not.”

It was 1991, and Kreep—who’ll be sworn in as a Superior Court judge in January— was being stalked by a client who’d gone off the deep end. The signs were just the beginning of a Cape Fear-style threat to Kreep and his staff; the man allegedly idled outside Kreep’s office and sent postcards featuring images of skeletons and bloody bodies. The client defended his actions in court, saying his goal was “to protest Kreep’s unscrupulous, careless and impious actions towards me and to warn the community about an archetype of ill repute.” Kreep successfully obtained a restraining order, and the court record indicates that was the end of it.

Among attorneys who practice family law, unhinged clients are considered part of the cost of doing business. Yet, as Kreep hopes to be assigned to domestic court next year, the controversial attorney’s record in family law certainly deserves scrutiny.

After running a stealth campaign, Kreep won the June 6 primary election by less than half a percentage point. His election has raised grave concerns in the legal community and the press due to his history as a polarizing political force. A lifelong Republican, Kreep pursued a career as a self-styled constitutional-law attorney. Over three decades, he’s represented myriad conservative interests, such as the anti-abortion and Minutemen movements, and, as a Republican activist, headed up numerous political action committees. These days, he’s best known as one of the primary “Birther” attorneys suing over the supposed illegitimacy of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

(Read CityBeat's previous in-depth reporting on Kreep here.)

Soon, he’ll leave all that behind to become a judge in the Superior Court of California, serving San Diego County. He’s told multiple media outlets that he won’t let his right-wing and Christian fundamentalist leanings (such as his ardent opposition to LGBT marriage equality) impact his rulings. However, Kreep’s record in family court—as a private attorney, as the executive director of a far-right nonprofit and as a party in his own domestic matters—raises questions about whether families will be in good hands.

One of Kreep’s earliest family-related cases is stored on microfilm at the Vista courthouse. The records from 1983 and 1984 detail his representation of two foster parents who needed to obtain a restraining order against their troubled, adult adopted son, specifically to keep him away from their younger adopted child. Kreep had been hired to file the injunction, and he quoted the parents a fee of between $250 and $500. As the case became more complicated, involving Carlsbad police and a private investigator, Kreep racked up fees in excess of $1,500. When the couple couldn’t pay, Kreep took them to court.

Related content Birther attorney in the lead for judge seat Who’s behind Gary Kreep robocall? Gary Kreep needs your help to throw Obama off the ballot

The judge took the rare move of ruling that Kreep must write the case off as pro-bono.

“The lawyers of California have been told by the California Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal [sic] that they must contribute their time and talent to those less fortunate than themselves,” Judge Ross Tharp wrote in his ruling. “Such is the case at hand. Defendants, being borderline indigents, simply could not, and cannot, afford to pay $90 per hour for plaintiff’s professional services, no matter how exemplary or successful they may have been.”

Kreep declined to comment on this case, or any other case for that matter, citing attorney-client privilege, even though, at the time some of the cases were happening, he was eager to publicize them.

Through the U.S. Justice Foundation (USJF), often described as the right-wing’s answer to the American Civil Liberties Union, Kreep has inserted himself into several family-law cases. A 1987 profile in the Los Angeles Times referenced USJF’s assistance to a San Francisco man who was attempting to gain custody of his daughter. The argument was that the mother was an unfit guardian, since she’d been a leader in the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Maoist radical group. Kreep sent out a newsletter with the headline “USJF Wins First Round of Battle to Save 12-Year-Old From Communism,” the Times reported.

More than 20 years later, USJF signed on to Miller vs. Jenkins, a landmark custody dispute that cut to the core of LGBT parental rights.

The case involved a lesbian couple in a civil union who had a child together. The biological mother became an ex-gay, born-again Christian and sought to dissolve the relationship. Although a Vermont court awarded the other parent visitation rights, the biological mother—for whom the USJF served as cocounsel—left for Virginia, which doesn’t recognize LGBT unions, to invalidate the visitation rights. A federal law explicitly prohibits this kind of interstate judge-shopping; however, Kreep’s organization sought to publicize the case as a front in a larger culture war.

“We anticipate that this litigation, which centers around the issue of child custody and visitation rights resulting from a domestic partnership, will soon wind up before the United States Supreme Court as state courts are involved in more of these cases,” Kreep said in a press release. “The United States Justice Foundation believes that the time is now to engage in this battle to preserve the sanctity of traditional marriage and the best interests of children.”

The case didn’t reach the Supreme Court. When it was resolved in the other mother’s favor, the biological mother fled to Nicaragua with the child. A Mennonite pastor was convicted of kidnapping for helping the mother leave the country.

Ask Kreep about his own domestic life, and he’ll talk about how he cared for his terminally ill wife for two-and-a-half years. After she passed away, Kreep cared for his terminally ill mother-inlaw for another eight months.

He remarried in 2004, but after three years, they separated. Kreep filed for dissolution in September 2007, citing irreconcilable differences. A legal battle ensued over splitting property, including real estate, timeshares, insurance policies, IRS returns, Corvettes, art work, coin and sports-card collections and a cache of firearms. The protracted case grew bitter as Kreep accused his wife of a gambling addiction and she countered with multiple allegations of abuse.

“Since my marriage to my husband it has become very clear that he has a very strong need to control me emotionally, physically and financially,” Kreep’s ex-wife, a psychologist, wrote in a declaration on file at the East County court house. “The reason I left my husband is because he was verbally and physically and emotionally abusive. He is a recovering alcoholic and unfortunately has to lay blame on me for things he cannot accept in himself. He accuses me of addictive behaviors I don’t have, throws bottles at me, punches holes in walls, and belittles me.” Confronted with these allegations, Kreep points out they were not made at the beginning of the case, but two years into the dispute.

“I have never touched either of my wives in anger,” Kreep writes in an email to CityBeat. “The charges of ‘verbally and physically and emotionally abusive’ are completely false. As far as being ‘a recovering alcoholic,’ I have only been ‘blasted’ once in the past 30+ years. I do not feel that it is appropriate to comment on my ex-wife’s addictions. I never threw a bottle at her, never punched walls during our marriage, and I should point out that my ex-wife was 6’ tall in stocking feet, and not exactly petite.” [Maura Larkins comment: Apparently Mr. Kreep thinks that it's a fair fight for a man to assault a tall woman. A woman on steroids, perhaps, but in general a short man is much stronger than a tall woman. I'll bet Mr. Kreep would choose to fight the woman if he were forced to make a choice as to whether he'd fight a tall woman or a short man.]

CityBeat unsuccessfully attempted to reach his ex-wife directly or through her attorney of record.

Although Kreep has made a career of smearing politicians, he believes it’s unfair to bring up these issues about him.

“You REALLY must hate me, or you’re REALLY being paid a lot to go after me by the downtown crowd,” he writes. “I hope that your bootlicking is getting you the crumbs from the table of the ‘powers that be’ that you are seeking, as your journalistic integrity, and accuracy, certainly is lacking.”

Kreep will be sworn into office on Jan. 7, after which Presiding Judge Robert Trentacosta will assign him to a department.

Another crazy election for San Diego Superior Court judge

I agree with Bonnie Dumanis on this one, “I think what we are seeing now is an assault on the judiciary.”

Judging San Diego’s Judicial Candidates (Video)
By Ryann Grochowski
KPBS
September 17, 2012

...Vying for a seat on the Superior Court bench is veteran prosecutor Robert Amador who has judges, lawyers, Democrats and Republicans on his side. His opponent is Jim Miller Jr., a private practitioner from El Cajon who touts his diverse legal experience and conservative credentials.

Who to vote for? The county bar association is pressing to be the credible voice. It rated Amador well qualified and Miller not qualified. Some of the most high-profile legal names in the county are urging voters to pay attention to the bar. Miller and the Republican Party, though, say not so fast: there is more to the story.

A crowd gathered early one Monday evening late last month to eat hors d'oeuvres, drink cocktails and write checks for Amador.

There was an urgency among the dozens of lawyers and judges. They said they want to ensure voters don’t make the same mistake they made in June: electing a candidate the county bar association deemed as “lacking qualifications.”

“I’m as guilty as probably a lot of us in this room for taking that race for granted,” county Sheriff William Gore told the crowd. “And we saw what happened. We can’t let that happen again.”

“What happened” was the election of Gary Kreep, a conservative, constitutional lawyer in private practice and member of the “birther” movement. He beat prosecutor Garland Peed by less than 2,000 votes.

That race for county judge became known across the country as the one with the funny name: Kreep versus Peed. National political commentator Rachel Maddow came to tears with laughter as she described it.

But the people at the fundraiser for deputy district attorney Amador weren’t laughing.

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis told the group: “I think what we are seeing now is an assault on the judiciary.”

In California, Superior Court is the official name for the county-level court that presides over civil, criminal, family, juvenile and probate cases. Superior Court judges can decide life in prison, they can assess millions of dollars in damages and they can decide custody of children.

There are more than 110 active Superior Court judges in San Diego County. Some are appointed by the governor and then subject to election by the voters. Others, like Amador and Miller, run for an open seat outright. Judges serve six-year terms.

Amador, who is 55 and a 29-year deputy district attorney, says he is the best candidate because he has proven himself in tough situations, including the prosecution of a death penalty case. By his count, he has handled more than 100 jury trials and 250 court trials. He admits to a lack of experience in the civil realm, but believes his criminal law expertise carries over to civil cases.

“I think until you’ve actually done a lot of things in the criminal justice system, you’re not really prepared to be a judge,” he said.

Miller, 42, is an attorney in El Cajon specializing in family law, a practice he took over after his father’s unexpected death in 2009. Miller’s legal experience is broad; he emphasizes his work in the five areas of the county court. He touts his “outsider” status with pride. He believes his civil law background is sorely needed in courts overrun with judges who were once prosecutors and other government attorneys.

“They don’t want somebody coming in who’s going to upset their apple cart,” he said.

Miller and his wife have four children. His eldest stepdaughters graduated from his alma mater, Valhalla High School in El Cajon.

...A registered Republican, Amador has some support from the other side -- the county Democratic party, while not endorsing Amador, passed a resolution advising Democrats not to vote for Miller. His list of endorsements includes high-profile members of both parties, as well as independents.

Miller is backed by the county and state Republican Party, the Lincoln Club of San Diego and many local tea party groups, including the Chula Vista Patriots and the Fallbrook Tea Party. Miller said he was happy to see Kreep, a tea party-backed constitutional lawyer who does not believe President Obama is a U.S. citizen, elected to the bench...


Jim Miller Jr.
Age: 42

Education: Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego State University

Bar Rating: Lacking qualifications
Key Endorsements: Republican Party of San Diego, Lincoln Club of San Diego, California Republican Party, councilman and mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio, several tea party organizations.

Birther Gary Kreep pays to hoodwink voters, then denies being elected by uninformed voters

How much more proof do we need that judges should be appointed, not elected? We now have a judge who got elected by deceptive campaign tactics. How can we expect him to uphold the law?

Gary Kreep paid to fool voters, then denied that his win was a result of uninformed electorate.

ELECTION: Kreep says right-wing views won't affect rulings as judge
WINNING CANDIDATE HAS CHALLENGED OBAMA'S BIRTHPLACE, LEGITIMACY
June 23, 2012
By TERI FIGUEROA

Voters in San Diego County appear to have elected a conservative activist lawyer to a judgeship with the San Diego Superior Court.

Gary Kreep, 61 ---- known for taking on right-wing causes ---- said Friday that his views will not color his decisions on the bench.

According to the unofficial tally, Kreep surpassed his opponent, veteran prosecutor Garland Peed, by 1,702 votes in a judicial contest in which more than 406,000 ballots were cast. Kreep garnered 50.21 percent of the votes to Peed's 49.79 percent.

The result caught political observers by surprise, because prosecutors tend to be shoo-in candidates in judicial races....

Kreep says he used old-fashioned methods ---- shoe leather and slate mailers ---- to reach out to voters. He even ended up on a slate mailer urging voters to back Obama...

He credits grass-roots supporters, robo-calls, endorsements and slate mailers in a campaign he said he financed with about $55,000 of his own money.

As for those slate mailers, in an effort to reach out to Democratic voters, it turned out he bought into one with an Obama endorsement. It was especially ironic because, as an attorney, Kreep has worked on a couple of federal civil suits challenging Obama's eligibility to be president based on his birthplace.

Dismissing criticism

The San Diego County Bar Association rated Kreep as "lacking qualifications" to become a judge, a rating Kreep disputed as a decision rooted in politics.

He dismissed criticisms by people who said his apparent win is the result of an uninformed electorate.

"That implies that the voters are too stupid to know who they are voting for. That is an elitist, obnoxious view," Kreep said...