About that family Shanahan is quitting to spend more time with

The FBI has been examining a violent domestic dispute from nine years ago between acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan and his then-wife as part of a background investigation ahead of his possible confirmation hearing to be President Trump’s permanent defense chief.

[...]

The incident, in which Shanahan and his then-wife Kimberley both claimed to the police that they had been punched by the other, did not surface when Trump nominated Shanahan to be the Pentagon’s second-in-command two years ago, or when he was selected to be the interim defense chief this year.

  USA Today

Why the hell not? There were police records of the incident.

Both Shanahan and Jordinson acknowledged in court filings and police reports that a late-night argument on Aug. 28, 2010, after both had been drinking, spilled from their bedroom to the front yard of their Seattle home. The incident escalated into a clash that police said left him with a bloodied nose and hand and her with a blood-stained forearm. But their accounts diverged on who was to blame, as well as the claim Jordinson reported to officers and later outlined in divorce papers: that Shanahan punched her in the stomach.

[...]

“We have had arguments over this briefcase and its contents before,” Jordinson stated.

[...]

During her divorce, Jordinson was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, though she disputed that conclusion. And police records in her new hometown of Sarasota, Florida show officers have expressed concerns about her mental stability when responding to multiple calls from her home.

[...]

The charges and counter charges are part of a bitter legal battle that spanned more than six years, as the couple waged an extensive fight over the care of their three children and the division of the family’s significant financial holdings.

Jordinson’s post-divorce life has not been without its troubles. In 2014, she was charged with burglary and criminal mischief in separate disputes with a former business partner. The burglary charge was subsequently dismissed, as was the criminal mischief charge after she completed a pre-trial diversion program.

[...]

“The question is going to be whether or not he’s credible on the issue. If he’s credible, he’ll be OK,” said Leon Panetta, who was defense secretary and CIA director during President Barack Obama’s administration. “These days nothing is out of bounds.”

Obviously. Look at the president we have.

In the months that he has served as President Trump’s acting secretary of defense, Patrick Shanahan has worked to keep domestic violence incidents within his family private. His wife was arrested after punching him in the face, and his son was arrested after a separate incident in which he hit his mother with a baseball bat. Public disclosure of the nearly decade-old episodes would re-traumatize his young adult children, Shanahan said.

  WaPo

And derail that confirmation hearing he avoids by stepping down?

The competing accounts of the fight are outlined in hundreds of pages of court files and police records, as well as police photographs, audio recordings and an interview with USA TODAY in which Shanahan’s former wife reiterated her accusations.

Again, I ask: why was this not known to Senators confirming him for the number 2 position at the DOD?

“Bad things can happen to good families . . . and this is a tragedy, really,” Shanahan said. Dredging up the episode publicly, he said, “will ruin my son’s life.”

Hitting his mother with a baseball bat seems calculated to ruin HERS.

In November 2011, Shanahan rushed to defend his then-17-year-old son, William Shanahan, in the days after the teenager brutally beat his mother. The attack had left Patrick Shanahan’s ex-wife unconscious in a pool of blood, her skull fractured and with internal injuries that required surgery, according to court and police records.

Two weeks later, Shanahan sent his ex-wife’s brother a memo arguing that his son had acted in self-defense.

What the hell was SHE wieldin, then? Self-defense. A blow to the head and internal injuries. Was she on ketamine and he couldn't stop her with just one strike?

“Use of a baseball bat in self-defense will likely be viewed as an imbalance of force,” Shanahan wrote. “However, Will’s mother harassed him for nearly three hours before the incident.”

Oh. She harrassed him for nearly three hours. Didn't even punch him in the face? Jesus Christ. Sounds like the son has some mental issues of his own.

Shanahan, who has been responding to questions from The Post about the incidents since January, said he wrote the memo in the hours after his son’s attack, before he knew the full extent of his ex-wife’s injuries. He said that it was to prepare for his son’s initial court appearance and that he never intended for anyone other than his son’s attorneys to read it.

He didn't think he'd have to back it up at some point?

Shanahan said Monday that he does not believe there can be any justification for an assault with a baseball bat, but he went further in the interview, saying he now regrets writing the passage.

Yeah. Now he can't be Secretary of Defense.

Kimberley Shanahan won custody of the children and moved to Florida.

[...]

Shortly after midnight on Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2011, Kimberley Shanahan and William got into “a verbal dispute” over her suspicion that the 17-year-old was in a romantic relationship with a 36-year-old woman, according to a police report.

According to police, just after 1:30 a.m., William “shoved and pinned his mother against a bathroom wall” before grabbing a $400 Nike composite baseball bat “to swing at her head,” striking her multiple times.

“I attempted to run away from Will, but as I reached the laundry room, he struck me with the bat in the back of my head,” Kimberley Shanahan wrote in a court filing in the divorce case. “The last thing I remember from before I lost consciousness is the impact of the bat, and blood gushing everywhere.”

William, Sarasota police wrote, struck several blows to his mother’s head and torso and left her “to lie in a pool of blood” and then “unplugged the landline phone cord depriving the victim and [the younger brother] the use of 911 to render aid.”

[...]

The younger brother called 911 from a neighbor’s phone, according to police records.

Within hours, William contacted his father, who immediately booked a predawn flight to Florida, according to court records and documents provided by the Pentagon.

And set about helping him try to claim self-defense.

While she was in the hospital, authorities began to search for William, according to records released to The Post by Sarasota police.

Police distributed a photo of William to patrol cars on Bird Key. They tried to track the young man’s cellphone, but it appeared to be turned off, police wrote. They canvassed a local park and bridges to the mainland. They searched a local yacht club. But there was no trace of him, according to records.

Sounds like a person who was just defending himself. His father knew where he was.

Patrick Shanahan landed in Florida just before 5 p.m. on Wednesday. He arranged to stay with William in a hotel.

“Mr. Shanahan’s response when he learned of the assault was to book Will a hotel room,” Kimberley Shanahan wrote.

Shanahan said it’s a bit of a blur.

A bit of a blur.

“I wasn’t hiding. We got a hotel and talked to the attorney, and we just camped out.”

Just camped out. Not hiding. Not turning him into the police either.

Derek Byrd, head of a well-known Sarasota defense firm hired by Patrick Shanahan to represent his son in the criminal case, said in an interview that the elder Shanahan acted appropriately by not contacting police until his son could consult a defense attorney, a process that was delayed by the Thanksgiving holiday.

Appropriately. Really? The boy should have been taken to the police where he could claim his right to remain silent and see his attorney then.

Byrd also said that Patrick Shanahan was not aware that police were searching for his son in the days after the attack.

LOLOL.

“I think he was just doing what a reasonable dad should probably do. I’m sure the timeline looks bad on paper, but he didn’t do anything that I consider out of the ordinary, and he wasn’t hiding Will.”

Looks bad on paper. LOL.

So, they finally turn him in, and a hearing is set.

Patrick Shanahan and Byrd came to the hearing prepared to plead for the younger Shanahan to remain out of custody, citing his baseball career at an exclusive youth sports academy and prep school attended by sons and daughters of major league athletes.

“He’s a college baseball prospect. He has dreams. He has a future. His father is an executive of Boeing,” Byrd said, according to an audio recording that the court released to The Post. “If he has to sit in jail for 21 days, not only is that going to traumatize him, he’s not going to finish the semester, probably get kicked off the baseball team . . . everything is going to be over for him.”

Jesus Christ. Now imagine a young black man who's been apprehended for beating his mother unconscious with a baseball bat.

Patrick Shanahan also vouched for his son.

“He doesn’t believe in violence,” he told the judge. “I’ve never seen him act aggressively toward his brother or any other family members, so it’s a shock to me what has happened.”

Oh, he believes in violence.

The judge declined to release William Shanahan, calling pictures of the crime scene “horrendous.”

[...]

Kris Roberts, a police officer who assisted in the search for William Shanahan, recalled that after the arrest, his father was a “hindrance” in a follow-up matter, as police investigated whether there had been an inappropriate relationship between the adult woman and William. Under Florida law, William was too young at the time to have had a consenting sexual relationship with the woman. Roberts, a retired detective with the Longboat Key Police Department, said the father, whom she could not remember by name, would not turn over his son’s cellphone.

[...]

Roberts said that without the cooperation of the father, the investigation fell apart. “We only had one love letter between them, but it didn’t speak to anything sexual,” Roberts said. The adult woman “soon lawyered up, too, and we moved on.”

[...]

Prosecutors would go on to charge William as an adult with one felony: aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. He pleaded down to a third-degree felony, and in 2012, a state prosecutor agreed to a “withhold of adjudication,” curtailing the length of the sentence and probation. The post-sentencing maneuver is not recognized outside of Florida, and William’s record could not be sealed or expunged in the state because it involved a violent domestic assault.

William was ordered to spend 18 months at a Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and sentenced to four years’ probation. Both penalties were later reduced.

[...]

Kimberley Shanahan lost custody of the couple’s youngest child in 2014, when a judge wrote that she had “engaged in abusive use of conflict that is seriously detrimental” to the child. According to multiple accounts, she is now estranged from all three of her children. At his last confirmation hearing, to become deputy secretary of defense in June 2017, all three children were sitting behind Patrick Shanahan.

None of the senators asked him about domestic violence.

I never did find out what was in that briefcase. But I have to say, I feel very sorry for the whole family, and I hope they're all in therapy.



Always has been, always will be.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.