Howard Frankland stabbing suspect is former federal prosecutor | Tampa Bay Times

By Tony Marrero Times staff

Patrick Douglas Scruggs, who worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa for about a decade, is accused of stabbing another motorist after a crash.

Patrick Douglas Scruggs, 38, of Tampa, was arrested and booked into the Pinellas County Jail on Tuesday. He faces charges of aggravated battery, aggravated assault and armed burglary after authorities say he repeatedly stabbed a driver on the Howard Frankland Bridge after the driver struck Scruggs’ sedan. [ Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office ]

Patrick Douglas Scruggs, 38, of Tampa, worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office from September 2012 until April of this year, according to his LinkedIn page. His time there included appearing on behalf of the federal government during hearings for Florida residents accused of taking part in the riots at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021.

In May, he joined Barnes and Thornburg, an Atlanta-based private law firm, as an “of counsel” attorney, the page says. The page describes Scruggs as “a seasoned litigator and investigator with experience in various practice areas of criminal law.”

Now Scruggs faces his own legal trouble stemming from a bizarre chain of events that unfolded on the Howard Frankland as rush hour was winding down on Tuesday morning.

According to a news release issued Tuesday by the Florida Highway Patrol, a 40-year-old Tampa man was driving a sedan south on Interstate 275 when he and his 43-year-old wife noticed a vehicle that was stopped in the travel lanes of the bridge shortly before 9:24 a.m. The 35-year-old driver, also of Tampa, was slumped over inside his sedan, troopers said, so the couple pulled over in front of the car to help.

The 40-year-old man was unable to get inside the other sedan, so he walked back to his car to get something that could break the window. While he was doing that, the 35-year-old man woke up and accelerated forward, crashing into the couple’s sedan. He shifted into reverse and then tried to get around the couple’s sedan, according to troopers, but at that point, he struck Scruggs’ sedan as he was driving by the scene.

Scruggs pulled over, got out and walked up to the driver of the vehicle that hit his car. According to the Highway Patrol, Scruggs broke a window and started stabbing the 35-year-old man with a pocketknife.

The couple returned to the vehicle to help the man being stabbed, but Scruggs then tried to stab them and they fled, troopers said. . . .

Days after the riots at the U.S. Capital in 2021, Scruggs appeared on behalf of the U.S. Attorney’s Office during the bond hearing of Adam Johnson, the Parrish man who became one of the most prominent symbols of the riots that engulfed the U.S. Capitol when he was photographed carrying a lectern from the House of Representatives. Scruggs asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Christopher Tuite to order certain restrictions while Johnson was on release, including drug testing, the surrender of his passport and a nightly curfew.

“This is a serious case,” Scruggs told the judge. “Everyone involved in the storming of the Capitol last week needs to be held accountable for their actions, including Mr. Johnson.”

Another judge in 2022 sentenced Johnson to 75 days in jail.

Retiring Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley is hitting the media circuit as he retires. How odd of him to warn about all the unconstitutional measures that Donald Trump threatened to enact that supposedly justified the illegal or unethical acts that his opponents in the military and intelligence community actually did.

Or to put it another way, Biden’s abject corruption, his chronic lying, his unapologetic racial condescension, his utter destruction of the border, and his dementia still would not justify Milley’s replacement to call his communist Chinese counterpart to warn him that Biden was cognitively inert and dangerous, or to order theater commanders  to ignore Biden-routed orders and instead report directly to him.

Nor would Biden’s pathologies justify a dozen or so retired 4-stars to violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice by publicly blasting Biden a liar, a Mussolini, and to be gone the sooner the better.

Nor would Biden’s failed and dangerous presidency warrant a former Pentagon lawyer to publish a warning that he needed to be removed by a possible military coup. Nor would Biden’s dangers to the republic justify 51 former “Intelligence authorities” to issue a lying affidavit to warp an upcoming  presidential debate and election.

So Mark Milley ends as he begins—without a clue that he and others set precedents that if followed with future controversial presidents would soon destroy the republic.

An FBI informant file said that Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of natural gas company Burisma Holdings, claimed he was “coerced” into paying $5 million apiece in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden in exchange for Shokin’s ouster. AP

The European Commission praised Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin for his efforts to fight corruption in a December 2015 progress report published nine days after then-VP Joe Biden demanded his ouster.

The report flies in the face of Biden’s claims that the European Union joined his demands that Shokin be removed for being corrupt and obstructing anti-corruption reforms.

In fact, the Dec. 18, 2015, progress report, obtained by the New York Post, says that the European Union was satisfied that Ukraine had achieved “noteworthy” progress, including in “preventing and fighting corruption,” and thus was eligible for visa-free travel in Europe.

The European Commission noted that Shokin had just appointed the head of a specialized anti-corruption prosecution office, which it described as “an indispensable component of an effective and independent institutional framework for combating high-level corruption.”

The new office would help the newly established National Anti-Corruption Bureau combat corruption, the report noted, and urged Ukrainian leadership to ensure that both bodies were “fully operational” by the first quarter of 2016.

But Shokin was gone by March 29, 2016, forced out by Biden’s threats to then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that he would withhold $1 billion in US aid unless the prosecutor general was fired.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin says that then-VP Joe Biden and his son Hunter received bribes in exchange for forcing him out of office. (Screenshot)

Despite Biden’s claim, Europeans WEREN’T trying to oust Ukraine prosecutor targeting Hunter’s firm | New York Post